March 14

Fabled railroad engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones born in southeast Missouri. A member of the Railroad Engineers, he was the sole fatality in a wreck near Vaughan, Miss., on April 29, 1900. His skill and heroics prevented many more deaths - 1863

Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12 and a half hours to 93 minutes.  Goodbye, craftsmanship.  Hello, drudgery - 1914
(The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker: Society makes sweeping judgments about the intelligence of the "common worker." But consider the lightning-fast calculations required of any waitress; the complex spatial mathematics of the carpenter; the hairdresser’s ability to turn a client’s vague description into a real hairdo. Ditto the skills and brainpower involved in being an electrical worker, a welder and more. In this impassioned and insightful book, Mike Rose reveals the intellectual skills that physical labor requires and assesses the costs—educational, economic and societal—of ignoring them.)
 
The movie Salt of the Earth opens. The classic film centers on a long and difficult strike led by Mexican-American and Anglo zinc miners in New Mexico. Real miners perform in the film, in which the miners’ wives—as they did in real life—take to the picket lines after the strikers are enjoined - 1954

More info & ammo for unionists is available
online from Union Communication Services.

http://www.unionist.com/