Michael Hiltzik has useful commentary to add to the story of Nazi youth camps in mid-30s New York. The scare over them led to the creation of the Dies Committee, later HUAC. In Washington, panic about the camp rumors struck Rep. Martin Dies Jr. as...
new deal
On July 11, 1934, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union formed when eleven white farmers and seven black farmers met in Tyronza, Arkansas to form a union of sharecroppers to fight.
My interest in political-based poetry of American history means I find all sorts of weird stuff, or more accurately, I report on what others have found if I don't find.
On July 5, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act. This groundbreaking piece of legislation revolutionized the relationship between the federal government and organized labor and gave workers a fair shake from the government for the first time in American history....
On June 25, 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act. This groundbreaking piece of legislation, while flawed as almost all progressive legislation must be to pass.
On May 6, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 7034 creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Passed and funded by Congress in the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of.
On April 12, 1934, workers at the Electric Auto-Lite Company in Toledo walked off the job in a strike that united unionized labor and the unemployed, creating a social movement that scared capitalists around the nation, helped spur more substantial labor legislation, and left two...
Alf Landon's speech opposing Social Security in 1936 could have been made by Paul Ryan today. These are a few reasons why I called this law unjust and stupidly drafted..
On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, bringing the modern welfare state to the American people and providing the nation’s poor long-desired old age.
On May 26, 1937, United Auto Workers organizers, including future president Walter Reuther, walked toward the Ford Motor Company's giant River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan to hand out pro-union leaflets to workers. As they crossed an overpass toward the plant, Ford's private army, led...
During the discussion around my piece calling for international safety standards at the workplace with real enforcement teeth that could implicate American corporations subcontracting with unscrupulous employers, a reader suggested.
On this date in 1937, Chicago police opened fire on strikers in front of the Republic Steel mill, killing 10 workers. Part of the "Little Steel" strike, where smaller steel.