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The Flour Riot of 1837 - New York Almanack

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SUMMARY
From 1836-1837, flour prices escalated greatly. This created the fear that flour would become unaffordable. In February of 1837, a mob protested Hart & Co., an establishment that was being accused of hoarding flour. Dangerous rumors had been spread throughout the lower-class community through newspapers, providing the fuel for this rage. This riot resulted in hundreds of barrels being thrown out windows, and the military was called in to calm these riots down. This food was being held by wealthy merchants in lower Manhattan, which sparked fear in lower-class people that they might be facing starvation.

SIGNIFICANCE
The Flour Riots of 1837 emphasized and represented the divide in social classes in places like Manhattan. The hoarding of this food made it clear to those in the lower-class social group that upper-class people were only worried about themselves and only worked to help themselves.

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SUMMARY
The Lowell Mill Girls were young to middle-aged girls and women, who moved to Lowell, Massachusetts to work at industrial corporations. They were generally 15-30 years old, moving to Lowell beginning in 1823. They faced long hours of work and were paid unfair wages. They organized a union and went on strike against these corporations and unfair treatment. A mill worker named Amelia wrote that they worked 13 hours or more a day. In 1834, their wages were cut, influencing them to organize a strike against these treatments. They marched to multiple mills, gathering more girls to protest with them.

SIGNIFICANCE
The Lowell Mill women created the first union of working women. Even after the Mill girls were defeated by their bosses, they refused to give up. Even though the Lowell Mill Girls weren't successful then, they influence our society today when it comes to fair treatment of women in the workforce.

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SUMMARY
The Knights of Labor was the first labor union in America, founded in 1869. It started as a secret organization, in an effort to protect its members from being fired by their employers. They worked towards an 8-hour work-day for laborers and sought to end child labor.

SIGNIFICANCE
This organization was important because it helped people get fair employment and equal pay. By 1886, they had reached 700,000 members. They were able to achieve this growth because of their continuous strikes, which proved to be successful.

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SUMMARY
The Haymarket Riot was a violent encounter between Chicago police forces, and labor protesters, in an effort for workers' rights. There was a national campaign in the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company that was working towards having eight-hour workdays. Labor leaders called for a mass meeting in Haymarket Square. Shortly after most of the demonstrators left, the police arrived, calling for the meeting to come to an end. A bomb was thrown by someone, and the police responded with gunfire.

SIGNIFICANCE
The Haymarket Riot sparked fear throughout the Chicago workforce. The police brutality shown at these riots caused a rise in antisemitism against immigrants, and increased anti-labor.

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American Federation of Labor (December 8th, 1886)

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American Federation of Labor (December 8th, 1886)

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SUMMARY
An organization that was known as the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions later became the American Federation of Labor in 1886. This organization was led by a man named Samuel Gompers. He was the organization's president for 2 years before he passed away. The organizations' purpose was to organize workers with certain skill sets into national unions. These unions consisted of people with the same skill sets.

SIGNIFICANCE
The organizations of these unions allowed people to pursue economic stability in their fields of work. This federation also greatly impacted the fight for child labor laws. It also gave retired workers health benefits.

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SUMMARY
Mother Jones was known as the miner's angel because she was an active campaigner for miners. While she was very helpful to miners, she was also concerned about child labor. She led over 100,000 workers to leave their jobs, and demand their workweeks be cut down to 55 hours. She brought an awareness of the working conditions of people, especially girls and children. She was also responsible for several of the 50 states revising their child labor laws.

SIGNIFICANCE
Mother Jones' actions lead to the change of many child labor laws, and the working conditions of coal mines being revised.

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SUMMARY
The workers at Carnegie Steel Company started a violent outburst of protest, protesting against the companies management; Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. The union's contract with the company was supposed to break on July 1st of the same year, but Carnegie gave Frick the go-ahead to break the contract early. On July 2nd, 3,800 workers were fired. Henry Frick had called for private agents to protect the plant, but the workers of the union were able to catch them at the pier.

SIGNIFICANCE
This riot resulted in the defeat of those who protested the company. The unionization of steel-workers was set-back greatly by this as well.

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SUMMARY
In 1893, George Pullman fired hundreds of workers, and cut wages for the rest, by over 30%. He also refused to lower rent for the same employees that lived as his tenants, or store prices for customers. Employees and these former workers were very upset about these circumstances and walked out in May 1894. The American Railway Union, run by Eugene V. Debs, declared a boycott against all trains using Pullman's car.

SIGNIFICANCE
The result of this strike was the creation of the Labor Day Holiday, which was passed by Congress in June of 1894. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill into law on June 28th, 1894. This federal holiday is still celebrated in modern-day America.

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Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (March 25, 1911)

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Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (March 25, 1911)

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SUMMARY
A garment factory near Washington Square in New York City caught fire on March 25, 1911. The entire eighth floor of the building was completely up in flames in a matter of minutes. Those who were working on the ninth floor were trapped, due to the fact that the fire escape had collapsed, the elevator was out of order, and the door was locked. Once firefighters reached the building, they realized their ladder only extended to the sixth floor of the building. 146 workers, most being young women and girls, died in this fire.

SIGNIFICANCE
Three months after this tragic fire, the New York governor, John Alden Dix, signed a law that later influenced 8 more laws concerning fire safety, factory inspection, and sanitation to be passed. Over 25 more laws were passed the following year. These laws provided more safety and regulations for women and girls who worked in the garment industries.

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SUMMARY
The I.W.W is a labor union, formed in 1905. Their goal was to better organize workers, so they could fight for shorter workdays, higher wages, and better working conditions for all industries. This group opposed the acceptance of capitalism, because of its ideologies that unskilled workers should not be a part of unions. They developed during World War I.

SIGNIFICANCE
They understood that in America, you can, and should be allowed to organize. The United States government needed them the most at this time because of the war, and people were refusing to work.

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Battle for Blair Mountain (August 25, 1921 - September 2, 1921)

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Battle for Blair Mountain (August 25, 1921 - September 2, 1921)

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SUMMARY
In August of 1921, union miners and coal companies ran into a conflict with each other. Miners and coal companies had a rocky history previous to these events, miners being paid bad wages, or company currency that could only be used at company stores. When a group of 75 miners, led by Reverend Wilburn, ran into Don Chafin's "Logan Defenders", a shootout broke out. Union men stormed up the mountainside, but driven back by defenders.

SIGNIFICANCE
This battle is known as the largest labor uprising in American history. It led to over 10,000 coal miners marching in protest of their unfair work conditions, terrible wages. In modern-day, while the treatment of coal workers has improved so much.

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SUMMARY
When the stock market crashed in the midst of the great depression, workers took it as an opportunity to propose better working conditions. The Wagner Act was passed in 1935, and it confirmed that workers had the right to collectively organize. This act ultimately secured all workers to organize their labor to fight for their interest.

SIGNIFICANCE
Workers were allowed the freedom to unionize once this act was passed. It prohibited companies that employed these workers from putting their workers in unfair circumstances.

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Fair Labor Standards Act (June 25, 1938)

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Fair Labor Standards Act (June 25, 1938)

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SUMMARY
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 states that companies are required to pay their workers a minimum wage. The first minimum wage that was set when this act went into effect was 25 cents. It also called for overtime pay, for people who worked more than 40 hours a week.

SIGNIFICANCE
This act set nationwide standards for workers and companies. This is still in act today, our current minimum wage being $7.25.

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SUMMARY
A few years after the Wagner Act, World War II hit. A lot of workers saw this as a perfect time to fight for the things that they wanted, because this was when the government needed them the most. This act prevented certain labor union practices, and required them to disclose the thing they were doing. It allowed workers the right to decline joining a union, and still be able to work at that job.

SUMMARY
Gave people the right to just work, and not have to join a union. States and businesses were allowed to say that people didn't have to join unions and pay union fees, which was harmful to unions. Because they didn't have all that much power, they weren't always able to get the things they wanted, and this act gave them even less power.

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SUMMARY
Latino Americans working in the southwest in agricultural fields were treated poorly, given terrible wages, and unfair working conditions. Cesar Chavez organized Latin-American workers and gave them the power to fight for something better than they were getting.

SIGNIFICANCE
Because they were able to fight off worker insecurity and fight for better working conditions, Latin-American's were treated somewhat better after these fights.

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Reagan - Air Traffic Control (August 5, 1968)

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Reagan - Air Traffic Control (August 5, 1968)

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SUMMARY
Air traffic control workers were being treated with poor conditions and wanted to do something about it. Over 13,000 air traffic control workers went on strike to fight for better conditions. The President at the time, Ronald Reagan ordered that if they didn't return to work within 48 hours, they would be fired. Most of the workers kept up with the strike, while some returned. Ronald Reagan ended up firing 11,345 air traffic controllers that had ignored this order.

SIGNIFICANCE
This strike caused a shortage of air traffic workers, which also ended up affecting President George H.W. Bush. By 2006, 850 of these workers had been re-hired.