1. The 1820s led to various unions wanting to reduce the working day from 12 to 10 hours. This sparked the interest of the idea of a federation of joining together to pursue common objectives for working people. These first efforts to organize may have been ineffective, but it shown the need for economic and legal protection of the working people from these exploiting employers. The factory system started to become more common with the invention of the steam engine and the growing use of water power to operate machinery. Beginning in the 1830s and accelerating even more so with the Civil War, factories accounted for a growing percentage of American production. It produced great wealth for few, but still poverty for many. An increasing number …show more content…
Samuel was born in 1850 in the Jewish slums of London. He came to America at age 13 with his parents in 1863. His father was a cigar maker and Samuel joined the his first cigarmakers’ union in 1864. Samuel devoted 38 years to the AFL until his death in 1924. 100,000 miners of the United Mine Workers went on strike on May 12, 1902 in northeastern Pennsylvania and kept the mines closed all that summer. When the mine owners refused a UMW proposal for arbitration, President Theodore Roosevelt intervened on Oct. 3. On Oct. 16, he appointed a commission of mediation and arbitration. The miners returned to their jobs five days later. Five months later, the Presidential Commission awarded them a 10 percent wage increase plus shorter work days, but they did not receive the formal union recognition they …show more content…
Lewis announced the creation of the CIO, the Committee for Industrial Organization, in November 1935. The CIO was composed of about a dozen leaders of AFL unions, to carry on the effort for industrial unionism. Industrial Unions organize an entire industry regardless of skill. These were unions of unskilled workers. Lewis was born in Iowa in 1880 of Welsh immigrant parents. He went to work in the coal mines and became president of the Mine Workers in 1920. In 1936, the various CIO unions were expelled from the Federation. In 1938 the CIO held its first constitutional convention and became the Congress of Industrial