Displaying all 5 Episode of The Year That Was with the tag “labor”.
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Flu Fences and Chin Sails: Answering New Questions about the Spanish Flu
May 26th, 2020 | Season 1 | 55 mins 28 secs
1919, african-american history, american history, labor, medicine, red scare, science, season 1, spanish flu
Living through the COVID-19 pandemic raises all sorts of new questions about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919. This episode seeks to answer those questions. We look at the multiple waves of the flu, popular home remedies, who went to the hospital and who stayed home, how the federal government responded to the outbreak, the effect on the economy, resistance to face masks, and how the flu shaped the Roaring Twenties.
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Say It Ain't So: The Black Sox Scandal and Baseball in 1919
May 5th, 2020 | Season 1 | 59 mins 48 secs
1919, american history, baseball, labor, season1, spanish flu, world war i
Baseball was the only truly national American sport in 1919, loved by fans across the United States. But the mood among players was grim--team owners kept salaries artificially low. When the Chicago White Sox won their league championship, the temptation to accept hard cash from gamblers to deliberately lose the World Series was irresistible. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
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Reign of Terror: The First Red Scare
December 19th, 2019 | Season 1 | 1 hr 1 min
1919, american history, bolsheviks, labor, radicals, red scare, reds, season1, wobblies
Americans felt under attack in 1919 as a series of riots, strikes, disasters, and bombings hit the country. After radicals attempted to blow up the house of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, he decided enough was enough. It was time to stop the Red Menace using any means possible. But would Americans tolerate the loss of their civil liberties in the pursuit of Bolsheviks?
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Pie in the Sky: The Wobblies and the Fight for Labor
December 10th, 2019 | Season 1 | 58 mins 56 secs
1919, american history, i.w.w., labor, season 1, wobblies
The I.W.W. was a tough, militant, radical union, and its very existence terrified business owners, factory bosses, and the entire U.S. government. Since its founding, the law had been out to get the Wobblies. In 1919, as a record number of Americans went on strike for better wages and working conditions, would the union be able to help them? Would the union even survive?
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Send All Available Personnel: The United States and the Great Molasses Flood
November 26th, 2019 | Season 1 | 59 mins 19 secs
1919, american history, labor, molasses flood, season 1
The Purity Distilling Company molasses tank dominated the North End of Boston, standing 50 feet tall over the surrounding tenements. Residents of the area were accustomed to the sight of tank oozing syrup from its seams and making strange rumbling noises from its depths. And one day in January 1919, life changed forever for Bostonians when the walls of the tank suddenly, inexplicably failed. Was it negligence? Or a vicious attack by anarchists?