Summary of Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The American labor movement owes a huge debt to women. Women were allowed to join early labor organizations, such as the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World, but their relatively inclusive outlook made them outliers in the broader labor landscape.
#2 The Victorian era was a time when women were expected to be housewives, and any deviation from this norm was viewed as socially suspect. For middle- and upper-class women, the thought of earning money for their toil was completely foreign.
#3 The first strike in the country’s history was conducted by textile workers in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1824. The women blockaded the mills’ entrances and loudly declared their intention to stay out of work until the new orders were rescinded.
#4 The Industrial Revolution brought with it a wave of child labor in mills across New England. By the time of the Pawtucket mill strike, their sisters of the loom had already been sweating away in mills across New England for more than a decade.

Sujets

• Labor
• Trade union
• Unions

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822510777
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The American labor movement owes a huge debt to women. Women were allowed to join early labor organizations, such as the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World, but their relatively inclusive outlook made them outliers in the broader labor landscape.

#2

The Victorian era was a time when women were expected to be housewives, and any deviation from this norm was viewed as socially suspect. For middle- and upper-class women, the thought of earning money for their toil was completely foreign.

#3

The first strike in the country’s history was conducted by textile workers in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1824. The women blockaded the mills’ entrances and loudly declared their intention to stay out of work until the new orders were rescinded.

#4

The Industrial Revolution brought with it a wave of child labor in mills across New England. By the time of the Pawtucket mill strike, their sisters of the loom had already been sweating away in mills across New England for more than a decade.

#5

The appeal of young women to the factory owner was not just their low wages, but their supposed docility. They were a transient workforce that would stick around only a few years before getting married, preventing the formation of a permanent working class in the mill cities.

#6

The Lowell mills were a paradise for young women, but as time went on and the harsh realities of the workplace began to set in, the publication of a labor activist turned firebrand, Sarah Bagley, helped change the tone of the writings in the Lowell Offering.

#7

Mill owners next turned to hiring immigrants, who were typically paid less than their Yankee counterparts. The first group of immigrant workers to enter New England’s mills were the Irish, who were routinely discriminated against and anti-Catholic violence.

#8

White men, unlike women of the time, held the threat of their votes as well as their labor to stir up trouble for those in power. The LFLRA used this to pressure legislators into passing labor laws.

#9

The connection between the suffering of enslaved Black people and that of the textile workers in the North was clear to them, as well as to many abolitionist leaders.

#10

On June 16, 1866, Black laundry workers in Jackson, Mississippi, organized and demanded higher wages from their white employers. They signed their letter The Washerwomen of Jackson, and in doing so, gave a name to Mississippi’s first trade union.

#11

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a series of often violent work stoppages in which more than one hundred thousand railroad workers struck over wages and dangerous working conditions, temporarily brought the railroad barons to their knees.

#12

Chinese workers were also a target of anti-Chinese racism, and many were forced to work in agriculture or small restaurants.

#13

Atlanta was abuzz with industry and progress in 1881, as the city prepared to host the International Cotton Exposition. But despite the city’s efforts to position itself as a forward-thinking power, it had failed to invest in the well-being of the working class, or address the rampant racial discrimination that relegated Black Atlantans to labor-intensive jobs.

#14

The Atlanta washerwomen strike was successful in changing the balance of power, as they were able to force the city council to grant them control over the local hand-laundering industry.

#15

Atlanta’s white supremacist employer class had to face the reality of Emancipation: Black workers would no longer tolerate injustice.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

New York City in the early 1900s was a terrible place to live. The population had grown to become the nation’s largest by 1910, but the city itself was not a gleaming metropolis. The upper crust of politics and society were more than happy to leave the toiling class to their dirty, malnourished fates as long as they didn’t cause too much trouble.

#2

Working-class white women, who made up the majority of women in the workforce at the time, were paid less than their male counterparts.

#3

In 1909, a group of young Jewish women workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan decided they had enough. They declared a strike, and were supported by their male coworkers in a strike vote.

#4

The New York garment strike of 1910 was a major moment in the history of American labor, as it was the first time many women garment workers had walked off the job in protest. It helped lay the groundwork for industrial unionism in the garment industry.

#5

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurred, killing 146 workers. It was a clear example of how companies did not care about the safety of their employees, as they had no federal safety regulations to speak of at the time.

#6

The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were eventually acquitted of all charges following the fire. They turned a profit off of the fire, and were never held accountable for the lives lost due to their own paranoid greed.

#7

The Triangle fire killed 146 workers in half an hour, and it has always torn me apart that the executives with a couple of steps could have opened the door, but they thought they were better than the working people.

#8

Frances Perkins, a suffragist, became involved with the fight against injustice at a young age. She was the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the Roosevelt administration, and she was tireless in her drive to fight for workers’ safety.

#9

Perkins was a queer feminist who was central to the New Deal. She was also impeached in 1939 for supporting radical union leader Harry Bridges.