| Submitted by: | saqlainj |
| Date: | 03 / 12 / 2009 |
| Category: | US History |
| Words | Pages: | 1409 | 6 |
| Views: | 124 |
Saqlain Jagani
US History, 6
Labor Essay
Although organized labor encountered some difficulties when first getting started from several companies and the government, the overall outcome helped improve the position of workers by decreasing the work hours and improving their working conditions from the time period of 1875 to 1900. During the later part of the 19th century, several systems of organized labor popped up around the United States such as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. They strove to unite workers across the nation and work to better the positions of these workers. This produced one of the richest time periods in American history ever.
Each different system of organized labor had different goals and some systems had higher bars to jump than others. When first established, these systems of organized labor were not recognized by the United States government and were therefore illegal. This is why the term “labor unions” cannot be attributed to this time period from 1875 to 1900 since they are illegal until the early 20th century. They began by trying everything they possibly could. For example, the Knights of Labor strove to eliminate the nonproducers and go with the base of the country. They wanted to abolish child labor. They had a goal to “make each man his own employer.” Another labor union was the American Federation of Labor that tried to use boycotts and strikes to get better wages and less hours of work for their members. As document A shows, the different systems or organized labor didn’t produce their desired results for a very long time. The average hours worked began to drop 12 years after the first major system of labor was formed and from 1875 to 1881, their index of daily averages, was on the rapid decline until things began to show improvement. Indexes started to increase once more and work hours began to decline and can be attributed to one of the major innovations of this time period. These...
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