Sung by a swelling chorus of lovely ladies (and a few guys) of all colors, shapes and sizes, it was the anthem of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

Airing in the 1970s, as American unions began to confront the inexorable drain of jobs to cheap foreign labor markets, the song ringingly implored us to look for the union label when shopping for clothes (“When you are buying a coat, dress or blouse”). Seeing these earnest women, thinking of them at their sewing machines, made some of us race to the closet and check our clothes for that ILGWU imprimatur. (“It says we’re able to make it in the USA.”)

After all, these were ladies who could put in a hard day’s work and then come home and bake one hell of a pie.  They were the daughters of Rosie the Riveter. Owning the clothes they made just seemed, well, righteous.

With all the talk abut union-busting and collective bargaining in the controversy over public employee unions, those union ladies of the ILGWU came to mind when I was looking for some socks the other day—even though socks weren’t mentioned in the song.  Hunting for warmth in this winter of our discontent, I found it difficult to find a pair of socks that were made in America, just as we all know it is increasingly challenging to locate other American-made articles of clothing, household products, electronics or sports equipment. This, of course, is not news. It’s globalization baby!  (Blaming this problem entirely on the unions, as many Americans do, is a simplistic and convenient misrepresentation of a much more complex issue.)

I have never been one to paste a “Buy American—The Job You Save May Be Your Own” bumper sticker on my cars (which for the most part, I must add, have been foreign-made). But in the past few years, my wife and I have been making a conscious decision to “Buy Local.” That means shopping at the local hardware store, sporting goods store and especially the farmers market near our Vermont home, where we feel like we are not only getting fresher produce but also participating in a community. We like to buy things from our neighbors. Even better if they make or grow them.

I struck gold with my sock problem when I finally found some wonderful Merino socks that were not only made in America, but also made in Vermont! They weren’t cheap but they were on special—“Buy 3 Get 1 Free”—so I took four pair. And yes, I love my Darn Tough socks.

But here’s the point. Whether it is socks or solar panels, the task of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base is obviously one key to the problem of unemployment and low-wage jobs facing the country. It would be incredibly naïve to think that buying four pairs of locally produced socks will make a big difference. But small acts add up to movements. In the past few months, as my wife and I have become far more label-conscious, we’ve put down many an item that was foreign-made, either doing without or expanding the search.

Lately, with a little effort –and some gentle nudging to merchants to show me something made in America—I’ve found some small prizes: a nice pair of cycling shorts made in High Point, N.C.; a road bike built in Pennsylvania; sneakers still turned out in an American plant.

Admittedly, some concessions are necessary –unless you want to go the Gandhi route and wear homespun. But I don’t do loincloths very well.

Now, as a political statement, buying home- grown socks doesn’t quite rank with joining the March on Washington or going on a hunger strike for peace. It’s one small step. But maybe it is the first step that begins a long journey —and in comfortable socks!

So back to those singing ladies –and a final point on labor history and the current headlines. The International Ladies Garment Worker Union was born in 1900, in the midst of the often-violent period of early 20th century labor organizing when brutal working conditions and child labor were the norm in America’s mines and factories. One of the companies the union attempted to organize was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, which employed many poor and mostly immigrant women. A walkout against the firm in 1909 helped strengthen the union’s rolls and led to a union victory in 1910. But the Triangle Shirtwaist Company –which would chain its doors shut to control its workers— earned infamy when a fire broke out on March 25, 1911 and 146 workers, most of them young women, were trapped in the flaming building and died, some leaping to their deaths. The tragedy helped galvanize the trade union movement and especially the ILGWU.

As the 100th anniversary of that dreadful event approaches, it is worth remembering that American prosperity was built on the sweat, tears and blood of working men and women. It is a piece of history that should be part of any discussion of the future of workers’ unions and their rights.

Cornell University’s Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation offers a web exhibit on the Triangle Factory Fire;

And last night, February 28, 2011, the American Experience on PBS aired a documentary film about the tragedy and the period.

I also discuss labor history in Don’t Know Much About History.

The Homestead Strike was a labor lockout and strike that began in late June 1892 in the town of Homestead, near Pittsburgh, at the Carnegie Steel Works.Owned by Andrew Carnegie, the plant was managed by Henry Frick, a Pittsburgh industrialist who made his fortune producing coke needed for steelmaking. The strike was organized by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, an early trade union, which had some success in organizing workers and negotiating contracts with other steel factories.

During a severe economic downturn, Frick and Carnegie determined to break the union. Carnegie left the country and Frick was given control of the union-busting effort. He surrounded the plant with a 12-foot high fence, three miles long, and equipped with guard towers and sniper posts from which guns could be fired. The strikers renamed the plant “Fort Frick.” Frick then brought in a private army of Pinkerton Detectives, often used in that time as strikebreakers.

When hundreds of Pinkerton men, armed with Winchester rifles, were moved toward the factory on river barges in the middle of the night, striking union members raced from house to house –in Paul Revere fashion– raising an alarm. The strikers attacked the barges with burning oil and dynamite. And on July 6, a pitched gun battle raged for more than twelve hours between the Pinkertons and strikers. When it was over, three Pinkerton men and seven to nine workers lay dead or mortally wounded.

Pennsylvania’s governor called out the state militia to put down the Homestead strike. The soldiers took over the plant, and strikebreaking workers were shipped in by railroad car. The strike was crushed, and with it, the Amalgamated Association collapsed. Carnegie and Frick slashed wages, instituted a 12-hour workday and fired hundreds of workers. Union members were blacklisted and unable to return to work.

In a bizarre aftermath to the strike, anarchist Alexander Berkman tried to assassinate Frick in revenge for the dead steelworkers. Berkman had plotted this attack with his lover, Emma Goldman. (In her memoirs, Goldman wrote of an unsuccessful attempt at prostitution to earn money to fund their plan.) A few weeks after the strike began, on July 23, 1892, Berkman shot Frick, but only wounded the businessman. Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison and served 14. There was no evidence to connect Emma Goldman to the plot and she went on to become a noted speaker, writer and publisher. She was jailed for opposing the draft during World War I and the government later deported her and Berkman to Russia during the first “Red Scare” in 1919.

Frick, an avid art collector (and named in April 2009 by financial network CNBC as one of the “Worst American CEOs of All Time”), later moved to New York where he built a Fifth Avenue home occupying a full city block to house his art collection. (The home is now the Frick Collection http://www.frick.org/information/index.htm).

Carnegie later sold his steel business to J.P. Morgan, who told the Scottish-born, poor-boy-turned-industrialist that he was now “the richest man in the world.”

Steelworkers were left without a union until the 1930s.  Most labor laws protecting workers were not enacted until the 1930s. (A monument to the dead steelworkers was erected in 1941.)

Here is a link to a PBS documentary about Andrew Carnegie, including a history of the Homestead Strike: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/sfeature/mh_horror.html