WEGAI - The Rise of Labor Unions (Lesson)

The Rise of Labor Unions

The economy was rapidly industrializing in the late 19th Century as factories sprung up across the nation, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. The workers in these factories were often new immigrants or new migrants from rural areas. They worked hard on long shifts, often in dangerous conditions. Pay was low, benefit packages almost non-existent, and workers had few options if they were injured on the job. Over time, workers began to organize in labor unions to push for more reasonable hours, better working conditions, and higher pay. Labor unions were often strongly opposed by industrial leaders with strikes sometimes turning violent. View the presentation below on the Growth of the Labor Movement and read the following section (quoted with permission from Boundless).

 

Early Organizing

The first local trade unions of men in the United States formed in the late 18th century, and women began organizing in the 1820s. Some of the earliest organizing by women occurred in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1845, the trade union of the Lowell mills sent representatives to speak to the Massachusetts legislature about conditions in the factories, leading to the first governmental investigation into working conditions. The mill strikes of 1834 and 1836, while largely unsuccessful, involved upwards of 2,000 workers and represented a substantial organizational effort. However, the movement came into its own after the Civil War, when the short-lived National Labor Union (NLU) became the first federation of American unions.

 

The Knights of Labor/American Federation of Labor

The first successful effort to organize workers' groups on a nationwide basis appeared with the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor in 1869. Originally a secret, ritualistic society organized by Philadelphia garment workers, it was open to all workers, including African Americans, women, and farmers. The Knights grew slowly until they succeeded in facing down the great railroad baron, Jay Gould, in an 1885 strike. Within a year, they added 500,000 workers to their rolls, far more than the thin leadership structure for which the Knights were prepared.

The Knights of Labor soon fell into decline, and their place in the labor movement was gradually replaced by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Rather than open its membership to all workers, the AFL, under former cigar-makers union official Samuel Gompers, focused on skilled workers. His objectives were "pure and simple": increasing wages, reducing working hours, and improving working conditions. As such, Gompers helped turn the labor movement away from the socialist views earlier labor leaders had espoused. The AFL gradually became a respected organization in the United States, although the organization wanted nothing to do with unskilled laborers.

 

Notable Strikes

Non-skilled workers' goals—and the unwillingness of business owners to grant them—resulted in some of the most violent labor conflicts in the nation's history.

The first of these was the Great Railroad Strike in 1877, when rail workers across the nation went on strike in response to a 10-percent pay cut by owners. Attempts to break the strike led to bloody uprisings in several cities.

The Haymarket Riot took place in 1886, when an anarchist apparently threw a bomb at police dispersing a strike rally at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago. The killing of policemen greatly embarrassed the Knights of Labor--which was not involved with the detonation of a bomb but the group took much of the blame.

In the riots of 1892 at Carnegie's steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a group of 300 Pinkerton detectives, whom the company had hired to break a bitter strike by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, were fired upon by strikers and 10 people were killed.

As a result, the National Guard was called in to guard the plant; non-union workers were hired to fill the positions of the striking workers, and the strike was broken.

Two years later in 1894 wage cuts at the Pullman Palace Car Company led to a strike, which, with the support of the American Railway Union, soon brought the nation's railway industry to a halt. The shutdown of rail traffic meant the virtual shutdown of the entire national economy, and President Grover Cleveland acted vigorously. He secured injunctions in federal court, which Eugene V. Debs and the other strike leaders ignored. Cleveland then sent in the Army to stop the rioting and get the trains moving. The strike collapsed, as did the ARU.

 

Industrial Workers of the World

The most militant working-class organization of the 1905-1920 era was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The "Wobblies" as they were commonly known, gained widespread notoriety from their incendiary and revolutionary rhetoric.

Openly calling for class warfare, the Wobblies gained many followers after they won a difficult 1912 textile strike (commonly known as the "Bread and Roses" Strike) in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They proved ineffective in managing peaceful labor relations and members dropped away. The IWW strongly opposed the 1917-18 war effort and was shut down by the federal government (with a tiny remnant still in existence.)

 

Pullman Strike of 1894

George Pullman designed and manufactured a popular type of sleeping train car. (Before cars and airplanes, people traveled long distances on trains and sometimes needed sleeping cars for overnight trips.) Pullman’s company was so successful that he built a “company town” (much like textile mill towns where the company owned the homes the workers rented and the stores where the workers shopped) outside of Chicago, Illinois. In the spring of 1894 about 12,000 workers lived in Pullman’s “company town;” that spring there was a general recession and decrease in prices nationally. George Pullman didn’t reduce workers’ wages and he also didn’t reduce the prices for the goods they bought from the company store.

The workers decided to go on strike and the strike became a national strike as the American Railway Union (led by Eugene V. Debs) called out workers on railroads across the country in support of the Pullman workers.

The railway companies put bags of United States mail on board the trains for the striking workers to move. When the trains didn’t move because the workers were on strike, they were accused of obstructing the U.S. mail. Railway owners asked President Grover Cleveland for help.

President Cleveland sent troops to Chicago to “protect the mail.” An injunction was issued against the striking workers. Eugene V. Debs and other leaders were arrested when they refused to honor the court-issued injunction and end the strike.

The courts upheld the injunction and the strike ended. The government had again sided with the employer in a labor/management dispute.

 

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