Good morning, Whitewater
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, today in 1911 was an important moment in Wisconsin’s labor movement:
“Italian working men, employed by Andrus Asphalt Company in Madison, went on strike and threatened to kill their foreman if they did not receive an increase in wages for laying pavement. The men demanded a 25-cent (a day) raise, from $1.75 to $2.00.”
(Emphasis added.)
I support the right of workers to strike, make demands, and quit to seek other employment. It’s not a free market if it’s not a free market in capital and labor. Still, it must say something about the frustration of the workers that they went on strike and threatened to kill their foreman.
It also suggests that the workers doubted that threatening to kill the foreman alone would get them what they wanted. If the workers were right about that, I wonder if that made the foreman realize his threats on his life, alone, were not enough to motivate the Andrus Asphalt Company?
There are no public meetings scheduled for today in our city.
The National Weather Service predicts a chance of thunderstorms and a high of 85 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts a stormy weather for the Great Lakes then turning fair. In all these weeks of flooding, a fixed, long-range forecast like that of the Farmers’ Almanac has been useless — it never mentions the risk, and even if it had, there would have been no specific and useful guidance for readers.