A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis
Happy Juneteenth tomorrow, USA!
A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis is the fifth nonfiction book I've read in 2026 putting me squarely at the halfway point of my overall 10 nonfiction goal. This blog post is slightly delayed - I read and finished this back in May, but was drowning in end-of-the-school-year shenanigans. I’ve read a whole other book between then and now.
First off, the title is a bit of a misnomer as not all of these are strikes. All of them have strikes, but it's more an overview of different phases of the American labor movement. I guess 10 Labor Movements doesn't roll off the tongue as well.
Rather than delving into a single movement and examining it in greater detail, the book instead takes a wider lens. It uses broad strokes to illustrate a pattern that emerges as you zoom out and see workers rights movements across time. The movements as constructed within the book fall into a cyclical pattern you can practically set your watch to.
- Workers are treated like garbage. Early on, this is primarily driven by violence such as a 72 hour work week, unsafe working conditions, lack of a living wage, dependence on company dollars and stores, and so on. Later on, these struggles are for worker protections, non-discrimination, a living wage (again), benefits, and so on.
- The workers organize. The factory owners crack down and spin the workers' efforts as detrimental to the US economy while pocketing greater and greater profits. Some workers may be killed by state militias, depending on the time period, or arrested.
- Labor wins a few small victories, but the movement fractures. Sometimes this is because of some workers being given greater treatment or the union leaders themselves selling out. Sometimes this is because of white nationalism or patriarchy.
- The extraction class rolls back some of those protections, piecemeal, over the course of months or years as the pendulum swings. They gets wealthier off of the working class.
This same pattern occurs over, and over, and over again. Some of the labor gains remain across iterations, but as the industries change and evolve the battles begin anew.
Another consideration is the role of the government. The labor movements only work when there are people who believe in labor rights in the government. Remember, the United States often drifts toward oligarchy as the people who hold office are paid by corporate elites.
Thus, there is little incentive for government officials to stand with labor which is both consistently unpopular (seen as radical, un-Christian or communist) and often can't pay. It highlights the sheer integrity of those people who swim against the stream.
Loomis examines these labor movements from multiple angles, covering the violent and the nonviolent, and when unions become stooges for the bosses. It drives home the point that living in a society for the people requires constant vigilance against corruption.
Resistance during slavery
The first 'strike' of the book is also the most interesting because it draws attention to framing by Niagara Movement writer and thinker W. E. B. DuBois: that the mass of unorganized resistance by enslaved people during the civil war through defecting to Union lines, stalling on work, and so on constituted a general strike. This was published in DuBois’ Black Reconstruction, which you can read here.
I’ve known about the role enslaved people played in their own emancipation in the United States, but the framing was new to me. This is absurd to me because this publication has been around long enough to go into the public domain, yet this is my first exposure to this framing. Shows why it’s important to always keep learning.
Final thoughts
The history of the labor movement in the United States has been one of many, many losses. Corporate interests have their talons deep in the US, including the highest offices of government. However, when people are united hand in hand, they can hold power accountable. Just because the struggle may seem Sisyphean doesn’t mean it is, which feels like the point Loomis was trying to make.
Thank you for reading if you made it this far~