Labor History Links

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.

Before the Great Depression of the 1930’s the Beuschers—he was a sixty-two-year-old railroad worker; she was the mother of their eleven children—had been fairly prosperous: they owned their home and had several life-insurance policies serving as savings.
But by the time the Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviewed them in 1937, their lives had dramatically changed: the father had lost his railroad job and the mother was taking in sewing.

This interview summary, published by the WPA, showed how they struggled to make ends meet during The Great Depression.
Source: David Shannon. The Great Depression (Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1960), pp. 138–146

Recasting labor studies in a long-term and global framework, the book draws on a major new database on world labor unrest to show how local labor movements have been related to world-scale political, economic and social processes since the late-nineteenth century. Through an in-depth empirical analysis of select global industries it demonstrates how the main locations of labor unrest have shifted from country to country together with shifts in the geographical location of production. It shows how the main sites of labor unrest have shifted over time together with the rise/decline of new leading sectors of capitalist development, and demonstrates that labor movements have been deeply embedded (as both cause and effect) in world political dynamics. The book concludes by exploring the likely forms that emergent labor movements will take in the twenty-first century
Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
1 INTRODUCTION 1
2 LABOR MOVEMENTS AND CAPITAL MOBILITY 41
3 LABOR MOVEMENTS AND PRODUCT CYCLES 75
4 LABOR MOVEMENTS AND WORLD POLITICS 124
5 CONTEMPORARY DYNAMICS IN WORLD-HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 168
Appendix A The World Labor Group Database: Conceptualization,
Measurement, and Data Collection Procedures 181
Appendix B Instructions for Recording Data from Indexes 198
Appendix C Country Classifications 2 04
References 205
Index - - "

Discover what made New York City “the cradle of the American labor movement.” Walking the Central and East Villages between Washington Square Park and Union Square, where for over two centuries, home, work, and social life have intertwined, this tour explores the history of the labor movement and the working people who built New York.
Stops could include sites associated with the first Labor Day Parade in 1882, the founding of the ILGWU, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the 1836 Stonecutter’s Riot, and sites associated with Samuel Gompers, Emma Goldman, Peter Cooper, and Clara Lemlich.

Please note: this walk is led on dates of significant American labor history (May Day, Labor Day, and other labor-related dates—both known and unknown—throughout the year).

The Original Big Onion Walking Tour!

The City of New York has welcomed immigrants from all over the world for centuries. Our walk, Immigrant New York, explores the experiences of the different immigrant and ethnic populations residing in the Lower East Side from the early 19th century through today.

We’ll walk through Chinatown, Little Italy, the Jewish East Side, and former Irish/Free Black Five Points. We will “peel away the layers of history” while discussing tenements, pushcarts, and sweatshops, as well as places of worship and street life, to see how everyone got along (or didn’t) at different times.

Some stops include the Tweed Courthouse, the African Burial Ground, the infamous Mulberry Bend, the Bowery, sites associated with Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Jacob Riis, Abraham Cahan, “Master” Juba, Emma Goldman, and many others.

This history of the first national strike also covers issues like state and federal power, the role of industrial workers, the development of railroads, immigration and and the different forms of worker organizations in the period after the Civil War.

“Free to Think, Talk, Listen, or Sing” recounts how new technologies and workplace structures affected the most intimate aspects of people”s lives. Often, workers” demands made in negotiations don”t fully reveal the human consequences of work. Even when the call is for higher wages, the underlying grievances may be much deeper.

With the help of paper airplanes and chocolate, this lesson shows students a key aspect of the changes occurring at the workplace around the turn of the century: the attempted capture of workers — skill and knowledge by management. The changes in how workplaces were structured and work organized occurred at different paces in different industries and, in modified form, continue today. Systematizing and justifying the new management practices, Frederick Winslow Taylor contributed his name to our language. “Taylorism,” according to the dictionary, means “scientific management.” Students will gain a first-hand appreciation of the impact that “scientific management” had on the lives of working people and will acquire a theoretical understanding of the stages of Frederick Taylor’s scientific management.

“This set of images by photographer Bill Gillette depicts the effect of the 1980s farm crisis on several Iowa families and was used in his exhibition "Voices of Protest". The narrative text prepared for the exhibit is included in this album., with the photographer's overview appearing below, and his comments on individual stories appearing in the descriptions of the related photos.”

A two-hour special report on how chemical companies have collaborated to keep from American workers and the American public the full truth about the impact of chemicals on health and safety. The chemical revolution of the past 50 years has produced thousands of manmade chemicals that have not been tested for their effect on the public’s health and safety. The report is based on documents never before published and interviews with historians, scientists, and physicians who are exploring how chemicals affect the human body.

Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report is an investigation of the history of the chemical revolution and the companies that drove it – and how companies worked to withhold vital information about the risks from workers, the government, and the public. Journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones rely on an archive of documents the public was never meant to see –- documents that reveal the industry's early knowledge that some chemicals could pose dangers to human health that were not disclosed at the time.

Un-American is Bill Mullen's revisionist account of renowned author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois's political thought toward the end of his life, a period largely dismissed and neglected by scholars. He describes Du Bois's support for what the Communist International called 'world revolution' as the primary objective of this aged radical's activism. Du Bois was a champion of the world's laboring millions and critic of the Cold War, a man dedicated to animating global political revolution. Mullen argues that Du Bois believed that the Cold War stalemate could create the conditions in which the world powers could achieve not only peace but workers' democracy. Un-American shows Du Bois to be deeply engaged in international networks and personal relationships with revolutionaries in India, China, and Africa. Mullen explores how thinkers like Karl Marx, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi, and C.L.R. James helped him develop a theory of world revolution at a stage in his life when most commentators regard him as marginalized. This original political biography also challenges assessments of Du Bois as an American 'race man'"-- Provided by publisher

A massive strike wave in the 19th and 20th centuries redefined how painters, illustrators, and photographers advocate for the working class.

Gravesite of martyred George Bilyeu at Oak Hill Cemetery, Taylorville Illinois. Block 1, Lot 94, Site 2.

This has a rich online digital experience as well as a site in Bisbee, Arizona embedded in the copper extraction past. "The Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum takes you and your family back in time to the days of the Arizona Territory, telling the story of a copper-mining town’s role in the industrialization of America, a history of your grandparents’ generation. An Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum offers an interactive trip back in time for the whole family."

Our ‘Step Back In Time’ historic walking tour is full of entertaining stories about Bisbee’s history. It starts at the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum building stairs each Saturday at 2 p.m. Appealing to all interests and all ages, you’ll appreciate Old Bisbee more as you learn about a century-and-a-half of its changing architecture, art, and humanity – from mining hotbed to modern mecca. You’ll explore several blocks of old downtown with your guide. There are multiple stops in this 1-hour adventure; each sparks a conversation on topics that range from economics to entertainment, shootouts to Statehood, brewing to bordellos, mining accidents to matrimony, fashion to freight trains, immigration to imagination, and more. Please note that this is a walking tour of the Historic District; it does not include Museum admission.

Acclaimed historian Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story."--Publisher

There have been countless books, articles, and televised reports in recent years about the almost-mythic white working class - a tide of commentary that has obscured the labor, and even the very existence, of entire groups of working people, including everyday Black workers.

In this corrective work, historian Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story. Spanning two hundred years - from one of the author's earliest known ancestors, an enslaved blacksmith, to the essential workers of the COVID-19 pandemic - this book highlights the lives of the laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, and postal workers who established the Black working class as a force in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Taking jobs white people didn't want and confined to segregated neighborhoods, Black workers found community in intimate spaces, from stoops on city streets to the backyards of washerwomen, where multiple generations labored from dawn to dusk, talking and laughing in a space free of white supervision and largely beyond white knowledge. As millions of Black people left the violence of the American South for the promise of a better life in the North and West, these networks of resistance and joy sustained early arrivals and newcomers alike, and laid the groundwork for organizing for better jobs, better pay, and equal rights. As her narrative moves from Georgia to Philadelphia, Florida to Chicago, Texas to Oakland, the author treats Black workers not just as laborers, or members of a class, or activists, but as people whose daily experiences mattered - to themselves, to their communities, and to a nation that denied that basic fact.

Through portraits of her great-grandfather, a sharecropper named Solicitor, and her grandmother, Brunell, who worked for more than a decade as a domestic maid, the author captures how generation after generation of labor was required to improve, and at times maintain, her family's status. Yet her family, like so many others, was always animated by a vision of a better future. The church yards, factory floors, railcars, and postal sorting facilities where Black people worked were sites of possibility, and, as the author suggests, Amazon package processing centers, supermarkets, and nursing homes can be the same in the twenty-first century. -- Adapted from publisher's description

Introduction: Solicitor
Henry, a blacksmith
Sarah at home, working on her own account
Resistant washerwomen
The Jeremiad of the porter
Minnie and Bruce
The maids of the migration
Everything sufficient for a good life
Conclusion: Brunell

Following the death of the Rev. Martin Luther in 1968, activist photographer Bob Fitch renewed his commitment to document nonviolent peace and social justice leaders and movements, traveling to Delano, California to photograph Cesar Chavez and members of the United Farm Workers union. Trained to be a Protestant minister, Bob Fitch's career as a photojournalist began in 1965 when he joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s organization, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as a staff photographer. As Fitch notes, "I worked for two intense years as the volunteer photographer for Dr. King and the SCLC, crisscrossing "Black Belt" states to document his people-to-people speaking tours promoting get-out-the-vote campaigns"
Fitch's work with the SCLC in 1965 and 1966 produced powerful images of Dr. King's speaking and leadership, as well as of the courageous efforts of marchers in events such as the 1966 Meredith March Against Fear. [View gallery]
As this gallery richly illustrates, between 1968 and 1975, Fitch captured powerful images of Chavez and the UFW as they organized and demonstrated for better working conditions and wages. These actions, including the Modesto March of February, 1975, helped to bring about passage in May, 1975 of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (CALRA), a statute that established collective bargaining rights for farmworkers.

Focusing on the mining communities of Walsenburg and Trinidad, offers some of Bob Rossi’s findings and details how Syrians and Lebanese helped build, benefitted from, and demonstrated against Colorado coal mining companies. Includes stories of community life.

Since the 1980s, Bob Rossi has been working on a social history of Colorado coal mining communities and an account of the 1927–28 Colorado mine workers’ strike. A part of this work has entailed documenting the lives of Syrian and Lebanese families in the Colorado coalfields. Rossi is a retired union organizer who had family members employed in coal mining. He recognized the need to capture these stories and thus provide nuanced understanding of the Syrian and Lebanese immigrant experience as related to the coal industry and labor strikes. With a focus on the mining communities of Walsenburg and Trinidad, the following post offers some of Rossi’s findings and details how Syrians and Lebanese helped build, benefitted from, and demonstrated against Colorado coal mining companies. This essay was originally published in the Moise A. Khayrallah Center Newsletter in September 1921. We’ll be publishing a second essay from Rossi next week.

The Mississippi River occupies a sacred place in American culture and mythology. Often called The Father of Rivers, it winds through American life in equal measure as a symbol and as a topographic feature. To the people who know it best, the river is life and a livelihood. River boatmen working the wide Mississippi are never far from land. Even in the dark, they can smell plants and animals and hear people on the banks and wharves. Bonnie Stepenoff takes readers on a cruise through history, showing how workers from St. Louis to Memphis changed the river and were in turn changed by it. Each chapter of this fast-moving narrative focuses on representative workers: captains and pilots, gamblers and musicians, cooks and craftsmen. Readers will find workers who are themselves part of the country's mythology from Mark Twain and anti-slavery crusader William Wells Brown to musicians Fate Marable and Louis Armstrong

Boot and Shoe Workers Union, AFL, which relied on the union label as a main strategy to win bargaining contracts, sought to organize workers in the shoe industries of US and Canada, and issued this journal from headquarters, Boston, Massachusetts. It was a radical union in its early days.

The Boott Cotton Mills Museum at Lowell National Historical Park is the best place to learn about Lowell’s industrial past. Explore the stories of the workers, engineers, inventors, and investors who made Lowell the first successful planned industrial city in the United States. Learn more about the city’s role as a cutting-edge developer of technology and hub of economic change in the American Industrial Revolution. Includes exhibits on child labor, tour of weave room, and more

The Born Again Labor Museum (BALM) was restarted in 2019 by Adam Turl and Tish Tish in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first BALM began in the mid-20th century. BALM artifacts, artworks, and gestures are based on epistles delivered from time-traveling representatives of the Communist Resurrection Cult. Now located in Carbondale, Illinois, BALM is open by appointment and during special events. BALM is also available to labor, community, antiracist, queer, anti-imperialist, leftist and similar grassroots organizations. For more information call 618-713-8132.
Features:
Wounded Tool Library -- "plays on the Marxist concept of "dead labor" --machinery and tools-- and how capitalism separates human creators from their instruments. By imbuing broken, obsolete, or discarded tools with human emotional wounds, the exhibit critiques alienation, automation, and modern commodity culture."
Common Task Agit-Prop Library
Cyber-Brechtian Collages
Irrealist historical markers -- physical, public-facing, pseudo-historical plaques and markers. For instance, a marker might label an intersection as the "birthplace of the second communist resurrection" or chart surreal occurrences "outside of time....uses regional ghost stories and cryptid lore as a canvas to map out the "lost souls" and buried class struggles of the region.
Mixed-media collage and ash on canvas
Artifacts of working-class dreams