1865- 1890 Laissez-faire dominance and consequences; the impact of the ending of the frontier. Flashcards
How much progress was made by the labour movement between 1877-90?
Trade unions emerged during this period due primarily to rapid industrialisation. However, much of the struggle for trade union and labour rights was focused on the right of trade unions to exist at all, to be recognised as representing their membership and to do so in negotiations with employers for improvements in pay and working conditions. They campaigned for appropriate structures to be put in place that obliged employers to bargain with the representatives of the workforce and that established systems for mediation, conciliation and arbitration as well as the right to strike.
How much progress, if any, was made by Early unions in the 1870s?
Before 1877, union organisation had been sporadic and largely local. Small craft unions organised local workers around local concerns. The great exception was the National Labor Union, formed in 1866. Seventy-seven delegates representing 60,000 workers gathered at Baltimore to launch this national organisation and adopt a platform focused on securing legislation protecting the eight-hour day. However, the union was short-lived. The economic depression of 1873 drove millions of workers into unemployment and out of their unions. By 1877, the nation’s total union membership had fallen from a peak of 300,000 in 1872 to just 50,000.
What was the National Railroad Strike, 1877, and what did it aim to achieve?
In 1877, when the owners of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad announced a pay cut - the fourth in as many years - workers walked off the job and were joined by workers from rival railroads, and even workers from entirely different industres who abandoned their jobs in sympathy. Together, this growing mass of workers attacked railroad yards, burning trains and tearing up tracks. The violence was the worst in Pittsburgh, where a crowd of some 5,000 workers fought 650 federal troops in a pitched battle. The workers laid waste to the railroad yard, burning more than 500 cars, 104 locomotives and 39 buildings. The troops were brought in and 25 people were killed when they fired into the rioting crowd.
Military force eventually restored order along the nation’s railroad lines, but not before strikers had destroyed more than $10 million worth of property and terrified middle-class observers of the events. The railroad strike of 1877 was therefore a terrifying shock to most Americans.
What was the Knights of Labour?
In the decade following the railroad strike, unions grew rapidly. The most ambitious of these was the Knights of Labor. Founded in 1869, the Knights sought to build a comprehensive organisation uniting workers of all races genders, ethnicities and occupations.
They lobbied government for the 8 hour day and child labour restrictions.
Why did the success of The Knights of labour decline?
When an eight-hour-day rally in Chicagos Haymarket Square turned violent, all supporters of the eight-hour day were blamed. The Knights of Labor, because of their size and visibility, were condemned the most vehemently. Within a year of the Haymarket riot, the Knights’ membership had been cut in half; within a decade, the Knights were all but extinct.
What was the American Federation of Labour (AFL)
A union that played a crucial role in the labour movement set up by Samuel Gompers in 1885.
Less a single union than a federation of semi-independent craft associations, the AFL admitted only skilled white men. Its objectives were also comparatively limited; the federation focused only on achieving higher wages and shorter workdays for its members, forsaking the larger social objectives that had motivated the Knights.
But the AFL did grow - by 1892 it claimed more than a quarter of a million members.
The policy of the AFL was to support unions in winning recognition and securing agreements from employers by collective bargaining, and to strike, and to strike hard, only when these failed. Gompers was elected as its first president in 1896 and served in that capacity until his death in 1924.
What was The end of the frontier?
Settling the West meant losing the wilderness and that ‘uncivilised’ part of the American continent. To some Americans this meant losing the essence of America - Freedom. In 1890, the US Census Bureau declared:
Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier or settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into isolated bodies of settlement there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it cannot, therefore, any longer have a place in census reports.”
So officially there was no longer a frontier. For the first time in American history, there was no large tract of unsettled land.
