An excerpt from the good old days pre-unions. One that Congress seems dying to return to

"Their protest ended quickly and peacefully, seeming to be little more than a brief outburst of frustration, but the following spring came the storm. When lumberyard owners cut the wages of common laborers from $1.50 to $1.25 a day, the Bohemians reacted to the blow as a community. Thousands of lumber shovers left the yards en masse. When they were replaced by unemployed Irish workers from across the river, the strikers attacked the interlopers, and street warfare raged through the Southwest Side until wagonloads of police finally arrived and drove the Czechs off the streets.

"Medill's Tribune devoted three days of coverage to the 'serious troubles in the Bohemian lumber district,' but few of its readers would have paid any attention to the riots in a depressing river district no Americans visited other than salesmen, vessel men and policemen... When these men struck, they always failed and were forced to return to work for less pay than they were getting before they went out. 'There were ten pairs of hands ready and willing to take the place of every single pair of hands that quit,' the reported noted. With their families on the edge of starvation, the workmen were being driven to starvation."  -- From James Green's book Death In The Haymarket. Late 1870's Chicago.