Transcript Organized Labor, 1865-1900

Organized Labor, 1865-1900
U.S. History II
Socialism’s Failure in the U.S.
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2 Socialist parties in the U.S.
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Labor organizations relentlessly suppressed
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Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor Party
Eugene V. Debs’ Social Democratic Party
Management used divide & conquer strategy,
playing ethnic groups off each other
Pinkerton detectives & Nat’l Guard used to break up
strikes
Workers more concerned about individual,
bread-and-butter issues
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Unwilling to sacrifice individual present for collective
future
Most strikes about wages, hours, & abusive
foremen
Boom & Bust Cycles
Triangle Shirtwaist Co. Fire
The Growth of Manufacturing
The National Labor Union
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National Labor Union
short-lived; founded 1866
 640,000 members in 1868
 Called for 8-hour day,
greenbacks, co-ops, &
equal rights for women &
blacks
 Got Congress to repeal
Contract Labor law & pass
8-Hour Day law
The Knights of Labor
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Knights of Labor founded in 1860 by
Philadelphia tailors; opened to all workers
in 1870s
 Grand Master Terence V. Powderly
(1879-1893) increased membership from
under 10,000 in 1879 to 730,000 in 1886
 Sought cooperative society - alliances
between employer & employee, producer
& consumer - as well as gov’t ownership
of utilities, trust reform, & ban on child
labor
 Got Congress to create U.S. Bureau of
Labor
 Declined after 1886: lost strike vs. Jay
Gould & discredited by ties to Haymarket
Bombing
Terence Powderly
American Federation of Labor
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A.F.L. founded in 1886
 Led by Dutch Jewish cigar maker from
Britain, Samuel Gompers (1886-1924)
 Over 1 million members by 1901; 2.5 million
by 1917
 Federation of 111 unions, representing
27,000 locals
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Organized by crafts, with each union independent
no unskilled workers, women, or blacks
Officially nonpartisan, but published
legislative platforms
Industrial Workers of the
World
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“Wobblies” founded in
1905; led by Big Bill
Heywood & Mother Jones
Mostly un- or semi-skilled
workers
Used radical,
revolutionary rhetoric
Strikes were spectacular
affairs, but only real
success was Lowell,
Mass in 1912
Big Bill Heywood
The Great Railroad Strike (1877)
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Strike damage, Pennsylvania
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Rate wars in 1876 ended
with truce which involved
a 10% wage cut
Strike began in Baltimore
& Pittsburgh, spreading
quickly across Midwest &
West
July 21-22, Philadelphia:
militia killed 30 strikers;
strikers burned 39
buildings, 104 engines, &
1,245 cars
Ended by Pres. Hayes
calling out troops
The Haymarket Bombing (1886)
 Anarchists
had called public meeting to
protest bloodshed at McCormick plant
 7 Germans, 1 American (Albert Parsons,
a former carpetbagger who married a
black woman and was a Knight of Labor)
 Not sure who threw bomb - meeting was
dispersing as police came
 Farcical trial, presided over by Judge
Gary, led to four executions & one suicide
The Homestead Strike (1892)
Pullman Strike (1894)
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Pullman was
company town,
where employees
gouged for
everything
 American Railway
Union led by Debs became Socialist in
jail afterwards
Eugene V. Debs