Transformation of Work and Workers: American Labor, 1869-1919Kyle Wilkison
Pre-industrial work and “the craftsman's universe”
Before the triumph of the corporation and industrial mass production in America, hand craftsmen and artisans dominated manufacturing. As you might guess, their work, social position and ownership status contrasted sharply
with that of later industrial workers. One historian has called this era in the American economy “the craftsman’s universe,” arguing that during the pre-Civil War era self-employed, owner-operator producers dominated American manufacturing in most locales.
To illustrate this, imagine an economy that was not integrated on a nationwide scale. Instead, the U.S. economy consisted, in large degree, of a series of locally-centered
“island economies” which by necessity had to be nearly self-sufficient. Those desiring manufactured goods either had to hand-produce them for their own family (as was the case with many semi-subsistence farmers where the father and mother were also the family’s shoemaker and garment manufacturer), or, in the typical small town setting, trade for manufactured items from local artisans such as blacksmiths, millers, tanners or shoemakers. These local artisans
had a great deal of control over their own working lives. As owners of their own establishments, they typically controlled the pace and rhythm of work bound only by their own level of energy and by local custom. The artisan’s pride in his craft, his relationship with his “customers” (often kinspeople) and local custom--informed by the community’s moral consensus--also tended to govern the price and quality of the finished product. While
many such artisans had a virtual local monopoly, their economic behavior was bounded by local custom.
Local custom was at least as powerful as later government regulations since the method of enforcement, potential social ostracism, served as a powerful restraint on individual motive or desire.
First Generation Factory Workers and the Slow Rise of Unionism
At least
one historian has gone so far as to describe what happened next as the “degradation of labor.” During the government-sponsored railroad building boom of the Civil War and post-Civil War era, steel rails linked more and more of the island economies of small-town America to the national marketplace. The national marketplace did not operate on the same first person, face-to-face ethic as the village economy. No network of cousins could shame the industrial
titans into obeying local customs.
Such industrial giants obtained their new status because their command of capital gave them ownership of the huge, expensive industrial machines that replaced hand production. The skilled craftsman found himself replaced by an unskilled machine operator. The goods produced by these industrialists, their machines and employees, were increasingly cheaper and more readily
available
Through this process, workers lost control of the means of production. Now the pace and rhythm of their work was controlled by absentee owners and by the logic of machine production. This introduced a generation of American factory workers to “industrial discipline.” The everyday habits of being at liberty to come and go as they pleased ran up against the demands of
their employers for punctuality and regularity. This critical first generation of workers found this an onerous transition. They employed a variety of low-key methods of resistance, which included, in some instances, dressing in their Sunday best to work in the factory. Social historians believe the workers were trying to assert their equality to their bosses. In reality, however, they were not in fact equal to their
bosses in many tangible ways, socially or economically.
The new industrial workers in mines and factories soon learned that how well or how poorly someone was paid depended almost entirely on supply and demand in the free market for labor. Workers chafed under their loss of status and power. Some, always a minority, participated in the American labor movement of union organizing in an attempt to regain a portion that lost power
and control. Labor unions grew slowly before the Civil War but more rapidly thereafter.
Major Nation-Wide Labor Unions and Labor Conflicts
Then, as now, American labor organizations structured themselves in different, sometimes competing, fashions. The two major organizing models were “industrial unions” and “trade unions.”
Trade unions are probably the oldest labor organizations if we broaden the definition to include any combination of workers organized into a “benevolent society” or “guild” for the purpose of mutual assistance. One of the oldest such groups in America were typesetters whose scarce skill and collective bargaining gave them leverage for relatively higher wages as far back as the eighteenth century. Like the type-setters,
other trade organizations allowed in only the highest skill level of workers whose prior training and experience gave them automatic bargaining power with their employers. Trade unions tended to organize only within their specific occupational specialty.
On a nineteenth century railroad, for example, the engineers, brakemen and firemen would each belong to a separate trade union. These unions would not recruit semi-skilled or unskilled workers, such as
the roadbed maintenance crew. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, trade unions tended to be all male, English-speaking and white. The most successful nationwide trade union during this era, the American Federation of Labor (1886-), avoided politics and focused narrowly and pragmatically on only three issues: higher wages, safer conditions and shorter hours.
On the other hand, “industrial
unions” dominated the landscape of the late nineteenth century U.S. labor movement. Their goal was to organize all workers in a given industry regardless of skill level. Typically, they also disallowed discrimination based on race or national origin. The most fundamentally radical of these groups even banned gender discrimination. Unlike the trade unionists, industrial unionists were often ideologues. who would rather lose battles than
compromise on principle. Inherently political in goals, industrial unionists envisioned a united working class for the purpose of at least empowerment as a class within the current system; the most radical sought to restructure the system itself, usually along socialistic lines. The most important nationwide industrial union during this era, the Knights of Labor (1869-1890s), sought a “cooperative commonwealth” where corporations would be owned by the workers themselves.
National Labor Union, 1866-1870s
This short-lived industrial union is significant to us because it was the first attempt at a nationwide �umbrella� organization of local unions and because it proclaimed the cause of the eight-hour workday in an era when twelve hours was the norm. It fell apart during the depressions of the 1870s because of unemployment and internal weaknesses.
The Great Strike of 1877
The most dramatic development produced by the low wages of the 1870s was the so-called “Great Strike of 1877." This strike produced long-lasting changes in American society.
A strike among railroad workers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia spread rapidly after the two governors called out state troops against the strikers.
Sympathy strikes--also powered by low wages--spread throughout almost
all of the industrial states of the Northeast and Midwest. From railroaders to brewery workers, strikers virtually shut down the economies of sixteen states.
At first local militias proved reluctant to use force against their neighbors; indeed, some of the strikers were themselves members or had kin in the militia. Militias from outlying areas were ordered in to confront the strikers. Eventually, thousands of
workers were wounded and one hundred people died in the states’ suppression of the strike.
The companies and state governments successfully broke the strike. The strike fueled fears among the upper class that the spirit of the “Paris Commune” (1870) had infiltrated the American working class. The reluctance of the militias proved their undoing. The National Guard Association used the moment to institutionalize changes that
replaced community-based militias (commanded by democratically elected officers) with professional military units with college-educated officers appointed by the governors. Some historians see the “Great Strike of 1877” as the nation's first “red scare.”
The Knights of Labor, 1869-1890s
This industrial union’s rise to prominence after 1877 reflected the cautiously radical mood of the industrial working class after the disaster of
the “Great Strike.” Founder and “Grand Master Workman” Terrence Powderly denounced strikes and violence, yet offered workers a clear-cut critique of the current system. The Knights of Labor was a radical industrial union that believed workers should own the means of production simply through the means of employee-owned companies. Thus, their revolution was to be nonviolent and without the use of governmental force.
The Knights even avoided strikes and politics at first and taught that the government should simply remain passive and neutral in conflicts between workers and owners. In this, they attempted to marry Jefferson’s skepticism toward government to Marx’s hopes for worker empowerment.
The Knights b
roadly defined workers to include almost anyone whom the Knights considered a productive member of
society. Unlike most nineteenth century American institutions, they welcomed women, members of racial minorities and immigrants. The Knights included not just industrial workers, but also reached out to farmers, teachers and the clergy. They refused membership only to pimps, gamblers, liquor dealers, bankers and lawyers. The Knights reached the height of their power and influence in the
mid-1880s, before meeting two irreparable setbacks in 1886, the Haymarket Square troubles in Chicago and the Great Southwest Strike in Texas and elsewhere. You may wish to read the prologue--or more if you choose--of this
in-depth exploration of the Haymarket Square incident here or a shorter piece on Albert Parsons here.
The Tense 1890s
(The Illustrated American, July 30, 1892)
| Troops vs. strikers,
Homestead, Pennsylvania, 1892
|
The 1890s saw two of the most significant labor confrontations of this era of industrial conflict. The steelworkers' 1892 confrontation with Carnegie Steel in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and railroad workers' 1894 attempted boycott of the Pullman Company near Chicago, each proved to be watershed moments in American economic and working class history. Read the textbook’s summary of the Homestead Lockout ("strike") then explore
“The Strike at Homestead,” a collection of primary documents concerning the events as they happened. Read about the 1894 Pullman Strike here (Debs refers to it as the "Chicago Strike" below) and in your textbook. What new federal power was used to
help break that strike?
| Debs
| "The Chicago strike was in many respects the grandest industrial battle in history, and I am prouder of my small share in it than of any other act of my life. . . . Had the carpenter of Nazareth been in Chicago at the time He would have been on the side of the poor, the heavy-laden and sore at heart, and He would have denounced their oppressors and been sent to prison for contempt of court under President Cleveland's administration"
--Eugene V. Debs
(1908)
|
American Federation of Labor (1886-)
After the tension of the 1870s-90s, the American Federation of Labor emerged as the nation’s most long-term successful union. This trade union organized the most highly skilled, English�-speaking white males (this exclusiveness later abandoned). They were sometimes called the “Aristocrats of Labor.” President Samuel Gompers sought to project a conservative,
pro-business image. For years, Gompers even refused to allow the AFL to endorse political candidates or contribute to their campaigns. The AFL restricted its member unions to simple and limited goals: higher wages, shorter hours and safe working conditions.
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1919
This radical “anarcho-syndicalist” group sought to abolish capitalism, private property and the wage system. The term “anarcho-syndicalism” simply combines the terms for anarchy (a belief in little or no government) and syndicate (or union). IWW true believers envisioned a future cooperative world without governments or money; instead there would simply be “one big union.”
In 1912 the IWW was thrown out of the
Socialist Party of America for failing to adhere to its creed of nonviolence. Harassed during World War I for suspected disloyalty, the union was bankrupted in 1919 when its founder and president, William D. “Big Bill” Haywood, jumped bail and fled to Lenin’s new Soviet Union.
The IWW was famous for the posters, slogans and, especially, the songs of martyred songwriter Joe Hill memorialized by legendary
folksinger Woody Guthrie.
War, Repression and the Decline of Labor
The coming of World War I led to a heightened atmosphere of suspicion of laborites and radicals. The government banned labor-left anti-war periodicals from using the mails during the war and the society as a whole acquiesced to wholesale persecution of “un-American” groups from ethnic
German-Americans to labor unions. A number of prominent laborites were arrested and some were convicted of sedition and imprisoned. By the end of the war the country was firmly in the grip of the so-called “First Red Scare.” In 1919 a number of worker movements and strikes were swiftly repressed, most notably in the steel industry and in the Boston Police Strike. The union movement continued to decline throughout the rest of the 1920s.
Labor unions arose in the nineteenth century as increasing numbers of Americans took jobs in factories, mines, and mills in the growing industrial economy. The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, was the first major labor organization in the United States.
What was the main benefit that labor unions of the late 19th century gained for their members? Improved wages and hours.
