Industry relied on its laborers, who
worked in low-paying, unskilled
jobs & often unsafe factories.
What is illustrated in the cartoon below?
Exploitation of the workforce
Who is the workforce?
 Immigrants! 14 million of
them!

Contract Labor Act in 1864- employers
pay immigrants passage to U.S. in return
for labor up to a year

Farms struggling
poor people migrate
to cities. Urban growth!

Women & children– low wages, whole
families had to work
 Children as young as 5!
 20% boys under 15 & 10% are girls
 boys given preference to stay in
school
See page 244 for shifts in population &
employment data.

Working Conditions





12 hr days 6 or 7 days a week
States had 10 hr workdays, but did NOT enforce
Low pay
Danger! (1882– 675 workers killed per week!)
No sick time, vacation, workman’s comp.,
unemployment compensation
 1868 federal law grants govt. employees 8 hr
day, but private industry does NOT have to
comply
Could workers get govt.
assistance?
• NO!!!
• The popular theory of
Social Darwinism
held that poverty
resulted from
personal weakness.
Many thought offering
relief to the
unemployed would
cause idleness.
Faces of Labor
Children of the Poor, Jacob Riis, 1892Reformer- wrote exposing the impact of
factory work on children. Stated the
development of mind & body was stunted.
WAGES
• Most employers paid
a fixed amount for
each finished piece
produced–
piecework
• Employees worked
long hours at low
wages to earn more–
sweatshops
• Children –
30 cents/day(14 hr/day)
• Women --$270/year
• Men -- $500/year
(for comparison)
***In 1899, Carnegie made
$23 million dollars without
income tax!
Increasing Efficiency
• The Principles of Scientific Management,
Frederick Winslow Taylor, 1911
-time & motion studies; increase productivity
thereby increasing profits; broke tasks down
• Division of Labor- tasks broken down into
parts, workers perform same task repeatedly,
efficient BUT not joyous
• “hands” or “operatives” were interchangeable
parts in a vast impersonal machine
DANGER on the Job
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Noisy, loud, deafening
Lighting & ventilation poor
Faulty equipment
Careless training
Frequent fires, accidents
Grime from mines lead to disease, cancer
Fined for tardiness, talking or refusing to
do a task
Labor Unrest
1870-1900
Widening the Gap
• 1890, richest 9% own nearly 75% of national wealth
• The rich get richer, the poor get poorer
Robber Barons or Captains of Industry?
SOCIALISM
• Economic & political philosophy that favors
public instead of private control.
• Society at large should take charge of
national wealth
• Equal distribution
• Began 1830s, idealistic, utopian
• Most Americans opposed– threatening to
private property, free enterprise, individual
liberty, wealth & public order
Cartoon: Socialism
COMMUNISM
• Karl Marx & Frederick
Engels wrote
Communist Manifesto, 1848
• Radical, takes utopian
socialism farther
• denounces capitalism,
create a classless society
without private ownership
• Predicts workers
(proletariat) would rise up
& overthrow the govt.
The Rise of Labor Unions
Businesses Merge, Why Not Labor?
“Solidarity Forever!”
by Ralph Chapin (1915)
When the union's inspiration
through the workers‘ blood shall run,
There can be no power greater
anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker
than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong!
CHORUS:
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union
makes us strong!
National Labor Union
•
•
•
•
•
1866, Baltimore, William Sylvis
60,000 members
Made 8hr day legal for govt. work
Most excluded African Americans
Union failed following 1873 depression
Knights of Labor
• 1869, Philadelphia, Uriah Stephens
• Organized working women & men, skilled & unskilled,
into one union
• Farmers, factory workers, office workers
• African Americans were members too
• “An injury to one is the concern of all.”
• 1881- Terence Powderly pursues 8hr day, equal pay for
equal work, end child labor
• Preferred arbitration over strikes
• Forced Jay Gould RR to give up a wage cut
• Series of failed strikes and some violence follows
• By 1890, K of L disappears from national scene
Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor trade card
Notice the invitation
to prospective
Members!
American Federation of Labor
(AFL)
• 1886, Samuel Gompers
• Craft union; organizes only
skilled workers
• Women were NOT welcome;
believed their presence
brought wages down
• 1890-1915 increased wages
from $17.50/wk to $24/wk; 54
½ hrs/wk to 49 hrs/wk
• Collective bargaining, strikes
• Rally for “closed shops”—only
union workers
International Workers of the World
The Wobblies (IWW)
• 1905, William “Big Bill”
Haywood
• Chicago, 43 groups
opposed to AFL founded
this group
• focused on unskilled
workers
• Socialists- more govt.
control of business, equal
distribution of wealth
• Violence was justified to
overthrow capitalism
American Railway Union
(ARU)
IWW, Debs
• 1894, Eugene Debs
• Unskilled & skilled
workers
• Debs is ANTI strikes &
ANTI violence
• Protect wages & rights of
employees
• Debs arrested following
Pullman strike, 1894
• Becomes leader of
Socialist Party, runs for
president
Management vs. Labor
“Tools” of
Management
“Tools” of
Labor
 “scabs”
 boycotts
 P. R. campaign
 sympathy
demonstrations
 Pinkertons
 lockout
 blacklisting
 yellow-dog contracts:
won’t join union
 court injunctions
 open shop
 informational
picketing
 closed shops
 organized
strikes
 “wildcat” strikes
The Great Railroad Strike
of 1877
The Great Railroad Strike
•B&O RR announce a
of 1877
10% wage; increase cars
pulled by engines
•RR workers in WV strike
•Violence spreads to
Pittsburgh, Chicago,
St. Louis & others
•Pres. Hayes sends in
federal troops
•In Pittsburgh, soldiers
kill/wound rioters; 20,000
cause $5 million
in damages
THE VIOLENT ERA
of LABOR had begun!
Haymarket, Chicago
1886
• May 1, demonstration begins
“eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours
for what we will”
• May 3, police break up fight between strikers & scabs;
casualties result
• May 4, Haymarket Square- anarchists join demonstration
w/ strikers
• Bomb is thrown, kills police officer. Riot breaks out!
• Bomb thrower never found. 8 anarchists tried for
conspiracy to commit murder. 4 were hanged. One
commits suicide in jail.
• Gov. later pardons remaining 3– not enough evidence.
• K of L blamed for the Haymarket Riot (although
involvement never proven)
Haymarket Riot (1886)
McCormick Harvesting Machine Co.
Governor John Peter Altgeld
Homestead, Pennsylvania 1892
• Henry Frick cuts wages at
Carnegie Steel
• Union calls strike
• Frick calls in Pinkertons,
private police force, to break
strikes
• Result: violence, death
• Anarchist tries to assassinate
Frick
• Union calls off strike- bad PR
for unions
• Homestead reopens under
National Guard protection
Built in 1880
A
“Company
Town”:
Pullman,
IL
Pullman Cars
A Pullman porter
The Pullman Strike of 1894
Pullman Strike, 1894
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
ARU, Debs
½ employees laid off; other ½ wage cuts
Panic of 1893
Pullman bans alcohol
Employees can’t pay rent
Pullman refused arbitration—strike & boycotts followed
Peaceful until strikebreakers called in; Debs warns not to
interrupt delivery of mail
• Pres. Cleveland sends in federal troops (violation of
Sherman Anti-Trust Act)
• Strikers fired & blacklisted. Debs jailed.
President Grover Cleveland
If it takes the entire army and navy to
deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card
will be delivered!
Government Action
• Sherman Antitrust Act– used against labor
(said strikes interfere with interstate trade)
--Support for owners help keep union
membership low
--Nativism & prejudice towards
immigrants keeps membership low
The Rise & Decline of
Organized Labor
Right-to-Work States Today
Mother Jones:
“The Miner’s Angel”
 Mary Harris.
 Organizer for the
United Mine
Workers.
 Founded the Social
Democratic Party
in 1898.
 One of the
founding members
of the I. W. W. in
1905.
Women & Labor
• Mother Jones supported
strikers, daughter of Irish
unionist
• Led women to the scene to
prevent violence
• Children’s March (1903)– led
80 child laborers to President
Roosevelt’s home
• Pauline Newman
• organized garment workers at
16
• Strike in 1909—moderate
success
• Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (1911)Working conditions, locked doors
led to 145 dead
Owners acquitted; public outraged
New Laws!! – 54 hr/wk for women
& children; only 14 & older can
work