Labor Unions Dbq

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Several barriers hindered the use of labor union strikes but to a certain extent, organized labor was successful for being so persistent. As seen in Document A, labor hours were shortened and the average wage increased slightly. Their persistence helped companies hesitate when slashing wages. But it was not enough for the satisfaction of the workers. Organized labor did indeed try to succeed, few goals were achieved, but too many impediments stood in their way of significantly improving their positions. The public’s opinion was a major contributing factor in overruling labor unions. According to The New York Times, the public was sympathetic towards the strikers of Baltimore and Ohio Road (Doc B). However, during the year of that editorial, there was the Panic of 1877. Most people at that time were actually just starting to get suspicious of organized labor. The factory companies were trying to justify their treatment of their workers. Thomas Nast’s cartoon in Harper’s Weekly demonstrates that people viewed the strikers negatively as communists trying to undermine capitalism. The “Gospel of Wealth” was a theory spread by specific people like Cornwell. It states that wealth can be obtained by anyone that is willing to work for it and God will provide you with it at some point, viewing the poor as lazy people. And another political cartoon was published in Frank Leslie’s Newspaper (Doc F) which mocks labor unions and that they were associated with anarchists and socialists. Employers attempted to hinder the success of the labor unions. According to the “testimony of a machinist before the Senate” there was a rise in unskilled labor (Doc D). Employers no longer needed as much workers to do the same tasks. That factor as well as wage cuts and panics led to more strikes. The Knights of Labor failed when conflict emerged between skilled and unskilled workers. The AFL
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