Organized Labor, 18651900

1
Organized Labor, 1865-1900

• U.S. History II

2
Socialisms Failure in the U.S.

• 2 Socialist parties in the U.S.
• Daniel DeLeons Socialist Labor Party
• Eugene V. Debs Social Democratic Party
• Labor organizations relentlessly suppressed
• Management used divide conquer strategy,
  playing ethnic groups off each other
• Pinkerton detectives Natl Guard used to break
  up strikes
• Workers more concerned about individual,
  bread-and-butter issues
• Unwilling to sacrifice individual present for
  collective future
• Most strikes about wages, hours, abusive foremen

3
Boom Bust Cycles
4
The Growth of Manufacturing
5
The National Labor Union

• National Labor Union short-lived founded 1866
• 640,000 members in 1868
• Called for 8-hour day, greenbacks, co-ops,
  equal rights for women blacks
• Got Congress to repeal Contract Labor law pass
  8-Hour Day law

6
The Knights of Labor

• Knights of Labor founded in 1860 by Phila-delphia
  tailors opened to all workers in 1870s
• Grand Master Terence V. Powderly (1879-1893)
  increased membership from under 10,000 in 1879 to
  730,000 in 1886
• Sought cooperative society - alliances between
  employer employee, producer consumer - as
  well as govt ownership of utilities, trust
  reform, ban on child labor
• Got Congress to create U.S. Bureau of Labor
• Declined after 1886 lost strike vs. Jay Gould
  discredited by ties to Haymarket Bombing

7
American Federation of Labor

• A.F.L. founded in 1886
• Led by Dutch Jewish cigar maker from Britain,
  Samuel Gompers (1886-1924)
• Over 1 million members by 1901 2.5 million by
  1917
• Federation of 111 unions, representing 27,000
  locals
• Organized by crafts, with each union independent
• no unskilled workers, women, or blacks
• Officially nonpartisan, but published legislative
  platforms

8
Industrial Workers of the World

• Wobblies founded in 1905 led by Big Bill
  Heywood Mother Jones
• Mostly un- or semi-skilled workers
• Used radical, revolutionary rhetoric
• Strikes were spectacular affairs, but only real
  success was Lowell, Mass in 1912

Big Bill Heywood
9
The Great Railroad Strike (1877)

• Rate wars in 1876 ended with truce which involved
  a 10 wage cut
• Strike began in Baltimore Pittsburgh, spreading
  quickly across Midwest West
• July 21-22, Philadelphia militia killed 30
  strikers strikers burned 39 buildings, 104
  engines, 1,245 cars
• Ended by Pres. Hayes calling out troops

Strike damage, Pennsylvania
10
The Haymarket Bombing (1886)

• Anarchists had called public meeting to protest
  bloodshed at McCormick plant
• 7 Germans, 1 American (Albert Parsons, a former
  carpetbagger who married a black woman and was a
  Knight of Labor)
• Not sure who threw bomb - meeting was dispersing
  as police came
• Farcical trial, presided over by Judge Gary, led
  to four executions one suicide

11
The Homestead Strike (1892)
12
Pullman Strike (1894)

• Pullman was company town, where employees gouged
  for everything
• American Railway Union led by Debs -became
  Socialist in jail afterwards

Eugene V. Debs