Labor Unions Emerge
• Northern wages generally higher than Southern
• Exploitation, unsafe conditions unite workers
across regions
• Most workers have 12 hour days, 6 day workweeks
- perform repetitive, mind-dulling tasks
- no vacation, sick leave, injury compensation
• To survive, families need all member to work,
including children
• Sweatshops, tenement workshops often only jobs
for women, children
- require few skills; pay lowest wages
Continued . . .
NEXT
The Changing American
Labor Force
Child Labor
Child Labor
“Galley Labor”
Labor Unrest: 1870-1900
The Molly Maguires
(1875)
James
McParland
Management vs. Labor
“Tools” of
Management
“Tools” of
Labor
 “scabs”- hired replacements
 boycotts
 P. R. campaign
 sympathy
demonstrations
 Pinkertons- personal army
 lockout- close work
 Blacklisting yellow-dog contracts- not allowed to join
a Union
 court injunctions- troops
 open shop- only hire non-Union workers
 picketing
 closed shopsOnly Union
workers
 organized
strikes- not
working
The Tournament of Today:
A Set-to Between Labor and
Monopoly
The Corporate
“Bully-Boys”: Pinkerton
Agents
A Striker Confronts a
SCAB!
Early Labor Organizing
• National Labor Union—
first large-scale national
organization
• 1868, NLU gets
Congress to give 8-hour
day to civil servants
• Local chapters reject
blacks; Colored NLU
forms
• Great RR strike of 1877
brings an end to the
union
NEXT
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877:
•
Dangers of RR work, 2,000 workers die a
year, 30,000 injured
•
Wages: $957 Engineers, $575 Conductors,
$212 Brakemen, $124 Laborers
The Great Strike of 1877
• Brought on by the Panic
of 1873
• Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad strike spreads
to other lines
• Governors say impeding
interstate commerce;
federal troops intervene
• 100’s die
Knights of Labor
Terence V.
Powderly
An injury to one is the concern of all!
Goals of the Knights of
Labor
ù Anyone could join, women, blacks,
anarchists, socialists…
ù Fought for Eight-hour workday.
ù Goal to create workers’
cooperatives and ownership,
change capitalism.
ù Willing to use violence, boycotts,
strikes, and mass meetings
ù Abolition of child and prison labor.
ù Safety codes in the workplace.
National Strike- 12 to 8 hour
workday
Anarchists Meet on the Lake Front
in 1886
Haymarket Riot (1886)
McCormick Harvesting Machine Co.
The Haymarket Affair
• 3,000 gather at Chicago’s
Haymarket Square, protest police
brutality
• Violence ensues; 8 charged with
inciting riot, convicted
• Public opinion turns against labor
movement, see it as radical
Haymarket Martyrs
Governor John Peter Altgeld
May Day
•
May Day, also called
International Workers' Day or
Labor Day, is a commemoration
of the execution of the Haymarket
martyrs who were arrested after
the Haymarket Riot of 1886 in
Chicago, Illinois, which occurred
on May 4 but was the culmination
of labor unrest that had begun on
May 1. Consequently this May
Day became established as an
anarchist and socialist holiday,
and in this form, May Day has
become an international
celebration of the social and
economic achievements of the
working class and labor
movement. Although May Day
observance began in the United
States, it is not officially nor
popularly recognized as a holiday
there; instead May 1 was officially
designated by the U.S. Congress
as Loyalty Day in 1958, because
of the association of May Day
with communism.
The American Federation
of Labor: 1886
Samuel Gompers
How the AF of L
Would Help the Workers
ù Limited membership to skilled workers.
ù Goal to get better wages
ù Maintained a national strike fund.
ù Prevented disputes among the many craft
unions.
ù Mediated disputes between management
and labor.
ù Pushed for closed shops.
ù Conservative labor union, worked within
the system
1. Sort terms on pg. 157 onto the chart on pg. 158
2. Pg. 163 Doc D, What pattern do you notice in the
shaded part of the graph?
3. Pg. 165, Doc G, Looking at the years 1870 to 1900,
how successful was the labor movement in that
period?
4. Looking at the info on Pg. 172, was the national gov.
more sympathetic to business or workers?
5. Pg, 177, Doc. C, What is the duty of a wealthy man?
6. Pg. 178, Doc D & E, What is the meaning of the
cartoon?
7. Do the labor chart on pg, 187
8. Pg. 188, What does the cartoon say about American
attitudes toward organized labor?
Homestead Steel Strike
(1892)
Homestead Steel
Works
The Amalgamated
Association of
Iron & Steel Workers
1892, Carnegie Steel
workers locked out
over pay cuts
Workers win battle against
Pinkertons; National
Guard later reopens plant
“The Pinkertons are coming!
The Pinkertons are coming!
Attempted Assassination!
Henry Clay Frick
Steelworkers do not
remobilize for 45 years
Alexander Berkman
Johnstown
Flood, 1889
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Flood killed 2,209 people
Water strength of the
Mississippi River
South Fork Fishing and
Hunting Club founded by Frick
Development included
lowering the dam to make its
top wide enough to hold a road
so Frick could drive his
carriage over it, and putting a
fish screen in the spillway
These alterations are thought
to have increased the
vulnerability of the dam.
The members built cottages
and a clubhouse to create the,
an exclusive and private
mountain retreat.
Membership grew to include
more than 50 wealthy
Pittsburgh steel, coal, and
railroad industrialists
Carnegie-Frick Feud
Panic 1893
• 3 out of 15 million labor force were
unemployed
• 642 banks failed
• 16,000 businesses closed down
• 2nd worst depression in US history
A
“Company
Town”:
Pullman,
IL
Pullman Cars
A Pullman porter
The Pullman Strike of 1894
The Pullman Company Strike
• Pullman lays off 3,000, cuts wages but
not rents; workers strike
• Pullman refuses arbitration; violence
ensues; federal troops sent b/c
restrained movement of mail
• Debs (United Railways Workers Union
leader) jailed, most workers fired, many
blacklisted
• Debs become a radical Socialist leader
after this experience
President Grover Cleveland
If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a
postal card in Chicago, that card will be
delivered!
The Pullman Strike of 1894
Government by injunction!
•First time ever the
government used an
injunction (A
court order forcing
labor to go back to
work) to break a
strike
•The government
made striking, an
activity not
previously defined
as illegal, a crime
The Socialists
Eugene V. Debs
International Workers of the
World (“Wobblies”)
Eye Wobble Wobble"
Also known as the "Chinese Restaurant
Owner Theory", In Vancouver, in 1911,
we had a number of Chinese members,
and one restaurant keeper would trust
any member for means. He could not
pronounce the letter "w" (due to the "l"
sounds in the pronunciation of the
letter), but called it "wobble" and would
ask, "you Eye Wobble Wobble?" and
when the [red] card was shown credit
was unlimited. Thereafter the laughing
term amongst us was "I Wobbly
Wobbly".
“Big Bill” Haywood of the
IWW
Violence was justified to overthrow
capitalism.
Socialism and the IWW
• Some labor activists turn to socialism:
- government control of business, property
- equal distribution of wealth
• Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or
Wobblies, forms 1905
• Organized by radical unionists, socialists;
include African Americans
• Industrial unions give unskilled workers
dignity, solidarity
NEXT
Joe Hill-IWW, Songwriter,
wrongfully convicted of murder
Just prior to his
•
execution, Hill had
written to Bill Haywood,
an IWW leader, saying,
"Goodbye Bill. I die like
a true blue rebel. Don't
waste any time in
mourning. Organize...
Could you arrange to
have my body hauled
to the state line to be
buried?
I don't want to be found
dead in Utah
My will is easy to decide
For there is nothing to divide
My kin don't need to fuss and moan
"Moss does not cling to rolling stone"
My body? Oh, if I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my Last and final Will.
Good Luck to All of you
Joe Hill
The
“Formula”
unions  violence  strikes  socialists 
anarchists = immigrants !!
Mother Jones:
“The Miner’s Angel”
 Mary Harris.
 Organizer for the
United Mine
Workers.
 One of the
founding members
of the I. W. W. in
1905.
Summary
1. Who wins all the strikes? Business
or Labor
2. What side does government take in
the strikes? Business, Labor, or
Neutral
3. Are the strikes peaceful or violent?
4. How do the majority of Americans
see labor unions as a result of the 4
strikes?
5. What idea justifies business owners
being so rich?
AFL, Knights of Labor, Anarchists,
Open Shop, IWW,
Sort Below
1
3
7
9
5
________________________________________
I
I
I
I
I
Radicals
Liberals Moderates Conservatives
Capitalism
XX X
X
X
• In the year 1877, the signals were given for
the rest of the century: the blacks would be
put back; the strikes of white workers would
not be tolerated; the industrial and political
elites of North and South would take hold of
the country and organize the greatest march
of economic growth in human history. They
would do it with the aid of, and at the
expense of, black labor, white labor, Chinese
labor, European immigrant labor, female
labor, rewarding them differently by race,
sex, national origin, and social class, in such
a way as to create separate levels of
oppression-a skillful terracing to stabilize the
pyramid of wealth.
“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!
Workers Benefits Today
Come On and
Sing Along!!
“Solidarity Forever!”
Is there aught we hold in common
with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom
and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us
but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong!
CHORUS:
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union
makes us strong!
“Solidarity Forever!”
* * * *
Through our sisters and our brothers
we can make our union strong,
For respect and equal value,
we have done without too long.
We no longer have to tolerate
injustices and wrongs,
Yes, the union makes us strong!
CHORUS:
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union
makes us strong!