On this day, 20 November 1816, the word ‘scab’, meaning ‘strikebreaker’, was used in print for the first time. One of the most important words in the working class vocabulary! On scabs, author Jack London famously wrote the following: “After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.“
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Pictured: strike supporters in New York, 1916 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1269118939939920/?type=3
(via trixclibrarian)
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