These pictures of the Minneapolis truck driver's strike, typical of disorders flaring up in various cities,

show a spirit of lawlessness which has no place in America.

5,000 are in the milling mob trying to prevent trucks from delivering needed food to the city. A strong guard of police and distribution of nightsticks to citizen deputies

fails to check the crowd which closes in in an ugly move.

Outnumbering the police 10 to 1, they attack in gangs.

The actual beginning of hand-to-hand fighting in which one deputy was beaten to death and scores were injured.

The episode's begun.

I'm Andy.

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So let's get started talking about the episode, some context about why it's good to talk about this chapter in U.S. labor history today. Because, of course, 1994 marks a high point in the class struggle.

Sort of the normal periodization is you get this,

these ways of class struggle between like 1875 and 1893 and in this period of quiescence.

And then the return of kind of large scale industrial strikes and unionism with the IWW

and a surge in the AFL in the 1910s and that period of quiescence in the 20s.

And then with the depression, you get this large-scale return of unionism that surpassed anything

before.

And 1934 is not the high watermark of it, but it's the high point of militancy that the U.S.

had not seen since the labor insurrections of the late 19th century.

And a prelude to a really massive strike wave, the first of two in 1936 and seven, leading the creation of

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