This week’s Labor History Today podcast: This week's show: The Battle of Virden. Last week's show: Sharecroppers’ struggles for rights and power.
October 15 Pres. Woodrow Wilson signs the Clayton Antitrust Act – often referred to as "Labor’s Magna Carta" – establishing that unions are not "conspiracies" under the law. It for the first time freed unions to strike, picket and boycott employers. In the years that followed, however, numerous state measures and negative court interpretations weakened the law - 1914 October 16 Queen Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is beheaded during the French Revolution. When alerted that the peasants were suffering due to widespread bread shortages, lore has it that she replied, “Let them eat cake.” In fact she never said that, but workers were, justifiably, ready to believe anything bad about their cold-hearted Royalty - 1793 Abolitionist John Brown leads 18 men, including five free blacks, in an attack on the Harper's Ferry ammunition depot, the beginning of guerilla warfare against slavery - 1859 October 17 Labor activist Warren Billings is released from California's Folsom Prison. Along with Thomas J. Mooney, Billings had been pardoned for a 1916 conviction stemming from a bomb explosion during a San Francisco Preparedness Day parade. He had always maintained his innocence - 1939 Salt of the Earth strike begins by the mostly Mexican-American members of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union Local 890 in Bayard, N.M. Strikers' wives walked picket lines for seven months when their men were enjoined during the 14-month strike against the New Jersey Zinc Co. A great movie (trailer below), see it! - 1950 Twelve New York City firefighters die fighting a blaze in midtown Manhattan - 1966 Industrial Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers of America merges with International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers - 1988 - David Prosten. Comments are closed.
|