This book explores one of the most dramatic and scandalous events in the movement for American democratic reform. Dubbed the Memorial Day Massacre, it saw Chicago police shoot and kill ten demonstrators and beat more than one hundred others as they tried to form a mass picket line at the Republic Steel Plant in South Chicago.

This book explores one of the most dramatic and scandalous events in the movement for American democratic reform. Dubbed the Memorial Day Massacre, it saw Chicago police shoot and kill ten demonstrators and beat more than one hundred others as they tried to form a mass picket line at the Republic Steel Plant in South Chicago.

A pivotal moment in the history of the movement for working-class democracy, the “Memorial Day Massacre” vividly captured the conflicting ideals of workers’ rights and the sanctity of private property. On Memorial Day 1937, thousands of steelworkers, middle-class supporters, and working-class activists gathered at Sam's Place on the Southeast Side of Chicago to protest Republic Steel’s virulent opposition to union recognition and collective bargaining. By the end of the day, ten marchers had been mortally wounded and more than one hundred badly injured, victims of a terrifying police riot. Sam's Place, the headquarters for the steelworkers, was transformed into a bloody and frantic triage unit for treating heads split open by police batons, flesh torn by bullets, and limbs mangled badly enough to require amputation. While no one doubts the importance of the Memorial Day Massacre, Michael Dennis identifies it as a focal point in the larger effort to revitalize American equality during the New Deal. In Blood on Steel, Dennis shows how the incident—captured on film by Paramount newsreels—validated the claims of labor activists and catalyzed public opinion in their favor. In the aftermath of the massacre, Senate hearings laid bare patterns of anti-union aggression among management, ranging from blacklists to harassment and vigilante violence. Companies were determined to subvert the right to form a union, which Congress had finally recognized in 1935. Only in the following year would Congress pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and a maximum work week, outlawed child labor, and regulated hazardous work. Like the Wagner Act that protected collective bargaining, this law aimed to protect workers who had suffered the worst of what the Great Depression had inflicted. Dennis‘s wide-angle perspective reveals the Memorial Day Massacre as not simply another bloody incident in the long story of labor-management tension in American history but as an illustration of the broad-based movement for social democracy which developed in the New Deal era.

This historical analysis of the 1937 Chicago Steel Strike demonstrates how it revealed systemic oppression and inspired the larger progressive movement. On Memorial Day 1937, thousands of steelworkers and labor rights supporters gathered on the Southeast Side of Chicago to protest Republic Steel. By the end of the day, ten marchers had been mortally wounded and more than one hundred badly injured, victims of a terrifying police riot that came to be known as the Memorial Day Massacre. In Blood on Steel, historian Michael Dennis identifies this tragic landmark in the fight for labor rights as a focal point in the larger movement for American equality during the New Deal. Dennis shows how the riot—captured on film by Paramount newsreels—validated the claims of labor activists and catalyzed public opinion in their favor. Senate hearings about the massacre revealed patterns of anti-union aggression among management, ranging from blacklists to harassment and vigilante violence. The following year, Congress would pass the Fair Labor Standards Act. Dennis’s wide-angle perspective reveals the Memorial Day Massacre as more than another bloody incident in the long story of American labor-management tensions. It was an all-too graphic illustration of the need for a broad-based social democracy movement.

From the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to the Sandy Hook school massacre of 2012, this two-volume encyclopedia surveys tragic events—natural and man-made, famous and forgotten—that helped shape American history. Tragedies and disasters have always been part of the fabric of American history. Some gave rise to reactions that profoundly influenced the nation. Others dominated public consciousness for a moment, then disappeared from collective memory. Organized chronologically, Disasters and Tragic Events examines these moments, covering both the familiar and the obscure and probing their immediate and long-term effects. Unlike other works that concentrate on a particular type of disaster, for example, weather- or medicine-related tragedies, this two-volume encyclopedia has no such limits. Its entries range from natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, to civic disturbances, environmental disasters, epidemics and medical errors, transportation accidents, and more. The work is a perfect supplement for history classes and will also prove of great interest to the general reader.

In May 1937, seventy thousand workers walked off their jobs at four large steel companies known collectively as “Little Steel.” The strikers sought to make the companies retreat from decades of antiunion repression, abide by the newly enacted federal labor law, and recognize their union. For two months a grinding struggle unfolded, punctuated by bloody clashes in which police, company agents, and National Guardsmen ruthlessly beat and shot unionists. At least sixteen died and hundreds more were injured before the strike ended in failure. The violence and brutality of the Little Steel Strike became legendary. In many ways it was the last great strike in modern America. Traditionally the Little Steel Strike has been understood as a modest setback for steel workers, one that actually confirmed the potency of New Deal reforms and did little to impede the progress of the labor movement. However, The Last Great Strike tells a different story about the conflict and its significance for unions and labor rights. More than any other strike, it laid bare the contradictions of the industrial labor movement, the resilience of corporate power, and the limits of New Deal liberalism at a crucial time in American history.

Through moments of social protest, policy debate, and popular mobilization, this book follows the campaign for economic democracy and the fight for full employment in the United States. Starting in the 1930s, Dennis explores its intellectual and philosophical underpinnings, the class struggle that determined the fate of legislation and the role of left-wing civil rights activists in its revival. Demonstrating how the campaign for full employment intersected with movements for women's liberation and civil rights, it explores how social groups and oppressed minorities interpreted and appropriated the promise of full employment. For many, full employment provided an indispensable path to racial and gender emancipation. In this book, Dennis uncovers the class dimensions and the resistance to full employment in the US. He demonstrates how the recurring debates over full employment consistently exposed the contradictions inherent in a capitalist society and challenged the assertion that an allegedly free enterprise system automatically generated employment for all.