Labor History Links

Intelligent and Honest Radicals explores the Chicago labor movement’s relationship to Illinois legal and political system especially as seen through the eyes of the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL). Newton-Matza focuses on the significant era between the great strike in 1919 and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration and the beginning of the New Deal in 1933. He brings to light a number of victories and achievements for the labor movement in this period that are often overlooked. Newton-Matza shows the Chicago labor movement as a progressive agency intent on changing the workers’ world through words and peaceful actions, drawing upon their personal experiences and ideology.
The ghosts of upheaval : Chicago law and labor in the nineteenth century
Whoopla ho! : the creation of the Chicago Federation of Labor and into the twentieth century
Everybody is watching us now : the CFL and the dream of a Labor Party
The crack of the whip : the battle against the labor injunction
The Chicago controversy : the Landis Award
A brisk war over a new constitution for Illinois
Conclusion : out of the twenties and into the New Deal
Appendix 1: Constitution of the LPCC
Appendix 2: Platform of the Labor Party of Illinois
Appendix 3: Chicago Labor Party’s Platform
Appendix 4: New Party Platform of 1923
Appendix 5: Robert Buck’s Speech to the Farmer-Labor Party Convention of 1923 Appendix 6: John Fitzpatrick’s Speech to the CFL, May 18, 1924
Appendix 7: Judge Landis’s Rules for Arbitration
Appendix 8: The Landis Award
Appendix 9: The Uniform Agreement
Appendix 10: Application for Employment
Appendix 11: Leaflet No. 4 By The Joint Building Trades Publicity Committee Appendix 12: The State Federation Report on the Proposed Constitution Appendix 13: Public Ownership League Report on the Proposed Constitution Appendix 14: Save Our Liberties!
Bibliography

includes lesson plans and teaching activities

Visit "the only labor museum in Michigan" at 41 W Front St, Monroe, MI 48161. Exhibits feature industrialization in Michigan and the link between civil rights and labor. Special tours can also be organized by following the link on the hompage.In 2001, the Monroe County Council CIO Social and Welfare Association conceived a bold plan for the adaptive re-use of the historic hall - creation of a labor history museum for Monroe County dedicated to, preservation and display of artifacts documenting the rich heritage of the State of Michigan and Monroe County as well as education and outreach to the general public, youth and organized labor, illustrating the importance of Monroe County to the American labor movement. The museum is located in the heart of Downtown Monroe among many wonderful shops, restaurants, cafes, the Monroe County Historical Museum, the River Raisin Centre for the Arts and much more.

Located downtown in the former CIO Headquarters, the Monroe County Labor History Museum stands as one of the only museums dedicated to the history of labor movements and the workforce in the state of Michigan. The museum not only examines the technological aspects of the Industrial Revolution that changed how work was carried out, but also the movements to create safer conditions for workers and the way in which the American Dream influenced and was influenced by various labor movements.

With open hours on Saturdays and options for private tours, this museum is a must stop for anyone interested in the industrialization of America and the history of labor in Michigan and the United States.

The Montana Labor News was first published in 1925 in Butte, Montana. The 3-column, 4-page weekly was published by the Silver Bow Trades and Labor Council (now Montana AFL-CIO). Its first known editor was F.E. Cleves. Other editors between the 1920s and 1951 included Charles Sebold, Clarence E. Blewitt, John Vickers, and Ed C. Vawter.

As "The Official Organ of the Montana State Federation of Labor," the paper's stance on labor issues and politics was clear. The masthead declared the Labor News was "A Fearless Champion of Human Rights Devoted to the Interests and Voicing the Demands of the Trade Union Movement."

Content in the newspaper included an editorial column, a combination humor and socio-political commentary column titled "Timely and Untimely Observations," and national labor news in "The Washington Scene." Local content focused strongly on labor issues in the copper industry, though other trades were also represented. Headlines such as "Miners Urge Silicosis Compensation" appeared beside warnings against patronizing local businesses that were "unfair to organized labor." Other content included coverage of state and national labor conventions and reports on the Fort Peck Dam project from the labor perspective. The Labor News peppered phrases such as "Butte Copper Means Butte Prosperity" and "Agitate–Educate–Organize" between articles and other content. The paper printed legal notices and rosters for unions in Butte, Missoula, Miles City, Anaconda, and Bozeman. Further rosters for Glasgow, Billings, Havre, and Helena appeared later.

In 1928, editor Cleves faced a libel charge for comments he made about the president of the Federation of Labor, Stephen Ely. The Helena Daily Independent reported on January 11 that the criminal libel information filed in district court the day before "contains alleged extensive and voluminous excerpts from the Labor News, in which Ely is called a thief and crook, and charged with tampering with votes cast at the official election last year." The filing went on to say Cleves referred to Ely as "one of the most damnable cancers on the breast of the labor movement," and that he was "ignominiously bounced" from the United Mine Workers after a "five year period of doubtful service during which the records show that he had extracted the tidy sum of $35,000." Cleves pleaded not guilty, and soon afterward the libel charge, Cleves was dismissed on the condition he would print a retraction in his paper.

More than 600 interviews conducted in the 1980s on now in a digital format. Montanans at Work Oral History Project focuses on change and continuity in three main industries in Montana: agriculture, mining, and forest products. The interviews captured the stories of laborers, labor leadership, and support industry workers, from the expansion in extractive economy jobs during World War II to the decline of those industries in the 1980s.

Collection Summary
Through the Voices of Labor: Preserving the Montanans at Work and New Deal in Montana Oral History Interviews project, the Montana Historical Society digitized three major oral history projects in its collections: Montanans at Work, Metals Manufacturing in Four Montana Communities, and New Deal in Montana/Fort Peck Dam. Montanans in the mining, agriculture, and forest products industries, as well as Montanans working in Depression-era New Deal programs, especially the construction of the Fort Peck Dam.

An index exists for each of the three oral history projects through the ArchivesWest website. Please note access to online copies of interviews is not possible through these indexes. To access online copies please click on the links below or by searching by name on this website.

The Metals Manufacturing in Four Montana Communities Oral History Project concentrates on residents of Anaconda, Black Eagle, Columbia Falls, and East Helena, who share their experiences as merchants, bartenders, union organizers, and families of smelter workers living in towns dominated by metals manufacturing plants.

The New Deal in Montana/Fort Peck Dam Oral History Project documented the economic recovery programs initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1930s and 1940s Montana, such as the construction of Fort Peck Dam under the Public Works Administration, as well as efforts by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Resettlement Administration.

Working in close partnership with community stakeholders over multiple stages, MONUMENTS TO MIGRATION AND LABOR is creating public art, monument installations, and programming that explore what it has meant to migrate to and work in New Jersey.

The first of its kind, this project offers a model for how public history and art, and monumental expressions, can actively and democratically involve the public in constructing new and more inclusive commemorative landscapes.Examining immigrants who have come to New Jersey from abroad, as well as Southern Blacks and Puerto Ricans who moved to the state, this project confronts the hostility and exclusions that groups migrating for work have historically encountered.

Demonized in the media and political discourse as economic burdens, criminals and worse, this project represents a collective opportunity and effort to change perceptions. We aim to examine how im/migrant laborers are essential to New Jersey and the United States, while also interpreting their complicated stories.

Menace to Empire is a profoundly original and ambitious book, a history of race and empire that traces both the colonial violence and the anticolonial rage that the United States spread across the Pacific between the Philippine-American War and World War II. Author Moon-Ho Jung argues that the US national security state as we know it was born out of attempts to repress and silence colonized subjects, from the Philippines and Hawai'i to California and beyond, whose anticolonial aspirations challenged US claims to sovereignty. Jung examines how the contradictions of race, nation, and empire generated waves of revolutionary movements spanning the Pacific--anticolonial, antiracist, and labor movements that exposed and confronted the US empire. In response, the US state closely monitored and brutally suppressed those movements by racializing particular politics and distinct communities as seditious, exaggerating fears of pan-Asian solidarities and sowing anti-Asian racism under the guise of national security. Menace to Empire transforms familiar themes in American history to highlight the critical role of colonial violence in the formation of radical movements and the antiradical origins of anti-Asian racism. Radicalized by their opposition to the US empire and racialized as threats to US security, peoples in and from Asia pursued a revolutionary politics that gave rise to the national security state--the heart and soul of the US empire ever since"-- Provided by publisher

The Rising Tide of Color challenges familiar narratives of race in American history that all too often present the U.S. state as a benevolent force in struggles against white supremacy, especially in the South. Featuring a wide range of scholars specializing in American history and ethnic studies, this powerful collection of essays highlights historical moments and movements on the Pacific Coast and across the Pacific to reveal a different story of race and politics. From labor and anticolonial activists around World War I and multiracial campaigns by anarchists and communists in the 1930s to the policing of race and sexuality after World War II and transpacific movements against the Vietnam War, The Rising Tide of Color brings to light histories of race, state violence, and radical movements that continue to shape our world in the twenty-first century.Part One. Framing Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements -- Introduction: Opening Salvo / Moon-Ho Jung -
- "Standing at the Crossroads" : Why Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements Matter Now / George Lipsitz -
- Part Two. Traversing the Pacific -- Mobilizing Revolutionary Manhood : Race, Gender, and Resistance in the Pacific Northwest Borderlands / Kornel Chang
-- Dangerous Amusements : Hawaii's Theaters, Labor Strikes, and Counterpublic Culture, 1909-1934 / Denise Khor
-- Part Three. Forging Multiracial Fronts -- Positively Stateless :
Marcus Graham, the Ferrero-Sallitto Case, and Anarchist Challenges to Race and Deportation / Kenyon Zimmer -
- Relief and Revolution : Southern California Struggles against Unemployment in the 1930s / Christina Heatherton
-- Part Four. Seeing Radical Connections
-- Policing Gay LA : Mapping Racial Divides in the Homophile Era, 1950-1967 / Emily K. Hobson
-- Carceral Migrations : Black Power and Slavery in 1970s California Prison Radicalism / Dan Berger
-- Part Five. Fighting a State of Violence
-- Hypervisibility and Invisibility : Asian/American Women, Radical Orientalism, and the Revisioning of Global Feminism / Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
-- Radicalizing Currents : The GI Movement in the Third World / Simeon Man.

The Mordecai House is the oldest house in Raleigh in its original location. Once the largest plantation in Wake County, it was home to the Lane and Mordecai families and enslaved and freed African Americans from 1785 to the 1960s.

Mordecai Historic Park offers one-hour guided tours of the park’s historic buildings and grounds. Tickets for tours may be purchased at the Visitor Center.

Tours leave the Visitor Center at the top of the hour, beginning at 10 a.m., and the last tour leaves at 3 p.m. Each tour is approximately 60 minutes long. Self-guided tours of the building exteriors and park grounds are available when the park is open. Stop by the Visitor Center to pick up a self-guided map to begin your tour. Please note that visitors may only enter park buildings on a guided tour.

The incarceration rate in the United States today is so high that it can only be described as a pattern of mass incarceration. Worse, this system of mass incarceration operates through structures of gendered and racial discrimination which unfairly target black men. Societal racism in the forms of federal policy and residential segregation produce and normalize this discrimination. However, racial ideologies and practices, as well as segregation, have differed geographically throughout United States history. I examine the racial dynamics of incarceration on a state level, asking how racism and segregation have intersected with the demographics of incarceration in the United States over the last 90 years. Since women make up such a small proportion of the prison population, I narrow my focus to the mass incarceration of men, specifically the disproportionate representation of black men in American prisons.

Testimonials and debate between Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, and Morris Hilquit, leader of the Socialist Party of America. This text reveals the similarities and differences in the AFL's and SP's politics.

The miners and railroad boys of Birmingham, Ala., entertained me one evening some months ago with a graphic description of the conditions among the slaves of the Southern cotton mills. While I imagined that these must be something of a modern Siberia, I concluded that the boys were overdrawing the picture and made up my mind to see for myself the conditions described. Accordingly I got a job and mingled with the workers in the mill and in their homes. I found that children of six and seven years of age were dragged out of bed at half-past 4 in the morning when the task-master's whistle blew. They eat their scanty meal of black coffee and corn bread mixed with cottonseed oil in place of butter, and then off trots the whole army of serfs, big and little. By 5:30 they are all behind the factory walls, where amid the whir of machinery they grind their young lives out for fourteen long hours each day. As one looks on this brood of helpless human souls one could almost hear their voices cry out, "Be still a moment, O you iron wheels or capitalistic greed, and let us hear each other's voices, and let us feel for a moment that this is not all of life."

Mother Jones Museum is the website of the Mother Jones Heritage Project. The project is guided by the philosophy & model of Mother Jones, whose base was in Chicago, but who travelled s the US to organize and fight for justice. So while the Mother Jones Museum has traditional museum exhibits in several locations, it takes Mother Jones on the road, creates ways for people to experience her continuing relevance and the weight of the past on the present. The museum is currently sponsoring a campaign to put her on a statue in Chicago. It will go up in a place designated as Mother Jones Plaza by the City, and will be near Trump Tower.

The museum's core project originated in 2014, inspired by the Cork Spirit of Mother Jones Festival. This website originated in 2008, as a project to revive Mother Jones and the early history of the activist labor and immigrant movement. The museum is proud to work with partners across the U.S. and the globe.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

This is a unique place in the history of the labor movement; it was the only union-owned cemetery in the country. This is a place with a monument to Mother Jones, but it also evokes the power and potential of the labor movement. It is a place of reflection and remembering, of thinking of the labor movement’s roots. It is a shrine not only to Jones but to the sacrifices that connected human rights and labor rights, a place where people wonder when and why labor lost power.

Other options: The Clio version of the tour. https://theclio.com/entry/70331

Museum is site of a manor house of a plantation. There are multiple links at this site that are very excellent surveys of paid and unpaid labor, enslaved and indentured, convict labor, and industrialization stories. Mount Clare has a self-guided exhibit on the industrial development of the former plantation and the workers who labored there. A separate display tells the history of the property after three generations of the Carroll family moved out. The museum also showcases its significant collection of 18th and 19th century decorative arts, including paintings, furniture, silver, and export china. Visitors may take a guided one-hour tour of the house or wander through on their own.Endowed with rich iron ore deposits, abundant timber, and navigable waterways, the Baltimore region sustained a long history of iron and steel making. During the colonial period, iron was needed for constructing ships, buildings, weapons, and tools. The Baltimore Iron Works, which operated from 1731 to 1799, was the second iron operation to be organized in the colony, but the first to be locally owned. British investors had established The Principio Company in 1719 in Cecil County.

For nearly 150 years, the primitive but effective cold-blast furnace technology was used by a succession of 13 companies in Baltimore County to manufacture iron. However in 1889, a small firm at Baltimore’s Sparrows Point began producing a stronger, more versatile alloy called steel. By 1954, the Sparrows Point mill, then owned by Bethlehem Steel, was the largest in the world. Its dominance would not last. Technological advances and foreign competition forced it into bankruptcy by 2001. Today, the former steel plant is a distribution center for retailers like Amazon and Under Armour.

Mount Clare has a self-guided exhibit on the industrial development of the former plantation and the workers who labored there. Visitors may take a guided one-hour tour of the house or wander through on their own.

Mount Clare Museum is dedicated to preserving the house, a National Historic Landmark, and its supporting collections in a way that authentically represents and contextualizes life in Maryland since the 18th century and explores how the past continues to affect life in America today. The museum strives to tell the stories of all who lived and worked at Mount Clare and Georgia Plantation, including the Carroll family, enslaved people, indentured servants and transported convicts.

Made between 1918 and 1929, these Canadian films are a useful resource for historical research and teaching. They also complement other primary sources. Widely viewed and popular with the public at the time, they are useful for understanding how perceptions and perspectives were influenced and constructed. For more detailed views of the film

This specific Library and Archives Canada film collection is significant, exceeding 1,000 films. Their subjects are diverse and will be of interest to labour and social historians; better farming techniques, celebrations of industrial technology, scenic vacation spots for the leisure class and appropriate workplace behavior, are just some subjects addressed by the films in the collection. More detailed descriptions of each film can be found here

City-owned Mother Jones Museum focuses on the local story of the coal mners of the area, in a room in City Hall

Religious concepts and metaphors suffused the words and ideas of many late nineteenth-century American workers. The New and Old Testaments provided not only personal succor to many working people but also a set of allusions and parables they applied directly to their lives and struggles in industrial America. Working-class ideas and writing often were cast in stark millenarian terms, with prophesies of imminent doom predicted for capitalists who worshipped at Mammon’s temple and imminent redemption for hard-working, long-suffering, and God-fearing laboring men and women. Christ was uniformly depicted in workers' writing as a poor workingman put on Earth to teach the simple principles of brotherhood and unionism. In this 1897 essay in the Railway Times, titled “Christ,” Murphy O’Hea suggested that Jesus Christ’s early career as a “poor humble carpenter” proved "that the cause of Labor is holy."

Source: Murphy O’Hea, “Christ,” The Railway Times, 1 November 1895.

Recommendations by the National War Labor Board during World War II to pay male and female workers equal wages yielded few changes in the gender wage gap. Women continued to receive less money for comparable work, and into the 1960s want ads characterized jobs as “male” or “female” with resulting salary differences based on gender. The Equal Pay Act (EPA) made it illegal to pay men and women differently for similar work. Although the EPA was passed in 1963, it was debated in workplaces and courtrooms for decades thereafter. In this Senate hearing testimony, union leader Murray Plopper argued that the “race against the Communist bloc of nations” demanded an end to gender discrimination. Plopper used specific examples of retail clerks’ working conditions and earnings to argue for passage of the law. He also noted that “women work because they must” and challenged the provisions of the law that would exempt small stores.

Through analyzing photographs, illustrations, objects, and flyers, students will learn about the complex relationship between organized labor and civil rights activism, including efforts to desegregate labor unions as well as the role unions played in the fight for racial equality. Key figures: Ella Baker, Frank Ferrell, Reverend Milton Galamison, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Mae Mallory, Rhody McCoy, Albert Shanker
Standards and goals and procedure outlined for each lesson. 1880-1970

Take a a trip down a recreated coal mine right in downtown Chicago! Also take time to see the American Factory Worker Sculptures located on museum grounds.

Upheaval in the Garment Trades | 1900-1915 In the early 20th century, New York was the largest city and garment production the largest manufacturing business in America. The garment trade was made possible by tens of thousands of immigrant workers, who labored long hours under unsafe conditions in crowded tenements or factories

Activist Literature
In the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, many New York writers used novels and poems as tools to address the working class, or “proletariat.” Using the written word to advance their political agenda, these writers espoused their views on class, communism, and global affairs. This movement “does not believe in literature for its own sake,” explained writer and editor Mike Gold, “but in literature that is useful, has a social function.”

Young Lords
“¡Basta ya!”—”Enough!” was the feeling of Young Lords member Mickey Melendez and other East Harlem activists. It was the summer of 1969, and the group had blocked traffic on 110th Street with piles of garbage to protest inadequate sanitation services. They had already asked the city for brooms to clean their neighborhood’s streets and, when refused, they went ahead and took them.

South Bronx
In the decades after the new Cross-Bronx Expressway bisected the South Bronx in the 1950s, abandonment and arson claimed large swaths of the borough. Facing diminishing revenues, some landlords were accused of burning their own buildings.

Young Lords
“¡Basta ya!”—”Enough!” was the feeling of Young Lords member Mickey Melendez and other East Harlem activists. It was the summer of 1969, and the group had blocked traffic on 110th Street with piles of garbage to protest inadequate sanitation services. They had already asked the city for brooms to clean their neighborhood’s streets and, when refused, they went ahead and took them. Housing Activism
Learn about a powerful period of rent strikes, tenant mobilizations, and policy reforms that laid the groundwork for housing justice movements still shaping our city today.

A multi-part exhibit with digital material on-line. Includes a lesson plan that is driven by documents and photos examined critically.
In the early 20th century, New York was the largest city and garment production the largest manufacturing business in America. The garment trade was made possible by tens of thousands of immigrant workers, who labored long hours under unsafe conditions in crowded tenements or factories.

On November 22, 1909, immigrant worker Clara Lemlich of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) called for a General Strike. Lemlich’s “Uprising of the Twenty Thousand” and a devastating fire at the Triangle Waist Company factory in Greenwich Village in 1911 illuminated the contributions of working women and made labor unions key players in the life of the city.

New York working people had been organizing unions since 1794, when the city’s industrial revolution began creating wage workers distinct from business owners. But the garment activists of 1909-1911 transformed the city’s labor movement and ushered in a new era, one in which labor unions—and working women in particular—became central players in the city’s economy.

Alongside labor activists, elected officials and Tammany Hall reformers made New York a model of workplace legislation, and unions became crucial to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Yet in the mid-20th century, many garment factories left in search of lower costs and fewer regulations, and union power diminished. Unions criticized manufacturers for abandoning New York, while manufacturers blamed unions for keeping labor costs too high. But in recent years, organized labor has made new inroads in the service economy, and the garment industry has renewed its emphasis on “Made in New York.”