S2E3: Labor And Capital Part 1: The Struggles that Shaped Modern America
Today, we embark upon an exploration of the Gilded Age, a period epitomized by its stark juxtaposition of grandeur and despair. We shall delve into the fundamental paradox of this era: the simultaneous emergence of vast wealth and pervasive poverty, as articulated by the astute observer Henry George, who lamented the enigma of progress entwined with poverty. The narrative unveils a nation undergoing radical transformation, propelled by industrialization and the relentless march of capital, while grappling with the human cost of such progress. We will illuminate the lives of those who toiled in factories and tenements, revealing the grim realities that shaped their existence amidst the towering ambitions of industrial titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller. As we navigate through this tumultuous landscape, we will also confront the ensuing labor movements that arose in response to these disparities, setting the stage for a profound societal reckoning that resonates even in our contemporary discourse.
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Takeaways:
- The Gilded Age, characterized by stark contrasts, revealed the paradox of wealth amidst pervasive poverty, challenging the narrative of progress.
- The emergence of industrial titans such as Carnegie and Rockefeller epitomized both innovation and exploitation, raising ethical dilemmas about wealth accumulation.
- Labor movements arose as a response to deplorable working conditions, highlighting the urgent need for reform and collective bargaining rights for workers.
- The brutal response of the state to labor strikes underscored the profound chasm between capital and labor, setting the stage for future conflicts and reforms.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Hello, y' all.
Speaker A:It's me.
Speaker A:It's me.
Speaker A:It's Dr.
Speaker A:G.
Speaker A:Welcome back to Star Spangled Studies.
Speaker A:Today we plunge into the crucible of modern America.
Speaker A:An era of towering ambition, but also crushing despair, of massive fortunes, but grinding poverty.
Speaker A:We're learning about the Age of capital and labor, the title of chapter 16 in our textbook.
Speaker A:Now imagine a nation hurling forward steel rails now stitching the continent, factories churning out unbelievable technological wonders.
Speaker A:And cities reaching up into the clouds.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But beneath this shining, shimmering surface, a different story unfolds.
Speaker A:One of families packed into squalid and disease filled tenements, workers risking life and limbs for pennies a day, and farmers battling debt and despair.
Speaker A:As Henry George, a keen observer of the time, lamented, this association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times.
Speaker A:We're going to hear more voices about this age of prosperity and poverty.
Speaker A:We're going to explore the struggles and understand how this tumultuous period forged the America we know today.
Speaker A:This isn't a story of economic transformation alone.
Speaker A:It's actually about the very soul of a nation grappling with unprecedented change after the Civil War.
Speaker A:We're going to witness the march of Capital, as it was called.
Speaker A:The staggering rise of wealth inequality, the explosive birth of a labor and union movement, the farmers populist revolt against capitalism, and the impassioned debate over gold and the gold standard that captivated the nation for decades.
Speaker A:We'll also see the emergence of socialism as a radical challenge to this new world order.
Speaker A:This new era, titled the Gilded Age, raised several questions.
Speaker A:Questions about wealth distribution, questions about workers rights, questions about the role of government and the question of the definition of a just society.
Speaker A:These are still questions that we wrestle with today.
Speaker A:Understanding this period is key to understanding contemporary America because the questions haven't really changed.
Speaker A:So let's step into the Gilded Age, an age of iron and steam, of progress and poverty, of stark contrasts and fierce battles.
Speaker A:So let's go.
Speaker A:The Gilded Age is portrayed as the age of vast new enterprises.
Speaker A:It's the age of titans, of industry, of large corporations and trusts, and of poverty and tenements.
Speaker A:So let's begin with the first of those.
Speaker A:Let's talk about the titans.
Speaker A:Let's talk about the.
Speaker A:The march of capital and the new industrialization of these United states.
Speaker A:The late 19th century, after the Civil War witnessed an economic metamorphosis in these United States, and it's been unparalleled in its speed and scale.
Speaker A:The nation was aggressively shedding its agrarian roots and skin, and it Was transforming into an industrialized behemoth.
Speaker A: By: Speaker A: And by: Speaker A:This wasn't merely just some growth.
Speaker A:It was a fundamental revolution in how goods were produced, how businesses operated, and ultimately, how American society was structured.
Speaker A:At the heart of this transformation were profound technological and and managerial innovations.
Speaker A:Scientific management, which was famously championed by Frederick Taylor and often dubbed Taylorism, sought to maximize efficiency by meticulously subdividing tasks and analyzing every motion of the worker for efficiency.
Speaker A:This philosophy permeated the growing factories and industrialization of the time.
Speaker A:Mass production and the techniques around mass production, which were honed during the Civil War in the armaments manufacturing, Were now being applied to a vast array of consumer goods Unassociated with war manufacturing.
Speaker A:Think of Singer sewing machines, the disassembly lines of the Chicago meat packers, Cyrus McCormick's agricultural reapers, and James Buchanan Duke's cigarette rollers.
Speaker A:All of these things were part of the new industrial order that had become more mechanized as well as mass produced.
Speaker A:McCormick's own company provided a striking example.
Speaker A: By: Speaker A: By: Speaker A:This relentless pursuit of efficiency and increasing volume came at a cost, a significant cost, a human cost, A recurring theme that we're going to continue to explore.
Speaker A:But for now, the drive for efficiency and market dominance Fueled an unprecedented wave of corporate consolidation.
Speaker A: The period between: Speaker A:This led to the rise of industrial giants like General Electric and DuPont, which came to dominate their respective markets monopolies.
Speaker A: rth of United States Steel in: Speaker A:Orchestrated by the financial titan J.P.
Speaker A:morgan, U.S.
Speaker A:steel was forged from eight leading steel companies, Creating the world's first billion dollar corporation and establishing a near monopoly on steel, a critical industry that was growing.
Speaker A:This march of capital was more than just an economic shift.
Speaker A:It represented a profound reordering of power and society.
Speaker A:The technological leaps and new management styles enabled economies of scale previously unimaginable before the Civil War.
Speaker A:These economies, in turn, favored larger, more capitalized enterprises.
Speaker A:The relentless pursuit of market control and operational efficiency Naturally led to mergers and acquisitions in the formation of Trusts.
Speaker A:These consolidated entities amassed not only enormous financial capital, but but also wielded immense political power and even social leverage capable of dwarfing individual workers, crushing community dissent, and even overpowering local and state governments.
Speaker A:This concentration of power in the hands of a select few men became a central point of contention, igniting the flames of a labor movement and a populist movement that would define the era.
Speaker A:At the helm of this industrial juggernaut of the Gilded Age were figures of immense ambition and often ruthless ingenuity.
Speaker A:Were they the captains of industry, as they like to be portrayed?
Speaker A:Were they.
Speaker A:Were they visionary builders who propelled America into modernity?
Speaker A:Or were they robber barons, as their enemies would claim?
Speaker A:Were they just monopolists who amassed large fortunes at the expense and the lives of workers and the public good?
Speaker A:The debate then as now, reflects the era's deep ambivalence towards these new titans of capital.
Speaker A:Let's begin by considering Andrew Carnegie.
Speaker A:He was a Scottish immigrant who rose from a humble bobbin boy to become undisputed king of steel.
Speaker A:His life was a testament to the shrewd business acumen and relentless drive.
Speaker A:He was the epitome of the rags to riches.
Speaker A:Yet later in life, he grappled with the moral implications of his vast wealth, famously declaring, the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.
Speaker A: Carnegie articulated this in: Speaker A:This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth.
Speaker A:To consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:Now, Carnegie himself, there are libraries and there are universities, and there are lots of things associated with him in terms of what he did for the public good, the way he donated his money.
Speaker A:And while he thought all of those were great options, lots of people who were poor couldn't eat the books or attend the universities that he had created, arguments his detractors had against his wishes for how to spend his fortune.
Speaker A:But let's move on.
Speaker A:There was also John D.
Speaker A:Rockefeller, who was the architect of Standard Oil.
Speaker A:His name became synonymous with monopoly, and he achieved this through aggressive, often predatory, tactics designed to eliminate all competition.
Speaker A:His infamous pronouncement, competition is a sin, starkly illustrates this drive for absolute monopoly and market control also kinda goes against capitalism as a place for competition.
Speaker A:But I digress.
Speaker A:Rockefeller's methods, while Building one of the world's most powerful corporations also fueled public outrage and calls for government regulation of his monopoly and monopolistic drives.
Speaker A:Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore, as he was known.
Speaker A:Wait a minute.
Speaker A:Vanderbilt University.
Speaker A:The Commodores got to be some sort of connection there.
Speaker A:Vanderbilt dominated the world of railroads and shipping with a similarly cutthroat approach as the two previous predecessors.
Speaker A:I talked about his often repeated, though perhaps apocryphal quote, quote, you have undertaken to cheat me.
Speaker A:I won't sue you for the law is too slow.
Speaker A:I'll ruin you.
Speaker A:And this captures the spirit of an era where personal power and financial muscle often superseded the legalities in the legal system itself.
Speaker A:Another quote attributed to him, what do I care about law?
Speaker A:Ain't I got the power?
Speaker A:Further underscores this sentiment.
Speaker A:The immense fortune gained by these industrialists meant that they had immense power to wield in the political and social spheres.
Speaker A:It allowed them to not only reshape the economic landscape of the United States, but also to propagate their ideologies that legitimized their accumulated wealth and solidified why their influence was necessary.
Speaker A:Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth, for example, attempted to reconcile the existence of massive personal fortunes with the public interest by framing the wealthy individual as a trustee for society.
Speaker A:While such philanthropy undoubtedly led to the creation of valuable public institutions, it also served to burnish the public image of these magnets and provide a moral justification for the often brutal laboring conditions and the methods that they use to acquire such wealth.
Speaker A:The very debate over whether these men were captains of industry or robber barons itself encapsulates the profound anxieties of an age confronting an unprecedented concentration of economic, and by extension, political power, and maybe helps us a little bit more understand the same issues today.
Speaker A:Let's turn our attention now to how the other half lived, those that lived in the industrialized city who worked in the factories and the mines while the fortunes were being forged in steel and oil and on the rails, making Carnegie and Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, amongst others, very rich, a vastly different reality confronted the millions and millions who toiled in the factories and the mines and the mills.
Speaker A:For the industrial workforce, life was often a grim struggle for survival, marked by grueling hours, meager starvation wages, and perilous deathly conditions in the work.
Speaker A:The typical industrial worker in the late 19th century could expect to work roughly 60 hours a week, often from wages that kept them teetering on or below what we would consider the poverty line.
Speaker A:Safety was a luxury rarely afforded to these workers.
Speaker A:Factories were filled with dangerous, unguarded machinery and accidents were horrifyingly common.
Speaker A:The air was often thick with dust or some sort of toxic fumes leading to chronic respiratory illnesses.
Speaker A:Oscar Nieb, observing child laborers in a canning factory, recounted, quote, most every day it happened that a finger or hand was cut off.
Speaker A:But what did it matter?
Speaker A:They were paid off and sent home, and others would take their place.
Speaker A:I believe that children working in factories has for the last 20 years made more cripples than the war with the south.
Speaker A:And the cut off fingers and mangled bodies brought gold to the monopolies and manufacturers.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:The work itself was often mind numbingly repetitive, a far cry from the skilled artisanship of previous generations, leading to a sense of alienation and dehumanization in addition to the mangled limbs and possibly death.
Speaker A:Child labor in this era was not an aberration, but a deeply entrenched feature of this industrial landscape, driven by family poverty, as in mothers and fathers cannot and do not make enough money to feed their families.
Speaker A:Children as young as six years old were thrust into the workforce, their small hands and bodies exploited in textile mills, in coal mines and factories.
Speaker A:The statistics of the time are sobering.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A: By: Speaker A: Between: Speaker A:The famed labor organizer Mother Jones, a fierce advocate for children and ending child labor, described their plight with heartbreaking clarity.
Speaker A:Quote.
Speaker A:Tiny babies of 6 years old with faces of 60 did an 8 hour shift for 10 cents a day.
Speaker A:If they fall asleep, cold water was dashed in their faces.
Speaker A:Sleep was their recreation, their release as play is to the free children.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:Imagine how many of you would actually have been child laborers in a different time.
Speaker A:It's terrible to think about.
Speaker A:The living conditions of these workers were often as squalid as the workplaces themselves.
Speaker A:Rapid urbanization fueled by industrial jobs led to severe overcrowding in cities.
Speaker A:Tenement housing became the norm for the urban poor.
Speaker A:They were cramped.
Speaker A:They were poorly lit, if lit at all.
Speaker A:They were inadequately ventilated.
Speaker A:You can imagine the smell.
Speaker A:And they lacked basic sanitation, as in, there were usually no toilets or running water.
Speaker A: how the Other half lives from: Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:Disease in tenements was rampant.
Speaker A:Filth Vermin and contaminated water led to frequent outbreaks of these types of diseases.
Speaker A:Typhus, cholera, dysentery, and child mortality rates were tragically high, not just from the labor they did, but the conditions they slept in.
Speaker A:Rhys documented the grim reality of children living and working in riverside dumps, sifting through garbage to find food to survive.
Speaker A:He wrote, quote, I found boys who ought to have been at school, picking bones and sorting rags.
Speaker A:They were children of the dump, literally.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:The brutal reality of the industrial city, with its dangerous factories and disease risen tenements, profoundly shaped the lives of the working class.
Speaker A:It bred not only sickness and despair, but also simmering resentment.
Speaker A:The shared experience of exploitation and the close proximity of urban living, however inadvertently, created fertile ground for collective action against their employers.
Speaker A:The misery and powerlessness felt by individual workers, when shared and articulated began to coalesce into a demand for change, laying the groundwork for the organized labor movements and unions that would challenge the dominance of industrial capital.
Speaker A:The staggering disparities in wealth and living conditions during this Gilded Age demanded justification and an intellectual framework.
Speaker A:And this came to be known as Social Darwinism, which emerged in this time to provide it.
Speaker A:Drawing often very crudely on Charles Darwin's theories of biological evolution, proponents applied this same concept, this survival of the fittest, to human society and social interactions.
Speaker A:The British sociologist Herbert Spencer was a key popularizer of these ideas, and his influence in America was immense.
Speaker A:He had an American counterpart, a Yale thinker by the name of William Graham Sumner, who became one of the most forceful advocates for this philosophy.
Speaker A:Sumner famously declared, before the tribunal of nature, a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake.
Speaker A:He has no more right to liberty than any wild beast.
Speaker A:His right to pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence.
Speaker A:Sounds a little bit in contradiction to the founding documents, right?
Speaker A:Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, but I digress.
Speaker A:This stark philosophy argued that societal hierarchy and economic success were the natural outcomes of inherent differences in ability and effort.
Speaker A:Hierarchies are natural.
Speaker A:Wealth was a sign of fitness.
Speaker A:Poverty was a mark of unfitness.
Speaker A:Sumner also championed laissez faire attitudes when he said, quote, unquote, society needs, first of all, to be freed from these meddlers, that is, to be let alone mind your own business.
Speaker A:It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty.
Speaker A:Consequently, Social Darwinism opposed government intervention.
Speaker A:It opposed any sort of governmental welfare or any attempts by the government to ameliorate the conditions of the poor.
Speaker A:Such actions were seen as interfering with the natural selection process.
Speaker A:That supposedly led to societal progress.
Speaker A:This ideology conveniently aligned with the material interests of a burgeoning industrial elite, these wealthy titans, providing a somewhat scientific and moral justification for the vast wealth inequalities and the minimal social responsibilities therein.
Speaker A:It effectively naturalized both poverty and and extreme wealth as things that should happen, deflecting then criticism from the architects of this new industrial order, and therefore opposing any reform efforts by branding them as misguided attempts to subvert the natural way of things going.
Speaker A:However, this justification did not go unchallenged, nor was it universally accepted.
Speaker A:There were critics like one in your textbook, the economist Henry George.
Speaker A:And he produced what would be his influential work, Progress and Poverty.
Speaker A:And he pointed directly at the paradox of how industrialization created and coexisted with immense poverty.
Speaker A:George argued that so long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortune, progress is not real and it cannot be permanent.
Speaker A:He proposed a single tax on land values as a remedy to this, believing that the unearned increment from land speculation was the primary driver of this inequality.
Speaker A:These critiques, alongside the lived experiences of the people being crushed by the weight of this, began to chip away at the intellectual foundations of laissez faire capitalism as well as social Darwinism.
Speaker A:And both of these ideas, laissez faire capitalism and social Darwinism, the justifications for the society, were the fuel for the labor movements and the populist reforms that followed.
Speaker A:We're not going to take it.
Speaker A:No, we ain't going to take it.
Speaker A:We're not going to take it anymore.
Speaker A:The harsh realities of industrial life spurred workers to seek collective strength.
Speaker A:If individual labors were powerless against the might of consolidated companies, perhaps organized into a union, they could force concessions when they bargained as a group.
Speaker A:Then that way they could demand a fairer share of the wealth that their labor produced.
Speaker A:And as such, clashes now began to emerge between these great giant corporations and the laborers who worked for them.
Speaker A: So the year: Speaker A:And it became a violent overture to decades of labor conflict to come.
Speaker A: ill reeling from the panic of: Speaker A:And this was again an economic depression that had led to widespread unemployment and hardship.
Speaker A:And it's against this backdrop then, that major railroad companies, despite benefiting from government subsidies and paying handsome dividends to shareholders throughout, started to slash workers wages as the depression continued.
Speaker A: the great railroad strike of: Speaker A:What began as a localized dispute quickly spread, and it engulfed rail lines from Baltimore to St.
Speaker A:Louis, and it effectively shut down a major and significant portion of the transportation networks of the nation.
Speaker A:The response from capital and government was swift, as it was brutal.
Speaker A:When local police forces proved unable or possibly unwilling to suppress the strikes, State governors called out the militia.
Speaker A:In Baltimore, the maryland militia fired into a crowd of striking workers and their sympathizers, killing 11 people and wounding many more.
Speaker A:The violence was even more intense in Pittsburgh, where the Pennsylvania state militia, after a confrontation with the strikers, killed 20 people with bayonets and rifle fire.
Speaker A:This act enraged the local populace.
Speaker A:As you would imagine, it led to widespread violence and rioting, the destruction of vast amounts of railroad property.
Speaker A:In Reading, Pennsylvania, another 10 strikers themselves were killed by militia fire.
Speaker A:The strike there took on a character of a class war.
Speaker A:In St.
Speaker A:Louis, a general strike erupted in response to this, with workers seizing rail depots and boldly declaring their demands.
Speaker A:Workers wanted change, and they saw this as the opportunity.
Speaker A:They wanted an eight hour workday, and they wanted the end to child labor.
Speaker A:Their stand was ultimately broken by federal troops and vigilante forces, resulting in 18 deaths.
Speaker A:Chicago saw tens of thousands of protests under the banner of the workingmen's party, only to face deadly force from special police and militiamen, leaving at least 20 protesters dead.
Speaker A:The head of the Pennsylvania railroad, a man named Thomas Scott, infamously articulated the sentiments of many of those in the higher positions of management when he suggested giving the strikers, quote, a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread.
Speaker A:It's easy to see then, in this time period that when confronted with the organizing power of labor trying to strike and demand better pay wages, they were met with violence.
Speaker A:And violence was sanctioned by the state as an acceptable response to strikes.
Speaker A:Ultimately, the federal government intervened decisively, deploying troops across northern rail lines to crush the strikes, which collapsed after about six weeks.
Speaker A:The toll was immense.
Speaker A: million in: Speaker A: The great railroad strike of: Speaker A:It starkly revealed the national scale of the labor grievances, the crushing weight, as I said, that laborers were laboring under.
Speaker A:And it also showed the profound chasm that had opened between those with capital and those that labored.
Speaker A:More ominously though it demonstrating the willingness of both corporate power and the state, both state and federal, to employ overwhelming and lethal force to suppress worker demands, the strike convinced many of the laborers that the absolute necessity for strong and institutionalized Unions to combat this, while simultaneously persuading businesses of the need for even greater political influence and government aid to protect their capital.
Speaker A:The great upheaval, as it was known, was a brutal awakening, shattering any lingering illusions of a natural and harmonious relationship between the owners of the capital and and those who labored for them.
Speaker A:And it set the stage for half a century or more of intense labor conflict.
Speaker A:The great railroad strike itself was a unifying moment, and it was a watershed moment, at least for labor.
Speaker A:And so, in the wake of the great railroad strike and admits the growing turmoil created by the industrializing America and the growth of capital, two major labor organizations emerged, the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.
Speaker A:And these two groups, national and scale, offered differing visions and sometimes differing strategies for how to empower the working class to gain a better share of the wealth in which they created.
Speaker A:Let's start with the Knights of Labor.
Speaker A: They were founded in: Speaker A:Powderley.
Speaker A:Their philosophy was ambitious as it was inclusive and it encapsulated in the ideal that it one big brotherhood.
Speaker A:They welcomed nearly all workers into their ranks.
Speaker A:Skilled and unskilled men and women, native born and immigrant, and significantly, African Americans, though they were often in segregated local assemblies.
Speaker A:So not fully diverse, but at least more so than the others.
Speaker A:The Knights platform was broad and it advocated for sweeping social and economic reforms to the system itself.
Speaker A:They championed an eight hour workday.
Speaker A:They wanted the abolition of child labor.
Speaker A:They wanted equal pay for equal work.
Speaker A:They wanted factories to be safe to work in.
Speaker A:They wanted to be compensated for any on the job injuries.
Speaker A:More so than anything else, they envisioned an alternative to the wage labor system, favoring the establishment of worker owned cooperatives and cooperative stores.
Speaker A:Their aim, as one historian has put it, was to reshape the entire economy along more egalitarian lines, meaning no more billionaires.
Speaker A: t the zenith that they had in: Speaker A:However, their influence waned rapidly following the Haymarket riot, which we're going to talk about in a bit, which unjustly associated the labor movement with anarchism and violence.
Speaker A:But more on that in a minute.
Speaker A:In contrast to the Knights of Labor, we have the American Federation of Labor, the afl, not the football AFL as we like to think of it today, but the original AFL.
Speaker A: And they were founded in: Speaker A:And they adopted a more focused approach, more pragmatic, in their words.
Speaker A:The AFL was a federation of autonomous craft unions, and they primarily organized skilled laborers, only skilled laborers being men, like carpenters, or women, like topographers, cigar makers.
Speaker A:Gompiers championed what he called, quote, pure and simple trade unionism, end quote.
Speaker A:He wanted to concentrate on achieving tangible gains for its members.
Speaker A:What he called the bread and butter issues.
Speaker A:Higher wages, shorter working hours, and better conditions within the existing capitalist system, not trying to change it as a whole.
Speaker A:Their strategy has been described by historians, was to, quote, prioritize the immediate tangible needs of workers.
Speaker A:But in key industries, the differences between the two organizations were indeed stark.
Speaker A:The Knights of Labors were idealistic.
Speaker A:They were inclusive, and they aimed for a broad societal transformation, officially rejecting strikes in favor of arbitration as well as education.
Speaker A:But they were often drawn into industrial conflicts and strikes, as we will see.
Speaker A:In contrast, the AFL was pragmatic, maybe, but exclusive, as it focused only on the skilled trades at the expense of the more populous unskilled workers.
Speaker A:But it was also exclusive to women and minorities, and what it readily embraced, collective bargaining and strikes as key tools.
Speaker A:It advocated for strikes.
Speaker A:It wanted to achieve narrower economic objectives rather than change the whole system.
Speaker A:So while the Knights envisioned an alternative to the laissez faire capitalism, the AFL largely accepted the wage labor system, but sought to improve the workers lot within it.
Speaker A:The divergence between the Knights of Labor in the AFL highlights the fundamental tensions that had long been an issue within the labor movement overall.
Speaker A:Which was, what goals should they seek after?
Speaker A:Should it be an advocation for radical society change?
Speaker A:Or should they pursue small incremental improvements over time?
Speaker A:The eventual ascendancy and the long term endurance of the AFL's model suggests that within at least the context of the Gilded Age itself, a more narrowly focused, business oriented type of unionism, emphasizing the bargaining power of skilled workers, was better equipped to withstand the opposition from the consolidated capital and corporations.
Speaker A:And we also have to take into account that the government wasn't very sympathetic to labor either.
Speaker A:This strategic choice often came at the cost of broader social solidarity between the working class.
Speaker A:And it also excluded the most vulnerable segments of the labor force, the unskilled workers, women, immigrants, racial minorities and black people, thereby fragmenting a potential collective power of a truly unified labor movement into something much more easily defeatable.
Speaker A: The great railroad strike of: Speaker A:There were a Lot of them.
Speaker A:Let's go over a few of them right now.
Speaker A: Haymarket riot in Chicago in: Speaker A:And this was a particularly infamous riot in itself.
Speaker A:The context was a nationwide movement for an eight hour workday that had been simmering and hundreds of thousands of workers striking on May 1.
Speaker A:Tensions in Chicago itself was already high following a violent clash at the McCormick Reaper Works on May 1, where police had fired on striking workers, killing and wounding several of them.
Speaker A:On May 4, a protest rally for those deaths was held near Haymarket Square.
Speaker A:As police moved to disperse the crowd, a bomb was thrown, killing seven policemen and at least four civilians, with many more injured.
Speaker A:In the ensuing chaos and police gunfire, the Chicago Tribune had a headline that said, A hellish deed.
Speaker A:A dynamite bomb is thrown into a crowd of policemen.
Speaker A:In the aftermath of this, eight anarchists were arrested and convicted of conspiracy.
Speaker A:Despite a lack of concrete evidence directly linking them to the bombing.
Speaker A:What they were linked to was the Knights of Labor.
Speaker A:So four of these men were hanged, one committed suicide in prison and three were later pardoned.
Speaker A:But the Haymarket affair had had a devastating impact on the labor movement, particularly the Knights of Labor, which never recovered from this publicity.
Speaker A:It also fueled a public backlash.
Speaker A:And it started the association of labor activism, especially its more radical elements, with violence and with foreign ideologies.
Speaker A:And it provided the justification for harsher and more violent crackdowns on union activities.
Speaker A: Six years later, in: Speaker A:The conflict pitted Andrew Carnegie's steel empire, managed by the notoriously anti union Henry Clay Frick, against the powerful Amalgamated association of Iron and Steel Workers.
Speaker A:When contract negotiations broke down over wage cuts, Frick determined to break the union.
Speaker A:And when I say wage cuts, it was like 20 to 25% of their wages were just to be cut.
Speaker A:Overall, Frick locked out the workers and he fortified the steel mill.
Speaker A:Fortified in the sense like he was ready for a war.
Speaker A:And he created what workers then dubbed Fort Frick.
Speaker A:Frick then hired 300 Pinkerton private detectives to secure the plant, protect the strike breakers, the scabs that he was bringing in to run the Factory.
Speaker A:Now, on July 6, as the Pinkertons attempted to land from the barges on the river, they were met by thousands of striking workers and townspeople.
Speaker A:A fierce day long battle ensued, resulting in deaths on both side.
Speaker A:At least three Pinkerton workers and seven laborers were killed.
Speaker A:The workers ultimately forced the Pinkertons to raise the white flag and surrender.
Speaker A:The anguish and the anger of the workers were captured in a popular song of the Father was killed by the Pinkerton men.
Speaker A:Twas in Pennsylvania town not very long ago, men struck against reduction of their pay.
Speaker A:Father was killed by the Pinkerton men.
Speaker A:However, the workers victory was short lived.
Speaker A:The governor of Pennsylvania dispatched the state to militia which took control of the plant and allowed Frick to bring in his strikebreakers.
Speaker A:The strike effectively after that was broken.
Speaker A:The union was crushed at Homestead and the power of the steel industry was growing.
Speaker A:As the power of the union diminished, Workers then were forced to wage cuts in longer hours and those that participated in the strike were blacklisted from working again.
Speaker A:Carnegie's image, though as the benevolent industrialist was deeply tarnished.
Speaker A: another strike, this time in: Speaker A:And this strike paralyzed much of the nation's railway systems.
Speaker A:Now George Pullman was the owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company.
Speaker A:Go take a look at what they did and what the palace car looked like.
Speaker A:These were the luxurious Rolls Royce of train travel cars that came with porters.
Speaker A:The porters were usually black because they could be paid less.
Speaker A:And these porters would tend to your every need from turning on the lights to ironing your clothes and getting you dinner.
Speaker A:So Pullman and the Palace Car Company had built a company town for his employees to live in and to shop in.
Speaker A: other panic hit, this time in: Speaker A:But crucially, he refused to lower the rents of the houses in his company town.
Speaker A:So workers made less money but had the expenses the same.
Speaker A:So in response to this, the Pullman workers went on strike.
Speaker A:Eugene V.
Speaker A:Debs, who was the leader of the newly formed American Railway Union, which had recently won a significant victory against the Great Northern Railroad, called for a nationwide boycott of any and all trains that carried Pullman cars.
Speaker A:The boycott was remarkably effective and it halted rail traffic across large swathes of the Northeast.
Speaker A:The federal government, though under the President Grover Cleveland, intervened decisively, citing the need to ensure the passage of US Mail, which often were attached to Pullman cars.
Speaker A:The government could then obtain a federal injunction against the American Railways Union, the aru, using the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Speaker A:Ironically, this was an act that was designed to curb corporate monopolies, but against a labor union.
Speaker A:It was used.
Speaker A:For the first time, thousands of federal troops were deployed to Chicago and other railway hubs to break the strike and as you can imagine, violence ensued and numerous deaths and extensive property damage also followed.
Speaker A:Eugene Debs was arrested and imprisoned for violating the injunction.
Speaker A:The Pullman strike was eventually crushed and the ARU was effectively destroyed.
Speaker A:A significant consequence was the radicalization of Eugene Debs.
Speaker A:His experience in prison led him to embrace socialism.
Speaker A:Reflecting his transformed views from the entire ordeal, Debs would later declare that socialists sought to overthrow the capitalist system and the emancipation of the working class from wage slavery.
Speaker A:In a conciliatory gesture to the labor movement, amidst the strike's fallout, Congress officially established Labor Day as a federal holiday.
Speaker A:Now these major strikes, the Haymarket, Homestead and Pullman, reveal a consistent and violent pattern.
Speaker A:Corporations, driven by profit and a desire for managerial control, fiercely resisted unionization and worker demands for better wages, better labor and better conditions.
Speaker A:They frequently resorted to locking out their workers to bring in strikebreakers and in the employment of private security forces like the Pinkertons.
Speaker A:When these measures failed, or when strikes threatened broader economic interests, state and federal governments almost invariably came and intervened on the side of capital, not the workers.
Speaker A:They often deployed the militia or even federal troops and utilized the legal system to break strikes and imprison labor leaguers.
Speaker A:The mainstream press was no help either.
Speaker A:They often demonized labor activities, particularly those of immigrants and those with radical political views further alienated public sympathy.
Speaker A:While these confrontations often ended in immediate defeat of the specific union involved and sometimes death of many workers, they served to heighten the national awareness towards the deep seated conflicts and fault lines in industrial America.
Speaker A:And it continued to ratchet up the pressure for future reforms.
Speaker A:And it shaped the ideology of a generation of labor leaders forged in these types of battles.
Speaker A:So this is where we're going to end part one of our two part lecture on capital and labor.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining me today in Star Spangled Studies.
Speaker A:Next time we're going to talk about populism, the People's Party, William Jennings Bryan, the gold standard and the rise of socialism.
Speaker A:And maybe most importantly, how all of these things happening in the Gilded Age will help us understand how the Progressive era that followed was trying to solve some of the problems that this era created.
Speaker A:I'll see y' all in the past.
Speaker A:Sam.
