[Dictators on the Skids (in 1973), Dockworkers Say No to Japan
(1938), Free Speech Is the Future (1928), Not Only a Crook, but a Liar
Too (1973), Three Cheers for Yellow Fever (1803), Crime Doesnt Pay
(1873), Measuring Time Pays Off (1888)]
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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, NOV. 14–20  
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_ Dictators on the Skids (in 1973), Dockworkers Say No to Japan
(1938), Free Speech Is the Future (1928), Not Only a Crook, but a Liar
Too (1973), Three Cheers for Yellow Fever (1803), Crime Doesn't Pay
(1873), Measuring Time Pays Off (1888) _

"Down with the junta!",

 

_Student Strike Puts Dictators on the Skids_
50 years ago, on November 14, 1973, hundreds of students at the
prestigious Athens Polytechnic University went on strike and began an
occupation of their campus to protest the repressive policies of the
right-wing military junta that had ruled Greece for more than six
years. The strike and the brutal way the Army suppressed it were
crucial developments in the growth of the movement that brought the
military regime to an end nine months later. 

The day after the students took the campus over, they set up a
powerful radio transmitter, over which they repeatedly urged all Greek
citizens to help bring an end to the junta. On November 17, the Army
used battle tanks to break into the campus, shut the transmitter down,
and put an end to the strike. In the course of retaking the campus,
the Army killed at least 24 protesters; the number of the dead was
undoubtedly greater, but the Army made it impossible for anyone to
learn what the true number was. The junta had been widely unpopular
ever since it toppled a democratically elected government in 1967, but
the student strikers and their short-lived radio station galvanized
the opposition, which never let up until it achieved success on July
24, 1974.
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_Dockworkers' Strike Against Japan's War Machine_
85 years ago, on November 15, 1938, Australian dockworkers and their
union took the bold and potentially illegal step of going on strike
and thereby preventing a large shipment of pig iron (an essential raw
material for making steel) from being loaded onto a freighter that was
bound for the Japan Steel Works in Kobe. The workers' action was
inspired by news reports of horrific war crimes committed by the
Japanese Army in China, and also by the growing realization that Japan
was likely to declare war on Australia before long. The strike action,
which continued for more than 10 weeks, had the support from almost
all sections of the Australian population, which sent large quantities
of food and other supplies to the incomeless strikers. Almost the only
opposition to the strike came from the right-wing Australian
government, which accused the union of usurping the government's
responsibility to dictate foreign policy, and threatened to prosecute
the strikers for violating federal law.
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_Free Speech Is the Future_
95 years ago, on November 16, 1928, Fiorello LaGuardia,who was then a
member of Congress, delivered a spirited attack on the backwardness of
U.S.  labor law at a meeting of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science. What he said then closely anticipated federal
legislation that he would co-sponsor in 1932, known as the
Norris-LaGuardia Act (the bill's other sponsor was Senator George
Norris of Nebraska). The main target of LaGuardia's speech was the
federal court system, which, until passage of the Norris-LaGuardia act
demonstrated its hostility to organized labor by abusing the power of
injunction to prevent unions from exercising the basic right of free
speech in connection with job actions. As LaGuardia put in his speech,
"If the future of our Republic depends on the suppression of free
speech, there is no future. The right to criticize public officials is
not only wholesome, but necessary in a republic. It is possible by
brute force to suppress opinion, but such forces cannot survive.
Nowhere has Government succeeded when brute force is used against the
right of free speech." Less than four years later, Congress passed and
President Hoover signed the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which established
the legal principle that federal courts did not have the power to
issue injunctions against union activities or speech in non-violent
strikes. [link removed] 

_Not Only a Crook, but a Liar Too_
50 years ago, on November 17, 1973, Richard Nixon -- the only U.S.
president so crooked that he stayed out of jail only because his
hand-picked Vice-President pardoned him upon becoming President --
stood before 400 newspaper editors and declared, "I am not a crook."
Less than nine months later, Nixon's lies caught up to him and he
became the only U.S. President to resign.
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_Three Cheers for Yellow Fever_
220 years ago, on November 18, 1803, Napoleon's plan to take Haiti by
force and restore it to the French Empire crashed and burned when
Haiti's revolutionary army decisively defeated a large French invasion
force at the Battle of Vertières in northern Haiti. The Haitian Army
deserves all possible credit for repelling the French, but they had an
unexpected ally, a yellow fever epidemic that killed about 23,000
French troops, or 75 percent of the invasion Army. 

Perhaps an even bigger beneficiary of the French defeat than the
people of Haiti were the people of the United States.  It had been
Napoleon's firm (but secret) intention to take over Haiti and then
invade North America through Louisiana, which was then owned by
France. From Louisiana it would have been easy for Napoleon to use his
large and well-equipped army to establish firm military control over
the Mississippi River valley. Given the small size of the U.S. Army at
the time and the fact that almost all its forces were hundreds of
miles from Napoleon's objective, the chances were excellent that the
infant U.S. government would have faced a dire situation, hemmed in by
as many as thirty-thousand French troops to the west and many
thousands of British troops to the north. Had it not been for the
yellow-fever mosquito, the history of both Haiti and the U.S. might
have been enormously different.
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_Another Political Crook Faces Justice _
150 years ago, on November 19, 1873, corrupt political "Boss" William
Tweed's 15-year career of running one of the most crooked imaginable
political machines was scotched when he was convicted by a New York
jury of stealing as much as $200 million of taxpayer dollars, an
amount that would be the equivalent of $5 billion today.
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_Measuring Time Pays Off_
135 years ago, on November 20, 1888, the first time-clock was
patented. Employers loved it. Most workers, not so much. The
oddly-named time-clock (what is a clock that is NOT a time-clock?)
automated the process of recording a worker's time of arrival, and
departure, from work.  Before the time-clock's invention, an employer
had to pay someone to keep track of the same information. The
time-clock eliminated the need for a timekeeper, which is an excellent
example of what automation does. Time-clocks were in such demand that
the first company to produce them was an enormous success. So
successful that it eventually morphed into IBM.
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* Greek junta
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* student strike
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* Richard Nixon
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* Yellow Fever
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* William Tweed
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* timekeeping
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