The ten most important events in American industrial history

[Chuck0]

JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
> 
> I have been asked by a documentary filmmaker who is doing a short (12 min.?) film on US industrial history for a pretty mainstream context what are the 10 absolutely must-include events, preferably with a bias towards stuff for which there exists film. Given the context and the buyer it cannot be all militant/labor radical stuff. The call is for stuff related to industry, not just radical labor.
> 
> The following list occurs to me. I am not trying at this point to limit it to 10. Please add, cut, rank. Thanks.
> 
> The discovery of the steam engine and/or cotton gin
> The completion of the transcontinental railroad/Chinese immigration to build it
> The formation of the great Trusts: Standard Oil, US Steel
> The Haymarket rally/8 hour day
> The ARU strike and/or the Homestead strike (a Penna event)
> Ford's Model T assembly line, Blacks move north to get factory jobs
> The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire/ILWGU
> The Lawrence Strike/IWW
> Something about the CIO--the UMW battles (very important in Penna), maybe the Ford Hunger Strikers?
> The signing of the NLRA
> Industry/labor in WWII: women in the industrial workforce, Rosie the Riveter
> The Treaty of Detroit
> The civil rights movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
> Something about the computer industry, what? IBM, Microsoft
> Something about deindustrialization, moving offshore, maybe US Steel gets out of the steel biz?, becomes USX
> The breaking of the PATCO strike
> Something about the service economy, what?
> ???

Good list, especially the PATCO strike.

I'd also add:

* the destruction of radical/revolutionary unionism during the 20s and
30s and subsequent coronation of AFL-CIO business unionism

A friend tells me that the IWW was severely hurt by a factor that
happened at the same time the union was undergoing political repression.
That factor was the mechanization of farm work, which destroyed the
IWW's base among migrant farmworkers (and hobos ;-))

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