Say “labor” and “Akron” and the likely response will be “rubber.” That’s as it should be, but in “Labor in Akron, 1825-1945” the historian John Tully reaches back far earlier, even as far back as the founding of the city.
The laborers who dug the Ohio & Erie Canal, mostly Irish immigrants seeking opportunity after a famine and cholera epidemic, were paid a pittance and vulnerable to rattlesnakes and diseases like malaria. There were a few unorganized strikes, but conditions did not improve.
Other early labor activities included the forming of a carpenters’ union in 1837 and a factory workers’ strike in 1845. Akron was important in women’s rights, with early suffrage efforts and the momentous 1851 “Ain’t I A Woman” speech by Sojourner Truth.