A California Businessman Contracts for Chinese Immigrant Labor
This labor contract between a Chinese worker, "Affon," and California businessman Jacob P. Leese, was made in Hong Kong on July 28, 1849, and witnessed by A. Shue, C. H. Brinley, and Henry Anthon, Jr., acting U.S. Vice Consul in Hong Kong. The [...]
Discharge Record from the CCC
While the original goal of the CCC was to put unemployed youths to work on natural resource projects, training and vocation in other areas eventually became an important function of the camps.
A Steelworker Strikes for "Eight Hours a Day and Better Conditions"
The steel strike of 1919 saw some 350,000 workers walk off the job, temporarily bringing the steel industry to a halt. The U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor investigated, interviewing striking steelworkers such as Slavic immigrant Andrew [...]
A Railroad Titan Explains Why the Chinese are Good for White Workers
The "divide-and-conquer" tactics used by bosses pitted different ethnic groups against one another and native-born workers against all immigrants. It often worked out better for white workers than for Asians. Charles Crocker, one of the "Big Four" [...]
An Apprentice's Indenture Contract
Many English settlers arrived in the colonies as indentured servants. Because poor men and women could not afford the cost of travel to North America, they bound themselves for four to seven years’ labor in return for passage across the [...]
An Apprentice's Indenture Contract (with text supports)
Many English settlers arrived in the colonies as indentured servants. Because poor men and women could not afford the cost of travel to North America, they bound themselves for four to seven years’ labor in return for passage across the [...]
A South Carolina Textile Mill Owner Explains Child Labor
In 1914 members of Congress were preparing to vote on the the Palmer-Owen Child Labor Bill, which would have banned interstate commerce in goods produced using the labor of children. Lewis Parker was the owner and manager of several textile mills, [...]
Employers Favor Increased Mexican Immigration
During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the U.S. passed a number of laws restricting immigration by nationalities seen as racially inferior. For example, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred all immigration from China, while [...]
Lenora M. Barry Describes Women's Working Conditions in New Jersey (1887)
Lenora M. Barry was the national women’s organizer for the Knights of Labor in the late nineteenth century. The Knights of Labor aimed to improve the lives and health of laborers by encouraging them to organize unions and other groups to fight for [...]
NAACP Representative Testifies before Congress about the Economic Security Act (1935)
In January 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the Economic Security Act to Congress. Congress held committee hearings on the bill. Charles H. Houston, a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) [...]