Cesar Chavez was born March 31, 1927 near Yuma, Arizona. At a young age he started to toil as a migrant farm worker. In 1939 he and his family moved to a barrio in San Jose, California. From 1944 to 1946 he served in the United Sates Navy. By 1962 Chavez had founded the National Farm Workers Association which later in collaboration with Dolores Huerta, became the United Farm Workers. He initiated successfull strikes and boycotts which resulted in the grape and produce growers signing contracts with the NFWA, then subsequently with the UFW. Cesar served as president of the United Farm Workers until his death. He died in his sleep on April 23, 1993.
Jimmy Hoffa was born February 14, 1913 in Brazil, Indiana. A few years after the death of his father, his mother moved the family to Detroit, Michigan. At the age of seventeen he took a job in a Kroger company warehouse, where he organized the workers and a strike. He eventually became an organizer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hoffa went on to serve as the chairman of the Central States Drivers Council and president of Local 299 and the Michigan Conference of Teamsters. After serving as an International vice-president, he was elected president of the IBT in 1959. Hoffa was constantly dogged by government investigations and was eventually sentenced to federal prison. In 1971 U.S. President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence and he was released. In July of 1975 he mysteriously disappeared when he was to attend a meeting at a Detroit suburb restaurant. Although he has been declared legally dead, the case remains unsolved.
The date April 20, 1914 will forever be a day of infamy for American workers. On that day, 20 innocent men, women and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. The coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the UMWA for many years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Upon striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The massacre occurred in a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strike breakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later investigations revealed that kerosene had intentionally been poured on the tents to set them ablaze. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents. The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun-the Death Special-that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre, the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.--A monument erected by the United Mine Workers of America stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.
Source: United Mine Workers of America-A Brief History
In the winter of 1913 more than 24,000 men, women, and children marched out of Paterson, New Jersey's silk mills calling for decent working conditions, an end to child labor, and an eight hour day. From January to July, constant mass arrests and hostile city authorities threatened the safety of the strikers and their families. Pietro and Maria Botto offered their home overlooking a green as a meeting place for the strikers. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Upton Sinclair, and other champions of the cause of labor spoke from the second floor balcony to workers of many nationalities. The American Labor Museum, headquarted in the historic Botto House National Landmark, is located in Haledon, New Jersey which is approximately 25 miles west of New York City. For information about tours, etc., call (973)-595-7953.
Joe Hill, arriving in New York City after imigrating from Sweden in 1902, worked in factories and mines, and on farms and waterfronts as he traveled from the east coast to San Pedro, California, where he joined the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1913, journeying east again-probably via freight train-Hill stopped to work in the mines of Utah. While in that state he was arrested, tried, and convicted of murdering a Salt Lake City grocer. Joe Hill's execution by a Utah firing squad in November of 1915 was preceded by appeals for clemency from thousands of sympathizers and such notables as Samuel Gompers-president of the American Federation of Labor, W.A.F.Ekengren-Swedish Minister to the United States, and President Woodrow Wilson. Since then, the Joe Hill story has become legend. To a large extent it was the legacy of his songs. If Joe Hill were to return to earth he probably still would be writing songs about "Pie in the Sky." For despite the Square Deals, the New Freedoms, the New Deals, the New Frontier, and the Great Society, the goal of rendering people secure from the dread of war and the fear of want in a democratic society has not been realized. It was this spirit of the future that animated Joe Hill and other rebels in the I.W.W. and was capsulated in Joe Hill's famous sentence, still used in radical rhetoric today: "Don't Mourn, Organize. Although the I.W.W.'s most talented and prolific songwriter was Joe Hill, other contributors included Richard Brazier, Ralph Chaplin, Covington Hall, and Laura Payne Emerson. I.W.W. songs were sung on picket lines, in hobo jungles, at mass meetings, at free speech demonstrations- wherever members gathered to agitate for a new world "built from the ashes of the old."
The I.W.W. emerged as a result of two forces: the frustration of eastern radicals who wished to influence the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor toward their socialist ideas, and the militant philosophy of the Western Federation of Miners. The most important strikes which the I.W.W. directed or took part in include the Goldfield, Nevada miners' strike of 1906-1907, the Lawrence, Mass. textile workers strike of 1912, a lumber workers' strike in the same year in Louisiana and Arkansas, the Paterson, New Jersey silk mill workers' strike of 1913, and the iron workers' strike on the Masabi Range in Minnesota in 1916. Although the organization never had more than about 100,000 members at the peak of its activities, it shook the nation with an impact disproportionate to its size.
During the depression, the I.W.W. joined with organizations of unemployed workers to set up unemployment unions to provide housing and food for the jobless. Throughout 1932 and 1933, I.W.W. organization and agitation in Detroit added impetus to the growing unrest of auto workers suffering from layoffs, wage cuts, and tensions of speed-up in the auto plants. Soapboxing, leafletng. a weekly radio program, and weekend socials in the Detroit I.W.W. hall provided the growth of a skeleton organization in some of the large auto plants which helped spur quickie strikes in the Briggs, Hudson, and Murray body plants. Some of the I.W.W. organizers moved on to Cleveland where during the next few years, they organized members in several foundries and metal shops. Shops organized in 1934, such as the American Stove Company, were still in the I.W.W. in 1950, the longest record of collective bargaining in the I.W.W.'s history. The I.W.W. persists to the present day, and its newspaper as lively and provocative as former I.W.W. publications.
Source: Joe Hill..by Gibbs M. Smith, Publisher
Bill Haywood was born on February 4, 1869 in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a teenager he worked in various mines throughout the West. In the 1890's he became aware of how important a union was to mine workers. By 1896 in Idaho he helped form Local 66 of the Western Federation of Miners. Haywood became an organizer for the WFM and was elected President of Local 66 in 1900 and in 1901 became secretary-treasurer of the national WFM. In 1905 Haywood joined with Gene Debs, Mother Jones, and others to form the Industrial Workers of the World, the "wobblies". By 1914 he served as the IWW General-Secretary. "Big Bill" Haywood died of a stroke on May 18, 1928.
Eugene Debs was born on November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana. At the age of fifteen he quit school and got a job in the train paintng shop at Vandalia Railroad. For a few years he also worked for the railroads in St. Louis, Missouri. Around 1875 in Terre Haute he joined firemen's Lodge 16 and was elected secretary. In 1880 he became national secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. Debs was interested in politics, therefore in 1879 he ran for and won city clerk of Terre Haute. Then in 1884 he was elected to the Indiana legislature. After his stint as a state congressman he returned to the labor movement and in 1893 founded the American Railway Union. Because of his involvement with the Pullman Car strike and boycott he was found in violation of the Sherman Trust Act and sentenced to jail. From 1900 to 1920 Debs was a candidate for U.S. president five times. The last while serving a prison term because of his pacifism. Eugene Debs died on October 20, 1926.
Mary Harris Jones was born in Ireland in 1830. She came to America as a young child, and later married a coal miner. All her family, her husband and her four children died in a yellow fever epidemic in 1867. So Mary Jones declared that the coal miners and working people everywhere were her children, and they accepted and loved her and called her Mother Jones. She traveled everywhere in support of workers' efforts to improve their lives. In 1903 she was in Philadelphia helping a group of textile workers who were striking a textile mill in the Kensington section of the city. She was deeply distressed to find that out of a total 75,000 textile workers, 10,000 were children, and that many of them worked long hours and had been injured by the mill machinery. The workers were striking for more pay and shorter hours. Every day little children came into the union headquarters, some with their fingers missing, some with a hand missing. Many of them were not over ten years of age, although the state law prohibited any child under the age of 12 from working. She organized a child labor march to New York City.The march had done its work. She had drawn the attention of the nation to the crime of child labor. And while the strike of the textile workers in Philadelphia was lost and the children driven back to work, not long afterward the Pennsylvania legislature passed a child labor law that sent thousands of children home from the mills.
Source: Sing a Song of Unsung Heroes and Heroines: Penn State University
Wilson was born in Scotland on April 2, 1862 and came to America with his parents soon after the Civil War. He worked with his father in the coal mines and was elected secretary of his local union when he was fifteen years old. In 1890 he worked with John Mitchell to set up a national union of coal miners, the United Mine Workers of America, and in 1902 he was elected national secretary of the union. Wilson was the first United States Secretary of the Department of Labor. He was appointed to that position by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 and was the first representative of working people to serve on a President's cabinet. The Clayton Act was passed which stated that labor unions were not illegal. William Wilson worked to get this law passed. He also set up the U.S. Employment Service which helps unemployed workers find work and administers funds to pay them a part of their wages while they are looking for new jobs. He also, for the first time, created Boards with representatives from government, business, and labor.
Source: Sing a Song of Unsung Heroes and Heroines: Penn State University
The year was 1877. A young union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, were organizing railroad engine-men nationally. The railroad companies including the Philadelphia and Reading were entering into the coal mining business. In the springtime of the year, many of the railroads including the P&R slashed the wages of the workers by 10 percent. There were rumors of a strike. Without any warning approximately 350 Reading engineers walked off the job. They were quickly replaced by scabs. The union then demanded that all the railroads in the eastern part of the country restore the 10 percent cut and come up with a 20 percent increase. The general-manager of the P&R informed the employees if they did not desert the union they would be fired. Some workers went back to the job. But many others became much more militant. By mid-July striking engine-men were demonstrating and rioting in Morgantown, West Virginia. A few days later the same thing happened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the militia was called in and 28 people were killed. On Sunday July 22 in Reading, Pennsylvania, unrest started to emerge. By evening a large group of strikers and others were gathering in the railroad yards. A train headed for Philly was blocked by the crowd and boxcars were set afire. The following day the strikers were back in the yards. What the union brothers did not know was that the President of the P&R sent a telegram to the state attorney-general asking for military help. Militia troops were mobilized in the City of Easton and put on a train for Reading. When they arrived at the outer station on North Sixth Street they were met by the P&R Coal and Iron police. The officials in charge decided to move the troops and police through the yards. The crowd was yelling and screaming and rocks were thrown. Suddenly a shot was fired. Then many shots were fired. After the smoke cleared, dozens lay wounded. Ten lay dead. No official investigation. The murderers walked away.
Terrence Powderly, the son of irish immigrants, was born in 1849 in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. As a teenager his first job was working for the railroad, and then he eventually apprenticed in a machine shop. In 1871 he joined the Machinists and Blacksmiths National Union and by 1872 was elected president. A few years later he joined the Kights of Labor and by 1879 he attained the leadership position. Under his tenure the membership of the K. of L. rose to approximately 700,000. Powderly opposed strikes which caused internal quarreling and by 1893 he resigned from the union. He entered politics and was elected mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania three times and later held other government positions. Terrence Powderly died in 1924.
Samuel Gompers was born in 1850, in London, England. At a very young age he was an apprentice shoemaker, before moving on to the cigar making trade. In 1863 his family moved to New York City. By 1864 he joined the Cigar Makers International Union and later served as president of his local. He eventually went on to become vice-presidnet of the International. He was a co-organizer of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions and served as an officer. By 1886 he was elected president of the American Federation of Labor, which later became the AFL-CIO. He also was instrumental in the creation of the International Labor Organization, which is now an agency of the United Nations. Gompers died on December 13, 1924 in San Antonio, Texas.
From the 1830's to the Civil War, workers experimented with various ideas to win more dignity and better conditions at the workplace. They formed political parties. They bought and operated their own factories, and they formed clubs and organizations to help members who were sick and out of work. The most important labor leader of this period was William H. Sylvis, who saw that unions would have to organize nationally if they were going to be effective. Sylvis was born in Armagh, near Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1828. William was the second son in a family of ten children. Times were hard for the Sylvis family. So at the age of eleven, William was placed with a family that agreed to support him in exchange for his work. When he became a teenager, he decided to become an iron molder. Iron molding was a dangerous job. The molders worked in foundries or furnaces. The workers lived in company homes and made all their purchases at the company store. He became active in the union and decided that the union should be national, not a local organization. He called a convention of all molders in the U.S. which met in Philadelphia on July 4, 1859. By 1867 William had been elected to five terms as president and had built the most powerful labor union of his day. Just as he had seen the need for his own union to be organized on a national basis, he also thought there should be a national organization of all workers. In 1866, he helped to form the first national federation of labor: The National Labor Union (N.L.U.). In 1868 he was elected president of the N.L.U. In July of 1869, as he sat at his desk preparing his speech for the convention that was to meet in August, he became ill. Five days later, he died. He was forty-one years old. The N.L.U. was not able to continue for very long without the dedicated and unselfish leadership that Brother William had provided.
Source: Sing a Song of Unsung Heroes and Heroines: Penn State University
The first city Central Labor body was formed in Philadelphia in 1827. One of the leaders of this first central body was William Heighton. Like all central bodies ever since, they were concerned about politics. They formed a Workingman's Party.
William was born in England and came to America, like so many of our ancestors, seeking a better life. He found a job as a shoemaker in the Southwork section of Philadelphia. In 1827 he wrote a pamphlet entitled,"An Address to the Members of Trade Societies and to the Working Class Generally." In the pamphlet, he argued for free public schools. In his day, schools charged a fee which working people often could not afford. He also started a newspaper called The Mechanics Free Press, and founded a library where workers could study and become familiar with the issues of the day. Heighton thought they should educate themselves by reading. Educated workers would be able to select and vote for candidates who would help them obtain a fair share of what they produced.
Source: Sing a Song of Unsung Heroes and Heroines: Penn State University
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