Labor History Links

The BCG network is excited to share our interactive mapping tool. The tool includes:
GIS mapping of local union contract expirations across the U.S.
We have shared the basic map below, and you will also see links to additional maps that color code the contract expiration data by industry sector and international union
Links to additional maps that serve as examples for how this contract information could be combined with other data for movement work
Information on how to connect with the network to build out this map and the common good movement

This is the website of the Barre Historical Society, owner of the Socialist Labor Party Hall National Historic Landmark, known as the “The Old Labor Hall”. Hall constructed in 1900. Here you can find information about the history of the Hall, about renting the Hall for your event, and about how you can help the Barre Historical Society preserve the Hall and the Union Cooperative Store bakery building.

This book examines Manny Fried's career as a labor organizer and blacklisted citizen by exploring his major labor plays and the political atmosphere that nurtured them"-- Provided by publisher

The Union Membership and Coverage Database, available at www.unionstats.com, is an Internet data resource providing private and public sector labor union membership, coverage, and density estimates compiled from the monthly household Current Population Survey (CPS) using BLS methods. Economy-wide estimates are provided beginning in 1973; estimates by state, detailed industry, and detailed occupation begin in 1983; and estimates by metropolitan area begin in 1986. The Database, constructed by Barry Hirsch (Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University), David Macpherson (Department of Economics, Trinity University), and William Even (Department of Economics, Miami University),was created in 2002 and is updated annually.
include:
I. Historical Tables: Union Membership, Density and Employment
By Sector and Demographic Group: 1973-2025
By Sector and State: 1983-2025
By Sector and Metropolitan Area: 1986-2025
By Industry: 1983-2025
By Occupation: 1983-2025

II. Historical Tables: Union Wages, Nonunion Wages, and Union Wage Gaps, 1973-2022
By Sector and Demographic Group: 1973-2025

The Battle of Homestead Foundation (BHF) is a diverse organization of citizens, workers, educators and historians. Our purpose is to memorialize the dramatic labor conflict of the 1892 Battle of Homestead and clarify the consequences that remain with us today. Inspired by that event, we promote a people’s history, empower today’s workforce and build strategies for the future of work. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization.Today the site is owned and benevolently operated by Rivers of Steel Heritage Corporation, who also offer many educational programs, tours, and events related to the Pump House as well as other local points of interest.

The best quick overview of the Homestead strike is here. More than 130 years after it occurred, the Homestead Strike of 1892 retains its capacity to shock.
It was a defining event which revealed in the starkest terms the respective strength of labor and management in America in the 1890s. The crushing defeat of the workers meant that there would be no recognized trade unionism and collective bargaining in steel and other heavy industries until the 1930s.

The map points out the sites of some key moments in working class history including the 1892 Battle of Homestead, the McKees Rocks Strike, and railroad strike of 1877. The map also includes historically significant locations like the offices of the Abolitionist Newspaper, The Mystery; the homes of August Wilson, Thomas Bell, Jane Grey Swisshelm; as well as monuments to Philip Murray, Fanny Selliins, and Thomas Armstrong and Roberto Clemente.This map is based on the book Labor History Sites in the Pittsburgh Region published in 2015 by the Battle of Homestead Foundation and written by Charles McCollester and Howard Scott.

The Labor & Industry Museum is the only public institution devoted to the history of the labor and industry of Belleville and southwestern Illinois. Belleville was one of the most significant centers for the growth of Illinois industry, which ranked third in the nation in the late 19th century.Explore the rich history of labor and industry in our region through our extensive collection of artifacts, documents, and photographs.

The Museum's mission is to chronicle and interpret the area's rich cultural heritage of labor and industry.

Belleville contributed significantly to the industrial movement by establishing some of the earliest and largest manufacturing establishments in the burgeoning United States.

The Labor & Industry Museum, is based in the Conrad Bornman House on historic Church Street in Belleville. This 1837 building, rescued from the wrecking ball by the Belleville Historic Preservation Commission, was a witness to the enormous development of the 19th century industry. The building, which has undergone an extensive renovation, houses permanent and special exhibition galleries, as well as an educational center and archives.

The photographs, documents, and artifacts of the Labor & Industry Museum reflect the history of daily life in Belleville, Illinois, with emphasis on the role of labor and industry in the city's development. The photo collection presented here will continually expand. Archive and Object records will be added at a later date.The Labor & Industry Museum is the only public institution devoted to the history of the labor and industry of Belleville and southwestern Illinois. Belleville was one of the most important centers for the growth of the Illinois industry, which ranked third in the nation in the late 19th century. The Museum's mission is to chronicle and interpret the area's rich cultural heritage of labor and industry. Belleville contributed significantly to the industrial movement by establishing some of the earliest and largest manufacturing establishments in the burgeoning United States.

"Biographical Sketch of Ben Hanford, by Joshua Wanhope

MOST people are familiar with the story of the little boy who asked if his father was a Christian replied that he was but that 'Tie wasn't working at it. Some professing Socialists might be similarly described^ but fortunately for the cause there are thousands of notable exceptions. And perhaps among them all^ for in-» domitable^ tireless energy and record of service, no name stands higher than that of Ben Hanford, the virile author of this volume. A sketch of his activities, therefore, well may form the contents of this introduction.

Hanford was bom in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1861. His mother died in his infancy, and some years later his father married Frances Jane Thompson, of Bangor, Maine. She is a woman of rich and cultivated mind and rare and beautiful character, and Hanford declares his debt to her is incalculable. Under her instruction he acquired a taste for reading and study, and to her influence he attributes most of whatever may be good in his character.

Having learned the printer's trade in the office of the Marshalltown (Iowa) "Republican," Hanford went in 1879 to Chicago, and on February 26 of that year became a member of Chicago Typographical Union No. 16. Since then he has never been a day without his card of membership in the International Typographical Union. For many years he has been a member of New York Typographical Union No. 6 — ^^^Big Six" — and for thirty years he has been a militant and active worker in the trade-union movement.

Sixteen years ago he became a student of Socialfst economics and philosophy under that gifted and wonderful teacher, Fred Long, of Philadelphia, also a printer. Since then the Socialist movement has had no more indefatigable and persistent champion than Ben Hanford.

He has been three times nominated as Socialist candidate for Governor of the State of New York — ^in 1898 being the nominee of the Socialist Labor Party, and in 1900 and 1903 he headed the New York State ticket for the Socialist Party. In 1901 he was chosen as Socialist Party candidate for Mayor of New York City. In 1904 and again in 1908 he was nominated by the Socialist Party for Vice-President of the United States, in both campaigns the national ticket of the Party having been Debs and Hanford.

His activity in both the Socialist and trade-union movements has never ceased. He generally put in three months of each year on the lecture platform and in making political addresses before the annual election, but the day after the polls closed saw Hanford back in the printing office working at his trade. In addition to his activity as a speaker, Hanford has been a constant contributor to the labor press, and leaflets and pamphlets from his pen have been circulated by millions. When the Ifew York ^^Sun" locked out its Union printers in 1899, Hanford wrote much of the literature of "Big Six,'^ boycotting that paper, and openly defied Judge Bookstaver's injimction against himself and other members of the Printers* Union.

As a public speaker Hanford has always been recognized as one of the most powerful and effective on the Socialist platform. He possesses eloquence, fluency, a power of piquant and effective illustration and a wide range of economic knowledge, with the ability to explain seemingly intricate problems in clear and simple terms. The reader of this volume will find many striking examples of this faculty in its pages. In addition to these qualifications, Hanford is an exceedingly formidable champion in debate, and has on many occa^ sions completely outclassed the ablest apologists of capitalism that could be found to meet him.

Though never a strong man physically, Hanford possesses a nervous power and endurance which enabled him for many years to undertake and snccessf ully carry out speaking campaigns which were beyond the strength of men his physical superiors. But for several years past his health has been so broken that he has been forced for a long time (and it is feared permanently) to abandon all public speaking. While his physical sufferings have been and still are most painful, he still employs his pen in the Great Cause. It has always been his profound belief that his work for Socialism has given him a stronger hold on life, and that had it not been for the inspiration and strength derived from working for the Cause, he would have long since been dead or a hopeless invalid. ''socialism is Life'* has been Hanford's motto, and this point of vie«f has undoubtedly influenced him in selecting the title under which the present work appears.

Though these collected writings of this Socialist veteran have a high economic value as Socialist propaganda, a value which has indeed been promptly recognized in the Socialist movement, as testified by the wide circulation many of them have enjoyed, they are perhaps as valuable in another respect, as displaying in the most marked degree the indomitable spirit, the unbounded courage, faith and hope that makes the Socialist movement of the world invincible and irresistible."

[Text continues at link...]

Google Books (full text): https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fight_for_Your_Life/CREOAAAAYAAJ?q=&gbpv=0#f=false

Internet Archive (full text): https://archive.org/details/fightforyourlif00hanfgoog/mode/2up

Set within Chicago's labyrinth of alleyways, Scrappers is a cinema verite portrait of Otis and Oscar, two scrap metal scavengers searching for a living with brains, brawn and battered pickup trucks. The film shows how globalization, the 2008 financial crisis, crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and widespread scrap metal theft affect these men and their families.

This site provides access to the papers of Ben Shahn in the Archives of American Art that were digitized in 2012. The papers have been scanned in their entirety, and total 42,203 images. Ben Shahn (1898-1969) was a social realist painter, muralist, printmaker, photographer, illustrator, and educator who worked primarily in Brooklyn, New York and New Jersey. He was most active in the 1930s through the 1950s and worked on several federally funded arts projects, including the Farm Security Administration's photographic documentation project of rural America during the Depression. Ben Shahn was born in Kovno, Lithuania and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1906 where he settled in Brooklyn, and later Roosevelt, New Jersey, after becoming a naturalized citizen in 1918.

Digital exhibit on the union contribution to liberty, justice, and equality, with sections on labor rights, the eight hour day, social rights, political rights, and lots of visuals and documents embedded. Labor unions were created by workers to protect their rights. Less recognized is labor’s role in advancing civil liberties, social justice, and economic equality for all Americans.The labor movement has always supported the quest for economic justice, including demands for an eight-hour workday and a living wage. From the beginning of the 20th century, organized labor has championed religious freedom and the evolving demands of the environmental movement. By the end of the century, the labor movement consistently promoted international human rights.

In contrast, people of color, women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community faced exclusion, segregation, and discrimination by unions. These groups created their own organizations, fought for inclusion, and pushed the labor movement to broaden its central principles of liberty, justice, and equality. In the 21st century, organized labor has become an advocate for the rights of all these communities, including anti-discrimination and civil rights legislation, marriage equality, and protections for undocumented workers.

This exhibit explores the American labor movement’s contributions to social progress using documents, images, videos, and artifacts from the Labor History Collections within the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland Libraries.

Risking Immeasurable Harm: Immigration Restriction and U.S.-Mexican Diplomatic Relations, 1924-1932 explains how the prospect of immigration restriction affects diplomatic relations by analyzing the United States' effort to place a quota on immigration from Mexico during the late 1920s and early 1930s"-- Provided by publisher

In this concise and gripping narrative, Benjamin F. Alexander contextualizes the march by vividly describing the misery wrought by the Panic of '93. Alexander brings both Coxey and his fellow leaders to life, along with the reporters and spies who traveled with them and the diverse group of captivated newspaper readers who followed the progress of the marches and train heists. Coxey's Army explains how the demands of the Coxeyites--far from being the wild schemes of a small group of cranks--fit into a larger history of economic theories that received serious attention long before and long after the Coxey march. Despite running a gauntlet of ridicule, the marchers laid down a rough outline of what, some forty years later, emerged as the New Deal."--Publisher's description

Has the "American Dream" become an unrealistic utopian fantasy, or have we simply forgotten what we are working for? The author examines the way that progress, once defined as more of the good things in life as well as more free time to enjoy them, has come to be understood only as economic growth and more work, forevermore. The author provides an incisive intellectual, cultural, and political history of the original "American Dream" from the colonial days to the present. Taking his cue from Walt Whitman's "higher progress," he follows the traces of that dream, cataloging the myriad voices that prepared for and lived in an opening "realm of freedom." This book reminds Americans of the forgotten, best part of the "American Dream" - that more and more of our lives might be lived freely, with an enriching family life, with more time to enjoy nature, friendship, and the adventures of the mind and of the spirit

Examines the period from 1920 to 1940 during which the shorter hour movement ended and the drive for economic expansion through increased work took over. This book traces the political, and social dialogues that changed the American concept of progress from dreams of leisure in which to pursue the higher things in life to an obsession.

Power and Control in the Imperial Valley examines the evolution of irrigated farming in the Imperial-Mexicali Valley, an arid desert straddling the California-Baja California border. Bisected by the international boundary line, the valley drew American investors determined to harness the nearby Colorado River to irrigate a million acres on both sides of the border. The 'conquest' of the environment was a central theme in the history of the valley. Colonization in the valley began with the construction of a sixty-mile aqueduct from the Colorado River in California through Mexico. Initially, Mexico held authority over water delivery until settlers persuaded Congress to construct the All-American Canal. Control over land and water formed the basis of commercial agriculture and in turn enabled growers to use the state to procure inexpensive, plentiful immigrant workers"

“Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth” provides a fresh account of the International Working Men’s Association. Founded in London in 1864, the First International gathered trade unions, associations, co-operatives, and individual workers across Europe and the Americas.
The IWMA struggled for the emancipation of labour. It organised solidarity with strikers. It took sides in major events, such as the 1871 Paris Commune. It soon appeared as a threat to European powers, which vilified and prosecuted it. Although it split up in 1872, the IWMA played a ground-breaking part in the history of working-class internationalism. In our age of globalised capitalism, large labour migration, and rising nationalisms, much can be learnt from the history of the first international labour organisation. Contributors are: Fabrice Bensimon, Gregory Claeys, Michel Cordillot, Nicolas Delalande, Quentin Deluermoz, Marianne Enckell, Albert Garcia Balaña, Samuel Hayat, Jürgen Herres, François Jarrige, Mathieu Léonard, Carl Levy, Detlev Mares, Krzysztof Marchlewicz, Woodford McClellan, Jeanne Moisand, Iorwerth Prothero, Jean Puissant, Jürgen Schmidt, Antje Schrupp, Horacio Tarcus, Antony Taylor, Marc Vuilleumier.

The American West erupted in anti-Chinese violence in 1885. Following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming Territory, communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed, assaulted, and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants.
Beth Lew-Williams shows how American immigration policies incited this violence and how the violence, in turn, provoked new exclusionary policies. Ultimately, Lew-Williams argues, Chinese expulsion and exclusion produced the concept of the “alien” in modern America.
The Chinese Must Go begins in the 1850s, before federal border control established strict divisions between citizens and aliens. Across decades of felling trees and laying tracks in the American West, Chinese workers faced escalating racial conflict and unrest. In response, Congress passed the Chinese Restriction Act of 1882 and made its first attempt to bar immigrants based on race and class. When this unprecedented experiment in federal border control failed to slow Chinese migration, vigilantes attempted to take the matter into their own hands. Fearing the spread of mob violence, U.S. policymakers redoubled their efforts to keep the Chinese out, overhauling U.S. immigration law and transforming diplomatic relations with China.
By locating the origins of the modern American alien in this violent era, Lew-Williams recasts the significance of Chinese exclusion in U.S. history. As The Chinese Must Go makes clear, anti-Chinese law and violence continues to have consequences for today’s immigrants. The present resurgence of xenophobia builds mightily upon past fears of the “heathen Chinaman.”

In Sweatshop Capital, Beth Robinson examines the brutal sweatshop labor conditions that produced American consumer goods from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, as well as the labor and social movements that contested them.

Arguing that sweatshop labor is a persistent feature of capitalism, she shows how manufacturers used both their influence in government and their mobility to sidestep US labor laws, maximize profits, and perpetuate abuses. She outlines how workers and their allies routinely confronted manufacturers by building solidarity networks across race, class, and national lines.

Drawing on activists’ literature, news accounts, archival sources, and oral histories, Robinson presents the long history of the antisweatshop movements that responded to American capital’s pursuit of profit through hyperexploitation with a wide range of protest, legal action, and creativity.

Beginning with the sweatshops and reformers of the Progressive Era, Robinson moves through the Great Depression and the activism of the Popular Front, the “free trade” globalization of the 1990s and its discontents, and, finally, the global cyber and gig economies of the twenty-first century and the growing movements to rein them in.

Prologue xiii
Introduction 1
1. “The Struggle Has But Begun”: The Labor Feminism of the Progressive Error 13
2. “Don’t Overlook Any Channel for Publicity”: The Solidarity of the Popular Front 47
3. “Settle the Case, or We’ll Be in Your Face”: The Worldview of the Global Justice Movement 77
4. “Amazon Crime”: The Omnipresence of the New Global Assembly Line 109
Conclusion 149
Notes 159
Bibliography 193
Index 211

This poem describes conditions faced by retail workers during the Christmas holiday season in the early 1900s. It is critical of wealthy shoppers who contribute to workers’ misery, and was used by the National Consumers’ League to encourage consumers to be allies by getting their shopping done early. Includes student materials and teaching guide

Examines the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) as a social movement, discussing the new black working-class radicalism of the time and labor union's efforts to confront discrimination

"Rooted in the crisis over slavery, disagreements about child labor broke down along sectional lines between the North and South.
For decades after emancipation, the child labor issue shaped how Northerners and Southerners defined fundamental concepts of American life such as work, freedom, the market, and the state. Betsy Wood examines the evolution of ideas about child labor and the on-the-ground politics of the issue against the backdrop of broad developments related to slavery and emancipation, industrial capitalism, moral and social reform, and American politics and religion.
Wood explains how the decades-long battle over child labor created enduring political and ideological divisions within capitalist society that divided the gatekeepers of modernity from the cultural warriors who opposed them. Tracing the ideological origins and the politics of the child labor battle over the course of eighty years, this book tells the story of how child labor debates bequeathed an enduring legacy of sectionalist conflict to modern American capitalist society"-- Provided by publisher

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. The power loom weavers of Rhode Island were the intended audience of this “catechism” written by labor activists “Bobba Chuttle” and “Betty Reedhook” (pseudonymns evocative of the tools of the textile worker’s trade) in 1887. Drawing on church traditions, the pair patterned their educational effort, published in The People, along the lines of a call-and-response format.

Source: "Labor’s Catechism," The People (Providence, R.I.), 17 December 1887. Reprinted in Paul Buhle, “The Knights of Labor in Rhode Island,” Radical History Review (Spring 1978): 39.

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. Trade unionist William D. Mahon chastised organized religion for ignoring its “true mission” to “establish the brotherhood of man” in this 1899 speech espousing a strong church role in helping the labor movement.

Source: William D. Mahon, “What are the Relations of Capital to Labor and to What Extent and in What Manner Should the Church Occupy Itself with this Problem?” The Motorman and Conductor 5 (January 1899): 1–3.