Challenges to Big Business: Henry George: Progress and Poverty Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward

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Challenges to Big BusinessHenry
GeorgeProgress and PovertyEdward
BellamyLooking Backward
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Socialism

• 1870s Socialist Labor Party
• By 1901 American Socialist Party
• By 1912 All three parties denounced Socialism

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Unions

• First real labor victory in American History
• Shoe workers in Lynn, Mass.
• 10,000 walked off of the job and demanded
• Wage increase union recognition

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1866 The National Labor Union

• Founder Sylves
• Included many reform groups
• Excluded women
• 640,000 members at peak
• Died with the Panic of 1873

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1869 Knights of Labor

• Secret organization at first under Stephens
• 1878 Powderly took it out in the open
• Open to all EXCEPT professionals
• Short term goals 8 Hour Day, end child labor
• Long term goal replace wages with a cooperative
  system

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Knights of Labor Continued

• By 1886 700,000 members
• 1880s unsuccessful strikes
• Became associated with violence, anarchy
• No public sympathy
• Government sided with big business
• By 1890 down to 100,000 then died

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The AFL

• Skilled Labor
• Founder Gompers
• Goals were political not social
• 8 Hour Day
• Higher Wages
• Better conditions
• Equal pay for women (why?)

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AFL sponsored legislation for

• Abolition of child labor
• Restriction of immigration
• Restriction of the use of injunction in labor
  disputes

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The Strikes

• 1886 Haymarket Square Riots (Chicago)
• 1892 The Homestead Strike (Penn.)
• 1894 The Pullman Strike (Chicago)

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No public sympathy

• Unions will become associated with anarchy
• Collective bargaining sounded communistic

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May 1,1886 Haymarket Square Riots

• 5-1-1886 The AFL called for a national strike
  for an 8 hour day
• The day before, 4 strikers were killed during a
  strike outside of the McCormick Harvesting Co.
• May 1st A bomb was thrown into a very large
  protest/gathering
• 7 policemen killed, 67 others injured
• Police fired into the crowd, 4 more killed

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Haymarket Square Continued

• Local anarchists were rounded up
• One was executed
• 1892 liberal Illinois governor, Altgeld, pardoned
  the others who were still in jail

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1892 The Homestead Strike

• Carnegie Steel Plant in Pennsylvania
• Carnegie and plant manager, Frick, hated unions
• At Homestead plant The Amalgamated Association
  of Iron and Steel Workers Union was affiliated
  with the AFL
• 1890-92 serious wage cuts
• 1892 another wage cut and denied the unions
  right to negotiate

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Homestead Strike Continued

• Workers occupied plants
• Pinkertons called in to remove strikers and to
  protect scabs
• Pinkertons approached by river
• Workers poured oil into the river and set it on
  fire
• All hell broke loose

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Homestead continued

• 8,000 National Guard sent to protect Steel plant
  and replacement workers
• Frick was shot and wounded
• Public opinion against strikers
• By 1891 down to 24,000 members
• By 1901 less than 7,000
• AFL just barely survived

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1894 The Pullman Strike

• Winter 1892-93 Pullman Company cut wages by 25
• Did not reduce rents, store prices in its town
• 1893 Eugene Debs organized the American Railway
  Workers Union (ARU)
• Called for a nation-wide strike against Pullman
  Co. in July of 1894
• 60,000 walked off of the job

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Pullman Strike continued

• Illinois Governor Altgeld sympathized with
  strikers and would not interfere on behalf of
  Pullman Co.
• Cleveland sent his Attorney General, Olney
• Olney placed a mailbag on the train and charged
  strikers with violation of the Sherman Anti-trust
  Act
• Big battle in Chicago

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Pullman Strike continued

• Injunction issued
• Cleveland sent federal troops
• Eugene Debs jailed
• Converted to Socialism (Helen Keller)
• Ran for president for the Socialist Party 5 times

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The Molly McGuires 1865-77

• Irish coal miners in Penn
• Destroyed mining co. property
• Killed mine superintendents
• Infiltrated by Pinkertons
• 19 strikers executed in the end

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1905 The IWW

• Big John Haywood
• Militant
• The Wobblies
• Organized miners, immigrants, itinerant farm
  workers
• Violent
• Government repression, deportation

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ALSO

• The Womens Trade Union League worked to
  improve working conditions for women and children
• National Consumers League worked for above at
  the state level

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Federal Reform Attempts

• The Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) every
  contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint
  of trade is illegal
• Was intended to restrain the power of monopolies
• BUT was more often used against strikers
• (Pullman) NOT against monopolies (E.C. Knight
  case 14th Amendment)

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Another Federal Reform Attempt

• The Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
• said RR rate discrimination was illegal
• and established the ICC a 5-member non-partisan
  board to take RRs to court for violations of the
  ICA
• BUT also did not work rebates, the ICC, and the
  Court