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Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

22 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 22, 1599. Spanish troops began their attack on Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. This incredibly violent incident and aftermath created a regime of labor under Spanish rule that would have devastating impacts on Native peoples! Let's talk about it!

From the moment Europeans came to the Americas, they had a pretty clear and consistent view of the labor regime they desired: people of color working for nothing or next to nothing.

Too often, our stories of American history downplay this because New England, which has played a huge part of national culture creation, was something of an exception, although not nearly to the extent that it gets portrayed.

Read 40 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

20 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 20, 1920. Filipino sugar workers on Oahu, Hawaii, went on strike to demand higher pay. Japanese workers soon joined and a cross-racial strike was on! Let's talk about it!

Hawaii became a target of U.S. imperialism from almost the moment that American missionaries arrived there in the early 19th century.

Often from middle class families from the Northeast with close ties to early industrialism, the missionaries wrote home to their families, suggesting they invest in Hawaii.

Read 35 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

19 Jan

https://twitter.com/drfarls/status/1351542014483943424

Clearly missing films:
Lone Star
Hell's Hinges (original anti-western with William S. Hart)
Go West
The Gold Rush
The Hateful Eight
The Iron Horse
The Big Trail
The Petrified Forest
The Grapes of Wrath

Might include The Baron of Arizona as well.

https://twitter.com/drfarls/status/1351542014483943424

You could argue that The Grapes of Wrath is not a western. But you would wrong. It's a film about a journey into a mythical West that proves to be a mirage--a classic western story.

Also, where is The Big Country? Clearly missing

Read 8 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

18 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 18, 1887.

Pinkerton detectives killed a fourteen year old boy in Jersey City, New Jersey during a coal wharves strike. Let's talk about the horror of the Pinkertons, hired guns of capital and who are still around today!

This murder, like so many of the period by the Pinkertons and other agencies developed to protect employer interests from workers, are a sign of the murderous attitude of business, police, and politicians toward American workers during the Gilded Age.

Nothing is more emblematic of these attitudes than the hated Pinkertons.

Read 38 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

17 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 17, 1915. The radical Lucy Parsons led an unemployed march of 10,000 workers in Chicago. This surprised more reformist leaders, who then worked for a sizable work program for the city's unemployed. Let's talk about it!

Chicago workers were having a hard time of it in the winter of 1915. While the 1913 recession doesn’t get the same publicity as the Great Depression or Panic of 1893, it still caused serious hardship to workers in an era when employment was often tenuous.

When periods of low employment took place, especially in the West and Midwest, where you had large amounts of seasonal and itinerant labor in farming (and logging in the Northwest), huge masses of unemployed people flooded into the cities.

Read 29 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

5 Jan

This Day in Labor History: January 5, 1914. Henry Ford announced his famous $5 a day wage to his workers. But let's be clear; Ford was a horrible human who treated his workers awful. He's no model and we need to talk about this!

Turnover was a massive problem for employers through the early 20th century. The horrors of industrialization combined with callousness of employers to lead to workers constantly seeking a job that was just a little bit less terrible than the last.

The growth of assembly line work made this worse because it was so boring. Treating a worker like a machine, as Henry Ford did, deskilled and depressed workers who had once partially defined themselves through their physical labor.

Read 32 tweets

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