Today in Labor History 10/3/1873: The authorities hanged Chief Kintpuash for the Modoc War in California. 53 Modoc warriors killed 55 U.S. troops, including the only general to die in the Indian Wars. The authorities eventually captured Kintpuash and chopped off his head. They displayed it for decades at the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C.
Today in Labor History October 3, 1902: President Theodore Roosevelt met with miners and coal field operators to settle the 5-month long anthracite coal strike. It was the first time a president had personally intervened in a labor-management dispute. Three weeks later, the miners settled.
Today in Labor History October 3, 1915: The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was founded.
October 3, 1920: Anarchists reopened the Modern School at Clivio, Italy . But the government immediately shut it down again.
Today in Labor History October 3, 1932: All 164 students at Kincaid High School in Illinois walked out to protest their school’s use of scab labor to provide heating coal, in solidarity with their fathers who were striking against Peabody Coal. Also known as the Father-Son strike, the actions came on the heals of the creation of the new Progressive Miners of America (PMA). Thousands of Illinois miners joined the new union in protest of wage concessions by John Lewis of the UMWA. The strikers went to all scab mines and forced the workers to join their new union or leave the mine. They also picketed UMWA mines to protest their wage concessions. The government called in the National Guard to stop the armed conflicts between the two unions.
October 3, 1945: A seven-state Greyhound bus strike took place.
Today in Labor History October 3, 1957: The California State Superior Court rules that the book Howl and Other Poems is not obscene.
October 3, 1967: Woody Guthrie died of Huntington’s disease at the age of 52.
Today in Labor History October 3, 1970: Baseball umpires called their first strike (against employers instead of players).
October 3, 1981: Irish nationalists called off their hunger strike at Maze Prison in Belfast, after seven months and ten deaths. Bobby Sands, who had recently been elected to parliament, was on of the men who died.