6.7 Labor in the Gilded Age

Gilded Age

superficial glitter of new wealth

“iron law of wages”

David Ricardo’s justification of low wages, thought paying workers more would lead to a cycle of misery and starvation

• raised wages would raise the working population

• wages would fall again due to an excess of labor supply

wage earners

also included women and children - households could not be supported on just one income

labor discontent

no sense of accomplishment, tyranny of the clock, dangerous conditions caused workers to rebel by missing work or quitting

methods to defeat unions

• lockout - closing a factory to break labor movement before it could be organized

• blacklist - list of pro-union worker names circulated by employers to make them unable to find employment

• yellow-dog contract - contract including a condition of employment against workers joining unions

• private guards and state militia used to put down strikes

• court injunctions - judicial action to end/prevent strikes

laborer tactics in response to companies

• political action

• direct confrontation, union recognition

• collective bargaining - the ability of workers to negotiate as a group with an employer over wages and working conditions

• Great Railroad Strike of 1877

  • railroad companies cut wages → nationwide railroad worker strike

  • President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops to end labor disputes

  • some employers addressed grievances

attempts to organize national unions

• previously only craft unions - local union associations focused on one type of work

• National Labor Union (1866) - first attempt to organize all workers in all states (skilled, unskilled, agricultural, etc.)

  • succeeded in winning 8 hour day for federal government workers

  • lost momentum due to depression 1873 and unsuccessful strikes 1877

• Knights of Labor - second national labor union led by Terence V. Powderly

  • open membership to all workers, African Americans and women

  • reform goals: worker cooperatives, abolishing child labor, abolishing trusts and monopolies, settling labor disputes by arbitration rather than strikes

• Haymarket Bombing (1886) - bomb thrown at public meeting, killing police officers → negative view of the union movement as radical and violent

• American Federation of Labor - narrower economic goals, only focusing on higher wages and improved working conditions

strikes and strikebreaking in the 1890s

• Homestead Strike (1892) - manager of Homestead Steel cut wages and defeated steelworkers using lockout, private guards, and strikebreakers

• Pullman Strike (1894) - George Pullman’s Palace Car Company cut wages

  • Eugene V. Debs, leader of American Railroad Union directs railroad workers not to handle trains with Pullman cars

  • railroad owners linked Pullman cars to mail trains, federal court forbade interference with mail trains, union leaders jailed

• In re Debs (1895) - Supreme Court approved using court injuctions against strikes

conditions in 1900

• management had upper hand in labor disputes, people began to recognize problems

• industrial growth was concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest, more immigrants and migrants were attracted to those areas