U.S. Labor and Work

Week 9: The Industrial Revolution and Wage Work

U.S. Labor and Work 201 Prof. Brucher

Agenda • Assignments: week 9 discussion forum; paper

2 draft 1 due week 11. • Presentation and discussion: industrialization,

republicanism, and the early labor movement

“Peg and Awl,” Pete Seeger

Music: https://youtu.be/U2e7-bkWuyA Lyrics: https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-peg-and-awl-lyrics

Communications and Transportation Growth in the U.S., 1800-1850

The Delaware and Raritan Canal, Built 1830-1834

Communications and Transportation Growth in the U.S., 1800-1850

The Dewitt Clinton locomotive on the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, NY, 1831

Communications and Transportation Growth in the U.S., 1800-1850

1800s printing press

Literacy rates grew rapidly among working people in the north. By 1836, 1 in 4 New York City residents purchased daily newspapers.

Throughout the 1800s, books, newspapers, and magazines reached wide audiences, catering to readers of different classes, races, ethnicities, and genders.

The First Industrial Revolution

Watch David McAulay’s Mill Times: https://youtu.be/AOdCinHv-Jw

Paterson, NJ: The Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.)

Alexander Hamilton and the S.U.M.: https://youtu.be/GB0oHPPhF_Q

Paterson then…

… and now!

… and now!

Changing Industry, Changing Work

Master and apprentice in a shoe shop, ca. 1800

Young women working as mill operatives, ca. 1830

How much power do you have at work?

• Do you get to determine: – Your wages? – Your hours? – Your working conditions?

• If not, why not? • If so, why do you have power to determine your

work?

“Republicanism” and Work

• What did “republicanism” mean in the late 1700s and early 1800s?

• How did it relate to how Americans thought about work?

Rural republicanism and “the chosen people of God”

• For Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic- Republicans, self-sufficient free holding small farmers (yeomen) were the bedrock of the new nation, because they exercised both political and economic independence (specifically white male heads of household).

• Both the North and the South were primarily agricultural in the early 1800s, with 80 percent of Northerners still living in rural areas by 1840.

• Unlike southern plantations that used slave labor, most northern farms were smaller at 40 to 120 acres.

• Farm life involved the work of everyone in the household: fathers, mothers, and children.

• Work was gendered: fathers and sons did much of the field work, while mothers and daughters did most of the domestic manufacturing.

Towns, Cities, and Artisan Labor

• As the 1800s progressed, more people became involved in the growing manufacturing industries, especially Northern cities and towns.

• Why and how did this happen? • How was early artisan

manufacturing work structured? • What did these developments

mean for the ideals of republicanism?

The Shoe Shop-Doucette “Ten Footer” in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

Artisan Republicanism and its Limits

• The apprenticeship system was hierarchical, with masters in charge of apprentices. Some masters could be cruel and despotic.

• Journeymen had more freedom, but did not own their own shops. • Ideally, an apprentice who became an journeyman was supposed to have skill

and the ability to control his own work.

New Challenges and New Responses • In the 1800s, journeymen and other skilled

workers worried about the growth of larger workshops and factories, increasing divisions in labor.

• More journeymen worked for wages rather than establishing shops of their own, losing control of their pay and their time.

• “Outwork” further deskilled artisan labor, with workshop and factory owners employing less skilled workers to complete manufacturing tasks in their homes for low pay. This was common in the shoe industry and in textile spinning mills (like the Slater Mill).

• What did workers do to combat these problems?

The Historical Origins of Unions and the U.S. Labor Movement

• What is a union? • Why did workers in the 1800s wish to form

unions? • Did workers have the right to organize unions

at that time?

The Rights of Workers vs. The Rights of Employers (Labor vs. Capital)

• Commonwealth v. Pullis

• Commonwealth v. Hunt

The Workingmen’s Movement, 1820s-1830s

• Growing out of the mechanics associations founded in the 1700s, working men and women began to publish newspapers, build political parties, and form unions to respond to the growth of wage labor and the loss of artisan republicanism.

• Thomas Skidmore’s The Rights of Man to Property (1829) called for a radical redistribution of wealth and property: “no lenders, no borrowers, no landlords, no tenants, no masters, no journeymen; no Wealth; no Want.” (Rosenzweig and Lichtenstein, 352).

• The workingmen’s parties that developed in U.S. cities weren’t quite as radical as Skidmore, but still called for sweeping reforms.

The Growth of the Labor Unions, 1820s-1830s

• The growth of routine, factory labor led to the deskilling of artisan crafts.

• At the same time, long hours (60-70+ hours/week), sped up production, and declining wages sparked animosity and protest on the part of workers of all backgrounds.

• Regional organizations like the New York General Trades Union, the New York Tailoresses Society, and others attempted to unite workers for mutual protection and united action.

• In August 1834, 25,000 workers united in the National Trades Union (NTU), leading to the formation of over 60 unions and over 100 strikes.

Women’s Leadership in the Early Labor Movement

• 1824, Pawtucket, RI: women weavers went on strike to protest longer workdays and lower piece-rates.

• 1833, Lynn, MA: women shoe binders form a protective association, declaring, “Women as well as men have certain inalienable rights, among which is the right at all times of ‘peaceably assembling to consult upon the common good.’”

Lowell “Mill Girls” on Strike, 1834 and 1836 • Thousands of young women, many of them from

rural New England farms, flocked to the growing mills in Waltham, Lowell, and other textile manufacturing cities in the 1820s-40s. The jobs generally offered better pay—and better prospects for economic security—than farm work, domestic work, or other jobs open to women.

• However, they worked 12 hours a day for six days a week and had few holidays.

• When employers responded to increased competition by cutting wages, increasing boarding house rents, and increasing workloads, women “turned out”(went on strike) in 1834 and 1836

“The Turn Out at Lowell,” https://americanantiquarian.org/millgirls/items/show/51

“I Cannot Be a Slave,” 1836 Lowell Mill Strike

"Oh! isn’t it a pity, such a pretty girl as I- Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die? Oh ! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave, For I’m so fond of liberty That I cannot be a slave."

Why did the Labor Movement Begin to Falter in the by the late 1830s?

• Immediate cause, the 1837 Depression: due to the declining price of cotton, the European economy faltered. The Bank of England called in American loans, causing American banks and many businesses to fail. This led to massive unemployment.

• Many employers welcomed the decline of unions during the 1837 depression: that workers would be free of “the moral gangrene Trades Union principles” and “the inconveniences” of “regular combinations and periodical strikes” (Rosenzweig and Lichtenstein, 368-369).

Why did the Labor Movement Begin to Falter in the by the late 1830s?

• Deeper causes: limited solidarity across skills and craft; growing ethnic and racial hostilities between workers; lack of legal rights to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.

• Still, working class people continued to fight against what they saw as the immorality of the market system and engaged in food riots and other forms of protest.