United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


To my surprise and keen pleasure President Harding led forward my old boss, Daniel G. Reid. There was much laughing and old-time talk between us. "Do you recall," said Mr. Reid, "how during the tin strike of '96, you steered to the lodge room and unionized men who came to take the place of the strikers?" Mr. Reid thought this was a great joke.

The Glassblowers' Union was saved from disruption by Dennis Hayes, who, as president of the national union, reorganized the entire force in the years 1896-99, unionized a dozen of the largest glass producing plants in the United States and succeeded in raising the wages fifteen per cent.

It was simply this: That he would not be dictated to by individuals who he felt were meddling in his affairs. He had arrived at a definite decision on this point: his mills should never be unionized.... If his men had grievances he would meet with them individually, or committees sent by them committees of themselves. He would not treat with so-called professional labor men.

The customary drink money was demanded of him, first by the pressmen with whom he was associated, and afterwards by the compositors. Franklin undertook to resist the second demand; and it is interesting to learn that after a resistance of three weeks he was forced to yield to the demands of the men by just such measures as are now used against any scab in a unionized printing office.

All of the steam laundries in San Francisco, now thirty-two in number, are unionized, including the laundries operated in one of the largest hotels.

The city "trades' union" of the thirties accorded with a situation where the effects of the extension of the market were noticeable in the labor market, and little as yet in the commodity market; when the competitive menace to labor was the low paid out-of-town mechanic coming to the city, not the out-of-town product made under lower labor costs selling in the same market as the products of unionized labor.