Labor Federation convention badge to JFK

The Massachusetts Federation of Labor was formed as the state branch of the American Federation of Labor in 1887.... One of the principle differences between the Knights of Labor and the AFL was that the Knights wanted all workers to be united regardless of trade, and the AFL felt that working people had more in common with workers of their same trade and therefore should be further united with those workers. The AFL promoted the creation of new unions for different trades and became the unifying group between the different unions and regional Central Labor Councils.

From http://www.massaflcio.org/1887-massachusetts-state-federation-labor-founded,-"labor-leader"-begins-publication

Bastian Company was founded in 1895 and was incorporated as Bastian Brothers Company initially operating as a jewelry store. Shortly after it’s founding, Bastian Brothers became one of the first firms in Rochester, New York to become a Union Shop and continues today to be a totally unionized firm. Within a short period of time, the firm became known for its custom recognition and award products and underwent a rapid expansion. Soon after moving into a larger facility, Bastian expanded its sales and marketing efforts to eventually cover the entire United States and today has numerous customers located outside the United States.

Since 1895, Bastian Company has been recognized internationally for its quality, craftsmanship, and integrity in the production of emblematic jewelry, lapel pins, medallions, belt buckles, paperweights, key tags, convention badges, police-security-firemen badges and insignia, and automotive decorative emblems.

Bastian Company’s die cutters (tool makers) can reproduce a concept into an embossing die that will provide the clarity, sharpness and definition of detail you expect in the finished product. In each and every step of the very labor intensive die striking, enameling, polishing, finishing and plating procedures our employees build integrity and quality into every Bastian Company product.

From http://www.bastiancompany.com/about.shtml

The objects below might not be considered in and of themselves significant enough to warrant presentation on this site, were they to have pertained to lesser figures than John F. Kennedy and some of his key aides.
But since the most important JFK objects are held by the JFK Library in Boston, Mass., USA, and considering the huge historic magnitude of JFK, "third-rate" objects significantly associated with him are arguably equivalent to first-rate objects significantly associated with lesser historical figures.

In the highly regarded book The 100: a ranking of the most influential persons in history by Michael H. Hart, JFK is ranked #80, solely because of his primary responsibility for the lauching of the American goverment's program to send men to the moon, which became a historic success in 1969.

Other aspects of Kennedy's career that warrant special attention to objects significantly associated with him include:
his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is widely regarded as one of the great occasions of calamity averted by skillful diplomacy, and as a model for the handling of such crises, and

his 1960 campaign for the U.S Presidency is considered the first such successful insurgent candidacy, in that never before had a candidate won a Presidential nomination of a major party (and thereafter the November election) without having previously been widely considered by party elders to be Presidential timber. This is to say, he was the first man to succeed in an essentially unilateral run for the Presidency, in his case via his unbroken string of victories in the 1960 Democratic Presidential Primaries, and his subsequent receipt of the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at that party's National Convention.

Previously, Presidential timber required a resume containing one of the following executive or quasi-executive qualifications:
Vice-President; General in the army; Secretary of State, War, or Commerce; Chairman of a major Congressional Committee; or Governor of a fairly major state.

The only exceptions to the above before Kennedy were Abe Lincoln and Warren G. Harding, the administration of the latter being so rocked with scandal that his Presidency has consistently been considered one of the worst in American history; his nomination on the tenth ballot of the 1920 Republican Convention resulted from a famous secret meeting of party elders in a "Smoke-filled Room".
As for Lincoln, his lack of executive or quasi-executive qualifications was all but inevitable for anyone seeking nomination and election as a Republican, since that party was much too new in 1860 for it to have had available the sort of "farm team" (of persons with such qualifications) possessed by most parties in American political history.