Labor unions were fighting out fierce legislative battle with employers to fix what they saw as unfair practices. Employers, for their part, concerned that labor strikes could ruin their business, used every combat tactic they could, from spying on the unions to bringing in strikebreakers. Many small unions could not survive in those conditions, especially after the Great Depression made the labor market even tougher. Those that did, united to survive.

On this day, May 22, in 1942, two of the larger surviving unions, Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers and Steel Workers Organizing Committee merged to form United Steelworkers, which today is the largest industrial trade union in the U.S.

Union strikes in the early part of the century were not always settled peacefully. For example, one strike at a Carnegie steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania was met by detectives-guards by from the Pinkerton Detective Agency as well their hired goons. The two sides clashed in a small battle one day in July on 1892, which left many on both sides wounded.