Today's Labor History

Click here to check out this week's Labor History Today podcast. On this week’s show: Working History’s Beth English interviews award-winning New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash. His novel, The Last Ballad, explores the complexities of southern class, race, and gender relations against the backdrop of the 1929 Loray Mill strike, one of the most notable strikes in U.S. labor history. The Working History podcast is put out by the Southern Labor Studies Association.
 
Greedy industrialist turned benevolent philanthropist Andrew Carnegie pledges $5.2 million for the construction of 65 branch libraries in New York City—barely 1 percent of his net worth at the time. He established more than 2,500 libraries between 1900 and 1919 following years of treating workers in his steel plants brutally, demanding long hours in horrible conditions and fighting their efforts to unionize. Carnegie made $500 million when he sold out to J.P. Morgan, becoming the world’s richest man - 1901

The first tunnel under the Hudson River is completed after 30 years of drilling, connecting Jersey City and Manhattan. In just one of many tragedies during the project, 20 workers died on a single day in 1880 when the tunnel flooded - 1904
 
The Lawrence, Mass., "Bread and Roses" textile strike ends when the American Woolen Co. agrees to most of the strikers’ demands; other textile companies quickly followed suit - 1912

Steelworkers approve a settlement with Oregon Steel Mills, Inc. and its CF&I Steel subsidiary, ending the longest labor dispute in the USWA’s history and resulting in more than $100 million in back pay for workers - 2004
 
Labor history courtesy Union Communication Services. 

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