Topic 10 - Industrial and Economic Growth (1865-1914)

Lesson 5 - The Labor Movement

Before the Civil War, most factories were small and family-run. Bosses knew their workers by name and chatted with them about their families. Because most workers had skills that the factory needed, they could bargain with the boss for better wages. By the late 1800s, though, factories had changed, and workers needed to adapt.

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Start up

Examine the photo of the workers on strike. Write a paragraph about why they are facing soldiers.

Guiding Questions

Why did American workers form labor unions?
What issues did women face in the workplace?
What challenges did labor face?

Vocabulary

sweatshop
strikebreaker
anarchist
trade union
collective bargaining
Triangle Fire

Academic Vocabulary

endorse

prohibit

How Did Working Conditions Change in the Late 1800s?

By the 1880s, the relationship between worker and boss had changed. People worked all day tending machines in a large, crowded, noisy room. Because their skills were easily replaced, many workers were forced to work for low wages. In the garment trade and other industries, sweatshops became common. A sweatshop is a workplace where people labor long hours in poor conditions for low pay. Most sweatshop workers were young women or children.

Child Labor

The 1900 census reported nearly 2 million children under age 15 at work throughout the country.

Boys and girls labored in hazardous textile mills, tobacco factories, and garment sweatshops. In coal mines, they picked stones out of the coal for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Working children had little time for schooling. Lack of education reduced their chances of building better lives as adults.

A Dangerous, Unregulated Workplace

Factories were filled with hazards. Lung-damaging dust filled the air of textile mills. Cave-ins and gas explosions plagued mines. In steel mills, vats of molten metal spilled without warning. Some workers developed long-term health problems. Others were severely injured or killed in industrial accidents. In just one year, 195 workers died in the steel mills of Pittsburgh.

The federal government continued its hands-off policy toward business. Congress did little to regulate conditions in the workplace or otherwise ensure the safety of workers—even child laborers.

Analyze Images Large, fast-moving machines were a mainstay of factories.

Draw Conclusions What kind of hazards would the women in this image face when the machine was running?

READING CHECK

Identify Supporting Details What were the working conditions like in sweatshops?

Why Did Workers Organize Unions?

Many workers found ways to fight back. Some workers slowed their work pace. Others went on strike. Strikes were usually informal, organized by workers in individual factories.

Sometimes workers banded together to win better conditions. However, most early efforts to form unions failed.

The Knights of Labor

In 1869, workers formed the Knights of Labor. At first, the union was open to skilled workers only. The members held meetings in secret because employers fired workers who joined unions.

In 1879, the Knights of Labor elected Terence Powderly as their president. Powderly worked to strengthen the union by opening its membership to immigrants, African Americans, women, and unskilled workers.

Powderly did not believe in strikes. Rather, he relied on rallies and meetings to win public support. Goals of the Knights included a shorter workday, an end to child labor, and equal pay for men and women. Most important, Powderly wanted workers and employers to share ownership and profits.

In 1885, some members of the Knights of Labor launched a strike that forced the Missouri Pacific Railroad to restore wages that it had previously cut. The Knights did not officially support the strike. Still, workers everywhere saw the strike as a victory for the union. Membership soared to 700,000, including 60,000 African Americans.

How Did the Haymarket Riot Hurt Workers?

The following year, the Knights of Labor ran into serious trouble. Workers at the McCormick Harvester Company in Chicago went on strike. Again, the Knights did not endorse the strike.

Like many companies at the time, the McCormick company hired strikebreakers, or replacements for striking workers. On May 3, 1886, workers clashed with strikebreakers outside the factory. Police opened fire, and four workers were killed.

The next day, thousands of workers gathered in Haymarket Square to protest the killings. The rally was led by anarchists, people who oppose all forms of organized government. Suddenly, a bomb exploded, killing seven police officers.

Eight anarchists were arrested for their part in the Haymarket Riot , as the incident was called. No real evidence linked these men to the bombing, but four were tried, convicted, and hanged. A wave of antilabor feeling swept the nation. Many Americans thought that the unions were controlled by anarchists. As a result, membership in the Knights of Labor dropped sharply.

Analyze Images In 1886, a bomb exploded during a workers’ rights protest in Haymarket Square in Chicago. The Haymarket Riot damaged the labor movement’s image.

Infer Why would the labor movement’s image have suffered, even though labor organizers were not responsible for the bombing?

A New Union Forms

Despite the failure of the Knights of Labor, the labor movement continued to grow. In 1886, an immigrant cigar maker named Samuel Gompers organized a new union in Columbus, Ohio. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was open to skilled workers only.

Workers did not join the AFL directly. Rather, they joined a trade union, a union of persons working in the same trade. For example, a typesetter joined a typesetter’s union. The union then joined the AFL. Thus, the AFL was a large organization made up of many unions.

Unlike the Knights of Labor, the AFL stressed practical goals. It focused on higher wages, shorter hours, and improved working conditions. It led the fight for collective bargaining, the right of unions to negotiate with management for workers as a group. The AFL also supported the use of strikes to achieve its goals.

Its practical approach helped the AFL become the most powerful labor organization in the nation. Between 1886 and 1910, membership in the AFL swelled from 150,000 to more than one and a half million. However, because African Americans, immigrants, and unskilled workers were barred from most trade unions, they could not join the AFL.

Analyze Graphs Union membership increased significantly between 1890 and 1910.

Understand Effects What would joining a union have done for a typical worker?

READING CHECK

Identify Supporting Details What were the goals of the Knights of Labor?

Women in the Workplace

By 1890, one million women worked in American factories. In the textile mills of New England and the tobacco factories of the South, women made up the majority of workers. In New York City’s garment industry, women outnumbered men.

During the 1800s, some women formed their own unions. A few, like the Washerwomen’s Association of Atlanta, which had all African American members, went out on strike for higher wages. None of these unions succeeded, however.

Who Was Mother Jones?

The best-known woman in the labor movement was Irish-born Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones. Jones devoted much of her adult life to the cause of workers.

Jones spoke out about the hard lives of children in textile mills, “barefoot . . . reaching thin little hands into the machinery.” By calling attention to such abuses, Mother Jones helped pave the way for reform.

Organizing Garment Workers

In 1900, garment workers organized the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). More than 20,000 women and men in the ILGWU walked off their jobs in 1909. After a few weeks, employers met union demands for better pay and shorter hours. The ILGWU became a key member of the AFL.

Despite the efforts of the ILGWU and other labor groups, most women with factory jobs did not join unions. They continued to work long hours for low pay. Many labored under unsafe conditions. Then a tragic event focused attention on the dangers faced by women workers.

The Triangle Fire

On a cool day in March 1911, the workday was just ending when a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a sweatshop in New York City. Within minutes, the factory’s upper stories were ablaze. Hundreds of workers raced for the exits, only to find them locked. The company had locked the doors to keep workers at their jobs. In their panic, workers ran headlong into the doors, blocking them with their bodies.

Fire trucks arrived almost immediately, but their ladders could not reach the upper floors. One after another, workers trying desperately to escape the flames jumped to their deaths.

Primary Source

“As I looked up . . . there, at a window, a young man was helping girls to leap out. Suddenly one of them put her arms around him and kiss[ed] him. Then he held her into space and dropped her. He jumped next. Thud . . . dead. Thud . . . dead.”

—The New York Times, March 26, 1911

Nearly 150 people, mostly young women, lost their lives in the Triangle Fire. The deaths shocked the public. As a result, New York and other states approved new safety laws to help protect workers.

Analyze Images Despite the efforts of firefighters, many people lost their lives in the Triangle Fire.

Infer How did the public react to the event?

READING CHECK

Understand Effects How did the Triangle Fire affect labor reform in New York and other states?

Labor Faces Challenges

The new era of industry led to vast economic growth. At the same time, it created economic strains. In the rush for profits, many industries expanded too fast. As goods flooded the market, prices dropped. To cut their losses, factory owners often fired workers.

As the supply of goods fell, prices rose again. In turn, factories geared up again, and workers returned to their jobs.

The economy swung wildly between good times and bad. These boom and bust cycles challenged labor. Between 1870 and 1900, two major depressions and three smaller recessions rocked the country. In such hard times, workers lost their jobs or faced pay cuts.

Strikes Turn Violent

After suffering several forced pay cuts, rail workers went on strike in 1877. Riots erupted as workers burned rail yards and destroyed track.

Violent strikes also broke out in the West. In the 1870s, miners in Idaho tried to shut down two large mines. In 1893, after another bitter strike, miners formed the Western Federation of Miners. This union gained great strength in the Rocky Mountain states. Between 1894 and 1904, it organized strike after strike.

Analyze Images Violence, including this train crash, marked the Pullman Strike.

Cite Evidence Is violence an effective tool for striking workers? Why or why not?

Authorities Act Against Unions

The federal and state governments usually sided with factory owners. Several Presidents sent in troops to end strikes. Courts usually ruled against strikers, too.

In 1892, a Carnegie steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, cut wages. When the mill manager refused to bargain, the workers went on strike. The manager shut down the mill and called in a private army to end the Homestead strike. A deadly clash followed. The governor sent in the state militia to stop the violence. Four months later, most of the men went back to work, but afterward the mill prohibited unions.

In 1894, a Chicago court dealt a serious blow to unions. A year earlier, George Pullman had cut the pay of workers at his railroad car factory. Yet he did not reduce the rents he charged them for company-owned houses. Workers walked off the job in protest.

A federal judge ordered the Pullman workers to end their strike. The strike’s leaders were jailed for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. This act had been meant to keep trusts from limiting free trade. The courts, however, said that the strikers were limiting free trade.

Gains and Losses

Union workers staged thousands of strikes during the late 1800s. However, many Americans opposed the strikes. Some were afraid that unions were run by foreign-born radicals. Because unions were unpopular, owners felt free to try to crush them.

Workers did make some gains. Overall, wages rose slightly between 1870 and 1900. Still, union growth was slow. In 1910, only one worker in 20 belonged to a union. Some 30 years would pass before large numbers of unskilled workers were able to join unions.

Analyze Graphs Industrialization led to profound changes in the American workforce around the year 1900.

Analyze Graphs What effect might industrialization have had on farm productivity during this time?

READING CHECK

Identify Cause and Effect Why were unions unpopular with many Americans?

Lesson Check

What role did anarchists play in the Haymarket Riot?
Why was it important for trade unions to engage in collective bargaining?
Identify Main Ideas How did the employer-worker relationship change over the course of the 1800s?
Support Ideas with Examples What do working conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tell you in general about the attitude of sweatshop employers toward their workers’ health and safety?
Identify Cause and Effect How did economic recessions and depressions affect workers during the late 1800s, and how did workers respond to these challenges?
Writing Workshop: Shape Tone How would you feel if your already low factory wages were cut? In a collective bargaining session with the factory owner, would your words reflect your emotions, or would your tone be calm? Write a few sentences to help establish a tone for the argument essay you will write at the end of the topic.

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