Organized Labor From 1875-1900

The movement in organized labor from 1875 to 1900 to improve the position of workers was unsuccessful because of the inherent weaknesses of unions and the failures of their strikes, the negative public attitudes toward organized labor, widespread government corruption, and the tendency of government to side with big business. After the Civil there was a push to industrialize quickly, and the rushed industrialization was at the expense of the workers as it led to bigger profits for big business and atrocious working conditions for them; conditions that included long working hours, extremely low wages, and the exploitation of children and immigrants.

In an effort to organize themselves to better their situation, laborers created unions that ultimately proved to be largely ineffective. Among the first to be organized was the Knights of Labor, which was open to all workers, even women. The Knights were poorly organized and lacked a central direction, so it was unsurprising when it declined and then, after a failed strike against Gould railroad, disappeared altogether. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) appeared even before the Knights began to decline and became the most important and enduring labor group in the country. It differed from the Knights in that it rejected the idea of one big union for everyone and embraced instead the idea of an association of essentially autonomous craft unions. It also differed in that it represented mainly skilled workers and was generally hostile to the idea of women entering the work force. The AFL supported the immediate objectives of most workers: better wages, hours, and working conditions. It hoped to attain its goals by collective bargaining, but was willing to use strikes if necessary. This willingness to strike resulted in the AFL being associated with radicalism and anarchism, an association that turned public sentiment against it, and doomed the organization to be widely ineffectual. Militant labor organizations like the "Molly Maguires," helped feed the belief that unions were dangerous and better left unformed.

The tactic of striking was an important technique that unions used to pressure companies into giving in to their demands. Unfortunately, strikes often turned the public against wanting to improve the position of workers. The Railroad Strike of 1877, America's first major labor conflict, was one such strike. It began when the eastern railroads announced a ten percent wage cut and workers responded by going on strike. The enraged strikers disrupted rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis, destroyed equipment, and rioted in city streets. State militias were called out to suppress the disorders and they did so by opening fire on the workers in several cities, killing over 100 people before the strike ended. The Railroad Strike of 1877 was indicative of many things; including the fact that disputes between workers and employers could no longer be localized in the increasingly national economy, the depth of resentment among many American workers toward their employers (and the government allied with them), the lengths they were willing to go to express that resentment, and the frailty of the labor movement. Rather than winning their ten percent wage cut back, the strike served to seriously weaken the railroad unions and damaged the reputations of labor organizations in other industries as well.

The Homestead Strike was another strike that turned bitterly violent. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers was the most powerful trade union in the country, but in the Carnegie system (which was coming to dominate the steel industry) the union had a foothold in only one of the corporation's three major factories -the Homestead Plant. Carnegie and his chief lieutenant, Henry Clay Frick, decided that union's single foothold was one foothold too many and took action to get rid of the Amalgamated. They repeatedly cut wages at the Homestead and the union agreed to them because it was not strong enough to wage a successful strike. Then, the company stopped even discussing its decisions with the Amalgamated, denying the union its right to negotiate at all. The Amalgamated finally called for a strike when Frick announced another wage cut and gave the union two days to accept it. In response to the strike, Frick shit down the plant and called in guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency (well-known strikebreakers) to enable the company to hire nonunion workers. The mere presence of the hated Pinkertons was enough to incite the workers to violence. As the Pinkertons approached the Homestead plant by river, strikers prepared for them by pouring oil on the water and setting it on fire and meeting the guards at the docks with guns and dynamite. The Pinkertons surrendered after several hours of pitched battle that left three guards and ten strikers dead, but the workers' victory was temporary. 8,000 National Guard troops were called in to protect the strikebreakers and production in the plant resumed. Public opinion turned completely against the strikers when a radical attempted to assassinate Frick. Defeated, strikers slowly drifted back to their jobs until Amalgamated had no choice but to surrender. Amalgamated membership shrank from 24,000 to 7,000, a decline symbolic of the general erosion of union strength as factory laborers became increasingly unskilled, and so increasingly easy to replace.

Public opinion came to reflect the belief that labor unions were dangerous attempts by radicals to promote, at best, socialism, and at worst, anarchism. The American populace were much more willing to accept the ideas that the Robber Barons (like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller) were proliferating; ideas like the concept of the self-made man and Social Darwinism. Defenders of the new industrial economy argued that it was not reducing opportunities for individual advancement, but expanding them by providing every individual with a chance to succeed and attain great wealth. There was very limited truth to the idea of the self-made man as most of the new business tycoons had begun their careers from positions of wealth and privilege and risen to power and prominence not because of hard work and ingenuity, as they like to claim, but as a result of ruthlessness, arrogance, and rampant corruption. The Robber Barons also used Social Darwinism to justify their despicable actions. Social Darwinism the application of Charles Darwin's laws of evolution and natural selection among species to human society; the idea being that just as only the fittest survived in the process of evolution, only the fittest individual survived and flourished in the marketplace. The tycoons latched on to Social Darwinism because it seemed to legitimize their success and justify they tactics. It placed the corrupt and unacceptable activities within