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FreakinDJ

(17,644 posts)
Mon Sep 2, 2013, 08:53 AM Sep 2013

The United States also has had the bloodiest labor history of any industrial nation

The first strike fatalities were two New York tailors, killed in 1850 by police dispersing a crowd of strikers.



Some died in famous incidents, such as the 1913 Ludlow Massacre, when National Guardsmen attacked a tent colony of striking Colorado miners

1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when ten supporters of a steel strike were killed by Chicago police

Approximately 35,000 workers a year were killed annually in work-related accidents from 1880 to 1900. Injured workers totaled another 536,000

To "keep the peace" and break the strike, state militia units from Philadelphia were ordered to Pittsburgh. (Militia units from Pittsburgh were deemed unreliable because they sympathized with the strikers.) On July 21, six hundred troops arrived from Philadelphia. Led by Superintendent Robert Pitcairn of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a posse of constables with arrest warrants for the strike leaders, they found themselves confronted by crowds of men, women and children. The crowds, loudly protesting the troops' presence and expressing support for the strikers, sought to prevent military action. The militiamen responded with a bayonet charge that resulted in injuries and provoked a hail of rocks from some sections of those assembled. The troops then opened fire on the unarmed men, women, and children, scattering them - and leaving at least twenty dead (including one woman and three small children) and twenty-nine wounded.

http://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/notable_labor_strikes_of_the_gil.htm
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