Monday, September 01, 2008
Labor Day...there's a lesson in there somewhere....
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Conceived by America's labor unions as a testament to their cause, the legislation sanctioning the holiday was shepherded through Congress amid labor unrest and signed by President Grover Cleveland as a reluctant election-year compromise.
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The American Railway Union, led by a young Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued; mobs of non-union workers joined in.
The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence erupted, and two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago, but the strike was doomed.
On August 3, 1894, the strike was declared over. Debs went to prison, his ARU was disbanded, and Pullman employees henceforth signed a pledge that they would never again unionize. Aside from the already existing American Federation of Labor and the various railroad brotherhoods, industrial workers' unions were effectively stamped out and remained so until the Great Depression.
It was not the last time Debs would find himself behind bars, either. Campaigning from his jail cell, Debs would later win almost a million votes for the Socialist ticket in the 1920 presidential race.
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Cockburn weighs in on Obama and Palin:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08302008.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08302008.html
# posted by 
: 9:22 AM PDT
: 9:22 AM PDT
Ralph Nader demands repeal of Taft-Hartley:
http://www.votenader.org/media/2008/09/01/tafthartley/
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http://www.votenader.org/media/2008/09/01/tafthartley/
# posted by : 5:43 PM PDT
: 5:43 PM PDT Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
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