Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1921. During that summer the battle waged over the efforts to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coal mines. The miners had been evicted from their company homes, and had established tent colonies. One was located at Lick Creek.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1914.  That was the day that the Miner’s Union Day parade was scheduled in Butte, Montana.  

In spite of the festivities trouble was brewing down in the copper mines. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1904.  That was the day that 18,000 workers in the Chicago’s stockyards went out on strike.  Work in the stockyards was often brutal and dangerous. Thousands of workers toiled in the yards, many of them immigrants from Eastern Europe.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1969. That was the day that labor leader John L. Lewis died. Born to a Welsh-American Coal mining family in Iowa, Lewis became the leading champion of industrial unionism in the 1930s.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1946.  That was the day that the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that would have massive implication for American workers. The case was known as Anderson V. Mount Clemens Pottery.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1954.  That was the day that marked the public downfall of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Senator McCarthy had become the public face of anti-Communist hysteria during the Cold War.  He used his position as Senator to make wild accusations against alleged communists in the US Government.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1904. That was the day that John Carley, a union miner, was shot down in Dunnville, Colorado.  He was part of a strike in the Cripple Creek gold mining region.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1929. That was the day that Police Chief Orville Aderholt was shot and killed, at a camp of striking textile workers in Gastonia, North Carolina.  The textile mills had fallen on hard times in the 1920s.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1894.  That was the day that the Colorado state militia troops came to Cripple Creek to intervene in a mining strike. But unlike every other time in US mining history that a state militia was called out, the state troops did not have their guns pointed at the miners.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1947. That was the day that Secretary of State George Marshall delivered a speech at Harvard University.  In his speech Marshall made a call for the United States to send assistance to European countries devastated by World War II.