Labor History in 2:00

October 4 - A Chain Reaction of Human Misery

On this day in Labor History the year was 1918. 

That was the evening that a series of explosions began at the T.A. Gillespie Company near Morgan, New Jersey. 

The explosions would destroy the plant and 300 buildings and kill an estimated 100 people.

The world was embroiled in war. 

The Unites States had entered the global conflict the year before. 

The nation’s factories were churning out munitions and other supplies for the war effort.  

On that fateful evening at Gillespie, workers were loading shells at the sprawling complex of 700 buildings that covered more than 2,000 acres. 

The initial explosion was likely an accident. 

Regardless the explosion was so severe that it cut the water lines to that part of the plant. 

Without water pressure, fire fighters struggled to douse the flames.

A chain reaction of explosions touched off as the fire spread in the plant. 

Houses in the nearby town shook from the massive explosions. 

Windows exploded and residents fled. 

Residents from three towns were evacuated due to the disaster. 

The New York Sun described the exodus as “streams of human misery—mothers and fathers, frightened children clutching still more frightened dogs; old, old people tottering along, all with the same dazed expressions on their faces, as if they scarcely realized what had happened.” 

When the fire was finally put out, nearly half of the plants buildings were destroyed. 

It was impossible to say exactly how many workers were killed, so bad was the carnage. 

Two members of the US Coast Guard died responding to the disaster. 

The disaster was then compounded, when a flu epidemic swept through the residents evacuated from nearby towns. 

The death toll and misery from these tragic events mounted even higher.

October 3 - Remembering Woody Guthrie

On this day in Labor History the year was 1967. 

That was the day that the “Dust-bowl Troubadour,” Woody Guthrie, died. 

Over the course of his life, Woody Guthrie wrote almost 3,000 songs. 

He was one of the thousands of people who took the road during the Great Depression, swept into wandering by the winds that churned the Dust Bowl.

In an interview with NPR, fellow folk music legend Pete Seeger described Guthrie’s influence, “We all read about music being part of people’s lives, but I hadn’t seen it in action until I met him.  The words that came out of his mouth and the music he made all flowed together with the life that he had led and I was greatly attracted to it and kind of tagged along with him for several months.  Woody showed me how to hitchhike and how to ride freight trains, how to sing in saloons.”

A 2013 article in Paste magazine summarized Guthrie’s legacy writing, “No artist…has ever expressed a deeper will to fight against oppression and the rights of “the little guy” than Woody Guthrie.”

Iconic author John Steinbeck wrote this vivid description, “Harsh-voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings.  But there is something more important for those who will listen.  There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression.  I think we call this the American spirit.”  

October 2 - Rebuilding in Tough Times

On this day in Labor History the year was 1935. 

That was the year that San Diego hosted the California Pacific International Exposition, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke the most memorable words about the rights of workers to organize. 

The goal of the exposition was to show case San Diego, and to boost the local economy, which had fallen on hard times in the Great Depression.

The exposition was held in Balboa Park.

Exhibits included history, science, industry and culture. 

To prepare for the expo, improvements were made to the park, paid for by the Works Progress Administration. 

The WPA was a New Deal era program designed to put people back to work on public infrastructure projects. 

The expo kicked off in May, and ran for 377 days, with a break during the winter months.

More than 7 million people visited the park for the expo.

Two of those visitors was President Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. 

As part of his trip, the President gave a speech to 60,000 people at Balboa Stadium.

Earlier that year had signed the Wagner Act otherwise known as the National Labor Relation Act, which guaranteed private sector workers the right to joins and form a union. 

The President spent part of his Expo speech celebrating that achievement. 

He declared, “a changing civilization has raised new problems with respect to the relationship between the employer and the employed. It is now beyond partisan controversy that it is a fundamental individual right of a worker to associate himself with other workers and to bargain collectively with his employer.”

President Roosevelt went on to acknowledge, “New laws, in themselves, do not bring a millennium.”  

The passage of the law helped to launch a new wave of union organizing across U.S. industry.

Creating a prosperous working class.

October 1 - The Jerry Level

On this day in Labor History the year was 1851. 

That was the day that William Henry, a black cooper, or barrel maker who went by the name of Jerry was arrested in Syracuse, New York. 

First he was told that he was being arrested for theft. 

But then he learned that federal marshals had arrested him for violating the Fugitive Slave Law, passed the year before. 

Jerry had escaped slavery in Missouri. 

The anti-slavery Liberty Party was holding its convention in nearby church. 

When word came about Jerry’s arrest, a crowd rushed to release him. 

Once released he was quickly recaptured and returned to custody. 

But then a large crowd, numbering more than 2,000 gathered to free Jerry from the office where he was being held. 

According to research done by the Syracuse University Library, the first person into the office was J. M. Clappe, an iron worker likely chosen for his brawn. 

The crowd was able to free Jerry and hide him until he could escape into Canada. 

Clappe also had to flee to Canada to avoid arrest, along with eight others. 

Nineteen people were indicted for participating in the rescue. 

Only one person was convicted, and he died before he could appeal. 

In turn, the abolitionists won an indictment against the marshal who had arrested Jerry.

They charged him with kidnapping.  

Although the marshal was acquitted, it gave the abolitionists a chance to publicly challenge the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Each year until 1858 a Jerry Rescue celebration commemorated the event.

Abolitionists referred to the “Jerry Level” as a standard for justice. 

In 2001 a monument to the rescue was dedicated in Clinton Square, in downtown Syracuse New York.

September 30 - The Elaine, Arkansas Massacre

On this day in Labor History the year was 1919. 

That was the day that began the Elaine Massacre. 

The massacre took place in Arkansas, where more than 100 black farmers and sharecroppers were gunned down for daring to organize their labor. 

The Year before, a black farmer by the name of Robert L. Hill had founded the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America.

Union members pooled their money to purchase land. 

They also hired a lawyer to sue planters who did not give black tenant cotton farmers their fair share of the profits.

The group grew in membership in the Arkansas delta region, including near the town of Elaine in Philips County. 

But white landowners would not allow this challenge to their power. 

Armed white militias came to a church where the union was holding a meeting. 

The black attendees were also armed. 

Gunfire broke out. 

In response, white posses and federal troops unleashed a wave of terror across Philips County.

Hundreds of black residents were arrested. 

At least 100 black Arkansans were killed. 

Some estimates of those murdered is considerable higher. 

Five white people also died. 

122 black men and women were charged with murder.

Twelve were given the death sentence.

No white vigilante was ever charged. 

The convicted African Americans appealed their cases.

One appeal for six of the defendants went all the way to the US Supreme Court, where it was overturned in a landmark ruling.  

The year of 1919 was one of the deadliest years of violence against African Americans in U.S. history. 

Civil Rights activist James Weldon Johnson called those bloody months the “Red Summer.” 

Twenty-six race riots left thousands of African Americans homeless and hundreds dead from Chicago to Washington D.C. to Omaha.

September 29 - Creating a Standing Army

On this day in Labor History the year was 1789. 

That was the day that the United States Congress officially created the United States army.

Not everyone agreed that the U.S. should have a standing army. 

Two years earlier, at the meeting that drafted the U.S. Constitution, James Madison warned against a permanent federal army.

He told those at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”

Since Madison was a strong proponent of a centralized federal government, his caution about the army was noteworthy. 

Perhaps these warnings is why it took Congress until the last day of their session to finally approve the measure. 

In fact, President George Washington had to write Congress not once but twice to get them to act on the issue.

Once it was approved, the first standing Army had about 800 members. 

By comparison, in 2015 the Army had just under half a million in active duty soldiers. 

To supplement the small army, Congress also made a provision for the President to call up troops from State militias.

A stated purpose for such call ups, was “protecting the inhabitants of the frontiers of United States from hostile incursions of the Indians.”

While in federal service, the State militias were supposed to receive “the same as the pay and subsistence” as the regular army. 

One time various State militias were used was for the forced removal of the Cherokee people from the Southeast on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. 

State militias were also deployed to break up labor strikes, such as in the Homestead Strike in Pennsylvania in 1892.

September 28 - Solidarity on the Docks

Would you be willing to stand up in solidarity with your fellow workers, even if it cost you your job?

On this day in Labor History the workers at Mersey Docks and Harbor Company in Liverpool, England answered that question. 

The year was 1995. 

329 Mersey Dock workers refused to cross a picket line that was being walked against another company on the docks. 

The workers at Torside had been fired for protesting against erosions in job security and increasingly unpredictable scheduling. 

They were speaking out against the casualization of their labor. 

When the Mersey Dock workers would not cross the Torside picket line, they too were fired. 

Dock workers across the world stood up in solidarity with the Mersey workers against this unjust treatment. 

They knew if it could happen in Liverpool, it might happen anywhere. 

Pickets sprung up from Norway to Japan, from Australia to Italy and into the United States. 

It was a global outpouring of solidarity. 

The strike wore on for 850 days. 

One year in to the strike, dockworkers held an international day of action in support of the Liverpool workers. 

Finally, two-and-a-half years after they were fired, the dockworkers agreed to a settlement. 

They did not get back their jobs. 

But they did get severance pay. 

A film was made about the struggle. 

The proceeds were used to purchase a bar in Liverpool. 

It is known as the Dockers Pub, and has become a space for working class organizing. 

The International Dockworkers Council was also born from this strike. 

Today the council has 90,000 members—a lasting movement of solidarity. 

Twenty years after the strike, dockworkers from across the world gathered in Liverpool to remember the struggle.

September 27 - Wreck of the Old ‘97

On this day in Labor History the year was 1903. 

That was the day that is remembered in Virginia as the “Wreck of old 97”. 

Old 97, also known as the Fast Mail, was a Southern Railway freight train. 

It carried the mail from Washington D.C. to Atlanta, Georgia. 

The train wreck happened on the leg of the trip from Monroe, Virginia to Spencer, North Carolina. 

The train had come in late to Monroe. 

It was reported that the railway company ordered the engineer to increase the speed of the train to make up time.

The company had to pay a penalty for delivering the mail late.

But when the trained neared Danville, Virginia the tracks curved at the Stillhouse Trestle Bridge.

The speed was too much. 

Despite the engineer’s efforts to slow the train, it careened off the tracks and plummeted to the rocky ravine forty-five feet below. 

Eleven of the sixteen people on board the train died, including the conductor, the engineer and the flagman, and both firemen. 

The railway company blamed the wreck on the deceased engineer.

Newspapers across the country carried photos of the wreck.

The disaster became the subject of multiple ballads. 

One version by Vernon Dalhart in 1924 is thought to be the first million-selling country record in the United States.

Johnny Cash recorded another well-known version of the song.

In 1993 an alternative country band took the name the “Old 97’s” harking back to the disaster and the songs it inspired. 

September 26 - Disaster on the Job Around the Globe

On this day in Labor History the year was 2007. It was that morning that a bridge under construction in Vietnam collapsed.

The disaster happened in Can Tho, about 100 miles south of Ho Chi Minh City. It was a suspension bridge project to cross the Hau River.

The project was run by Japanese firms working with the Vietnamese government. 250 workers were on site at the project when the disaster happened. 55 people were killed and another one hundred were injured due to the collapse. 

One reason cited for the collapse was that torrential downpours had caused the support structure for the bridge to sink. Another possible reason was that the scaffolding on the construction project was too weak to hold the weight.

When it failed, it took down a section of the four-lane concrete deck approach ramp with it. The fallen section weighed between 1,500 and 2,000 tons. The collapse was considered the worst disaster in the history of the Vietnam construction industry. 

Manh Hung, leader of one of the construction teams described what occurred. “We suddenly heard a great explosion at a bridge head.  Dust covered a great air space while workers screamed out.  The scene was so terrible.  The whole great block fell on people below.” 

Vietnamese, along with Japanese and Filipino rescue volunteers rushed to attempt to find survivors. 1,000 local residents gave blood at the hospital for those injured. The rescue efforts were hampered by the danger of a further collapse. They had to use a crane to clear the rubble. Finally, after four days, the rescue efforts were called off. 

The bridge project was completed in 2010. The names of the fallen workers are inscribed on a memorial.

September 25 - Martyred for the Vote

On this day in Labor History the year was 1961.

That was the day when Herbert Lee was murdered just outside of Liberty, Mississippi. 

He was a successful black cotton farmer, who became active in efforts to register black voters.

Lee had nine children. 

He was one of the few area black farmers with a vehicle. 

This made him very valuable to the voter registration movement. 

Lee would drive Bob Moses from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee around Amite County to reach unregistered voters.  

It was dangerous work to register black share croppers and farmers in rural Mississippi. 

Attempts by black residents to gain legal or economic equality were met with threats and violence.

On the morning of his murder, Lee had come to the Westbrook Cotton Gin outside of Liberty to drop off a truck load cotton.  

There he was met by a childhood friend, Mississippi State Representative, E. H. Hurst. 

Hurst came up to the truck and started shouting at Lee.  

He then took out a gun and shot Herbert Lee in the head. 

Witnesses stated that Lee had brandished a tire iron at Hurst.

Hurst claimed self-defense.

A jury declared the murder a justifiable homicide.

Louis Allen, a black farmer and timber worker, was one who had testified about witnessing the shooting. 

Later he recanted his testimony, saying he had lied about Lee threatening Hurst because he feared for his life. 

After Allen began to talk about what he saw that day, he became the victim of harassment and beatings. 

Finally, on January 31, 1964 he too was gunned down in his driveway. 

No one was every convicted or arrested for his murder.