A P US History Document Based Question
Directions: The following question requires you to construct an essay that integrates your
interpretation of the Documents and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. In
the essay you should strive to support your assertions both by citing key pieces of evidence from
the documents and by drawing on your knowledge of the period.
“Between 1880 and 1915 labor leaders voiced sharp disagreement over the proper
goals and strategies workers should follow to improve their position in American society.”
Assess the validity of this statement by contrasting the different goals and strategies
advocated by labor leaders between 1880 and 1915. Include an assessment of their vision
of the future of American society and the degree of success their approach achieved
between 1880 and 1915.
DOCUMENT A
Question, a senator: I was only asking in regard to your ultimate ends.
Answer, Strasser: We have no ultimate ends. We are going on from day to day. We are fighting
only for immediate objects that can be realized in a few years.
Question, a senator: You want something better to eat and to wear, and better houses to live in?
Answer, Strasser: Yes; we want to dress better and to live better, and become better off and better
citizens generally.
Question, a senator: I see that you are a little sensitive lest it should be thought that you are a
mere theorizer. I do not look upon you in that light at all.
Answer, Strasser. Well, we say in our constitution that we are opposed to theorists, and I have to
represent the organization here. We are all practical men.
*Source: testimony by Adolph Strasser, President of the Cigar Makers’ Union and a founder of
the American Federation of Labor, before a U.S. Senate Committee, 1883.
DOCUMENT B
The many must act, and they must act together in a system of cooperation that will stop the
grinding process. Under the competitive system labor has no share in what it develops. It has to
take what the master deals out to it; but once it receives a share in what it creates, industry will
become part of him who produces, and the secret of content is found.*Source: Terence V.
Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1889.
DOCUMENT C
It has always been, and is at the present time, my policy to advocate conciliation and
arbitration in the settlements of disputes.... Thousands of men who have become disgusted with
the ruinous policy of the strike, as the only remedy for ills we complain of were drawn to us
because we proclaimed to mankind that we had discarded the strike until all else had failed.... No
matter what advantage we gain by the strike, it is only medicating the symptoms; it does not
penetrate the system, and therefore fails in effecting a cure.... You must submit to injustice at the
hands of the employer in patience for a while longer. Bide well your time. Make no display of
organization or strength until you have every man and woman in your department organized, and
then do not strike, but study, not only your own condition, but that of your employer. Find out
how much you are justly entitled to, and the tribunal of arbitration will settle the rest.
*Source: Terence V. Powderly, quoted in a publication by the Missouri Bureau of Labor
Statistics and Inspection, 1887.
DOCUMENT D
The two movements were inherently different. Trade unions endeavored to organize for
collective responsibility persons with common trade problems. They sought economic
betterment in order to place in the hands of wage earners the means to wider opportunities. The
Knights of Labor was a social or fraternal organization. It was based upon a principle of
cooperation and its purpose was reform. The K. of L. prided itself upon being something higher
and grander than a trade union or political party.”
*Source: Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor: An Autobiography, 1925.
DOCUMENT E
John D. Rockefeller’s great fortune is built upon your ignorance. When you know enough
to know what your interest is you will support the great party that is organized upon the principle
of collective ownership of the means of life....
Now, we Socialists propose that society in its collective capacity shall produce, not for
profit, but in abundance to satisfy human wants; that every man shall have the inalienable right to
work, and receive the full equivalent of all he produces.*Source: Eugene V. Debs, Debs: His
Life, Writings and Speeches, 1908.
DOCUMENT F
It is well known that the Knights of Labor was not instituted with the view to action in the
matter of regulating wages. The objects included education, the bettering of the material
condition of the members by means of such schemes as co-operation, etc., and the elevation of
labor by legislation through political action, but not taken, however, in a partisan way. The plan
of the organization did not include the management of strikes or aught else pertaining to wages
and terms of labor, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the machinery has not proven equal to
those occasions, when the Knights went outside of their original objects. It would be a blessing to
all concerned if the Knights of Labor shall resolve to first principles and devote undivided
attention thereto.*Source: National Labor Tribune, July 7, 1883.
DOCUMENT G
The working people find that improvements in the methods of production and distribution
are constantly being made, and unless they occasionally strike, or have the power to enter upon a
strike, the improvements will all go to the employer and all the injuries to the employees. A
strike is an effort on the part of the workers to obtain some of the improvements that have
occurred resultant from bygone and present genius of our intelligence, of our mental progress.
We are producing wealth today at a greater ratio than ever in the history of mankind, and a strike
on the part of workers is, first, against deterioration in their condition, and, second, to be
participants in some of the improvements.*Source: Samuel Gompers, President of the American
Federation of Labor, testimony before a House of Representatives Committee, 1899.
DOCUMENT H
The “pure and simple” trade union of the past does not answer the requirements of today,
and they who insist that it does are blind to the changes going on about them, and out of harmony
with the progressive forces of the age....
A modern industrial plant has a hundred trades and parts of trades represented in its
working force. To have these workers parceled out to a hundred unions is to divide and not to
organize them, to give them over to factions and petty leadership and leave them an easy prey to
the machinations of the enemy. The dominant craft should control the plant or, rather, the union,
and it should embrace the entire working force. This is the industrial plan, the modern method
applied to modern conditions, and it will in time prevail.*Source: Eugene V. Debs, Debs: His
Life, Writings and Speeches, 1908
DOCUMENT I
The advocates of the so-called industrial system of labor organizations urge that an
effective strike can only be conducted when all workmen, regardless of trade, calling or
occupation, are affected. That this is not borne out by the history of strikes in the whole labor
movement is easily demonstrable. Though here and there such strikes have been temporarily
successful, in the main they have been fraught with injury to all. The so called industrial system
of organization implies sympathetic strikes, and these time and experience have demonstrated
that as a general proposition they should be discarded, while strikes of particular trades or
callings have had the largest number of successes and the minimum of defeats. *Source:
Convention Declaration, AFL, 1903.
DOCUMENT J
DOCUMENT K
The Socialist party is to the workingman politically what the trade union is to him
industrially; the former is the party of his class, while the latter is the union of his trade. The
difference between them is that while the trade union is confined to the trade, the Socialist party
embraces the entire working class, and while the union is limited to bettering conditions under
the wage system, the party is organized to conquer the political power of the nation, wipe out the
wage system and make the workers themselves the masters of the earth. *Source: Eugene V.
Debs, Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches, 1908.
DOCUMENT L
I want to tell you, Socialists, that I have studied your philosophy; read your works upon
economics, and not the meanest of them; studied your standard works, both in English and
German-have not only read, but studied them. I have heard your orators and watched the work of
your movement the world over. I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have
been closely associated with many of you, and know how you think and what you propose. I
know, too, what you have up your sleeve. And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with
your philosophy. I declare it to you, I am not only at variance with your doctrines, but with your
philosophy. Economically, you are unsound; socially, you are wrong; industrially, you are an
impossibility. *Source: Samuel Gompers, speech, AFL convention, 1903.
DOCUMENT M
Teacher of important and much-needed reforms, she [Knights of Labor] had been obliged to
practice differently from her teachings. Advocating arbitration and conciliation as first steps in
labor disputes she had been forced to take upon her shoulders the responsibilities of the aggressor
first and, when hope of arbitrating and conciliation failed, to beg of the opposing side to do what
we should have applied for in the first instance. Advising against strikes, we have been in the
midst of them. Urging important reforms we have been forced to yield our time and attention to
petty disputes until we were placed in a position where we have frequently been misunderstood
by the employee as well as the employer. While not a political party we have been forced into the
attitude of taking political action. *Source: Terence V. Powderly, 1893.
DOCUMENT N
Resolved, that the A.F. of L. most firmly and unequivocally favors the independent use of
the ballot by the trade unionists and workers, united regardless of party, that we may elect men
from our own ranks to make new laws and administer them along the lines laid down in the
legislative demands of the A. F. of L., and at the same time secure an impartial judiciary that will
not govern us by arbitrary injunctions of the courts, nor act as pliant tools of corporate wealth.
That as our efforts are centered against all forms of industrial slavery and economic wrong, we
must also direct our utmost energies to remove all forms of political servitude and party slavery,
to the end that the working people may act as a unit at the polls at every election.
*Source: Convention Declaration, AFL, 1897.
DOCUMENT O
Hiliquit:
Then, inform me upon this matter: In your political work of the labor movement is
the American Federation of Labor guided by a general social philosophy, or is it not?
Gompers:
It is guided by the history of the past, drawing its lessons from history, to know of
the condition by which the working people are surrounded and confronted; to work along the
lines of least resistance; to accomplish the best results in improving the condition of the working
people, men and women and children, today and tomorrow and tomorrow-and tomorrow’s
tomorrow; and each day making it a better day than the one that had gone before. That is the
guiding principle and philosophy and aim of the labor movement-in order to secure a better life
for all.*Source: Debate between Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of
Labor, and Morris Hiliquit, Socialist Party official, before a Senate Committee investigating
industrial relations, 1914.
DOCUMENT P