Fannie Never Flinched: One Woman’s Courage in the Struggle for American Labor Union Rights by Mary Cronk Farrell

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fannie Never Flinched: One Woman’s Courage in the Struggle for American Labor Union Rights by Mary Cronk Farrell Elizabeth Bush Farrell, Mary Cronk Fannie Never Flinched: One Woman’s Courage in the Struggle for American Labor Union Rights. Abrams, 2016 44p illus. with photographs ISBN 978-1-4197-1884-7 $19.99 R Gr. 5-7 A widow with four children to raise, Fannie Sellins had few career opportunities in 1897 St. Louis, Missouri. She joined the ranks of other overworked, underpaid, and unprotected women working at Marx & Haas Clothing Co., locked into the workplace at 7:15 a.m. for a ten-to-fourteen hour day. It was there that Sellins found her true calling—as union organizer and then president of the local United Garment Workers of America, and ultimately as a national labor activist. In 1919, her efforts cost her her life when she was gunned down by sheriff’s deputies during a miners’ strike in Natrona, Pennsylvania. Since little is known of Sellins’ personal life, Farrell focuses more on deplorable working conditions prior to the 1935 Wagner Act, which granted employees the right to organize, and the labor actions in which Sellins played a role. The result is an overview of brutal confrontations between workers and corporations at the turn of the last century, with Sellins representing the fate of so many activists who were regarded as dangerous rabble-rousers. Photographs (many of which are scenes typical of the period rather than specific to Sellins’ story) convey the distressed working and living conditions of the laborers Sellins struggled to organize. Over a quarter of the total page count is devoted to end matter—including an author’s note, glossary, a copiously annotated timeline of events in the labor struggle, notes, sources, suggestions for further reading, index—making this a useful resource for students researching the violent era of American labor history. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois