With the growth of the factory system and with more people moving to the cities to work, the need for better working conditions became an issue. In the late 1800s, workers had few rights. They were paid meager wages, worked long hours, and often faced dangerous conditions, not to mention workers had no benefits or job security.
Workers began to demand better conditions and pay, and they organized into unions to achieve their goals. But it wasn't easy because workers often had difficulty agreeing on what they wanted--higher pay, fewer hours, benefits, or a complete overhaul of the entire system.
As you might expect, factory owners were not happy about unions, nor were many politicians and judges who were beholden to business tycoons for money and political support.
Women workers sewing teddy bears in a sweatshop assembly line in New York City in 1915
The industrial growth of the late 1800s created new jobs. Growth also raised the standard of living for many American workers. That is, necessities and luxuries were more available and affordable. Yet, workers paid a price for economic progress. Factories had once been small workplaces where employers and employees knew one another and often worked side by side. As mass production spread, however, factories became larger and less personal.
Industrial laborers 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 or were replaced by immigrants who were willing to work for lower pay. Factories and mines were noisy, unhealthy, and unsafe. Accidents were common. Steel workers suffered burns from spills of hot steel. Coal miners died in cave-ins and from the effects of gas and coal dust. Textile workers’ lungs were damaged by airborne lint. Garment workers toiled in crowded urban factories called sweatshops, where their eyesight was ruined by sewing for hours in poor light. Filled with flammable materials, the sweatshops were also terrible firetraps.
Child laborers portrayed by Lewis Hine in 1909; a barefooted boy in a cotton mill was so small that he had to climb up on the spinning frame to mend the broken threads and put back the empty bobbins.
Although most working women in the late 1800s had jobs as domestic servants, women also joined the industrial workforce, especially the textile industry. By 1900, more than one million women worked in industry. However, because no laws regulated workers’ salaries, women generally received about half of what men earned for the same work.
Industries also hired children. In 1900, hundreds of thousands of children under 16 years of age worked in factories. Concerned groups brought child labor to the attention of their state legislatures. As a result, many states passed child labor laws. These laws stated that children working in factories had to be at least 12 years old and should not work more than 10 hours a day. Employers widely ignored child-labor laws, however. Also, the laws did not apply to agriculture, which employed about one million children.
Oil refinery workers in Bayonne, New Jersey, confront company guards outside Standard Oil moments before the private police opened fire on July 22, 1915. Five strikers were killed.
Eventually, there developed an outcry for change. Despite being poor, uneducated, and lacking political connections, workers had one thing – numbers. They clearly outnumbered the factory owners. Organizations that were designed to fight for the everyday needs of their members developed. These organizations were called unions and were made up of people who all worked in a common field or industry.
Unions had a right to exist legally, but employers and bosses could still simply fire workers for any reason. Sometimes, things got violent and even deadly. Bosses would hire “strikebreakers”, or even thugs, to stop workers from fighting or stopping work. Often, it was just the threat from a company breaker or the fear of job loss that would stop workers from organizing. However, workers also used violence at times.
Americans were unsure about the movement. Some saw a coming new civil war, while others thought all workers were dangerous, and could even be anarchists, people who wanted to end all government. Yet, unions did grow despite difficulties. Sometimes, the military was called into break strikes, and often the courts sided with companies over workers. The biggest challenge, though, was inside unions. They often could not agree on common goals, and they often excluded African American workers and women. However, change would come.
| What usually happened to women workers who became pregnant? | They were fired. |
| What did workers form so they could demand change from the bosses? | unions |
| Why do you think the government usually sided with the company bosses? | because they were powerful and held sway in government |
| Why did fights often erupt within the unions? | Workers could not agree on what changes they wanted. |
