On this day in 1898, the Battle of Virden began when armed members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) surrounded a train full of strikebreakers and exchanged fire with company guards. 13 people were killed, dozens more wounded.
After a local chapter of the UMW began striking at a mine in Virden, Illinois, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company hired black strikebreakers from Birmingham, Alabama and shipped them to Virden by train.
The company hired armed detectives or security guards to accompany the strikebreakers, and an armed conflict broke out when armed miners surrounded the train as it arrived in town. A total of four detectives and seven striking mine workers were killed, with five guards, thirty miners, and an unrecorded number of strikebreakers wounded.
After this incident, Illinois Governor John Tanner ordered the National Guard to prevent any more strikebreakers from coming into the state by force. The next month, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company relented and allowed the unionization of its workers.
"When the last call comes for me to take my ο¬nal rest, will the miners see that I get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden, Illinois...They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America."
Mother Jones
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I mean unless you're having an extremely small amount of ice cream and cake isn't this fairly uncontroversial?
Might not be controversial but it's almost certainly wrong. Alcohol is an outright poison at any amount. Sugar might cause diabetes and high cholesterol intake will contribute to heart and circulatory disease, but it isn't inherently poisonous and does not cause the wide range of harms that alcohol does.
I mean, that's not really meaningful to say alcohol is a poison at any amount - whether something is a poison or not is an intrinsic property. By this logic even a nanoliter of ethanol once in your life is worse than a lifetime of eating nothing but cake.
And FWIW high cholesterol, diabetes, heart and circulatory disease do cause a wide range of harms with a substantial body count.