Early Unions and the Great Strikes The growing gap between rich and poor and the workers and owner of the Industrial Revolution soon gave rise to Labor Unions Workers began to realize that only by banding together and forming groups of Organized Labor would they be able to improve their working and living conditions

By 1866 national labor unions where beginning to spring up in the US Some like the Knights of labor attempted to organize all workers and worked for broad social reforms, others like the AFL only tried to organize skilled labor and dealt only with wages and working conditions The Unions attempted to use “Collective Bargaining” or bargaining as a whole to forces owners to improve wages and conditions

Unions used collective bargaining, closed shops, and boycotts to achieve their goals but if all else failed they relied on the power of Strikes to achieve their goals Owners responded to Organized Labor by firing, blacklisting, yellow dog contracts, hiring private security to breakup organized labor, using scabs to replace striking workers and lockouts Often times both owners and unions would lash out at each other violently

Starting in 1877 a series of violent Strikes would rock the nation and draw national attention to organized labor movement Between 1877 and 1900 over 24,000 strikes would erupt in every major industry in the United States These strikes disrupted industries and often turned violent

The Railroad Strike of 1877 The Railroad Strike of 1877 began in the summer of 1877 when the B&O railroad cut wages by 10% and increased the work load by twice as much The 10% cut was the second in less than a year and angry rail workers in West Virginia declared a railway strike Workers refused to operate the tracks or let any train run through that area

The strike quickly turned violent as owner turned to local militias to open up the rail line The violent strike spread quickly to major cities in the Midwest State governors unable to deal with the large scale violence of the strike turned towards the federal government President Rutherford B Hayes sent in federal troops to crush the strike In the end the strike was put down and the president of relying on federal troops to surpess labor unrest was set

Haymarket, Homestead, and Pullman The Haymarket Riot in 1886 resulted from a strike at the McCormick reaper factory over an attempt to establish an 8 hour work day When the company attempted to bring in scab labor massive fights broke out surrounding the factory, the police broke up the fight but injured many strikers The next day at a rally in Chicago's Haymarket square union labor and Anarchist gathered to protest the police brutality

When police attempted to break up the protest a bomb was thrown into a police formation The resulting riot killed dozens of protesters and police The Haymarket riot would tied organized labor and violence and anarchist together for many people The Homestead strike was also marred by violence and tinged by anarchist

When Carnegie tried to break the steel union at his Homestead plant the workers went on strike and the strike quickly became violent Many Americans initially supported the Homestead workers but when an Anarchist attempted to assassinate Carnegies man in charge of the plant most Americans saw the strike as another violent labor unrest Again federal troops were brought in to break the strike

` Finally a strike at the Pullman railcar factory in 1894 quickly spread and shut down much of the nations rail lines This time owners used the Sherman Anti-trust Act to end the strike The owners claimed that labor unions were an illegal trust and used the act to force President Cleveland to bring in Federal troop to get the railroads running again

The used of anti-trust laws, federal troops, the violence of the early strikes would hold up union gains for almost 30 years