1933 Wisconsin milk strike

[4] Methods employed in the strikes were initially to simply not sell milk unless a previously agreed upon price of $1.50 per hundred pounds had been met.

[2] When the strikers realized they were grossly outnumbered and that some of their members were selling at a reduced price, they resorted to roadblocks to prevent milk deliveries to the manufacturers.

When they couldn't stop the deliveries, the strikers sometimes resorted to tainting the delivered milk with kerosene or oil, or in a few cases, throwing bombs at the creameries.

Tear gas was employed to disburse larger groups of strikers and in one instance guardsmen with fixed bayonets forced farmers from their position.

They were mainly confined to strike strongholds and centered on the area controlled by the Wisconsin Cooperative Milk Pool, led by Walter M. Singler, in the Fox Valley.

The first blood shed in the strike was reported to be near Appleton, Wisconsin, when milk convoy guards threw heavy objects like horse shoes at a group of 100 strikers.

In the Shawano County, the Journal Sentinel reported that 30 people were injured when the National Guardsmen, sworn in as deputies and charged with keeping the roads open against the pickets "engaged in a pitched battle" in front of a dairy plant.

"The strikers won the skirmish, dumping the milk and driving the deputies to cover by throwing back their own tear gas bombs," the Journal Sentinel reported on May 15, 1933.

[10] On May 18, a farmer in his 50s was killed when he fell or was pushed from the running board of a milk delivery truck after it left a picket road block between Saukville and Grafton in Ozaukee County.

[11] On May 19, the milk pool received a temporary peace with the state government in Madison to discuss options to end the strikes.