Today in labor history April 29, 1899: Members of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) seized a train, loaded it with 3,000 pounds of dynamite, and drove it into the Bunker Hill mine in Wardner, Idaho because the mine owners refused to respect their demand to hire only union men. They completely destroyed the $250,000 colliery. President McKinley responded by sending in black soldiers from Brownsville, Texas. He ordered them to round up the miners and imprison them in specially built "bullpens." From 1899 to 1901, the U.S. Army occupied most of the Coeur d'Alene mining region in Idaho. The WFM was led by Big Bill Haywood, who would go on to cofound the more radical IWW, in 1905, along with Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, Eugene Debs, and others.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #union #strike #sabotage #dynamite #prison #racism #IWW #bigbillhaywood #motherjones #lucyparsons #eugenedebs #socialism #anarchism

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 #police #policebrutality #policemurder #BigBillHaywood #ElizabethGurleyFlynn #newjersey

Today in Labor History April 13, 1894: The Great Northern rail strike began in Helena, Montana. It quickly spread to St. Paul. The strike was led Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union. Workers succeeded in shutting down most of the critical rail links. Consequently, the owners gave in to nearly all of the union’s demands. The successful strike led to thousands of rail workers joining the new union. Debs would go on to lead numerous other strikes, run for president of the U.S. several times, including from his prison cell, and to co-found the revolutionary union IWW, along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Lucy Parsons, and others.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #eugenedebs #railroad #solidarity #potus #IWW #motherjones #socialism #lucyparsons #bigbillhaywood

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 23, 1918: 101 IWW members went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I and for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft and encourage desertion. They were arrested in 3 groups, from Chicago, Sacramento, and Wichita. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial devastated the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later. 4 of those who were convicted died in prison from the Influenza Pandemic.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #communism #anarchism #ussr #soviet #BigBillHaywood #antiwar #FreeSpeech #prison #deportation #RedScare #union #influena #pandemic

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 #books #fiction #writer #author #uptonsinclair @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 7, 1942: IWW cofounder and anarchist labor organizer Lucy Parsons died on this date in Chicago, Illinois. Lucy Parsons was part African American and part Native American. Her mother had been a slave. In 1871, she married Albert Parsons, a Confederate soldier, in Waco, Texas. Soon after, they were forced to flee due to racism, moving to Chicago. There they participated in the Great Upheaval of worker rebellions that swept across the U.S. in 1877. They were also active in the movement for the 8-hour day and other worker movements. In 1887, the authorities executed Albert, along with several other anarchists, for the Haymarket bombing, even most hadn’t been present at the bombing. In 1905, Lucy Parsons cofounded the IWW, along with Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood and others. In 1915, she organized the Chicago Hunger Demonstrations. They were so effective that they pushed the AFL, the Socialist Labor Party and the Hull House to participate. In 1925, she participated in the International Labor Defense, which defended workers, communists, the Scottsboro Nine and others.

You can read my complete bio of Lucy here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/

#LaborHistory #workingclass #lucyparsons #IWW #haymarket #anarchism #communism #racism #womenshistorymonth #rebellion #8HourDay #motherjones #eugenedebs #execution #bigbillhaywood #union #scottsboro #chicago #waco #texas #slavery #civilwar #africanamerican #BlackMastodon

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. Two workers were killed during the 5-month strike. The strike ended in failure on July 28.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #pattersonsilkstrike #IWW #elizabethgurleyflynn #bigbillhaywood #massacre #strike #GeneralStrike #8hourday #union

#workingclass #LaborHistory #pattersonsilkstrike #IWW #elizabethgurleyflynn #bigbillhaywood #massacre #strike #GeneralStrike #8hourday #union

Today in Labor History February 17, 1906: The authorities arrested "Big Bill" Haywood and two others on trumped up charges for the murder of former Idaho Governor Frank Stuenenberg. Clarence Darrow successfully defended them, telling jurors, "If at the behest of this mob you should kill Bill Haywood, he is mortal, he will die, but I want to say that a million men will grab up the banner of labor where at the open grave Haywood lays it down . . ." The actual perpetrator was a one-time WFM union member named Harry Orchard, who was also a paid informant for the Cripple Creek Mine Owners' Association.

Haywood and his WFM comrades had been framed by James McParland, an agent for the Pinkertons Detective Agency. This was the same James McParland who framed dozens of Irish coal miners in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, whom he, and the media, had falsely branded as terrorists (Molly Maguires). Ten of them were executed in one day—the 2nd largest mass execution in U.S. history after the 1862 mass execution of 38 Dakota warriors. My novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, is about one of these Irish miners, a teenager named Mike Doyle.

Read more on the Pinkertons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/04/union-busting-by-the-pinkertons/

Read more on the Molly Maguires here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/13/the-myth-of-the-molly-maguires/

You can get a copy of Anywhere But Schuylkill here:
keplers.com/
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
https://boundtogether.org//
https://www.historiumpress.com/michael-dunn

Or send me $27 via Venmo (@Michael-Dunn-565) and your mailing address, I will send you a signed copy! (Shipping included)

#workingclass #LaborHistory #BigBillHaywood #IWW #WFM #union #strike #mining #socialism #clarencedarrow #pinkertons #mollymaguires #terrorism #racism #irish #books #novel #historicalfiction #writer #author @bookstadon