The American Way (novel)
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The American Way (novel)
''The American Way'' is the second in a four novel series entitled Building of Empire, Crime and Politics; the Cornerstone of America by author Paddy Kelly. The American Way relates the events leading up to and through the Great Woolen Strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts when approximately 40,000 immigrants from nearly every country in Europe, sharing 30 religions and 127 ethnic back grounds organized a seven-week strike against the richest man in the world. This despite the fact that only ten percent of them spoke English. Released in 2011 the title of this historical fiction is originally taken from the opening lines of the 1950s Superman television program Adventures of Superman (1952–1958) ". . . truth, justice and the American way!" However the catch phrase is meant as an entendre in that the American Way, usually perceived as the right and good way, is also in reality a two edged sword of unprecedented levels of corruption found at all levels of industry and gov ...
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1912 Lawrence Textile Strike
The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a new law shortening the workweek for women, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers and involving nearly every mill in Lawrence. On January 1, 1912, the Massachusetts government enforced a law that cut mill workers' hours in a single work week from 56 hours, to 54 hours. Ten days later, they found out that pay had been reduced along with the cut in hours. The strike united workers from more than 51 different nationalities many of whom knew little to no English. A large portion of the striking workers, including many of the leaders of the strike, were Italian immigrants. Carried on throughout a brutally cold winter, the strike lasted more than two months, from January to March, defying the assu ...
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Adventures Of Superman (TV Series)
''Adventures of Superman'' is an American television series based on comic book characters and concepts that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created in 1938. The show was the first television series to feature Superman and began filming in 1951 in California on RKO- Pathé stages and the RKO Forty Acres back lot. Cereal manufacturer Kellogg's sponsored the show. The first and last airdates of the show, which was produced for first-run syndication rather than for a network, are disputed, but they are generally accepted as September 19, 1952, and April 28, 1958. The show's first two seasons (episodes 1–52, 26 titles per season) were filmed in black and white; seasons three through six (episodes 53–104, 13 titles per season) were filmed in color. George Reeves played Clark Kent/ Superman, with Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen, John Hamilton as Perry White, and Robert Shayne as Inspector Henderson. Phyllis Coates played Lois Lane in the first season, with Noel Neill, who previously pl ...
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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and girls and 23 men – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Italian or Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria "Sara" Maltese. The factory was located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building, which had been built in 1901. Later renamed the " Brown Building", it still stands at 23–29 Washington Place near Washington Square Park, on the New York University (NYU) campus. The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a ...
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Industrial Workers Of The World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements. In the 1910s and early 1920s, the IWW achieved many of their short-term goals, particularly in the American West, and cut across traditional guild and union lines to organize workers in a variety of trades and industries. At their peak in August 1917, IWW membership was estimated at more than 150,000, with active wings in the United States, the UK, Canada, and Australia. The extremely high rate of IWW membership turnover during this era (estimated ...
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Joseph James Ettor
Joseph James "Smiling Joe" Ettor (1885–1948) was an Italian-American trade union organizer who, in the middle-1910s, was one of the leading public faces of the Industrial Workers of the World. Ettor is best remembered as a defendant in a controversial trial related to a killing in the seminal Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912, in which he was acquitted of charges of having been an accessory. Biography Early years Joseph James Ettor, known to his friends as "Joe" or "Smiling Joe," was born on October 6, 1885 in New York City, the son of a laborer who had emigrated to America from Italy.Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), ''The American Labor Who's Who.'' New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 67. Ettor went to work at the age of 12 selling newspapers. He later worked as a waterboy on a railroad, as a saw-filer in a lumber mill, as a barrel-maker, as a shipyard worker, and in a cigar factory. Union career Joe Ettor went to work for the Industrial Workers of the ...
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Arturo Giovannitti
Arturo M. Giovannitti (; 1884–1959) was an Italian-American union leader, socialist political activist, and poet. He is best remembered as one of the principal organizers of the 1912 Lawrence textile strike and as a defendant in a celebrated trial caused by that event. Early life Arturo Giovannitti was born January 7, 1884, in Ripabottoni in what is now the Province of Campobasso, Italy, at the time part of the Abruzzi but now part of Molise. He immigrated to Canada in 1900 and, after working in a coal mine and railroad crew, began preaching in a Presbyterian mission. He soon came to the United States, where he studied at Union Theological Seminary. Although he did not graduate, he ran rescue missions for Italians in Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. He also began writing for the weekly newspaper of the Italian Socialist Federation. In 1911, he became the newspaper's editor. Political career On January 1, 1912, in accordance with a new state law, the textile mills of Lawrence, Massac ...
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (August 7, 1890 – September 5, 1964) was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in Red Square attended by over 25,000 people. Background Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born on August 7, 1890, in Concord, New Hampshire, the daughter of Annie (Gurley) and Thomas Flynn. The family moved to New York in 1900, where she was educated at the local public schools. Her parents introduced her to socialism. When she was only fifteen she gave her first public speech, "What Socialism Will Do for Women," at the Harlem Socialist Club. As a result, she felt compelled t ...
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American Woolen Company
The American Woolen Company is a designer, manufacturer and distributor of men’s and women’s worsted and woolen fabrics. Based in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, the company operates from the 160-year-old Warren Mills, which it acquired from Loro Piana SpA in June 2014. History 1899-1950 The American Woolen Company was established in 1899 under the leadership of William M. Wood and his father-in-law Frederick Ayer through the consolidation of eight financially troubled New England woolen mills. At the company's height in the 1920s, it owned and operated 60 woolen mills across New England. It is most known for its role in the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912. The American Woolen Company was the product of the era of trusts. Overproduction, competition and poor management had brought the New England textile industry to its knees by the 1890s. In particular, family trusts, the main shareholders of many of the mills, insisted on receiving high dividends instead of making necessar ...
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William Madison Wood
William Madison Wood (June 18, 1858 – February 2, 1926) was an American textile mill owner of Lawrence, Massachusetts who was considered to be an expert in efficiency. He made a good deal of his fortune through being hired by mill owners to turn around failing mills and was despised by organized labor. Early life William Wood was born in 1858 in a cottage on Pease Point Way, in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on the island of Martha's Vineyard. His parents, Grace (Emma) Wood and William Wood Sr., were Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. His father, William Sr., Guilherme Medeiros Silva was a crewman on a New Bedford whaling ship from 1853 until his death in 1871. (The Portuguese word "silva" translates into English as "wood" or "forest".) William Jr. was only 12 years old when his father died, and had to drop out of school and find a job to provide for his mother and younger siblings. Fortunately for William Wood, Andrew G. Pierce, a wealthy New Bedford textile manufacturer, o ...
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Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers (; January 27, 1850December 13, 1924) was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining in order to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labor. He encouraged AFL member unions to take political action to "elect their friends" and "defeat their enemies". In politics he mostly supported Democrats, and occasionally local Republicans. He led the opposition to immigration from China. During World War I, Gompers and the AFL energetically supported the war effort, attempting to avert strikes and boost morale while raising wa ...
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American Federation Of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual support and disappointed in the Knights of Labor. Samuel Gompers was elected the full-time president at its founding convention and reelected every year, except one, until his death in 1924. He became the major spokesperson for the union movement. The A.F. of L. was the largest union grouping, even after the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) by unions that were expelled by the A.F. of L. in 1935. The Federation was founded and dominated by craft unions. especially the building trades. In the late 1930s craft affiliates expanded by organizing on an industrial union basis to meet the challenge from the CIO. The A.F. of L. and CIO competed bitterly in the late 1930s, but then cooperated during World War II and a ...
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United States Secretary Of Labor
The United States Secretary of Labor is a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and as the head of the United States Department of Labor, controls the department, and enforces and suggests laws involving unions, the workplace, and all other issues involving any form of business-person controversies. Formerly, there was a Department of Commerce and Labor. That department split into two in 1913. The Department of Commerce is headed by the secretary of commerce. Secretary of Labor is a Level I position in the Executive Schedule, thus earning a salary of US$221,400, as of January 2021. Marty Walsh has been Secretary since being sworn in on March 23, 2021. He was confirmed the previous day by the Senate as the last member of Joe Biden's cabinet, after being nominated by President Joe Biden on January 7, 2021. List of secretaries of labor ; Parties (13) (16) Status Line of succession The line of succession for the Secretary of Labor is as follows: # Deputy Secre ...
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