HTY 104
Outline Week 4
Showdown
Workers Models for Society:
KOL, Haymarket, AFL,
Film: The River Ran
Red
Intro: As industry consolidated and refined the corporate model, workers faced
increasingly powerful and hostile adversaries. Industry's commitment to
scientific mangement, control of the shop floor, rationalization of every facet
of production and distribution, and control of the poliotical and economic
machinery of the nation, workers made a desperate attempt to maintain the
dignity, fair exchange, and autonomy of tradition labor relations. Farmers too
turned to political organization to put their case forward to the nation. A
complete consolidation of workers and farmers interests as a unified labor organization did not occur, but
each mounted major challenges to the emerging corporate system.
While the standard of living
improved over the second half century, the cycles
of depression and unemployment were brutal.
Coming off the Great Uprising of 1877 (the railroad strike), industrial
employers were increasingly nervous about the prospects of unrest. The national and state governments
established armories and strengthened militias to prevent destruction of
industrial property. Industrialists also
turned to private security forces, many provided by the Pinkerton Agency to
break strikes and unions. Newspapers
portrayed strikers as radicals, Bolsheviks, communists, and so forth, usually
in caricatured depictions to marginalize or refute their status as Americans.
Likewise, workers confronted ongoing
reorganization in the workplace that reduced their autonomy in their jobs and
they found traditional skills reshaped by new mechanized processes and a division
of their labor into unskilled components.
Corporations sought control. The key was to dispossess workers of their
accumulated skills and knowledge of their craft. This was generally done by dividing up tasks
into their most basic constituent. The corporate conditions of work: division
of labor, work rhythms dictated by time & motion studies, eventually
resulting in assembly line production modes.
Combined frequent cycles of high unemployment and growing rates of
immigrating workers discouraged worker solidarity and often translated into
longer hours and less pay for those who did work. Workers responded with new approaches to
organizing in their own defense against the encroachments of the new industrial
order.
This week’s material will focus on workers’ ideas, principles, and responses to these challenges through a variety of efforts at collectivism in a number of union organizations and in direct actions against employers.
The first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City on September 5, 1882.
Ideas:
Traditional notion of moral economy:
fair and just wages and prices. An early modern conception that wages should be balanced with
prices such that a working man could provide adequately for his family. In
When traditional craft work was displaced by large scale operations,
these safeguards fell away in
Some other sources
for conceptions of the value of labor and socio-economic equity.
Henry George, Progress and
Poverty, 1879—a proposal to tax unearned income, i.e. an assault on the huge
accumulated fortunes.
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward,
1888—a socialist vision of state owned industry administered for the common
good.
Organizing labor:
The first direction of laborers after the Civil War was toward broad,
all inclusive collectives of workers.
The first union of Post-Civil-War America was of 1866 led by William. Sylvis. It was something descended from the
nineteenth-century utopian tradition. They called for broad, national reforms,
e.g., the 8 hour day, producers' co-ops, and land
distribution. The National Labor Union effort dissolved within just a few
years, giving way to two models:
1. Traditional craft unions, whose members all had a
common, specific skill (in the steel business: puddlers,
heaters, rollers, hammermen, roll turners, picklers, wire drawers, spring makers, axel turners, etc,
etc.; in construction: carpenters, joiners, masons, etc.; in railroading,
engineers, brakemen, machinists, conductors, switch operators, telegraphers,
etc.). Craft unions could and did join
in support of one another, occasionally creating what we call “amalgamated
unions.”
2. Industrial
Unions were open to all
workers in industry rather than a trade or skill. This was a conception that arose in
conjunction with the appearance of industrialization in
The Knights of Labor
The Knights were the first industrial union with national scope. The KOL sought to promote a unionism to
embrace all workers, skilled and unskilled, in a single labor
organization. They were convinced that trade unionism, as it had been
known, had to give way to labor organization on a much broader basis.
The Knights of Labor began as a secret society founded by nine inconspicuous tailors in
The organization grew
slowly during the hard years of the 1870s, but worker militancy rose toward the
end of the decade, especially after the great railroad strike of 1877, and the
Knights' membership rose with it, eventually exceeding 700,000 members. The
KOL became truly national organization, and membership remained
on an individual basis rather than through affiliated unions. Thus membership
was open to all wage earners and to all former wage earners, with the
exception of doctors, bankers and traders and manufacturers of liquor. Unlike trade unions, the Knights' union was open to all workers in a given industry, regardless
of trade. The Knights were also unusual in accepting workers of all skill
levels and both sexes; blacks were included after 1883 (though in segregated locals).
Women members came from textile, clothes, shoes, domestic, carpet, jute, and
cigarette workers.
From the Journal of United Labor,
1885:
We ask not your pity, we charity scorn,
We ask but the rights to which we were born,
For the flag of freedom has waved o’er the land,
We justice and equality claim and demand.
The KOL constitution
set forth many of the traditional demands of organized labor and also added
some new goals. It called for the 8-hour day, the establishment of cooperatives,
the reservation of public lands for actual settlers and a fiat currency,
prohibition of child labor, equal pay for the sexes, establishment of the
bureau of labor statistics, abolition of contract system for prison labor,
adoption of a graduated income tax, and government ownership of the railways
and telegraphs. They stressed organization,
education, and political agitation as the best means to build a new society.
They insisted that the existing economic system could only be changed peaceably,
and this often led them to oppose strikes. Powderly believed in boycotts and arbitration, but he opposed
strikes. However, many spontaneous
actions occurred, the most notable success against Jay Gould in 1885.
Powderly had only marginal control over the union membership, however, and a
successful strike by the Knights against Jay Gould's southwestern railroad
system in 1884 brought a flood of new members. By the beginning of 1886,
membership peaked at over 750,000 Knights of Labor. But when
the workers struck the Gould system again in the spring of 1886, they were
badly beaten. Meanwhile, other members of the Knights participated—again, over Powderly's objections—in the general strike that began in
Despite their progressive outlook their philosophy did not keep the
powerful skilled workers and the militant labor leaders allegiant to the Order.
And soon the rift surfaced. The members of the traditional trade unions became
increasingly unwilling to link their fortunes with the weaker sections e.g.
unskilled ones. The need for 'new unionism' evolved. By 1890, the membership
had fallen to 100,000. And eventually
the KOL ceased to exist.
The Knights called for a cooperative
commonwealth, government ownership of financial and transportation, but they
were NOT socialists. Maybe best
described as a quixotic and “amorphous social movement of laboring people” (Licht, 178). Leon
Fink argues that Knights served a real and useful didactic function toward
socializing a labor culture.
The strike that unraveled the
KOL and the vision of universal labor solidarity:
Haymarket: 1886 also known as The
McCormick strike—Bombing and Riot in
Albert Parsons and the Eight Hour Day.
The work week for common wage
workers was extremely grueling by our standards, running 10-12 hours per day
and six or even seven days per week.
Parsons had testified to Congress that he advocated an eight hour day. He
reasoned that employers would need to hire more people, and that would in turn
reduce unemployment. Workers would have
more leverage. Parsons also suggested
making homesteading more widely available so that those who wished could vacate
the industrial labor market and get into farming. By 1886, Parsons was one of the preeminent
labor radicals in
The Haymarket affair began when a bomb exploded among a squad of
policemen at a workers' rally in
The Haymarket bombing triggered a national wave of
fear; public officials, civic leaders, the press, and some union leaders joined
in equating foreign birth with anarchism and terror. In
Rise of Samuel Gompers
and the American Federation of Labor, 1886
Original affiliation w/ Knight of Labor, the departure of trade unionists contributed to precipitous demise of Knights after Haymarket. Samuel Gompers, of Dutch-Jewish descent, an emigrant by way of London, was the guiding spirit of the American Federation of Labor. After the debacle at Haymarket, he moved to hold on to the gains of trade/craft unions and to legitimize them in the public eye by distancing them from industrial unionists, radicals, strikers, etc. He focused on skilled workers because he thought they alone had the leverage to negotiate with employers. Compare brick layers and hod carriers.
Under
Gompers, the AFL stance on labor negotiations was that federal power &
force could rightly be used against “irresponsible” actions. That position, disavowing radicals, linked
recognition and legitimization of “responsible” craft unions and opened the way
to the beginning of collective bargaining.
The AFL
limited membership to skilled workers only, a hierarchy of status, accepting
only highly skilled white male trade & craft workers. Ordinary laborers and unskilled workers were
not recruited. Depending on the
affiliated union, women, blacks and immigrants were often not admitted, e.g.
metal trades refused Blacks. Other
unions in the AFL were integrated, such as coalmining and longshoremen.
AFL
Objectives: emphasis on immediate and
direct Bread & Butter issues, “pure and simple unionism, ” i.e. seek
concessions that can be obtained in wages, hours, benefits; avoidance of
wasteful idealist political activism.
The AFL
represented approximately 10% of the labor force at its peak prior WWI.
Study question: What were the similarities and differences between the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor?
Homestead: The River Ran Red
Homestead-the mill
town exemplifies the harshness of the industry of the era--lots of
injuries, 12 hour days, hellish, staffed by 80% immigrants (14 m from
1860-1900). The story epitomizes the
excesses of the confrontation between management/capital and labor in the new
industrial world.
Violent battle at Carnegie’s plant
precipitated by Henry Clay Frick’s use of strikebreakers and Pinkertons;
the demise of Amalgamated Iron Workers in bloody battle at
Homestead
Depression
In 1894,
with as much as 15 % of the labor force out of work, Joseph Coxey’s
led an army of unemployed men on a march to
The
Pullman
Eugene
The last best effort for a
workers/agrarian vision.
The Agricultural Vision turns to Politics:
the People’s Party, Populism, and silver.
Following the
decline of the Granger movement, farmers sought relief through the vehicle of
an organized political party of sufficient appeal to mount a national campaign.
The party came to be known as the Populists. Their popularity was linked to the
areas with worst debt ratio, the West, especially
Expanded money supply--purchase and minting of silver
Graduated income tax
New subtreasury
system for agricultural credit
Direct election of senators
Call for nationalization of RRs, telegraphs.
8 hour day
Outlaw profession armies of
strikebreakers (like Pinkertons)
Success: over 1 M
votes in ’92, but no cigar. They won
a few state offices and regrouped for the next election cycle.
Bryan “the Commoner,” The election of 1896
On July 9, 1896, William Jennings Bryan caused a sensation at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with his "cross of gold" speech denouncing supporters of the gold standard and calling for minting silver. Bryan went on to win the party's nomination.
Co-opted by Democrats, William
Jennings Bryan's presidential run failed, and the Populist Party did a fast
fade. The Republican William McKinley
won, again confirming the national commitment to economic growth and support of
the corporate vision.
Lasting impact of
Populists: Consciousness raising of American public
over social issues and the uneven relationship of individual with the large
corporation.
Failure: They lacked
organizational solidarity--too many independent farmers with different types of
problems who ultimately failed to develop a mechanism to control production.
The real key was that there was little appeal among non-farm workers or in the Democratic South. For example, expanding the money supply to raise prices on farm products was good for the farmers, but bad for wage workers who would have to pay higher prices. The
narrow political focus on common denominator of expanded currency, the Silver
currency project, undermined other progressive objectives and resulted in the
demise of the party.
The vision of the urban
and agrarian workers bows in defeat to the Corporate Social Vision.
Historian Leon Fink
argues that Gilded Age unionizing efforts represented a significant attempt
to fashion an alternative to corporate capitalism, with an emphasis on mutuality
rather than the ethos of individualism. For example, the KOL advocated open membership,
including skilled and unskilled, women, blacks, barring only “non-producing”
occupations like bankers, lawyers, liquor dealers.
However,
the retreat of organized labor under Gompers' AFL banner signaled a transition
to accommodation with management, and a retreat from industrial, broad based
unionism. Skilled workers generally did well, moving into a middle class,
while unskilled workers continued to struggle.
The
signal result of three decades on contention between agricultural visions,
workers visions, and corporate-industrial visions ends with a clear cut
dominance of the corporate-engineered model for not only business, but with
potentially broad social and political implications.
The Future: Fordism: A New Way of Doing Business
When the black Model T rolled out in 1908, it was hailed as
Ford's vision would help create a middle class in the
Frederick W. Taylor: So called "scientific management" became the model for business, for government, and even for the housewife. The corporate model of efficiency, productivity, and scientific analysis initiated and implemented by management, became the universal model for American society.
A Few questions
****Why
did class struggle in
****
Why did labor-management relations grow increasingly strained during this
period? What was government’s role in abating or exacerbating these
tensions?
****
How did industrialists such as Vanderbilt and Carnegie define “progress?”
How did workers and Populists define “progress?” How did their visions of
what constituted the “good society” differ?
1890s transition from isolation to
internationalist: Corporate visions
guide foreign policy.
In the 1890s the search for order infused American foreign
policy much as it was formative to business ideologies. They were actually already intertwined. American state power not only deployed force
to protect domestic industry from striking workers, but also began to take a
more assertive position in protecting “
The second theme is a new interest in expanding
Background of Expansion:
1850s: filibusterers in Nicaragua Cuba
1867 Alaska
A proposal for annexing Santo
Domingo
1880s:
President Arthur expands U.S. claims to a canal, exclusive claims to
Hawaii, initiates Latin American conference for 1882; U.S. claims Samoa (versus
Germany), Guam, Baker, and Wake Islands; President Cleveland intervenes in
Venezuelan boundary crisis w/Eng;
1890s: Naval
build-up; U.S. takes control in Hawaii (Sugar Trust) after private Americans (haoles like Sanford Dole) ovethrew
Queen Lili’uokalani; A prolonged Cuban civil war
revealed Spain’s inability to maintain stability in Cuba and left an opening
for U.S. intervention.
1900s: U.S. Columbia Nicaragua Haiti Dominican Republic
These actions grow out of the American claim to
hegemony in Western Hemisphere and the
desire to secure a global presence as a major trade and military power. Those ambitions translated into a key impetus
to obtain Naval bases strategically located around the
world.
The way it worked:
1) The logic of expansion of export
markets as a counterweight to over-production.
2) An emerging voice of Nationalism and American prestige saw American
expansion as validation of American superiority.
3) The rationalization of the “white man’s burden” forwarded by
Mahan, Lodge, Roosevelt provided a racial dimension to the mandate of American
expansion in the world.
Eric Foner
writes,”The Spanish-American War tied nationalism and
American freedom ever more closely to notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority,
displacing in part the earlier identification of the nation with democratic
political institutions.”
The Spanish American War
Cuban revolutionaries (Jose
Marti) appealed for American support in their war of liberation from
The
Administration decided to engage in a show of power and sent the Maine to Cuba, ostensibly to be ready to
aid American sugar companies and their employees ($50M in railroads, sugar, mining) if things got
out of control. The Maine’s
destruction in
Havana Spain
The Maine entering Havana. On Feb. 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, killing 260 crew members.
Despite the certainty of hearst's headlines, the cause of the Maine's destruction has never been definitively proven. Naval historians generally agree that spontaneous combustion in the coal bunkers was the likely cause of the explosion.
President McKinley explains the White Man’s Burden in terms of divine guidance.
See typical ad that
portrays others as "exotics" in contrast
to Anglo-Saxons
The question frames the conflict
between the assumption of Anglo Superiority and the limitations of assimilation
of other races; if assimilation is not feasible,
McKinley--Anti-Imperialists
battle over Phillipines which is beset by horrendous
civil war and long term guerilla resistance (Emilio Aguinaldo). The U.S. Puerto Rico , but not an extension of
citizenship. The Platt Amendment
extended protectorate status to Cuba
Looking East:
McKinley’s
Secretary of State John Hays articulated a major foreign policy doctrine known
as the “Open Door” Policy. It was
precipitated by events in China Europe
jockeyed for spheres of influence in China America China Britain France Germany China China China America
TRs policy record: Foreign
Policy Moves (see
Sears ad)
