THE STRUGGLES OF LABOR
The life of a 19th-century Ameri- can industrial worker was hard . Even in good times wages were low, hours long, and working conditions hazardous . Little of the wealth that the growth of the nation had gener- ated went to its workers . Moreover, women and children made up a high percentage of the work force in some industries and often received but a fraction of the wages a man could earn . Periodic economic crises swept the nation, further eroding industri- al wages and producing high levels of unemployment .
At the same time, technologi- cal improvements, which added so much to the nation’s productivity, continually reduced the demand for skilled labor . Yet the unskilled labor pool was constantly growing, as un- precedented numbers of immigrants — 18 million between 1880 and 1910 — entered the country, eager for work .
Before 1874, when Massachusetts passed the nation’s first legislation limiting the number of hours wom- en and child factory workers could perform to 10 hours a day, virtually no labor legislation existed in the country . It was not until the 1930s that the federal government would become actively involved . Until then, the field was left to the state and local authorities, few of whom were as responsive to the workers as they were to wealthy industrialists .
The laissez-faire capitalism that dominated the second half of the
19th century and fostered huge con- centrations of wealth and power was backed by a judiciary that time and again ruled against those who chal- lenged the system . In this, they were merely following the prevailing phi- losophy of the times . Drawing on a simplified understanding of Dar- winian science, many social think- ers believed that both the growth of large business at the expense of small enterprise and the wealth of a few alongside the poverty of many was “survival of the fittest,” and an un- avoidable by-product of progress .
American workers, especially the skilled among them, appear to have lived at least as well as their coun- terparts in industrial Europe . Still, the social costs were high . As late as the year 1900, the United States had the highest job-related fatality rate of any industrialized nation in the world . Most industrial workers still worked a 10-hour day (12 hours in the steel industry), yet earned less than the minimum deemed neces- sary for a decent life . The number of children in the work force doubled between 1870 and 1900 .
The first major effort to orga- nize workers’ groups on a nation- wide basis appeared with the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor in 1869 . Originally a secret, ritualistic society organized by Philadelphia garment workers and advocating a cooperative program, it was open to all workers, including African Americans, women, and farmers . The Knights grew slowly until its railway workers’ unit won a strike
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against the great railroad baron, Jay Gould, in 1885 . Within a year they added 500,000 workers to their rolls, but, not attuned to pragmatic trade unionism and unable to repeat this success, the Knights soon fell into a decline .
Their place in the labor move- ment was gradually taken by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) . Rather than open member- ship to all, the AFL, under former ci- gar union official Samuel Gompers, was a group of unions focused on skilled workers . Its objectives were “pure and simple” and apolitical: in- creasing wages, reducing hours, and improving working conditions . It did much to turn the labor move- ment away from the socialist views of most European labor movements .
Nonetheless, both before the founding of the AFL and after, American labor history was violent . In the Great Rail Strike of 1877, rail workers across the nation went out in response to a 10-percent pay cut . Attempts to break the strike led to ri- oting and wide-scale destruction in several cities: Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Pittsburgh, Penn- sylvania; Buffalo, New York; and San Francisco, California . Federal troops had to be sent to several locations before the strike was ended .
Nine years later, in Chicago’s Haymarket Square incident, some- one threw a bomb at police about to break up an anarchist rally in support of an ongoing strike at the McCormick Harvester Company in Chicago . In the ensuing melee, seven
policemen and at least four workers were reported killed . Some 60 police officers were injured .
In 1892, at Carnegie’s steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a group of 300 Pinkerton detectives the company had hired to break a bitter strike by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers fought a fierce and losing gun battle with strikers . The Na- tional Guard was called in to protect non-union workers and the strike was broken . Unions were not let back into the plant until 1937 .
In 1894, wage cuts at the Pullman Company just outside Chicago led to a strike, which, with the support of the American Railway Union, soon tied up much of the country’s rail system . As the situation deteriorat- ed, U .S . Attorney General Richard Olney, himself a former railroad lawyer, deputized over 3,000 men in an attempt to keep the rails open . This was followed by a federal court injunction against union interfer- ence with the trains . When rioting ensued, President Cleveland sent in federal troops, and the strike was eventually broken .
The most militant of the strike- favoring unions was the Industri- al Workers of the World (IWW) . Formed from an amalgam of unions fighting for better conditions in the West’s mining industry, the IWW, or “Wobblies” as they were com- monly known, gained particular prominence from the Colorado mine clashes of 1903 and the singularly brutal fashion in which they were
CHAPTER 9: DISCONTENT AND REFORM
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
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put down . Influenced by militant anarchism and openly calling for class warfare, the Wobblies gained many adherents after they won a dif- ficult strike battle in the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 . Their call for work stoppages in the midst of World War I, however, led to a government crackdown in 1917 that virtually destroyed them .