A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
Episodes
Wednesday Feb 14, 2024
Wednesday Feb 14, 2024
That was the day 300 commercial laundresses in Kansas City walked off the job, demanding a union.
Male laundry delivery drivers successfully organized the previous summer.
They soon joined the women on the picket lines.
The Employers’ Association had financed an open-shop drive since the beginning of the war.
The laundry companies refused to grant wage increases to the drivers.
They also refused to acknowledge the women’s demand for a union.
The Women’s Trade Union League tried to hold hearings about the strike at the Hotel Muehlebach.
But the Hotel refused to allow striking black workers into the building.
As a result, their white coworkers refused to testify.
When the hearings were finally moved, the women told of intolerable conditions.
Laundresses complained of filthy workplaces and potential firetraps.
They reported that laundry owners had put together their own private police force.
These guns for hire assaulted women strikers, breaking one’s arm, another’s wrist and injuring many more in hopes of deterring them from pressing on with their demands.
In the 6th week of the strike, 25,000 more workers of Kansas City called a general strike.
According to historian Maurine Weiner Greenwald, “they supported the laundry workers’ demands for increased wages, union recognition and enforcement of state regulations regarding hours and working conditions.”
Greenwald notes the general strike was relatively peaceful until the Kansas City Railway attempted to run streetcars with scab labor.
Finally, the laundry companies agreed to union recognition and later promised wage increases.
They soon reneged. But the show of solidarity among workers provided key lessons for future labor struggles in Kansas City.
Wednesday Feb 14, 2024
Wednesday Feb 14, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1937.
That was the day Indiana Governor, M. Clifford Townsend, dispatched State National Guard troops to Anderson, Indiana.
The national strike against GM had just ended in victory for the union two days earlier.
UAW forces were emboldened by the militancy, solidarity and public support for the union in Flint. But Anderson was a company town.
It was home to GM’s Guide Lamp and Delco-Remy divisions.
GM employed over 11,000 of the town’s 40,000 residents.
Guide Lamp workers struck in late December and Delco-Remy plants closed to prevent sit-downs.
Foremen visited workers in their homes, demanding signatures for back-to-work petitions.
The Citizens League for Industrial Security whipped almost half the town into an anti-union frenzy.
The entire month of January was so marred by anti-union violence and intimidation, the strike had to be abandoned.
When the national strike ended, the UAW organized a victory meeting.
It was held virtually under siege by an anti-union mob.
Victor Reuther recalled he aged 10 years that night.
Anti-union violence broke out the next evening at the Gold Band Tavern.
The bar owner shot and wounded at least 10 UAW members.
Union backup headed to Anderson. Fearing UAW forces, the Indiana National Guard was deployed and Madison County was placed under martial law for 10 days.
In the classic history of the Flint Sit-Down, Sidney Fine explains that anti-union sentiment began to break down once workers learned GM had been forced to eliminate incentive pay.
The union newspaper proclaimed: “The men and women who fought on the picket line; who withstood the terror of the vigilantes; who kept their faith under trying conditions; these people changed the conditions in the shops.”
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
That was the day the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded.
During the early years of the 20thcentury, the NAACP developed legal strategies to challenge anti-Black violence and segregation.
W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimke and Florence Kelley were just a few of the white and black intellectuals and activists who founded the organization.
They sensed the urgency for a civil rights organization in the wake of the 1908 Race Riot in Springfield, IL.
They hoped to combat the rapid growth of lynchings and Jim Crow statutes.
Membership ballooned to almost 90,000 in less than 10 years, with more than 50 branches nationwide.
These leaders opposed the gradualism of Booker T. Washington and fought to convince whites of the need for racial equality.
The NAACP investigated lynchings and targeted disfranchisement and segregation through a series of lawsuits.
They established a Legal Defense Fund that organized support for the Scottsboro Boys and similar cases.
They undertook the campaign to overturn the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson.
This resulted in the 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education.
The NAACP played a central role in the Civil Rights movement with Rosa Parks as its secretary.
They helped to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott, were centrally involved in the campaign to integrate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and mobilized for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
They also worked successfully towards the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The NAACP continues its important advocacy work today with some 425,000 members.
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1981.
That was the day at least eight workers at Sequoyah I nuclear reactor in Tennessee were exposed to radioactive coolant.
The reactor was part of the vast Tennessee Valley Authority that provided electrical power to the region.
Sequoyah I had just been commissioned and was already off to a bad start.
First, on January 19, 1981, a generator tube malfunctioned, forcing a complete shut down.
Then on February 11, an operator error triggered an emergency alert.
An Auxiliary Unit Operator was working his first day on the new job without proper training.
He inadvertently opened the wrong valve during a safety test.
The operator misunderstood his instructions and recognized his mistake immediately.
But when he tried to alert the control room, they were too busy responding to the developing crisis to answer his call.
Reactor water sprayed for 10 minutes before it was finally shut off.
As many as 14 workers were contaminated by the coolant.
Some scientists contend that the release of reactor vessel water was inadvertent and part of the design of the cooling system.
Others argue that, in order to cut costs, management had decided to use radioactively contaminated water as emergency coolant rather than the more expensive fresh, uncontaminated water.
Steam leaks, tube malfunctions and overflowing drainage tanks were just some of the reported failures at the plant in the following years.
Between 1985 and 1988, Sequoyah was forced to shut down again after an independent review concluded that the plant did not comply with current safety standards.
Today the plant supplies electricity to more than 1.3 million homes.
Saturday Feb 10, 2024
Saturday Feb 10, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1973.
That was the day the worst industrial disaster in Staten Island took place.
Staten Island housed the world’s largest Liquefied Natural Gas storage tank.
The Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation owned the tank and operated a pipeline system that stretched from Texas to the East Coast.
The tank measured 272 feet across and was as tall as an 11-story building.
When leaks were suspected, the company had the tank emptied and shut down.
Workers had been repairing the torn Mylar insulation in the tank’s liner for months.
But then, vapors released during the repair process ignited the lining.
This created extreme temperature and pressure rise, which caused an explosion inside the tank.
The entire 6” thick concrete dome covering the tank immediately crumbled and rained down on workers inside.
Concrete and Excavating Laborers Local 731 reported that 40 workers and 3 safety inspectors were inside at the time.
None of them survived.
The explosion caused a massive crater.
Smoke billowed out for over five hours.
Investigations revealed that nitrogen, Freon 11 and oxygen, and not LNG, caused the explosion. But the cause was never determined.
Some 25 years later, the New York Planning Board began re-evaluating a moratorium on LNG facilities, in place since 1978.
They concluded that: "The government regulations and industry operating practices now in place would prevent a replication of this accident.
The fire involved combustible construction materials and a tank design that are now prohibited.
Although the exact causes may never be known, it is certain that LNG was not involved in the accident and the surrounding areas outside the facility were not exposed to risk."
Saturday Feb 10, 2024
Saturday Feb 10, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1937.
That was the day Sheriff Theodore Middleton and his deputies in Harlan County shot into the house of UMWA organizer Marshall Musick, killing his 15 year-old son, Bennett.
Musick organized for UMWA’s District 19.
He traveled all over Harlan County. As a district organizer, he was beaten, arrested, and evicted from company housing repeatedly.
Some of the mines were organized in Harlan County but barely.
Many coal operators controlled area sheriff departments and restricted daily life of miners and their union representatives.
Organizing drives started in January 1937.
Union men faced extreme physical violence.
Organizers were tear gassed in early January.
Their cars were dynamited later that month.
Musick and his wife were shot at and warned repeatedly to leave town.
Another organizer had his door busted down by deputies and his house ransacked.
Musick finally agreed to leave town to keep his family safe.
When he arrived in Pineville on February 9, he learned his son had been killed in a firestorm of bullets shot into his house.
On March 22, the LaFollette Committee on Civil Liberties opened hearings into Bloody Harlan.
It lasted for six weeks.
The high court drama appeared every day in the Courier Journal.
The Justice Department indicted 69 Harlan County Coal Operators and law officers for criminal conspiracy to violate the Wagner Act.
Meanwhile, the new National Labor Relations Board answered UMWA charges and found in the union’s favor.
The Board issued a cease and desist order against interference with union activity and ordered the reinstatement of 60 coal miners.
Union membership soared to 9000.
The UMWA would continue for decades to fight to keep Harlan County organized.
Saturday Feb 10, 2024
Saturday Feb 10, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1919.
That was the day copper miners in Butte, Montana went on strike.
Mine owners announced a $1 a day wage cut when copper prices slumped in financial markets.
Swayed by the power of the Seattle General Strike then in progress, miners associated with the IWW and the Metal Mine Workers Union, Local 800 formed their own Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Council.
They issued a call for a general strike.
For days, area trade unionists honored picket lines, left their jobs and held meetings to debate joining a general strike.
The streetcar workers shut down public transportation for five days.
Soldiers returning from the war helped man picket lines.
The labor paper, Butte Daily Bulletinreported the post-war economy left returning war heroes penniless and working in dangerous mines.
While solidarity was unanimous among workers, their unions had yet to pass formal resolutions.
Immediately, Montana’s governor, Sam V. Stewart, called in the 44th Infantry to crush the strike. Infantrymen bayoneted nine strikers, when they tried to stop the anti-labor Butte Daily Post from being distributed.
Spirits were high by the end of the first week as official voting began.
The streetcar men went back to work, citing no grievances with their employer.
Then the engineers followed. Finally the IBEW caved.
They worried the engineers would take their jobs, as they had done in a 1917 strike.
The IWW and local 800 called off the strike, fearing continuation would be fatal.
Though most of the troops were soon withdrawn, one company stayed to ensure labor peace at the local water and electric works.
Butte would remain under federal military occupation until the end of 1920.
Wednesday Feb 07, 2024
Wednesday Feb 07, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1894.
That was the day, gold miners in Cripple Creek, Colorado walked out on strike.
Mine owners increased the workday from 8 to 10 hours.
They refused to increase workers pay accordingly.
Workers immediately affiliated with the Western Federation of Miners. Local 19 leader, John Calderwood demanded a return to the 8-hour day at the previous wage, but the mine owners refused.
About 6 weeks into the strike, the larger gold mines imported scabs.
Violence soon followed.
The El Paso county sheriff demanded the governor call out the state militia.
But Colorado’s governor, Davis Waite was Populist. He recalled the troops upon learning they would be used as strike breakers.
Soon the mine owners raised their own private army of 100 troops, which grew to over 1200.
By May, miners armed themselves.
They took over a mine in Victor and blew it up when deputies arrived with scabs.
Governor Waite ordered the owners’ private army disbanded and called the militia out to defend strikers.
The mine owners agreed to return to the 8-hour workday at no loss in pay, but refused to disband their army.
They arrested and beat hundreds of miners.
The owners finally disbanded the forces when the governor threatened the militia’s presence in Victor for a month to keep the scab army immobilized.
It was the first and probably only time a state militia was called out in defense of striking workers.
According to Erik Loomis, “It was arguably organized labor’s biggest win in the Gilded Age.” Waite lost the next election.
But the victory meant enormous organizing gains for the WFM throughout the Rocky Mountain region.
Wednesday Feb 07, 2024
Wednesday Feb 07, 2024
The strike began just five days before Christmas. 7,000 young women walked out of area factories when they learned their shops were receiving orders from struck shops in New York City.
Often referred to as the ‘Uprising of the 20,000,’ striking New York City garment workers had rocked the industry.
The number of strikers in Philadelphia soon grew to over 15,000.
The young women crafted their own demands.
They wanted shorter workdays, uniform wages, better pay and union recognition.
Close to 300 arrests were made in the first weeks of the strike.
Labor leaders like Big Bill Haywood and Mother Jones addressed picketers, walked the lines and offered financial support.
Mother Jones declared, “Let us live together or starve together. We will let New York know that we can also fight. We will march up and down the streets of Philadelphia in solid ranks until victory is ours.”
Strikers marched throughout the area to call out workers in many of the smaller shops.
Tragically, at least 7 were killed and a dozen or more seriously injured in a fire at a smaller shop that continued to operate throughout the strike.
When manufacturers agreed to some concessions but refused union recognition, the women would not settle, stating, “We will go back to work as a union or starve.”
Historian Daniel Sidorick notes the gains won “demonstrated the resolute determination of the strikers to see their struggle through to victory, even in defiance of their union leaders, when necessary, and to the amazement of almost all observers.”
Wednesday Feb 07, 2024
Wednesday Feb 07, 2024
On this day in labor history, the year was 1900.
That was the day the newly formed Building Contractors Council locked out 40,000 building tradesmen in Chicago.
The Contractors Council was founded in opposition to the power of the Building Trades Council.
Solidarity among the trades galvanized their ability to determine wages and working conditions throughout the city.
Hard-won gains included use of sympathy strikes, restriction of laborsaving machinery and apprentices, and work pace and production limits.
In 1899, citywide building trades contracts expired.
Backed by financiers, manufacturers and engineers, the new council demanded the unions abandon these gains and cut all ties with the Building Trades Council.
The contractors cited the more than 20 walkouts at the Montgomery Ward construction site as but one example.
The bosses’ were driven to destroy what historian Andrew Wender Cohen refers to as ‘craft governance’ in the city.
Incredulous, the crafts refused to recognize the contractors council or its demands.
The contractors locked them out.
They brought in 6000 scabs to continue construction work throughout the city.
Pitched battles continued daily in the streets between locked out tradesmen and scabs.
Many contractors brought in cots and food to non-union workers, keeping them on job sites until completion.
Labor-friendly Mayor Carter Harrison II offered to mediate, but refused police protection of scabs.
The contractors built up their own private force.
Then they injected an added racial dimension to the conflict.
Among the non-union workers, some were black tradesmen, briefly hired as construction workers and job site guards.
The lockout ended in a 1901 defeat for the Building Trades, whose ranks were decimated by 90%.
The building trades bounced back and were soon a formidable force in Chicago.