Odd Wisconsin Archive
Striking Out
This morning's news that New York transit workers have gone on strike reminds us that such difficulties go back a century and a half. In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Ship Carpenters and Caulkers Association called the first successful strike in our state in 1848. Most early strikes were over issues such as low wages, the withholding of pay, and the hiring of unskilled labor to manage new technology. Employers also used women, African Americans, and immigrants as cheap sources of labor to successfully manipulate white male workers. In 1863, for example, Milwaukee Typographical Union Number 23 went on strike when women were first hired as compositors at the Milwaukee Sentinel. The strike was unsuccessful and the women kept their jobs, though at wages only slightly more than half than their male predecessors had received. Workers, male and female, both lost.
As talk of reducing daily work to eight hours intensified across the nation in the 1880s, workers in Milwaukee formed the Milwaukee Labor Reform Association (later the Eight-Hour League) to agitate for the eight-hour day that we now take for granted. A two-year campaign to urge all employers to adopt a standard eight-hour day culminated on May 1st, 1886, when all workers not yet on the system were to cease work until their employers met the demand. Striking workers shut down industrial plants in Milwaukee during the first five days of May, 1886, except for one: the North Chicago Railroad Rolling Mills Steel Foundry in Bay View. On May 5, a crowd of demonstrators who had sought to call out the workers still inside the huge Bay View factory was attacked by troops called out by Governor Jeremiah Rusk. Five people were killed and four wounded. While the massacre at Bay View did not end the agitation, the shots fired dampened momentum for the movement and Governor Rusk became celebrated as a national hero, assumed to have saved Milwaukee from anarchy.
Such simplistic caricatures often follow emotionally charged events. At times like this, it's helpful to remember that there are always more than two sides to any issue, even those that seem to quickly fall into a "good guys vs. bad guys" dichotomy such as labor actions. In fact, most events are not two-sided but are irregular polyhedrons, and as time and viewpoint shift they change shape like amoebas.
View more photos of strikes and lockouts in Wisconsin and Chicago
:: Posted in Curiosities on December 20, 2005
Did You Know?
The Wisconsin Historical Museum is currently featuring Odd Wisconsin objects in the latest exhibit: Odd Wisconsin. And don't miss the Odd Wisconsin book by author Erika Janik published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
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