The Growth of the American Labor Movement

1. The Growth of the American Labor Movement Ms. Susan M. PojerHorace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY Modified by Mrs. Kroll

2. Labor Force Distribution1870-1900

3. The Changing American Labor Force

4. Lewis Hine’s photodocumentaryon CHILD LABOR

5. Furman Owens, 12 years old. Can't read. Doesn't know his ABC's. "Yes, I want to learn but can't when I work all the time." Been in the mills 4 years, Columbia, S.C

6. Some children were so small they had to climb up on to the spinning frame to mend broken threads and to put back the empty bobbins. Bibb Mill No. 1. Macon, Ga.

7. Out after midnight selling extras in Washington DC. Youngest boy in the group is 9 years old

8. Michael McNelis, age 8, a newsboy just recovered from his 2nd attack of pneumonia and selling papers in a big rain storm. Philadelphia, PA

9. Francis Lance, 5 years old, 41 inches high. He jumps on and off moving trolley cars at risk of his life. St. Louis, Mo.

10. Miners: View of the Ewen Breaker of the Pennsylvania Coal Co. Dust so dense as to obscure the view. This dust penetrated the utmost recesses of the boys' lungs. A kind of slave-driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding or kicking them into obedience. South Pittston, Pennsylvania.

11. Miners: Breaker boys Hughestown Borough Pennsylvania Coal Company.

12. Miners: A young driver in the Brown Mine Has been driving 1 year Works 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily Brown, West Virginia.

13. “Galley Labor”

15. Labor Unrest: 1870-1900

16. The Corporate “Bully-Boys”: PinkertonAgents

17. Management vs. Labor “Tools” of Management “Tools” of Labor • “scabs” • P. R. campaign • Pinkertons • lockout • blacklisting • yellow-dog contracts • court injunctions • open shop • boycotts • sympathy demonstrations • informational picketing • closed shops • organized strikes • “wildcat” strikes

18. Knights of Labor Terence V. Powderly An injury to one is the concern of all!

19. Knights of Labor Knights of Labor trade card

20. Goals of the Knights of Labor 8-hour workday. Worker-owned factories. Abolition of child and prison labor. Equal pay for men and women. Safety codes in the workplace. Prohibition of contracting foreign labor.

21. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

22. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

23. The Tournament of Today: A Set-to Between Labor and Monopoly

24. First annual picnic of the “Knights of Labor” more fun for the spectators than for the performers

25. Anarchists Meet on the Lake Front in 1886

26. Haymarket Riot (1886): the Undoing of the Knights of Labor McCormick Harvesting Machine Co.

27. Haymarket Martyrs Seven men received the death sentence. In Nov. 1887, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, August Spies, and Albert Parson were executed. Of the others, one committed suicide on the eve of his execution. Death sentences of the others were changed to life imprisonment b/c the public strongly questioned their guilt. Governor John P. Altgeld fully pardoned the activists in 1893.

28. The American Federation of Labor: 1886 Samuel Gompers

29. How the AF of L Would Help the Workers Catered to the skilled worker. 8-hour day; higher wages (“bread ‘n’ butter”) Maintained a national strike fund. Evangelized the cause of unionism. Prevented disputes among the craft unions. Mediated disputes between management and labor. Pushed for closed shops (no one outside of union could work).

30. Homestead Steel Strike (1892) Homestead Steel Works The Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers

31. Homestead Steel Strike (1892)

32. Homestead Steel Strike (1892) Pinkerton Detective Agency Logo and ad

33. Big Corporate Profits!

34. A “CompanyTown”: Pullman, IL

35. Pullman Cars A Pullman porter

36. Pullman Cars

37. Pullman Cars

38. The Pullman Strike of 1894

39. The Pullman Strike of 1894 During the economic Panic of 1893, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages as demand for their train cars plummeted and the company’s revenue dropped. A delegation of workers complained of the low wages and 16-hour workdays and the company’s failure to decrease rents or the price of goods. Company owner George Pullman "loftily declined to talk with them.”

40. The Pullman Strike of 1894 Many of the workers were already members of the American Railway Union (ARU) led by Eugene V. Debs, which supported their strike by launching a boycott in which union members refused to run trains containing Pullman cars. The strike effectively shut down production in the Pullman factories and led to a lockout. Railroad workers across the nation refused to switch Pullman cars onto trains. The ARU declared that if switchmen were disciplined for the boycott, the entire ARU would strike in sympathy.

41. The Pullman Strike of 1894 The boycott was launched on June 26, 1894. Within four days, 125,000 workers on twenty-nine railroads had quit work rather than handle Pullman cars. Adding fuel to the fire, the railroad companies began hiring replacement workers (that is, strikebreakers), which only increased hostilities. Many Blacks, fearful that the racism expressed by the ARU would lock them out of another labor market, crossed the picket line, which added a highly racial division to the union's predicament.

42. The Pullman Strike of 1894 On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful gathering to obtain support for the strike from fellow railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois. Afterward, groups within the crowd became enraged, set fire to nearby buildings, and derailed a locomotive. Elsewhere in the United States, sympathy strikers prevented transportation of goods by walking off the job, obstructing railroad tracks or threatening and attacking strikebreakers. This increased national attention and fueled the demand for federal action.

43. The Pullman Strike of 1894 The railroads succeeded in having Richard Olney, lawyer for the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway, appointed as federal attorney under President Cleveland with responsibility for dealing with the strike. Olney obtained an injunctionbarring union leaders from supporting the strike and demanding that the strikers cease their activities or face being fired. Debs and other leaders of the ARU ignored the injunction, and federal troops were called into action.

44. The Pullman Strike of 1894 The strike was broken up by US Marshals and ~12,000 US Army troops sent by Pres. Cleveland on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail, violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and represented a threat to public safety. The arrival of the military and deaths of 13 workers (57 = wounded) led to further outbreaks of violence. An estimated 6,000 rail workers did about $8,818,000 in 2010 dollars worth of property damage

45. President Grover Cleveland If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered!

46. The Pullman Strike of 1894 Government by injunction!

47. The Pullman Strike of 1894 Charges were brought against Debs and the organizers The Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision In re Debs supporting President Cleveland's actions. BUT, Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld was furious at Cleveland for using the federal government to help bosses against workers, and for rejecting his plan to use state militia to keep order, instead of federal troops. As the leader of the Illinois delegation to the Democratic Party Convention in 1896, Altgeld used his influence to block Cleveland's bid for nomination at the 1896 Democratic National Convention.

48. Eugene Debs turned Socialist during his 6-month imprisonment after the strike Eugene V. Debs American Railway Union

49. The Pullman Strike of 1894 A national commission formed to study causes of the 1894 strike found Pullman's attitudes partly to blame and Pullman's company town to be "un-American". In 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court forced the Pullman Company to divest ownership in the town, which was annexed to Chicago. George Pullman remained unpopular with workers. Upon his death in 1897, he was buried in Graceland Cemetery at night in a lead-lined coffin within a reinforced steel and concrete vault topped by several tons of concrete to prevent his body being exhumed and desecrated.

50. The Pullman Strike of 1894 Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 after the strike when President Grover Cleveland and Congress made appeasement of organized labor a top priority. Legislation for the holiday was pushed through Congress six days after the strike ended. Samuel Gompers, head of American Federation of Labor, which had sided with the government in its effort to end the strike by the ARU, spoke out in favor of the holiday.