Industrial growth created jobs. Yet factory workers paid a price for economic progress. They generally worked for 10 or 12 hours a day, six days a week. They could be fired at any time for any reason. Many lost their jobs during business downturns. Immigrants willing to take lower pay drove down wages.
People often worked in unsafe and unhealthful conditions. Steelworkers suffered terrible burns. Coal miners died in caveins. Garment workers toiled in crowded and dangerous urban factories known as sweatshops.
By 1900 more than 1 million women had joined the industrial workforce. Women generally earned about half of what men did for the same work. Hundreds of thousands of children under 16 also worked in industry. Many states passed child-labor laws that said children working in factories had to be at least 12 years old and should not work more than 10 hours a day. Employers, however, widely ignored child-labor laws.
Economic depressions in the 1870s and the 1890s hit working people hard. After a financial panic in 1873, for example, many companies cut costs by forcing workers to take pay cuts. In some cases, they fired workers. Unions responded with large strikes that sometimes sparked violence.
In July 1877, angry railroad strikers in several locations burned rail yards, ripped up track, and destroyed property. Railroad companies hired strikebreakers to replace the striking workers. Federal troops restored order.
Another bloody clash occurred between police and strikers in Chicago's Haymarket Square in May 1886. Workers from the McCormick Harvester Company had been striking in favor of an eight-hour workday. Several were injured when the police broke up a labor rally. The next day, a crowd gathered in protest. As police ordered the crowd to break up, an unidentified person threw a bomb. The blast touched off a riot. When it was over, seven police officers and several civilians were dead, and 60 people were injured. Afterward, many Americans linked the labor movement with violence and disorder.
