Transcript Slide 1

The Changing American
Labor Force
Labor Force Distribution
1870-1900
1) Analyze these graphs and the ones on the previous slide and describe what
is occurring to the American labor force. (use specific data to support your
conclusions)
2) What is the reason for these changes?
Observe the following photographs and
identify the different impacts
industrialization
is having on labor.
While viewing each photographs answer the
following:
1. Who is doing the work?
2. What are the hazards?
3. What type of work are they doing?
Would they need training? (skilled vs.
unskilled)
4. What was it like to live during this time
period?
Working Conditions- What
do you see?
A group of miners pose for a picture……. 2000 feet underground!!!!! That is
almost ½ of a mile!
3 miners waiting to use the primitive elevator to
lower them into the mining shaft for a days work!
Women and Children in the
Workplace – What do you see?
How is Big Business treating its workers according to the
picture?
Child Labor
Children stand on the machine while it
is in motion!!!!
Here is a SIX year old girl working in a cotton mill
“Galley Labor”
Analyze this cartoon using your cartoon analysis questions
Look carefully, what is missing? (more than 1 thing)
What do you think happened?
Daydreaming……. What is she thinking about?
A candle would be
placed into his hat
to provide light
while working in
the mines!
What occupational (job) hazards can you find in these pictures?
The taller boy standing to the right oversees the breaker boys
who separate the coal from the stones during mining. The
machine used is moving quickly and they are not allowed to
wear gloves! Why might this be dangerous?
Women in the Workplace
Mom and children working
together in the seafood industry!
Women sewing in a garment
factory.
Women canning fruits in order to
preserve them!
The Molly Maguires
(1875)
The Molly Maguires were a secret organization of coal miners in western Pennsylvania and West
Virginia. Also known as the "Buckshots," "Sleepers," and "White Boys," the name "Molly
Maguires"was taken from a famous widow who had headed a tenant protest in Ireland in the
1840s.
By the 1860s, there was much unrest among coal miners. Working conditions were abysmal and
hiring discrimination was common. The workers had little recourse since the mine operators
controlled the workplace, housing, stores and often the police and courts. Inability to improve their
conditions eventually led the workers to violence that was most often directed against mine owners
and supervisors.
The activities of the Molly Maguires were often shielded by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an
Irish-American fraternal group. Secrecy was strictly enforced. When reform demands were not
met, mining equipment was destroyed, officials intimidated and sometimes killed.
James
McParland
The end of the Mollies came in the mid-1870s when Franklin B. Gowen, president of the
Philadelphia Coal and Iron Company, decided that the Mollies had to be put down. He hired a
Pinkerton detective, James McParlan as an infiltrator. McParlan joined the organization and rose to
become secretary of his division. When after a particularly heinous murder in 1875 led to the first
capital conviction of a Molly, suspicion began to build that the nature of the testimony introduced at
trial pointed to the likelihood of a traitor in their midst. McParlan began to look suspiciously like the
best candidate.
Despite a plot to murder him, McParlan was able to last a while longer and then slip away. In later
murder trials, his testimony resulted in the conviction and hanging of 10 alleged members of the
Molly Maguires. Those harsh sentences and public fear of radicalism led to the group’s rapid
demise.
The Corporate
“Bully-Boys”: Pinkerton
Agents
Offering a range of “private investigative” services, the Pinkerton Detective Agency was founded in 1850 and at first specialized in
train robberies: the protection of railroad property. By the late 1860s, however, Pinkerton agents were protecting all manner of
property — most notoriously when its ownership was at odds with organized labor.
A lot of agency detective work, however, became “protective” work. With labor disputes often turning violent, several states had
enacted laws to give businesses the authority to create or rent police forces.
Corporations desirous of ascertaining whether their employees are joining any secret labor organizations with a view of compelling
terms from employers can [hire] a detective suitable to obtain this information.
— Pinkerton advertisement, early 1890s
The Pinkerton agency’s first foray into strikebreaking took place at an Illinois mine in 1866, during which it provided “guards” to
“protect” replacement workers. An armed force would escort scabs into a factory, plant or mine, while armed watchmen in towers
would intimidate strikers. Hundreds of strike-breaking operations were created during the 1870s, with some, such as the BaldwinFelts Agency, openly boasting about organizer harassment and other “labor discipline services.”
Pinkerton, authored Strikers, Communists and Tramps. The title is quite telling, and in the pages of the book he defended the use of
his agents as strikebreakers, arguing that it was an extension of his original property-safety business and that opposition to unionism
was a good way to protect workers.
Management vs. Labor
“Tools” of
Management
“Tools” of
Labor
 “scabs”
 boycotts
 P. R. campaign
 sympathy
demonstrations
 Pinkertons
 lockout
 blacklisting
 yellow-dog contracts
 informational
picketing
 closed shops
 court injunctions
 organized
strikes
 open shop
 “wildcat” strikes
A Striker Confronts a
SCAB!
Write a
caption
for this
picture?
Knights of Labor
Terence V. Powderly
“An injury to one is the concern of all!”
Knights of Labor
What is meant by the Knights of
Labor Slogan?
Knights of Labor trade card
Goals of the Knights of
Labor
 Eight-hour workday.
 Workers’ cooperatives.
 Worker-owned factories.
 Abolition of child and prison labor.
 Increased circulation of greenbacks.
 Equal pay for men and women.
 Safety codes in the workplace.
 Prohibition of contract foreign labor.
 Abolition of the National Bank.
Labor Unrest: 1870-1900
What conclusions would you make based on this data shown on this map?
The Great Railroad Strike
of 1877
Why do you think railroads were a focus of strikes early on in the labor
movement?
The Great Railroad Strike
of 1877
Based on this image what assumptions do you think readers had about the
Railroad Strike?
What leads you to make this conclusion?
The Tournament of Today:
A Set-to Between Labor and
Monopoly
Analyze this cartoon using your cartoon analysis questions
Anarchists Meet on the
Lake Front in 1886
Strikes by industrial workers were increasingly common in
the United States in the 1880s, a time when working
conditions often were dismal and dangerous, and wages
were low. The American labor movement during this time
also included a radical faction of socialists, communists and
anarchists who believed the capitalist system should be
dismantled because it exploited workers. A number of these
labor radicals were immigrants, many of them from
Germany.
Haymarket Riot (1886)
McCormick
Harvesting Machine
Co.
The May 4, 1886, rally at Haymarket Square
was organized by labor radicals to protest
the killing and wounding of several workers
by the Chicago police during a strike the day
before at the McCormick Reaper Works.
Haymarket Martyrs
Toward the end of the Haymarket Square rally, a
group of policemen arrived to disperse the crowd.
As the police advanced, an individual who was
never identified threw a bomb at them. The police
and possibly some members of the crowd opened
fire and chaos ensued. Seven police officers and at
least one civilian died as a result of the violence that
day, and an untold number of other people were
injured.
The riot set off a national wave of xenophobia, as
scores of foreign-born radicals and labor organizers
were rounded up by the police in Chicago and
elsewhere. In August 1886, eight men, labeled as
anarchists, were convicted in a sensational and
controversial trial in which the jury was considered
to be biased and no solid evidence was presented
linking the defendants to the bombing. Judge
Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on
seven of the men, and the eighth was sentenced to
15 years in prison. On November 11, 1887, four of
the men were hanged.Of the additional three who
were sentenced to death, one committed suicide on
the eve of his execution and the other two had their
death sentences commuted to life in prison by
Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby. The governor
was reacting to widespread public questioning of
their guilt, which later led his successor, Governor
John P. Altgeld, to pardon the three activists still
living in 1893.In the aftermath of the Haymarket
Square Riot and subsequent trial and executions
public opinion was divided. For some people, the
events led to a heightened anti-labor sentiment,
while others believed the men had been convicted unfairly
and viewed them as martyrs.
Governor John Peter Altgeld
Analyze this cartoon using your cartoon analysis questions
The American Federation
of Labor: 1886
Keep it simple. That was the mantra of labor leader
SAMUEL GOMPERS. He was a diehard
capitalist and saw no need for a radical
restructuring of America. Gompers quickly
learned that the issues that workers cared
about most deeply were personal. They
wanted higher wages and better working
conditions. These "BREAD AND BUTTER"
issues would always unite the labor class. By
keeping it simple, unions could avoid the
pitfalls that had drawn the life from the
National Labor Union and the Knights of
Labor.
In December of 1886, the same year the Knights of
Labor was dealt its fatal blow at Haymarket
Square, Gompers met with the leaders of
other craft unions to form the AMERICAN
FEDERATION OF LABOR. The A.F. of L.
was a loose grouping of smaller craft unions,
such as the masons' union, the hatmakers'
union or Gompers's own cigarmakers' union.
Every member of the A.F. of L. was therefore
a skilled worker.
Samuel Gompers
How the AF of L
Would Help the Workers
 Catered to the skilled worker.
 Represented workers in matters of national
legislation.
 Maintained a national strike fund.
 Evangelized the cause of unionism.
 Prevented disputes among the many craft
unions.
 Mediated disputes between management
and labor.
 Pushed for closed shops.
Homestead Steel Strike
(1892)
The Homestead strike, 1892, in Homestead,
Pennsylvania, pitted one of the most powerful
new corporations, Carnegie Steel Company,
against the nation's strongest trade union, the
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel
Workers. An 1889 strike had won the
steelworkers a favorable three-year contract;
now Andrew Carnegie was determined to
break the union. His plant manager, Henry
Clay Frick, stepped up production demands,
and when the union refused to accept the new
conditions, Frick began locking the workers out
of the plant; on July 2 all were discharged.
The union, limited to skilled tradesmen,
represented less than one-fifth of the thirtyeight hundred workers at the plant, but the rest
voted overwhelmingly to join the strike. An
advisory committee was formed, which
directed the strike and soon took over the
company town as well. Frick sent for three
hundred Pinkerton guards, but when they
arrived by barge on July 6 they were met by
ten thousand strikers, many of them armed.
After an all-day battle, the Pinkertons
surrendered and were forced to run a gauntlet
through the crowd. In all, nine strikers and
seven Pinkertons were killed; many strikers
and most of the remaining Pinkertons were
injured, some seriously.
Homestead Steel
Works
Homestead Steel Strike
(1892)
The sheriff, unable to recruit local residents against the
strikers, appealed to Governor William Stone for
support; eight thousand militia arrived on July 12.
Gradually, under militia protection, strikebreakers got
the plant running again. Frick's intransigence had won
sympathy for the strikers, but an attempt on his life by
anarchist Alexander Berkman on July 23 caused most
of it to evaporate. Meanwhile, the corporation had
more than a hundred strikers arrested, some of them
for murder; though most were finally released, each
case consumed much of the union's time, money, and
energy. The strike lost momentum and ended on
November 20, 1892. With the Amalgamated
Association virtually destroyed, Carnegie Steel moved
quickly to institute longer hours and lower wages. The
Homestead strike inspired many workers, but it also
underscored how difficult it was for any union to prevail
against the combined power of the corporation and the
government.
The Amalgamated
Association of
Iron & Steel Workers
Attempted Assassination!
Henry Clay Frick
Alexander Berkman
Big Corporate Profits!
What is this graph showing?
What do you think laborers response would be to
this information?
A “Company
Town”:
Pullman, IL
In 1879 Pullman followed closely the
movement in New York to create model
tenements that would offer working class
families clean and ventilated room to
reduce sickness and disease and promote
good morals by inducing men to stay at
home rather than escape to saloons. In
return, investors would receive a
reasonable 7% return. The idea that
improving workers’ material conditions of
life could be made compatible with the
most efficient and economical business
practices lay at the heart of Pullman’s plan
in 1880 to build a model town south of
Chicago. The town was intended neither
as philanthropy or charity nor as a utopian
experiment. It was an attempt to
demonstrate that reform and uplift could
be made a paying proposition, just as he
had turned comfort, beauty, and luxury in
railroad travel into a successful business
enterprise.
Pullman Cars
With the same marketing flair that Pullman had used to drum up interest in his
railroad cars, Pullman attracted visitors to his town.
However many workers resented their inability to buy their homes, a limitation
that Pullman adamantly retained. Pullman officials conducted periodic
inspections of workers’ homes to make sure they were not damaged and that the
town maintained a proper public image. Moreover, rent was higher in Pullman
than elsewhere; in 1893 it comprised one-third rather than the more typical onefifth of a workers’ income.
Despite its family-friendly image and the fact that a majority of its employees
were relatively highly paid skilled workmen, the town as well as the company
itself experienced a high degree of turnover.
Only two-thirds of Pullman’s workers actually lived in the town and one-half of
those were boarders.
A Pullman porter
According to one observer, “no one regards it as a real home.”
The Pullman Strike of 1894
In 1893, because of a depression, factory
wages at the company fell about twentyfive percent, but the rents George Pullman
charged did not decrease. If a Pullman
worker went into debt, it was taken from his
paycheck. On May 11,1894, three thousand
Pullman workers went on a "wildcat" strike,
that is, without authorization of their union.
Many of the strikers belonged to the
American Railroad Union (ARU) founded
by Eugene V. Debs. Debs, who was from
Indiana, had moved to Chicago where he
became a railroad fireman. He became
aware of the working conditions of his
fellow laborers. He saw men working for
low wages, some of whom were injured or
killed because of unsafe equipment. He
was determined to make things better.
On June 26, 1894, some ARU members refused to allow any train with a Pullman car to move, except
those with mail cars. Debs did not want federal troops to get involved, and he knew that if the U.S. mail
was tampered with, the troops would be there immediately. The railroads had formed an organization
called the General Managers Association. They announced that no one could tell them whom to hire,
whom to fire, or how they should pay their workers. The twenty-four railroads that were part of the
General Managers Association immediately tried to end the strike. They announced that any switchman
who refused to move rail cars would be fired. Debs's union announced that if a switchman was fired
because he refused to move Pullman cars all the union members would walk off the job. By June 29, fifty
thousand men had quit their jobs. Crowds of people who supported the strike began stopping trains. Soon
there was no movement on the rails west of Chicago. In some places, fights broke out.
President Grover Cleveland
In order to break the strike, the railroads needed help from
federal troops. Getting their assistance, however, was a
difficult task. The railroads could only get help from federal
troops if the President agreed. President Grover Cleveland
said that he would only send the aid of government troops if a
governor requested them.
The governor of Illinois was John P. Altgeld. He did not want to
request troops because he believed that workers should have
the same rights as their bosses. These ideas made the
General Managers Association uneasy. The railroad managers
started flooding the newspapers with stories that made Debs's
American Railroad Union seem like a violent and lawless gang
and portrayed Eugene Debs as a radical. They claimed that
unrest had always ended in violence and threatened that this
strike would be the same.
“If it takes the entire army
and navy to
deliver a postal card in
Chicago, that card
will be delivered!”
The railroads began sending people to work on railroads as
strike breakers or scabs. Attorney General Richard Olney
supported the General Managers Association because he
believed that the railroads had the right to do things their way,
and if the workers disagreed with the treatment they were
receiving, they could quit. The railroad workers there felt they
were being discriminated against. Angry railroad workers
began destroying the yards and burning anything that was
flammable.
Attorney General Olney requested President Cleveland to
send federal troops into Chicago to break the strike.
The Pullman Strike of 1894
Olney obtained an injunction from a federal court
saying that the strike was illegal. When the
strikers did not return to work the next day,
President Cleveland sent federal troops into
Chicago. This enraged strikers, and rioters began
stopping trains, smashing switches, and, again,
setting fire to anything that would burn. On July 7,
another mob stopped soldiers escorting a train
through the downtown Chicago area. Many people
were killed or wounded from bullets.
Debs realized that continuing the strike would be a
lost cause because of the federal troops.Most
railroad workers resumed their old jobs and
received the same wages as before. Some
workers were put on a blacklist, which meant that
no railroad in the United States was allowed to
hire them.
Government by injunction!
The Socialists
Eugene V. Debs
From his membership in the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Firemen to his role co-founding the
Industrial Workers of the World (the "wobblies"), Debs
raised his voice in defense of the common man.
Debs became a featured speaker for the Socialist
Party, and ran for president in 1900 as their nominee.
He lost, but continued to be the party’s candidate in
several subsequent elections.
“Big Bill” Haywood of the
IWW

Violence was justified to
overthrow capitalism.
One of the foremost labor radicals of the American West,
"Big Bill" Haywood became a leading figure in labor
activities across the United States.
In 1884, Haywood became an underground miner at
the Eagle Canyon mine in Nevada. He began his
labor career as a founding member of a local chapter
of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM),
Haywood rose quickly in the union ranks, becoming
secretary and president of his local, joining the
national union's General Executive Board in 1900.
Just as Haywood became one of the leaders of
Western unions, labor relations in Colorado exploded
into violence. Motivated largely by harsh working
conditions the WFM launched a series of mining
strikes in Colorado beginning in 1901. The next
several years saw near warfare in Colorado's mining
fields.
International Workers of the
World (“Wobblies”)
The defeat of the strikes led Haywood to stress
the need for "one big union" which could bring
broader support to individual labor struggles;
accordingly, in 1905 he played a key role in the
founding of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW), commonly referred to as "the
Wobblies."The next year Haywood was charged
with plotting the murder of a former Idaho
governor. The jury acquitted Haywood, but
businessmen and fellow labor leaders would
continue to fear and even hate Haywood for his
alleged endorsement of violence and sabotage. In
1915, he became the formal head of the IWW and
helped to direct strikes from New Jersey to
Washington State.
I W W & the Internationale
From 1905 to 1920, the IWW
organized hundreds of
thousands of workers in mines,
lumberyards, farms and
factories; it never had more
than about 150,000 members
at any one time, but over 3
million people joined at one
time or another. The IWW was
strongest in the West, where it
organized women and men,
African-Americans and whites,
recent immigrants and nativeborn Americans into large
industry-wide unions. Wobblies
were explicit about their
eventual goal of toppling
capitalism, and many of their
leaders, including Haywood,
expressed open admiration for
the young Soviet Union.
Wobblies quickly became a
part of the folklore of the West,
celebrated for their staunch
egalitarianism and no-holdsbarred style.
The Hand That Will Rule the
World One Big Union
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.
In June 1897, after Mary addressed the railway union convention, she began to be referred to as "Mother" by the men
of the union. The name stuck. That summer, when the 9,000-member Mine Workers called a nationwide strike of
bituminous (soft coal) miners and tens of thousands of miners laid down their tools, Mary arrived in Pittsburgh to assist
them. She became "Mother Jones" to millions of working men and women across the country for her efforts on behalf of
the miners.
Mother Jones was so effective the Mine Workers sent her into the coalfields to sign up miners with the union. She
agitated in the anthracite fields of eastern Pennsylvania, the company towns of West Virginia and the harsh coal camps
of Colorado. Nearly anywhere coal miners, textile workers or steelworkers were fighting to organize a union, Mother
Jones was there.
Mother Jones also was very concerned about child workers. During a silk strike in Philadelphia, 100,000 workers
including 16,000 children left their jobs over a demand that their workweek be cut from 60 to 55 hours. To attract
attention to the cause of abolishing child labor, in 1903, she led a children痴 march of 100 children from the textile mills
of Philadelphia to New York City "to show the New York millionaires our grievances." She led the children all the way to
President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island home.
Lawrence, MA Strike:
1912
The Lawrence strike, one of the largest in
United States history, became known as "the
Bread and Roses Strike," after workers' protest
signs that read, "We Want Bread, But Roses
Too!"
The strike, marked by violence, quickly gained
national public attention and union support. At
the time, the textile industry dominated the
economy of Lawrence, Massachusetts. In
1912, the city's population was nearly 86,00060,000 of whom depended directly upon the
payrolls of the textile mills.
The wages for workers were poor, housing
conditions overcrowded, and average life
expectancy in Lawrence one of the lowest in
the United States.
Work in the mills was hard and dangerous for
the largely immigrant population of workers,
many of them children who started work at an
early age.
Lawrence, MA Strike:
1912
In 1911, the year before the strike, Massachusetts had
passed a new law that was to take effect on January 1,
1912, that mandated the reduction of the maximum
weekly work hours for women and children under 18
from 56 to 54 hours. On average, Lawrence workers
earned a weekly wage of $8.76. Half of the striking
workers were women and children who earned merely
$6.00 per week.
Lawrence's mill owners, including the largest, the
American Woolen Company, responded to the law by
reducing workers' wages by 3.5%, arguing that if
workers' hours were to be decreased, then wages
would have to fall in order to keep competitive with
mills in New Hampshire, Vermont, and in the South,
where wages were even lower.
The “Bread & Roses”
Strike
DEMANDS:
 15¢/hr. wage increase.
 Double pay for overtime.
 No discrimination against strikers.
 An end to “speed-up” on the
assembly line.
 An end to discrimination against
foreign immigrant workers.
Lawrence, MA Strike: 1912
The Lawrence strike began
with a walkout by workers
on January 11, 1912.
Workers cut threads,
slashed power belts, and
smashed windows to
ensure that work could not
continue. Over the course
of the day, the number of
protesters grew from a few
hundred to nearly 10,000
men, women, and children.
By the end of the ten-week
strike, 23,000 workers had
left their jobs.
The strike received extensive press coverage, which resulted in an outpouring of support for workers and
their families. Many supporters and witnesses testified before Congress during hearings held in early
March, prompting President Taft to order an investigation of industrial conditions throughout the nation.
Negotiation between government representatives, including the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, and mill
owners, concerned over the public reaction to the hearings, helped to bring the strike to an end. The
American Woolen Company acceded to all the strikers' demands on March 12, 1912, and soon the rest of
the Lawrence textile companies followed suit. Wages were raised for textile workers throughout New
England.
The
“Formula”
What does this
“formula” mean?
unions + violence + strikes + socialists + immigrants =
anarchists
Labor Union Membership
What does this graph tell us about the labor movement?
Why is this growth occurring in the United States?
How would business leaders respond to this information?
What does this graph say about the “promise” for laborers in the U.S.?