The ten most important events in American industrial history

[Tom Lehman]

Sorry Max.  Your thinking about the time Lewis allegedly punched the President
of the carpenters union in the nose at an AFL convention in the early 30's
before the founding of the CIO.  And from what I've been told that was pretty
much newspaper hype.  They might of bumped belly's or something on that order of
conflict.  But, the punch in the nose story sounded better back in the
coalfields.

No one has ever done a good in depth bio of Phil Murray--and--I think that's
just as well.

The only time that I know of that Murray and Lewis publicly had a disagreement
was in 1940 when Murray backed FDR for President.  Although, I'm sure they had
private differences of opinion.  Murray had his style and Lewis had his.

Tom Lehman

Max Sawicky wrote:


> how about general strikes in Seattle, Toledo,
> and Minneapolis (?)
>
> Auto worker massacre in Detroit; forget the name
> Battle of the Underpass
>
> Trial of Bill Haywood and other Wobblies trial in Idaho (Colorado?)
>
> John L. Lewis punches out Phillip Murray
>
> attack by construction workers on anti-war protestors in NYC
>
> mbs
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of JKSCHW at aol.com
> Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 1:48 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: The ten most important events in American industrial history
>
> 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?
> ???
>
> --jks