Industrialization and the Organized Labor Movement

Flashcards covering key vocabulary related to industrialization and the organized labor movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including immigration, nativism, business practices, and labor union actions.

Immigration and Industrialization (late 19th Century)

Immigrants served as a cheap source of labor for factories, contributing to industrialization.

Nativism

Caused by American workers' fear of competition from immigrants lowering wages and business owners' worries about foreign workers supporting anarchism and socialism.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Outlawed Chinese immigration into the U.S. due to racist attitudes and fears of competition.

National Origins Act (1924) (Johnson Reed Act/Immigration Act of 1924)

Restricted immigration into the U.S. to 3% of a nation’s proportion of the US population in 1890, limiting immigrants from southern/eastern Europe and Asia.

Tenements

Crowded, unsanitary apartments in cities where many people lived together, often with inadequate food preparation and only outside bathrooms.

Immigrant Living and Working Conditions (late 1880s)

Immigrants often worked long hours (12 hours a day, 6 days a week) in factories or manual labor jobs with inadequate workplace safety.

Urbanization

The movement of people from rural areas to live in cities.

Andrew Carnegie

Became rich by bringing the Bessemer process for steel to the U.S., lowering steel prices, pioneering the use of steel for building, and employing vertical integration.

John D. Rockefeller

Made his riches through Standard Oil Company by receiving secret rebates from railroads and buying out competitors to control 90% of U.S. oil refining.

Scientific Management

A philosophy aimed at making production efficient, often involving quotas and time requirements for workers.

Laissez-faire Capitalism

An economic system where the government does not regulate businesses or markets.

Vertical Integration

Occurs when a company controls all aspects of its own production, from raw materials to retail selling, to keep production costs lower.

Horizontal Integration

Occurs when a company controls one stage of the production process, such as Standard Oil controlling 90% of oil refining.

Monopolies' Effect on Small Businesses and Consumers

Reduced competition between businesses, leading to higher prices and lower quality products.

Labor Unions (Reasons for Organization)

Workers organized due to perceived low wages, long work hours, dangerous working conditions, and the belief that business owners were unjustly enriching themselves.

Collective Bargaining

When workers form a labor union to negotiate wages as a group, with the power to call a strike if management does not agree to better terms.

Haymarket Rally (1886)

A protest for an 8-hour workday; a bomb was thrown, killing a police officer, which led to the Knights of Labor being perceived as too radical and declining in membership.

Pullman Strike

Railroad workers in the American Railway Union went on strike for higher wages and better working conditions; President Cleveland called in the National Guard to end it, handing a win to railroad owners.

Homestead Strike and Lockout

Steel workers struck to protest low wages and dangerous conditions; the governor of Pennsylvania called in the state militia to end it, weakening labor unions and handing victory to Carnegie.

Knights of Labor

A labor movement that accepted all workers but declined after the Haymarket Square Incident because they were perceived as too extreme and associated with anarchism.