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How Did Labor Grow In The Early 20th Century

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As cities were growing rapidly in the early 1900’s, businesses booming and railroads being built, the population of American was increasing as well. *Immigrants from Northern and Western Europe fled to America, seeking opportunity. There came a point where when there were so many immigrants, the Geary Act was put into place. Limiting the number of people that could come into America. Although there were many opportunities in America, there were many issues that made fulfillment for many difficult, including poor work and living conditions and unfair wages. With businesses making their presence known in cities, helping to boost the economy because of the use of cheap labor and trusts, there became the need for laborers, but conditions were so …show more content…

Between the two, one having just skilled workers and the other with workers of all capabilities, the goal was to provide laborers with fair wages, better hours, and a say in business. More often than not, these laborers had to advocate for themselves. Starting off as a protest for a fair national wage, the Haymarket Riot of 1886 earned its name when a bomb was thrown at the police and eight people died. Four men, Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer, were found guilty and were hung. After this event, labor unions including the knights of labor were torn apart. This was important to big businesses because they had a handle on the actions of citizens once again. With laborers knowing death was a possibility of resistance, they backed down. Conditions of living were just as bad as in the workplace, as Jacob Riis, a muckraker, expressed through his writing. Riis, an immigrant from Denmark, wrote about the filthy slums immigrants were forced to live in because of the unfair wages.**Although the industrial revolution brought about great change in the way we did things, such as the use of machines, the conditions in which these mechanisms were used remained the same in the late 1800’s and early 1900s. Slums were still evident in the city during the late 1800’s as they were during the first industrial revolution because of underpayment and work-related injuries still occurred day to day which left many unable to provide for themselves. Unfortunately, the idea of social Darwinism seemed to be practiced by far too many throughout the cities, because immigrants and blacks just couldn’t achieve equal treatment. Too many upper-class citizens believed that the white race was just superior to all others, so they didn’t find it necessary to aid the

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During the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s an economic and industrialized revolution took place in America. As important natural and manmade resources such as Iron, coal, and lumber had just become easily accessible. Which for most meant an improvement on their living conditions, but for the poverty it meant sustaining their life was going to get harder. The wealthy became wealthier and the poor became the mule of labor. “Those who are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down,” (Doc 3).

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However, for the union workers, striking was ineffective because the big corporations called on courts and troops to break the strike and order strikers back to work with reduced wage as in the Railroad Strike of 1877, Homestead Strike of 1892, and Pullman Strike of 1894. In the Haymarket Riot of 1886, eight anarchists were convicted of bombing and murdering policemen. This led the public to associate labor unions and strikes with violence and radicalism. This public belief can be seen in Thomas Nast’s cartoon “Labor Against Capital” published in Harper’s Weekly, 1878 (Document C), where it illustrated the labor representative killing a goose (capital) with an onlooking

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During the Industrial Revolution big businesses took places of small workshops, increasing to quantity but not quality. This made many people lose their jobs, and now there was only one place to work the factories. Ahead of these factories were big business owners, some born into money others worked their way up to it like Andrew Carnegie. Work at these factories became unsafe and the pay was bad, they could only blame one person and that was the owners.

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While the Haymarket Affair was primarily a labor protest demanding an eight-hour workday, many of the activists involved were immigrants and some were anarchists. The media and the authorities, however, portrayed the movement as a foreign-born, radical, and racially diverse threat to the established order, contributing to the demonization of labor

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The detrimental Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is considered to be one of the most tragic disasters in history. On March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out and killed 146 garment workers who were mostly women. These women worked countless hours with low wages and inhumane working conditions in a factory. Even though this event was tragic, the triangle shirtwaist fire helped to shape the new world for the better. The multitude of workers trapped within the inferno to their demise was the final straw for the mistreatment of America’s workers.

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Transcontinental Railroad The largest single construction project ever undertaken within the country left approximately eighty thousand people dead, weighing in as the fifth deadliest construction project in the world. The Transcontinental Railroad shortened the distance traveled from the east coast to the west coast from months in a horse drawn wagon to only eight days by train. On July 1,1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Pacific Railroad Act. Asa Whitney, a New York businessmen tried for this project as early as the 1840’s, however, the 1850’s was the year that the United States Army Corps of Engineers was granted permission to survey the routes.

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The workers gather to listen to several speakers over the five days near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company among those giving the speaks there was both a pled from those who discouraged violence and encourage the crowd to join together against the companies; however, this was also a pled from those who urge worked to take action of violent revolution. The Haymarket Riot turned into a violent event resulting in a controversy trial that supported the discrimination against union members. Perhaps the greatest lasting effect of the riot was that it created a widespread revulsion against union, which caused membership to decline and reduce union influence; because unions became lined to radical ideas and violence in the popular mind. (Avial,2011)

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After the industrial revolution, work conditions in the United States quickly became a major problem. Individually a person could not do much, but there was strength in numbers. The formation of unions helped all these individuals unit and gave them a voice that could no longer be ignored. The formation of unions helped pave the way for better work conditions for these workers. One of the groups seeking better work conditions were the American farm workers.

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Technology and machinery played a great role in the working class due to better production of goods. The quality and quantity of the goods being produce rose because of the advancements of technology as well as machinery. Although technology and machinery advancements were one of the positives that seemed to help the working-class it also hurt them. The machines were more productive than the workers were and this meant that businesses replaced workers with machines. As a result of this many of the working-class lost their jobs and were sent to find work other places.

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The life in the 19th-century for labor worker was from far easy. With all the wealth being generateing during the Gilded age very little of its wealth were given to the wokers. Even the best wages for a industrial worker were low, with long hours, working in awfully poor conditions. With safety rules and regulations being unexisted, it was hard to blame employers responsible. It was worse for women and children, who worked as hard or even harder than men, often time only revcieved only but a fraction of what a man earned.

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The Haymarket affair is one most important events in Chicago’s labor protest is questionably still unknown to many of high school kids and down. At this mark in Chicago history several horrifying, and great events happened. Industrial workers were getting fed up with the intense hours and wanted change from their shady bosses. People associated with all the industrial works started to arrange private meeting to talk about what’s wrong within the industries. Soon several of the bosses found out about these meeting and paid the police to eliminate these meetings.

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In a time after the civil war, America improved their financing by switching to the gold standard, improved communication by boosting the telegraph, improved transportation by building railroads, and improved wealth by giving contracts for clothes to multiple companies. The economy was also improving massively also due to natural resources, demography, and law. Railroads allowed people as well as supplies to be transported quicker, safer, and cheaper. Companies bought each other out and formed monopolies which made the price go up and the owners very wealthy. Aside from all of these positives, there are also various problems that took place during the Gilded Age (1865-1900).

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City life was not the best. Cities were usually overcrowded, most immigrants lived in tenement housing. But soon urbanization picked up, and it got better, when neighborhoods formed, and people could breathe better with more space. America 's economy was and still is described as capitalism. And with the invention of the light bulb, the assembly line by Henry Ford, and the automobile, Mass production was able to support the rising economy of the U.S.

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In Andrew Ure’s “The Philosophy of Manufactures,” he shows his support for the Industrial Revolution. Ure believed that all of the improvements in technology made workers’ lives easier. The new technology allows workers to produce more products in less amount of time, which would equal greater productivity, which would then equal more wealth for companies and for the country. Ure makes an argument that the people who work in factories have better lives than those who live and work on farms, because of the advanced technology that factory workers have access to. Ure also presents the argument that factory workers are not necessarily treated unfairly just because they do not receive breaks while at work.

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It killed seven police and wounded about sixty people. The police than fired on the crowd, killing several people and wounding one hundred people,” The Haymarket affair was horrible because it gave the employers more leverage on the workers because the could use the Haymarket affair as a weapon to keep employees in line. Also, many innocent lives were lost because the harvester company didn’t want to raise wages just a few cents. Instead of raising wages the company provoked the workers and that’s why the fights in the streets broke out.

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