Workers’ Complaints
• Specialization of labor
– Made only a single component of product
• Interchangeable parts
Labor in the Industrial Age
Chapter 18, Section 4
– Led to little satisfaction
– Allowed skilled workers to be replaced by machines
– Could easily be replaced b/c of the low skill required
• Loss of freedom
– Life was regimented by the machine they used
• Long hours, low pay
– Worked 10 hr. days 6 or 7 days a wk.
– Made very low wages
• Very little skill was required.
• Avg. wage for a skill worker in the 1890s was $2.25/day.
• Often made less than the family needed to live.
– Wives had to work.
 Except in the middle- to upper-class families
 Remember the perception of beauty (slightly plump and pale)
– Children had to work.
Workers’ Complaints
• Dangerous working conditions
– Textile workers
• Inhaled the dust and fibers that filled the air
– Coal miners
• Explosions
– B/c of novice “explosive experts”
• Cave-ins
• Dust
– Miner’s lung
– Steel workers
• Worked w/in inches of molten steel
• Averaged 195 deaths/year in Pittsburgh alone.
• No protections for workers
– No workers’ compensation
• So if they get hurt, they were out of luck.
– No unemployment compensation
• So if they got fired or laid off, they were out of luck.
National Labor Union (NLU)
National Labor Union (NLU)
• 1st to organize workers on
a nat’l scale in 1866
• Headed by Wm. H. Sylvis
• Sought political reform to
help the workers
– 8-hr. day
– Cooperative
• Business organization owned
and operated for mutual
benefit of its workers
• Eliminated the profit-seeking
middlemen
Great Railroad Strike (1877)
– Land reform
• Wanted to encourage people to move and settle in the W.
• Tried to get people to move away from the cities
• Hoped to produce a smaller work force
– Scarcity would allow the workers to get pd. more.
– Immigration restrictions
• B/c they were taking away jobs
• Esp. Chinese immigrants
– Greenbacks
• Paper currency issued during the Civil War
• Would inflate the currency
•
– Rise in prices and decrease in the value of currency
– Favors the debtor
 Who pay back money worth less than they borrowed
Evolved into a 3rd party
– Nat’l Labor Reform Party
– Fell apart when it failed to elect any candidates
• Strike
– Work stoppage to protest actions of employer
• Workers on the B & O were forced to take a 35% pay cut.
– But company dividends actually increased!
– Workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, walked off the job in July
when another pay cut was announced.
• Federal troops sent to control strikers.
– By Rutherford B. Hayes
• Sympathy for strikers spread.
– Strikers in actually seized control of Pittsburgh from fed. troops.
– Strike spread to Chicago and St. Louis.
• Disrupting 2/3 of the nation’s rail system
– Strike also spread to other industries as well.
– Strikers were very violent and destructive.
• Order was finally restored on Aug. 2, 1877.
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Knights of Labor (KOL)
• Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor
• Organized by Uriah S. Stephens in 1869
• Originally was a secret society
– B/c of the fear of unions the Great Strike caused
• Tried to organize all workers
– Regardless of race, sex, or degree of skill
– Discriminated against only lawyers,
professional gamblers, and liquor dealers
bankers,
• Reached its height under Terence V. Powderly
– An excellent leader
– Assumed leadership in 1879
• Won several strikes against Jay Gould
– Hated owner of the Missouri Pacific
Haymarket Riot (1886)
• Strike at McCormick Harvester
Works in Chicago
– Started on May 1 for the 8-hr. work
day
– Required the police to be called on
May 3
• Charged and fired on the workers,
killing and wounding several
• Rally at Haymarket Square
– Called to protest actions of the
police
– Wasn’t very successful b/c of
drizzling, cold rain
– Was just about over when the police
arrived
Haymarket Riot
• Sparked when a bomb was thrown at the police
– Killing several officers
– Prompting the police to charge the protesters
• Causing the riot
• Resulted in the death of 7 officers and 4 workers
– Hundreds were wounded
• Caused by anarchists
– People against any organized gov’t
– Had organized the rally
• Never identified the person who threw the bomb
– 8 anarchists arrested and convicted
• B/c of unpopularity of their views, not b/c of the evidence
– 4 hanged; 1 committed suicide; 3 received prison terms
• Until later pardoned by John Peter Altgeld
2
Decline of the KOL
• Reputation of KOL tarnished after Haymarket Riot.
– Even though they were not responsible
• KOL had enjoyed too much success.
– Membership grew rapidly and leadership lost control.
– Workers started striking indiscriminately.
• W/ little success
• Powderly lost support of many workers.
– He had w/drawn national KOL support for some strikes.
• Blamed for the strikes’ failure
• Appeared as though he had sold them out
American Federation of Labor
• AFL or AF of L
• Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1881
• Focused on “bread and butter” issues
– More interested in actual gains for workers in the workplace than
with political reform.
• Organized only skilled workers
– Excluded unskilled workers
• Mostly blacks, women, and recent immigrants
– Had often been hired as scabs to break strikes
• Joined indirectly thru membership in a craft union
– Represented skilled workers in a specific craft or trade
• Sought to win gains for workers w/ the use of . . .
– Strikes
– Collective bargaining
• Right of the unions to represent workers in negotiation of contracts
• Encouraged the closed shop
– Where employers only hire union workers
Homestead Strike (1892)
Homestead Strike
• Occurred at the Homestead Steel Works
• Henry Clay Frick
– Part of Carnegie Steel Company
• Amalgamated Assoc. of Iron and Steel Workers
– Union representing workers at Homestead
– Refused to allow its workers to accept a pay cut
– Plant manager
– Refused to deal w/ the union
– Hired scabs to replace the
workers when they went on
strike
– Hired the Pinkerton’s Detective
Agency to protect the scabs
3
Battle of Homestead
• Pinkertons and scabs were being ferried down the Monogahela R.
on barges when ambushed by the strikers.
• Small battle waged btw Pinkertons and strikers.
• Penn. Nat’l Guard called to help restore order and break the strike.
– All but destroys the union.
Pullman Strike (1894)
• George Pullman
– Inventor of the Pullman Palace Car
– Founded the town of Pullman, IL, for his workers to live.
• Homes were nicer than most workers’ who lived in squalor.
• Workers were at Pullman’s complete mercy.
– He was employer, landlord, merchant, mayor, etc.
4
Pullman Strike
• Depression of 1893
– Pullman cut wages.
– Pullman didn’t reduce rents or
prices in company-store.
– Pullman fired 3 workers who
presented employee grievances.
• American Railroad Union
(ARU)
– Represented workers in all
railroad-related businesses.
– Headed by Eugene V. Debs
– Supported the strike of the
Pullman workers
– Refused to handle Pullman cars
• Unhooking them from the trains
and leaving on side rails
Pullman Strike
• General Managers Assoc.
– Represented 24 Chicago RRs
– Decided to chain the mail cars to the Pullman cars
• Forcing workers to unhook the mail cars as well
• Causing workers to interfere w/ the mail
– A federal crime
• Courts issue an injunction.
– Court order prohibiting a certain action
– Ignored by Debs
• President Grover Cleveland
– Sent federal troops to IL to break up the strike
• For interfering w/ the federal mails
• Over the strong objections of Gov. John Peter Altgeld
• Results of strike
– Strike was broken.
– Debs arrested for violating the injunction.
• Serves a 6-month term
– Union was virtually destroyed.
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Reaction to Unions
• Yellow-dog contracts
– Pledges signed by workers not to join unions
– Required by many employers before hiring
– Allowed employee to be fired if he broke it
• Blacklist
– Lists of strikers shared among employers
– Made it difficult for agitators to find work
• Lockouts
– When employers shut down b/c of rebellious workers
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