payment page
Conditions in Factories
The factory owners of the Gilded Age had much to justify. Adults who worked in factories often worked six or seven days of 12 or more hours a day. They had no vacation or sick leave; worked in dirty, poorly-ventilated factories; had infrequent breaks; and had no workers’ compensation if they got injured at work.
Additionally, there was the issue of child labor. Usually, children worked because their families were poor and depended on their wages to survive. In 1870, one out of every eight children worked outside the home. By 1900, it had increased to one out of five children. Some jobs for children included working in mines or in glass or textile factories where their small hands allowed them to reach into moving machines. They also worked as newsboys, messengers, shoeshiners, or street peddlers.
Gilded Age Labor Unions and Disputes
In response to these conditions, labor unions formed and tried to use collective bargaining. Individual workers have little power to convince owners to give them better working conditions. By working together to represent ALL the workers, collective bargaining allows representatives of labor and management to reach written agreements on wages, hours, and working conditions. The Knights of Labor was the first major labor organization in the United States, founded in 1869. Other organizations included the American Federation of Labor, a craft union that included skilled workers from all trades, and the Industrial Workers of the World, a socialist union that included all kinds of workers, including African Americans.
One early Gilded Age labor dispute was the Railroad Strike of 1877. After a major financial panic occurred in 1873, major Eastern rail lines cut wages in 1877. This caused West Virginia railroad workers to walk off the job and block the tracks. The strike began to spread all the way to the East Coast and was characterized by 52 days of mob action and the destruction of railroad property. It was finally put down by militias, the National Guard, and federal troops.
Another labor dispute that occurred during the period after the Civil War was the Haymarket Square Riot. It began in May 1886 with a peaceful protest led by anarchist leaders held in Haymarket Square in Chicago. Workers were responding to a striker’s death at the hands of the Chicago police. Someone threw a bomb at police who had arrived to disperse the workers, and the police responded with gunfire. Eight labor activists were tried and convicted, even though there was no evidence to support their involvement. Seven of these activists were sentenced to death.
Both of these disputes show why the general population often viewed unions as violent and dangerous in this time period. Because of this, the theme of all the Gilded Age labor disputes was that the government always sided with the employers against the labor unions.
