TIME LINE OF SELECT EVENTS IN THE AMERICAN LABOR STRUGGLE, 1877–1935
Time lines of labor-union victories do not always show the depth of the struggles and the sacrifices made to achieve gains in workers’ rights. A link to a traditional labor-union time line is located here. However, this time line shows valiant efforts by union workers that were crushed by industrial corporations with the backing of local, state, and/or the federal government. After each instance, union people eventually found the wherewithal to rally and try again, until 1934, when companies were forced by the federal government to recognize unions and negotiate with workers. The United Garment Workers Strike in St. Louis, which Fannie helped organize, is included, though it is a notable exception. That strike was a clear victory for laborers.
1877 THE GREAT NATIONWIDE RAILROAD STRIKE, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
The Maryland National Guard fought its way through striking railroad workers in Baltimore on July 20. The strike against wage cuts swept west along the rails through Chicago, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, to San Francisco—100,000 workers halting commerce for forty-five days. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops to end the strike, and workers went back to their jobs, taking lower wages. This set a precedent for using federal soldiers to enforce corporate interests against labor.
1886 HAYMARKET SQUARE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
During a rally on May 4 to support workers seeking an eight-hour workday, a pipe bomb exploded in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, panicking both the demonstrators and the police, who opened fire. Seven policemen and at least four civilians died, and more than sixty demonstrators were hurt. In a frenzy, local police rounded up labor leaders and suspected radicals, plus hundreds of workers. No evidence ever identified who threw the bomb, but eight men stood trial, and four were hanged. Historians still debate the accuracy of the charges against these men and the fairness of the trial.
1892 THE HOMESTEAD LOCKOUT, NEAR PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
In one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history, after days of demonstrating, members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers faced off at the Carnegie Steel Company against company-hired agents from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in a fourteen-hour skirmish. After collective bargaining failed, Carnegie shut down its Homestead plant and locked out the union workers. Angered at losing their jobs, the laborers took over the plant. After several people died in skirmishes, nine workers among them, state militia arrived, armed with Winchester rifles and Gatling machine guns. They forced the workers to back down and sidelined the union in Western Pennsylvania for two generations.
Striking miners were arrested and forced to leave Colorado after mine owners secretly financed vigilantes (self-appointed law enforcers) and National Guard soldiers to crush the miners’ union. Seventy-two percent of Colorado voters had approved an eight-hour workday, but the mine owners ignored them and paid Pinkerton detectives to incite violence and blame it on the strikers. When dynamite exploded at a railroad depot, killing thirteen and injuring six nonunion men, the Mine Owners Association seized control of the investigation by threatening to lynch the county sheriff—a union member who had been elected by the people and didn’t favor company interests. Laborers in the Cripple Creek mining district would not organize and win their rights for another generation.
1909–1911 UNITED GARMENT WORKERS STRIKE MARX & HAAS, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
After negotiations for better pay and working conditions broke down, the Marx & Haas Clothing Company locked out one thousand workers, including United Garment Workers of America Ladies’ Local 67, of which Fannie Sellins was president. Union members picketed the factory until they were prohibited from doing so by a judge. Still, the strikers held out for two years, while a national boycott of Marx & Haas Clothing pressured the company to sign a contract with the union for improved pay and working conditions.
1913–1914 UNITED MINE WORKERS STRIKE, COLLIERS, WEST VIRGINIA
September 13, 1913, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) went on strike against the West Virginia–Pittsburgh Coal Company, which continued operations with nonunion labor. The company won a court injunction to prohibit the UMWA from organizing local workers. Union leaders, including Fannie Sellins, were jailed for speaking at public rallies. The strike settled in June 1914, with workers re-hired at slightly better wages and working conditions but dissolution of the UMWA in the region.
1914 LUDLOW MASSACRE, LUDLOW, COLORADO
On April 20, Colorado National Guard soldiers aimed a machine gun at a union camp during a strike in Southern Colorado. Company gunmen harassed strikers, shot at them from an armored car and beamed searchlights on their tents at night. The miners thought the Guard had arrived to protect them from dangerous harassment by the camp guards, but the soldiers and guards destroyed two tent camps, burning one to the ground and killing two women and eleven children. The massacre brought criticism to principal owner John D. Rockefeller and highlighted the Colorado miners’ grievances, but little improved for them.
What remains of a striking coal miners’ tent colony after attack and burning by National Guard troops. Ludlow, Colorado, 1914.
1919 UNITED MINE WORKERS STRIKE ALLEGHENY COAL & COKE, BRACKENRIDGE, PENNSYLVANIA
After Fannie’s death, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) continued its labor action against the Allegheny Coal & Coke Company. The next month the American Federation of Labor (AFL) struck the United States Steel Corporation with the same demands—higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and recognition of unions. The strike spread across the nation, and eventually 350,000 workers walked out. But companies whipped up prejudice against unions, painting workers as communists, and strikers lost public support. Federal and state soldiers ended the strike, and UMWA and AFL workers returned to their jobs with no gains.
1920–1921 WEST VIRGINIA COAL WARS AND BATTLE OF BLAIR MOUNTAIN
West Virginia miners lived in nearly feudal conditions—their homes, schools, churches, stores, and even their politicians owned by the mine bosses. When the miners went on strike, coal operators hired gunmen, including sheriff’s deputies, to assault, arrest, and blacklist workers and evict their families from their homes. When two union sympathizers were shot on the steps of the county courthouse, five thousand union miners armed themselves to face the corporate gunmen and soldiers. When the federal government sent ground troops, and bomber planes landed at a nearby airfield, the strikers surrendered.
1934 WEST COAST LONGSHOREMEN STRIKE
In what is also known as the West Coast Waterfront Strike, longshoremen (dockworkers) closed ports in California, Oregon, and Washington for eighty-three days, demanding union recognition and hiring halls run by unions, not bosses. Two strikers were shot dead and more than one hundred wounded by police on a sidewalk in San Francisco on July 5. The police killings triggered a four-day general strike, and sailors and workers throughout the city joined the shutdown. Employers eventually agreed to government arbitration to end the strike. The longshoremen’s victory launched the modern labor movement in the western United States, in which workers have the right by law to form unions and bargain with employers.
Policeman wielding a nightstick engages with a striker during the citywide general strike. San Francisco, California, 1934.
1934 BLACK FRIDAY, MINNEAPOLIS TRUCKERS STRIKE
After truckers striking for improved wages and better working conditions nearly shut down commercial transportation in the upper Midwest, Minneapolis police fired on crowds of strikers at the city’s central market, killing two and wounding more than sixty. Political pressure from President Franklin D. Roosevelt averted all-out warfare in the streets. Companies needing the administration’s help to finance their credit agreed to sit down and talk with strikers and accept government help in reaching an agreement. Thus the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was born.
1934 AUTO-LITE STRIKE, TOLEDO, OHIO
In what is also known as the “Battle of Toledo,” sheriff’s deputies used tear gas and fire hoses against Electric Auto-Lite Company strikers. The city’s 80 percent unemployment rate, a result of the Great Depression, had led factory managers to reduce wages and inspired thousands of citizens to support the strikers. National Guard troops provoked a five-day battle in the streets. People fought with fists and bricks; soldiers fired on the crowd, killing two and injuring more than two hundred. Forty thousand citizens threatened to shut down the city. Electric Auto-Lite finally gave in and signed the first contract with what would become the United Auto Workers.
1934 NATIONAL TEXTILE WORKERS STRIKE, NEWNAN, GEORGIA
Charged with picketing for better hours and working conditions at a cotton mill in Newnan, Georgia, sixteen women and one hundred and twelve men were imprisoned. A Labor Day textile workers’ strike in North Carolina quickly spread across the South and up the Eastern Seaboard. Soon, nearly half a million workers joined the strike. Company guards and Georgia National Guard troops were dispatched in at least seven states, smashing the strike in three weeks. Penniless workers, faced with brutal violence, started returning to their jobs, but companies refused to re-hire 72,000 strikers. Unions remain weak in the South to the present day.
1935 NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT
The presidential election of 1932 sparked a major turning point for American labor unions, bringing pro-labor president Franklin D. Roosevelt into office in 1933, along with a Congress sympathetic to labor. The National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, guaranteed workers the right to form unions and collectively bargain for fair wages and workplace safety. The law formed the National Labor Relations Board to protect both employers’ and employees’ rights and to intervene when labor and management disputes become deadlocked.
