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Y319: Civil Rights in the USA 1865–1992

Trade Union and Labour Rights: unions from 1865 to the 1890s

  • 2 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on the legal position of unions in 1865, the Knights of Labor, Haymarket, the AFL, immigration, industrialisation and skilled workers, the railroad strike of 1877, Homestead and Pullman, and antitrust law.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Numbers

Describe the legal position of trade unions in the United States in 1865.

Numbers

Describe the aims and fate of the Knights of Labor.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Describe the legal position of trade unions in the United States in 1865.

    Model answer

    Almost none: unions had no statutory right to exist or bargain, employers could dismiss organisers at will, and courts still treated collective action as a criminal or civil conspiracy in restraint of trade, so the National Labor Union of 1866 had to seek change through political lobbying rather than law.

  2. 2

    Describe the aims and fate of the Knights of Labor.

    Model answer

    Formed in 1869 and led by Terence Powderly, the Knights admitted skilled and unskilled workers, women and Black members alike and campaigned for the eight-hour day, co-operatives and an end to child labour, peaking at around 700,000 members in 1886 before public reaction to the Haymarket bombing and lost strikes destroyed them.

  3. 3

    What happened at Haymarket Square in 1886 and why did it damage the labour movement?

    Model answer

    During a Chicago rally in support of the eight-hour day a bomb thrown at the police led to the deaths of seven officers, and the trial and execution of anarchist organisers on almost no evidence allowed employers and the press to identify unionism with foreign terrorism, choking off recruitment for a generation.

  4. 4

    How did the American Federation of Labor differ from the Knights of Labor?

    Model answer

    Founded in 1886 under Samuel Gompers, the AFL organised skilled craftsmen only into autonomous national unions, avoided socialism and third-party politics, and pursued immediate gains in wages, hours and conditions through collective bargaining and the strike, a strategy that let it survive where broader bodies collapsed.

  5. 5

    Explain the effect of the New Immigration on union development.

    Model answer

    The arrival of millions from southern and eastern Europe after 1880 gave employers a supply of desperate, often non-English-speaking labour who could be used as strike-breakers, divided the workforce along ethnic and religious lines, and pushed craft unions towards exclusion and support for immigration restriction rather than mass organisation.

  6. 6

    Explain how industrialisation weakened the bargaining position of skilled workers.

    Model answer

    Mechanised, subdivided factory work stripped out the craft knowledge that had given skilled men their leverage, replacing them with machine-tenders who were easily replaced, while the concentration of capital in giant corporations left individual workers facing employers with far deeper resources during a strike.

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