Today in Labor History April 14

1800s

Today in Labor History April 14, 1812: Luddites rioted in Sheffield, England, because of food shortages. The rioters were mostly women and boys. They seized potatoes and vegetables and attacked a militia arms store.

Today in Labor History April 14, The Bussa slave rebellion began in Barbados. — _{Sketch of a flag used by the Bussa rebels. By The National Archives UK. No restrictions.}

April 14, 1816: Bussa led the largest slave rebellion in Barbadian history. Because of this, he is remembered as the first national hero of Barbados.

1900s-1910s

Ruins of the Ottoman pogrom against Armenians in Adana. 1909. — _{A street in the Christian quarter of Adana. By Bain News Service, publisher. Public Domain}

Today in Labor History April 14, 1909: The Ottoman Empire massacred Armenians in the Cilicia plain. 20,000-25,000 people were killed. Most were Armenian Christians. However, they also killed 1,500 Assyrians.

April 14, 1917: IWW sailors went on strike in Philadelphia. As a result, they won a raise of ten dollars per month.

Today in Labor History April 14, 1919, workers created a soviet in Limerick, Ireland. — _{Members of the Limerick Soviet. By Unknown author. Public Domain.}

Example of the money issued by workers in the LImerick soviet. 1919.

Today in Labor History April 14, 1919: Workers in Limerick, Ireland, initiated a General Strike against the British occupation. They ran the city as a soviet. Workers printed their own newspaper and issued their own currency. In order to keep food prices low, they regulated food supplies.

1920s

April 14, 1925: Rod Steiger was born on this day. He co-starred in On the Waterfront, as Brando’s older brother, Charlie. He won an academy award as the police chief, opposite Sidney Poitier, in the film In the Heat of the Night. And he played a Mexican bandit and unwitting revolutionary in Sergio Leone’s, Fist Full of Dynamite.

1930s

Today in Labor History April 14, 1930: Police arrested over 100 Mexican and Filipino farm workers for union activities in Imperial Valley, CA. They convicted 8 of them for “criminal syndicalism.”

Today in Labor History April 14, 1935, the Black Sunday dust storm hit Oklahoma and Texas. — _{The “Black Sunday” dust storm approaches Spearman in northern Texas, April 14, 1935. By Monthly Weather Review, Volume 63, April 1935, p. 148. Public Domain}

April 14, 1935: The Black Sunday dust storm swept across Oklahoma and Texas. It displaced 300 million tons of topsoil, making it one of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl. Because of the storms, hundreds of thousands of people migrated in search of work and food.

April 14, 1939: John Steinbeck published his classic, The Grapes of Wrath on this day. It chronicled the migration of dust bowl victims west, to California. He received death threats because of the book. And the FBI put him under surveillance. Even the Soviets hated the book because it showed that even the dirt-poor in America could own a car. Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for the book. He later won a Nobel Prize, too.

1960s-Present

_{Rachel Carson, 1940. By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Public Domain}

Today in Labor History April 14, 1964: Rachel Carson died on this day. Her book, Silent Spring, helped launch the modern environmental movement. Carson was a marine biologist, who became a conservationist in the 1950s. She wrote about the environmental and health problems caused by pesticides. Although she was vilified by the chemical industry, her writings led to some changes in pesticide policies.

April 14, 1984: Simone de Beauvoir died on this day. She was a novelist, activist, philosopher and feminist. Her most famous book, The Second Sex, analyzed the oppression of women and became foundational for the modern feminist movement.

April 14, 2005: The United Steelworkers and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers unions merged. As a result of the merger, they became the largest industrial union in North America.