As a people we like to mark the anniversaries of important events in our lives. This is true for nations, individuals, corporations, and political groups.
The labor movement has been mostly left out of this tradition. This is my effort to change that. For instance, this Wednesday is the 160th Birthday of Samuel Gompers, founder of the AFL.

For this essay I would like to concentrate of events, such as this Tuesday is the anniversary of the very first worker's compensation agreement.

John Montgomery Ward was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964. He debuted with the Providence Grays on July 15, 1878, as a pitcher. He won 164 career games with a 2.15 ERA. He threw the second perfect game in baseball history.
When an injury ended his pitching career in 1884, he learned to throw with his other arm and became a shortstop and second baseman. He went on to collect over 2,100 hits and steal 540 bases, including 111 in just one season.
He played on two pennant winning New York Giants teams, and managed the team for two other seasons. No other player in the history of baseball has won over 100 games as a pitcher and also collected over 2,000 hits.
For all these reasons he deserves to be remembered.

However, these accomplishments were nothing in comparison to the real legacy that defined him as a person and left its mark on baseball.

"I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."
- Joe Hill's last written words

Every successful popular movement has its legendary, or near legendary, characters. People, or groups, who seemed bigger than life, and in the end must be sacrificed to the cause. The civil rights movement had Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. The American Revolution had Nathan Hale.

For the labor movement the group that fit that role was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). While the roll-call of the IWW is filled with legendary characters, far more than can be written in anything less than a book, one character stands out above them all - Joe Hill.

"Terrors Reign, The Streets of Chicago Given Over to Howling Mobs of Thieves and Cutthroats."
-Chicago Times headline, 1877

130 years ago America was a different place. Labor unions were small in number and relatively powerless, the federal government was immensely corrupt, and the presidential election had just been openly rigged.
Hmmm. OK. Maybe America wasn't different from today's world after all. But it was a great deal different from the America of most of that 130 years.