Today in Labor History May 16, 1717: Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille for writing subversive satire. Today in Labor History May 16, 1871: The Paris Commune destroyed the Vendôme Column (“monument de barbarie”). Karl Marx predicted the destruction of this monument in 1852, in his political pamphlet Le 18 Brumaire de Louis Bonaparte. “But if the Imperial […]
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Today in Labor History May 15, 1872: Julia Ward Howe declared the first Mother’s Day as an anti-war holiday. Howe was an abolitionist and a feminist who wrote the lyrics for the Battle Hymn of the Republic. However, despite her disgust with slavery, she never thought black and white people were truly equal. 1890s May 15,
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Today in Labor History May 14, 1771: Utopian-socialist Robert Owen was born on this day in Wales. In the early 1800s, he made a fortune in textiles. However, he tried to run his mills on higher principles than greed. For example, he offered prices at his company store that were only slightly higher than their wholesale
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Ben Fletcher and the IWW Dockers struck in Philadelphia on May 13, 1913. 10,000 Wobblies participated. They were protesting poor wages and dangerous working conditions. By May 28, they had won a ten-hour workday and time-and-a-half pay for overtime. However, the strike also launched one of the most successful anti-racist, anti-capitalist unions in the country: IWW
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Mexican American War Today in Labor History May 13, 1846: The U.S. declared war on Mexico. Over 1,733 U.S. soldiers and more than 5,000 Mexican soldiers died in the Mexican-American War. However, the Mexican death toll was probably closer to 25,000. That’s because so many died from disease and accidents related to the war. As
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