Today's Labor Quote: Eugene V. Debs

“Socialism is a growing idea; an expanding philosophy. It is spreading over the entire face of the earth: it is as vain to resist it as it would be to arrest the sunrise on the morrow. It is coming, coming, coming all along the line. Can you not see it?”

Railroad union leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs on this date in 1918 spoke in Canton, Ohio on the relation between capitalism and war. Ten days later he was arrested under the Espionage Act, and eventually sentenced to 10 years in jail. 

Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Painters join Black Lives Matter protests; the history of black police in America; Race and Rebellion
Last week’s show: Labor supports DC Black Lives Matter protests; “Debs In Canton” preview; Revisiting The Battle of Homestead; Voices of exiled Iranian workers.

Eight local unions organize the International Fur Workers Union of U.S. and Canada. The union later merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen - 1913

The National Industrial Recovery Act became law, but was later to be declared unconstitutional. It established the right to unionize, set maximum hours and minimum wages for every major industry, abolished sweatshops and child labor. The Wagner Act, in effect today, was approved two years later to legalize unionization - 1933

Inacom Corp., once the world's largest computer dealer, sends most of its 5,100 employees an e-mail instructing them to call a toll-free phone number; when they call, a recorded message announces they have been fired - 2000

- David Prosten