Workers Organize

Knights of Labor Great

Seal

Journal Question

• What changes were made in the workplace for laborers (good and bad) during the late 19th Century? What challenges did unions face?

Quick Facts

• When the Civil War began, there were approximately 1.3 million factory workers in the U.S.

• By 1900, the number rose to 5.3 million.

The Laborers• Workers lost the sense of friendship,

personal freedom and personal satisfaction in their work.

• Became seen as numbers, not individuals.

Working Conditions•Typical work week was about 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.•No vacations, sick days, or unemployment compensation.•Average pay was between $3 - $12 a week.•Average cost of living for a family of six was $18.50 a month (excluding clothing and entertainment). Factory workers during their

lunch break – photo by Lewis Hine (1908).

Danger!• Laborers worked in dangerous

conditions in factories as well as in mines across the country.

• More than 230,000 workers were killed & about 2 million workers were injured between 1890-1917.

• No safety laws or regulations.

Child Labor• “The most beautiful sight that we can see

is the child at labor.”– Idle children were seen as wasting their lives.

• Places children worked: factories, mines, mills, and worked on street corners as Newsies and selling trinkets to name a few…

• Many families could not have survived without every family member working.

• By 1910, 1 out of 5 children under the age of 15 were earning wages.

Children Mine Workers

Miguel, a 7 year old shrimp picker

Newsies

Children working in a mill

Sweatshops• Products were made in people’s homes.• The “sweater,” or subcontractor, would

set up in two rooms of the tenement flat.

• In one room, between 6-20 people worked, ate, and slept; the sweater lived in the other room.

• The workers were to supply their own tools.

• Paid on a per piece basis.

Mr. Pullman’s Town• Pullman Palace Car

Company owned by George Pullman.

• Everyone who worked for Pullman lived in the town of Pullman, IL.– The company

controlled the town.

• Pullman controlled the wages and fixed the rent and the price of goods in the store.

Interior of a Pullman car

The Town of Pullman

George Pullman

The National Labor Union• Established in

1866.• Made up of 300

local unions of skilled and unskilled workers.

• Main goal was an 8 hour work day.

• Also urged for the inclusion of women and African Americans.

• Successfully persuaded Congress for an 8 hour workday for Government workers in 1868.

• Did not survive the depression of 1873.

The First Nationwide Strike• Began in July 1877.• Organized by workers of the Baltimore

and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia in response to constant wage cuts, increased work hours, and doubling train size.

• Sympathy strike broke out in Pittsburgh.- Federal troops were called in.- Killed 26 strikers, wounded

hundreds.- Workers from nearby mills and

mines attacked the troops and drove them from the city.

The First Nationwide Strike• By the end of the strikes,

those workers who went on strike lost their jobs. However, the railroads restored wages or promised not to cut the wages further.

• Railroad and other companies began to have their employees sign yellow dog contracts – pledges to not join a union.– Also hired Pinkertons to

serve as spies and strikebreakers.

Knights of Labor• Organized by Uriah

Stephens in 1869.• Organization of

individuals, not unions.• Open to ALL workers.– except bankers, lawyers,

professional gamblers, and liquor dealers.

• Favored an educated workforce and arbitration over striking.

The Knights (continued)…• Supported: 8 hour day, health and safety

laws, equal pay for equal work.• Against: child and convict labor.• Under Grand Master Workman Terence V.

Powderly, membership grew to 700,000.• Led very successful strikes against Jay

Gould’s railroads.• By mid-1890’s almost extinct.– Haymarket affair and rise of the American

Federation of Labor.

The Haymarket Affair• In Haymarket Square

Chicago, a crowd gathered to watch three ‘radicals’ speak.– Albert Parsons,

August Spies & Samuel Fielden.

• As the demonstration ended, policemen arrived in the square.

• A bomb exploded near the policemen, killing seven.

• The police opened fire and charged the crowd.

The Haymarket Affair• By the time the firing

and clubbing ended, 10 workers were killed.

• Nobody knows exactly who threw the bomb, but Parsons, Spies & Fielden, as well as 5 other radicals, were charged.

• All eight men were convicted, despite a lack of proof they orchestrated the violent attack.– 4 were hanged.

The American Federation of Labor (AFL)

• Bread-and-butter unionism: focused less on political reform and more on shorter hours, higher wages, and better working conditions for skilled workers.

• Ideas came from Samuel Gompers.• Served as president of the AFL from

1886-1924, taking only a year off.

AFL• Federation of national unions.• For skilled workers only – craft

unions.– Excluded women and blacks.

• Used collective bargaining – group negotiations between workers and employers.

• Increased the wages and decreased the work hours for unionized industries.

• Problem: craft unions only accounted for 30% of workforce.– Unskilled labor force was

growing.• Shift to industrial unionism:

organizing all workers in the same industry.

Samuel Gompers

The American Railway Union and Eugene V. Debs

• Debs is credited with beginning the industrial unionism movement.

• Included all railroad workers in the American Railway Union – skilled and unskilled.

• African Americans not admitted, against the wishes of Debs.

• Idea was to “march together, vote together, and fight together.”

Eugene V. Debs

Industrial Workers of the World• Founded by a group of socialists and

radical unionists.• Members were knows as Wobblies.• Popular in the West; most members

were miners, lumbermen, and cannery and dock workers.

• Included women and blacks.• Only major strike victory was in 1912.• Not as popular or successful – BUT did

show that unskilled workers could organize.

Women in the Workforce• By 1910, women made

up 21% of workforce.• Earned about ½ as much

as men for same kind of work.

• Almost every mining town had a ‘mother’-someone to organize the wives of striking workers.

• Women would bang on pots to scare the mine mules and throw garbage on the scabs.

• Arrested women would take their babies to jail.

Mary Harris “Mother Jones”• Mother Jones was the most

famous of these women.• She became devoted to raising

public awareness about child labor.

• Led 80 children on a march, from Pennsylvania, to see Teddy Roosevelt at his home in Long Island.– Didn’t get to see him, but it led to

Pennsylvania passing child labor legislation prohibiting child labor under the age of 14.

Pauline Newman• Went to work for the Triangle

Shirtwaist Company when she was 8 years old.

• First female organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

• Raised money for the ‘Uprising of 20,000.’

Uprising of 20,000• Strike against

New York’s garment industry.

• Strikers were young women –mostly Jewish and Italian.

• Achieved most of its goals including a 52 hour workweek instead of a 59 hour week.

Triangle Shirtwaist Company• March 25, 1911 fire broke out.• No sprinkler system and flames spread

rapidly aided by oil-soaked machines and cloth through the 7th-9th floors.

• All doors were locked from outside; one that wasn’t locked opened inward.

• Only 1 fire escape, and that went to 2nd floor.

Triangle Shirtwaist Company• Some women jumped from the windows and

broke through firemen’s nets.• 146 workers died.• Owners were tried, but acquitted because

jurors believed the fire was an ‘act of God.’• New York legislature passed laws improving

conditions.– Sprinklers, 54 hour work week for women and

minors, no working on Sunday, and children couldn’t work before the age of 14.

Firefighters trying to put out the flames

Damage done by the fire

Bodies of women who jumped to avoid being burned alive

Government Supports Management

• During 1894 strike at Pullman Company, managers asked U.S. Attorney General for help.

• Said strikers were interfering with mail delivery.

• President Cleveland sent in federal troops.

Attorney General Richard Olney

Government Supports Management

• Injunction (court order) was filed stating railroads were ‘public highway’ and if workers quit they were interfering with interstate commerce.– Courts agreed.

• Gave businesses a heavy advantage over unions.

• By 1910, only 8.3% of industrial workers were in unions.