Labor Movement

1. Labor Movement Midvale Middle School

2. Child Labor • Because many immigrants were so poor, everyone in the family worked, including the children. • Only 35% of the children in New York attended school. Children who did not attend school, worked.

3. What Jobs did Children Have? Boys became shoe shiners, messengers, and newspaper boys. Young girls worked in factories making clothes, candy, or cigars.

4. Eye Witness A Belarus Immigrant reported, “Does everybody in America live like this? Go to work early, come home late, eat and go to sleep? And the next day again work, eat and sleep? Will I have to do that too? Always?” An Italian Immigrant reported, “In Italy girls don’t work, but to eat here, everyone has to work.” (Hopkinson, Deborah. Shutting out the Sky, 2003, p. 47; 56)

5. Working Conditions • Worked 14 Hours a Day • Paid 6 to 10 Dollars a Week • Inhaled Harmful Dust or Fumes in the Factories • Stand or Sit in Uncomfortable Conditions for Hours • Risked Injuries from Factory Equipment

6. Eye Witness A factory worker reported, “The faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my haste I get my finger caught and the needle goes right through it. I bind the finger up with a piece of cotton and go on working.” (Hopkinson, Deborah. Shutting out the Sky, 2003, p. 53) A factory worker reported, “Fourteen hours a day you sit on a chair. Fourteen hours with your back bent, your eyes close to your work you sit stitching in a dull room. You are breathing the air that other bent and sweating bodies in the shop are throwing off, and the air that comes in from the yard heavy and disgusting with filth and the odor of open toilets.” (Hopkinson, Deborah. Shutting out the Sky, 2003, p. 61-62)

7. Strike • Union – Group of workers who join together to fight for better working conditions. • Strike – When Workers stop working to protest their working conditions. • Workers strike for more money, shorter work days, and safer working conditions. • Factory owners either meet the demands of the strikers or have to hire all new workers.

8. Uprising of the 20,000 • On November 22, 1909, union members met to discuss a general strike. • Most of these union members were teenage girls who worked in garment factories. • A young union girl, Clara Lemlich, stormed the stage and pleaded, “I have listened to all the speakers. I would not have further patience for talk . . . I move that we go on a general strike!”

9. Uprising of the 20,000 • The next morning, 20,000 shirtwaist workers walked off their jobs. • This was the largest strike by women in the history of the United States. It became known as “The Uprising of the 20,000.” • Workers were striking for raises, a shorter work week, better safety conditions, and no more than two hours of overtime each day.

10. Uprising of the 20,000 • Strikers picketed outside factories throughout the winter. • The strikers were harassed, beaten, and arrested. • Because the strikers weren’t working, many strikers and their families went hungry. • After 3 months, the strike ended without the strikers demands being met, but the strikers had laid the foundation for future successes in the labor movement.