Looks at the garment factory industry in the 1800s and the early part of the 20th century, where workers toiled in sweatshop conditions. After a terrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1911, labor unions gained support in...

Learn all about this National holiday started in 1894 that celebrates how we value work in America presented by History.com.

Once called "the most dangerous woman in America", Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was one of the great organizers of the labor and union movements.

Description of the rise and fall of the American Railway Union in the context of the Pullman Strike.

Reference source for information on the history of the labor organization, the Knights of Labor, nationally and in Georgia, in particular, in the late 1800s and the role it played in organizing southern laborers. Hyperlinks to additional...

Scroll down through this American Memory's Today in History to the Rock Springs Massacre. Find a brief description of what happened to the Chinese mine workers on that day in Wyoming, and the aftermath. Included are links to photographs...

The Great Depression built the modern labor movement by growing and strengthening unions. Follow the labor movement through a day-by-day database of newspaper articles chronicling strikes in Washington State. Additionally, students can...

The National Humanities Center presents collections of primary resources compatible with the Common Core State Standards - historical documents, literary texts, and works of art - thematically organized with notes and discussion...

A rich collection of resources, including primary sources, student activities, and lesson plans, to support study of Americans at work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A good look at not only Samuel Gompers and the formation of the American Federation of Labor, but also of the course of unionism in general, its successes and failures, its goals, and membership in the late 19th century.

Encyclopedia of Chicago has an interesting article about the rise of the Knights of Labor. Read about union's acceptance of all workers, its successes, and its legacy.

This article relates the history of African Americans in the union movement during the Great Depression. Read about the importance of black membership in the CIO, the ILA, and the steel industry.

A brief history of the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado in 1914. Read about the thwarted attempts of coal miners to unionize.

Chapter 9 provides an overview of the profound changes labor has undergone from agrarian times to a modern industrial state in the 20th Century and outlines the significance and history of organized labor.

Overview of the Knights of Labor with maps showing the expansion of the Knights by color-coded time period, the number of local assemblies in each LA county, and more.

A look at the history of the United Mine Workers from its inception to present day. Find out what causes the UMW supported.

Read about the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a union that represented steel workers, among many other factoy workers. Find out about their tactics used in strikes during the Great Depression.

Find information about the Homestead strike and the treatment of the workers inspired some labor activists to plot the murder of Henry Clay Frick. Part of the autobiography of Emma Goldman.

A good look at three of the titans of the steel industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Read about Andrew Carnegie and his business relationship with Henry Clay Frick, and the development of Bethlehen Steel by Charles Schwab....

An interesting article about the strike against the Little Steel companies in Ohio in 1937. It describes the use of the sit-down strike by the unionized steel workers.

Due to the strife incurred by garment workers at the turn of the century, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was formed. Read about its history and its relevancy in the 21st century.

It's interesting to read about the anti-union sentiment that led to the Taft-Hartley Act after World War II, but even more amazing to see how that sentiment was tied to the anti-communist witch hunts of the time. Read the comments of the...

The Progressive Era from the 1890s to the 1920s evolved as a response to the negative effects of industrialization. Reforms that emerged provided protections for workers and consumers and gave women voting rights. Backlash against the...

Read the gripping testimony of an immigrant girl who testified before a U.S. Congressional committee detailing the conditons in the textile mill in which she worked. Because of these unsafe working conditions, the textile workers...