Us T H E M A C H I N E A G E

The villages and farms of antebellum America increasingly gave way to cities and factoriesFrom 1870 to 1900 the portion of agricultural workers fell from 53% to 37% of the workforceAmericans who left the farms to live in cities were joined by another massive stream: the “New Immigrants” from eastern and southern Europe (primarily Catholics and Jews)By 1900, 40% of residents lived in a place of 2,500 people or more: Americans were massing in compact areas on an unprecedented scale

There is no sine qua non link between cities and factoriesEarly mills had been located along sources of water power, chiefly rivers: towns had then gradually grown around the millAfter the Civil War the trend became massing population, production, and consumption in cities: each reinforced the otherTechnological innovations were indispensable to this linkageEarlier American urban areas were termed “walking cities” as their size and scope was limited to the distance inhabitants could travel on foot (often a radius of about two miles)

URBAN TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTIONFirst came the horse-drawn omnibus, little more than a stagecoach, introduced in New York in 1827By the mid 19th century horse drawn trolleys were competing with the omnibus in may eastern citiesThe 1886 harnessing of electric power allowed great dynamos to propel several cars simultaneously along the same track Leading to urban transport augmentations and breakthroughs such as the “EL” in Chicago (monorail), the cable cars in San Francisco and Chicago (1873) and, by the turn of the century, the subway in New York and other citiesTogether, these greatly expanded the horizontality of the emerging industrial cities, while providing many jobs to the builders and staffers of the systemsCities could thus expand outward as commuting distances steadily increased

The steam engines (circa 1850), powered by America’s abundant coal deposits, now allowed factories to escape river proximity, and, coupled with the electricity to power transportation systems and light homes, streets, and factories, also pulled industries into urban settingsExisting cities also enjoyed the inherent advantage of already having centralized access to capital and laborEastern cities began to specialize in producing consumer staples and heavy industrial itemsMidwestern centers like Chicago on processing agricultural goods, and western urban areas focused on extracting and refining minerals and lumber

PRE-INDUSTRIAL WORKPLACEREFER TO YOUR NOTES OF OUR IN-CLASS DISCUSION ON THIS TOPIC

PRE-INDUSTRIAL ARTISAN WORKSHOP

PRE-INDUSTRIAL SHOEMAKER’S WORKSHOP

NEW INDUSTRIAL FACTORYIncreasingly loud, frenetic, crowded, ill-lit and ventilated with machine-tending workers ever more stripped of individuality, creativity, self-esteem, and dignityIncreased competition, in part a result of the railroad’s ability to facilitate mass-marketing, drove owners to impose discipline, efficiency, and long hours for low pay on a work force that was tied to immigrationFactories and immigrants were often the anchor of the city centers while the new transport networks allowed those succeeding in the emerging business opportunities of the industrial economy (“middle classes”) to live in ever-growing rings outward from the centerBusinessmen in the cities could easily recruit labor to tend the machines because factory work demanded no particular skillsAs the owners deployed workers and arranged the work into ever more specific, repetitive tasksMachine-made shoes, tended by up to fifty workmen trained to do only one part of the process, could now be completed at the rate of eighty per hour, as opposed to one hand-made pair per hourLoss of control by the workers of the production process

Cont…Power over the machines allowed management to restructure social relationsA much greater gap came about between the low paid, unskilled workers on the plant floor and the management team that directed the factory (hourly vs. salaried employees)Reliance on machines required rigid disciplining of the workforce through adherence to fixed schedules of time and duties…disappearing was the quiet and relaxed atmosphere of the pre-machine workshop

1886 Mc CORMICK STRIKEMcCormick retaliated against a unionized iron molders strike that had succeeded the previous year by importing $500,000 worth of pneumatic molding machineryThus stripping the skilled iron molders of any leverage in negotiations: these new machines were tended by easily replaced, much less-skilled men who could now get the job done (all 91 members of the iron molders union were fired)Increasingly, leverage and power in the industrial age were on the side of management

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENTThe basic principles were established by Frederick W. Taylor in the late 19th centuryTaylor separated the thinking and doing of work, something that could now be done thanks to the increasing use of machines (that stripped workers of power and leverage in the workplace)His clipboard-toting assistants visited a factory and, through rigorous observation of time and motion studies of the workers on the job, recommended the elimination of about half the present work forceManagement at that factory would also thus know what the workers had always known: how to do the job-salaried overseers could now tell workers all they needed to know to perform their specific task in the larger production processThe implications for labor were chilling

Cont…Taylor’s men found wasted motion, improper tools, overstaffing, and reported on these happenings to the ownersThose workers who survived the draconian cuts in the factory workforce would find themselves doing the work of two or even three former employeesTurning men into robots of a sort

THE NEW IMMIGRANTSEastern US cities grew in tandem with the rapid pace of in-migration from southern and eastern Europe after 1880Almost 80% of the population of Chicago and New York in 1900 were foreign born or their children (first and second generation)Growing cities created a voracious demand for labor: municipal services, streets, sewers, schools, hospitals, and transportation systems that needed to be built from scratch: all of which multiplied the need for unskilled labor, a vacuum filled by the New Immigrants

Cont…At least 25% of arriving immigrants returned to their nations of origin and did not remain in the USBy 1910 the immigration service identified 60% of the New Immigrants as “laborers” or “servants”For many the hard edge of desperation propelled them outward from Europe (lack of available farmland, hunger, fear of conscription, anti-Semitic pogroms, poverty)By 1910 they were 70% of all immigrant to the US: they saw opportunity as day laborers and unskilled factory workers in the USWhenever possible the native-born shunned such jobsFurthermore, many who out-migrated from Europe went elsewhere: Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Australia

ETHNIC CONCENTRATIONSVarious immigrant groups also gravitated toward or were pigeonholed into certain jobsJew often gravitated to the ready-made clothing industryIrish dominated many eastern police forcesEastern Europeans were typecast as physical strong by stupid and ploddingItalians were stereotyped as well-suited for street labor and construction gangsMany new arrivals from Europe gravitated to neighborhoods already well populated by kin or residents of home districts from the old countryIn Kansas City, Missouri two-thirds of the Italians came from SicilyNewcomers often found work at nearby factories or jobsites where family and neighbors were already employed: an informal ethnic beachhead Newcomers usually were given the lowest-paying, most physically demanding jobs

Cont…Handicapped by low wages, many were forced into crowded, ill-lit and poorly ventilated tenement slum conditions such as the lower east side of New YorkOften located near the factory district in a given industrial city, with the accompanying stench and smoke adding to their discomfortMost did not earn enough to afford the one-way nickel fare on the urban transport systems

NEW YORK, THE “FIVE POINTS”

The streets of tenement neighborhoods were often crowded by those seeking to escape the stench, crowding, and claustrophobia of the dank interior roomsWhat one saw and heard on these streets became a primary form of entertainment for those too poor to afford the theater or concert hallsThe Bowery Boys

INDUSTRIAL ERA POLICE FORCEA trend borrowed by Americans from Paris and LondonThe industrial age created ever larger gaps between the emerging social classesAn increasingly materialistic culture, right under the noses of the poor, drove some to theft and property crimes, in turn frightening the growing middle classThe thriving middle class were willing to pay taxes to create a buffer between themselves and the newspapers described as the “dangerous classes” (the urban poor and struggling)

Cont…Irish-Americans were the logical group to predominate in urban-industrial police forcesMany Irish had emigrated to the US a generation or two earlierThey spoke EnglishThey were whiteThey had a reputation for toughness (the “paddy wagon”)A gigantic step up the class ladder from the days of “Irish need not apply”

FAILED FARMERSMany who had embraced the Jeffersonian vision of virtue, independence, and liberty through farm ownership eventually gave in, exhausted from the unrelenting toil and harsh winters, as well as the inherent loneliness and isolation that accompanied living in rural America, as well as the drought and insectsTheir subsequent in-migration to the new industrial cities was speeded by the deployment of farm machines like the individual atop a McCormick reaper that could do the work of twenty men with harvesting sickles

Cont…They enjoyed a significant advantage over the New Immigrants streaming in from eastern and southern Europe: most were native born Protestant Americans who understood the culture and spoke EnglishMany, however, were initially ill-equipped for the wrenching transition from farm life with its rhythm of the seasons, outdoor work, relative autonomy, and control of one’s time into the rigid discipline of factory life and the tyranny of Taylor’s time clock, coupled with urban crowding and diversity

1870-1900: the capital invested in manufacturing increased six-foldQuantum jump in steel production from 1867 to 1900: 19,000 tons to 10 million tonsBoth are indicators of the US surge to world industrial standingSteel (1857 Bessemer process) replaced iron and wood as the main component in US machinery (harder and with much greater tensile strength)Now rails, nails, beams, plate, wire and tubing were all made of steel: the price dropped to $12 a ton by the late 1890s (from $50 in 1875)

By 1900, 1500 factories had payrolls of over 500 workersEleven of the sixteen largest industries doubled in size, 1870-1900Steel, in conjunction with steam power and electricity changed the face of the USThe Brooklyn Bridge (essay in Portraits)City buildings could now soar vertically thanks to skeletons of steel I-beam, balloon-frame constructionThe meat-packing industry was revolutionized by the invention of the refrigerated railroad car

REFRIGERATED RAILROAD CARSBrought an enormous improvement to the American dietRevolutionized the cattle ranching and meat-packing industriesMade the railroad even more important in American lifeHelped create fortunes for the two giants in the meat-packing field: Philip Armour and Gustavus Swift

VERTICAL INTEGRATIONPioneered (but not invented) by Swift and his meat company in the late 19th centuryTake control of very aspect of the raw material acquisition, manufacturing and distribution process in which your company engages = EFFICIENCY AND CONTROL + ECONOMY OF SCALE Swift bought the cattle ranches and employed the cowboys/owned the railcars that brought the beef to the Swift slaughterhouses, and owned as well the refrigerated railroad cars and, later, trucks that transported the cuts of meats to stores and markets

ECONOMY OF SCALE“the more you buy, the less you pay”Which gave the larger businesses and corporations a distinct advantage in under-pricing competitors and driving them out of the marketplace, thus capturing a greater market share for themselvesShipping in bulk also induced railroads to transport your product more cheaply per unit, thus also lowering costsWalmart and Crest toothpastePurchasing group medical insurance for employees

HORIZONTAL INTEGRATIONPioneered by John D. Rockefeller of Standard OilSeizing control of ever greater market share within your field is the goal of this monopolistic strategyAccomplished by driving competitors out of the marketplace, using vertical integration and lowball pricing, sometimes ruthless tactics, and/or buying them out (economy of scale a large key)Rockefeller owned all the pipelines that carried the unrefined oil: the size of his growing control of oil won rebates from railroads (economy of scale) which gave him an additional pricing advantage over competitorsRockefeller at his peak controlled about 87% of the petroleum market, the closest any horizontal integration has come to a pure monopoly

CORPORATIONSThey further revolutionized the industrial age in several important waysEssentially the modern corporation was born with the transfer of several heretofore individual rights and immunities to large business entitiesIn the process corporations gained the freedom from external regulation and control that was originally the hallmark of republican liberty in Jefferson’s AmericaJefferson had argued that individual economic independence and the sanctity of private property, free of intrusion by government or other individuals, were essential to liberty

Cont…Ironically, by granting these long-cherished individual rights to companies, a majority of Americans lost basic freedoms so dear to Jefferson’s generationAs an increasing number of Americans were now dependent on someone else for their livelihoodThey also became increasingly subjected to the hierarchical rules and nondemocratic controls of the corporations and large businesses for which they worked as the corporations secured the rights long established to insure the freedom of individuals against concentrated government power

LEGAL FOUNDATIONSGradually shifting legal doctrines, emerging from common law protection of farmers, evolved to encourage capital accumulation, risk taking, and economic growthBy the 1820s courts were dismissing lawsuits filed by farmers whose lands had been flooded by the actions of mill owners, with judges presuming society’s “greater good” was served by businesses rather than individualsGradually eroding the tenets of the Moral Economy that had guided Europe since the Middle Ages (common good over private gain)

Cont…With the rise of the Market Economy views of the economic sphere emerged stressing fluctuating prices according to supply and demand, as well as applauding speculative commercial ventures and future’s trading in crops and animalsIn other words, the new wisdom in the business world stressed that prices and values were inherently subjectiveContracts, thanks to the Marshall and Tawney Supreme Courts, were now governed by the will of the parties and were considered binding regardless of any perceived unfairness or inequality in the agreementIn 1837 Tawney had freed a newer company from the monopolistic claims of an older corporation in the Charles River Bridge case, encouraging open competition and spurring the creation of new businesses and competitionAndrew Jackson had typified the beliefs of many anti-corporate Democrats in decrying such decisions, while their Whig opponents, embracers of the market economy, cheered

SUPREME COURT, CONT…Individual state legislatures passed laws in the latter half of the 19th century, that effectively functioned as tariffs, in an effort to favor local and in-state merchants and manufacturers over outside competitors who could now much more easily access national markets via the railroadThe Supreme Court, in a series of rulings in the late 19th century, overturned these state statutes, citing the inter-state commerce clause in the Constitution, thus completely a national marketplace free of local restrictions and advantagesThus, the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by an agricultural revolution, a judicial revolution, and a market revolution that created a “common market”

Cont…The amount of capital needed and the scope of activities of the emerging corporations were unprecedented by 1900As was the flow of information needed to run a corporation in a changing marketplaceResulting in bureaucratic and hierarchical corporate structures that resembled a military culture with its chain of command, flowing downward and outward from central officesRailroads pioneered this “militarization” as well as eliminating the old “barriers to bigness” presented by time and distance

ADVERTISING REVOLUTIONJames B. Duke (yes, the university) led the American Tobacco Company as it pioneered mass production via machines that could turn out 100,000 cigarettes per day in 1881Faced with over-production Duke created mass marketing advertising techniques that at first were ridiculed by his CEO peers in the corporate worldThe thought of plowing up to 1/3 of company profits into convincing Americans to buy one’s product seemed laughable if not foolhardy, as that money, CEOs argued, should rightly go to stockholders in the form of dividends that would also shore up the company’s Wall Street share price

Cont…But Duke’s approach to marketing gradually won over other corporate leaders as they came to realize that mass production could only succeed in tandem with mass marketingWith increasing mass production fueled by machines corporate leaders also understood that production costs must be shaved to the boneLike Duke they sought to sell millions of units of their products with bare-bones profit per item (instead of making a million on one sale you instead make a dollar on each of a million sales)

POOLSBusiness leaders within a given industry, despite public pronouncements about competition and the virtues of free enterprise, sought to mitigate the damaging effects of vicious competition and the discipline of the market by creating poolsPools, entered into voluntarily by the top several companies in a given industry, fostered cooperative agreements on pricing, production, regional market allocations, and wages, as well as passing on information about potential union activistsThey often broke down, however, as individual companies were also under pressure from stockholders to increase profits by growing their market shareAlso, they could not be enforced because they were not legally enforceable as the Congress passed bills like the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

TRUSTSJohn D. Rockefeller saw the inherent weakness of poolsHis chief lawyer, Samuel Dodd, dug up an old business tactic in which an individual was allowed to manage the financial affairs of someone unwilling or unable to handle them himselfDodd in 1887 saw the possibilities for horizontal integration via a trust if the stockholders of smaller oil companies could be persuaded or bullied into yielding control of their stock to the Board of Trustees of Standard Oil

HOLDING COMPANIESTrusts, however, became a moot point the next year when New Jersey, anxious to attract corporations to their state, passed new laws allowing corporations chartered there to own property in other states as well as stock in out-of-state companiesTrusts had not allowed for ownership, only “trusteeship”Thus opening the way for the creation of New Jersey chartered “holding companies,” many of which over time owned no corporate assets except the stock of other companiesThereby allowing one corporation to control the actions of many businesses by acquiring majority interests in them through stock purchases and stashing that stock in holding companies

Cont…Holding companies could also be used to vertically integrate, as Gustavus Swift was doing in the meat industryBy buying up cattle ranches and pig farms, as well as purchasing the railroad cars on which the meat was transported and, later, owning the trucks in which the processed meat was sent to retail outlets like grocery storesSubsidiary companies controlled by Swift were created to manage each of these interrelated parts of the operation

FINANCIERSActed as “marriage-brokers” or middlemen in the financial arena for the many “mergers and acquisitions” that took place toward the end of the 19th century and beyondBringing together firms that needed capital with those that had large sums to lend or investAnd extracting a small percentage fee for their services (1% of a million dollar transaction is $10,000, barely noticeable, but by the end of the year you have made a fortune)

SOCIAL DARWINISMA notion first coined in England by the philosopher Herbert SpencerIts foremost American champion was the Yale professor William Graham SumnerIts proponents linked Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest with the prevailing laissez faire principles trumpeted by business and corporate leadersTo justify the great and growing gaps between rich (WASPS) and the (immigrant) poorAnd to legitimize the notion that wealth flows naturally to the superior and the eliteMonopolies, therefore, were beneficial in that control lay in the hands of the “fittest”

GOSPEL OF WEALTHAn argument put forward by the immigrant industrialist Andrew Carnegie: philanthropyHe argued for the validity of Social Darwinism but added the idea that the elite who gained wealth had a duty to society to give backBy creating cultural, artistic, and literary monuments for public use and edification: parks, libraries, concert halls, universitiesWas he goaded late in life by his nagging Scottish Presbyterian conscience?Never did he advocate raising the wages of the exploited working class

GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE TO BUSINESSJust as business leaders in the industrial age publicly trumpeted rugged individualism while privately creating pools, trusts, and holding companies to minimize competitionSo they also readily accepted numerous forms of government help in creating and growing their businessesTariff policies kept out European competitors and allowed American firms to raise pricesRailroads had benefitted greatly from generous land subsidiesThe US Post Office carried corporate correspondenceUS patent laws safeguarded the profits from the inventions created by corporate scientists

LESTER WARDThe university champion of the new academic discipline of Sociology that was becoming the rage on college campuses among those seeking reform of the systemWard argued that progress of civilization came from human control of nature, not natural selectionHe further suggested that humans are the product of their environment, that they are shaped by their surroundings (casting doubt on Social DarwinismFor Ward, ethics was more important than exploitive profits and laissez faireHe decried the brutal excesses of the Industrial Age as wasteful and obscene

HENRY GEORGEA social reformer and economist whose book “Progress and Poverty” sold more copies in the US in the 1880s than any other publication save the BibleGeorge was appalled at the great disparity between rich and poor in the industrial ageHe advocated a “single tax” on all owned land in the US equal to its rental value: doing this, he argued, would obviate the need for any other tax, leaving America with a “single tax”Workers could thus keep all their hard-earned wagesHe saw land as a gift from God, not a man-made creationHe became so popular in New York city that he defeated Theodore Roosevelt while finishing 2nd in the city’s mayoral election

EDWARD BELLAMYA socialist who believed that the lustful drive for profit and property lay at the root of American society’s increasing ills in the Industrial AgeArgued in his utopian novel “Looking Backwards” that the only way out of this morass lay in government ownership of all means of production and vital industries, thus removing the profit motive that turned men into ravaging beastsAnd evolving America into an egalitarian and just society based on brotherhood and fair play that Bellamy labeled NationalismBecause American citizens chose the government leaders, in reality, the people not the plutocrats would own the companies, businesses, and utilities

BELLAMY/”LOOKING BACKWARD”

E.C. KNIGHT CASECorporate friendly senators had succeeded in watering down the Sherman Anti-Trust bill and knew that its enforcement lay with pro-business federal judgesThe EC Knight case came about through legal challenges to the “Sugar Trust” which had come to dominate the American sugar-refining industryThe Supreme Court embraced a literal meaning of the Constitution’s “interstate commerce” clause, and ruled that Congress could only regulate trade, not manufacturing, which they deemed an entirely different activity not covered by the Framers

Cont…Only a handful of prosecutions under the Sherman bill took place in the decade after its passageIronically, the pro-business courts interpreted the famous “restraint of trade” phrase in the bill to curb the power of labor unions, something its congressional creators had never intended

CLERICAL REVOLUTIONBusiness paperwork in the antebellum arena had been done by the ink-stained fingers of male scriveners (Herman Melville)Their ranks had shrunk drastically by the early 20th century, replaced by young, single women with enough trade school education to effectively use the latest business innovations: the typewriter, cash register, and adding machineCorporations increasingly relied on these women because they could pay them less than men, they were viewed as more tractable, and, with the strong societal pressure on women to marry and “find their true calling” as wives and mothers, they were short-term employers who would not unionizeNevertheless, a big step up for young single, modestly educated American women mired in the expectations of the “velvet cage” of domesticity

Cont…In 1880 4% of clerical jobs were staffed by females…in 1920 nearly half wereA significant step up from factory or servant work for the daughters of the New Immigrants in becoming secretaries and shop girlsDiscrimination was the norm as women were seldom entrusted with cash and were paid wages lower than men

CHILD LABORIn 1890 over 18% of children outside the farm sector were employed, especially in the textile and shoe industriesThey were paid a fraction of adult wages, saving the company money by reducing production costsSeveral northern states passed laws regulating child labor abuses, but the courts ruled that large firms, engaged in interstate commerce, were exempt from state regulationPoor parents, desperate for extra family income, complicated the situation by misleading the authorities about the age of their childrenCompulsory school laws put a dent in child labor

INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTSThe number of injuries, maimings, and deaths rose steadily in America’s Industrial Age, peaking at hundreds of thousands per year around 1920In 1913 industrial accidents killed 25,000 and left an additional one million hurtIn an era with no disability insurance for doctor visits, or to replace lost incomesPrevailing free market views impeded the passage of laws in this area

LABOR REFORM EFFORTSVariations on the allegations of Malthusian theory and Ricardo’s “iron law of wages”If wages rise the number of people seeking the jobs will increase, creating a glut of workers and driving wages back down, using basic supply and demand principlesTherefore, why bother to give wage increases in the first place?Especially with the massive influx of New Immigrants creating an “excess labor pool”

HENRY FORDLinked individualism and materialism through the assembly line and FordismHis creation of the auto assembly line greatly increased production by bringing the evolving “Model T” to the stationary workersThe assembly line work was often boring and repetitive: Ford decided to pay these workers the then outrageous wage of five dollars per dayHis corporate peers sneered at such largesse, but Ford replied that his workers would all run out and buy a Ford automobileThus making an important contribution to modern American consumerism and demand-side economics: without well-compensated workers manufacturers cannot produce and make profits

DU PONTS: CHEMICALSAlthough Germany as a nation took the lead in the chemical field the foremost American family in this areas was the Du PontsThey feared that the family’s long-term domination of the gunpowder industry in the US could be threatened by anti-trust lawsAnd so branched out into the broader chemical market, producing fertilizers, dyes, photographic film, rubber, lacquer, and plasticsAll the while pioneering modern management tactics and strategies

SUPREME COURT AND LABORIn Holden v. Hardy, 1896, the Court denied the plaintiffs’ claims that their 14th Amendment rights were being violated and upheld a Utah law limiting the workday of miners there to eight hours, on the grounds that the work was inherently dangerous and unhealthyIn Locknerv. New York, 1905, the Court by a narrow 5 to 4 vote reached a very different decision in a case involving the ten work day and sixty hour , work week of bakers, on the grounds that such work posed no inherent danger to employees, thus ruling against the bakers’ 14th Amendment claims and in favor of “liberty of contract”

Cont…In Muller v. Oregon, 1908 the Supreme Court for the first time accepted sociological evidence before rendering its decision (the famous Brandeis Brief)They found unanimously that female laundresses could not be compelled to work more than ten hours per dayLargely for sexist reasons as longer hours might have an adverse affect on maternityA victory for labor but the decision was later interpreted to bar women from certain jobs on account of their “weaker” nature

RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1877See the Walter Licht essay in Interpretations

TROOPS IN BALTIMORE SHOOT STRIKERS, 1877

KNIGHTS OF LABORSee the Walter Licht essay in InterpretationsThe leader of this union, Terrence Powderly, named them “knights” in an attempt to rekindle the status, self-esteem, and relative income of skilled craftsmen in the Middle Ages that was being eroded in the Industrial AgePowderly divided the world into those who earn a living by honest toil and the sweat of their brow, and the leaches who exploited noble working people while acquiring the bulk of available assets and money (“an injury to one is a concern to all”)He therefore allowed any working person into the Knights (including women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants): an incredibly radical idea for its timeThey were not able to overcome middle class fears and misperceptions, and disappeared in the wake of the 1886 Haymarket Affair

POWDERLY ENCOURAGES BROTHERHOOD

HAYMARKET AFFAIR, 1886Grew out of European labor-inspired May Day parades and celebrations in ChicagoA few extremist anarchists (those who advocate complete individual freedom and believe governments must be eliminated, violently if necessary) exploded bombs at the eventBringing in the police who brutally dispersed the demonstrators, killing severalThe Knights were blamed despite a lack of any real evidence, and several leaders were convicted at trialMiddle class fear and anger with the sea of immigrants helped set the stage for this tragedy, as did a rejection of all things European like May Day, and the growing class tensions emerging in the Industrial Age

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABORUse the Walter Licht essay in InterpretationsReally more of an “umbrella organization” of several unions of skilled men (we support Capitalism while seeking a larger slice of the pie)Their charismatic leader, Samuel Gompers, stressed “bread and butter” issues: higher wages, safer factories, health insurance, and collective bargainingGompers also emphasized a non-partisan approach to the two dominant political parties, promising to throw the voting strength of the AF of L to the party that would do the most for laborGompers also stressed the creation of a strong strike fund to use as a weapon at the bargaining table to win concessions in negotiations with owners and managementFinally, Gompers rejected the Knights all-encompassing strategy and only allowed skilled white men to join: they were much less easily replaced in the event of a strike

HOMESTEAD STRIKE, 1892Use web research to understand this event

PULLMAN STRIKE, 1894Use web research to understand this event

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLDThe most radical of the labor unions of the Industrial Age: they supported violence if necessary to topple the System (ruthlessly exploitive Big Business and the courts and politicians who did their bidding)And replace it with worker-dominated network of production and distribution of goods and services in which the wage structure would be eliminatedRejected the “failures” of the AF of L which, by the founding of the “Wobblies” in 1905 had only unionized 5% of workers in America“an injury to one is an injury to all” (a worker solidarity slogan that went beyond the Knights)Gompers saw the AF of L as top down culture in which leaders bargained with management for the workersWhile “Big Bill” Haywood and other Wobbly spokesmen emphasized a bottom-up structure in which workers as a group would assume control of factories

Cont…Clearly their radical strategy and occasionally violent tactics terrified the middle and upper classesThe beginning of the end for Wobblies began in World War I when the union refused to sanction either US participation in the conflict or the draft: why should good working men, the Wobblies argued, be compelled to murder brother working men from other countries so that the rich could grow richer by supplying them with the guns to bring about their destruction?)

TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE, 1913Use your in-class notes from the film to understand this tragic moment in both labor and gender history

CLOCKING IN: TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST

UNIONS FOR WOMENUse Norton, 495-496

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