On this day in Labor History the year was 1879.
That was the day that Will Rogers was born in Oologah, Indian Territory, in what later became Oklahoma.
Rogers grew up on a ranch, and by 10thgrade had dropped out of school to be a cowboy.
Skilled with a lasso, he became a cowboy entertainer first in vaudeville then in silent film.
Rogers also had a syndicated column and a radio show where he became a popular political commentator.
With quick wit and humor Rogers helped to shape public opinion.
He brought humor to serious issues in a way later echoed by the likes of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Rogers often talked about the plight of the American worker.
In 1931 he was asked to give a radio address for President Herbert Hoover’s Organization on Unemployment.
Rogers expressed the urgency of the unemployment that was sweeping the nation during the Great Depression.
He said, “The only problem that confronts this country today is at least 7,000,000 people are out of work.
That’s our only problem. There is no other one before us at all. It's to see that every man that wants to is able to work, is allowed to find a place to go to work, and also to arrange some way of getting a more equal distribution of the wealth in country…So here we are in a country with more wheat and more corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world—there’s not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of it than any other country ever had on the face of the earth—and yet we’ve got people starving.”
July 8 - WPA Building Trades On Strike
July 7 - State Militia Confront Pullman Strikers
July 6 - Industrial Murder in the North Sea
July 5 - Bloody Thursday
July 4 - Founding of the National Unemployed Council
July 3 - The New Deal Against Sit-Downs
July 2 - A Foul Blot Upon the Labor Movement
July 1 - The Po-Boy is Born
June 30 - Convict Lease System Ends in Alabama
June 29 - Fighting Insurmountable Odds
June 28 - Harry Bridges Act Signed into Law
June 27 - Founding of the IWW
June 26 - Milwaukee Transit Workers Join the ‘34 Strike Wave
June 25 - Congress Pushes for Wartime Labor Repression
June 24 - Striking Against Taft-Hartley
June 23 - Legislating Labor’s Destruction
June 22 - A Long Road to Victory
June 21 - Miners Push Back Against Starvation Wages
June 20 - UAW Wins a First Contract at Ford
June 19 - The Fight to Free the Hawaii Seven
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