1answer.
Ask question
Login Signup
Ask question
All categories
  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Social Studies
  • Business
  • History
  • Health
  • Geography
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Computers and Technology
  • Arts
  • World Languages
  • Spanish
  • French
  • German
  • Advanced Placement (AP)
  • SAT
  • Medicine
  • Law
  • Engineering
Radda [10]
3 years ago
8

Explain the rise of the labor movements and major strikes

History
2 answers:
beks73 [17]3 years ago
6 0

The labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers. For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. ... In the 19th century, trade unionism was mainly a movement of skilled workers.

Neporo4naja [7]3 years ago
5 0

The labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers. For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.

The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. The formation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1794 marks the beginning of sustained trade union organization among American workers.  

From that time on, local craft unions proliferated in the cities, publishing lists of “prices” for their work, defending their trades against diluted and cheap labor, and, increasingly, demanding a shorter workday. Thus a job-conscious orientation was quick to emerge, and in its wake there followed the key structural elements characterizing American trade unionism–first, beginning with the formation in 1827 of the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia, central labor bodies uniting craft unions within a single city, and then, with the creation of the International Typographical Union in 1852, national unions bringing together local unions of the same trade from across the United States and Canada (hence the frequent union designation “international”). Although the factory system was springing up during these years, industrial workers played little part in the early trade union development. In the 19th century, trade unionism was mainly a movement of skilled workers.

Did you know? In 2009, 12 percent of American workers belonged to unions.

The early labor movement was, however, inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from the Ricardian labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship. The transforming economic changes of industrial capitalism ran counter to labor’s vision. The result, as early labor leaders saw it, was to raise up “two distinct classes, the rich and the poor.” Beginning with the workingmen’s parties of the 1830s, the advocates of equal rights mounted a series of reform efforts that spanned the nineteenth century. Most notable were the National Labor Union, launched in 1866, and the Knights of Labor, which reached its zenith in the mid-1880s.  

On their face, these reform movements might have seemed at odds with trade unionism, aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all “producers” rather than strictly to wageworkers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott. But contemporaries saw no contradiction: trade unionism tended to the workers’ immediate needs, labor reform to their higher hopes. The two were held to be strands of a single movement, rooted in a common working-class constituency and to some degree sharing a common leadership. But equally important, they were strands that had to be kept operationally separate and functionally distinct.

During the 1880s, that division fatally eroded. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes; when it refused, they joined in December 1886 to form the American Federation of Labor (afl). The new federation marked a break with the past, for it denied to labor reform any further role in the struggles of American workers. In part, the assertion of trade union supremacy stemmed from an undeniable reality. As industrialism matured, labor reform lost its meaning–hence the confusion and ultimate failure of the Knights of Labor. Marxism taught Samuel Gompers and his fellow socialists that trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution. The founders of the afl translated this notion into the principle of “pure and simple” unionism: only by self-organization along occupational lines and by a concentration on job-conscious goals would the worker be “furnished with the weapons which shall secure his industrial emancipation.”


You might be interested in
Significant Information about Ancient Egyptian RELIGION?
Anastaziya [24]
"Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals which were an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. It centered on the Egyptians' interaction with many deities who were believed to be present in, and in control of, the forces and elements of nature."
4 0
3 years ago
What is one long term cause of the civil war
diamong [38]
The civil war ended slavery.
5 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
The weakening of the soviet union in the late 1980s was encouraged by the soviet policy of
kozerog [31]

Answer:

The open discussion of political and social issues.

Explanation:

the weakening of the soviet union in the late 1980s was encouraged by the soviet policy of <u>the open discussion of political and social issues.</u>

7 0
2 years ago
The travels of Ibn Battuta and Zheng He have what in common?
Nostrana [21]

Answer:

A few things connect Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, and Zheng He, even though their lives did not overlap. They each served kings and emperors. They each traveled enormous distances to places most people from their homelands had never seen.

8 0
3 years ago
What are the two requirements for exclusion of a pre-trial identification under the due process clause?
Sholpan [36]
<span>1. the court must determine whether the identification procedures were impermissibly suggestive. 2.if the procedures were impermissibly suggestive, the Court must then determine whether the procedures created a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.</span>
6 0
3 years ago
Other questions:
  • Pls help :(<br> What does Thoreau say people should do with unjust laws?
    11·1 answer
  • According to Montesquieu, why should government be divided three ways ?
    12·1 answer
  • How did conflict in Serbia between Austria-Hungary and Russia help ignite world war 1?
    8·2 answers
  • What characteristics did ancient civilizations share
    9·2 answers
  • Which of these BEST describes the central issue of the "Scopes Trial" of 1925
    9·2 answers
  • How did William Penn's treatment of Native Americans differ from the Puritans' treatment?
    7·1 answer
  • What were the results of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan?
    8·2 answers
  • Do you think the European powers expected this response from the League of Nations
    12·1 answer
  • Carefully study the chart above. Which country has the smallest gap between literacy rates for men and women (for all the adults
    13·2 answers
  • What would be the greatest natural disaster to strike from outside of the earth?
    7·1 answer
Add answer
Login
Not registered? Fast signup
Signup
Login Signup
Ask question!