The Westmoreland County (Pa.) Coal Strike – known as the "Slovak strike" because some 70 percent of the 15,000 strikers were Slovakian immigrants – begins on this date and continues for nearly 16 months before ending in defeat. Sixteen miners and family members were killed during the strike - 1912

Women and children textile strikers beaten by Lawrence, Mass. police during a 63 day walkout protesting low wages and work speedups - 1912

Vigilantes beat IWW organizers for exercising free-speech rights, San Diego - 1912

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

American Federation of Labor charters a Mining Department - 1912

Unionists John T. and James B. McNamara were sentenced to 15 years and life, respectively, after confessing to dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during a drive to unionize the metal trades in the city. Twenty people died in the bombing. The newspaper was strongly conservative and anti-union - 1911

A Chicago "slugger," paid $50 by labor unions for every scab he "discouraged," described his job in an interview: "Oh, there ain't nothing to it. I gets my fifty, then I goes out and finds the guy they wanna have slugged, then I gives it to ‘im" - 1911

James Oppenheim’s poem “Bread and Roses” published in The American Magazine; the phrase was originated by state factory inspector Helen Todd around the issue of women's suffrage - 1911

New York City agrees to pay women school teachers a rate equal to that of men - 1911

First Workers’ Compensation law in U.S. enacted, in Wisconsin - 1911

More than 6,000 furniture workers go on strike in Grand Rapids, MI - 1911

128 convict miners, leased to a coal company under the state’s shameful convict lease system, are killed in an explosion at the Banner coal mine outside Birmingham, Ala. The miners were mostly African-Americans jailed for minor offenses - 1911