Industry, Invention, and Labour, c. 1870–1900

This is Unit Three, part two, on industrial work, the unions, and the new consumer. Part one closed by asking what to call the industrialists, and answered with two columns. This part turns to the workers: what the work paid, and what they did about it. Carry one question through it: did the great strikes fail? Strike by strike, the answer looks like yes. At the end of the strikes the course measures the answer over decades as well, and the two measurements disagree. By the end you will be able to describe the wages, hours and dangers of industrial work. To explain what Haymarket did to the Knights of Labor. To distinguish the Knights from the American Federation of Labor. To say whether the great strikes failed, holding both readings. And to explain how new ways of selling taught Americans to consume.

Four entries on what industrial work paid, what it cost in lives, and who was hired to do it.

Wages and hours.

USH2 0326 Wages and Hours

In nineteen hundred the average factory wage was about twenty cents an hour, an annual income of barely six hundred dollars, over a standard week of sixty hours: ten hours a day, six days a week. About a fifth of urban industrial workers lived at or below poverty, and the Yawp adds a month of unemployment in a typical year.

The hardest and most dangerous work.

USH2 0327 Twelve Hours, Seven Days

Steelworkers laboured twelve hours a day, seven days a week, in some of the most dangerous conditions of the industrial age. Nearly twenty-five thousand workers were killed on the job in nineteen thirteen alone, and another seven hundred thousand were hurt badly enough to miss a month of work. Few employers took responsibility.

The system that timed every motion.

USH2 0328 Scientific Management

Frederick Taylor's scientific management used stopwatch studies to break factory work into short, repetitive segments timed for maximum efficiency. Owners adopted it for profit. The anchor says it made workers cogs in a machine and ended the collaborative craft work many had known.

The women and children who entered the factories.

USH2 0329 Women and Children at Work

The number of women earning wages tripled to five million between eighteen seventy and nineteen hundred, and a quarter of them worked in factories, most under twenty-five and many from immigrant families, paid less than men. Employers assumed women needed no independent living wage. Child labour in factories also tripled over the same thirty years.

Three entries on the first attempts to organise, and the strike that shut down the railroads.

The first national attempt to organise.

USH2 0330 The National Labor Union

Seventy-seven delegates founded the National Labor Union in Baltimore in eighteen sixty-six, calling for an eight-hour day, currency reform and equal rights, and it won the eight-hour day for federal employees. It backed African American equality and women's rights. The Panic of eighteen seventy-three and its founder's death ended it.

The strike that shut down the railroads.

USH2 0331 The Great Railroad Strike

In eighteen seventy-seven railroads still reeling from the Panic of eighteen seventy-three cut wages again and again, and in July workers struck, beginning in West Virginia. The strike spread from Baltimore to St. Louis and lasted forty-five days. Digital History calls it the first general strike in the nation's history, and says governors in ten states mobilised sixty thousand militia. In Baltimore the militia killed eleven, the Yawp says, and in Pittsburgh troops killed twenty. Federal troops finally broke it. The anchor says the strikers gained nothing. The Yawp says the defeat convinced workers they needed to organise. Both are true, and later in this lecture the course asks about that gap directly.

A secret society in the coalfields.

USH2 0332 The Molly Maguires

The Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish coal miners in eastern Pennsylvania, used kidnappings, beatings and murder to protest conditions in the mines. A Pinkerton detective worked undercover in the coalfields for two and a half years. Ten accused Maguires were hanged in June eighteen seventy-seven, the Day of the Rope, and the reprisal crushed the movement.

Three entries on the union that tried to enrol everyone, and the night that broke it.

The union that tried to enrol everyone.

USH2 0333 The Knights of Labor

The Knights of Labor, led by Uriah Stephens and from eighteen seventy-nine by Terence Powderly, sought one big union of all wage workers: skilled and unskilled, men and women, Black and White. Only a few occupations, lawyers and bankers among them, were barred. The Knights demanded the eight-hour day and equal pay for women.

The night that broke them.

USH2 0334 Haymarket

On May fourth, eighteen eighty-six, a Chicago rally for the eight-hour day at Haymarket Square followed the killing of workers by police at the McCormick reaper works the day before. As police moved to break up the rally, someone threw a bomb. It killed one officer at once, and in the gunfire and injuries that followed, the Yawp says, seven policemen and at least four protesters died. Eight anarchists were convicted despite a lack of direct evidence tying them to the bomb. Four were hanged, and one died by suicide before his execution. The Yawp says the affair helped many Americans link unionism with radicalism.

What Haymarket did to the Knights.

USH2 0335 The Knights Collapse

The Knights of Labor had more than seven hundred thousand members in eighteen eighty-six and barely one hundred thousand by the year's end, six hundred thousand lost within a single year. The anchor ties the collapse to Haymarket. The Yawp says the Knights became associated with violence and radicalism, and the eight-hour movement collapsed with them.

Two entries on the union that took the Knights' place, and on how the two differed.

The union that took their place.

USH2 0336 The American Federation of Labor

In eighteen eighty-six twenty craft unions formed the American Federation of Labor, led by Samuel Gompers until his death in nineteen twenty-four. It grew from five hundred thousand members in nineteen hundred to one million in nineteen fourteen and four million in nineteen twenty. It sought economic gains, not political change, and even at its peak it enrolled only fifteen percent of nonfarm workers.

The difference between the two unions.

USH2 0337 One Big Union or Craft Unions

The Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor are the two models the era produced, and they are often run together. The Knights sought one big union of all wage workers, skilled and unskilled, with broad goals including cooperatives and equal pay. The AFL joined autonomous craft unions of skilled workers and pursued what the Yawp calls pure and simple trade unionism: higher wages and shorter hours won through bargaining. The Knights grew fastest and fell hardest; the AFL grew slowly and lasted. So ask whom each would admit and what each wanted. The answers explain why the AFL survived the backlash that destroyed the Knights, and why most workers still stayed outside any union.

Five entries on two great confrontations, Homestead and Pullman, and then the question this part promised.

The lockout at Carnegie's Homestead mill.

USH2 0338 Homestead, 1892

In eighteen ninety-two, with Carnegie in Scotland, his manager Henry Clay Frick locked out the steelworkers at Homestead, Pennsylvania, on June twenty-ninth. Three hundred Pinkerton detectives arrived by river barge on July sixth. A gunfight on the shore killed three Pinkertons and six workers, the anchor says, and the Yawp adds that the Pinkertons surrendered after hours of battle.

How the lockout ended.

USH2 0339 Homestead's Outcome

By July thirteenth the state militia was escorting strikebreakers into the Homestead mill, and by November the union was defeated. The anarchist Alexander Berkman's failed attempt to kill Frick cost him fourteen years in prison. Digital History says the clash helped eliminate unions from the steel industry for more than four decades.

The strike in a company town.

USH2 0340 The Pullman Strike

After the depression of eighteen ninety-three, George Pullman cut wages by a quarter but kept rents and store prices in his company town unchanged, and he had also fired half his workforce, the anchor says. Eugene V. Debs's American Railway Union refused to handle Pullman cars on any line, and the sympathy strike spread nationwide.

How the president ended it.

USH2 0341 Cleveland and the Mail

President Grover Cleveland attached mail cars to trains and sent federal troops to ensure mail delivery, which broke the Pullman strike. Debs was arrested, and the strike ended on July thirteenth with no gains. The federal government acted as a strikebreaker. Unit six sets a later president's very different answer to a strike beside this one.

Whether the strikes failed.

USH2 0342 Whether the Strikes Failed

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 to four million by nineteen twenty. Both readings are defensible. The strikes failed at their goals, and the unions that survived them grew. Homestead's four decades without steel unions mark how long some defeats lasted.

Five entries on the other side of the industrial economy: new ways to shop, to pay, and to want.

The new ways Americans shopped.

USH2 0343 Department Stores

Department stores such as New York's Macy's, Philadelphia's Gimbel's and Chicago's Marshall Field's made shopping a new urban experience, and from the eighteen seventies chain stores like A and P and Woolworth's served customers who were not wealthy. The Yawp says large dry-goods houses grew into modern department stores by the eighteen eighties.

The store that came by mail.

USH2 0344 Mail Order

Aaron Montgomery Ward founded the first significant mail-order business in eighteen seventy-two, and Sears, Roebuck and Company followed in eighteen eighty-six, with a catalogue Richard Sears called the consumer's bible. Sears mailed over three hundred thousand catalogues a year by eighteen ninety-seven and over a million by nineteen oh seven.

How families paid for what they bought.

USH2 0345 Buying on Credit

Sellers extended credit to ordinary buyers, most famously Singer's dollar down and a dollar a week for a sewing machine, a machine that cut the work of making a shirt from fourteen hours to one. Families bought sewing machines and pianos as investments in middle-class status. Unit nine shows credit buying reaching the whole country.

The industry built to sell.

USH2 0346 Advertising

Advertising spending reached almost one hundred million dollars a year by nineteen hundred, professional agencies appeared from the eighteen eighties, and magazines and newspapers filled with illustrated advertisements for brand-name goods. Advertising turned manufacturing into mass consumption, creating demand as well as meeting it.

The man who dressed the shop window.

USH2 0347 L. Frank Baum's Store Window

L. Frank Baum founded the National Association of Window Trimmers in eighteen ninety-eight and published a journal called The Store Window, on shop windows arranged to make passers-by want what they saw. Baum later wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The display window, like the catalogue, taught Americans to consume.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe industrial work: about twenty cents an hour, sixty-hour weeks, steelworkers on twelve-hour days, and twenty-five thousand killed on the job in nineteen thirteen. You can explain what Haymarket did to the Knights of Labor: a bomb, a trial without direct evidence, unionism linked with radicalism, and six hundred thousand members lost in a year. You can distinguish the two models. The Knights would admit nearly every worker and wanted broad change; the AFL joined skilled craft unions and wanted wages and hours. You can say whether the great strikes failed, holding both readings. They failed at their goals, and the unions that survived them grew. And you can explain how department stores, catalogues, credit, advertising and the shop window taught Americans to consume.