Labor

David Palmquist, of the Bridgeport Public Library, has prepared a six-page typescript, “Bibliography of Connecticut Labor History,” as of 1978. He will send you a copy if you ask. Much of his material is included below, along with several items not found on his list; but he includes typescript works that we do not. Serious researchers will want to consult both lists.

Between 1887 and 1922 there was a Connecticut Department of Fac­tory Inspection, later the Department of Labor and Factory Inspection, since 1933 the Department of Labor. Researchers should check the au­thor catalogs at the State Library under these headings for their reports and other publications.

The best published materials for a study of the history of the laboring class in Connecticut are reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, created by the General Assembly in 1873. The Annual Reports, which began the next year, deal with wages and hours, conditions of work, numbers and types of workers, sanitary conditions, and so on. The Bureau publish­ed two articles of historical interest, both in the Report of 1887: “Industrial Legislation in Connecticut,” pp. 27-278; and “Labor Organization in Connecticut,” pp. 353-73. The Bureau’s Reports for the years 1898-1903 included directories of local unions and their officers. Connecticut’s “steady habits” were hit hard during the era of national industrial strife. The Bureau Reports for the years between 1875 and 1926 contain a good deal of information about the numerous strikes, including the famous Danbury hatters’ strike of 1901. The Bureau published, in Connecticut Legislative Documents 1902, I, part 2, pp. 331-499, “History of Or­ganized Labor in Connecticut,” by Charles B. Leonard.

There is also a manuscript history, “Connecticut Labor, 1877-1914,” by Bernard Wolfe. (State Library, RG 33, Box 199) About 150 pages, it in­cludes a chapter on the period before 1850. The WPA Guide also carries a short summary of the subject (pp. 64-70), which would make an excel­lent outline for a study or teaching unit.

Special attention has been paid to women in the work force, and relevant items are included in the “Women” section of this bibliography.

Other items:

Bucki, Cecelia F. “Dilution of the Craft Tradition: Bridgeport, Connecticut Munitions Workers, 1915-1919.” Social Science History 4(February, 1980)1:105-24.

Burr, Nelson R. The Early Labor Movement in Connecticut, 1790-1860. West Hartford: the author, 1972. A brief, reliable twenty-five-page survey of this much-neglected era.

Edwards, Alba. The Labor Legislation of Connecticut. New York: Macmillan, 1907. An excellent scholarly monograph published for the American Economic As­sociation Publications. 3rd series 7(1903)3. Edwards traces state labor legisla­tion from 1842 to 1906 and demonstrates the strength of organized labor in the legislature. Thirty-seven representatives in 1885-86 were members of the Knights of Labor.

Green, Constance M. The Role of Women as Production Workers in War Plants in Connecticut Valley. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 1946. A professionally done monograph. See below under “Women.”

Janick, Herbert. "Yale Blue: Unionization at Yale University, 1931-1985," Labor History 28 (Summer, 1987) 3:349-69. A narrative of efforts -- ultimately successful -- to unionize Yale's blue collar and clerical and technical workers. Includes accounts of town-gown relations and the resultant pressures that caused Yale administration to give way both to unionization and to the payment of wages nearly as high as the average for the area.

Janick, Herbert. "From Union Town to Open Shop: The Decline of the United Hatters of Danbury, Connecticut, 1917-1922." Connecticut History 31 (November, 1990) 1-20. The hat factory owners, taking advantage of unsettled war conditions, deliberately precipitated a strike in order to break the unions. The national union leadership was willing to sacrifice the locals in order to make a point about how to establish wages. The national government intervened ineffectually; the state manufacturers supported the Danbury hat company owners; and the union was undone. However the strike also led to the beginning of the exodus of hat factories.

Heath, Frederick M. “Labor and the Progressive Movement in Connecticut.” Labor History 12(Winter, 1971)1:52-67. See under “Women.”

Montgomery, David. “Whose Standards? Workers and the Reorganization of Production, 1900-1925,” in his Workers’ Control in America. New York: Cam­bridge University Press, 1979. Uses Bridgeport c. 1918-20 as a case study. “Craftsmen’s resistance to standardization, the new importance of machine tenders and tool die makers, the conflicts over the intensification of work and wage classifications, the employers’ determination not to allow the vagaries of full employment to loosen their grip on their factories, or impede managerial reform, the workers’ new forms of organization, die gospel of ‘mass action’ and die encounter between local revolutionaries and the newly powerful leader­ship of international unions were all evident in the munitions center of Bridgeport, Connecticut.” (p. 127)

Moret, Marta. A brief history of the Connecticut labor movement. [Storrs:] Univ. of Conn. Labor Education Center, 1982.

Schack, Justin M. "Why COPE Couldn't Cope: Organized Labor's Political Activities in Connecticut from the Fifties to Vietnam," Connecticut History. 39(Spring 2000) 1:39-63. Each state had a Committee on Political Education, an arm of the combined AFL-CIO. Connecticut's union members were registered to vote in double the national percent -- 90% as opposed to 45%. The state's labor leaders chose to direct their attention to larger social issues, and lacking a state anti-labor movement, were unable to mobilize the new suburbanizing laborers after the 1950's.

Schmitt, Dale J. “Labor in Early Connecticut.” Connecticut Review 7(April, 1973)2. The seventeenth century. Based on Schmitt’s dissertation. See below, under “Society and Daily Life.”

Wilson, Tracey M. "The 1911 Hartford Garment Workers Strike," CHS Bulletin 50 (Winter 1984) 1:23-47. This strike, partly successful, focused attention on women in the workforce, and inspired the General Assembly to consider legislation that would protect female workers -- as females and future mothers more than as workers. It also brought the ILGWC to the fore as a major force in Hartford's economy.