August 8 - Murdered for Standing Up

On this day in Labor History the year was 1850. 

That was the day that two tailors who were out on strike in New York City were killed in a confrontation with the police. 

It is thought they were the first workers to die while participating in a strike in the United States. 

They certainly would not be the last. 

The United States has one of the bloodiest labor histories of any industrial nation. 

It is estimated that at least 700 people have lost their lives to violence during a strike. 

The vast majority of those slain were workers. 

Some of the most-bloody conflicts included the Great Upheaval of 1877. 

Across the country 100 workers lost their lives in an uprising of railway labor. 

Then in the 1892 strike against Carnegie Steel in Homestead, Pennsylvania nine strikers and three Pinkerton agents died. 

Two years later, thirty workers died across the country in a strike and boycott against the Pullman Palace Car Company. 

One of the most infamous labor massacres occurred in Ludlow, Colorado in 1914. 

During this coal mining strike gun thugs hired by the company rained machine gun bullets and fire down on a tent colony of the striking workers. 

At least nineteen people were killed. 

Eleven of them were children. 

In 1937, ten workers died on Memorial Day at a demonstration against Republic Steel in Chicago. 

These are just some of the battles, massacres and murders that shaped the American labor movement. 

Too often the toll of this blood-shed is not taught in history classes.