This collection is highly diverse. Here you’ll find 1,900 photographs, 3,700 prints, 230 posters, 190 banners and a hundred other items such as paintings, badges and historic objects. Also included are 200 brochures with a total of 6,000 pages of text. Everything comes from the collections of the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis [International Institute of Social History] in Amsterdam, one of the largest documentation and research centres for social history in the world.

Here the organized labour movement comes to life in words and pictures: the trade unions, the cooperatives and the political parties and groups, beginning with the Social-Democratic Confederation of 1881.There is also a great deal of material on the numerous committees and associations having to do with care for the poor and unemployed, ethics and free thinking, the temperance movement and anti-militarism.

The material

The photos show the meetings and parades held by political parties and organizations, such as the big May Day demonstrations and the demonstrations for universal suffrage. There are also numerous portraits of movement leaders.

The prints are taken from magazines such as De Notenkraker and De Amsterdammer and were made by artists who were famous in their day, such as Albert Hahn, Johan Braakensiek and Louis Raemaekers. Their drawings often had to do with the same events but from different points of view.

The posters are quite diverse, from text posters to splendid lithographs, and from notices about meetings to the first illustrated election posters from 1913.

Banners were the pride of every trade union. They were made of heavy velvet, were decorated with mottos and symbols and were carried along in parades.

The texts are taken from brochures. They were the main vehicle for disseminating points of view and carrying out fierce tactical debates within the movement. The most important writers, organizations and subjects from the period are represented here.

Finally, two reports of parliamentary inquiries are included: the investigation of working conditions in factories and workshops carried out in 1874 and the investigation of railway personnel of 1903.