Get yer ya-yas out!
A great overview. Thanks for the info.
Mixter
Happy Labor Day, Dr. S! I am afraid I may have trounced a bit on your crossposting @ WTWC, but my post took a bit different tack from yours.
It is so discouraging to see how ignorant the average worker is of the sacrifices made by those before them to give them the basic work benefits which they so often take for granted. Here's to fighting the ignorance!
To this day no one knows the identity of who threw the Haymarket Square bomb.
But, it was speculated, and there was evidence at the time to suggest that a guy named Rudolph Schnaubelt had thrown the bomb - that Schnaubelt was working with the Chicago police as an agent provocateur. Schnaubelt was arrested but immediately let go by the Chicago police and allowed to leave the country. (the Chicago Daily Intelligencer wrote in August 1900: "...Rudolph Schnaubelt was the miscreant who threw the bomb.")
Apparently Schnaubelt never returned to the US and was certainly never extradicted back to the country to explain his role.
Here's a part of letter Albert Parsons wrote to Lucy Parsons just befor he was executed (circa Sept 1887):
We are all creatures of circumstance; we are what we have been made to be. This truth is becoming clearer day by day.
There was no evidence that any one of the eight doomed men knew of, or advised, or abetted the Haymarket tragedy. But what does that matter? The privileged class demands a victim, and we are offered a sacrifice to appease the hungry yells of an infuriated mob of millionaires who will be contented with nothing less than our lives. Monopoly triumphs! Labor in chains ascends the scaffold for having dared to cry out for liberty and right!
good post dr s.
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Thanks for the history lesson on unions. What little I know of them has been gleaned from news reports, and my own brief experience working as an engineer in a large company with a union. I found this work environment frustrating and stifling because of the rigidity of the rules. Engineers were not allowed to carry or use ANY kind of tool, and we could get written up for something as simple as changing a fuse on your own (something that actually requires no tools at all).
Thank you for reminding us that the basic rights we take for granted (or even assume we are entitled to) were hard won after much fighting and lost lives.
Let's not forget the big MLB strikes! 
How right you are that very few in this country today have the slightest comprehension of the tremendous debt owed to labor unions for their work over the years to get fair labor practices, decent working conditions, health & safety regs established for everyone, not just for union members.
I grew up with my grandparents and Grandpa was a staunch supporter of the UMW - his heros were John L. Lewis and FDR -and since Grandpa was my hero, of course, I adopted his heros as mine too.
It's true, you can't fight city hall -alone, that is. But, when people band together, it can be done and battles won. Unions are more than just paying dues and all kinds of rules/regs the union contract may have in place.(No, I don't always agree with some of those things as at times, they are a bit bizarre, as Fermicat mentioned in her post.)
Keep up the fight though as with union memberships dwindling drastically, the need to re-establish such contact between employer and employee is also becoming more and more necessary for this country to maintain decent work for its citizenry.
I found this work environment frustrating and stifling because of the rigidity of the rules. Engineers were not allowed to carry or use ANY kind of tool, and we could get written up for something as simple as changing a fuse on your own (something that actually requires no tools at all).
this kind of "work environment" exists in non union shops as well. I worked for IBM for a while many years ago (in an engineering / testing / research environment...) and the same sometimes seemingly silly rules applied. So its not just a Union thing.
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To Farmer - the bad thing too when these ridiculous rules and such are applied in non-union shops is that the workers have zilch recourse but either put up, shut up or give up and quit. My son worked for a company that was totally lax in their observations of work safety as well as workman's comp along with giving worker's a raise of perhaps a quarter an hour, then rescinding it too at their whims. He asked me what could be done and my answer was "union" but the workers were in constant fear of losing their jobs if they rocked the boat at all.
as I was not here a year ago..thanks Dr S..2 things ..
1) It appears that a big complaint of repugs gone libertarians is organized labor..I have heard on several occasions that the reason Ford is in deep is because of "the unions"..also the housing slump.."the unions"..
2) We have kicked around the idea now for a few years of making the musicians union something worthwhile..in Chicago, its only purpose is to negotiate for the CSO, and otherwise do some grift invested functions. But what if..musicians could actually have enough respect for themselves to say "we deserve to be paid" instead of kowtowing to every club owner etc who gets music for free? It used to work.
As the simple fact of digitally disseminated work means free work, iow, if something is made digital, anyone who wants to can have it for free..the live performance aspect once again becomes a musicians main source of income. I have nothing against dilettantes/amateurs etc..mof, I encourage eva'body to play music..it's just that some of us are real musicians in the fact that we have dedicated our lives (and livelihoods) to the Art. And maybe we should get paid for the labor involved.
Thanks again for the sum up. After reading Dos Passos' "American Trilogy" and Sinclair's "Oil" (on which There Will be Blood is based) I have (once again) come back to realizing how much a part of the United States of Amnesia I have become. The Big Wake Up is really needed..I especially recommend reading (rereading?) these two great American works as an introduction to "same as it ever was" in regards to Labor in America.
"Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased."
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