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January 16

The United States Civil Service Commission was established as the Pendleton Act went into effect - 1883

January 16

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January 15

Wobbly Ralph Chaplin, in Chicago for a demonstration against hunger, completes the writing of the labor anthem ?Solidarity Forever? on this date in 1915. He?d begun writing it in 1914 during a miners? strike in Huntington, W. Va. The first verse: When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, But the union makes us strong ? 1915

January 15

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January 14

Clinton-era OSHA issues confined spaces standard to prevent more than 50 deaths and 5,000 serious injuries annually for workers who enter confined spaces - 1993

January 14

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January 13

The original Tompkins Square Riot. As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children with billy clubs. Declared Abram Duryee, the Commissioner of Police: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw..." - 1874

January 13

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January 12

Novelist Jack London is born. His classic definition of a scab?someone who would cross a picket line and take a striker's job: "After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles" - 1876

January 12

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January 11

The IWW-organized ?Bread & Roses? textile strike of 32,000 women and children begins in Lawrence, Mass. It lasted 10 weeks and ended in victory. The first millworkers to walk out were Polish women, who, upon collecting their pay, exclaimed that they had been cheated and promptly abandoned their looms - 1912

January 11