The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia

Labor Movements and Working-class Culture

Labor Movements and WorkingClass Culture SECTION EDITOR Richard Schneirov 26414_U17.qxd 7/7/06 11:18 AM Page 1249 Overview 1252 Antebellum Labor 1256 From the Knights of Labor through the American Federation of Labor, 1877–1935 1258 The Midwestern Labor Market and Its Integration into the National Market 1261 Canal Workers 1262 Railroad Workers 1262 Labor’s Great Upheaval and the Struggle for the Eight-Hour Day 1263 The Pullman Strike of 1894 1264 The Carpenters Union 1265 The Knights of Labor 1266 The Rise of Building Trade Unions 1267 The United Mine Workers of America and the Central Competitive Field 1267 Company Welfare Programs and Company Unions 1268 The 1919 Steel Strike 1269 Mine Disasters 1269 Strikebreaking and the Open Shop 1270 Early Midwestern Labor Reformers John R. Commons (1862–1945) 1271 John Fitzpatrick (1871–1946) 1272 William Green (1870–1952) 1272 John Mitchell (1870–1919) 1273 John H. Patterson (1844–1922) 1273 Labor and Midwest Politics 1273 Labor Parties 1276 The Minnesota Democratic-FarmerLabor Party 1277 Frank Walsh (1864–1939) 1277 Industrial Democracy and World War I 1278 Labor and the Left 1279 The Haymarket Affair 1282 Anarchists 1283 The Socialist Party 1283 The Communist Party and Labor 1284 Victor L. Berger (1860–1929) 1285 Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) 1285 William Z. Foster (1881–1961) 1286 The Garland Fund 1287 Joseph A. Labadie (1850–1933) 1287 Thomas J. Morgan (1847–1912) 1288 Immigration, Ethnicity, and Employment 1288 German American Workers 1291 Irish American Workers 1291 Polish American Workers 1292 Mexican American Workers 1293 Native American Workers 1293 Finnish American Workers 1294 Jewish American Workers 1295 The Great Migration of African Americans 1295 The Southern White Migration 1296 The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters 1297 The Fair Employment Practices Committee 1298 The 1919 Race Riot 1298 Metropolitan Unionism 1299 The Cleveland Labor Movement 1301 The Detroit Labor Movement 1302 The Milwaukee Labor Movement 1303 The Minneapolis Labor Movement 1304 Industrial Workers in the Era of the CIO, 1935–1965 1305 Mass Production and Ford’s Five-Dollar Day 1308 The 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike 1309 Packinghouse Workers 1310 Steelworkers 1310 Farm Implement Workers 1312 Walter Reuther (1907–1970) 1312 Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) 1313 Company Towns 1314 Working-Class Americanism in the Midwest 1314 Labor since the Sixties 1315 Working-Class Communities and Deindustrialization 1318 The Decline of Building Trade Unions 1319 Ed Sadlowski and Steelworkers Fight Back, 1973–1977 1320 Labor and Politics at the State Level 1320 Section Contents 26414_U17.qxd 7/7/06 11:18 AM Page 1250 Organized Labor and Organized Philanthropy 1321 The Rise of Teacher Unionism 1323 The Rise of Public Employees’ Unionism 1323 Temporary Faculty in Higher Education 1324 Women and Unions 1325 The Caterpillar Strikes and the Staley Lock-Out 1326 Firefighter Strikes 1326 The Hormel Strike 1327 Women Workers and the Labor Movement 1327 Clerical Workers 1330 Garment Workers 1330 Household Workers 1331 Labor Movements and Working-Class Culture v 1251 Elizabeth C. Morgan (1850–1944) 1331 Margaret Haley (1861–1939) 1332 Cultural Patterns in Working-Class Communities 1332 Religion and the Working Class 1335 Studs Terkel on Midwest Labor 1336 Working-Class Musical Tastes in the Twentieth Century 1338 Working-Class Sports and Recreation 1338 Back of the Yards 1339 The Labor Education Movement in Chicago 1340 Labor Newspapers 1340 Labor Songs 1340 26414_U17.qxd 7/7/06 11:18 AM Page 1251 Overview From the Civil War era until the mid-twentieth century , the Midwest was the storm center of the American labor movement. From the Haymarket Affair in 1886 and the Pullman Strike in 1894, to the General Motors Sit-Down Strike of 1936–1937 and the defeats of the Staley, Caterpillar, and newspaper workers’ strikes in the mid-1990s, midwestern workers were central to the unfolding of American labor history. The Midwest’s first wageworkers serviced the region’s agricultural economy as harvest hands, timber cutters, skilled plowers, and teamsters. However, the first large group of wageworkers who had a consciousness of themselves as a distinct social class were the German and Irish immigrants, who in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, dug the region’s canals—among them, the Wabash and Erie canal and the Illinois and Michigan canal in Indiana and 1252 v Economy and Technology Illinois. These men were unique because they were attracted from the East by the premium wages. They worked in gangs, faced extremely hazardous...