2. Objectives/Essential Questions
Why did workers demand changes in working
conditions and wages?
How did labor unions help workers get economic and
political influence?
4. • Life was hard for the industrial age worker.
• Industrialization caused many skilled workers to lose their jobs.
• These workers not had to work at jobs in factories for unskilled labor which caused
the to work for poor wages.
• Child labor also led to a decrease in wages for workers.
• Many workers took jobs in dangerous factories called sweatshops.
• These workers had to endure low wages, long hours, and dangerous working
conditions.
5. Sweatshops were factories in which a middleman, the sweater, guided workers in
clothing production. The sweatshops left many experienced tailors without a job,
because the cheap clothes were preferred by many people.
6. •During the Industrial Revolution families migrated from the rural farm areas to
the newly industrialized cities to find work.
•Once they got there, things did not look as bright as they did. To survive in
even the lowest level of poverty, families had to have every able member of
the family go to work.
•This led to the high rise in child labor in factories.
•Children worked up to 19 hours a day with only one, one hour break.
•Many children were killed or injured in accidents involving industrial
machinery
7. During the Industrial Revolution, the economy depended on women to
work in the factories. Women mostly found jobs in domestic service, textile
factories, and coalmines. The women that worked in these factories faced
unsanitary working conditions and dangerous work. Also, as a result of the
need for wages in the growing cash economy, families became dependent on
the wages of women. The average wage in New York state in 1926 for women
employees was $17.41, and for men $31.47. Statistics show that women's wages
are from one-third to one-half less than men's wages. The majority of women
working in the industrial revolution faced a life of hardship.
8. Labor unions were formed when dissatisfied workers formed in to
groups to demand better pay and working conditions.
In 1869 garment cutters formed the Noble and Holy Order of the
Knights of Labor. The members ofof Labor was officially formed. It had
In 1886, the American Federation the labor union met secretly and
handshakes so thatskilled workers in various find out about them. of the
represented many their employers wouldn‟t crafts. The President
SomethingFederation of Labor was Samuel Gompers. The organization
American that was unique about this labor union was that its members
includedfor higher wages, shorter hours, better working conditions, and
worked African Americans, women, and unskilled laborers. The Knights
of Labor had more than 700,000 members at its peak.
the right to bargain collectively with employers.
9. Samuel Gompers was the first and longest
serving president of the American Federation of
Labor. Under his leadership, the American
Federation of Labor became the largest and most
influential labor federation in the world. It grew
from a small association of 50,000 in 1886 to an
established organization of nearly 3 million in 1924
that had won a permanent place in American
society.
10. Collective Bargaining is a negotiation between
organized workers and their employer or employers to
determine wages, hours, rules, and working conditions.
The American Federation of Labor pressed for this
right.
11. Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was very involved in the
struggles of coal miners, and helped at many protests and
Another one ofShe famous strikes was leading the "children's crusade," a
strikes. her was a very persuasive speaker, and she had a fiery
caravan of striking childrenher best-known activities was leading a
personality. One of from the textile mills of Kensington,
Pennsylvania,of miners' wives "who routed strikebreakers Longbrooms New
march to President Theodore Roosevelt's home in with Island,
and mops in the Pennsylvania coalfields in 1902."
York, in 1903, to dramatize the case for abolishing child labor. Mother Jones
went on to participate in 1915 and 1916 in the strikes of garment workers and
streetcar workers in New York, and in the strike of steel workers in Pittsburgh
in 1919.
12. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was
one of the most important and progressive unions in the
1930‟s. It was also once one of the largest Labor Unions of the
United States, and it also contained mostly female members.
In 1909, 20,000 New York shirtwaist makers, mostly women,
launched a fourteen-week strike, called “The Uprising,”
followed several months later by a strike of 60,000 cloak
makers. In the negotiations that followed, the ILGWU was
recognized by the industry and won higher wages as well as
important new benefits for its members, such as health
examinations.
13. The Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire in New York City on
March 25, 1911, was the largest
industrial disaster in the history of
the city of New York, causing the
death of 146 of the 500 garment
workers who either died in the fire or
jumped to their deaths. The fire led
to legislation requiring improved
factory safety standards and helped
spur the growth of the International
Ladies' Garment Workers' Union,
which fought for better working
conditions for sweatshop workers in
that industry.
15. Many strikes took place when Unions responded to
low wages and fired employees. Many of these strikes
ended in violence. Many of the companies hired
strikebreakers to replace the striking workers. During a
strike, if violence occurred, the federal troops would
restore order.
16. During the nation-wide strike for the 8-hour workday, which
began May 1, 1886, a mass meeting was held in the Chicago Haymarket
to protest a police action of the previous day in which workers were
killed. When police ordered the protest meeting to disperse (peaceful
though it was), a bomb was thrown by an unknown person, killing
several officers. This became known as the "Haymarket Riot." The 8-
Hour Day Movement was destroyed in the nation-wide hysteria, which
followed.
17. In 1892 there burst outthen fury of the so-called Homestead
Incensed, Frick the by his action that he meant the
Frick immediately indicated called upon the governor of war to the
strike, state of Pennsylvania for the militia and within a hand the iron
which was really a lockout, involving on the one
bitter end. He erected a wire fence three miles long and few days thearound
15 feet high
and steel workers, who,12,000 was an armed camp. The soldiers one
little mill town of with a membership of nearly 25,000, were
the works and called upon the Pinkerton Detective Agency to send him 300
of the strongest unions in the country, and on the other the Carnegie
gunmen. The locked-out workers heardwhenthe Pinkertons were coming,
stayed till the end of November, that the strike officially
Steel Company.the utter defeat of the workers. The union‟s treasury
ended in Three years previously the union had been recognized
and they watched for their arrival. They knew that the gunmen would be
by the was empty; winter was entered with it into a three-year contract, as a
Before that occurred, however, Andrew Carnegie, were going
company; indeed, had coming on, and already famous
armed and prepared themselves to meet them families own terms. On the
on their
major the expiration of which Carnegie wanted the men to take had hurriedly
at prophet of American In desperation, workers returned to a reduction
cold and hungry. „democracy‟, anticipating violence, in Homestead.
night of July 5th , a boatload of Pinkertons attempted to land work as
turned the command over to the company‟s superintendent, , before they a
of wages. The union declined these terms and on July 1stHenry C Frick,
non-unionists.
A battle followed, in which 10 men were killed and three times that number
frank and declare a strike, theand departed for Europe.locked out.
could brutal union-hater, workers were suddenly
wounded. At the end the workers got the better of the gunmen, captured the
entire 300, minus the few who were killed, held them prisoners of war for 24
hours, and finally ran them, disarmed, out of town.
18. The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national
strike in United States history. It, before coming to an end,
involved over 150,000 people and twenty-seven states and
The problem that caused the Pullman Strike arose after
the panic of It would temporarily stop the nations railway
territories. 1893, when the workers of Pullman received
several wage cuts that on the force of the nation to twenty-five
system. The entire rail labor average added up would walk
percent. These cuts were supporting the capital side of added
away from their jobs. In bad in themselves, but when this
with Pullman's actions of not lowering the rents forNation's
strike President Cleveland for the first time in the company
owned homes in Pullman, the labor began to unite. on and
history would send in federal troops, who would fire
kill United States Citizens, against the wishes of the states.
19. Eugene Victor Debs was an American labor and a political
leader. He was one of the founders of the International Labor
Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He was also
five-time Socialist Party of America candidate for President of the
United States.
In 1893 Debs was elected the first president of the American
Railway Union (ARU). During the Pullman Strike in 1894, Debs
was arrested and charged with contempt of court. He was
sentenced six months in prison.
20. Exit Slip
Why did workers demand changes in working
conditions and wages? List five reasons.
How did labor unions help workers get economic and
political influence? List three reasons.
