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labor unions and labor movements in the United States in railroads, steel, and manufacturing and the expansion of consumer goods and labor markets were accompanied by the formation of thousands of local unions and numerous nationwide organizations that competed for the allegiance of the country’s rapidly growing industrial labor force The National Labor Union, founded in 1866, an umbrella organization of trade unionists, agitated for the eight-hour workday and other reforms but never fully got off the ground More enduring in its impact was the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, which reached the height of its influence in the mid1880s under Terence Powderly, with a membership of around 750,000 and lodges in most every county in the nation More inclusive than other labor associations, the Knights exalted the “nobility of toil” and dignity of labor, opening its doors to all who worked, regardless of race, gender, or social class Championing the eighthour day, the abolition of child labor, and the creation of a “cooperative commonwealth” that would replace “wage slavery,” the organization under Powderly’s idiosyncratic and autocratic rule disappeared by the early 1890s, but not before exercising an important influence on a generation of labor activists and organizers UNIONS AND STRIKES With the economic depression of 1873–79 following the panic of 1873, unemployment skyrocketed, leading to a spate of labor organizing and activism, including the Long Strike of coal miners in Pennsylvania in 1874–75 These events were to prelude one of the signal events in U.S labor history, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, in which thousands of railroad workers in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio put down their tools and disrupted rail traffic to protest a series of pay cuts The protest, fueled by antimonopoly outrage among broad swaths of the populace, sparked a general strike in major industries that spread rapidly as far west as Chicago and St Louis and at its height included more than 100,000 workers Unplanned, unorganized, and without national leadership, the Great Strike lasted more than six weeks and was put down by federal troops at the cost of over 100 workers’ lives The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which made headlines across much of Europe as well as the United States, exposed the deepening divisions between working people and big business, as well as the federal government’s partisan role on the side of business In the two decades to follow, in what is commonly known as Labor’s Great Upheaval, strikes, labor protests, and labor organizing mushroomed across the country and 217 in all major industries, especially railroads, steel, and coal mining, but also among slate quarrymen, garment workers, and hundreds of other trades and crafts The 1880s alone saw more than 10,000 strikes and lockouts; in 1886–87, union membership reached nearly million THE AFL AND THE UMWA Emblematic of this upsurge in labor activism was the formation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, led by Samuel Gompers, an outgrowth of the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, founded in 1881 An umbrella organization representing hundreds of individual trade and craft unions, the AFL was dedicated to “pure and simple unionism” among skilled tradesmen and focused mainly on “bread and butter” issues of wages, working conditions, and the length of the workday Spearheaded by the AFL and supported by the Knights of Labor and other organizations, in 1886 upwards of 700,000 workers went on strike, most to press for reduction of the workday to eight hours from an industry average of 12 The year 1886 also saw the infamous Haymarket affair in Chicago, in which the explosion of a bomb at a huge workers’ rally in Haymarket Square killed a police officer, prompting the police to fire into the crowd, killing one protester and injuring many more and later resulting in the hanging of four labor organizers Major industrialists and financiers, backed by the nation’s major newspapers, seized on the Haymarket events to denounce organized labor as dominated by anarchists and terrorists determined to destroy the nation’s social fabric The charge had little factual foundation, although it found plausibility in the past decade’s immigration from Germany, Italy, and elsewhere of many seasoned labor organizers influenced by the ideologies of socialism, communism, syndicalism, and anarchism then sweeping across much of Europe Haymarket and its aftermath had a strong dampening effect on more radical labor organizing efforts Political parties devoted to advancing the cause of working people also multiplied in the post–Civil War years, most notably the Socialist Labor Party, led by Daniel De Leon, founded in the 1870s Some workingmen’s parties built their strength on appeals to white workers’ racism, such as Dennis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party of California, instrumental in pressuring Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Unlike in Europe, however, the enfranchisement of white male workers made exclusively labor-oriented
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