Bethlehem Steelworkers, the Press, and the Struggle for the Eight-Hour Day

After years of simmering unrest, machinists and laborers staged a strike at Bethlehem Steel in 1910. The protest delayed the federal government’s military contracts prompting the US Congress to order the Bureau of Labor to investigate. The bureau found conditions in the mill “shocking.” The press published the report, arousing the nation, and prodding Washington in 1912 to pass the first federal labor law limiting the hours of work in private industry.