History of the United States II / Unit 3 USH2 0342 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Whether the Strikes Failed
The idea
The anchor's verdict on the great strikes is blunt: the railroad strikers of eighteen seventy-seven and the Pullman strikers of eighteen ninety-four gained nothing, and Homestead broke the steel union. Measured strike by strike, that verdict holds. Measured over decades, the record is mixed. The National Labor Union had already won the eight-hour day for federal employees, the Yawp says the eighteen seventy-seven defeat convinced workers to organise, and the AFL grew from five hundred thousand members in nineteen hundred to four million by nineteen twenty.
In practice
A column of lost strikes beside a line of rising union membership.
Where people slip
Two readings are both defensible. One counts each strike as a battle and finds defeat after defeat. The other counts the movement and finds slow growth under repression. Neither erases the other: the strikes failed at their goals, and the unions that survived them grew. Digital History's judgment on Homestead, four decades without steel unions, marks how long some defeats lasted.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for History of the United States II