WHAT WAS IT LIKE BEING A "WORKER" IN AMERICA DURING THE "INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION" OF THE 19TH CENTURY?
MILLIONS OF IMMIGRANTS FROM ALL OVER EUROPE CAME TO AMERICA DURING THE 1800s AND 1900s
THEY WERE PARENTS AS WELL AS CHILDREN; ALL WANTING A BETTER LIFE THAN THE ONE THEY HAD
THE GREAT MAJORITY OF THESE NEW AMERICANS, WITHOUT EVEN THE BENEFIT OF SPEAKING ENGLISH, SETTLED IN AMERICAN CITIES.
LIVING SPACE HAD TO BE FOUND FOR THESE MILLIONS OF LABORERS AND THEIR FAMILIES WHO WORKED IN FACTORIES, RAILROADS, MINES, SHIPYARDS, DOCKS, AND NUMEROUS OTHER JOBS IN CROWDED AND GROWING AMERICAN CITIES. MANY FAMILIES LIVED IN "TENEMENTS"; BUILDINGS THAT ONCE HOUSED 2 OR 3 FAMILIES, REMODELED INTO MUCH SMALLER UNITS ABLE TO HOUSE 100 OR MORE FAMILIES IN SMALL, TERRIBLY CROWDED, & UNHEALTHY CONDITIONS.
THE WORK THEY DID WAS HARD, DANGEROUS, AND WOULD COST MANY NOT ONLY THEIR HEALTH, BUT ALSO THEIR LIVES. FAMILIES WERE NEVER COMPENSATED FOR THE DEATH ON THE JOB OF A LOVED ONE.
BELOW IS AN EXAMPLE OF A WORK CREW FROM A COAL MINE. WHAT IS THE MOST SURPRISING THING ABOUT THIS PICTURE TO YOU?
BELOW IS HOW ALL CLOTH WAS MADE BEFORE 1800; BY A SKILLED CRAFTSMAN WEAVING IT ON A HAND POWERED LOOM. PEOPLE DID THESE JOBS IN THEIR OWN HOMES WITH FAMILY MEMBERS ASSISTING.
BELOW ARE THE TOOLS A SKILLED CABINETMAKER WOULD HAVE USED TO CREATE A FINE DRESSER OR A CORNER CABINET. EVERY PIECE OF THE ITEM WOULD FIT EXACTLY AND LAST FOR MANY GENERATIONS. THIS CABINETMAKER WOULD HAVE LEARNED HIS TRADE WORKING AS AN APPRENTICE UNDER A MASTER CARPENTER FOR MANY YEARS BEFORE GOING INTO BUSINESS FOR HIMSELF.
HERE ARE THE TOOLS A METAL WORKER WOULD HAVE USED TO PRODUCE ANY ITEM COMPRISED OF ANY TYPE OF METAL. AGAIN THE QUALITY AND THE DURABILITY OF AN ITEM PRODUCED IN THIS FASHION WOULD HAVE LASTED GENERATIONS; WITH THE WORKER STANDING BEHIND THE WORK.
ONCE WATER POWER, LATER STEAM POWER, BECAME WIDELY USED, THIS IS WHAT A 19TH CENTURY WORKSHOP SOON TURNED INTO; A FACTORY
HERE WORKERS ARE CRAMMED ON TOP OF EACH OTHER RUNNING INDIVIDUALLY POWERED MACHINES IN A FUSE FACTORY. NOTICE THERE ARE NO WINDOWS; PROBABLY NO FRESH AIR, AND LOTS OF WAYS TO GET INJURED AROUND THE DANGEROUS MACHINERY. NOTICE ALL THE BELTS RUNNING FLOOR TO CEILING.
THESE CHILDREN ARE WORKING IN A SAW MILL IN INDIANAPOLIS INSTEAD OF BEING IN SCHOOL. THEIR WAGES WERE NECESSARY FOR THEIR FAMILIES TO SURVIVE. MINUS ANY CHILD LABOR LAWS, FACTORIES HAD THEIR PICK OF CHILDREN THEY COULD PAY A MUCH LOWER WAGE.
THE MEN BELOW WERE KNOWN AS "ROBBER BARONS". THEY MANIPULATED LAWS, BANKS, AND POLITICAL LEADERS TO BECOME THE RICHEST, MOST POWERFUL MEN OF THE 19TH CENTURY. WHILE TENS OF MILLIONS LIVED IN POVERTY, THESE MEN, AND OTHERS LIKE THEM LIVED LIKE KINGS.
SUPER RICH MEN LIKE THESE AND OTHERS HAD GOVERNMENT AND LAWS ON THEIR SIDE TO THE DETRIMENT OF TENS OF MILLIONS OF POOR WORKERS LIVING AND DYING TO MAKE THEM RICHER.
READING # 1
MAKE YOUR SQ3R TITLE: "THE WATER WHEEL AND STEAM POWER CHANGE WORKING LIFE FOREVER"
SCROLL TO THE END OF READING # 1. SELECT ANY 4 OF THE QUESTIONS TO COPY TO YOUR SQ3R SHEET. REVIEW THE QUESTIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE READING THE ENTIRE TEXT.
A GOOD DEAL FOR MODERN WORKERS
What does it mean to be a worker in the United States of America in the 21st century? Among other things it means that you will go to work every day in as safe an environment as is possible. It means that if you have trained for a career that requires special working skills you will earn a higher wage than an unskilled worker. It means that you can expect, even if you are lacking any special skills, to make a minimum wage that is enforced by Federal law. It means that you will have access to some form of self funded or company assisted health care should you or your family become ill. It means that if you are injured or die at work, your family will be compensated for your loss. It also means that if you choose, you can contribute towards your eventual retirement by directing a portion of every paycheck towards that eventuality.
If this sounds like a pretty good deal for the American worker, it is. This is in great contrast to the employer-employee relationships experienced by many millions of workers once mass employment of Americans broke into full throttle during America's version of the Industrial Revolution. This widespread movement of millions of people from rural family farms to Northeastern cities followed the conclusion America's Civil war in the 1860s.
Large and small steps taken over many decades by brave people saw American workers eventually organize themselves into “Labor Unions”. This American form of "Collective Bargaining" became the catalyst for modernizing the employer-employee relationship from being one sided and dictatorial by rich and powerful owners, to the more mutually beneficial model 21st century workers now all but take for granted.
DAYS OF THE SKILLED CRAFTSMAN
For most of the recorded history of humanity, when a person needed a cupboard to store food, a pair of pants, or a chair; when they needed an axe to chop wood, or a dresser for their clothes, or a thousand other goods and products that people come to want or need, they had two options. They could either make the product themselves, or they could choose to pay a skilled craftsman make the desired good for them.
Usually a skilled craftsman was someone who had learned their Trade through many years of apprenticeship under the guidance of a master craftsman. They then spent many additional years developing and perfecting their own set of skills which allowed them to make a good living selling a quality product they guaranteed with their name and their reputation.
Hand made products were of a very high quality. They took longer for the individual craftsman to produce, and they were in most cases expensive to purchase because of the amount of care and work that went into hand making the product. Craftsmen worked out of their homes and made their living from the agreed upon selling price of the item that was to be made.
Over time many Investors began opening small workshops that provided high quality hand produced items made by teams of skilled craftsmen. These people worked outside their homes in larger buildings with other craftspeople where certain types of human powered tools or machines were provided for the workers to use. Instead of receiving payment for the individual items they crafted, these workers were paid an hourly or a daily wage for all the labor they provided that day.
SAMUEL SLATER HELPS CITIES GROW QUICKLY
The weaving of cloth and the fashioning of fabrics into finished clothes around the start of the 1800s would eventually lead to great changes in how products were made, and even greater changes in the lives and lifestyles of millions of people as to how they earned their living. Many thousands of people living in rural areas began moving from family farms to find work in cities. Farm work was very tough labor, and there was never any guarantee a farmers family would have a successful year.
People by the thousands wanted to move to the quickly growing cities of the Northeast and find work for wages in the ever expanding factories. Many more millions of European immigrants would leave the hard lives of their native lands in Europe to come to The New World for a better life as the 1800s wore on.
What we now recognize to be the first American factory was started in 1790 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island by the Englishman Samuel Slater. Slater and his associates employed a system that had been in use for many years in England to use fast running river water to turn a water wheel that was vertically attached to a building called a Mill. This turning water wheel provided the energy to run machines that enabled workers to mass produce thread from raw cotton. In the following years Slater, and other factory owners later referred to as Industrialists, devised numerous, faster, and cheaper methods of quickly mass producing finished clothes using Slater's thread on power looms and finally sewing machines.
The making of cloth and the fashioning of fabric into finished articles of clothing by workers operating machines would usher in an era of great societal change; not only in how and where products were made, but frightening and unexpected changes in the lifestyles of many millions of workers who would come to earn their livings working in crowded and dangerous factories located in large, very dirty, very dangerous, and terribly over populated American cities.
A DANGEROUS DAY EVERY DAY
As machines and manufacturing technologies advanced into the mid 1800s, much larger and more heavily mechanized factories became the destination of millions of workers at the crack of dawn every day. Most people worked as many as six days a week, 12 or more hours a day. On the fear of being fired, many worked even longer hours if orders needed to be filled or other employees were sick or injured. The factories were stifling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Workers had no safety gear to protect against the many dangers in the factories of this era.
The great number of turning and moving parts in the factories resulted in hideous injuries and death to untold thousands of laborers over the decades. The turning of the great water wheel, and later the power of the steam engine, caused numerous other connected wheels, gears, sprockets, pulleys, and belts to propel in motion. Large and stationary machinery inside the Plant was modified so that individual machines could be started and stopped by the hand of the worker simply by tightening or loosening tension on a wide belt that extended from a large Central shaft near the ceiling angling downwards to the machines on the floor.
Frequently, overtired workers not paying sharp enough attention to their surroundings, or working too closely to a machine were often drug into the machine suffering crippling injuries. Unable to work any longer the employee was simply fired without regard to the injuries they suffered or the payment of any benefits. Now suffering some sort of crippling ailment, a person had no chance to look for other employment. They and their families would soon be evicted from their buildings for lack of paying the overpriced rents charged by the slum landlords of the day.
In a relatively short span of time human power had been replaced in numerous manufacturing processes by machine power. This allowed Factory owners to bring large amounts of machinery and large numbers of workers together under the same roof. Mass production of goods of all kinds in factories, by workers who were paid wages to tend and operate the machines, virtually replaced the individual craftsman making a single product at a time within the confines of their own homes. These mass produced goods were of a lesser quality, but they could be produced faster and were much cheaper because of the methods of production.
THE FILTHY RICH
Industrialists then were rich Capitalists; businessmen in the business of making money by mass producing products of all kinds in large factories in America's densely populated cities of the Northeast. They quickly replaced large scale Farmers and Bankers as the richest and most powerful people in America in the decades following the American Civil War. Means and processes were devised to mass produce any good or product that had always before been painstakingly produced by talented craftsmen; most often within the setting of their own home.
Mass produced goods and the methods of production were greatly advanced and improved by the time the American Civil War occurred during the 1860s. Northern factories provided the Union Armies with the materials necessary to defeat the Southern Confederacy. The chief reason these Industrialists were able to set up and operate tens of thousands of factories of every possible kind was the readily available, and terribly cheap labor, provided by millions and millions of American workers.
In the years following the Civil War, American Industrialists became rich beyond belief. They came to be widely known as "Robber Barons" because of the unethical and even illegal methods by which they came to accumulate their great wealth and power. Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Jay Gould, Henry Clay Frick, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, and Andrew Mellon were some of the many businessmen of the era who came to be known by this hated name. They gained control of natural resources. They used their wealth to gain influence in the halls of government. They paid low wages and exploited workers. They used their wealth and power to destroy competitors so they were able to fix prices at high levels. This practice was known as the “Monopoly”.
THE DIRT POOR
On the other hand the millions of human beings toiling in the factories, the mills, the mines, and working on the railroads were paid next to nothing. They were forced to work very long hours in very dangerous environments. Tens of thousands of children, many below 10 years of age, were compelled by family needs to work in the same environments as their parents. Richer families could allow their children to go to school to learn to read & write. The children of the working poor had no option but to join their parents in earning wages to help the family survive.
When workers left the factory they would return home to "cold water flats". That was an apartment in a multiple story building without heat, running water, or private toilet facilities. Underpaid workers were barely able to afford to pay the high rents set by the slumlords of the day. Very little money was left over for food so malnutrition was very common. The complete absence of medical care saw many workers, young and old, die long before their time from accidents in the factories, sickness gone untreated, or the wide array of frightening diseases like cholera, whooping cough, small pox, diphtheria, and other sicknesses that flourished in the unsanitary and crowded cities of that era.
What does it mean to be a worker in the United States of America in the 21st century? Among other things it means that you will go to work every day in as safe an environment as is possible. It means that if you have trained for a career that requires special working skills you will earn a higher wage than an unskilled worker. It means that you can expect, even if you are lacking any special skills, to make a minimum wage that is enforced by Federal law. It means that you will have access to some form of self funded or company assisted health care should you or your family become ill. It means that if you are injured or die at work, your family will be compensated for your loss. It also means that if you choose, you can contribute towards your eventual retirement by directing a portion of every paycheck towards that eventuality.
If this sounds like a pretty good deal for the American worker, it is. This is in great contrast to the employer-employee relationships experienced by many millions of workers once mass employment of Americans broke into full throttle during America's version of the Industrial Revolution. This widespread movement of millions of people from rural family farms to Northeastern cities followed the conclusion America's Civil war in the 1860s.
Large and small steps taken over many decades by brave people saw American workers eventually organize themselves into “Labor Unions”. This American form of "Collective Bargaining" became the catalyst for modernizing the employer-employee relationship from being one sided and dictatorial by rich and powerful owners, to the more mutually beneficial model 21st century workers now all but take for granted.
DAYS OF THE SKILLED CRAFTSMAN
For most of the recorded history of humanity, when a person needed a cupboard to store food, a pair of pants, or a chair; when they needed an axe to chop wood, or a dresser for their clothes, or a thousand other goods and products that people come to want or need, they had two options. They could either make the product themselves, or they could choose to pay a skilled craftsman make the desired good for them.
Usually a skilled craftsman was someone who had learned their Trade through many years of apprenticeship under the guidance of a master craftsman. They then spent many additional years developing and perfecting their own set of skills which allowed them to make a good living selling a quality product they guaranteed with their name and their reputation.
Hand made products were of a very high quality. They took longer for the individual craftsman to produce, and they were in most cases expensive to purchase because of the amount of care and work that went into hand making the product. Craftsmen worked out of their homes and made their living from the agreed upon selling price of the item that was to be made.
Over time many Investors began opening small workshops that provided high quality hand produced items made by teams of skilled craftsmen. These people worked outside their homes in larger buildings with other craftspeople where certain types of human powered tools or machines were provided for the workers to use. Instead of receiving payment for the individual items they crafted, these workers were paid an hourly or a daily wage for all the labor they provided that day.
SAMUEL SLATER HELPS CITIES GROW QUICKLY
The weaving of cloth and the fashioning of fabrics into finished clothes around the start of the 1800s would eventually lead to great changes in how products were made, and even greater changes in the lives and lifestyles of millions of people as to how they earned their living. Many thousands of people living in rural areas began moving from family farms to find work in cities. Farm work was very tough labor, and there was never any guarantee a farmers family would have a successful year.
People by the thousands wanted to move to the quickly growing cities of the Northeast and find work for wages in the ever expanding factories. Many more millions of European immigrants would leave the hard lives of their native lands in Europe to come to The New World for a better life as the 1800s wore on.
What we now recognize to be the first American factory was started in 1790 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island by the Englishman Samuel Slater. Slater and his associates employed a system that had been in use for many years in England to use fast running river water to turn a water wheel that was vertically attached to a building called a Mill. This turning water wheel provided the energy to run machines that enabled workers to mass produce thread from raw cotton. In the following years Slater, and other factory owners later referred to as Industrialists, devised numerous, faster, and cheaper methods of quickly mass producing finished clothes using Slater's thread on power looms and finally sewing machines.
The making of cloth and the fashioning of fabric into finished articles of clothing by workers operating machines would usher in an era of great societal change; not only in how and where products were made, but frightening and unexpected changes in the lifestyles of many millions of workers who would come to earn their livings working in crowded and dangerous factories located in large, very dirty, very dangerous, and terribly over populated American cities.
A DANGEROUS DAY EVERY DAY
As machines and manufacturing technologies advanced into the mid 1800s, much larger and more heavily mechanized factories became the destination of millions of workers at the crack of dawn every day. Most people worked as many as six days a week, 12 or more hours a day. On the fear of being fired, many worked even longer hours if orders needed to be filled or other employees were sick or injured. The factories were stifling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Workers had no safety gear to protect against the many dangers in the factories of this era.
The great number of turning and moving parts in the factories resulted in hideous injuries and death to untold thousands of laborers over the decades. The turning of the great water wheel, and later the power of the steam engine, caused numerous other connected wheels, gears, sprockets, pulleys, and belts to propel in motion. Large and stationary machinery inside the Plant was modified so that individual machines could be started and stopped by the hand of the worker simply by tightening or loosening tension on a wide belt that extended from a large Central shaft near the ceiling angling downwards to the machines on the floor.
Frequently, overtired workers not paying sharp enough attention to their surroundings, or working too closely to a machine were often drug into the machine suffering crippling injuries. Unable to work any longer the employee was simply fired without regard to the injuries they suffered or the payment of any benefits. Now suffering some sort of crippling ailment, a person had no chance to look for other employment. They and their families would soon be evicted from their buildings for lack of paying the overpriced rents charged by the slum landlords of the day.
In a relatively short span of time human power had been replaced in numerous manufacturing processes by machine power. This allowed Factory owners to bring large amounts of machinery and large numbers of workers together under the same roof. Mass production of goods of all kinds in factories, by workers who were paid wages to tend and operate the machines, virtually replaced the individual craftsman making a single product at a time within the confines of their own homes. These mass produced goods were of a lesser quality, but they could be produced faster and were much cheaper because of the methods of production.
THE FILTHY RICH
Industrialists then were rich Capitalists; businessmen in the business of making money by mass producing products of all kinds in large factories in America's densely populated cities of the Northeast. They quickly replaced large scale Farmers and Bankers as the richest and most powerful people in America in the decades following the American Civil War. Means and processes were devised to mass produce any good or product that had always before been painstakingly produced by talented craftsmen; most often within the setting of their own home.
Mass produced goods and the methods of production were greatly advanced and improved by the time the American Civil War occurred during the 1860s. Northern factories provided the Union Armies with the materials necessary to defeat the Southern Confederacy. The chief reason these Industrialists were able to set up and operate tens of thousands of factories of every possible kind was the readily available, and terribly cheap labor, provided by millions and millions of American workers.
In the years following the Civil War, American Industrialists became rich beyond belief. They came to be widely known as "Robber Barons" because of the unethical and even illegal methods by which they came to accumulate their great wealth and power. Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Jay Gould, Henry Clay Frick, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, and Andrew Mellon were some of the many businessmen of the era who came to be known by this hated name. They gained control of natural resources. They used their wealth to gain influence in the halls of government. They paid low wages and exploited workers. They used their wealth and power to destroy competitors so they were able to fix prices at high levels. This practice was known as the “Monopoly”.
THE DIRT POOR
On the other hand the millions of human beings toiling in the factories, the mills, the mines, and working on the railroads were paid next to nothing. They were forced to work very long hours in very dangerous environments. Tens of thousands of children, many below 10 years of age, were compelled by family needs to work in the same environments as their parents. Richer families could allow their children to go to school to learn to read & write. The children of the working poor had no option but to join their parents in earning wages to help the family survive.
When workers left the factory they would return home to "cold water flats". That was an apartment in a multiple story building without heat, running water, or private toilet facilities. Underpaid workers were barely able to afford to pay the high rents set by the slumlords of the day. Very little money was left over for food so malnutrition was very common. The complete absence of medical care saw many workers, young and old, die long before their time from accidents in the factories, sickness gone untreated, or the wide array of frightening diseases like cholera, whooping cough, small pox, diphtheria, and other sicknesses that flourished in the unsanitary and crowded cities of that era.
QUESTIONS FOR READING #1
SELECT ANY 4 OF THE 6 QUESTIONS BELOW TO COPY TO YOUR SQ3R SHEET. THESE QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED IN DETAIL AFTER COMPLETING READING # 1
1. DESCRIBE A SKILLED CRAFTSMAN OF THE 1800s AND WHAT THEY DID TO BECOME SKILLED AT A TRADE.
2. DISCUSS & DESCRIBE THE "1ST AMERICAN FACTORY" IN LOTS OF DETAIL.
3. DESCRIBE A SIMPLE WORKERS LIFE IN A MODERN 19TH CENTURY FACTORY AROUND 1840-1850.
4. DESCRIBE A "CAPITALIST" AND WHAT IT WAS THAT CAPITALISTS DID TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH.
5. WHAT WERE THE "ROBBER BARONS" AND WHAT METHODS DID THEY USE TO GENERATE THE GREAT WEALTH & POWER THEY AMASSED DURING THE 19TH CENTURY GROWTH OF LABOR?
6. DISCUSS THE LIFE OF THE POOR WORKER DURING THE MID 1800s AND THE EFFECTS IT HAD ON THEIR HOME LIVES AS WELL AS THE CHILDREN IN THEIR FAMILIES.
2. DISCUSS & DESCRIBE THE "1ST AMERICAN FACTORY" IN LOTS OF DETAIL.
3. DESCRIBE A SIMPLE WORKERS LIFE IN A MODERN 19TH CENTURY FACTORY AROUND 1840-1850.
4. DESCRIBE A "CAPITALIST" AND WHAT IT WAS THAT CAPITALISTS DID TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH.
5. WHAT WERE THE "ROBBER BARONS" AND WHAT METHODS DID THEY USE TO GENERATE THE GREAT WEALTH & POWER THEY AMASSED DURING THE 19TH CENTURY GROWTH OF LABOR?
6. DISCUSS THE LIFE OF THE POOR WORKER DURING THE MID 1800s AND THE EFFECTS IT HAD ON THEIR HOME LIVES AS WELL AS THE CHILDREN IN THEIR FAMILIES.
DON'T FORGET THERE WILL BE A "BELL RINGER" TO EXPAND ON FROM A QUESTION/ANSWER COMBINATION OF YOUR CHOICE.
UNION WORKERS AND POLICE IN A STANDOFF AT THE SITE OF A WORKERS "STRIKE" FOR BETTER WAGES & WORKING CONDITIONS. YOU CAN SEE THE REMNANTS OF EITHER SMOKE FROM FIRES OR MAYBE TEAR GAS THAT WAS USED ON THE "STRIKERS".
THIS "BROADSIDE" WAS PUBLISHED AND POSTED WARNING WORKERS TO NOT GO TO WORK BECAUSE A "STRIKE" HAD BEEN CALLED. TO CROSS A "PICKET LINE" WAS TO PUT YOUR LIFE IN DANGER FROM YOUR FELLOW WORKERS.
THIS DRAWING DEPICTS THE VIOLENCE ASSOCIATED WITH A RAILROAD STRIKE IN 1886. SOME OF THE MOST VIOLENT "STRIKES" OCCURRED DURING THE LATER 1800s
IN OR NEAR LARGE CITIES.
OFTEN TIMES TROOPS HAD TO BE BROUGHT IN TO "STRIKE" AREAS TO MAINTAIN OR RESTORE PEACE AFTER VIOLENT CONFRONTATIONS LEFT MANY DEAD & INJURED.
THE "KNIGHTS OF LABOR" WAS THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO ORGANIZE WORKERS ON A NATIONAL LEVEL. FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS THEY WERE NOT TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THE LONG RUN.
VIOLENCE WHICH WOULD OCCUR BOTH DURING AND AFTER THE "HAYMARKET SQUARE" UNION RALLY WOULD END THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE "KNIGHTS OF LABOR" AS A NATIONAL LABOR UNION OF WORKERS.
THE "AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR" WOULD BE THE NATIONALLY ORGANIZED UNION THAT WOULD BE SUCCESSFUL WHERE THE "KNIGHTS OF LABOR" WERE NOT.
WHEN LABOR NEGOTIATIONS HAD BROKEN DOWN AND A "STRIKE" WAS CALLED BY UNION LEADERS, ALL FEARED VIOLENCE AND THE PRESENCE OF "STRIKE BREAKERS" KNOWN TO ALL AS "SCABS".
SAMUEL GOMPERS STARTED LIFE OUT AS A CIGAR MAKER. HE WORKED HIS WAY THROUGH UNION ORGANIZING TO BECOME THE HEAD OF THE FIRST TRULY SUCCESSFUL AND LASTING OF THE NATIONAL LABOR UNIONS, THE "AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR" (THE A.F.L.)
READING # 2
MAKE YOUR SQ3R TITLE: "UNIONS & LABOR STRIKES IMPROVE ORDINARY WORKERS LIVES"
SCROLL TO THE END OF READING # 2 AND SELECT ANY 4 OF THE 6 QUESTIONS TO COPY TO THE FRONT OF YOUR SQ3R SHEET.
IT WAS TIME TO FIGHT BACK
It would take the American worker many years to realize that although they as individuals were powerless to improve their lives, if they were to act together with thousands of other voices speaking as one, they could force factory owners to treat them as human beings instead of animals. Earning a fair wage in a safe working environment; working a reasonable amount of hours in a day; and having confidence in the assurance of being treated fairly in disputes was the desire of every individual walking into a factory, entering a steel or a textile mill, descending into a mine, or walking onto a busy and chaotic 19th century Railroad yard.
Around the 1820s, some Craftsmen in the Northeast had joined forces and organized the first "Labor Unions". These early "Unions" were comprised of skilled workers only; workers like Printers, Shoemakers, Cigar makers, skilled machinists, and others who had learned their craft through many years of apprenticeship. Most were eager to keep the numbers in their professions small in order to maintain their ability to keep their wages high.
THE "STRIKING OF THE SAILS"
Later far greater numbers of non-skilled factory workers would also begin to organize themselves into "Labor Unions". Rather than restrict workers from the workplace, their hopes were to be treated as human beings. Their hopes were to live in a decent environment, feed their children, and have some security for their families in the event of crippling injury or death. Industrialists had grown less inclined to provide fair conditions of employment as their wealth increased to never before heights. If factory owners refused to improve conditions for their employees, then all members of the Union would simply refuse to work.
This refusal to work came to be called the "Strike". This term is believed to have come from sailors on British merchant ships. When they failed to convince ship owners that their wages and working conditions needed to be improved, they responded by "Striking the Sails". This meant that the sails of the ship would be lowered by the sailors to stop the ship in the water. They refused to raise the sails and resume progress until the ship owner became more willing to meet reasonable demands of a pay increase, better food, or fewer working hours were met.
The ceasing of work in factories would hurt the owners because the production of goods would stop. Without products to ship to buyers the owners would immediately begin losing money; and the only way to stay in business is to make money. Orders left unfilled and commitments to buyers broken would quickly injure or destroy business relationships slowly built up over many years.
"Strikes" became an increasingly popular tactic workers brought to bear against owners as the labor force grew larger and social conditions deteriorated further. As industrialists became fabulously wealthy, the living conditions for the general laborer worsened. It became the goal and intent of Labor Unions to achieve several general concessions from employers for the workers who were making them rich. Increases in wages, an eight hour workday, and an improvement in the conditions in which workers had to toil.
THE BIGGEST "LABOR STRIKES: OF THE ERA
Some of the major Labor Strikes of the era included the Great Southwest railroad strike from March to September 1886. Two hundred thousand workers in Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas refused to work from May to July 1894 citing dangerous working conditions, too many hours, and unfair pay.
From May to July 1894, working twelve hour work days and facing pay cuts, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago walked off the job in protest. Members of the American Railway Union (ARU) soon joined workers in the strike shutting down all train traffic west of Chicago. These actions threatened to affect the national economy, so President Grover Cleveland eventually sent Federal soldiers to stop the strike and resume railroad traffic.
Miners in eastern Pennsylvania, from May to October 1902, threatened a strike that could cause a nationwide energy crisis. One hundred forty seven thousand members of the United Mine Workers Union wanted better wages and safer working conditions. After the involvement of President Theodore Roosevelt and Industrialist J. P. Morgan the miners were given a ten percent raise.
From September 1919 to January 1920, three hundred fifty thousand steel workers in Pittsburgh, Pa began a strike citing dangerous working conditions, long hours, low wages, and company harassment over Union activity. Nearly half the steel industry in the nation was shut down. The public eventually turned against the strikers causing its ultimate failure.
So through the consistent expansion of labor unions throughout the 1800s, the American worker was able to greatly improve their pay, the safety of the workplace, and the amount of hours per day they could be compelled to work. Eventually untold millions of children would be able to spend their youths in schools instead of dangerous factories through the adoption of Child Labor Laws preventing the employment of youths. Through these improvements millions of people through the generations were able to move into the economic middle classes.
THE SHINING "KNIGHTS OF LABOR"
One of the first nationwide organizations was called the "National Labor Union" (NLU). It was founded in 1866 after the end of the Civil War but was unsuccessful and dissolved by 1874. Its limited lifespan paved the way for longer lived and more successful national organizations. The "Knights of Labor" was established in 1869 and grew into nationwide prominence by the 1880s. It became the most important of the early labor organizations in the United States. It wanted to organize workers into "one big brotherhood" rather than into separate unions made up of workers who had a common skill or who worked in a particular industry.
The Knights were founded as a secret organization of tailors in Philadelphia. At first, the union had a strong Protestant religious orientation. But a decade later, when a Catholic, Terence V. Powderly was elected its head, the Knights became a national organization open to workers of every kind, regardless of their skills, sex, nationality, or race. The only occupations excluded from membership were bankers, gamblers, lawyers, and saloonkeepers.
At its height in 1885, the “Knights” claimed to have 700,000 members. The "Knight's" did not believe in the use of strikes as a tactic in labor disputes. Nevertheless the union won big victories against the Union Pacific Railroad in 1884 and the Wabash Railroad in 1885. The Knights had a wide-ranging platform for social and economic change. The organization campaigned for an eight-hour work day, the abolition of child labor, improved safety in factories, equal pay for men and women, and compensation for on-the-job injury. The organization held the first Labor Day celebration in 1882. It would be later said that the “Knights of Labor” wanted to fight for too many benefits for the American worker; Things that could not be reasonably obtainable at that time in history.
CHICAGO BURSTS INTO VIOLENCE AT THE "HAYMARKET"
Violence in Chicago in 1886 helped to shift the focus of labor organizers. On May 1, 1886, thousands of people in Chicago began demonstrations in behalf of an eight-hour workday. The marchers' slogan was, "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will." On May 4, 1886, a deadly confrontation between police and protesters erupted at Chicago's Haymarket Square. A labor strike was in progress at the McCormick Farm Equipment Works. Police and security guards from the famous Pinkerton Security Agency had shot several workers who they believed were causing a civil disturbance.
A public demonstration had been called to protest police violence. Eyewitnesses later described a "peaceful gathering of upwards of 1,000 people listening to speeches and singing songs when authorities began to move in and break up the crowd." Suddenly a bomb exploded, followed by pandemonium and an exchange of gunfire. Eleven people were killed including seven police officers. More than a hundred were injured.
Authorities quickly arrested 31 suspects. Eventually, eight men, "all with foreign sounding names" as one newspaper put it, were indicted on charges of conspiracy and murder. Four were eventually executed. The “Knights of Labor” declined rapidly after the 1886 Haymarket Square riot in Chicago.
THE "AFL" AND "BREAD AND BUTTER UNIONISM"
The “American Federation of Labor” ("AFL"), a union of skilled workers, gradually replaced the Knights of Labor as the nation's largest labor organization. Unlike the Knights who wanted to organize workers regardless of the skill they possessed, did not choose to use the strike as a method of dealing with owners, and hoped to improve workers lives in multiple ways, the "AFL" consisted of skilled workers only and were determined to pursue what was known at the time as "bread-and-butter" unionism.
In other words, obtaining for Union members a decent living based on a fair wage for the labor they provided. Workers should be able to afford to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families. The goals the "AFL" hoped to achieve for workers were fewer but more realistic than those pursued by the Knights. The "ACFL" wanted higher wages, shorter working hours, and improved safety within the workplace.
In 1889, the American Federation of Labor delegate to the International Labor Congress in Paris, France proposed May 1 as International Labor Day. This later came to be known worldwide as "May-Day". Workers marched for an eight-hour day, the rule of democracy, and the right of workers to organize into Unions. They also memorialized the dead and injured from the Haymarket Square riots in Chicago.
Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) was the first president of the American Federation of Labor. He served as president from 1886 until his death in 1924, except for a single year, 1895. Born in London England, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 13, and worked as a cigar-maker. He had personal experience with the difficulties of life in the factories. He became the leader of the cigar-makers' union, and eventually transformed it into one of the country's strongest unions.
Gompers believed that labor had the most to gain by organizing skilled craft workers, rather than attempting to organize all workers in an industry. Gompers fought for agreements for employees which would spell out the amount an employee, the guaranteed number of hours they would be expected to work, and the procedures for handling problems which might end in the workers dismissal. Gompers wanted employers to hire only union members; this was known as "the closed shop". He also wanted all employees to be required to pay union dues. Employers preferred "the open shop", which meant they were free to hire non-union members as well.
SUMMING IT ALL UP
The American worker surely has come a long way from the 1820s when only the most skilled of workers banding together were able to reach fair labor agreements with employers. Throughout the decades of the 19th century, first as a result of the water wheel followed by the steam engine, Industrialists, Investors, and "Robber Barons" expanded industrialization, mass employment, and the factory system. As hundreds of thousands of Americans left family farms to swell the populations of large northeastern cities, tens of millions more European immigrants sailed across oceans to look for a better life.
Eventually brave people refused to accept living like cattle in crowded tenements in Northeastern & Midwestern cities. Places like New York City, Boston Massachusetts, Pittsburgh & Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Cleveland & Cincinnati Ohio, Gary & Indianapolis Indiana, Chicago Illinois, and multiple dozens of other large and crowded cities where people were virtually stacked on top of each other in tenement buildings of the worst kind.
At great personal risk, ordinary people organized themselves into “Labor Unions”. Their hope was to force rich Industrialists in Railroading, Mining, Steel Production, Textile Manufacturing, the Construction Industry, and multiple tens of thousands of Factories of every kind to treat them fairly in terms of wages, hours, and working conditions.
The widespread use of the “Strike” enabled powerless individuals to confront all-powerful business owners and make reasonable demands that would have to be taken seriously. Through the great improvement in wages, benefits, and working conditions achieved over many decades, children of workers in the 19th century were forbidden by law from working in factories and the grandchildren of these early wage laborers were able to enter and establish a strong and viable American middle class.
Because of the efforts of millions of people putting their lives as well as their livelihoods on the line, tens of millions of American workers today have the benefit of a safe workplace, high wages for those with special employment skills, a federally enforced minimum wage for those without special employment skills, protections against unfair treatment by employers, and other benefits that could only be fantasized about by the workers from the 1800s through the mid 20th century.
It would take the American worker many years to realize that although they as individuals were powerless to improve their lives, if they were to act together with thousands of other voices speaking as one, they could force factory owners to treat them as human beings instead of animals. Earning a fair wage in a safe working environment; working a reasonable amount of hours in a day; and having confidence in the assurance of being treated fairly in disputes was the desire of every individual walking into a factory, entering a steel or a textile mill, descending into a mine, or walking onto a busy and chaotic 19th century Railroad yard.
Around the 1820s, some Craftsmen in the Northeast had joined forces and organized the first "Labor Unions". These early "Unions" were comprised of skilled workers only; workers like Printers, Shoemakers, Cigar makers, skilled machinists, and others who had learned their craft through many years of apprenticeship. Most were eager to keep the numbers in their professions small in order to maintain their ability to keep their wages high.
THE "STRIKING OF THE SAILS"
Later far greater numbers of non-skilled factory workers would also begin to organize themselves into "Labor Unions". Rather than restrict workers from the workplace, their hopes were to be treated as human beings. Their hopes were to live in a decent environment, feed their children, and have some security for their families in the event of crippling injury or death. Industrialists had grown less inclined to provide fair conditions of employment as their wealth increased to never before heights. If factory owners refused to improve conditions for their employees, then all members of the Union would simply refuse to work.
This refusal to work came to be called the "Strike". This term is believed to have come from sailors on British merchant ships. When they failed to convince ship owners that their wages and working conditions needed to be improved, they responded by "Striking the Sails". This meant that the sails of the ship would be lowered by the sailors to stop the ship in the water. They refused to raise the sails and resume progress until the ship owner became more willing to meet reasonable demands of a pay increase, better food, or fewer working hours were met.
The ceasing of work in factories would hurt the owners because the production of goods would stop. Without products to ship to buyers the owners would immediately begin losing money; and the only way to stay in business is to make money. Orders left unfilled and commitments to buyers broken would quickly injure or destroy business relationships slowly built up over many years.
"Strikes" became an increasingly popular tactic workers brought to bear against owners as the labor force grew larger and social conditions deteriorated further. As industrialists became fabulously wealthy, the living conditions for the general laborer worsened. It became the goal and intent of Labor Unions to achieve several general concessions from employers for the workers who were making them rich. Increases in wages, an eight hour workday, and an improvement in the conditions in which workers had to toil.
THE BIGGEST "LABOR STRIKES: OF THE ERA
Some of the major Labor Strikes of the era included the Great Southwest railroad strike from March to September 1886. Two hundred thousand workers in Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas refused to work from May to July 1894 citing dangerous working conditions, too many hours, and unfair pay.
From May to July 1894, working twelve hour work days and facing pay cuts, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago walked off the job in protest. Members of the American Railway Union (ARU) soon joined workers in the strike shutting down all train traffic west of Chicago. These actions threatened to affect the national economy, so President Grover Cleveland eventually sent Federal soldiers to stop the strike and resume railroad traffic.
Miners in eastern Pennsylvania, from May to October 1902, threatened a strike that could cause a nationwide energy crisis. One hundred forty seven thousand members of the United Mine Workers Union wanted better wages and safer working conditions. After the involvement of President Theodore Roosevelt and Industrialist J. P. Morgan the miners were given a ten percent raise.
From September 1919 to January 1920, three hundred fifty thousand steel workers in Pittsburgh, Pa began a strike citing dangerous working conditions, long hours, low wages, and company harassment over Union activity. Nearly half the steel industry in the nation was shut down. The public eventually turned against the strikers causing its ultimate failure.
So through the consistent expansion of labor unions throughout the 1800s, the American worker was able to greatly improve their pay, the safety of the workplace, and the amount of hours per day they could be compelled to work. Eventually untold millions of children would be able to spend their youths in schools instead of dangerous factories through the adoption of Child Labor Laws preventing the employment of youths. Through these improvements millions of people through the generations were able to move into the economic middle classes.
THE SHINING "KNIGHTS OF LABOR"
One of the first nationwide organizations was called the "National Labor Union" (NLU). It was founded in 1866 after the end of the Civil War but was unsuccessful and dissolved by 1874. Its limited lifespan paved the way for longer lived and more successful national organizations. The "Knights of Labor" was established in 1869 and grew into nationwide prominence by the 1880s. It became the most important of the early labor organizations in the United States. It wanted to organize workers into "one big brotherhood" rather than into separate unions made up of workers who had a common skill or who worked in a particular industry.
The Knights were founded as a secret organization of tailors in Philadelphia. At first, the union had a strong Protestant religious orientation. But a decade later, when a Catholic, Terence V. Powderly was elected its head, the Knights became a national organization open to workers of every kind, regardless of their skills, sex, nationality, or race. The only occupations excluded from membership were bankers, gamblers, lawyers, and saloonkeepers.
At its height in 1885, the “Knights” claimed to have 700,000 members. The "Knight's" did not believe in the use of strikes as a tactic in labor disputes. Nevertheless the union won big victories against the Union Pacific Railroad in 1884 and the Wabash Railroad in 1885. The Knights had a wide-ranging platform for social and economic change. The organization campaigned for an eight-hour work day, the abolition of child labor, improved safety in factories, equal pay for men and women, and compensation for on-the-job injury. The organization held the first Labor Day celebration in 1882. It would be later said that the “Knights of Labor” wanted to fight for too many benefits for the American worker; Things that could not be reasonably obtainable at that time in history.
CHICAGO BURSTS INTO VIOLENCE AT THE "HAYMARKET"
Violence in Chicago in 1886 helped to shift the focus of labor organizers. On May 1, 1886, thousands of people in Chicago began demonstrations in behalf of an eight-hour workday. The marchers' slogan was, "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will." On May 4, 1886, a deadly confrontation between police and protesters erupted at Chicago's Haymarket Square. A labor strike was in progress at the McCormick Farm Equipment Works. Police and security guards from the famous Pinkerton Security Agency had shot several workers who they believed were causing a civil disturbance.
A public demonstration had been called to protest police violence. Eyewitnesses later described a "peaceful gathering of upwards of 1,000 people listening to speeches and singing songs when authorities began to move in and break up the crowd." Suddenly a bomb exploded, followed by pandemonium and an exchange of gunfire. Eleven people were killed including seven police officers. More than a hundred were injured.
Authorities quickly arrested 31 suspects. Eventually, eight men, "all with foreign sounding names" as one newspaper put it, were indicted on charges of conspiracy and murder. Four were eventually executed. The “Knights of Labor” declined rapidly after the 1886 Haymarket Square riot in Chicago.
THE "AFL" AND "BREAD AND BUTTER UNIONISM"
The “American Federation of Labor” ("AFL"), a union of skilled workers, gradually replaced the Knights of Labor as the nation's largest labor organization. Unlike the Knights who wanted to organize workers regardless of the skill they possessed, did not choose to use the strike as a method of dealing with owners, and hoped to improve workers lives in multiple ways, the "AFL" consisted of skilled workers only and were determined to pursue what was known at the time as "bread-and-butter" unionism.
In other words, obtaining for Union members a decent living based on a fair wage for the labor they provided. Workers should be able to afford to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families. The goals the "AFL" hoped to achieve for workers were fewer but more realistic than those pursued by the Knights. The "ACFL" wanted higher wages, shorter working hours, and improved safety within the workplace.
In 1889, the American Federation of Labor delegate to the International Labor Congress in Paris, France proposed May 1 as International Labor Day. This later came to be known worldwide as "May-Day". Workers marched for an eight-hour day, the rule of democracy, and the right of workers to organize into Unions. They also memorialized the dead and injured from the Haymarket Square riots in Chicago.
Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) was the first president of the American Federation of Labor. He served as president from 1886 until his death in 1924, except for a single year, 1895. Born in London England, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 13, and worked as a cigar-maker. He had personal experience with the difficulties of life in the factories. He became the leader of the cigar-makers' union, and eventually transformed it into one of the country's strongest unions.
Gompers believed that labor had the most to gain by organizing skilled craft workers, rather than attempting to organize all workers in an industry. Gompers fought for agreements for employees which would spell out the amount an employee, the guaranteed number of hours they would be expected to work, and the procedures for handling problems which might end in the workers dismissal. Gompers wanted employers to hire only union members; this was known as "the closed shop". He also wanted all employees to be required to pay union dues. Employers preferred "the open shop", which meant they were free to hire non-union members as well.
SUMMING IT ALL UP
The American worker surely has come a long way from the 1820s when only the most skilled of workers banding together were able to reach fair labor agreements with employers. Throughout the decades of the 19th century, first as a result of the water wheel followed by the steam engine, Industrialists, Investors, and "Robber Barons" expanded industrialization, mass employment, and the factory system. As hundreds of thousands of Americans left family farms to swell the populations of large northeastern cities, tens of millions more European immigrants sailed across oceans to look for a better life.
Eventually brave people refused to accept living like cattle in crowded tenements in Northeastern & Midwestern cities. Places like New York City, Boston Massachusetts, Pittsburgh & Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Cleveland & Cincinnati Ohio, Gary & Indianapolis Indiana, Chicago Illinois, and multiple dozens of other large and crowded cities where people were virtually stacked on top of each other in tenement buildings of the worst kind.
At great personal risk, ordinary people organized themselves into “Labor Unions”. Their hope was to force rich Industrialists in Railroading, Mining, Steel Production, Textile Manufacturing, the Construction Industry, and multiple tens of thousands of Factories of every kind to treat them fairly in terms of wages, hours, and working conditions.
The widespread use of the “Strike” enabled powerless individuals to confront all-powerful business owners and make reasonable demands that would have to be taken seriously. Through the great improvement in wages, benefits, and working conditions achieved over many decades, children of workers in the 19th century were forbidden by law from working in factories and the grandchildren of these early wage laborers were able to enter and establish a strong and viable American middle class.
Because of the efforts of millions of people putting their lives as well as their livelihoods on the line, tens of millions of American workers today have the benefit of a safe workplace, high wages for those with special employment skills, a federally enforced minimum wage for those without special employment skills, protections against unfair treatment by employers, and other benefits that could only be fantasized about by the workers from the 1800s through the mid 20th century.
QUESTIONS FOR READING # 2
SELECT ANY 4 OF THE 6 QUESTIONS BELOW TO COPY TO YOUR SQ3R SHEET. THESE QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED IN DETAIL AFTER COMPLETING READING # 2
1. WHAT DID THE AMERICAN WORKER HOPE TO GET FROM A JOB IN EXCHANGE FOR A DAYS WORTH OF HARD WORK?
2. DESCRIBE THE "STRIKE" AND HOW IT COULD BE USED TO FORCE BUSINESS OWNERS TO IMPROVE THE LIVES & LIFESTYLES OF THEIR WORKERS.
3. WHAT WAS DIFFERENT ABOUT HOW "KNIGHTS OF LABOR" CHANGED THE WAY THEY WANTED TO ORGANIZE WORKERS INTO LABOR UNIONS?
4. WHY DID VIOLENCE AT AN 1886 STRIKE IN CHICAGO CAUSE "THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR" TO WEAKEN AS A NATIONAL UNION?
5. WHY WAS THE "AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR" (AFL) MUCH MORE SUCCESSFUL AS A NATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION THAN THE "KNIGHTS OF LABOR"?
6. WHAT SPECIFIC RIGHTS DID SAMUEL GOMPERS WANT AFL MEMBERS TO BE GUARANTEED BY THEIR EMPLOYERS?
2. DESCRIBE THE "STRIKE" AND HOW IT COULD BE USED TO FORCE BUSINESS OWNERS TO IMPROVE THE LIVES & LIFESTYLES OF THEIR WORKERS.
3. WHAT WAS DIFFERENT ABOUT HOW "KNIGHTS OF LABOR" CHANGED THE WAY THEY WANTED TO ORGANIZE WORKERS INTO LABOR UNIONS?
4. WHY DID VIOLENCE AT AN 1886 STRIKE IN CHICAGO CAUSE "THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR" TO WEAKEN AS A NATIONAL UNION?
5. WHY WAS THE "AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR" (AFL) MUCH MORE SUCCESSFUL AS A NATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION THAN THE "KNIGHTS OF LABOR"?
6. WHAT SPECIFIC RIGHTS DID SAMUEL GOMPERS WANT AFL MEMBERS TO BE GUARANTEED BY THEIR EMPLOYERS?