Pullman Strike Research Paper

You touched on a critical point in your forum, as of why workers went on strike. While poverty played a significant role, in 1877, railroad employees experienced a significant pay cut, which sparked the Great Railway Strike, triggering violence and a shutdown of the railways lasting nearly six weeks. Next, the Pullman strike began with railroad owners becoming increasingly wealthier, while none of the profits trickled down to the employees. The labor walk-outs encompassed the substantial divide between social classes. Hence, rich businessmen were increasing their profits, while poor workers often remained stagnate with low wages and company issued paycuts.

Another result of the Triangle Factory fire that resulted in change in the American workplace was the attempts of labor unions and strikes. Prior to the fire, in 1909, one of the more notable strikes dubbed the "Uprising of 20,000" was organized primarily by female immigrant garment workers because of the awful conditions, long hours, and low wages they were made to work in due to the lack of options available to them (Pool, 2012). The primary challenge was to get attention paid to the mistreatment of immigrant workers. While there were short term agreements for their demands, the strike ultimately failed, however where it did succeed was exposing poor working conditions and stirring a debate about what counted as public and private (Pool,

After the police stopped several of these meeting the workers didn’t stop there, they started to publicly express the wrongs in these industries. Some of these actions would be creating small strikes, creating slogans heard everywhere like "Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!" or "Shortening the Hours Increase the Pay". , or even creating songs like "the Eight Hour Day". Soon after that the works started to arrange marches through the middle of down town. Nearly 100 thousand workers marched through the middle of down town chanting about the eight-hour day.

The Pullman Strike occurred a year later, as an effect of the depression. It had a huge impact on working hours, wages, people losing jobs, as well as transportation for people and goods. The Pullman Strike also was an influential turning point for labor movement and laws in the United States. The conflict between railroad workers and the Pullman company during the strike was influential because

They demanded less hours, higher wages, workplace safety and unions. In the summer of 1909 the majority of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers walked off of the job. Blanck and Harris hired private police forces and prostitutes to beat the strikers and had them arrested for fighting back. The public looked at them as disturbers of the peace, lazy immigrants who didn’t understand how lucky they were to have a job. Other workers in factories left their jobs as well, leading to Blanck and Harris organizing all of the other shirtwaist factories, leading them against the workers in what essentially became a long game of “chicken”.

While the Haymarket Affair was primarily a labor protest demanding an eight-hour workday, many of the activists involved were immigrants and some were anarchists. The media and the authorities, however, portrayed the movement as a foreign-born, radical, and racially diverse threat to the established order, contributing to the demonization of labor

The Panic of 1873 contributed to The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 by allowing hardworking people to experience financial struggle and by causing southern blacks to nearly lose the little hope they had remaining. Although The Panic of 1873 contributed to many bad things, it ended in a way many did not think it would end. President Hayes eventually [sent many troops and militia from city to city] where strike occurred to decrease and soon cease all strikes until it was over (PBS 1). In 1878, many believe that this was when the strike was over, but many smaller strikes resulted thereafter from The Great Railroad Strike. But what we refer to as The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 finally ended in 1879.

The feeling, shown in Nast's illustration after the railroad strike of 1877, that amalgamations simply lead to more " communistic values" and general uniformity made it very arduous to genuinely get anything done. Samuel Gompers, progenitor of the American Federation of Labor, argued that the right to strike was absolutely obligatory if any reforms were going to be made and not even this right had been officially granted to the people by regime (Document I). Gompers made it very pellucid that not even the very substratum of organized labor had been established and so up until this point the advances that had been made, were virtually frivolous. In conclusion, from 1875-1900 very few advances were made through organized labor in achieving better working conditions for workers.

However, the economic crises in 1837 collapsed the labor unions because of economic hard times, and with immigrants coming in surplus willing to work for cheap, regular people could not compete and thus had to work at the beckon of the factories. Labor unions worked when the economy was resilient, but when the economy was shocked, everyone was too afraid of demanding more when there were those willing to work for

But the financial success of the mill did not translate into the success of the spinners and weaver who worked in the factories. On January 21, 1886, the workers went on strike, shutting down the plant under the influence of the labor organization Knights of Labor. The leader of the strike was a weaver named George Lee, who established a committee in order to formally present the grievances of the shop workers to Albert Sack. The grievances included the formation of a permanent committee in order to present grievances and negotiate terms with Sack, as well as to address the mistreatment of the workers by the mill’s managers. However, the biggest grievance that the committee wanted to address was the wage system.

The detrimental Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is considered to be one of the most tragic disasters in history. On March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out and killed 146 garment workers who were mostly women. These women worked countless hours with low wages and inhumane working conditions in a factory. Even though this event was tragic, the triangle shirtwaist fire helped to shape the new world for the better. The multitude of workers trapped within the inferno to their demise was the final straw for the mistreatment of America’s workers.

The AFL advocated for most of the same things as the Knights of Labor. The American Federation of Labor used strikes and boycotts against owners to try and get what they wanted. Two major strikes that occurred were the Pullman Strike and the Homestead Strike. Both strikes were very dangerous and had millions of dollars of damage. Some of the strikes and boycotts did work and wages were raised, however some backfired and many workers ended up losing their

thousand went on strike on July 20, 1899 after months of planning to boycott ("William Randolph Hearst"). All of the other newspapers lowered their prices back to pre-war prices of 65 cents for 100 except Joseph Pultizer’s Evening World and William Randolph Hearst’s Evening Journal. At this high of a rate Newsies could not make enough for housing and food. The reason many newsies started protesting was because they believed that Pulitzer and Hearst were being greedy saying, "Ain't that ten cents worth as much to us as it is to Hearst and Pulitzer who are millionaires? well i guess it is.

Problems like these angered the workers and caused labor unions to form. Some labor unions included the American Federation of Labor (AFL), or the Knights of Labor (KoL), which were the first two industrial labor unions. The industrial unions did more physical rebellion such as strikes or walk-outs, but both the industrial unions and the farmer unions were formed due to the people’s

It killed seven police and wounded about sixty people. The police than fired on the crowd, killing several people and wounding one hundred people,” The Haymarket affair was horrible because it gave the employers more leverage on the workers because the could use the Haymarket affair as a weapon to keep employees in line. Also, many innocent lives were lost because the harvester company didn’t want to raise wages just a few cents. Instead of raising wages the company provoked the workers and that’s why the fights in the streets broke out.