On this day in Labor History the year was 1874. That was the day that Mary Heaton Vorse was born in New York City.
She grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts in a well-off family. She traveled across Europe with her parents, receiving her education and learning to speak multiple languages fluently.
She then worked as a book reviewer for the Criterion magazine. In 1912 Mary and the man who would be her husband witnessed the Massachusetts’s textile strike. The experience was a turning point in her life. She later wrote: “Both Joe O’Brien and I had come a long road to get to Lawrence…Together we experienced the realization of the human cost of our industrial life. Something transforming happened to both of us. We knew now where we belonged—on the side of the workers and not with the comfortable people among whom we were born…Some synthesis had taken place between my life and that of the workers, some peculiar change that would never again permit me to look with indifference on the fact that riches for the few were made by misery of the many. It was in Lawrence that we realized what we must do, that we could make one contribution—that of writing the workers’ story—as long as we lived.”
For more than fifty years after Lawrence, Mary travelled the United States, reporting and participating in strikes and the labor movement. She wrote about the 1919 steel strike, and the lumber workers in the Pacific Northwest. She wrote about the struggles of auto workers and textile workers and child labor. In 1962 the United Auto Workers honored Mary with the Social Justice Award
May 11 - Organizing in the Fields
May 10 - Bankruptcy Bonanza for Big Bankers
May 9 - The Historic ‘34 West Coast Maritime Strike Begins
May 8 - Mary Marcy is Born
May 7 - Popeye The Union Man
May 6 - FDR Rolls Out the WPA
May 5 - The Bay View Massacre
May 4 - UE Beats Back HUAC in Dayton
May 3 - First Workers Compensation Law is Passed
May 2 - Our Thing is DRUM!
May 1 - Mayday Marchers Attacked in Cleveland
April 30 - Refinery Workers Walk Off the Job
April 29 - Allis-Chalmers and the Road to Taft-Hartley
April 28 - OSHA Goes Into Effect
April 27 - Disaster in West Virginia
April 26 - National Guard Ousts Montgomery Ward CEO
April 25 - UAW Mobilizes Against Taft-Hartley
April 24 - The California Spinach Riot
April 23 - Sitting Down for Dignity at Ford
April 22 - The Red Jacket Mine Explosion
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