Free to Think, Talk, Listen, or Sing

In Paper Airplane Simulation, students “saw” some of the key turn-of-the-century workplace changes, which continue to affect workers.

In this reading from Milton Meltzer“s classic book on U.S. labor history, Bread and Roses, students explore some of the historical background. “Free to Think, Talk, Listen, or Sing” recounts how new technologies and workplace structures affected the most intimate aspects of people”s lives. Often, workers” demands made in negotiations don”t fully reveal the human consequences of work. Even when the call is for higher wages, the underlying grievances may be much deeper.

The Power In Our Hands — Available for Download

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This is one of the 16 lessons available from The Power In Our Hands. Other lessons available for individual download are:

Opening

• Acknowledgments, Notes to the Teacher, and Introduction

Unit I: Basic Understandings

• Organic Goodie Simulation
• Who Makes History?
• What Rights Do We Have?

Unit II: Changes in the Workplace/”Scientific Management”

• Paper Airplane Simulation
• Free to Think, Talk, Listen, or Sing
• Modern Times
• “Taylorizing” Burgers: A Fantasy

Unit III: Defeats, Victories, Challenges

• The Homestead Strike
• Birth of a Rank-and-File Organizer
• Lawrence, 1912: The Singing Strike

Unit IV: Our Own Recent Past

• • It’s a Mystery—White Workers Against Black Workers
  • Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union: Black and White Unite?
  • 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike

• Union Maids

Unit V: Continuing Struggle

• Shutdown!—Confronting Plant Closures
• Labor Songs

Order the book online from Monthly Review.