Celebrations Today – August 20
Holidays and observances
- Christian feast day:
- Feast of Asmá’ (Bahá’í Faith, only if Bahá’í Naw-Rúz falls on March 21)
- Indian Akshay Urja Day (India)
- Restoration of Independence Day, re-declaration of the independence of Estonia from the Soviet Union in 1991.
- Revolution of the King and People (Morocco)
- Saint Stephen’s Day (Hungary)
- World Mosquito Day
Celebrations Today – USA: August 20
National Radio Day
National Chocolate Pecan Pie Day
National Lemonade Day
National Bacon Lover’s Day
Virtual Worlds Day
World Mosquito Day
Today in US History: August 20
8-Hour Work Day
I’ve worked in the mill in my day, until nine o’clock at night, from seven in the mornin’…I wouldn’t want to go back to it, and I don’t think anyone else would. An eight hour day is long enough.Matthew White,
circa 1938-1939.
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940
Occupational Portrait of Three Railroad Workers Standing on Crank Handcar,
between 1850 and 1860.
America’s First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864
On August 20, 1866, the newly organized National Labor Union called on Congress to mandate an eight-hour workday. A coalition of skilled and unskilled workers, farmers, and reformers, the National Labor Union was created to pressure Congress to enact labor reforms. It dissolved in 1873 following a disappointing venture into third-party politics in the 1872 presidential election.
Although the National Labor Union failed to persuade Congress to shorten the workday, its efforts heightened public awareness of labor issues and increased public support for labor reform in the 1870s and 1880s.
The Knights of Labor, a powerful advocate for the eight-hour day in the 1870s and early 1880s, proved more effective. Organized in 1869, by 1886 the Knights of Labor counted 700,000 laborers, shopkeepers, and farmers among its members. Under the leadership of Terrence V. Powderly, the union discouraged the use of strikes and advocated restructuring society along cooperative lines.
Leaders of the Knights of Labor,
Kurz & Allison,
c November 27, 1886.
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
In 1886, a series of violent strikes waged by railway workers tarnished the union’s reputation. In May, police were called in when fighting broke out between striking workers and strikebreakers at the McCormick Reaper Works of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in the Haymarket area of Chicago, Illinois.
“Attention Workingmen! Great Mass Meeting To-night, at 7:30 o’clock, at the Haymarket…”
Chicago, 1886.
An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
The police shot two union men; later, an explosion killed seven policemen. Although the person who set off the bomb was never identified, four alleged anarchist labor leaders were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and hanged. Three more men remained imprisoned until they were pardoned by Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld in 1893. The Haymarket Riot branded as “radical” the eight-hour-day movement and diminished popular support for organized labor.
The decline of the Knights of Labor contributed to the rise of the American Federation of Labor, established under the leadership of Samuel Gompers in 1886.Whereas the Knights of Labor aimed at legislative reforms including the eight-hour day and child labor laws, the American Federation of Labor focused on protecting the autonomy and established privileges of individual craft unions.
Coal Breaker Boys,
Kingston, Pennsylvania, between 1890 and 1910.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920
Progress toward an eight-hour day was minimal until June 1933 when Congress enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act, an emergency measure taken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the economic devastation of the Great Depression. The Act provided for the establishment of maximum hours, minimum wages, and the right to collective bargaining. Struck down by the Supreme Court in May 1935, the Recovery Act was soon replaced by the Wagner Act, which assured workers the right to unionize.
Depression-era workers continued, however, to bemoan their long, hard day. On May 16, 1939, Henry Truvillion sang the steelworkers’ blues for John and Ruby Lomax, who recorded him during their trip through Louisiana. Listen to recordings of work songs such as Henry Truvillion’s in the collection Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip.
“Steel-Driving Song,”
Performed by Henry Truvillion,
May 16, 1939,
Merryville, Louisiana.
Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip.
Listen to this recording.
(RealAudio Format)
Listen to this recording.
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- Search American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940 on eight hour day to retrieve interviews such as the one with Matthew White quoted above.
- Peruse a nineteenth-century ditty extolling the plan for an eight-hour workday, “The Eight-Hour System,” in the collection America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets.
- Search on terms such as worker, strike, or banner in Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887, which documents a violent confrontation between Chicago police and labor protesters in 1886. See, for example, “Liberty/Equality/Fraternity” embroidered on a red silk Furniture Workers’ banner.
- Experience The Dramas of Haymarket, an online project produced by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University, which is organized in the form of a tragedy in five acts. Although the site devotes considerable attention to the May 4, 1886, protest meeting, at which a dynamite bomb attributed to political radicals killed several policemen, it also provides historical context on the political climate and events leading up to and following the riot.
- Wood engravings based on sketches by C. Bunnell and Charles Upham of the Haymarket Riot appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on May 15, 1886, the week after the confrontation. View these engravings available through the Prints and Photographs Division Online Catalog:
- “The Anarchist-Labor Troubles in Chicago. Explosion of Bomb May 4th, in Haymarket Square, Chicago, and Priest Giving Last Rites to Policeman.”
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 15, 1886. - “The Anarchist-Labor Troubles in Chicago. The Police Charging the Murderous Rioters in Old Haymarket Square on the Night of May 4th.” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 15, 1886.
- “The Anarchist-Labor Troubles in Chicago. Explosion of Bomb May 4th, in Haymarket Square, Chicago, and Priest Giving Last Rites to Policeman.”
- Search on Isaac Myers in The African-American Experience in Ohio: Selections from the Ohio Historical Society to learn more about the first president of the Colored National Labor Union. Read a review of the life of the “Late Isaac Myers, of Baltimore, Md.” to learn why Myers, considered the first important African-American labor leader, spoke against the National Labor Union’s decision to form a third political party.
- Read Today in History features on the origins of Labor Day, on the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, and the day granite workers of Barre, Vermont, received an American Federation of Labor charter.
- Search American Memory’s photograph and print collections on labor union, worker, or strike to find more images of industrial workers.
- View films of early nineteenth-century laborers at work in a factory, such as the example on this page, “Girls Taking Time Checks, Westinghouse Works,” by browsing the collection, Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904.
“Girls Taking Time Checks, Westinghouse Works,”
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company,
G. W. “Billy,” Bitzer, cameraman,
Filmed April 26, 1904, copyright May 6, 1904.
Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904
Today in History – August 20-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia