Knights Of Labor In The Gilded Age Essay

During the period of the Gilded Age, the United States was controlled by the corporations owned by robber barons. Men such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan used money to place their own foothold in the entire economic and political system of the united states. They were able to control wages, adjust prices, buy out all competition, and avoid nearly all punishment. They held their workers under them to build their business. These business’ products were such a necessity they were able to control the entire nation.

The Knights of Labor was the first major American labor union created around 1871. It was configured by all productive laborers from the factories to fields, whose leader was Terence V. Powderly. Their goals were to adopt a system that could which will secure the labor job and involve the government to protecting the workers. In addition they were fighting to obtain 8 hour work day, graduated income tax, cooperatives.

Uriah Stephens formed the Knights of Labor in 1869, but the union gained a national following when Terence Powderly assumed leadership. The Knights of Labor were founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Uriah Stephens and six other tailors in 1869.”The Main goal for Knights of Labor was “To combat this dismal situation for workers, unions of the Gilded Age pursued two broad strategies.

The Knights of Labor, founded by Terence Powderly and Uriah Stephens in 1869, helped create a union contract with Carnegie’s Braddock Mill. While the Knights of Labor were trying to have broad social reform around the country, they created a lockout in the Braddock Mill. Workers like Kratcha did not care as much about the union’s goals, instead they wanted the mills to be open so that they could earn money (25). Large business owners, like Carnegie, tried, and usually succeed, at breaking strikes and unions in their mills. In Homestead and Braddock, Kratcha experienced the effects of strikes, and they were not positive.

Women were paid about half of what the men made, and worked in dangerous and unhealthy circumstances. In often cases, women were not seen in many unions as men were, this is due to the fact that unions were hostile to female workers. As a result to this situation, the National Women's Trade Union League was assembled with 150,000 women leading it. However, the war did not improve the women’s wages. (First World

How would you like to work for little to no pay and over 60 hours a week? In today's day in time some people would call that abuse or over work, but that’s exactly what was going on in the 1870s and 1880s. This is where the labor movement started, with people being over worked and little to no pay. As you can imagine people started to get upset with how things were going so that started violent outbreaks along with strikes all across the United States. In the 1880s, a group was formed to help the working man, this group was called the Knights of Labor.

In ways, this was seen as a labor union since the employers were well represented, but it was not well organized, which eventually led to the downfall of the group. The Knights of Labor was a diverse union that was open to all

The National Labor Union looked for rather to unite the national 's major work associations in presence, and the eight-hour alliances built up to press for the eight-hour day, to make a national league that could press for work changes and discovered national unions in those regions where none existed. Basically, this failed because the Union neglected to influence Congress to abbreviate the workday and the work association itself disintegrated in 1873 but this union, opened up the doors for other associations, for example, the Knights of Labor, the American Federation Labor, and the Western Federation of Miners

The CIO organized almost 4 million workers into 32 national and international unions in just the first two years that it was in service. They also signed contracts with 30,000 companies, “resulting in wage increases in excess of $1 billion, shorter work hours for millions of workers and improved working conditions. ”(UMWA) The AFL and the CIO stayed as two separate organizations until 1955, when the two groups combined to make the AFL-CIO. Today the AFL-CIO is the federation for U.S. unions that represent 12.5 million working women and men.

Black workers formed Revolutionary Union Movements within Detroit auto factories in the late 1960s as a means of organizing and protecting the black worker. At that time, black people were blue-collar workers, not skilled tradesman or white-collar workers, and often worked in factories as the “transformation of sweat and blood”. They realized that since they were overwhelmingly employed in these jobs, with upwards of 80-90% in some plants, they could cause a major disruption through work stoppages, causing plants to, “cease function”, and interrupting the, “money flow”. Working conditions were beyond subpar, since safety conditions failed to exist, “compulsory overtime”, where you were made to work overtime, and a system where the union

The Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor are just two examples of labor unions. Working in such poor conditions with little pay was a harsh reality. Labor unions provided at least some hope of change for workers. A worker in Hollitz explained that the reason he went on strike from George Pullman’s “model” company was because, “five reductions in wages, work, and in conditions of employment…” The railroad strike of 1877 grew violent, as workers demanded better wages.

The AF of L wanted “unionism” and opposed socialism. TheKnights of Labor, another labor union, was created in 1869 and enlisted in their ranks not only alllaborers but also everyone who could be truly classified as a producer. Labor unions, the two major depressions and the three “robber barons” were three of theforemost reasons the Gilded Age got its name. The “robber barons” invested in things that wouldultimately lead to a “Golden Industrial Age” but they didn’t achieve it totally legitimately, and thecreation of the labor unions sided with the workers, but at times, grew violent in their methods.

As stated in our text, “Knights of Labor, the first mass organization of America’s working class, proved the chief beneficiary of labor’s newfound consciousness.” [The American Promise, 519], strikes and riots across the 19th century helped propel organizations that represented the working class. One way that desperate working Americans actually did to make things better was to strike, in 1877 the Great railroad strike of West Virginia’s brakemen’s “[in retaliation], nearly 100,000 railroad workers had walked off the job. An estimated

During the gilded age, America turned out to be more prosperous and saw exceptional development in industry and innovation. However, the Gilded Age had a more vile side: It was where covetous, degenerate industrialists, financiers and legislators delighted in phenomenal riches and richness to the detriment of the regular workers. Truth be told, it was well off moguls, not lawmakers, who subtly held the most political power during the Gilded Age The gilded age in 1866-1900 the laborers who were basically outsiders and slaves needed specialists association. All things considered, they were just left helpless before their bosses.

The time period from when the Second Industrial Revolution was beginning, up until President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, is known as the Gilded Age. After the Civil War, many people headed out West to pursue agriculture, and many immigrants moved to urban areas to acquire jobs in industrial factories. It is in this context that farmers and industrial workers had to respond to industrialization. Two significant ways farmers and industrial workers responded to industrialization in the Gilded Age, were creating the Populist Party and the American Federation of Labor (AFL).