The stormy teamsters' strike, ostensibly undertaken in defense of the garment workers, but really arising from causes so obscure and dishonorable that they have never yet been made public, was the culmination of a type of trades-unions which had developed in Chicago during the preceding decade in which corruption had flourished almost as openly as it had previously done in the City Hall. This corruption sometimes took the form of grafting after the manner of Samuel Parks in New York; sometimes that of political deals in the "delivery of the labor vote"; and sometimes that of a combination between capital and labor hunting together. At various times during these years the better type of trades-unionists had made a firm stand against this corruption and a determined effort to eradicate it from the labor movement, not unlike the general reform effort of many American cities against political corruption. This reform movement in the Chicago Federation of Labor had its martyrs, and more than one man nearly lost his life through the "slugging" methods employed by the powerful corruptionists. And yet even in the midst of these things were found touching examples of fidelity to the earlier principles of brotherhood totally untouched by the corruption. At one time the scrubwomen in the downtown office buildings had a union of their own affiliated with the elevator men and the janitors. Although the union was used merely as a weapon in the fight of the coal teamsters against the use of natural gas in downtown buildings, it did not prevent the women from getting their first glimpse into the fellowship and the sense of protection which is the great gift of trades-unionism to the unskilled, unbefriended worker. I remember in a meeting held at Hull-House one Sunday afternoon, that the president of a "local" of scrubwomen stood up to relate her experience. She told first of the long years in which the fear of losing her job and the fluctuating pay were harder to bear than the hard work itself, when she had regarded all the other women who scrubbed in the same building merely as rivals and was most afraid of the most miserable, because they offered to work for less and less as they were pressed harder and harder by debt. Then she told of the change that had come when the elevator men and even the lordly janitors had talked to her about an organization and had said that they must all stand together. She told how gradually she came to feel sure of her job and of her regular pay, and she was even starting to buy a house now that she could "calculate" how much she "could have for sure." Neither she nor any of the other members knew that the same combination which had organized the scrubwomen into a union later destroyed it during a strike inaugurated for their own purposes.
同类推荐
热门推荐
凤舞九天:倾城九公主
苏亦然,医学传承的苏氏家族第十七代传人。因苏家千年守护的守灵戒一朝穿越,邂逅了一朵朵的桃花。南蛮国三皇子,清冷无情,却唯独对她倾心。“亦然,不要用兄妹来搪塞我,我知道你不是轩月无双。”离宫宫主,邪魅绝情,却唯独只对她纠缠。“小然儿,既然你看了我的身体,就得对我负责。”西坞国二殿下,风清云朗,却唯独只对她上心。“我早只你不是轩月无双,可你是世上无双没错。”渣男旧情?不要。娇妃惊天下:霸爱罗刹王
被莫名的丢到异世,杀宣王妃揍皇帝扁摄政王,还生死无惧是为啥?带着神兽小弟,扛着嗜血剑,风风火火的把天下当成了自家后院逛了便,没想到她欠了一屁股的感情债。“我会等你的。”那傻得有点痴呆的严诺。“杀了我嫔妃,你就留下来顶替她的位置吧。”沉默寡言的宣王居然密谋想监禁她终身。“你就是死了,我也能让你活过来,区区逃跑就想躲开我可能吗?”不当人是条命的秦月居然占有欲完全超标。看来除了回家没有其他的出路了。