American Workers Between 1877 And 1900

Equal Opportunity for various people between 1877 and 1900

Irish immigrants were often at the bottom of the ladder and took on the harsh and dangerous jobs that were often avoided by other workers. Many Irish women became servants or domestic workers, while many Irish men labored in coal mines and built railroads and canals. As Irish immigrants moved inland from eastern cities, they found themselves in heated competition for jobs. The Irish often suffered job discrimination. Furthermore, some businesses took advantage of Irish immigrants’ willingness to work at unskilled jobs for low pay. Employers were known to replace uncooperative workers and those demanding higher wages with Irish laborers. Irish immigrants were often poor by American standards, usually crowding into subdivided homes that were intended for single families. A lack of running water and cleanliness was common in these places which led to disease and other families often moving out in fear of these

The only problem is that a concentration of workers always produced fear among employers. They believed in the possibility of the workforce becoming too powerful and rising up against them. In the United States racial policy has been an effective way to assure that the unity of workers would not be achieved. By encouraging conflict between groups of workers divided by race, nationality, sex, language, or religion, employers rarely needed to worry about facing labor as an equal. Throughout much of United States history, employers regularly encouraged racial and ethnic conflict among workers. They did so mostly to prevent them from forming unions or conducting strikes. The deliberate creation of racial and ethnic conflict was not a matter of individual employer prejudice but of capitalist class strategy. In some cases, unions and white workers adopted policies that discriminated against certain nationalities and racial