The Plight of the Industrial Worker
The story of the labor movement is intertwined with the story of immigration in
the history of the United States. Immigration picked up just as a demand for labor
increased in growing industries. These two dynamics sound as if they should have
marched together, fife and drum, alongside the flag-bearing American Dream, but labor
strife led to deep dissatisfaction as the 19th century unfolded. Immigrants swelled
American cities. 87% of the urban work force of Chicago consisted of immigrants.
Detroit and Milwaukee workers were 84% immigrant. Cleveland and New York City
came in at 80%. Difficulty in forging a united labor movement resulted from the ethnic,
language, and religious barriers created by the variety of homelands from whence urban
industrial workers came. This diversity resulting in disunity is only one of the hurdles
organized labor had to leap in order to become an accepted institution in American life.
The first attempt at widespread organization of labor immediately reveals key
themes. Ira Stewart, a Boston machinist, organized the National Labor Union which
should make an easy name to remember for the first attempt at a national labor union.
Stewart and his compatriots wanted an 8-hour work day. Their willingness to push for
this concession was answered by the federal government which instituted an 8-hour day
for federal employees in 1868. Watch for this leadership to continue as the labor
movement gets rolling, but also keep in mind that if federal employees had reduced
hours, more workers would have to be hired to accomplish the same productivity, so
opportunities for graft provided an incentive. Don’t forget that the labor movement
originated during the Gilded Age.
Another key dynamic is revealed in that the National Labor Union enjoyed a
membership of 640,000 by 1868, but the Panic of 1873 killed this first attempt. Observe
that in times of depression labor unions generally suffer because strikes look silly when a
long line of men who have lost their jobs are waiting outside your factory and are willing
to work for lower wages than are you. Membership in unions has always been curtailed
by economic decline. A look at the severity of the Panic of 1873 is in order. The
depression lasted until 1879, and business declined one third with the collapse of Civil
War financier Jay Cooke’s fortune. Thousands of American workers lost their jobs. One
third of the workers of New York City were unemployed during the winter of 1874-75.
Uriah Stephens had begun a more successful national labor union back in 1869.
His Knights of Labor organization survived the Panic of 1873, and by 1880 membership
of both skilled and unskilled workers soared. The most influential KOL leader was
Terence V. Powderly who, ironically, disliked discussions of wages, hours, conditions,
job security, and pensions and was reluctant to call strikes. These traditional labor union
concerns were less important to Powderly than was the simple fraternity of being
organized. He wanted KOL solidarity to improve industrial output within each industry
that joined.
Three other labor organizations should be observed as they formed during these
turbulent times. As the full force of the Panic of 1873 was felt, the Socialist Labor Union
was founded in 1874. This radical organization was bent on the overthrow of the US
capitalistic system by a revolution and gave rise to a political party which is still around
today. Another party clamored for the coinage of silver and the printing of more paper
currency to increase inflation to help mainly farmers in ways we will analyze later. The
Greenback Labor Party was thus a forerunner of the Populist Party, the most successful
third party in US history.
The third group of note was a labor organization, also radical, that was associated
strictly with Irish coal miners. Irish immigrants transplanted a secret society called the
Ancient Order of Hibernians to US coal mines where they were referred to as the Molly
Maguires (after a female labor organizer). The Molly Maguires targeted bosses they
perceived as unfair and dropped cryptic “coffin notices” in their mail. Some of these
bosses started turning up dead. This is a main reason why I don’t have a suggestion box
in my classroom any more because when I did we got to the Molly Maguires and “coffin
notices” started appearing in my suggestion box—HA! HA! I even got a bullet one day.
But, back to Irish terrorists in coal mines. The famous Pinkerton Detective
Agency, created by a Civil War intelligence officer named Pinkerton, was called on by
the mine owners to infiltrate the Molly Maguires. The Pinkertons did so successfully,
and 20 Molly Maguires were hanged. These events are part of the reason labor had such
a terrible reputation in American history. The Pinkertons would be called on again.
Federal troops would even be called out to put down labor violence by more than
one Gilded Age president. Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops to intervene in the
National Railroad Strike in 1877 (he probably got a phone call about it). Striking railway
workers paralyzed railroad traffic. Militia troops were called in to suppress a growing
mob and killed 26 when the mob turned on them before escaping with their lives. The
mob then destroyed around $5 million dollars worth of railroad property, all because the
railroad had cut their wages by 10%. You might be called on to compare and contrast
labor strikes with the protests of farmers, so be aware that labor unions always seemed to
invite a more sinister reputation.
Despite the negative image produced by labor agitation and despite the growth of
the American economy, industrial workers had a serious problem. Just like every other
economic indicator, their wages rose exponentially 37% from 1890 to 1914. Why would
they have a problem then? Because the cost of living during the same time period went
up 39%! These workers, they reasoned, helped create the new wealth of the nation, but
they sensed (or their labor leaders told them) some rather startling statistics. During the
Gilded Age the top 10% of wealthy Americans controlled 34% of the nation’s wealth.
The bottom 10% controlled only 3.4% of the wealth. This comparison is easily explained
and in some way fitting, but very difficult to present to the bottom 10% (or to anyone in
the lower 50%) as just. Labor leaders thus organized strikes, especially when
management cut wages. 477 major strikes occurred in 1881 in the US. In 1891 this
number jumped to 2,000 and was still at 1,800 in 1900.
Now, let’s examine the demise of the Knights of Labor as a telling episode in the
labor movement. Remember, Uriah Stephens had founded the KOL in 1869 and
remained its president until 1871, but the most influential president was Terence
Powderly who ran the KOL through the height of its power from 1879-1890. Powderly
tried to keep the KOL a social and fraternal organization like the Grange for farmers, but
his organization got more and more involved in strikes and demonstrations. The worst of
these was on May 4, 1886 when the KOL led a demonstration at which eight anarchists
threw bombs at the police. Seven policemen and four workers were killed. This episode
occurred at the Haymarket Square in Chicago and therefore went down in history as the
Haymarket Square Riot. The eight anarchists were convicted, and it was proven that they
were not a part of the Knights of Labor, but the reputation of the KOL was irrevocably
damaged leading to its eventual collapse.
Samuel Gompers, an immigrant Jewish cigar maker, rose up as he saw the
Knights of Labor slipping and initiated the next step in the progress of the labor
movement. Right after the Haymarket Square Riot, Gompers formed the American
Federation of Labor, or the AFL. This national labor union had 140,000 members by the
end of 1886 and 2 million by 1914. A key strategy was to limit membership in the AFL
to skilled laborers. Gompers said skilled and unskilled laborers had nothing in common.
The skilled laborers pushed for a shorter day, better wages, safer working conditions, and
the removal of children from the workplace. This last point was not out of tender care for
youngsters but a reaction to the fact that child workers drove the wages of adults down.
Gompers and the AFL were perfectly comfortable striking and laid a permanent
foundation for labor unions in the US. The AFL is still active today, although it joined
with another organization to become the AFL-CIO.
The efforts of all labor unions were hampered by “yellow-dog” contracts where
employers exacted promises not to join a union from workers as they were hired,
especially in hard times. Owners and managers of factories wanted “open shop” facilities
where any workers could be employed. Labor organizers fought to create “closed shop”
factories where only union workers could be employed. All the while, factories remained
dangerous places to work. By 1913, 25,000 workers were killed in factories and 750,000
seriously injured!
The plight of industrial workers remained associated with poor immigrants in
America’s growing cities. 1/3 to 1/2 of Gilded Age workers lived in poverty, conditions
that remained severe until 1900. Urban improvements began by 1910 to offer a new
American Dream, but for city-dwellers it was long in coming. Immigrant workers were
pressured to “Americanize” as quickly as possible. Social progress and assimilation
meant, at bottom, that immigrant children were alienated from their foreign-born parents
through the indoctrination powers of public schools. Children learned English faster than
did their parents, and third-generation Americans often did not learn their grandparents’
native tongue at all. Boss politics exploited immigrant workers and the pragmatism and
materialism of America made immigrants hungry for consumer goods.
The Sears and Roebuck Catalog, first published in 1897, might be the only
common experience of immigrant workers. The mail-order company was able to
undersell shops and drove prices for consumer goods down, increasing mass production.
This growth contributed to an uneven distribution of wealth and prosperity that
exacerbated the class and ethnic (and generational) isolation immigrants felt. When
national markets were achieved in the US, a new and incredibly wide variety of goods
became available, but being a nation was on shaky ground again. Meanwhile, laborers
fought to secure decent jobs and for the right to keep them decent using collective
bargaining, the fundamental principle behind labor unions.
The progress for the labor movement prior to the turn of the century, however,
was almost completely undone by the aftermath of two devastating clashes between labor
and management (and the government) in the 1890s. These two strikes touched off the
worst labor violence in US history and set back the progress for decades.
In 1892, Andrew Carnegie had left the country for Scotland and left his
Homestead Steel Plant in Pennsylvania in the hands of a manager named Henry Clay
Frick. Frick did not inherit the interest in compromise of his namesake. While his boss
was away selecting a castle or some such vacation episode, Frick decided to try to break
the labor union that had crept into US Steel. He hired a private police force of 300
Pinkerton detectives and then cut the workers wages. When the union struck and took
over the plant, Frick sent the Pinkertons in by barge on the river next to the plant.
Before the barges even landed shots were fired from the shore. When the
Pinkertons did disembark, workers snuck in behind them and burned their barges. The
Pinkertons fought for their lives while 7,000 state militia troops were called in to take
back the plant. An anarchist tried to assassinate Frick in his office, shooting at him and
stabbing him from across Frick’s desk, but failed. When this plot failed, the Homestead
Steel Plant of US Steel became an open shop. Carnegie sent a terse congratulatory
telegram across the Atlantic which read, “Job well done STOP Life worth living again
STOP”
The second violent strike in US history was perpetrated by workers for the
Pullman Palace Car company. All of Pullman’s workers lived in a town which he had
built, and when he cut their wages they felt trapped because he did not lower rents nor
prices at his company stores. Rising socialist Eugene V. Debs organized a national strike
in 1894 where railroad workers across America refused to hook up Pullman Cars. Grover
Cleveland used an injunction, an executive order or a court order, to order workers to
hook the cars up and move the nation again. To convince Debs and the socialists to
comply, the president sent in federal troops in an assertion of property rights. Remember,
every strike robs from the owner of the property whether it is a factory, railroad, or
baseball team.
The vehemence of the labor movement that spawned the Pullman Strike, as it was
called, stemmed from the severity of the Panic of 1893. Again, this depression was the
worst the country had ever seen. 500 banks failed, 16,000 businesses went bankrupt, and
there was a 20% unemployment rate in winter again. That left 2.5 million workers
without jobs. A few hundred men joined a march on Washington (the first I’ve
mentioned) led by a man named Jacob Coxey.
Coxey proposed an idea that would eventually be the genesis for the ideas behind
the New Deal during the Great Depression. Back in the Panic of 1893, Coxey delivered a
petition regarding having road improvement funded by the government as a means of
providing jobs to unemployed people. The Congress was frightened, however, of what
they called Coxey’s Army and feared revolution. Coxey was jailed and his followers
dispersed. He exhibited a rather bizarre face to the world in that he named his son Legal
Tender Coxey. Stay tuned, however, for plenty of other marches on Washington.