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Chapter 17: THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKES:

Objectives:

o We will study the growing conflict

between labor and ownership

during this era.

o We will examine the rise of

organized labor in attempting to

address the need of workers and

why the movement became a

failure.

“Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.” James 5:4-5.

o There was near hysterical national attention of the 1877 Railroad Strike.

o The strike began in the eastern railroads because the company announced a 10 percent wage cut and which soon expanded into something approaching a class war.

o Strikers disrupted rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis.

o The strikers destroyed equipment and rioted in the streets of Pittsburgh and other cities.

THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE:

o State militia were called into suppress the demonstrators.

o A total of 100 people died before the strike finally collapsed several weeks after it had begun.

o The great railroad strike was America’s first major national labor conflict.

o It illustrated how disputes between workers and employers could no longer be localized in the increasingly national economy.

THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE:

o This Illustrated as well the depth of resentment among many American workers toward their employers, and the governments allied with them.

o And the lengths to which they were prepared to go to express that resentment.

o The failure of the strike seriously weakened the railroad unions and damaged the reputation of labor organization in other industries as well.

THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE:

o The first genuine national labor organization was the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869 under the leadership of Uriah S. Stephens.

o Membership was open to all who “toiled” a definition that included all workers and most business and professional people.

The Knights of Labor:

o The only excluded groups were lawyers, bankers, liquor dealers, and professional gamblers.

o Unlike most labor organizations of the time, the Knights welcomed women members.

o For several years, the Knights remained a secret fraternal organization.

The Knights of Labor:

o But in the late 1870s, under the leadership of Terrence V. Powderly, the ordered moved into the open and entered a spectacular period of expansion.

o However the Knights faced a steep decline after several high profiled strikes failed.

The Knights of Labor:

o The American Federation of Labor (AFL)

soon became the most important and

enduring labor group in the country.

o Rejecting the Knight’s idea of one big

union for everybody.

o The Federation was the association of

autonomous craft unions and

represented mainly skilled workers.

THE AFL:

o Samuel Gompers the powerful leader of the AFL believed that a test of a man’s worth was his ability to support a family and that women in the workforce would undermine men’s positions as heads of their families.

o Gompers accepted the basic premises of capitalism; his goal was to secure for workers a greater share of capitalism’s material rewards.

THE AFL:

o Gompers opposed the creation of a worker’s party, he was generally hostile to any government efforts to protect labor or improve working conditions.

o The AFL concentrated instead on the relationship between labor and management.

THE AFL:

o They wanted better wages, and

working conditions.

o Also hoped to attain its goals by

collective bargaining, eight hour

workday, it was ready to use strikes if

necessary.

THE AFL:

o In Chicago, a center of labor and radical strength a strike was already in progress at the McCormick Harvester Company when the general strike began.

o In Haymarket Square, the police ordered protestors to disperse and someone threw a bomb that killed seven officers and injured sixty-seven other people.

THE AFL:

o The police, who had killed four strikers the day before fired into the crowd and killed four more people.

o Chicago officials rounded up eight anarchists and charged them with murder and were scapegoats.

o Seven were sentenced to death.

o One of the condemned committed suicide, four were executed, and two had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

THE AFL:

o During the late nineteenth century anarchism was a code word in the public mind for terrorism and violence.

o Most anarchists were relatively peaceful visionaries dreaming of a new social order.

o They were also seen as tied to labor unions that caused the Labor Union to have a no win situation in winning over public opinion.

THE AFL:

o The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers which was affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.

o It was the most powerful trade union in the country.

o Because they represented skilled workers in great demand of employers they exercised significant power in the workplace.

The Homestead Strike in 1892 arose in the steel industry:

o But by the mid-1880s, new

production methods led to the

company to reduce less on skilled

labor.

o This lead to Carnegie and his chief

lieutenant, Henry Clay Frick to break

the Union specifically at the

Homestead Plant near Pittsburgh.

The Homestead Strike in 1892 arose in the steel industry:

o Wages were cut, and the company

denied the Union the right to

negotiate.

o Frick announced another wage cut to

Homestead and gave the union two

days to accept it, the Amalgamated

called for a strike.

The Homestead Strike in 1892 arose in the steel industry:

o Frick shut down the plant and called 300 private guards to enable the company to hire nonunion workers.

o There was a deadly battle between the guards and the Homestead employees with the guards retreating after three guards and ten strikers were dead.

The Homestead Strike in 1892 arose in the steel industry:

o But the victory was temporary.

o The governor of Pennsylvania at the

company’s request sent the state’s

entire National Guard contingent,

some 8,000 troops to protect the

strikebreakers.

The Homestead Strike in 1892 arose in the steel industry:

o Public opinion turned against the

strikers when a radical made an

attempt to assassinate Frick.

o Slowly workers drifted back to their

jobs and four months after the

strike began, Amalgamated

surrendered.

The Homestead Strike in 1892 arose in the steel industry:

o A dispute of equal bitterness was the Pullman Strike of 1894.

o The Company manufactured sleeping and parlor car for railroads.

o George M. Pullman, owner of the company referred to his employees as “his children” but slashed wages by about 25 percent citing the declining revenues the depression was causing.

The Pull Man Strike:

o At the same time, Pullman refused to reduce rents in its employee residents the company built called Model Towns.

o Which were 20 to 25 percent higher than rents of comparable accommodations in surrounding areas.

The Pull Man Strike:

o Workers went on strike and persuaded militant American Railway Union; led by Eugene V. Debs to support them by refusing to handle Pullman Cars and equipment.

o Within a few days thousands of railroad workers in twenty-seven states and territories were on strike.

o Transportation from Chicago to Pacific Coast was paralyzed.

The Pull Man Strike:

o State governors responded readily, appeals to strike threatened businesses but the governor of Illinois John Peter Altgeld had sympathies for the workers.

o Bypassing the governor the company appealed to the Federal Government to send regular army troops to Illinois.

o Claiming that the strike prevented the movement of mail on the trains.

The Pull Man Strike:

o President Grover Cleveland sent 2,000 troops to the Chicago area.

o Debs and his associates defied a court ordered injunction preventing the union to continue the strike.

o With federal troops protecting the hiring of new workers and with union leaders in a federal jail, the strike quickly collapsed.

The Pull Man Strike:

o At the end of the century found most workers with less political power and considerably less control of the workplace then before.

o Workers failed to make greater gains for many reasons.

o Principal labor organizations represented only a small percentage of industrial workforce.

Sources of Labor Weakness.

o Four percent of all workers fewer

than 1 million belonged to

unions in 1900.

o Tensions between different

ethnic and racial groups kept

laborers divided.

Sources of Labor Weakness.

o Another source of labor weakness

was the shifting nature of the

workforce.

o Most immigrant workers came to

America intending to remain only

briefly to earn some money, and

return home.

Sources of Labor Weakness.

o The assumption that they had no long-range future in the country (even though it was often a mistaken one) eroded their willingness to organize.

o Other workers native and immigrants alike were in constant motion, moving from one job to another, one town to another, seldom in one place long enough to establish any institutional ties or exert any real power.

Sources of Labor Weakness.

o Above all, workers made few gains in the late nineteenth century because of the strength of the forces arrayed against them.

o They faced corporate organizations of vast wealth and power.

o Which were generally determined to crush any efforts by workers to challenge their prerogatives not just through brute force but also through infiltration of unions and sabotage or organization efforts.

Sources of Labor Weakness.