6.7: Labour in the Gilded Age Flashcards
1
Q
POOR
A
- Poverty
- Urban families needed multiple incomes
- Dumbbell Tenements
- Panic of 1873 and 1893 = wages dropping
- BUT mass-production meant item prices = dropping
- Wages rose across board
- Living standards rose despite wealth gap doing same
- 1000s of working class work-related deaths and injuries
- Worker difficulty adressing wages and safety due to fear of migrant replacement
2
Q
RICH
A
- Division between rich and poor
- Richest 10% controlled 90% wealth
- Conspicuous Consumption coined by Economist Veblen
- e.g. Biltmore House = Vanderbilt Vacation Home = 35 bedrooms
3
Q
LABOUR UNIONS
A
- Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor
- Strength in numbers
- Strikes, slowdowns, picketing and collective bargaining
4
Q
GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE [1877]
A
- Rail companies cut wages to save mid-recession
- Strike in 11 states
- 60% of American railroads shut down
- Violence and federal troops sent to restore order
- 100 killed
- Rail employers forced to come to negotiation table after seeing Union power
5
Q
PULLMAN STRIKE [1894]
A
- Pullman manufactured sleeping train cars
- Cut wages in Panic of 1893
- Fired workers who bargained
- Other workers striked
- Debs ordered his Union members not to work on trains w/ Pullman cars
- Rail owners supported Pullman and hooked Pullman cars to trains w/ federal mail
6
Q
KNIGHTS OF LABOUR
A
- Opened ranks to blacks and women
- Goal = destruction of trusts, monopolies and child labour
- By late 19th century, children [10-15] = 18% of work force
- 700,000 members at peak
- Haymarket Square Riot [1886]
- Gathred to celebrate May Day Labor Movement
- Peacefully protested for 8 hour workday
- Bomb exploded
- Perpetrator = anarchist unaffiliated w/ Knights but public suddenly saw unions = violent and radical
- Union membership dropped dramatically
7
Q
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOUR
A
- Samuel Gompers
- Craft workers
- Million members
- Goals = higher wages and safer conditions
