1. APUSH Audio lecture
Unions

2. Industrialization
Problems
• Long Working hours (60+
hour weeks)
• Unsafe working conditions
• Job Insecurity
• By 1920s America most
industrialized nation, and
leader in industrial
accidents
Benefits
• High standards of livings
• Formation of modern
America

3. Answer to the industrial problems
Socialism/ Communism (REDS)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Similar systems
Government control of factors of
production
Equal distribution of all things
Favored by the working classes
Feared by Wealthy
Socialism
– strong belief in democracy
– Tend to be peaceful
•
Communism
– Working classes are too stupid to
create change
– Workers need to be led by an
educated elite
– Tend to believe in violence
Anarchism (BLACKS)
• Anti Government
• Believed states were against
human nature
• Believed in communal
ownership, similar to
socialism
• Tended toward terrorism
None of these work for
America

4. Unions
• Group of workers organized to protect its members
• Goals
– Higher wages
– Better working conditions
– Shorter hours
• Strategies
– Strikes
– Boycotts
– Arbitration/negotiations
• Problems
– Yellow dog contracts
• Employers forced workers to sign promising not to join unions
– Blacklisting union members

5. Knights of Labor
• Founded 1869
• Represented both skilled and unskilled
workers, and any race (except Chinese)
• Had wide ranged social reforms
– Homesteading
– Contract labor
– Monetary reform
• Wanted worker collectives
• Haymarket Affair ends the organization

6. American Federation of Labor
• Formed 1886
– Samuel Gompers
• Skilled Workers
– Not minorities
• Focused on specific workplace issues
• New Unionism
– Supporting pro-labor politicians
– Supporting Urban reformers

7. Haymarket Affair
•
•
•
•
•
Chicago May 4, 1886
Knights led strike against the McCormick Company
Police kill one union member
Next day Union holds a vigil in Haymarket Square
Police arrive and someone throws a bomb killing
several Policemen
• Policemen open fire killing several Union members
• 8 suspected anarchists arrested and found guilty of the
crime

8. Pullman Strike
• Pullman Il, Outside of Chicago 1894
• Workers Paradise
• Factory town that made Railroad Sleeper Cars
• Pullman cut wages, but left rents and prices at the
factory store high
• Strike
• Ends with violence
• 80 mill in damages
• 30 people died
• Ends with the Federal Government intervention to stop
the strike because of mail
• Army put the final end of the union

9. Homestead Strike
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Homestead PA, just outside of Pittsburgh 1892
Strike at a Carnegie Steel mill run by Henry Frick
Lock workers out of factories
Workers picket factories to prevent Scabs from working
Frick hires armed private security firm (Pinkertons) to protect
Scab workers
Striking workers arm themselves
Strike degrades into open warfare between the Pinkertons
and the Union
State Militia called into to end the violence
Union not supported by AFL
Union responsible dissolves following the end of the strike

10. Union Summary
Gains
Losses
• Average # of hours dropped
• Average pay increased
• Recognition of worker’s
rights
• Gave some power to the
working class
• Government took side of
business owners in most
cases
• Used Sherman Antitrust Act
against unions
• Failed to win the respect of
gov’t and the people at this
time in the late 1800s