C. Union Movements Diverge

As labor activism spread, it diversified. Two major types of unions made great gains under forceful leaders.

One approach to the organization of labor was craft unionism, which included skilled workers from one or more trades. Samuel Gompers led the Cigar Makers’ International Union to join with other craft unions in 1886. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) with Gompers as its president, focused on collective bargaining, or negotiation between representatives of labor and management, to reach written agreements on wages, hours, and working conditions.

Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor

Unlike the Knights of Labor, the AFL used strikes as a major tactic. Successful strikes helped the AFL win higher wages and shorter workweeks. Between 1890 and 1915, the average weekly wages in unionized industries rose from $17.50 to $24, and the average workweek fell from almost 54.5 hours to just under 49 hours.

Industrial Unionism

Some labor leaders felt that unions should include all laborers—skilled and unskilled—in a specific industry. This concept captured the imagination of Eugene V. Debs, who attempted to form such an industrial union—the American Railway Union (ARU). Most of the new union’s members were unskilled and semiskilled laborers, but skilled engineers and firemen joined too. In 1894, the new union won a strike for higher wages. Within two months, its membership climbed to 150,000, dwarfing the 90,000 enrolled in the four skilled railroad brotherhoods. Though the ARU, like the Knights of Labor, never recovered after the failure of a major strike, it added to the momentum of union organizing.

Eugene V. Debs

Socialism and the IWW

In an attempt to solve the problems faced by workers, Eugene Debs and some other labor activists eventually turned to socialism, an economic and political system based on government control of business and property and equal distribution of wealth. Socialism, carried to its extreme form— communism, as advocated by the German philosopher Karl Marx—would result in the overthrow of the capitalist system. Most socialists in late-19th-century America drew back from this goal, however, and worked within the labor movement to achieve better conditions for workers.

In 1905, a group of radical unionists and socialists in Chicago organized the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or the Wobblies. Headed by William “Big Bill” Haywood, the Wobblies included miners, lumberers, and cannery and dock workers. Unlike the ARU, the IWW welcomed African Americans, but membership never topped 100,000. Its only major strike victory occurred in 1912. Yet the Wobblies, like other industrial unions, gave dignity and a sense of solidarity to unskilled workers.

Other Labor Activism in the West

In April 1903, about 1,000 Japanese and Mexican workers organized a successful strike in the sugar-beet fields of Ventura County, California. They formed the Sugar Beet and Farm Laborers’ Union of Oxnard. In Wyoming, the State Federation of Labor supported a union of Chinese and Japanese miners who sought the same wages and treatment as other union miners. These small, independent unions increased both the overall strength of the labor movement and the tension between labor and management.