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Industrialization during the Gilded Age Transformed Yeoman and Immigrant Farmers into Blue-Collar Factory and Railroad Workers The Changing American Labor Force in the Gilded Age The Work Place Poor Wages & Long Hours 1. Grueling hard labor 2. Long hours: 12 hour days to 10 hours to 8 hours 3. Long work week: 6 days a week, sometimes 7 4. Low wages: • Not a living wage so all of the family had to work including the children (under age of 14) – took about $600/year for a family of four to live • Men paid more (between $400- $500/year); women paid half as much; boys even less; and girls next to nothing • Immigrant wages were less than native-born wages • Skilled workers paid 20¢ an hour; unskilled 10¢ an hour Poor Wages & Long Hours 5. Types of jobs: • Unskilled manual labor in the factories, on the railroads and in the mines • Piece work • Sweatshops 6. Safety standards low, accidents common, health jeopardized, and working conditions dangerous • Accidents more common than any other industrialized nation 7. Work by the clock 8. Strict discipline 9. Impersonal Why Did American Exploit the Working Class? 1. Social Darwinism 2. Laissez faire economic philosophy 3. American rugged individualism, hard work, upward mobility, and competitiveness 4. American public sided with management in labor disputes 5. Anti-immigrant feelings - immigrants would never assimilate and low paying jobs were what they deserved 6. Labor unions seemed “foreign,” radical, and out-of-step with the American tradition of individual achievement 7. Anti-city attitude What the Working Man and Woman Wanted? 1. Living wage 2. 8 hour work day 3. 5 day work week 4. Safe working conditions Exploitative Child Labor “Galley Labor” Blue Collar Labor Unrest Labor Unrest, 1870-1900 Management vs. Labor “Tools” of Management “Tools” of Labor “Iron Law of Wages” Boycotts Pinkertons Sympathy demonstrations Lockout Blacklisting “Scabs” Yellow-dog contracts Court injunctions Open shop Picketing Closed shops Organized strikes “Wildcat” strikes Violence Great Railroad Strike of 1877 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cut wages to give investors a higher dividend. Union struck, closed the B & O, destroyed the Pittsburgh yards, and fought a battle with the militia sent by the governor to break the strike resulting in the death of more than a hundred workers. Most Violent Strike Knights of Labor (1869-1890’s) Terence V. Powderly Knights of Labor Charter Knights of Labor trade card An injury to one is the concern of all! Goals of the Knights of Labor ù Welcomed as members all who “toiled” regardless of skill, creed, sex, or color ù Eight-hour work day ù Workers’ cooperatives ù Worker-owned factories ù Abolition of child labor ù Equal pay for men and women ù Safety codes in the workplace ù Prohibition of contract foreign labor Haymarket Riot of 1876 Worst Strike Chicago police ordered 3,000 McCormick Harvester strikers, peacefully assembled at a rally on Haymarket Square to protest police killing two workers the previous day, to disperse. A bomb was thrown. A policeman and six Chicagoans were fatally wounded. The police fired into the crowd and killed four others. Haymarket Riot of 1886 McCormick Harvesting Machine Company Union Rally The “Formula” Unions + Violence + Strikes + Socialists + Immigrant = Anarchists Haymarket Martyrs Eight known anarchists were rounded up – no evidence of guilt or whether they were present at the rally – and four were hanged. One committed suicide. Three remained in jail until the governor pardoned them. Governor John Peter Altgeld The Haymarket Riot linked anarchism and labor in the public mind, thereby weakening the national labor movement. The American Federation of Labor: 1886 Samuel Gompers Goals of the American Federation of Labor ù Catered to the skilled worker ù Worked to get laws passed by Congress favorable to workers and labor unions ù Maintained a national strike fund ù Mediated disputes between management and labor ù Pushed for closed shops ù Negotiated labor contracts – collective bargaining – for labor union members Carnegie Steel’s Corporate Profits! Homestead Steel Strike (1892) Homestead Steel Works Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick set out to break the union by cutting wages 20% and locking the workers out of the plant when the union struck. The Pinkertons, hired to drive the workers off, were pinned down in a gun battle with the union men. Men were killed. Homestead Steel Strike (1892) Corporate “Bully-Boys” 1. The Pinkertons 2. Presidents and governors 3. Militia and army 4. Police 5. Scabs Attempted Assassination! Alexander Berkman The Pennsylvania governor sent the militia in to impose peace. To retaliate, an anarchist tried to assassinate Frick. That broke the steel union for 30 years. Henry Clay Frick George Pullman of the Pullman Chair Car Works built a complete town for his employees: Parks, a miniature lake, schools, a theater, a church, an arcade (mall), bank, homes, and sidewalks. The town had sanitary water, an athletic program, and a town band. George Pullman expected only loyalty. “Company Town,” Pullman, Illinois Pullman Cars The Pullman Strike of 1894 Pullman laid off workers during the Panic of 1893 and cut wages by 25%, but kept rent and food prices in his town at the same levels. Protests arose. Three workers were fired so the union went on strike. Workers turned to Eugene Debs, socialist labor leader of the American Railway Union, for support. The Pullman Strike of 1894 20,000 members of the ARU joined the Pullman strike, stopped all rail traffic – including delivery of the mail – on the western railroads, and paralyzed the western half of the nation. Mobs of non-strikers overturned freight cars, looted, and burned. President Grover Cleveland Grover Cleveland Railroad owners got a federal injunction against the ARU – arguing the mail had too get through – and Grover Cleveland sent in the army to reopen the railroads. If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered! The Socialists Eugene Debs Socialism, a reformist political philosophy, grew dramatically before World War I. More moderate than European socialists who called for workers to join a world wide revolution and overthrow capitalism, socialists like Debs joined labor unions, attacked the injustices of capitalism and urged a workers’ republic. Industrial Workers of the World (“Wobblies”) “Big Bill” Hayward Industrial Workers of the World (“Wobblies”) Believed violence – world social revolution and sabotage – was justified to overthrow capitalism and the capitalist bosses Welcomed everyone as members regardless of race or gender Stressed solidarity and aimed to unite the working class into a mammoth union to promote labor’s interests Unlike the AFL, it organized the unskilled and foreignborn laborers who worked in mass production industries Motto: An injury to one is an injury to all “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 The Hand That Will Rule the World One Big Union “Bread and Roses” Strike Strike led by women and won by women A new Massachusetts law reduced the maximum workweek from 56 to 54 hours. Factory owners responded by speeding up production and cutting workers' pay. The women shut down their looms and left the mill. Increasingly violent methods were used to suppress the protest, but the strikers maintained their solidarity. The mill owners, anxious to avoid bad publicity, settled with the strikers. “Bread and Roses” Strike Labor Union Membership Come On and Sing the Union Song! “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! “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! The Blessings of the Labor Unions Workers Benefits Today The Rise & Decline of Organized Labor Right-to-Work States Today Unionism & Globalization?