One of the largest protests in Connecticut history took place today in 1991, as tens of thousands of Connecticans gathered on the lawn of the State Capitol in Hartford to call for the repeal of the brand-new state income tax. 1991 was a tumultuous year in state politics; during the summer, legislators repeatedly clashed both…
Tag: work
September 24: Connecticut’s Whaling Industry Sets Sail For Extinction
In the 19th century, New London, Connecticut was one of the busiest whaling hubs in the entire world, outranked only by Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Whale oil was a crucial and versatile resource that played a huge role in powering the Industrial Revolution, serving as both fuel for lamps and as a lubricant…
September 15: Catastrophe at the Climax Fuse Company.
Today in 1905, an employee using a hot iron to clear fuse debris from a reeling machine touched off a muffled explosion in the main building of the Climax Fuse factory in Avon. Though the blast was barely heard 300 feet away, the sheets of flame it triggered instantly engulfed the factory, suffocating seven…
September 12: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Teenage Summer in Simsbury
Years before he became an internationally famous orator and civil rights leader, young Martin Luther King, Jr. worked a number of jobs to make ends meet for his family. During the summer of 1944, after he gained early admission to Morehouse College at the age of 15, he journeyed north from Georgia to the…
September 1: The Root of Connecticut’s Industrial Greatness
The largely unknown man at the center of Connecticut’s 19th century industrial greatness – Elisha King Root – died in Hartford today in 1865. Root’s machine tool genius first revolutionized axe production in Collinsville and then made the Colt Firearms Company a worldwide icon of precision manufacturing. Born in western Massachusetts in 1808, Root…
August 16: The Bar Unbarred — Connecticut’s First Woman Lawyer
Today in 1843, Mary Hall was born in Marlborough, Connecticut. Growing up on a farm in antebellum America, when high Victorian culture placed an increasingly stringent emphasis on female domesticity, made her perhaps one of the most unlikely candidates to defy gender norms and become the first woman in Connecticut to be admitted to…
August 7: Connecticut Grinds to an Angry Halt
Today in 1919, Connecticut companies throughout the state were effectively shuttered as thousands of workers across a multitude of different industries joined in a massive regional strike that, within the course of a week, spread from Maine to New York and brought New England commerce to a screeching halt. Connecticut, like many other states…
August 5: The Statue of Liberty’s Connecticut Cornerstone
While scores of Connecticut men and women have left an indelible mark on American history, sometimes it’s easy to forget that objects from Connecticut can have their own stories of national significance, too. In fact, some of the most monumental objects in Connecticut history can be traced to a single point of origin: a…
May 30: 12,000 Bridgeport Workers Mobilize to Support Striking Trolleymen
Today in 1922, Bridgeport’s Central Labor Union issued a formal call to all its 12,000 members to support the striking trolleymen who worked for the Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company, triggering months of labor unrest in one of Connecticut’s largest cities. The Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company was the primary operator of electric trains,…
May 27: Organizing the Fight Against a Deadly Enemy
From the earliest days of Connecticut history, fire posed one of the greatest mortal dangers to Connecticut residents — especially to the English settlers whose homes, barns, fences, and other structures were made of timber and often clustered closely together. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, before the advent of portable water pumps,…
April 16: Planting The Seeds of A Powerful Agricultural Movement
As the United States grew in size and population in the 19th century, formal social groups and fraternal societies of all kinds sprang up whose missions encompassed lofty themes of patriotism, industry, fellowship, and civic service. The National Grange of Patrons of Husbandry was one such organization, founded in 1867 as a community organization for…
March 26: The First State to Make the Minimum Wage Over $10 an Hour
On March 26, 2014, Connecticut became the first state in the country to pass legislation setting its minimum wage above $10 an hour. The new law mandated slight increases, rolled out over three years, that would raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by the start of 2017, increasing the paychecks of…