Public repository of the Race, Citizenship, and Labour in the US (RCLinUS) project in historical sociology.
Dr. Liliana Riga (University of Edinburgh).
Yuji Shimohira-Calvo (University of Edinburgh).
This on-going project curates an original, large-scale and rare historical data set on every labour strike and lockout occurring in the United States between 1881 and 1905, as detailed in four extensive reports published by the Commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor (1881-1886, 1887-1894, 1894-1900, 1901-1905). These data are not currently available in the UK or in Europe. There is no existing publically available electronic resource of these data, however it will be made publically accessible in due course.
The data allow us to intersectionally explore:
- race/ethnicity,
- naturalization/citizenship status,
- sector of the economy or industry,
- detailed geographical dispersion of strikes over time,
- a proxy measure for strike repression through number of (new) workers before/after the strike or lockout.
These data are complemented with data on underlying racial/ethnic composition at the state level, which we derive from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and the Millennial Edition of Historical Statistics of the United States.
Our main data come from four different reports emanating from the Department of Labor of the US. These reports are the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Labor:
- Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1887): strikes and lockouts from January 1, 1881 to December 31, 1886 (6 years).
- Tenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1894): strikes and lockouts from January 1, 1887 to June 30, 1894 (7 1/2 years).
- Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1901): strikes and lockouts from July 1, 1894 to December 31, 1900 (6 1/2 years).
- Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1906): strikes and lockouts from January 1, 1901 to December 31, 1905 (5 years).
In total, these four volumes report on:
| Year | Strikes | Lockouts |
|---|---|---|
| 1881 | 471 | 6 |
| 1882 | 454 | 22 |
| 1883 | 478 | 28 |
| 1884 | 443 | 42 |
| 1885 | 645 | 50 |
| 1886 | 1,432 | 140 |
| 1887 | 1,436 | 67 |
| 1888 | 906 | 40 |
| 1889 | 1,075 | 36 |
| 1890 | 1,833 | 64 |
| 1891 | 1,717 | 69 |
| 1892 | 1,298 | 61 |
| 1893 | 1,305 | 70 |
| 1894 | 1,349 | 55 |
| 1895 | 1,215 | 40 |
| 1896 | 1,026 | 40 |
| 1897 | 1,078 | 32 |
| 1898 | 1,056 | 42 |
| 1899 | 1,797 | 41 |
| 1900 | 1,779 | 60 |
| 1901 | 2,924 | 88 |
| 1902 | 3,162 | 78 |
| 1903 | 3,494 | 154 |
| 1904 | 2,307 | 112 |
| 1905 | 2,077 | 109 |
| Total | 36,757 | 1,546 |
The public repository of the ALRinUS project is licensed under the MIT License. Please refer to LICENSE.md for more details.