This Day in History

Oct. 15, 1914: Clayton Antitrust Act Enacted

Time Periods: 1910
Themes: Economics, Labor
Print

The Clayton Antitrust Act sought to end practices that limited competition throughout the economy. This act was one of the first which acknowledged unions, and contains the clause that “the labor of a human being is not a commodity,” thus making clear that unions are not trusts or monopolies. In addition the act legalized peaceful strikes, picketing, and boycotts.

Piedmont Leaf Protest | Zinn Education Project

Protest at Piedmont Leaf Tobacco Company, 1946.

Here are some resources to teach about labor history.Special thanks to the Michigan Labor History Society for highlighting this anniversary.

Related Resources
Teaching Guides

The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States

Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. 184 pages.
Role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.

Teaching Activities (Free)

Lawrence, 1912: The Singing Strike

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond.
Role play on the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Mass.

Teaching Activities (Free)

Paper Airplane Simulation

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 4 pages.
In this simulation, students make paper airplanes to learn about the origins and effects of “scientific management”—owners’ attempt to capture workers’ skills and knowledge, and then to exploit that knowledge to reorganize work and cut costs by deskilling workers.

Suffragist and labor leader Agnes Nestor | Zinn Education Project
Teaching Activities (Free)

Birth of a Rank-and-File Organizer

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages.
Writing activity for students to complete the narrative of women workers striking at a glove-making factory, exploring possible outcomes.

Books: Non-Fiction

Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South

Book — Non-fiction. By Robert Rodgers Korstad. 2003. 576 pages.
Chronicles the rise and fall of the union that represented thousands of African American tobacco factory workers in Winston-Salem, N.C.

This Day in History

April 3, 1934: Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union broke away from a larger organization and became a racially integrated workers union.