1. Organized Labor, 1865-1900 U.S. History II

2. Socialism’s Failure in the U.S.  2 Socialist parties in the U.S.  Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor Party  Eugene V. Debs’ Social Democratic Party  Labor organizations relentlessly suppressed  Management used divide & conquer strategy, playing ethnic groups off each other  Pinkerton detectives & Nat’l Guard used to break up strikes  Workers more concerned about individual, bread-and-butter issues  Unwilling to sacrifice individual present for collective future  Most strikes about wages, hours, & abusive foremen

3. Boom & Bust Cycles

4. Triangle Shirtwaist Co. Fire

5. The Growth of Manufacturing

6. The National Labor Union  National Labor Union short-lived; founded 1866  640,000 members in 1868  Called for 8-hour day, greenbacks, co-ops, & equal rights for women & blacks  Got Congress to repeal Contract Labor law & pass 8-Hour Day law

7. The Knights of Labor  Knights of Labor founded in 1860 by Philadelphia tailors; opened to all workers in 1870s  Grand Master Terence V. Powderly (1879-1893) increased membership from under 10,000 in 1879 to 730,000 in 1886  Sought cooperative society - alliances between employer & employee, producer & consumer - as well as gov’t ownership of utilities, trust reform, & ban on child labor  Got Congress to create U.S. Bureau of Labor  Declined after 1886: lost strike vs. Jay Gould & discredited by ties to Haymarket Bombing Terence Powderly

8. American Federation of Labor  A.F.L. founded in 1886  Led by Dutch Jewish cigar maker from Britain, Samuel Gompers (1886-1924)  Over 1 million members by 1901; 2.5 million by 1917  Federation of 111 unions, representing 27,000 locals  Organized by crafts, with each union independent  no unskilled workers, women, or blacks  Officially nonpartisan, but published legislative platforms

9. Industrial Workers of the World  “Wobblies” founded in 1905; led by Big Bill Heywood & Mother Jones  Mostly un- or semi-skilled workers  Used radical, revolutionary rhetoric  Strikes were spectacular affairs, but only real success was Lowell, Mass in 1912 Big Bill Heywood

10. The Great Railroad Strike (1877)  Rate wars in 1876 ended with truce which involved a 10% wage cut  Strike began in Baltimore & Pittsburgh, spreading quickly across Midwest & West  July 21-22, Philadelphia: militia killed 30 strikers; strikers burned 39 buildings, 104 engines, & 1,245 cars  Ended by Pres. Hayes calling out troops Strike damage, Pennsylvania

11. The Haymarket Bombing (1886)  Anarchists had called public meeting to protest bloodshed at McCormick plant  7 Germans, 1 American (Albert Parsons, a former carpetbagger who married a black woman and was a Knight of Labor)  Not sure who threw bomb - meeting was dispersing as police came  Farcical trial, presided over by Judge Gary, led to four executions & one suicide

12. The Homestead Strike (1892)

13. Pullman Strike (1894)  Pullman was company town, where employees gouged for everything  American Railway Union led by Debs - became Socialist in jail afterwards Eugene V. Debs