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Rise
of Heavy Industry and Giant Corporations: did not dominate until after CW
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Railroads
as the first big businesses & modern corporations.
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Expansion:
30,000 miles of track in 1860 to 193,000 in 1900.
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Pioneered
in areas such selling of stock, estimation of costs, corporate
organization.
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RR
expansion stimulated growth of other industries such as steel, and
new transportation network facilitated the growth of others.
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Achieved
national scope & immense size: RRs bigger than governments.
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Pioneer
industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie (steel) & John D. Rockefeller
(oil) copied RR methods & acquired near monopolies, 10,000s of
employees.
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Believed
competition was inefficient & employed highly conspiratorial
methods, including bribes, kickbacks, price-fixing, predatory
pricing.
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Created
huge “trusts” & then (once corporation law was changed) used
mergers.
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Origins
of success: government support (often bought & often violent),
technology, mass production techniques, and extremely low labor costs.
Prices, wages declined.
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Balance
sheet: more & cheaper products for middle-class consumers, greater
national wealth & power, incredible pollution, horrific exploitation
of workers, worst inequalities of wealth in US history.
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From
Civil War to 1920s, wave after
wave of immigrants from cultures ever more “foreign” to WASP Americans.
Contrasts:
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Most
intense period: 1890-1914, 16.5 million immigrants.
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Except
for Japanese, none worked on farms.
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Most
went to cities & lived in ethnic neighborhoods near their own
people.
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Except
for Jews, most planned to return home, roughly half really did.
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Most
very poor. Retained much of their own culture & helped each other.
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Almost
all non-Protestant, many non-Christian, considered crime-prone
unassimilable, unfit to exercise rights as independent citizens of a
republic.
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As
more experienced immigrant group, Irish Catholics became political
leaders of cities, dominating political machines & city agencies
like the police. Provided
services in exchange for votes.
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Sources
of the New Immigration
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Asians
to West: Chinese, 1860s-1880s; Japanese, 1890s & early 1900s.
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Southern
& Eastern Europe, 1890s-1910s, to cities in Northeast & Midwest:
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Russian
& Polish Jews, 1.6 million: objects of most paranoia
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Italians
(mostly from Southern Italy), 4.5 million
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Polish
Catholics, 4.5 million
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Plus
other Slavs & Greeks
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Native-born
Americans saw new immigrants as savages, unfair competitors, and
(potentially) traitorous conspirators.
“Dual loyalty” idea.
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Conditions
for workers during the late 19th-century Industrial Revolution
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Larger,
more impersonal workplaces, less skilled, more monotonous jobs.
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Regular
booms & busts (1873, 1893) with no “safety net” at all.
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40%
of industrial workers lived below the $500 a year poverty line.
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Long
hours & low wages that were often cut; regular seasonal
unemployment.
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Low
wages made child labor necessary for families to survive.
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Incredibly
dangerous workplaces & terrible living conditions.
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Labor
Movement after the Civil War: took off during 1873 depression
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American
Federation of Labor: a coalition of brotherhoods for skilled tradesman,
accepted capitalism, but wanted more $, better treatment for workers.
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Knights
of Labor: fraternal
order/union open to all workers that hoped to replace wage labor with a
cooperative, worker-controlled economy.
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Working-Class
Radicalism
|
Molly
Maguires (1870s): Irish miners who assassinated company officials in
eastern PA.
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Anarchism:
movement for end to all coercive authority, by governments or
employers. Then a just society would be free to develop according to
man’s natural inclination to sociability. In essence, extreme
libertarianism combined with anti-capitalism.
|
Believed
private property was theft, crime was a by-product of property & authority.
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Developed
by French, English, Russian thinkers, a rival to Marxism, which
differed in looking to take over the authority of the state and
create a workers’ dictatorship.
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Some
anarchists believed violence was necessary to achieve goals.
“Propaganda of the deed” would show weakness of existing
order, inspire revolution. Role of new technology: dynamite.
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Worldwide
wave of bombings and assassinations, 1880s to early 1900s.
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Radical
form came to America with German & E. European immigrants.
Two leaders: Emma Goldman, Russian Jewish radical &
feminist; & her lover, Alexander Berkman.
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Not
that many anarchists in US, but useful for CTs, often blamed for
troubles.
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Workers
and the Law of Conspiracy: employers’ methods denied to workers
|
Common
law doctrine of criminal conspiracy transferred to US. Conspiracy
defined as “agreement between two or more individuals to effect some
unlawful purpose.”
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In
Philadelphia Cordwainers’ Case (1806) etc., labor unions were held to
be criminal conspiracies to steal wages & liberty from other
workers. “Closed shop” issue.
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|
Courts
generally agreed that unions were legal after the 1840s, but beginning
with 1877 railway strikes, began to issue injunctions against the
unions’ most effective tactics, such as secondary boycotts (“vast
conspiracies”) & sympathy strikes.
|
Injunctions
against “conspiracy in restraint of trade” or to prevent
delivery of the mail
permitted massive use of violence against unions, including US
troops.
|
|
Aimed
especially at any effort to get whole working class involved.
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|
|
Courts
undercut pro-labor legislation with rulings that constitution guaranteed
“freedom of contract” & thus legalized anything employers could
force on workers.
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|
|
The
Labor Wars of the Late 19th-Century
|
36,757
strikes, 1881-1905: Much violence on both sides, but most deaths
occurred as part of government and company efforts to end strikes,
suppress working-class movements.
|
|
Great
Strike of 1877:
|
A
general strike against all nation’s railways began when B&O
Railroad announced 10% dividend for stockholders & 10% pay cut
for workers. Began in WV & spread.
|
|
Trains
stopped, property destroyed, 100+ lives lost as federal & state
troops were sent in.
|
|
Severe
elite backlash led to “reform” & reorganization of militias,
building of armories.
|
|
|
Pullman
Strike, 1894, against train-car maker whose workers lived in company
town:
|
After
1893 panic, Pullman cut wages by 33%, with no cut in rent or store
prices.
|
|
Eugene
Debs and American Railway Union led national boycott of trains with
Pullman cars.
|
|
RRs
decided to wipe ARU out, hired strikebreakers. US Att Gen got
injunction against union, Pres. Cleveland sent 12,000 troops to
Chicago, leading to massive violence.
|
|
|
Impact:
Few unions survived. US labor movement narrowed into
“bread-and-butter” unionism, concerned with $ & conditions not
social justice or power of workers.
|
|
|
Background:
The Election of 1896 and the Consolidation of Capitalist Power
|
Amid
massive worker & farmer unrest cause by economic depression, radical
Populist Party joined Democrats in nominating William Jennings Bryan.
|
|
Republicans
nominated Wm. McKinley of Ohio, governor & former congressman best
known for 1890 McKinley tariff, among highest in history.
Reliable tool of industry.
|
|
McKinley
candidacy managed by Cleveland industrialist Marcus A. Hanna, who raised
millions & mounted first advertising-based campaign in US history.
|
Extolled
prosperity, progress, & patriotism.
|
|
Won
support of many native-born Democrats who did not identify with new
immigrants.
|
|
|
McKinley’s
victory sealed large Republican/capitalist majority until 1932.
|
|
|
The
McKinley Years
|
Infamous
for naked imperialism, such conquest of Cuba, Puerto Rico, &
Philippines in Spanish-American War, annexation of Hawaii on behalf of
American sugar growers.
|
|
Lots
of happy talk from White House, but same unequal conditions for workers.
|
|
Continued
repression of workers, such as Lattimer Mines Massacre, 1897:
|
Peaceful
protest march by E. European miners fired on by sheriff &
deputies near Hazelton, PA, killing 19 & wounding 39. May have
influenced McKinley’s assassin.
|
|
|
6
Sept. 1901: Assassination of McKinley by anarchist worker Leon Czolgosz,
at Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. A forgotten turning point.
|
|
Made
Theodore Roosevelt president, who helped usher in “Progressive Era”
when business was curbed some (by anti-trust laws) & worker
conditions slightly improved.
|
|
|
u
American-born,
1873, of new Czech immigrants.
|
|
u
Worked
beginning at age 6, in factories (glass & wire) from age 12.
|
|
u
Avid
reader of anarchist literature, attended meetings & met Emma Goldman in
Chicago.
|
|
–
Picked
up “propaganda of the deed” idea. Interested in 1900 assassination of
King Humbert I of Italy.
|
|
–
Some
anarchists thought he was a spy.
|
|
u
Bought
a gun & moved to Buffalo a few days before Pan-American Exposition.
|
|
u
Shot
McKinley twice point-blank in a receiving line at the Temple of Music. (McK
died of gangrene.)
|
|
u
Barely
survived beating by guards & mob.
|
|
u
At
arrest & trial, calmly admitted & stated political reasons for what
he done.
|
|
u
Quickly
executed, but was later declared “insane or degenerate” for holding his
anarchist beliefs & believing McKinley was enemy of working people.
|
|
u
Anarchists
blamed, laws passed against them, Emma Goldman deported.
|