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The Transcontinental Railroad Explained: US History Review

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Dawes General Allotment Act | History, Significance, & Facts

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Dawes General Allotment Act, U.S. law providing for the distribution of Indian reservation land among individual Native Americans, with the aim of creating farmers in the white man's image. It was sponsored several times by Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts and finally was enacted in February 1887.

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After the Civil War, the United States rapidly transformed into an industrial, urbanized nation. Technological innovation, economic growth, development of large-scale agriculture, and the expansion of the federal government characterized the era, as did the social tensions brought about by immigration, financial turmoil, federal Indian policy, and increasing demands for rights by workers, women, and minorities.

This group of objects highlights innovation and industrialization in the late 1800s, and the benefits as well as detriments of becoming an economic and industrial power.

Century Vase, 1876

Made by Union Porcelain Works, Greenpoint, New York

The American Industrial Revolution transformed the nation from a scattering of isolated communities into an economic and industrial giant, in part due to the country’s wealth of natural resources. Forests, minerals, waterways, and huge tracts of arable land for farming and ranching provided the raw materials that fueled growth and development, often at the expense of the environment.

This vase celebrates 100 years of American progress and depicts now-vanished icons of the American landscape such as bison, a wooden reaper, and a steamship.

Railroad Spike, 1869

Commemorative of the final spike that completed the transcontinental railroad

Railroads were the basis of the nation’s industrial economy in the late 1800s, creating new markets, carrying billions of tons of freight to every corner of the country, and opening up the West for development. Thanks in part to the railroad providing access to new land for farming, agricultural production doubled in the 1870s, which in turn increased railroad traffic.

Gift of Union Pacific Railroad, Mr. A. E. Stoddard, President

Stock Ticker, about 1900

Made by the Western Union Telegraph Company

The U.S. economy grew rapidly after the Civil War, fueled by an astounding rise in wealth, wages, production, and corporate mergers, along with limited government regulation. The volume of stocks traded rose sharply with corporations’ need for investment capital and the development of new technologies. The 1867 invention of the stock ticker, transmitting up-to-the-minute share prices over telegraph lines, modernized the stock exchange.

Gift of Western Union Corporation

Incandescent Lamp, about 1891

Made by Edison General Electric Company

Many inventions in the late 1880s helped speed urban growth, allowing for taller buildings, more efficient factories, and better transportation. One of the most dramatic improvements occurred in artificial lighting. Thomas Edison’s development of an electric lamp that did not rely on open flames made lighting more practical for factories, offices, and homes, and transformed city life.

Gift of General Electric Lighting Company, through Terry K. McGowan

Tinfoil Phonograph, 1878

Invented by Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Edison helped usher in an age of organized research in support of commerce and industry that reshaped American life. Vowing to turn out inventions on a regular basis, Edison and his team of scientists, engineers, draftsmen, and laborers developed or improved over 1,000 patents, from huge electric generators to this early phonograph.

Gift of American Telephone and Telegraph Company

Alexander Graham Bell's Big Box Telephone, 1876

One of the first commercially available telephones

Telegraph lines could carry only one coded message per wire at a time, which became a hindrance as the volume of communication increased. To overcome this problem, Alexander Bell used his knowledge of acoustics to devise a method of sending multiple tonal messages over a wire. This led to the telephone, and a communication revolution that transformed business and daily life.

Gift of American Telephone and Telegraph Company

Cross, 1875–99

Made by a Hispanic Catholic in New Mexico

New Mexico has experienced many cultural encounters since the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s. Following the United States’ 1848 annexation of the area at the end of war with Mexico, the population of the territory boomed, bringing together Catholics of Spanish descent, indigenous tribes, Protestant missionaries, and Anglo American settlers. Though often in conflict, these communities forged a distinctive regional identity that survives to the present.

Silver Presentation Cup, about 1900

Presented to Susan B. Anthony on her eightieth birthday

Although American women fought for black suffrage, they were unable to vote in federal elections themselves until 1920. As suffragists moved out of the parlor and into the streets, they challenged the notion that a woman’s place was solely in the home. Susan B. Anthony shocked the nation when she was jailed in 1872 for illegally trying to vote.

Gift of National American Woman Suffrage Association

Print, 1870s

Black politicians during Reconstruction

With the end of the Civil War, hard-won constitutional amendments abolished slavery and established citizenship and voting rights for black Americans. But during and after Reconstruction, blacks were often treated as second-class citizens. Southern states continued to restrict black voting, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan led to decades of violence.

From the Ralph E. Becker Collection of Political Americana

Statue, late 1800s

Made by the Union Porcelain Works, Greenpoint, New York

In the late 1800s, black Americans gained citizenship and the vote, while immigrants from Europe and Asia came to the country in record numbers. As these minorities strove for economic prosperity and social justice, some white Americans reacted to the rapidly changing social order with apprehension and hostility. The relationship of the three figures in this statue captures this tension.

Gift of Mrs. Franklin Chace

Singer Sewing Machine Patent Model, 1889

Factory machine for making buttonholes

American goods were increasingly made in factories as companies adopted large-scale, standardized production methods in the late 1800s. Specialized machines took the place of manual tasks—such as sewing buttonholes for ready-made clothing—speeding up the work to meet the growing demands of a nation of consumers. The advent of more simply constructed women’s apparel in the 1890s gave a further boost to the clothing industry.

Sholes & Glidden Typewriter, 1873

Made by E. Remington & Sons

The development of corporations after the Civil War led to the creation of multiple layers of office management. The vast demand for professional managers and clerical staff encouraged education and the growth of the middle class. The introduction of the typewriter gave women the opportunity to enter the corporate workplace.

Gift of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict

John Brown Lennon's Delegate Badge, 1893

From the Journeymen Tailors’ Union convention

Rapid industrial development in the late 1800s changed where and how Americans worked. By 1900, U.S. factories employed 4.5 million people, most working long hours for low wages in often unhealthful conditions. Workers organized local and national unions in response, leading to an intense period of political activity, strikes, and sometimes violent clashes in the fight for labor rights.

Gift of D. E. Lennon

Jeans, 1873-96

Made by Levi Strauss & Co., San Franscisco

Between 1870 and 1900 over 430 million acres were settled in the United States, most of them in the West. Mining, ranching, and farming drew waves of settlers, and cities and commerce followed. In 1873 San Francisco merchant LeviStrauss and tailor Jacob Davis patented a designfor rugged workers’ pants for western wear—the first jeans, advertised at right in 1875.

Gift of Walter Haas Jr.

Winchester Rifle, 1881

Captured from Sioux when Chief Low Dog surrendered in Montana Territory

Through most of the 1800s, Americans viewed the nation’s westward expansion as a symbol of its providence as a land of wealth and progress. But Indian tribes resisted the encroachment of settlers in their territories, setting off decades of violence. The federal government gradually pushed the tribes to more isolated areas, offering U.S. citizenship, but few opportunities, to those who agreed to accept allotments of land on reservations.

Man's Gown, about 1896

Ordered from China by Lee B. Lok in 1896

With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, thousands of Chinese laborers were left jobless in the western United States. Unwelcome in California, where it was feared they competed for low-paying jobs, many moved to the East Coast. Lee Lok emigrated from China to San Francisco in 1881 and then moved to New York City’s Chinatown where he worked in a general store. Although he could not become a U.S. citizen, his children could, and did.

Gift of James Edgar Mead and Virginia Lee Mead

The objects below are no longer on view

Harvester and Self-Raking Reaper Patent Model, 1877

Patented by William Whiteley

Increasingly mechanized farming meant fewer laborers were needed on farms, releasing them to work in urban industrial jobs. As the cities grew, demand increased for agricultural goods in turn. Inventors looked for new ways for farming to be more efficient and profitable, including making improvements to existing technology such as the mechanical reaper first developed by Cyrus McCormick in 1834.

Creeping Baby Doll, 1870s

Patented by Robert J. Clay

In the 1870s, changing notions of childhood meant that Anglo American parents had only recently accepted crawling, or creeping, as a natural stage in a baby’s development rather than a bad habit.  Prior to this, generations of American children had been prevented from crawling on all fours, an activity then associated with animals and the insane.

Child's Dress, 1876

Made from fabric purchased at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition

Celebrating innovations in industry and the arts, the international Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution, embodied Americans’ confidence in the future, and revealed the country’s potential to the rest of the world. Among the crowds attending the centennial was Henry Fletcher, who purchased the patriotic fabric his wife used to make this dress for their first child, born in 1876.

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After the Civil War, the United States rapidly transformed into an industrial, urbanized nation. Technological innovation, economic growth, development of large-scale agriculture, and the expansion of the federal government characterized the era, as did the social tensions brought about by immigrati…

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The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity. Big business firms broke themselves into different functions, or "departments," and used managers to coordinate the work of departments, and "middle managers" to coordinate work among departments.

Railroads were the first "big businesses" in the United States. After railroad companies began to operate on tracks that stretched for fifty and more miles, their owners soon realized that they had to divide responsibilities among different managers, with coordination of the various functions of the company--from soliciting business, to operating trains, to maintaining facilities, to financing everything. By the 1850s railroad executives were perfecting systems of managerial control over their ever more complex firms.

After the railroads pioneered the formation of "big business," big businesses appeared in manufacturing and distribution.

Big city department stores were a form of "big business." They combined many different retail operations in one organization, and placed them together in one building. By 1912 department stores were principal features of the downtown districts of every city.

Still other big businesses, mail order firms such as Sears, Roebuck, were by 1912 serving rural areas and small towns.

Thus when Americans shopped in 1912, they were likely to encounter a "big business." In their stores, moreover, they were likely to find products manufactured by "big businesses."

The "big business" form of organization spread rapidly in manufacturing industries after about 1870.

In some lines of manufacturing, there were advantages to have a single organization control raw materials, transportation, fabrication, and distribution. When he sold his steel company in 1901, for example, Andrew Carnegie was the most efficient--and the wealthiest--steel maker in the world. Carnegie steel had control over sources of coal, coke, and iron ore. Carnegie steel exercised control over ships and railroads that brought raw materials to its mills in the Pittsburgh district. Carnegie insisted on his mill remaining the most advanced of their day. Not only did Carnegie Steel manufacture steel, the company also produced finished products like railroad rails and bridge girders. All of these operations were in a single managerial organization. Managers controlled the flow of materials. Carnegie Steel was so efficient that it could undercut all of its competitors and still make large profits.

Meatpacking was another industry that witnessed the rise and perfection of "big business" forms. After 1870, several Chicago meatpackers built huge, complex organizations for purchasing animals, butchering them, and distributing meat to markets all across the nation. Their companies used all of the byproducts of the animals they slaughtered. Skins went into leather goods, hoofs into glue, bones into fertilizer, and fat into soap. One wag commented that the only part of the hog the Chicago packers did not use and sell was the squeal!

By the end of the nineteenth century, Standard Oil, led by John D. Rockefeller, dominated the refining and distribution of petroleum products in the United States, and extended its reach well beyond the nation's borders.

When an entrepreneur like Carnegie was successful in building an efficient organization to control manufacturing processes, he drove competitors out of business. A steel maker either had to compete by mimicking Carnegie's managerial techniques, or go into a niche, or specialized, market that the big steel companies did not enter. In the case of meatpacking, by 1900 thousands of local butchers found themselves squeezed, because they were less efficient than the Chicago packers. Small shopkeepers sometimes faced ruin from large department store competitors. These businesses following older, more traditional practices sometimes fueled popular sentiment to "bust" the trusts.

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The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity.

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Origins of The Labor Movement

The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. The formation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1794 marks the beginning of sustained trade union organization among American workers.
WATCH: The Labor Movement
From that time on, local craft unions proliferated in the cities, publishing lists of "prices" for their work, defending their trades against diluted and cheap labor and, increasingly, demanding a shorter workday in the face of the Industrial Revolution. Thus a job-conscious orientation was quick to emerge, and in its wake there followed the key structural elements characterizing American trade unionism. First, with the formation in 1827 of the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia, central labor bodies began uniting craft unions within a single city, and then, with the creation of the International Typographical Union in 1852, national unions began bringing together local unions of the same trade from across the United States and Canada (hence the frequent union designation "international"). Although the factory system was springing up during these years, industrial workers played little part in the early trade union development. In the 19th century, trade unionism was mainly a movement of skilled workers.

Did you know? In 2009, 12 percent of American workers belonged to unions.

Early Labor Unions

The early labor movement was, however, inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from the Ricardian labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship. The transforming economic changes of industrial capitalism ran counter to labor's vision. The result, as early labor leaders saw it, was to raise up "two distinct classes, the rich and the poor." Beginning with the workingmen's parties of the 1830s, the advocates of equal rights mounted a series of reform efforts that spanned the nineteenth century. Most notable were the National Labor Union, launched in 1866, and the Knights of Labor, which reached its zenith in the mid-1880s.

On their face, these reform movements might have seemed at odds with trade unionism, aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all "producers" rather than strictly to wageworkers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott. But contemporaries saw no contradiction: trade unionism tended to the workers' immediate needs, labor reform to their higher hopes. The two were held to be strands of a single movement, rooted in a common working-class constituency and to some degree sharing a common leadership. But equally important, they were strands that had to be kept operationally separate and functionally distinct.
PHOTOS: These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America
American Federation of Labor

During the 1880s, that division fatally eroded. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes. When it refused, they joined in December 1886 to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The new federation marked a break with the past, for it denied to labor reform any further role in the struggles of American workers. In part, the assertion of trade union supremacy stemmed from an undeniable reality. As industrialism matured, labor reform lost its meaning-hence the confusion and ultimate failure of the Knights of Labor. Marxism taught Samuel Gompers and his fellow socialists that trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution. The founders of theAFL translated this notion into the principle of "pure and simple" unionism: only by self-organization along occupational lines and by a concentration on job-conscious goals would the worker be "furnished with the weapons which shall secure his industrial emancipation."

That class formulation necessarily defined trade unionism as the movement of the entire working class. The AFL asserted as a formal policy that it represented all workers, irrespective of skill, race, religion, nationality or gender. But the national unions that had created the AFL in fact comprised only the skilled trades. Almost at once, therefore, the trade union movement encountered a dilemma: How to square ideological aspirations against contrary institutional realities?

Discrimination in The Labor Movement

As sweeping technological change began to undermine the craft system of production, some national unions did move toward an industrial structure, most notably in coal mining and the garment trades. But most craft unions either refused or, as in iron and steel and in meat-packing, failed to organize the less skilled. And since skill lines tended to conform to racial, ethnic and gender divisions, the trade union movement took on a racist and sexist coloration as well. For a short period, the AFL resisted that tendency. But in 1895, unable to launch an interracial machinists' union of its own, the Federation reversed an earlier principled decision and chartered the whites-only International Association of Machinists. Formally or informally, the color bar thereafter spread throughout the trade union movement. In 1902, blacks made up scarcely 3 percent of total membership, most of them segregated in Jim Crow locals. In the case of women and eastern European immigrants, a similar devolution occurred-welcomed as equals in theory, excluded or segregated in practice. (Only the fate of Asian workers was unproblematic; their rights had never been asserted by the AFLin the first place.)

Samuel Gompers

Gompers justified the subordination of principle to organizational reality on the constitutional grounds of "trade autonomy," by which each national union was assured the right to regulate its own internal affairs. But the organizational dynamism of the labor movement was in fact located in the national unions. Only as they experienced inner change might the labor movement expand beyond the narrow limits-roughly 10 percent of the labor force-at which it stabilized before World War I.

In the political realm, the founding doctrine of pure-and-simple unionism meant an arm's-length relationship to the state and the least possible entanglement in partisan politics. A total separation had, of course, never been seriously contemplated; some objectives, such as immigration restriction, could be achieved only through state action, and the predecessor to the AFL, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (1881), had in fact been created to serve as labor's lobbying arm in Washington. Partly because of the lure of progressive labor legislation, even more in response to increasingly damaging court attacks on the trade unions, political activity quickened after 1900. With the enunciation of Labor's Bill of Grievances (1906), the AFL laid down a challenge to the major parties. Henceforth it would campaign for its friends and seek the defeat of its enemies.

This nonpartisan entry into electoral politics, paradoxically, undercut the left-wing advocates of an independent working-class politics. That question had been repeatedly debated within theAFL, first in 1890 over Socialist Labor party representation, then in 1893-1894 over an alliance with the Populist Party and after 1901 over affiliation with the Socialist party of America. Although Gompers prevailed each time, he never found it easy. Now, as labor's leverage with the major parties began to pay off, Gompers had an effective answer to his critics on the left: the labor movement could not afford to waste its political capital on socialist parties or independent politics. When that nonpartisan strategy failed, as it did in the reaction following World War I, an independent political strategy took hold, first through the robust campaigning of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922, and in 1924 through labor's endorsement of Robert La Follette on the Progressive ticket. By then, however, the Republican administration was moderating its hard line, evident especially in Herbert Hoover's efforts to resolve the simmering crises in mining and on the railroads. In response, the trade unions abandoned the Progressive party, retreated to nonpartisanship, and, as their power waned, lapsed into inactivity.

The Labor Movement and The Great Depression
WATCH: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center. The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. When the craft unions stymied the ALF's organizing efforts, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his followers broke away in 1935 and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which crucially aided the emerging unions in auto, rubber, steel and other basic industries. In 1938 the CIO was formally established as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By the end of World War II, more than 12 million workers belonged to unions and collective bargaining had taken hold throughout the industrial economy.

In politics, its enhanced power led the union movement not to a new departure but to a variant on the policy of nonpartisanship. As far back as the Progressive Era, organized labor had been drifting toward the Democratic party, partly because of the latter's greater programmatic appeal, perhaps even more because of its ethno-cultural basis of support within an increasingly "new" immigrant working class. With the coming of Roosevelt's New Deal, this incipient alliance solidified, and from 1936 onward the Democratic Party could count on-and came to rely on-the campaigning resources of the labor movement.

Collective Bargaining

That this alliance partook of the nonpartisan logic of Gompers's authorship-too much was at stake for organized labor to waste its political capital on third parties-became clear in the unsettled period of the early cold war. Not only did theCIO oppose the Progressive party of 1948, but it expelled the left-wing unions that broke ranks and supported Henry Wallace for the presidency that year.

The formation of the AFL-CIOin 1955 visibly testified to the powerful continuities persisting through the age of industrial unionism. Above all, the central purpose remained what it had always been-to advance the economic and job interests of the union membership. Collective bargaining performed impressively after World War II, more than tripling weekly earnings in manufacturing between 1945 and 1970, gaining for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace. But if the benefits were greater and if they went to more people, the basic job-conscious thrust remained intact. Organized labor was still a sectional movement, covering at most only a third of America's wage earners and inaccessible to those cut off in the low-wage secondary labor market.

Women and Minorities in the Labor Movement

Nothing better captures the uneasy amalgam of old and new in the postwar labor movement than the treatment of minorities and women who flocked in, initially from the mass production industries, but after 1960 from the public and service sectors as well. Labor's historic commitment to racial and gender equality was thereby much strengthened, but not to the point of challenging the status quo within the labor movement itself. Thus the leadership structure remained largely closed to minorities-as did the skilled jobs that were historically the preserve of white male workers-notoriously so in the construction trades but in the industrial unions as well. Yet the AFL-CIOplayed a crucial role in the battle for civil rights legislation in 1964-1965. That this legislation might be directed against discriminatory trade union practices was anticipated (and quietly welcomed) by the more progressive labor leaders. But more significant was the meaning they found in championing this kind of reform: the chance to act on the broad ideals of the labor movement. And, so motivated, they deployed labor's power with great effect in the achievement of John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson 's domestic programs during the 1960s.

Decline in Unions

This was ultimately economic, not political power, however, and as organized labor's grip on the industrial sector began to weaken, so did its political capability. From the early 1970s onward, new competitive forces swept through the heavily unionized industries, set off by deregulation in communications and transportation, by industrial restructuring and by an unprecedented onslaught of foreign goods. As oligopolistic and regulated market structures broke down, nonunion competition spurted, concession bargaining became widespread and plant closings decimated union memberships. The once-celebrated National Labor Relations Act increasingly hamstrung the labor movement; an all-out reform campaign to get the law amended failed in 1978. And with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, there came to power an anti-union administration the likes of which had not been seen since the Harding era.

Between 1975 and 1985, union membership fell by 5 million. In manufacturing, the unionized portion of the labor force dropped below 25 percent, while mining and construction, once labor's flagship industries, were decimated. Only in the public sector did the unions hold their own. By the end of the 1980s, less than 17 percent of American workers were organized, half the proportion of the early 1950s.

The labor movement has never been swift to change. But if the new high-tech and service sectors seemed beyond its reach in 1989, so did the mass production industries in 1929. There is a silver lining: Compared to the old AFL, organized labor is today much more diverse and broadly based: In 2018, of the 14.7 million wage and salary workers who were part of a union (compared to 17.7 million in 1983), 25 percent are women and 28 percent are Black.

Sources

TED: The Economics Daily. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction.

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International Stock Food Factory, between 1900 and 1910
Detroit Publishing Company

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy.

Industrial growth transformed American society. It produced a new class of wealthy industrialists and a prosperous middle class. It also produced a vastly expanded blue collar working class. The labor force that made industrialization possible was made up of millions of newly arrived immigrants and even larger numbers of migrants from rural areas. American society became more diverse than ever before.

Not everyone shared in the economic prosperity of this period. Many workers were typically unemployed at least part of the year, and their wages were relatively low when they did work. This situation led many workers to support and join labor unions. Meanwhile, farmers also faced hard times as technology and increasing production led to more competition and falling prices for farm products. Hard times on farms led many young people to move to the city in search of better job opportunities.

Americans who were born in the 1840s and 1850s would experience enormous changes in their lifetimes. Some of these changes resulted from a sweeping technological revolution. Their major source of light, for example, would change from candles, to kerosene lamps, and then to electric light bulbs. They would see their transportation evolve from walking and horse power to steam-powered locomotives, to electric trolley cars, to gasoline-powered automobiles. Born into a society in which the vast majority of people were involved in agriculture, they experienced an industrial revolution that radically changed the ways millions of people worked and where they lived. They would experience the migration of millions of people from rural America to the nation's rapidly growing cities.

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Overview | Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy. Industrial growth transformed American society.

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The Growth of Mass Communication - late 1800s

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The Growth of Mass Communication - late 1800s

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Evolution of Communication is our latest ebook that explores the development of human communication methods from prehistoric times until today. This is the second of a three-part blog series that highlights the in-depth information available in that publication.
Can you imagine not being able to reach anyone, no matter their location, at a moment's notice? Until just a few centuries ago, communications were limited by distance. Once we entered the 19 th century, our communications methods advanced with innovations that made communications simpler and able to happen over longer distances than previously possible (remember the methods we talked about in our previous post?.

The 1800s: A Major Leap
During the 19 th century, signal lamps, newspapers, and the electric telegraph made it possible to transmit information farther and to more people at once than ever before. First known to be available around 1867, signal lamps were used to transmit Morse code between towns, between ships at sea, and from land to sea.

By the late 1800s, many small town and cities published their own newspaper which allowed for passing along information to very large groups of people at a time. People could learn about events in towns and cities from all over by subscribing to papers from other places. The electric telegraph led to many additional telegraph innovations including the trans-Atlantic telegraph, the acoustic phonograph, and wireless telegraphy.

The telegraph played a major role in the development of communication; in 1858, the completion of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable marked a new era in communication between Europe and the United States. Of course, one of the biggest technological breakthroughs of all time may be the telephone, which became a prime method of communication between individuals starting 1876. No discussion of communication would be complete without mention of the radio, which became publicly available in the late 1800s.

The 1900s: Technology Soars
America was already going mobile by the early 20 th century. Believe it or not, the first experimental videophone was available around 1936, and telephone service for automobiles was available shortly after that, though availability was limited.

Television changed the landscape of communication forever when it was first introduced in 1927. A few decades later, many families would have their own television sets, making it possible for the latest news and information to come directly into an individual's home almost as soon as it happened. Though many forms of communication have come and gone, television remains one of the most widely used inventions. People all around the world still depend on TV for up-to-date information, as well as entertainment.

Do these inventions sound more familiar? Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief at the familiarity of these more common methods of communication. They are here and we are no longer relying on a pigeon to transmit our messages (probably). While many of these came out less than a century ago, they have already been improved quite a lot in the years following their inventions.

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Evolution of Communication: 1800s and 1900s | OCN

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Evolution of Communication is our latest ebook that explores the development of human communication methods from prehistoric times until today. This is the second of a three-part blog series that highlights the in-depth information available in that publication. Can you imagine not being able to reach anyone, no matter their location, at a moment's notice?

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Chapter 18
The Transcontinental Railroad video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dc1RUzN9Sk
Massacre at Wounded Knee picture:
https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTYwODg2MjQwMjYwOTkwOTUx/hith-the_opening_of_the_fight_at_wounded_knee_by_frederic_remington_1891-ab.jpg
Dawes General Allotment Act article:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dawes-General-Allotment-Act
The Homestead and Morrill Acts article:
https://into-the-westah1.weebly.com/homestead-act-and-morrill-land.html
Chapter 19
The Bessemer Process video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLD95I6naEc
Growth of Invention- late 1800s article:
https://americanhistory.si.edu/american-stories/1870-1900-industrial-development
The Rise of Big Business article:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/RiseBigBusiness
The Antitrust Movement picture:
https://sites.google.com/site/mshochhonorsusiiwebsite/_/rsrc/1468867493562/home/the-rise-of-industrial-america/the-antitrust-movement/image003.jpg?height=320&width=271
The Labor Movement article:
https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
Chapter 20
The Rise of Immigration- late 1800s article:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/immgnts/
Growth of Cities picture:
https://ecdn.teacherspayteachers.com/thumbitem/Growth-of-Cities-Big-Businesses-Lesson-3474118-1510442725/original-3474118-1.jpg
Tenement Life- Causes and Effects video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgGm3SJ1WcU
Growth of mass Communication- late 1800s article:
https://www.onecallnow.com/blog/02/evolution-of-communication-1800s-and-1900s/
21/22
Rise of political machine- https://www.americanheritage.com/political-machine-i-rise-and-fall-age-bosses
Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)-https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s)-https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/women-and-the-temperance-movement
Election of 1912-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWKzNvgRKoQ
Isolationism vs. Imperialism-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Jr_DE29DU
Progressive reform-
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/lNdHrNm4TnHtJF1tENvxy8cNQWibkkdquIS-vB-VP2Ib9piD8agn32XxG8jne6cAJxOtqlNzugqxIVoXNn8tU22jtX-V
Chapter 23
assassination of arch duke-
https://www.history.com/news/the-assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-100-years-ago
new technology of ww1-https://www.ncpedia.org/wwi-technology-and-weapons-war
14 points-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbdhxLVlrhI
treaty of Versailles- https://historycooperative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/newspaper.jpg

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 Rise of Political Machines (Late 1800s)

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 Rise of Political Machines (Late 1800s)

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The big city and the political boss grew up together in America. Bossism, with all its color and corruption and human drama, was a natural and perhaps necessary accompaniment to the rapid development of cities. The new urban communities did not grow slowly and according to plan; on the contrary, huge conglomerations of people from all over the world and from widely varying backgrounds came together suddenly, and in an unplanned, unorganized fashion fumbled their way toward communal relationships and a common identity. The political bosses emerged to cope with this chaotic change and growth. Acting out of greed, a ruthless will for mastery, and an imperfect understanding of what they were about, the bosses imposed upon these conglomerations called cities a certain feudal order and direction.

By 1890 virtually every sizable city had a political boss or was in the process of developing one. By 1950, sixty years later, almost every urban political machine was in an advanced state of obsolescence and its boss in trouble. The reason is not hard to find. Some of the cities kept growing and all of them kept changing, but the bosses, natural products of a specific era, could not grow or change beyond a certain point. The cities became essentially different, and as they did, the oldstyle organizations, like all organisms which cannot adapt, began to die. The dates vary from city to city. The system began earlier and died sooner in New York. Here or there, an old-timer made one last comeback. In Chicago, the organization and its boss still survive. But exceptions aside, the late nineteenth century saw the beginning, and the middle twentieth, the end, of the Age of the Bosses. What follows is a brief history of how it began, flourished, and passed away.

Soft-spoken Irish fanners from County Mayo and bearded Jews from Poland, country boys from Ohio and sturdy peasants from Calabria, gangling Swedes from near the Artic Circle and Chinese from Canton, laconic Yankees from Vermont villages and Negro freedmen putting distance between themselves and the old plantation-all these and many other varieties of human beings from every national and religious arid cultural tradition poured into America's cities in the decades after the Civil War.

Rome and Alexandria in the ancient world had probably been as polyglot, but in modern times the diversity of American cities was unique. Everywhere in the Western world, cities were growing rapidly in the late nineteenth century; but the Germans from the countryside who migrated to Hamburg and Berlin, the English who moved to Birmingham and London, and the French who flocked to Paris stayed among fellow nationals. They might be mocked as country bumpkins and their clothes might be unfashionable, but everyone they met spoke the same language as themselves, observed the same religious and secular holidays, ate the same kind of food, voted-if they had the franchise at all-in the same elections, and shared the same sentiments and expectations. To move from farm or village to a big European city was an adventure, but one still remained within the reassuring circle of the known and the familiar.

In American cities, however, the newcomers had nothing in common with one another except their poverty and their hopes. They were truly "the uprooted." The foreign-born, unless they came from the British Isles, could not speak the language of their new homeland. The food, the customs, the holidays, the politics, were alien. Native Americans migrating to the cities from the countryside experienced their own kind of cultural shock: they found themselves competing not with other Americans but with recently arrived foreigners, so that despite their native birth they, too, felt displaced, strangers in their own country.

It was natural for members of each group to come together to try to find human warmth and protection in Little Italy or Cork Hill or Chinatown or Harlem. These feelings of clannish solidarity were one basis of strength for the political bosses. A man will more readily give his vote to a candidate because he is a neighbor from the old country or has some easily identifiable relationship, if only a similar name or the same religion, than because of agreement on some impersonal issue. Voters can take vicarious satisfaction from his success: "One of our boys is making good."

With so many different races and nationalities living together, however, mutual antagonisms were present, and the opportunity for hostility to flare into open violence was never far away. Ambitious, unscrupulous politicians could have exploited these antagonisms for their own political advantage, but the bosses and the political organizations which they developed did not function that way. It a man could vote and would "vote right," he was accepted, and that was the end of the matter. What lasting profit was there in attacking his religion or deriding his background?

Tammany early set the pattern of cultivating every bloc and faction and making an appeal as broad-based as possible. Of one precinct captain on the Lower East Side it was said: "He eats corned beef and kosher meat with equal nonchalance, and it's all the same to him whether he takes off his hat in the church or pulls it down over his ears in the synagogue."

Bosses elsewhere instinctively followed the same practice. George B. Cox, the turn-of-the-century Republican boss of Cincinnati, pasted together a coalition of Germans, Negroes, and old families like the Tafts and the Long-worths. James M. Curley, who was mayor of Boston on and off for thirty-six years and was its closest approximation to a political boss, ran as well in the Lithuanian neighborhood of South Boston and the Italian section of East Boston as he did in the working-class Irish wards. In his last term in City Hall, he conferred minor patronage on the growing Negro community and joined the N.A.A.C.P.

The bosses organized neighborhoods, smoothed out antagonisms, arranged ethnically balanced tickets, and distributed patronage in accordance with voting strength as part of their effort to win and hold power. They blurred divisive issues and buried racial and religious hostility with blarney and buncombe. They were not aware that they were actually performing a mediating, pacifying function. They did not realize that by trying to please as many people as possible they were helping to hold raw new cities together, providing for inexperienced citizens a common meeting ground in politics and an experience in working together that would not have been available if the cities had been governed by apolitical bureaucracies. Bossism was usually corrupt and was decidedly inefficient, but in the 1960's, when antipoverty planners try to stimulate "community action organizations" to break through the apathy and disorganization of the slums, we can appreciate that the old-style machines had their usefulness.

When William Marcy Tweed, the first and most famous of the big-city bosses, died in jail in 1878, several hundred workingmen showed up for his funeral. The Nation wrote the following week: Let us remember that he fell without loss of reputation among the bulk of his supporters. The bulk of the poorer voters of this city today revere his memory, and look on him as the victim of rich men's malice; as, in short, a friend of the needy who applied the public funds, with as little waste as was possible under the circumstances, to the purposes to which they ought to be applied-and that is to the making of work for the working man. The odium heaped on him in the pulpits last Sunday does not exist in the lower stratum of New York society.

This split in attitude toward political bosses between the impoverished many and the prosperous middle classes lingers today and still colors historical writing. To respectable people, the boss was an exotic, even grotesque figure. They found it hard to understand why anyone would vote for him or what the sources of his popularity were. To the urban poor, those sources were self-evident. The boss ran a kind of ramshackle welfare state. He helped the unemployed find jobs, interceded in court for boys in trouble, wrote letters home to the old country for the illiterate; he provided free coal and baskets of food to tide a widow over an emergency, and organized parades, excursions to the beach, and other forms of free entertainment. Some bosses, such as Frank Hague in Jersey City and Curley in Boston, were energetic patrons of their respective city hospitals, spending public funds lavishly on new-construction, providing maternity and children's clinics, and arranging medical care for the indigent. In an era when social security, Blue Cross, unemployment compensation, and other public and private arrangements to cushion life's shocks did not exist, these benefactions from a political boss were important.

In every city, the boss had his base in the poorer, older, shabbier section of town. Historians have dubbed this section the "walking city" because it developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when houses and businesses were jumbled together, usually near the waterfront, and businessmen and laborers alike had to live within walking distance of their work. As transportation improved, people were able to live farther and farther from their place of work. Population dispersed in rough concentric circles: the financially most successful lived in the outer ring, where land was plentiful and the air was clean: the middle classes lived in intermediate neighborhoods; and the poorest and the latest arrivals from Europe crowded into the now-rundown neighborhoods in the center, where rents were lowest. Politics in most cities reflected a struggle between the old, boss-run wards downtown and the more prosperous neighborhoods farther out, which did not need a boss's services and which championed reform. The more skilled workingmen and the white-collar workers who lived in the intermediate neighborhoods generally held the balance of power between the machine and the reformers. A skillful boss could hold enough of these swing voters on the basis of ethnic loyalty or shared support of a particular issue. At times, he might work out alliances with business leaders who found that an understanding with a boss was literally more businesslike than dependence upon the vagaries of reform.

But always it was the poorest and most insecure who provided the boss with the base of his political power. Their only strength, as Professor Richard C. Wade of the University of Chicago has observed, was in their numbers.

These numbers were in most cases a curse: housing never caught up with demand, the job market was always flooded, the breadwinner had too many mouths to feed. Yet in politics such a liability could be turned into an asset. If the residents could be mobilized, their combined strength would be able to do what none could do alone. Soon the "boss" and the "machine" arose to organize this potential. The boss system was simply the political expression of inner city life.

At a time when many newcomers to the city were seeking unskilled work, and when many families had a precarious economic footing, the ability to dispense jobs was crucial to the bosses. First, there were jobs to be filled on the city payroll. Just as vital, and far more numerous, were jobs on municipal construction projects. When the machine controlled a city, public funds were always being spent for more schools, hospitals, libraries, courthouses, and orphanages. The growing cities had to have more sewer lines, gas lines, and waterworks, more paved streets and trolley tracks. Even if these utilities were privately owned, the managers needed the goodwill of city hall and were responsive to suggestions about whom to hire.

The payrolls of these public works projects were often padded, but to those seeking a job, it was better to be on a padded payroll than on no payroll. By contrast, the municipal reformers usually cut back on public spending, stopped projects to investigate for graft, and pruned payrolls. Middle- and upper-income taxpayers welcomed these reforms, but they were distinctly unpopular in working-class wards.

Another issue that strengthened the bosses was the regulation of the sale of liquor. Most women in the nineteenth century did not drink, and with their backing, the movement to ban entirely the manufacture and sale of liquor grew steadily stronger. It had its greatest support among Protestants with a rural or small-town background. To them the cities, with their saloons, dance halls, cheap theatres, and red-light districts, were becoming latter-day versions of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Many of the European immigrants in the cities, however, had entirely different values. Quite respectable Germans took their wives to beer gardens on Sundays. In the eyes of the Irish, keeping a "public house" was an honorable occupation. Some Irish women drank beer and saw no harm in going to the saloon or sending an older child for a bucketful-"rushing the growler," I they called it. Poles, Czechs, Italians, and others also! failed to share the rage of the Prohibitionists against] saloons. Unable to entertain in their cramped tenements, they liked to congregate in neighborhood bars.

The machine also appealed successfully on the liquor issue to many middle-class ethnic voters who had no need of the machine's economic assistance. Thus, in New York in 1897, Tammany scored a sweeping victory over an incumbent reform administration that had tried to enforce a state law permitting only hotels to sell liquor on Sundays. As one of the city's three police commissioners, Theodore Roosevelt became famous prowling the tougher neighborhoods on the hunt for saloon violations, but on the vaudeville stage the singers were giving forth with the hit song, "I Want What I Want When I Want It!" As a character in Alfred Henry Lewis' novel The Boss explained it, the reformers had made a serious mistake: "They got between the people and its beer!"

In 1902, Lincoln Steffens, the muckraker who made a name for himself writing about political bossism, visited St. Louis to interview Joseph W. Folk, a crusading district attorney. "It is good businessmen that are corrupting our bad politicians," Folk told him. "It is good business that causes bad government in St. Louis." Thirty-five years later, Boss Tom Pendergast was running the entire state of Missouri on that same reciprocal relationship.

Although many factory owners could be indifferent to politics, other businessmen were dependent upon the goodwill and the efficiency of the municipal government. The railroads that wanted to build their freight terminals and extend their lines into the cities, the contractors who erected the office buildings, the banks that held mortgages on the land and loaned money for the construction, the utility and transit companies, and the department stores were all in need of licenses, franchises, rights of way, or favorable rulings from city inspectors and agencies. These were the businesses that made the big pay-offs to political bosses in cash, blocks of stock, or tips on land about to be developed.

In another sense, profound, impersonal, and not corrupt, the business community needed the boss. Because the Industrial Revolution hit this country when it was still thinly populated and most of its cities were overgrown towns, American cities expanded with astonishing speed. For example, in the single decade from 1880 to 1890, Chicago's population more than doubled, from a half million to over a million. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul tripled in size. New York City increased from a million to a million and a half; Detroit, Milwaukee, Columbus, and Cleveland grew by sixty to eighty per cent.

Municipal governments, however, were unprepared for this astonishing growth. Planning and budgeting were unknown arts. City charters had restrictive provisions envisaged for much smaller, simpler communities. The mayor and the important commissioners were usually amateurs serving a term or two as a civic duty. Authority was dispersed among numerous boards and special agencies. A typical city would have a board of police commissioners, a board of health, a board of tax assessors, a water board, and many others. The ostensible governing body was a city council or board of aldermen which might have thirty, fifty, or even a hundred members. Under these circumstances, it was difficult to get a prompt decision, harder still to co-ordinate decisions taken by different bodies acting on different premises, and easy for delays and anomalies to develop.

In theory, the cities could have met their need for increased services by municipal socialism, but the conventional wisdom condemned that as too radical, although here and there a city did experiment with publicly owned utilities. In theory also, the cities could have financed public buildings and huge projects such as water and sewer systems by frankly raising taxes or floating bonds. But both taxes and debt were no more popular then than they are now. Moreover, the laissezfaire doctrine which holds that "that government is best which governs least" was enshrined orthodoxy in America from the 1870's down to the 1930's.

As men clung to such orthodox philosophies, the structures of government became obsolete; they strained to meet unexpected demands as a swelling number of citizens in every class clamored for more services. In this climate the bosses emerged. They had no scruples about taking shortcuts through old procedures or manipulating independent boards and agencies in ways that the original city fathers had never intended. They had no inhibiting commitment to any theory of limited government. They were willing to spend, tax, and build-and to take the opprobrium along with the graft. Sometimes, like Hague in Jersey City, Curley in Boston, and Big Bill Thompson in Chicago, they got themselves elected mayor and openly assumed responsibility. More often, like Pendergast in Kansas City, Cox in Cincinnati, the leaders of Tammany, and the successive Republican bosses of Philadelphia, they held minor offices or none, stayed out of the limelight, and ran city government through their iron control of the party organization. In ruling Memphis for forty years, Ed Crump followed one pattern and then the other. Impeached on a technicality after being elected three times as mayor, Crump retreated to the back rooms and became even more powerful as the city's political boss.

What manner of men became political bosses? They were men of little education and no social background, often of immigrant parentage. A college-educated boss like Edward Flynn of The Bronx was a rarity. Bosses often began as saloonkeepers, because the saloon was a natural meeting place in poorer neighborhoods in the days before Prohibition. They were physically strong and no strangers to violence. Seventy-five years ago, most men made their living with brawn rather than brain, and a man who expected to be a leader of men had to be tough as will as shrewd. Open violence used to be common at polling places on Election Day, and gangs of repeaters roamed from one precinct to another. Although the typical boss made his way up through that roughneck system, the logic, of his career led him to suppress violence. Bloody heads make bad publicity, and it is hard for any political organization to maintain a monopoly on violence. Bosses grew to prefer quieter, more lawful, less dangerous methods of control. Ballot-box stuffing and overt intimidation never disappeared entirely, but gradually they receded to the status of weapons of last resort.

Political bosses varied in their idiosyncrasies and styles. A few, like Curley, became polished orators; others, like the legendary Charles Murphy of Tammany Hall, never made speeches. They were temperate, businesslike types; among them a drunk was as rare as a Phi Beta Kappa. If they had a generic failing it was for horses and gambling. Essentially they were hardheaded men of executive temper and genuine organizing talents; many, in other circumstances and with more education, might have become successful businessmen.

They have disappeared now, most of them. Education has produced a more sophisticated electorate; it has also encouraged potential bosses to turn away from politics toward more secure, prestigious, and profitable careers. A young man who had the energy, persistence, and skill in 1899 to become a successful political boss would in 1969 go to college and end up in an executive suite.

The urban population has also changed. The great flood of bewildered foreigners has dwindled to a trickle. In place of the European immigrants of the past, today's cities receive an influx of Negroes from the rural South, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and the white poor from Appalachia. As they overcome the language barrier and widen their experience, the Puerto Ricans are making themselves felt in urban politics. New York City, where they are most heavily concentrated, may have a Puerto Rican mayor in the not too distant future.

But the other groups are too isolated from the rest of the community to put together a winning political coalition of have-nots. The Mexicans and the ex-hillbillies from Appalachia are isolated by their unique cultural backgrounds, the Negroes by the giant fact of their race. Inasmuch as they make up a quarter to a third of the population in many cities, are a cohesive group, and still have a high proportion of poor who have to look to government for direct help, the Negroes might have produced several bosses and functioning political machines had they been of white European ancestry. But until Negroes attain a clear numerical majority, they find it difficult to take political power in any city because various white factions are reluctant to coalesce with them.

Regardless of the race or background of the voters, however, there are factors which work against the oldstyle machines. Civil service regulations make it harder to create a job or pad a payroll. Federal income taxes and federal accounting requirements make it more difficult to hide the rewards of graft. Television, public relations, and polling have created a whole new set of political techniques and undermined the personal ties and neighborhood loyalties on which the old organizations depended.

The new political style has brought an increase in municipal government efficiency and probably some decline in political corruption and misrule. But the politics of the television age puts a premium on hypocrisy. Candor has gone out the window with the spoils system. There is still a lot of self-seeking in politics and always will be. But gone are the days of Tammany's Boss Richard Croker, who when asked by an investigating committee if he was "working for his own pocket," shot back: "All the time-same as you." Today's politicians are so busy tending their images that they have become incapable of even a mildly derogatory remark such as Jim Curley's: "The term 'codfish aristocracy' is a reflection on the fish."

Curley entitled his memoirs I'd Do It Again . But the rough-and-tumble days when two-fisted, rough-tongued politicians came roaring out of the slums to take charge of America's young cities are not to come again.

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The Political Machine I: Rise And Fall The Age Of The Bosses

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The big city and the political boss grew up together in America. Bossism, with all its color and corruption and human drama, was a natural and perhaps necessary accompaniment to the rapid development of cities.

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Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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Origins of The Labor Movement

The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. The formation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1794 marks the beginning of sustained trade union organization among American workers.
WATCH: The Labor Movement
From that time on, local craft unions proliferated in the cities, publishing lists of "prices" for their work, defending their trades against diluted and cheap labor and, increasingly, demanding a shorter workday in the face of the Industrial Revolution. Thus a job-conscious orientation was quick to emerge, and in its wake there followed the key structural elements characterizing American trade unionism. First, with the formation in 1827 of the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia, central labor bodies began uniting craft unions within a single city, and then, with the creation of the International Typographical Union in 1852, national unions began bringing together local unions of the same trade from across the United States and Canada (hence the frequent union designation "international"). Although the factory system was springing up during these years, industrial workers played little part in the early trade union development. In the 19th century, trade unionism was mainly a movement of skilled workers.

Did you know? In 2009, 12 percent of American workers belonged to unions.

Early Labor Unions

The early labor movement was, however, inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from the Ricardian labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship. The transforming economic changes of industrial capitalism ran counter to labor's vision. The result, as early labor leaders saw it, was to raise up "two distinct classes, the rich and the poor." Beginning with the workingmen's parties of the 1830s, the advocates of equal rights mounted a series of reform efforts that spanned the nineteenth century. Most notable were the National Labor Union, launched in 1866, and the Knights of Labor, which reached its zenith in the mid-1880s.

On their face, these reform movements might have seemed at odds with trade unionism, aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all "producers" rather than strictly to wageworkers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott. But contemporaries saw no contradiction: trade unionism tended to the workers' immediate needs, labor reform to their higher hopes. The two were held to be strands of a single movement, rooted in a common working-class constituency and to some degree sharing a common leadership. But equally important, they were strands that had to be kept operationally separate and functionally distinct.
PHOTOS: These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America
American Federation of Labor

During the 1880s, that division fatally eroded. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes. When it refused, they joined in December 1886 to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The new federation marked a break with the past, for it denied to labor reform any further role in the struggles of American workers. In part, the assertion of trade union supremacy stemmed from an undeniable reality. As industrialism matured, labor reform lost its meaning-hence the confusion and ultimate failure of the Knights of Labor. Marxism taught Samuel Gompers and his fellow socialists that trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution. The founders of theAFL translated this notion into the principle of "pure and simple" unionism: only by self-organization along occupational lines and by a concentration on job-conscious goals would the worker be "furnished with the weapons which shall secure his industrial emancipation."

That class formulation necessarily defined trade unionism as the movement of the entire working class. The AFL asserted as a formal policy that it represented all workers, irrespective of skill, race, religion, nationality or gender. But the national unions that had created the AFL in fact comprised only the skilled trades. Almost at once, therefore, the trade union movement encountered a dilemma: How to square ideological aspirations against contrary institutional realities?

Discrimination in The Labor Movement

As sweeping technological change began to undermine the craft system of production, some national unions did move toward an industrial structure, most notably in coal mining and the garment trades. But most craft unions either refused or, as in iron and steel and in meat-packing, failed to organize the less skilled. And since skill lines tended to conform to racial, ethnic and gender divisions, the trade union movement took on a racist and sexist coloration as well. For a short period, the AFL resisted that tendency. But in 1895, unable to launch an interracial machinists' union of its own, the Federation reversed an earlier principled decision and chartered the whites-only International Association of Machinists. Formally or informally, the color bar thereafter spread throughout the trade union movement. In 1902, blacks made up scarcely 3 percent of total membership, most of them segregated in Jim Crow locals. In the case of women and eastern European immigrants, a similar devolution occurred-welcomed as equals in theory, excluded or segregated in practice. (Only the fate of Asian workers was unproblematic; their rights had never been asserted by the AFLin the first place.)

Samuel Gompers

Gompers justified the subordination of principle to organizational reality on the constitutional grounds of "trade autonomy," by which each national union was assured the right to regulate its own internal affairs. But the organizational dynamism of the labor movement was in fact located in the national unions. Only as they experienced inner change might the labor movement expand beyond the narrow limits-roughly 10 percent of the labor force-at which it stabilized before World War I.

In the political realm, the founding doctrine of pure-and-simple unionism meant an arm's-length relationship to the state and the least possible entanglement in partisan politics. A total separation had, of course, never been seriously contemplated; some objectives, such as immigration restriction, could be achieved only through state action, and the predecessor to the AFL, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (1881), had in fact been created to serve as labor's lobbying arm in Washington. Partly because of the lure of progressive labor legislation, even more in response to increasingly damaging court attacks on the trade unions, political activity quickened after 1900. With the enunciation of Labor's Bill of Grievances (1906), the AFL laid down a challenge to the major parties. Henceforth it would campaign for its friends and seek the defeat of its enemies.

This nonpartisan entry into electoral politics, paradoxically, undercut the left-wing advocates of an independent working-class politics. That question had been repeatedly debated within theAFL, first in 1890 over Socialist Labor party representation, then in 1893-1894 over an alliance with the Populist Party and after 1901 over affiliation with the Socialist party of America. Although Gompers prevailed each time, he never found it easy. Now, as labor's leverage with the major parties began to pay off, Gompers had an effective answer to his critics on the left: the labor movement could not afford to waste its political capital on socialist parties or independent politics. When that nonpartisan strategy failed, as it did in the reaction following World War I, an independent political strategy took hold, first through the robust campaigning of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922, and in 1924 through labor's endorsement of Robert La Follette on the Progressive ticket. By then, however, the Republican administration was moderating its hard line, evident especially in Herbert Hoover's efforts to resolve the simmering crises in mining and on the railroads. In response, the trade unions abandoned the Progressive party, retreated to nonpartisanship, and, as their power waned, lapsed into inactivity.

The Labor Movement and The Great Depression
WATCH: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center. The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. When the craft unions stymied the ALF's organizing efforts, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his followers broke away in 1935 and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which crucially aided the emerging unions in auto, rubber, steel and other basic industries. In 1938 the CIO was formally established as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By the end of World War II, more than 12 million workers belonged to unions and collective bargaining had taken hold throughout the industrial economy.

In politics, its enhanced power led the union movement not to a new departure but to a variant on the policy of nonpartisanship. As far back as the Progressive Era, organized labor had been drifting toward the Democratic party, partly because of the latter's greater programmatic appeal, perhaps even more because of its ethno-cultural basis of support within an increasingly "new" immigrant working class. With the coming of Roosevelt's New Deal, this incipient alliance solidified, and from 1936 onward the Democratic Party could count on-and came to rely on-the campaigning resources of the labor movement.

Collective Bargaining

That this alliance partook of the nonpartisan logic of Gompers's authorship-too much was at stake for organized labor to waste its political capital on third parties-became clear in the unsettled period of the early cold war. Not only did theCIO oppose the Progressive party of 1948, but it expelled the left-wing unions that broke ranks and supported Henry Wallace for the presidency that year.

The formation of the AFL-CIOin 1955 visibly testified to the powerful continuities persisting through the age of industrial unionism. Above all, the central purpose remained what it had always been-to advance the economic and job interests of the union membership. Collective bargaining performed impressively after World War II, more than tripling weekly earnings in manufacturing between 1945 and 1970, gaining for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace. But if the benefits were greater and if they went to more people, the basic job-conscious thrust remained intact. Organized labor was still a sectional movement, covering at most only a third of America's wage earners and inaccessible to those cut off in the low-wage secondary labor market.

Women and Minorities in the Labor Movement

Nothing better captures the uneasy amalgam of old and new in the postwar labor movement than the treatment of minorities and women who flocked in, initially from the mass production industries, but after 1960 from the public and service sectors as well. Labor's historic commitment to racial and gender equality was thereby much strengthened, but not to the point of challenging the status quo within the labor movement itself. Thus the leadership structure remained largely closed to minorities-as did the skilled jobs that were historically the preserve of white male workers-notoriously so in the construction trades but in the industrial unions as well. Yet the AFL-CIOplayed a crucial role in the battle for civil rights legislation in 1964-1965. That this legislation might be directed against discriminatory trade union practices was anticipated (and quietly welcomed) by the more progressive labor leaders. But more significant was the meaning they found in championing this kind of reform: the chance to act on the broad ideals of the labor movement. And, so motivated, they deployed labor's power with great effect in the achievement of John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson 's domestic programs during the 1960s.

Decline in Unions

This was ultimately economic, not political power, however, and as organized labor's grip on the industrial sector began to weaken, so did its political capability. From the early 1970s onward, new competitive forces swept through the heavily unionized industries, set off by deregulation in communications and transportation, by industrial restructuring and by an unprecedented onslaught of foreign goods. As oligopolistic and regulated market structures broke down, nonunion competition spurted, concession bargaining became widespread and plant closings decimated union memberships. The once-celebrated National Labor Relations Act increasingly hamstrung the labor movement; an all-out reform campaign to get the law amended failed in 1978. And with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, there came to power an anti-union administration the likes of which had not been seen since the Harding era.

Between 1975 and 1985, union membership fell by 5 million. In manufacturing, the unionized portion of the labor force dropped below 25 percent, while mining and construction, once labor's flagship industries, were decimated. Only in the public sector did the unions hold their own. By the end of the 1980s, less than 17 percent of American workers were organized, half the proportion of the early 1950s.

The labor movement has never been swift to change. But if the new high-tech and service sectors seemed beyond its reach in 1989, so did the mass production industries in 1929. There is a silver lining: Compared to the old AFL, organized labor is today much more diverse and broadly based: In 2018, of the 14.7 million wage and salary workers who were part of a union (compared to 17.7 million in 1983), 25 percent are women and 28 percent are Black.

Sources

TED: The Economics Daily. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction.

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Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s)

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Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s)

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During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Temperance Movement fought to reduce consumption of alcohol. The movement began in the 1820s, rooted in Protestant churches, led by clergy and prominent laymen, and powered by women volunteers. More women were involved in temperance than any other cause in US history up to that point. Women's involvement seemed natural since the movement targeted men's alcohol abuse and how it harmed women and children. At first, the Temperance Movement sought to moderate drinking, then to promote resisting the temptation to drink. Later, the goal became outright prohibition of alcohol sales. This shift coincided with a large wave of immigrants from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, and some temperance advocates echoed the concerns of nativists as they objected to immigrants' "wet" cultures and drinking customs. In addition, temperance advocates regarded urban saloons as hosts to a range of immoral behaviors beyond drunkenness, such as gambling, adultery, prostitution, profanity, and corruption.

Women rose to leadership roles with the founding of the national Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874. Temperance became known as the "Woman's Crusade," and women staged peaceful demonstrations of prayer at businesses that served alcohol. These methods reflected the gentle moral guidance expected from women of the era. Later, the Temperance Movement changed its goals and tactics, and it became a powerful political force which sought to prohibit alcohol entirely. Carrie (or Carry) Nation, a radical temperance advocate, gained both support and notoriety through raiding saloons and using a hatchet to smash their liquor bottles. In the 1890s, the Anti-Saloon League rose to prominence as an influential prohibition lobby, using methods from business and government rather than the church. The League fueled the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, or Prohibition, in 1920, which banned production and consumption of alcohol nationwide until 1933, when it was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment. While the movement aligned itself with privileged white femininity, many women who participated in the Temperance Movement also contributed to other forms of social activism, such as abolition, women's suffrage, and equal rights for women and people of color.

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During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Temperance Movement fought to reduce consumption of alcohol. The movement began in the 1820s, rooted in Protestant churches, led by clergy and prominent laymen, and powered by women volunteers. More women were involved in temperance than any other cause in US history up to that point.

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Deeply in love, Ferdinand chose to marry Sophie Chotek in 1900 despite the opposition of his uncle, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef, who refused to attend their wedding. Though not exactly a commoner, Sophie came from a family of obscure Czech nobles and not from a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty of Europe. As a result, her and Ferdinand's children were declared ineligible for the throne. Sophie also became the victim of countless petty slights. At imperial banquets, for example, she entered each room last, without an escort, and was then seated far away from her husband at the dinner table.

His marriage notwithstanding, Ferdinand remained Franz Josef's heir and inspector general of the army. In that capacity, he agreed to attend a series of June 1914 military exercises in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary had just annexed these provinces a few years earlier against the wishes of neighboring Serbia, which likewise coveted them. Ferdinand believed the Serbs to be "pigs," "thieves," "murderers" and "scoundrels." Yet he had opposed annexation for fear that it would make an already turbulent political situation even worse. Formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia-Herzegovina's population was roughly 40 percent Serb, 30 percent Muslim and 20 percent Croat, with various other ethnicities making up the remainder.

Upon learning of Ferdinand's upcoming visit, the Young Bosnians, a secret revolutionary society of peasant students, began plotting to assassinate him. In May, Gavrilo Princip, Trifko Grabez and Nedeljko Cabrinovic traveled to the Serbian capital of Belgrade, where they received six handheld bombs, four semi-automatic pistols and cyanide suicide capsules from members of the so-called Black Hand, a terrorist group with close ties to the Serbian army. After practicing with their pistols in a Belgrade park, the three men journeyed back to Bosnia-Herzegovina, receiving help from Black Hand associates to smuggle their weapons across the border. To this day, it remains unclear whether the Serbian government participated in the scheme.

Ferdinand and Sophie departed their estate for Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 23. Having received multiple warnings to cancel the trip, the archduke knew that danger potentially awaited them. "Our journey starts with an extremely promising omen," he purportedly said when the axles on his car overheated. "Here our car burns, and down there they will throw bombs at us." After arriving at a spa town a few miles outside of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital, Ferdinand attended two days of military exercises while Sophie visited schools and orphanages. On a whim, the couple drove in one evening to check out Sarajevo's bazaars. While there, they attracted a crowd of onlookers, including Princip, but were apparently treated with warmth and politeness.

Following a banquet with religious and political leaders, only one day of events remained before Ferdinand and Sophie were to return home. That morning, June 28, the archduke sent a telegram to his eldest son congratulating him on his latest exam results. He and Sophie then boarded a train for the short ride into Sarajevo. For once, Sophie was permitted to walk alongside Ferdinand during a brief troop inspection, after which the couple got in an open-topped car for a motorcade ride to city hall. The car in front of them was supposed to carry six specially trained officers but instead had only one, plus three local policemen. In fact, throughout the trip, Austro-Hungarian officials allegedly focused more attention on dinner menus than security details.

Meanwhile, seven Young Bosnians had fanned out along the Appel Quay, a main avenue in Sarajevo running parallel to the Miljacka River. When the motorcade passed by, its route having been published in advance, Cabrinovic asked which car carried the archduke. He then hurled his bomb at the car, only to watch it bounce off the folded-up roof and roll underneath the wrong vehicle. The subsequent explosion wounded two army officers and several bystanders but left Ferdinand and Sophie essentially unharmed. Cabrinovic jumped into the mostly dry riverbed and made a half-hearted attempt to kill himself before being apprehended. "I am a Serbian hero," he purportedly shouted as the police led him away. At least two other Young Bosnians also had good looks at the archduke but apparently lost the nerve to attempt an assassination.

Rather than immediately flee Sarajevo, Ferdinand decided to continue on to the planned event at city hall. Upon finishing that up, he insisted on visiting the wounded officers in the hospital. In order to dissuade any other bomb throwers, the motorcade zipped down the Appel Quay at high speeds. By mistake, however, the first three cars turned onto a side street right where Princip happened to be standing. As the cars attempted to reverse back onto the Appel Quay, Princip whipped out his pistol and fired two shots at the archduke from point-blank range, piercing him in the neck and also striking Sophie's abdomen. "Sophie, Sophie, don't die-stay alive for our children," Ferdinand murmured. Within minutes, though, both had passed away. Princip, a slender, 19-year-old Serbian army reject, later admitted to killing Ferdinand but said he had not meant to hit Sophie. Three weeks too young for the death penalty, Princip was given a 20-year sentence, but contracted tuberculosis and died in jail in April 1918, at the age of just 23.

With tensions already running high among Europe's powers, the assassination precipitated a rapid descent into World War I. First, Austria-Hungary gained German support for punitive action against Serbia. It then sent Serbia an ultimatum, worded in a way that made acceptance unlikely. Serbia proposed arbitration to resolve the dispute, but Austria-Hungary instead declared war on July 28, 1914, exactly a month after Ferdinand's death. By the following week, Germany, Russia, France, Belgium, Montenegro and Great Britain had all been drawn into the conflict, and other countries like the United States would enter later. Overall, more than 9 million soldiers and nearly that many civilians would die in fighting that lasted until 1918.

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The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, 100 Years Ago

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Deeply in love, Ferdinand chose to marry Sophie Chotek in 1900 despite the opposition of his uncle, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef, who refused to attend their wedding. Though not exactly a commoner, Sophie came from a family of obscure Czech nobles and not from a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty of Europe.

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by A. Torrey McLean
Reprinted with permission from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 1993.
Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History

See also: WWI: Life on the Western Front

One of the saddest facts about World War I is that millions died needlessly because military and civilian leaders were slow to adapt their old-fashioned strategies and tactics to the new weapons of 1914. New technology made war more horrible and more complex than ever before. The United States and other countries felt the effects of the war for years afterwards.

The popular image of World War I is soldiers in muddy trenches and dugouts, living miserably until the next attack. This is basically correct. Technological developments in engineering, metallurgy, chemistry, and optics had produced weapons deadlier than anything known before. The power of defensive weapons made winning the war on the western front all but impossible for either side.

When attacks were ordered, Allied soldiers went "over the top," climbing out of their trenches and crossing no-man's-land to reach enemy trenches. They had to cut through belts of barbed wire before they could use rifles, bayonets, pistols, and hand grenades to capture enemy positions. A victory usually meant they had seized only a few hundred yards of shell-torn earth at a terrible cost in lives. Wounded men often lay helpless in the open until they died. Those lucky enough to be rescued still faced horrible sanitary conditions before they could be taken to proper medical facilities. Between attacks,the snipers, artillery, and poison gas caused misery and death.

Airplanes, products of the new technology, were primarily made of canvas, wood, and wire. At first they were used only to observe enemy troops. As their effectiveness became apparent, both sides shot planes down with artillery from the ground and with rifles, pistols, and machine guns from other planes. In 1916, the Germans armed planes with machine guns that could fire forward without shooting off the fighters' propellers. The Allies soon armed their airplanes the same way, and war in the air became a deadly business. These light, highly maneuverable fighter planes attacked each other in wild air battles called dogfights. Pilots who were shot down often remained trapped in their falling, burning planes, for they had no parachutes. Airmen at the front did not often live long. Germany also used its fleet of huge dirigibles, or zeppelins, and large bomber planes to drop bombs on British and French cities. Britain retaliated by bombing German cities.

Back on the ground, the tank proved to be the answer to stalemate in the trenches. This British invention used American-designed caterpillar tracks to move the armored vehicle equipped with machine guns and sometimes light cannon. Tanks worked effectively on firm, dry ground, in spite of their slow speed, mechanical problems, and vulnerability to artillery. Able to crush barbed wire and cross trenches, tanks moved forward through machine gun fire and often terrified German soldiers with their unstoppable approach.

Chemical warfare first appeared when the Germans used poison gas during a surprise attack in Flanders, Belgium, in 1915. At first, gas was just released from large cylinders and carried by the wind into nearby enemy lines. Later, phosgene and other gases were loaded into artillery shells and shot into enemy trenches. The Germans used this weapon the most, realizing that enemy soldiers wearing gas masks did not fight as well. All sides used gas frequently by 1918. Its use was a frightening development that caused its victims a great deal of suffering, if not death.

Both sides used a variety of big guns on the western front, ranging from huge naval guns mounted on railroad cars to short-range trench mortars. The result was a war in which soldiers near the front were seldom safe from artillery bombardment. The Germans used super-long-range artillery to shell Paris from almost eighty miles away. Artillery shell blasts created vast, cratered, moonlike landscapes where beautiful fields and woods had once stood.

Perhaps the most significant technological advance during World War I was the improvement of the machine gun, a weapon originally developed by an American, Hiram Maxim. The Germans recognized its military potential and had large numbers ready to use in 1914. They also developed air-cooled machine guns for airplanes and improved those used on the ground, making them lighter and easier to move. The weapon's full potential was demonstrated on the Somme battlefield in July 1916 when German machine guns killed or wounded almost 60,000 British soldiers in only one day.

At sea, submarines attacked ships far from port. In order to locate and sink German U-boats, British scientists developed underwater listening devices and underwater explosives called depth charges. Warships became faster and more powerful than ever before and used newly invented radios to communicate effectively. The British naval blockade of Germany, which was made possible by developments in naval technology, brought a total war to civilians. The blockade caused a famine that finally brought about the collapse of Germany and its allies in late 1918. Starvation and malnutrition continued to take the lives of German adults and children for years after the war.

The firing stopped on November 11, 1918, but modern war technology had changed the course of civilization. Millions had been killed, gassed, maimed, or starved. Famine and disease continued to rage through central Europe, taking countless lives. Because of rapid technological advances in every area, the nature of warfare had changed forever, affecting soldiers, airmen, sailors, and civilians alike.
A. Torrey McLean, a former United States Army officer who served in Vietnam, studied World War I for more than thirty years, personally interviewing a number of World War I veterans.

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by A. Torrey McLean Reprinted with permission from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 1993. Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History See also: WWI: Life on the Western Front One of the saddest facts about World War I is that millions died needlessly because military and civilian leaders were slow to adapt their old-fashioned strategies and tactics to the new weapons of 1914.

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Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points | History