Three Strikes

8 Pages 2053 Words

“Miners, Musicians, and Salesgirls on Strike”
The book Three Strikes written by Howard Zinn, Dana Frank, and Robin Kelley is a gateway for readers back to the difficulties Americans faced in the early twentieth century. More than that it deals with three specific strikes that took place in American history that most people are unaware of. Mainly miners, musicians, and salesgirls and how they fought the labor battle in these times. The authors capture the drama and grief of the labor clashes that pit corporations against union organizers, chain stores against low-wage sales clerks, and new technologies against displaced workers. Zinn tells the story of the bloody Ludlow Massacre during the Colorado coal miners' strike in 1913-14. Frank writes of the successful seven-day strike by Woolworth salesclerks and waitresses in Detroit, Michigan. And Kelley tells of the events by New York City Theater musicians to organize and unite as the introduction of "talking pictures" in the 1930s threatened their jobs. It also implies how people then and now use unions to fight for equal human rights and touches on the ongoing rights for American workers as well as their future. I will present the reasons for these groups to strike, what their goals were, whether they were successful, and my personal opinion.
First I will give a brief summary of the events that lead up to the strikes. Zinn tells the grim tale of the conflict in which at least 66 people died, including women and children who were burned to death in a pit beneath the coal miners' tent colony in southern Colorado. Although Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the tragedy, historians have mostly overlooked it still today. It should be recalled, because embedded in the events of the Colorado strike are issues still alive today. The class struggle between owners of large enterprises and their workers, the relationship between economic power and political power, the role of the press, and the...