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Labor Struggles in the Gilded Age

Explore the rise of big labor and its impact on society between 1870 and 1920, including the influx of immigrants, mechanization's effects, role of women, key labor leaders like Powderly and Gompers, and major strikes like the Great Railroad Strike and Homestead Steel Strike.

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Labor Struggles in the Gilded Age

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  1. The Gilded Age The Rise of Big Labor

  2. Sources of Labor • Former Self-employed • Siblings in farming families • Immigrants (largest category) • Between 1870 and 1920 24 million immigrants arrived from: • Southern and Eastern Europe – 60% • Northern Europe – 25% • Other (Asia, Mexico, etc.) – 15% • By 1910 53% of all wage earners were of foreign birth

  3. Effect of Mechanization on Labor • Changed employer-employee relations • Gradually reduced customary autonomy • Decision making became centralized in management • Workers generally lost control of production process • Pace of production set by managers • Increasingly impersonal • Created new categories of workers • Skilled artisans generally replaced by unskilled “machine tenders” • Supervisors, managers

  4. Women in the Workforce

  5. The “Boom” & “Bust” Business Cycle

  6. Terence Powderly,Leader of the Knights of Labor

  7. Knights of Labor • Rejected “wage slavery” • Open to all laborers, skilled and unskilled • Maintained an adversarial relationship with business • Advocated broad social and economic reforms • Producer’s cooperatives • End to Child labor • Graduated income tax • Monetary reform

  8. The Haymarket Square Riot

  9. Samuel Gompersof the AFL

  10. The American Federation of Labor • Restricted to skilled laborers • Accepted wage system • Wanted to work with business owners • Promised amenable labor relations

  11. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 • First nationwide strike • Began in Martinsburg, WV • Strike spread quickly along the rail routes • Strikers halted all train traffic • Unemployed and workers in other industries joined the protest • Mobs defied militia sent to disperse them • Rioting persisted for about a week • Fearing a national insurrection President Hayes called out the army to suppress the strike • Federal troops fired into a crowd in Pittsburg, killing 20 • By the end of the strike over 100 were dead

  12. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

  13. Homestead Steel Strike • Carnegie determined to gain control over every facet of production • Want to break the Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers Union • Workers went on strike in June • Governor refused to use National Guard to disperse them • Steel Company used a private army • After day-long gun battle, governor sent in troops to restore order • Factory reopened with strikebreakers • After four months the union was forced to admit defeat • Carnegie reduced workforce by 25% • Lengthened work day • Cut wages 25% • Affected all steel workers • Within a decade, every major steel company operated without union interference

  14. Troops Guard the Trains during the Pullman Strike

  15. Eugene V. DebsHead of the American Railway Union and founder of the American Socialist Party

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