Today in Labor History June 1, 1916: The predominantly immigrant iron miners of the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, participated in a seemingly spontaneous strike in response to expensive housing and goods, long hours and poor pay. The group was led by radical Finns who quickly drew the attention and aid of IWW organizers. Wobbly organizers, including Carlo Tresca, Joe Schmidt, Frank Little, and later Joe Ettor and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came to help local strike leaders draw up a list of demands which included an 8-hour day timed from when workers entered the mine until they were outside; a pay-scale based upon the day worked; pay-days twice monthly; immediate back-pay for hours worked upon severance; abolition of the Saturday night shift; abolition of the hated contract mining system. In the Contract Mining system, the bosses hired and paid “skilled” miners to do most of the mining. The contract miners then had to hire their own laborers and pay them out of their meagre wages. The contract miners were often native-born people, while the laborers were often immigrants. This created a racialized two-tiered system that divided the workers and made it harder to organize. The bosses would routinely offer the contract miners a minor concession to get them back to work, while offering the even more poorly paid laborers nothing, destroying their solidarity and ending the strike.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #wildcat #Mesabi #iron #mining #solidarity #immigrant #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #FrankLittle #racism

@bandcampunited

Here's one of my favorite compilations.

#Organize #Unions #JoeHill

#BillyBragg #UtahPhillips #MarkLevy #PaulRobeson #SiKahn #PeteSeeger #MatsPaulson #JoeGlazer #LoriElaineTaylor #CiscoHouston #EarlRobinson #CarlosCortez #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #HazelDickens

1. Billy Bragg - Joe Hill
2. Utah Philips - Joe Hill's Last Will
3. Mark Levy - Joe Hill's Ashes
4. The Preacher and the Slave
5. Paul Robeson - Joe Hill
6. Si Kahn - Paper Heart
7. Pete Seeger - Casey Jones (The Union Scab)
8. Mats Paulson - Mr. Block
9. Joe Glazer/Lori Elaine Taylor - Joe Hill Listens to the Praying
10. Cisco Houston - The Tramp
11. Earl Robinson - Joe Hill
12. Carlos Cortez - The White Slave
13. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - Narrative
14. Hazel Dickens - The Rebel Girl
15. Entertainment Workers IU 630 with Utah Philips - There is Power in a Union

https://smithsonianfolkways.bandcamp.com/album/dont-mourn-organize-songs-of-labor-songwriter-joe-hill

Today in Labor History April 19, 1913: Modestino Valentino, a bystander, was shot and killed by company detectives during a conflict between IWW strikers and scabs in Patterson, N.J., during the infamous Silk Strike, which the workers ultimately lost on July 28, 1913. During the strike, 1,850 workers were arrested, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #IWW #patterson #strike #union #PoliceBrutality #BigBillHaywood #ElizabethGurleyFlynn

Today In Labor History April 3, 1913: Pietro Botto, socialist mayor of Haledon, N.J., invited the Paterson silk mill strikers to assemble in front of his house. 20,000 showed up to hear speakers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Upton Sinclair, John Reed and others, who urged them to remain strong in their fight. The Patterson strike lasted from Feb. 1 until July 28, 1913. Workers were fighting for the eight-hour workday and better working conditions. Over 1800 workers were arrested during the strike, including IWW leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Five were killed. Overall, the strike was poorly organized and confined to Paterson. The IWW, the main organizer of the strike, eventually gave up.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #Patterson #strike #IWW #union #anarchism #PoliceBrutality #socialism #UptonSinclair #JohnReed #BigBillHaywood #ElizabethGurleyFlynn

Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.

The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,

For they are women's children, and we mother them again.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #IWW #BreadAndRoses #PoliceBrutality #union #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #BigBillHaywood #strike #picket #immigrants #poetry #novel #UptonSinclair @bookstadon

Today in Labor History February 25, 1913: The IWW-led silk strike began in Paterson, New Jersey. 25,000 immigrant textile workers walked out when mill owners doubled the size of the looms without increasing staffing or wages. Workers also wanted an 8-hour workday and safer working conditions. Within the first two weeks of the strike, they had brought out workers from all the local mills in a General Strike of weavers and millworkers. Over the course of the strike, 1,850 workers were arrested, including Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Five workers were killed during the 208-day strike. The strike ended in failure on July 28.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #PattersonSilkStrike #IWW #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #BigBillHaywood #massacre #strike #GeneralStrike #8HourDay

Today in Labor History February 1, 1913: The IWW Patterson silk workers’ strike began. They were fighting for an 8-hr work day and better working conditions. Over the course of the strike, 1,850 workers were arrested, including Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Within the first two weeks of the strike, they had brought out workers from all the local mills in a General Strike of weavers and millworkers. Two workers died in the struggle, one shot by a vigilante and the other by a private guard. The strike ended in failure on July 28.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #patterson #strike #IWW #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #8hourday #generalstrike #police #prison #BigBillHaywood #vigilantes

Today in Labor History January 25, 1926: 16,000 textile workers went on strike in Passaic, N.J. The United Front Committee of the Workers (Communist) Party launched the strike. It was the first Communist-led strike in the U.S. At the time, men earned less than $1,200 per year in Passaic mills, while women were lucky to earn $1,000. Yet it cost $1,400 per year to live there. The IWW had attempted to organize the mills in 1912. Most of the workers were immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. The United Front appealed to the American Federation of Labor for help. However, the AFL refused, saying they’d have nothing to do with Communists. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (IWW organizer) and Mary Heaton Vorse both helped support the strikers. In August, 1926, the United Front relinquished control of the strike to the AFL-affiliated United Textile Workers, who eventually settled with the mill owners on March 1, 1927. Vorse was a journalist and novelist who reported on, while simultaneously participating in, many strikes of the era. She also wrote the novel, “Strike!” about the 1929 Gastonia Textile Strike.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #strike #children #women #novel #communism #journalism #elizabethgurleyflynn #IWW #immigrant

Today in Labor History January 19, 1920: Crystal Eastman, Roger Nash Baldwin, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (from the IWW) and others founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Their original focus was freedom of speech, primarily anti-war speech, and supporting conscientious objectors. In 1923, they defended author Upton Sinclair after he was arrested for trying to read the First Amendment during an IWW rally. In 1925, they persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee's anti-evolution law in The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. Clarence Darrow, an ACLU member, headed Scopes' legal team. The ACLU lost the case and Scopes was fined $100. In 1926, they defended H. L. Mencken, who deliberately broke Boston law by distributing copies of his banned American Mercury magazine and won their first major acquittal. However, they kicked Elizabeth Gurley Flynn off their board in 1940 because of her Communist affiliations. And they refused defend Paul Robeson and other leftists in the 1950s.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #communism #aclu #evolution #uptonsinclair #PaulRobeson #clarencedarrow #hlmencken @bookstadon

Today in Labor History January 11, 1912: The Bread and Roses textile strike began in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The IWW organized and led this strike of 32,000 women and children after management slashed wages. A group of Polish women walked out after receiving their pay and realizing they’d been cheated. Others soon joined them. The strike lasted 10 weeks. Many sent their children to live with family, friends or supporters during the strike to protect them from the hunger and violence. Members of the Modern School took in many of these kids. During the strike, the cops kept arresting the women for loitering. So, they began to march as they protested. This was the first known use of the moving picket line. The strike was led by IWW organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Etter and Arturo Giovannitti. Hundreds were arrested, including Etter and Giovannitti, who were charged with murder. 3 workers died.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #IWW #breadandroses #immigrants #picket #bigbillhaywood #elizabethgurleyflynn #prison