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A daily, pocket-sized history of America's working people, brought to you by The Rick Smith Show team.
Sunday Feb 14, 2021
On this day in labor history, the year was 1918.
That was the day 300 commercial laundresses in Kansas City walked off the job, demanding a union.
Male laundry delivery drivers successfully organized the previous summer.
They soon joined the women on the picket lines.
The Employers’ Association had financed an open-shop drive since the beginning of the war.
The laundry companies refused to grant wage increases to the drivers.
They also refused to acknowledge the women’s demand for a union.
The Women’s Trade Union League tried to hold hearings about the strike at the Hotel Muehlebach.
But the Hotel refused to allow striking black workers into the building.
As a result, their white coworkers refused to testify.
When the hearings were finally moved, the women told of intolerable conditions.
Laundresses complained of filthy workplaces and potential firetraps.
They reported that laundry owners had put together their own private police force.
These guns for hire assaulted women strikers, breaking one’s arm, another’s wrist and injuring many more in hopes of deterring them from pressing on with their demands.
In the 6th week of the strike, 25,000 more workers of Kansas City called a general strike.
According to historian Maurine Weiner Greenwald, “they supported the laundry workers’ demands for increased wages, union recognition and enforcement of state regulations regarding hours and working conditions.”
Greenwald notes the general strike was relatively peaceful until the Kansas City Railway attempted to run streetcars with scab labor.
Finally, the laundry companies agreed to union recognition and later promised wage increases.
They soon reneged. But the show of solidarity among workers provided key lessons for future labor struggles in Kansas City.
October 23 - John Sweeney is Elected
October 22 - Pretty Boy Floyd Is Gunned Down
October 21 - Through Rain, Sleet, Snow & Anthrax
October 20 - Remembering Debs
October 19 - Tragedy on the Tracks
October 18 - Voice of an Era
October 17 - Fighting to End Poverty
October 16 - Thank A Farmer
October 15 - Too Little, Too Late for Radiation Sickness
October 14 - Marching for Equality
October 13 - We Whipped the Ivy League and You Can Too!
October 12 - Workers Begin to Come Together
October 11 - Remembering Mary Heaton Vorse
October 10 - With a Push of a Button, Oceans Are Joined
October 9 - The End of the Boom Boom RoOm
October 8 - The Great Chicago Fire
October 7 - Housing Now!
October 6 - Clinton Signs the Hatch Act
October 5 - Hollywood’s Black Friday
October 4 - A Chain Reaction of Human Misery
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