6.7 - Labor in the Gilded Age

Challenges for Wage Earners

• By 1900, two-thirds of Americans worked for wages, often under harsh conditions with long hours (ten hours a day, six days a week).

• Wages were low due to a large supply of immigrant labor, leading many families to rely on income from women and children.

• Real wages rose over time, but most families still struggled to make ends meet, with about 20 percent of children working by 1900.

Labor Discontent

• Industrial workers faced monotonous, dangerous work with limited sense of accomplishment, often in unhealthy environments.

• Workers frequently rebelled by missing work, quitting, or changing jobs, with about 20 percent eventually leaving the industrial workforce altogether.

Industrial Warfare

• Lockout: Closing a factory to break a labor movement before it could organize.

• Blacklist: Circulating the names of pro-union workers to prevent them from finding employment.

• Yellow-dog Contract: A contract where workers agreed not to join a union as a condition of employment.

• Private Guards and State Militia: Used by employers to suppress strikes.

• Court Injunction: Legal action to prevent or end a strike.

• Management supported public fear of unions as anarchistic and un-American, often winning labor disputes with support from the federal and state governments.

Tactics by Labor

• Workers used collective bargaining, where they negotiated as a group with employers for better wages and working conditions, and picketing, where they demonstrated outside workplaces to protest and discourage others from working.

• Some labor advocates pushed for political reforms to support worker rights, while others favored direct confrontation through strikes, boycotts, and slowdowns.

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• A nationwide strike erupted during an economic depression when railroad companies cut wages.

• The strike involved 500,000 workers, shutting down two-thirds of the country's rail lines.

• President Rutherford B. Hayes used federal troops to end the strike, resulting in over 100 deaths.

• The strike led to some employers improving wages and conditions, while others took a harder line against unions.

National Labor Union

• Founded in 1866, it was the first attempt to organize all workers in all states, including skilled and unskilled, agricultural and industrial workers.

• Advocated for higher wages, an eight-hour workday, equal rights for women and African Americans, monetary reform, and worker cooperatives.

• Won the eight-hour day for federal government workers but lost support after the 1873 depression and unsuccessful strikes in 1877.

Knights of Labor

• Began in 1869 as a secret society and went public in 1881 under Terence V. Powderly.

• Opened membership to all workers, including African Americans and women.

• Advocated for worker cooperatives, abolition of child labor, trusts and monopolies, and arbitration over strikes.

• Peaked at 730,000 members in 1886 but declined rapidly after the Haymarket bombing in Chicago that year.

Haymarket Bombing

• A public meeting in Chicago's Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886, turned violent when a bomb killed seven police officers.

• Eight anarchist leaders were tried, with seven sentenced to death, causing public opinion to turn against the labor movement.

• The Knights of Labor lost popularity and membership following the incident.

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

• Unlike the reform-minded Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) focused on narrower economic goals, primarily higher wages and improved working conditions.

• Founded in 1886 as an association of 25 craft unions of skilled workers, it was led by Samuel Gompers until 1924.

• Gompers directed local unions to walk out until employers agreed to negotiate new contracts through collective bargaining.

• By 1901, the AFL was the nation’s largest labor organization with 1 million members, though significant successes would come later in the 20th century.

Strikes and Strikebreaking in the 1890s

• Two massive strikes in the last decade of the 19th century demonstrated both the growing discontent of labor and the continued power of management.

Homestead Strike (1892)

• Henry Clay Frick, the manager of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel plant near Pittsburgh, cut wages by nearly 20%, leading to a strike.

• Frick used lockouts, private guards, and strikebreakers to defeat the steelworkers' walkout after five months, resulting in 16 deaths, mostly steelworkers.

• The failure of the Homestead strike set back the union movement in the steel industry until the New Deal in the 1930s.

Pullman Strike (1894)

• Workers at George Pullman’s company town near Chicago struck after wages were cut and leaders of their delegation were fired.

• The American Railroad Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, supported the strike by boycotting trains with Pullman cars, tying up rail transportation nationwide.

• Railroad owners linked Pullman cars to mail trains and persuaded President Grover Cleveland to use the army to keep the mail trains running.

• A federal court issued an injunction against the strike, leading to the arrest and jailing of Debs and other union leaders, effectively ending the strike.

• The Supreme Court’s decision in In re Debs (1895) upheld the use of court injunctions against strikes, giving employers a powerful legal tool to break unions.

• After his jail sentence, Debs turned to socialism and helped found the American Socialist Party in 1900.

Conditions in 1900

• By 1900, only 3 percent of American workers belonged to unions, with management holding the upper hand in labor disputes and government generally siding with employers.

• The need for a better balance between the demands of employers and employees was becoming recognized to avoid the numerous strikes and violence of the late 19th century.

• Industrial growth was concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest, attracting more immigrants and migrants, leading to the development of more cities.