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Jane Addams’s Crusade Against Victorian “Dancing Girls”

Jane Addams, a leading Victorian-era reformer, believed dance halls were “one of the great pitfalls of the city.”
by Erin Blakemore via JSTOR Daily on October 11, 2017
Autoworkers in Janesville's GM plant

Labor Day Used to Be a Grand Celebration in This Storied Factory Town

Then the factory closed and the union crumbled.
by Amy Goldstein via The Nation on August 23, 2017

Why Did White Workers Leave the Democratic Party?

Historian Judith Stein debunks liberal myths about racism, the New Deal, and why the Democrats moved right.
by Judith Stein, Connor Kilpatrick via Jacobin on September 6, 2016
Composite photo of a child wearing a work clothes.

Composite Photographs of Child Labourers

A unique set of composite photographs by Lewis Hine depicting Southern cotton mill workers.
by Lewis Hine, Adam Green via The Public Domain Review on January 16, 2016
Policemen confronting a crowd of protesters

How a Revolutionary Was Born

Carl Skoglund's early life as a militant worker in Sweden prepared him for leadership in the 1934 Teamster Strikes.
by Joe Allen via Jacobin on December 21, 2015

Slavery Myths Debunked

The Irish were slaves too; slaves had it better than factory workvers; black people fought for the Confederacy; and so on.
by Jamelle Bouie, Rebecca Onion via Slate on September 29, 2015
Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It" poster.
partner

Women at Work: A History

Women in the workplace, from 19th century domestic workers to the Rosies of World War II to the labs of Silicon Valley.
via BackStory on February 6, 2015

May Day's Radical History

The date of Occupy's strike has ties to the eight-hour day movement, immigrant workers and American anarchism.
by Jacob Remes via Salon on April 30, 2012
African American workers march past a line of National Guards troops with bayonets fixed.

The National Guard’s History of Violent Labor Repression

Donald Trump recently deployed California’s National Guard to repress protests in LA. The National Guard has a long history of breaking up protests and strikes.
by Dana Frank via Jacobin on June 30, 2025
William Sentner address a crowd of union workers at a small arms plant

The Radical Midwest of Bill Sentner

St Louis organizer Bill Sentner led some of the most successful labor battles in Midwestern history by uniting workers across race and gender lines.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on June 23, 2025
Drawing of an early baseball game.

If You Print It, They Will Come

Baseball’s early years.
by Patrick Hastings via Library of Congress Blog on May 28, 2025
The U.S. Housing Corporation built nearly 300 homes in Bremerton, Wash., during World War I.

A Time When the US Government Built Homes for Working-Class Americans to Deal With a Housing Crisis

During World War I, the government constructed entire communities for workers and their families, setting new standards for housing and neighborhood planning.
by Eran Ben-Joseph via The Conversation on May 19, 2025
Protestors after Nixon's Election protesting the end to war.

US Labor and the Gaza War: Historical Perspective

Are we doomed to repetition? It’s something I worry about.
by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on November 15, 2024
A Chinese American woman riveter at work.

Could “Rosie the Riveter” Be Chinese American?

Despite having their citizenship withheld before the war, Chinese American women in the Bay Area made significant contributions to the wartime labor force.
by H. M. A. Leow, Xiaojian Zhao via JSTOR Daily on November 9, 2024
Men and women working in a factory during World War 2.

Dispelling the WWII Productivity Myth

Generally speaking, emergencies tend to reduce productivity, at least in the short and medium terms.
by Alberto Mingardi via Law & Liberty on July 30, 2024
Spindle boys in Georgia cotton mill.
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America Has Been Having the Same Debate About Child Labor for 100 Years

A century ago, debates about the failed Child Labor Amendment turned on larger issues about work, childhood, and the role of government.
by Janet Golden via Made By History on May 23, 2024
Plastic kitchen containers in red liquid.

How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals

The company found its own toxic compounds in human blood—and kept selling them.
by Sharon Lerner via The New Yorker on May 20, 2024
A family of Greek immigrants disembarking on Ellis Island.

For We Were Strangers in the Land of America

Comparing the struggles of Mexican and Greek immigrants to the United States.
by Paul Apostolidis via New Lines on January 24, 2024
Collage of George Romney giving a speech, the Baileys, their house, and riot police.

In 1967, a Black Man and a White Woman Bought a Home. American Politics Would Never Be the Same.

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.
by Zack Stanton via Politico Magazine on December 22, 2023
Scene from "Schindler's List."

How 'Schindler's List' Transformed Americans' Understanding of the Holocaust

The 1993 film also inspired its director, Steven Spielberg, to establish a foundation that preserves survivors' stories.
by Emily Tamkin via Smithsonian on December 14, 2023
Calculating machines.

Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control

The proto-Taylorist methods of worker control Charles Babbage encoded into his calculating engines have origins in plantation management.
by Meredith Whittaker via Logic on May 25, 2023
Sculpture of Thinking Woman, by Louis Fleckenstein, 20th century.

The Birth of Brainstorming

Meet the self-help author who wanted to teach corporate America how to think.
by Samuel W. Franklin via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 17, 2023
Cover and pages of "American Redux" book about housing.

The Rich American Legacy of Shared Housing

A visual journalist remembers a time when "housing was more flexible, fluid and communal than it is today.”
by Ariel Aberg-Riger via CityLab on May 2, 2023
Demonstrators march with t-shirts and signs in support of labor unions.
partner

Labor Union Activism Is on the Rise, Recalling the Great Depression

Spurred by the pandemic, new groups of workers are pushing to form unions in activism not seen since the 1930s.
via Retro Report on March 23, 2023
Visualization showing the largest cities in the US, from the Statistical Atlas of the Eleventh Census, 1790-1890

Growing New England's Cities

What can a visualization of population growth in cities and towns in the Northeast tell us about different moments in the region's economic geography?
by Garrett Dash Nelson via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on March 17, 2023
Zoe Anderson Norris.

Meet Zoe Anderson Norris, the "Nellie Bly You've Never Heard Of"

Norris, who dubbed herself the "Queen of Bohemia," exposed the injustices of post-Gilded Age New York City—by going undercover.
by Ann Lewinson via Hell Gate on February 28, 2023
Frederick Douglass Patterson, behind the wheel, with an unidentified passenger in a 1910 or 1911 Maxwell automobile in for repairs at the C.R. Patterson & Sons car repair shop, before the Pattersons began making cars themselves.

How America’s First — and Only — Black Automakers Defied the Odds

C.R. Patterson & Sons of Greenfield became the first Black-owned automobile manufacturer in 1915. More than a century later, it remains the only known one.
by Kevin Williams via Retropolis on February 18, 2023
Lillian Gilbreth lecturing at Purdue University.

Recognizing the Humanity of the Worker

Lillian Gilbreth, who died just over fifty years ago, saw that the worker could not be understood as a cog in the machine.
by Richard Gunderman via Law & Liberty on January 12, 2023
Welder-trainee Josie Lucille Owens plies her trade on the SS George Washington Carver at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, CA, 1943.

Toxic Legacies of WWII: Pollution and Segregation

Wartime production led to environmental and social injustices, polluting land and bodies in ways that continue to shape public policy and race relations.
by Matthew Wills, Alistair W. Fortson via JSTOR Daily on November 27, 2022
Pew Research chart showing rising earnings disparity between young adults with and without college degrees

Pushing Everyone Into College Was a Policy Response to Other Policy

None of it happened by mistake.
by Freddie deBoer via Freddie deBoer on November 21, 2022
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