There are lots of memes about all the good things labor unions did — the 8-hour working day, weekends, living wages, etc. In fact, labor unions built the middle class, which is why Republican President Ronald Reagan began the work of destroying labor unions. The thing that is often glossed over, though, is that labor unions didn’t just happen. It wasn’t like the workers went out one day on a peaceful strike and the bosses just said, “Oh, OK, let’s negotiate.” There were a lot of deaths, fires, cracked skulls, industrial sabatoge –and not all on one side. Watch The Molly McGuires if you’d like a refresher course.
Suffrage in America followed suffrage in England and the English Suffragettes asked nicely for years and years — to no avail. It happened here, in part, because of how it happened there.
Just observing.
hecatedemeter 