Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor36
Estimating the hospital cases for a year on the same basis we have the Pittsburgh District annually sending out from its mills, railroad yards, fac- tories, and mines, 45 one-legged men; 100 hopeless cripples walking with crutch or cane for the rest of their lives; 45 men with a twisted, useless arm; 30 men with an empty sleeve; 20 men with but one hand; 60 with half a hand gone; 70 one-eyed men—500 such wrecks in all. Such is the trail of lasting miseries work-accidents leave behind. . . .
There is no bright side to this situation. By industrial accidents, Allegheny County loses more than 500 workmen every year, of whom nearly half are American born, 70 per cent are workmen of skill and training, and 60 per cent have not reached the prime of their working life. Youth, skill, strength—in a word, human power—is what we are losing.
Workers Respond
Workers did not react passively to the conditions they confronted in the late nineteenth century. What do the following sources reveal about the conditions workers faced and what they thought about those conditions? What challenges did workers confront in attempting to improve their conditions?
4 In 1894, workers at George Pullman’s “model” company town went on strike after a series of wage cuts. The strike would spread from Pullman, where workers manufactured the Pullman railroad sleeper
cars, to the nation’s rail system, leaving much of it shut down. This is a state- ment of a Pullman striker at the Chicago Convention of the American Railway Union, which represented unskilled railroad workers involved in the strike.
Why We Struck at Pullman (1895)
We struck at Pullman because we were without hope. We joined the Ameri- can Railway Union because it gave us a glimmer of hope. Twenty thousand souls, men, women, and little ones, have their eyes turned toward the con- vention today, straining eagerly through dark despondency for a glimmer of the heaven-sent message you alone can give us on this earth.
In stating to this body our grievances it is hard to tell where to begin. . . . Five reductions in wages, work, and in conditions of employment swept through the shops at Pullman between May and December 1893. The last was the most severe, amounting to nearly 30 percent and our rents had not fallen. . . .