On Saturday March 14, 1885, workers at Finlay's Stores were told that they hourly rate would be cut to 20 cents an hour, down from twenty-five. They refused to work for less pay and the company replaced them with about fifty Swedes and Norwegians....

From the 1920s there existed a shanty town in Red Hook, largely populated by underemployed sailors and dockworkers.  With little money or hope some took to drinking a poisonous homemade brew called smoke .   In 1932, a number of smokies ,  those...