Highlights Archives
Labor Day, Labor History
The Wisconsin Historical Society has energetically collected evidence about the lives of working-class people for more than 100 years. Back when many cultural institutions shunned labor unions, the Society subscribed to their newsletters and gathered in their filing cabinets for posterity. The result is one of the nation's largest and richest collections for the study of the American labor movement.
This effort began more than a century ago when University of Wisconsin professors Richard T. Ely (1854-1943) and John R. Commons (1862-1945) started collecting materials and guiding graduate research on labor history. The pair produced a multi-volume History of Labour in the U.S. (1918-1935) as well as publishing much of its source material in the Documentary History of American Industrial Society (10 volumes, 1910-1911). Their manuscripts at the Society total more than 200 boxes of records and hundreds of reels of microfilm.
Once that foundation was laid, many labor organizations and historians decided that the Society was the natural steward for their unpublished records, and archival materials flowed in. During the 1950s the Society made a renewed effort to collect labor materials, especially ones generated during the Depression. Since then additions to these collections have grown steadily, and new efforts such as documenting workers in clerical and service jobs were launched. In the 1980s, grant-funded staff spent hundreds of hours interviewing workers and officials about the racial integration of unions during the 1950s and 1960s.
The result of all this effort is one of the nation's richest labor history research collections: more than 600 separate collections of unpublished material, over 3,000 magazines and newsletters, and almost 10,000 books and pamphlets about labor in America. Noteworthy archival materials include the records of the International Workingmen's Association, the Socialist Labor Party, Victor Berger, John L. Lewis, and the records of the American Federation of Labor, 1888-1955. The archives of trade unions include the International Association of Machinists, United Packinghouse Workers, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the Textile Workers Union of America, among others. Much of this material was microfilmed during the 1960s and 1970s in order to preserve and easily share it.
Of course, most workers did not edit periodicals or write books so the best evidence about their lives may come from the objects with which they accomplished their work. The Society's history museum collected the three-dimensional artifacts of working-class life just as its library and archives collected texts and photos. These range from an industrial sewing machine to migrant workers' bunk beds.
Another object in the Museum's collections related to labor history is a time clock used by workers at the Appleton Woolen Mills in Appleton, Wisconsin, ca. 1894-1915. It's depicted in close-up photographs and accompanied by an excellent essay on how devices such as this enabled management to collect more accurate and in-depth information about workers' behavior.
This Labor Day weekend, take a few minutes not only to honor the everyday people whose labor produced most of the objects that surround you, but also to look into the history of their lives. Many of the most interesting stories are collected online in the Birth of the Labor Movement and Rise of Skilled Manufacturing sections of Turning Points in Wisconsin History.
:: Posted September 4, 2007
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