This newsletter reported the doings of the salesmen of Marchant Calculating Machine Company, particularly outstanding sales and exceeding quotas. Issues present date from October, 1927 to May, 1930 and include Numbers 11, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, and 34.
This lapel pin features the initials of two organizations that formed the United Farm Workers (UFW), a labor union founded for farmworkers in the United States. The acronym A.W.O.C. stands for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, composed primarily of Filipino migrant farmworkers. AWOC was led by the Filipino American labor organizer Larry Itliong, who later worked alongside Cesar Chavez as the assistant director of the UFW. The other acronym on the pin N.F.W.A. stands for the National Farm Workers Association, which was led by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez. In September 1965, the Filipino-led AWOC spearheaded a series of strikes against table grape growers in Delano, California. A week later, the NFWA, whose membership was primarily Mexican farmworkers, struck in solidarity with AWOC. In August 1966, AWOC and NFWA joined forces to fight against the exploitation of farmworkers, merging to create the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. This pin highlights the importance of cross-racial and cross-ethnic collaboration of Asian and Latinx organizers and farmworkers.
This bar of soap was sold at the El Monte company store. Shop operators forced workers to buy food and personal items from them at inflated prices. The soap was seized during a well-publicized 1995 sweatshop raid and is part of a larger Smithsonian collection of artifacts documenting apparel industry sweatshops, focusing on the El Monte operation.
On August 2, 1995, police officers raided a fenced seven-unit apartment complex in El Monte, California. They arrested eight operators of a clandestine garment sweatshop and freed 72 workers who were being forced to sew garments in virtual captivity. Smuggled from Thailand into the United States, the laborers’ plight brought a national spotlight to domestic sweatshop production and resulted in increased enforcement by federal and state labor agencies. The publicity of the El Monte raid also put added pressure on the apparel industry to reform its labor and business practices domestically and internationally.
