Unit Three Responses to Industrialization
I. The Union Movement
A. Unions and collective Bargaining You re Fired! Can I have a raise?
A. Unions and collective Bargaining Let s talk. Can we have a raise?
B. Different approaches to early unionization Radical - Change the system Work within the capitalist system Knights of Labor, 1869 The International Workers of the World, 1905 American Federation of Labor (AFofL) 1886
Unions improved conditions for many workers Between 1890 and 1915 the average weekly wage in unionized industries rose from $17.50 to $24, while the work week decreased from 54.5 to 49 hours (Danzer, 246).
Strikes
C. Major strikes and their outcomes (activity) Strike or labor unrest/ Year Reason for the strike Outcome - What did the workers gain/ lose? Did the government take sides? Whose side did they take? What roll did they play? Great Strike of 1877 Wage cuts The strike was ended unsuccessfully for the workers but it strengthened the union movement and made workers more politically active US Army called in to suppress the strike. Federal troops kill 20 strikers in Pennsylvania Haymarket Affair Wage cuts at the McCormick farm machinery plant Unions lose support. Knights of labor basically destroyed (because they were suspected of radicalism) Police sought to crush a union meeting, when someone through a bomb, the police opened fire killing 10. Several union leaders jailed. 4 anarchists were convicted and hanged despite a lack of evidence The Homestea d Strike Drastic wage cuts The steelworkers lost. Hours were lengthened and wages cut by 25%. Within a decade, every major steel company had broken free of the unions. Pennsylvania national guard sent in to restore order (fighting had broken out between the owners private army and the strikers) The Pullman Strike Drastic wage cuts without any decreases in the rents employees paid for their Pullman houses. Workers fired for making complaints The strike ended with the defeat of the workers. Debs (the union leader) was jailed. The Attorney General issued an injunction (a legal order) against the strike Federal troops were sent in to break the strike Increased production demands Coeur d Alene Wage cuts in Idaho s silver and lead mines Owners got the mines re-opened, but the strike energized the unionization movement. Leads to the formation of the Western Federation of miners (a very strong union) Mining district occupied by 1500 state and federal troops to allow strikebreakers to enter mines Strikers arrested
D. The government and Unionization + V.
A. Definition II. The rise of political machines Big Jim Pendergast Kansas City, MO Abraham Ruef San Francisco Richard Croker (Tammany Hall)/New York I've been called a boss. All there is to it is having friends, doing things for people, and then later on they'll do things for you... You can't coerce people into doing things for you ; you can't make them vote for you. I never coerced anybody in my life. Wherever you see a man bulldozing anybody he don't last long. -- Jim Pendergast
B. Machines and immigrants
Political machines were highly organized, get out the vote machines The Boss Coordinates political activities throughout the city
Ward Captains - Coordinate political activities in specific parts of the city - they report to the boss
Precinct workers - work in neighborhoods to ensure political support for the machine
The Boss Contracts for city jobs, Legal assistance, Non-enforcement of gambling, prostitution and liquor laws, protection Ward Bosses Basic services, Parks, Neighborhood improvement, Protection Kickbacks Bribes Political support Businesses Immigrant Neighborhoods Precinct Workers Help with a legal scrape Help with a job Money in a pinch, City jobs Votes Individual Immigrants
C. Early efforts at reform
III. Social Reform in the Industrial Era
A. The temperance movement
Frances Willard and the WCTU
Amendment XVIII - Prohibition Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress
B. The Social Gospel/Settlement House movement
What Would Jesus Do? "I heard some people singing at a church prayer meeting the other night, 'All for Jesus, all for Jesus, All my being's ransomed powers, All my thoughts, and all my doings, All my days, and all my hours.' and I kept wondering as I sat on the steps outside just what they meant by it. It seems to me there's an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn't exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don't understand. But what would Jesus do? Is that what you mean by following His steps? It seems to me sometimes as if the people in the big churches had good clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and could go away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches, thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and drunkenness and sin."
The settlement house movement
Jane Addams and Hull House
Social reform laws
C. Women s Suffrage Beginnings - Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
Winning the right to vote Amendment XIX to the US Constitution (1920) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
IV. Political responses to industrialization A. The Populist movement The Populist movement drew support from small farmers who felt they were abused and taken advantage of by:
Banks
Railroad monopolies
The federal government
Tight money policy Loose money policy Money backed by gold Little inflation Dollars are more valuable Good for lenders (banks) because loans are paid back with more valuable money Money backed by gold and silver More inflation Dollars are less valuable Good for people in debt (farmers) because loans are paid back with less valuable money
1892
The Peoples Party Platform, 1892 We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita. We demand a graduated income tax. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered. Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph, telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people. The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.
The Peoples Party Platform, 1892 We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita. We demand a graduated income tax. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary The populist party did not immediately expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered. achieve any of its goals because... Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph, telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people. The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.
They lost the election of 1892 However many of their ideas would be adopted by the next call for reform - The Progressive movement
B. Early attempts to regulate big business
1. The Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887
2. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 1890 Monopoly
C. The Progressive Movement 1. What was the Progressive movement?
2. Motivating a Movement - The Muckrakers
Jacob Riis
Frank Norris
Ida Tarbell
Lincoln Steffens
Upton Sinclair
There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast.
3. Local Progressivism - Breaking the hold of political machines
4. State Progressivism - Breaking the influence of big business on politics Reforming Governors Hiram Johnson Robert La Follette
Direct Democracy Reforms
5. National Progressivism Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909 Woodrow Wilson, 1912-1921
a. Theodore Roosevelt s Progressive Agenda Environmental conservation Consumer Protection Regulation of big business
Environmental conservation TR s conservation policies Triple National forest reserves Established dozens of wildlife reserves Established Bureau of Reclamation
Regulation of big business Northern Securities Case (1902) Coal strike of 1902 Hepburn Act (1906) Regulation of big business
Consumer Protection Consumer Protection Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) Meat Inspection Act (1906)
Progressive Laws passed during the Wilson Administration Clayton Anti-trust Act Federal Trade Commission Act Federal Reserve Act Keating Owen Act Amendment 16 Amendment 17