Worker Protests And Violence

ASU HST 200 (Historical Themes) Industrialization and the Rise of Big Business, 1870-1900 Worker Protests And Violence The huge disparity between the wealth of the factory owners and the life of the workers was well known to them. Some working communities broke spontaneously into violence because they were severely angry and lacked the resources and legal protection necessary to organize. The focal points of these eruptions were the coal mines in eastern Pennsylvania and the railroad yards in western Pennsylvania, which were important to their respective industries and housed sizable immigrant labor populations. Till far into the twentieth century, the combination of violence and a number of other factors weakened any meaningful attempts to organize workers. Businesses saw organizing efforts with great suspicion and used open shops, strikebreakers, yellow-dog contracts (wherein an employee agrees not to join a union as a condition of employment), and other tactics to crush unions. This was done by taking advantage of the general public's strong anti-union sentiment. Language and cultural barriers brought about by the large wave of immigration from Southeastern Europe to the United States, as well as concerns about how to deal with the growing number of low-paid African American workers, presented challenges for workers seeking to organize based on their race and ethnicity. However, the public's persistent confidence in a strong work ethic and that an individual work ethic—rather than organizing into radical collectives—would reap its own advantages posed a significant barrier to the successful unionization of labor. Such incidents, as violence broke out, appeared merely to validate the general public's belief that radical, un-American elements were the driving force behind all union endeavors. Irish coal workers in eastern Pennsylvania established a clandestine group called the Molly Maguires in the 1870s, taking their name after the well-known Irish patriot. The Molly Maguires used a variety of scare tactics, such as kidnappings, beatings, and even murder, in an attempt to draw attention to the predicament of the miners and to worry the mine owners sufficiently that they would take notice of their complaints. Though not in the manner that the demonstrators had wanted, owners did pay heed. To find out the names of the Molly Maguires, they employed investigators to go undercover as miners and mix with the workforce. They obtained the names of twenty-four suspected Maguires by 1875; these individuals were found guilty of both murder and assault against property. Following their conviction and ten public hangings on "Day of the Rope" in 1876, all of the Molly Maguires were swiftly put down by this brutal retaliation. The workers' sole real takeaway from this experience was that they now knew that occasional violent protest would simply be greeted with further violence in the absence of labor organization. The brutal tactics employed by labor, as demonstrated by the Molly Maguires, were not well received by the general public. However, the public was even more horrified by some of the brutal tactics used by agents of the government to put an end to the labor movement, as demonstrated by the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 the following year. That year, West Virginia railroad workers spontaneously went on strike and blocked the lines in protest of taking a large salary reduction. As news of the incident spread, train workers throughout expressed their sympathies by quitting their jobs and damaging property to express their displeasure with the company. The majority of the locals, many of whom were friends and family, agreed with the demands of the railroad workers. Pittsburgh saw the railroad strike's most violent outburst, which started on July 19. To safeguard railroad property, the governor dispatched troops from Philadelphia to the Pittsburgh roundhouse. In an attempt to disperse the irate mob, the militia opened fire, killing twenty people and injuring twenty more. A riot broke out, leading in twenty-four hours of bloodshed, mayhem, arson, and looting. The rioters' exhaustion in the sweltering July heat caused the unrest to end. A second encounter between militiamen and strikers attempting to get out of the roundhouse resulted in the deaths of twenty more people. Following outbreaks of violence in Maryland and Illinois, President Hayes finally dispatched federal troops into key cities in an attempt to reestablish order. Due to this action and the approaching arrival of cooler weather, which increased demand for fuel and food, striking employees countrywide returned to the train. After 45 days of the strike, all they had achieved was a reputation for anger and violence that made people less tolerant of them than before. Disgruntled workers started to recognize that until they improved their own organization, there would be no meaningful increase in their standard of living.