James Francis Byrnes. © Archive Photos, Inc. Reproduced by permission.

United States 1936

Synopsis

In 1936 Congress enacted the Byrnes Act, also known as the Antistrikebreaker Law, which was authored by Senator James Francis Byrnes of South Carolina. The act made it a federal felony to willfully transport strikebreakers across state lines for the purpose of obstructing or interfering by force or threats with peaceful picketing by employees during any labor controversy affecting wages, hours, or conditions of labor, or the exercise by employees of any of the rights of self-organization or collective bargaining. The legislation responded to over a half century of industrial violence that had been fueled in part by management's persistent use of armed mercenaries to infiltrate, intimidate, threaten, and use violence against laborers to prevent or to break labor strikes.

Timeline

• 1921: As the Allied Reparations Commission calls for payments of 132 billion gold marks, inflation in...