HIST 151 Lecture 11 Chapter 19 The City and Its Workers 1870 1900 Outline of Last Lecture I Old vs New Immigrants II Xenophobia III Birds of Passage Living on the Wind IV Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 V Jim Crow Outline of Current Lecture I How the Other Half Lives Jacob Riis II Sweatshops child labor III 1877 s Great Railroad Strike IV Samuel Gompers AFL V Knights of Labor VI Haymarket Riot Gov John Peter Altgeld VII Nickelodeons Coney Island Current Lecture How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis Riis was a muckraker and the first photojournalist Went around the poor burrows of New York City Brooklyn Queens the Bronx and photographed sweatshops and those who worked in them mostly eastern immigrant women and their children and made a book out of it Since it was just a collection of photographs anybody could look at it and see the atrocities You didn t have to be able to read or speak English to understand what was happening in the urban areas Sweatshops and child labor Very small around 12 by 14 feet rooms with little to no ventilation It was hot damp dim loud and packed with as many people and machines as space would allow The doors were locked from the outside so a worker couldn t leave These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute Pay was based on labor output for both the worker and the sweatshop owner This made for extremely fast paced work for 12 to 14 hours a day with only one 15 minute break Accidents happened often The workers were mainly foreign women new immigrants and their children girls ages 10 to 15 The children would come to work both due to their mothers not being able to watch them babysitters were often unavailable as well as to earn more money for the family The children would sit under their mother s desk and work until they were old enough to sit in a chair The chair would be tethered to their mother s According to the US Census of 1870 750 000 children ages 10 to 15 were in the labor force This is the early Gilded Age By 1900 the US Census reported 1 million 750 000 children ages 10 to 15 in the labor force This is 18 of the workforce for the entire country o Also it should be noted that the facts on the census are typically underreported Having children in the labor force causes many problems such as o Higher number of accidents due to clumsiness o Higher rate of disease due to weaker immune systems AND MOST IMPORTANTLY o These children are not in school not learning any skills to better themselves and their future because they are working THUS continuing the cycle of poverty their parents clawed their way out of to come to America The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 In the summer of 1877 in West Virginia a B O railroad train has a wheel malfunction Rail workers try and fix it but end up accidentally causing more damage This causes the whole B O to shut down its rails and either fire or cut wages for the many workers who were trying to fix it This lead to the shutting down of the Ohio Northern Central Pacific Pennsylvania railroads and more 100 000 workers walked off because they had had enough of the way they were being treated This meant no mail produce products goods etc were being transported anywhere across the US Local police and militias were sent in to get the workers back but they either joined or supported them This made president Hayes choose to send in US troops to the affected areas They killed 40 workers and made thousands of arrests As well a ton of workers were permanently fired but the railroads started running again THIS IS THE STRIKE THAT STARTS ALL OTHER STRIKES AND OPENS THE DORR FOR ORGANIZED LABOR EVENTS BOTH SUCCESSFUL AND BLOODY Samuel Gompers and the AFL Gompers liked the idea of organized labor events but wasn t fond of immigrants or women SO he started the American Federation of Labor The membership was very selective and was only composed of white male skilled American artisans or school workers o These people were chosen because they were the 10 on top and they had the loudest voices If they threatened to walk politicians would listen o There were 80 85 000 members nation wide in the 1880s The Knights of Labor The largest group of organized labor force unionized workers because they took anybody and everybody in as a member Immigrants women people of color unskilled workers non citizens etc o 880 000 members They far outnumbered the AFL HOWEVER in 1886 the Knights were over due to poor organization and lack of manageability This manifests in the Haymarket Riot and Gov John Peter Altgeld In the summer of 1886 the employees of a McCormick Reaper wheat farm machine factory in Chicago invited the Knights of Labor to come lead a walk out so they too could be unionized Chicago police had heard of this so when the Knights arrived they were ready in full riot gear in Haymarket Square A bomb detonates and kills 4 policemen Nobody knows who created planted or detonated the bomb BUT the Knights automatically get blamed A vast number of Knights of Labor members were charged and hanged even if they weren t even in Chicago that night at all Some were even in Canada The governor of Illinois John Peter Altgeld orders all executions to be stopped and asks for evidence condemning the people charged He s run out of office shortly after o Considered an early progressive He saw a wrong and tried to right it against the majority Nickelodeons and Coney Island A nickelodeon is a box with an organ and pictures enclosed inside it If a person had a nickel they could place it in the slot on the box put their eyes up to a viewfinder pull a black curtain over their head and move through the pictures while music played o This a form of entertainment before movies theaters and other things were invented It provided stress relief for factory workers and helped them start the next workweek Coney Island was the first outdoor amusement park It was originally only open on Sundays because this was the only day workers had off Cotton candy and nickelodeons were everywhere and people could find comfort for one day walking down the boardwalk