US Labor History
1920-1929
1920
- President Warren Harding elected
- Trade Union Educational League founded
- Alabama Miners' Strike
- Clothing Workers' Lockout
- West Virginia Coal Wars begin, ten people killed in the Matewan Massacre in a battle
over the right to organize the southern West Virginia coalfields
1921
- Depression begins
- Supreme Court, in Duplex Printing Press v. Deering, rules that the Clayton Act
notwithstanding, federal courts could enjoin unions for actions in restraint of trade
- Congress restricts immigration to the United States and establishes the national origin
quota system
- Seamen's Strike
- West Virginia Coal Wars and Baldwin-Felts agents kill West Virginia unionists Sid
Hatfield an Ed Chambers on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse
- Battle of Blair Mountain, 2000 US troops block miners' attempt to organize in southern
West Virginia
1922
- Conference for Progressive Political Action founded
- Anthracite Coal Strike
- Bituminous Coal Strike
- Herrin, Illinois, Massacre
- Railroad Shopmen's Strike
1924
- President Calvin Coolidge elected
- Samuel Gompers dies.
William Green becomes president of the American Federation of Labor
1925
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters founded
- Anthracite Coal Strike
1926
- Congress passes the Railway Labor Act, which requires that employers bargain with unions
and forbids discrimination against union members
- Passaic, New Jersey, Textile Strike
1927
- Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Massachussetts labor activists are executed
- Bituminous Coal Strike
1928
- President Herbert Hoover elected
- New Bedford, Massachusetts, Textile Strike
- Convict-labor system for coal mining is outlawed in Alabama
1929
- Stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression
- Trade Union Unity League founded
- Conference for Progressive Labor Action founded
- Gastonia, North Carolina, Textile Strike