On February 22, 1860, 3,000 shoemakers in Lynn, Massachusetts went on strike, beginning the nation’s largest strike before the Civil War. Traditionally, shoemaking was a part time job for farmer
On February 20, 1893, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went into receivership. This was the first step toward the Panic of 1893, the greatest economic crisis in American history prior to the Grea
On February 10, 1966, the Senate failed to gain cloture on an attempt to appeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, a sign of the limited power of labor unions in American politics, even at the hei
On January 22, 1599, Spanish troops began their attack on Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. This incredibly violent incident and aftermath created a regime of labor under Spanish rule that would have devast
On January 11, 1968, around 1,000 workers in Saigon walked off the job, protesting the unfair treatment they faced from South Vietnamese government and demonstrating the lack of commitment to democrat
On January 1, 1867, a landowner named Isham Bailey signed a one-year sharecropping deal with freedmen Cooper Hughs and Charles Roberts. While there is no obvious date to discuss sharecropping, an abso
On December 15, 1921, the Kansas National Guard arrived to break up women’s marches in support of a strike of coal miners in southeastern Kansas. That intervention, done with the open support of
On December 14, 1945, the House passed what would become the Employment Act of 1946 once Harry Truman signed it. This was an important piece of legislation in moving the nation forward out of a renewe