January 6, 1878 - Author-poet Carl Sandburg was born in a three-room cottage in Galesburg, Illinois. His working class upbringing was reflected often in writings such as the poem, "Working Girls." Each day they go to work, he wrote, "long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms / Each morning as I move through this river of young-woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and memories in their eyes of dances the night before . . ."

January 6, 1882 - The Toronto Labor Council voted to support equal pay for equal work.