Chapter 4Labor and Progressivism

4.1 WORKERS AND LABOR UNIONS

Conditions of the Workers

• Nations' economy becoming more industrialized• Growth of urban areas• Increase in immigration• Working conditions:• Long working hours• Low wages• Dangerous working conditions• No social security or unemployment

• Child Labor• very common• Children as young as 5 have to work for their families

survival• No education and no childhood• Would never make it above the poverty level

The Unions

• Labor Unions – arose because of the working conditions• Organization of workers formed to protect interests of

its members• Craft unions – skilled workers who practiced a

specific craft• Trade unions – less skilled workers

• The Knights of Labor• Formed to create one union of factory workers,

farmers, shopkeepers, and office workers• Included African Americans • Supported Reforms:• Equal pay for equal work• Eight-hour work day• End child labor

• declined and disappeared in 1890’s

• The American Federation of Labor• Craft union lead by Samuel Gompers• Issues: working hours, wages, working conditions• Used strikes and boycotts• Believed in Collective Bargaining• Negotiate as a group not an individual

• Forced closed shop workplaces• Employers had to hire only union members

• Eugene Debs• one of most influential union leaders in history• Organized American Railway Union• Lead the Pullman strike• Ran for president several times as American Socialist

Party

Employer Response to Unions

• Hated unions• Forced employees to sigh contracts saying they

won’t join unions• Some places unions workers on blacklists (list of

workers employers would refuse to hire)• Lockouts – not allow employees to return to

work• During strikes, employers would hire scabs –

replacement worker

• Employers worked with government when it came to unions

• Government would grant companies injunctions – court order that forbade strikes because law violation or threatened public interests

• if all else failed employers would use violence or intimidation to deal with labor issues

Strikes and Confrontations

• The Great Strike• Railroad workers strike because of wage cuts• Violence throughout the Midwest and eastern U.S.• President sends federal troops to put down protest• Showed employers that they could appeal to federal

government for help

• Haymarket Riot• Seven police officers killed during protest• turned public opinion against unions • Saw them as anarchies and violent

• The Homestead Strike• Among steel workers at Carnegie Steel • Carnegie was in Europe when is workers when on

strike because of his partner Henry Frick• Frick hired a private police force the Pinkertons• Shootout left several dead or wounded

• The Pullman Strike• Pullman fired three labor representatives• Closed plant down• American Railway Union and Eugene Debs boycott

Pullman cars• Court injunction against the union set a precedence for

owners appealing to government to end strikes

4.2 PROGRESSIVISM

Progressive Era

• Era in which both government and citizens called for reform in business, politics, and society as a whole

• Some enjoyed wealth and prosperity• Immigrants and poor stilled live and work under

harsh conditions

Muckrakers

• Writers who exposed abuse in government and big business

• Theodore Roosevelt gave them their names• Muckrakers:• Lincoln Steffens – political corruption • Ida Tarbell – abuse of Standard Oil • Upton Sinclair – The Jungle • Uncovered the truth about U.S. meat packing

industry • Lead to the creation of meat inspection programs

Social Reformers

• Jacob Riis – drew attention to terrible living conditions in tenement

• Jane Addams – opened Hull House in Chicago• Center which poor immigrants and workers could get

help• Launch pad into investigations into economic,

political, and social conditions • Help lay the foundation for future settlement houses

The Temperance Movement

• Movement to limit and then eliminate alcohol• 1919 Congress ratified the 18th Amendment • Prohibited the making, selling, or transporting of any

alcoholic beverage in the U.S. • Later referred to as “Prohibition”• Failure/Was repealed by the 21st Amendment

Women’s Suffrage

• Women’s Suffrage Movement• Women’s right to vote• Early movement at Seneca Falls Convention 1848• Susan B. Anthony most recognized • Established the North American Women’s Suffrage

Association• 1920 Congress passed the 19th Amendment

Theodore Roosevelt

• Became the youngest man to be inaugurated president

• Progressive president who pushed for reform• Felt many monopolies were harmful• Competitive, strong willed, energetic• Social Darwinist

• Coal Mine Strike 1902• Roosevelt called both sides to White House• Used arbitration (a third impartial judgment on a

dispute)

• Breaking up Trusts• Brought suit against Northern Securities Company

for violating the Sherman Anti-trust Act• Raised as a reformer; went after other trusts

William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and The Election of 1912

• Roosevelt hand picked his friend Taft to run for president

• Taft won• Was not the reformer Roosevelt was but did change

some issues• Mann-Elkins Act – expanded the power of the

Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate telephone and telegraph rates

• Brought down more trusts than Roosevelt

• Taft could not gain full support of Progressives in the Republican party

• Party split in 1912 election• Taft – Republican Party • Roosevelt – Progressive Party/Bull Moose Party• Woodrow Wilson – Democrat Party

Split the Republican vote

Won the election

• Wilson opposed both big business and big government

• Federal Reserve Act – established a federal reserve to oversee banking in the U.S.; gave government greater control over money circulation and prevent bank failures

• Clayton Antitrust Act – made strikes, peaceful picketing, and boycotting legal• Government can no longer use antitrust laws to up

down strikes or break up unions

Constitutional Amendments During the Progressive Period

Sixteenth Amendment (1913)

Seventeenth Amendment (1913)

Eighteenth Amendment (1919)

Nineteenth Amendment (1920)

Reforms in State Government

• Referendum – allowing citizens to vote directly on proposed laws and policies

• Initiative – allowing for citizens of the state to force a vote on a particular issue

• Recall – holding special elections to remove corrupt officials from office before their terms have expired

• Secret Ballot – allowing individuals to vote secretly removing fear if voting against certain candidates

4.3 AFRICAN AMERICANS OF THE PROGRESSIVE PERIOD

Disenfranchisement of African Americas

• After Civil War, African Americas faces racism and discrimination

• Disenfranchisement – deny a certain group of people the right to vote• 14th Amendment – gave AA citizenship• 15th Amendment – gave AA the right to vote

• States did not follow the 15th Amendment• Ways states stopped AA from voting:• Literacy tests – had to prove you can read before

voting; AA had not formal education so they could not read

• Poll tax – citizens of that state to pay a special tax to vote; AA too poor to pay

• Grandfather Clause• Allowed for poor and illiterate whites to still be able to

vote• Anyone who votes in past elections or ancestors who

voted were exempt from the above laws

Segregation

• Segregation – separation of races• De jure segregation – separation based on law• Plessy v. Ferguson – Homer Plessy was jailed for

stilling in an all whites section of a railway car. He sued. Supreme Court said that segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities and services were equal. – “separate but equal”

• De facto segregation – not by law; evolved due to economic and social factors• More evident in the North

• Jim Crow Laws – laws that established racism• Meant that blacks were segregated from schools,

restaurants, hospitals, public transpiration

• Great Migration – period when thousands of AA left the south in search of industrial jobs created by the war

Booker T. Washington

• Former slave • Founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama• Train AA in a trade to they can achieve economies

freedom and escape the oppression suffered by uneducated blacks

• If AA excelled in trades requiring manual labor, whites would eventually treat them as equals• “Atlanta Compromise”

W.E.B. Du Bois

• First black Ph.D. graduate from Harvard• Disagreed with Booker T. Washington• Argued blacks should pursue occupations in the

humanities and in white-collar fields• Blacks must be politically and socially active to gain

equality

• Help fund National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Ida Wells-Barnett

• Fearless advocate of civil rights movement• One of the important AA women of her day• Campaigned against the railway cars, participated

in women’s suffrage parades, helped form NAACP, fought against lynching

Marcus Garvey

• Born Jamaican• Important figure during Progressive Era• “Back to Africa” movement• Blacks leaving the U.S. to find a homeland in Africa• Never came about

• Helped give since of pride AA never felt before