Labor, Socialism and Responses to Big Business

1. Under what circumstances might it be a good idea to strike? 2. Under what circumstances would it be a bad idea?

Government Response to Big Business

• Sherman Antitrust Act: it is illegal to interfere with free trade between states or other countries

• Problems:– Not easy to use: what exactly is

a trust?– Corporations easily reorganize to

avoid suits• Question: what does this

picture imply about the Antitrust Act? How do you know?

Plight of Industrial Workers• Grievances:

– Unsafe working conditions– Long hours– Low wages– Child labor– Low job security– No accident or

unemployment insurance– No vacations or sick days

• Question: What is unsafe about this picture?

Labor Unions• Knights of Labor (1869): open to all workers

– 8 hour day– Equal pay for equal work (men and women)– Strikes as a last resort

• American Federation of Labor (AFL):– Samuel Gompers joins cigar makers and other craft unions into one large

union (1886)– Focuses on collective bargaining: negotiations between labor and

management– Strikes are a major tactic

• American Railway Union– Eugene V. Debs– Supports all labors- skilled and unskilled- in the railroad industry

Socialism• Socialism: economic and political

system based on government control of business and property and equal distribution of wealth.

-Less extreme than communism• Question: Pros/cons?• Socialists work with labor unions to

achieve better working conditions• Industrial Workers of the World

(IWW)- a.k.a. “the Wobblies”– Radical unionists and socialists– Miners, lumberers, cannery and dock

workers– Welcomes African Americans