big business and labor

By sarina stephens

  • NLU organized

    The National Labor Union was the first national labor federation in the United States. Founded in 1866 and dissolved in 1873, it paved the way for other organizations, such as the Knights of Labor and the AFL. It was led by William H. Sylvis.

  • CNLU organized

    Established in 1869, the Colored National Labor Union was formed by African Americans to organize their labor collectively on a national level.

  • KOL organized

    Knights of Labor, officially Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence V. Powderly.

  • The great strike

    The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, sometimes referred to as the Great Upheaval, began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States after the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad cut wages for the third time in a year.

  • AFL organized

    The American Federation of Labor was a national federation of labor unions in the United States founded in Columbus, Ohio, in December 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association.

  • The Haymarket affair

    The Haymarket affair was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on Tuesday, May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago.

  • Pullman strike

    The Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States on May 11, 1894, and a turning point for US labor law.

  • IWW organized

    The Industrial Workers of the World, members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in 1905 in Chicago, Illinois in the United States of America

  • Triangle fire

    The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in US history

  • steel strike

    The steel strike of 1919 was an attempt by the weakened Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers to organize the United States steel industry in the wake of World War I