The Right to Work

"At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence." -Ray Stannard Baker, The Right to Work(1903) The Right to Work: The Story of the Non-Striking Miners (1903) originated as an article in which Ray Stannard Baker reported the abuse that strikebreakers received during the miners' strike of 1903. To expose the effects of the strikes on the lives of miners who did not participate in strikes Baker interviewed the unemployed and poor in Chicago, using actual experiences and quotes from people who lived through the Industrial Revolution to explain the crucial impact it had on society.