Chapter 19
What attracted immigrants from southern and eastern Europe to the United States in the late nineteenth century?
Advertisements from steamship companies and reports from other sources that emphasized American prosperity → Immigrants were attracted to the United States by steamship companies' advertising campaigns. Immigrants were a highly profitable cargo that loaded and unloaded itself from ships, so shipping companies created advertising campaigns that portrayed America as a country that awarded hard work with high wages and access to luxurious consumer goods. Immigrants received similar reports about American prosperity from friends and relatives. Most of these advertisements and reports were exaggerated and misleading, however.
What change led to the massive redistribution of the American population over the last few decades of the nineteenth century?
Agricultural workers and immigrants were simultaneously moving to American cities. → In the years after the Civil War, rural Americans were drawn to cities in increasingly large numbers, where they became part of the industrial labor force. In addition, rural people in other parts of the world—Ireland, Italy, Russia, Japan, China—were migrating to the United States and settling in urban industrial centers.
Which of the following groups did the state of Illinois prosecute and punish for the Haymarket bombing?
Albert Parsons, August Spies, and six other protesters → The state of Illinois arrested and tried anarchists Albert Parsons, August Spies, and some of their supporters. All eight men were found guilty; four were executed, one committed suicide, and the remaining three received prison sentences.
Which of the following describes the world economy at the turn of the twentieth century?
An industrial core, an agricultural domain, and a third world tied to the industrial core by economic colonialism → Beginning in the 1870s, the world economy consisted of three interconnected geographic regions consisting of an industrial core, an agricultural domain, and a third world bound to the industrial core through colonialism. The industrial core was bounded by Chicago and St. Louis in the west; Toronto, Glasgow, and Berlin in the north; and Milan, Barcelona, Richmond, and Louisville in the South. The agricultural domain consisted of much of eastern and southern Europe, Canada, the American Great Plains, and parts of Mexico, China, and Japan. The third world included the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East, India, Africa, and most of Asia.
What development triggered the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?
B&O Railroad's announcement of a 10 percent wage cut for workers and a 10 percent dividend for stockholders. → The depression of 1873 caused a great deal of unemployment. Workers who did not lose their jobs outright generally faced major pay cuts. In the summer of 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad announced a 10 percent wage cut at the same time it declared a 10 percent dividend for its shareholders. Brakemen in West Virginia, who had already had their wages cut by more than 50 percent, walked out on strike. This strike touched off the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which became a nationwide uprising involving hundreds of thousands of workers.
For what reason did large numbers of women join the clerical workforce in the late nineteenth century?
Educated women had few other career choices. → Educated men did not take on clerical jobs because they had many other options, but there were few careers other than secretarial work in which middle-class white women could put their literacy to use. The increasing number of women who joined the clerical force found that as office workers, they could make more money, and while working fewer hours, than they could as teachers, domestic workers, or factory employees.
How did employers respond to ethnic and racial antagonism in their workplaces?
Employers encouraged racial and ethnic antagonism because it inhibited workers from organizing. → Employers did not discourage ethnic and racial antagonisms because they found them useful. Workers from different ethnic or racial groups who were hostile to one another were less likely to join together to fight for change in the workplace. By hindering labor organizing, workers protected their own economic interests.
How did mechanization transform the garment industry at the end of the nineteenth century?
Mechanization of the garment industry led to the creation of sweatshops. → Mechanization of the garment industry led to the replacement of skilled tailors by unskilled workers who sewed precut pieces of cloth on sewing machines. Garment factory owners hired scores of unskilled workers who worked crowded together over their sewing machines in small rooms. These sweatshops replaced independent tailors' shops.
What did Samuel Gompers, who established the American Federation of Labor in 1886, believe skilled workers should do to improve their status?
Organize into craft unions and employ strikes to achieve work-related reforms → Gompers believed in "pure and simple" unionism. He believed in organizing skilled craftsworkers, who had the most bargaining power, and using strikes to gain immediate objectives, such as pay raises and better working conditions.
What effect did the possession of an industrial skill have on one's chances of finding employment in the late-nineteenth-century United States?
Possessing an industrial skill did not guarantee prosperity. → Skilled laborers earned much higher daily wages than unskilled workers; however, this was meaningful only when work could be found. The fact that industry and manufacturing tended to be seasonal caused even skilled workers to suffer from bouts of unemployment, and the depressions of 1873 and 1893 affected skilled and unskilled laborers alike.
What finally brought the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 to an end?
President Rutherford B. Hayes called out the army, which broke the strike and maintained peace along the lines. → After the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 led to violence and the destruction of millions of dollars' worth of property, owners and managers labeled the strike as an insurrection and asked Rutherford B. Hayes to callout the army to put the strike down. By the time troops arrived, the violence had already ended, but federal troops struck a blow against labor by acting as strikebreakers and maintaining peace along the railroad lines. This action effectively ended the strike.
Why did U.S. industrialists begin to hire cheap labor from around the world after the 1870s?
Railroad expansion and low steamship fares brought flocks of immigrants to America. → Industrialists began to hire labor from around the world after the 1870s because immigrants began to arrive in America in large numbers after that time. The expansion of industry and technology in Europe and the United States made transportation more affordable, so millions of Europeans and some Asians began to come to the United States and look for jobs. Immigrants provided a large percentage of the industrial labor force at the turn of the twentieth century.
Which of the following events first displayed the power of workers' collective action to the entire nation?
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 → The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the country's first national strike. As labor leader Samuel Gompers acknowledged, the event served as an alarm bell "that sounded a ringing message of hope to us all." The workers learned the power of collective action and would use it again in the future.
How did the Knights of Labor change as a result of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?
The Knights dropped their mantle of secrecy and began openly recruiting any and all workers. → In 1869, Uriah Stephens, a Philadelphia garment cutter, founded the Knights of Labor as a secret society of workers; the organization's secrecy deterred company spies and protected its members from reprisals. Following an increase in interest in labor organizing after the 1877 railroad strike, the Knights abandoned secrecy in 1878 and openly sought to organize workers regardless of skill, race, gender, or nationality.
What issue spurred American workers and their allies to rally in Chicago on May 1, 1886?
The eight-hour workday → The twelve-hour workday was the standard in industry and manufacturing and, since the 1840s, workers had sought to replace it with the eight-hour day. In the 1880s, pressure mounted for the eight-hour day, and labor championed the issue, organizing major rallies in cities across the nation. May 1, 1886, was the date set for a nationwide general strike in support of the issue in the United States. In Chicago, 45,000 workers paraded peacefully down Michigan Avenue in support of the eight-hour day.
Which of the following describes the pattern of children's employment in factories during the decades leading up to World War I?
The employment of children in the paid labor force increased decade by decade. → Because employers benefited from cheap labor, and families depended on their income to survive, the percentage of children in the paid labor force increased in the decades leading up to World War I. Children worked in factories and also as bootblacks and newsboys. Children between the ages of ten and fifteen made up more than 18 percent of the industrial labor force.
Who was Leonora Barry?
The general investigator for women's work for the Knights of Labor in the 1880s → The Knights of Labor was a labor organization ahead of its time in that it attempted to organize workers regardless of their ethnicity, gender, race, ideology, or occupation. Leonora Barry served as the general investigator of women's work from 1886 to 1890, helping the group to recruit teachers, waitresses, housewives, and domestics, along with sweatshop workers. Due in part to Barry's efforts, the Knights' membership consisted of 20 percent women.
Which of the following explains the difference between the wave of "new" immigration that occurred in the United States after 1880 and the "old" immigration of the early nineteenth century?
The new immigration originated from southern and eastern Europe while old immigration originated in northern and western Europe. → Before 1880, 85 percent of immigrants were Germans, Irish, English, and Scandinavians. After 1880, economic and political developments in Europe caused the pattern to shift; by 1896, Italians, Hungarians, eastern European Jews, Turks, Armenians, Poles, Russians, and other Slavic peoples accounted for more than 80 percent of the immigration into the United States.
What was the effect of the 1886 Haymarket Square riot on labor organizations?
The riot increased the popularity of the American Federation of Labor. → The Haymarket bombing caused the labor movement to come under attack. This led many skilled workers to turn away from radical groups in favor of the American Federation of Labor, which excluded unskilled workers and advocated a narrow concentration on concrete gains such as higher wages and better working conditions.
How did department-store saleswomen in the late nineteenth century believe they compared to factory workers of the period?
They saw themselves as superior to factory workers despite lower pay. → Female salesclerks in department stores of the late nineteenth century considered themselves a cut above factory workers; saleswomen appreciated that their work was neither dirty nor dangerous and thus felt a sense of superiority, even when they made less money than factory workers.
For what purpose did old-stock American elites and organized labor join together toward the end of the nineteenth century?
To press for immigration restrictions → Blue-blooded Yankees led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts worked with unions to devise ways of keeping out "undesirable" immigrants—those southern and eastern European immigrants they considered uneducated, backward, and likely to take jobs at low wages. In 1896, Congress approved a literacy test for immigrants that Lodge and his followers had championed, knowing that many Italian and Slavic peasants were unable to read, but President Cleveland vetoed the legislation.
How long did the average workingwoman in the 1880s and 1890s, who started working around age fifteen, expect to remain at her job?
Until she married → Young women in the 1890s were discriminated against in the workplace. They earned less than men and largely were ignored by labor unions. The average woman wage earner began working in her mid-teens and quit her job upon getting married eight to ten years later.
Which of the following describes the immigrant women who came to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century?
Wives, mothers, and daughters → Most women who immigrated to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century came in family groups as wives, mothers, and daughters. In families, these women performed vital work in the form of unpaid domestic labor, and they could only immigrate with the other parts of their families to earn wages.
Which of the following describes the patterns of American women's work in the late nineteenth century?
Women's work varied considerably, depending on race and ethnicity. → There were major variations in women's working patterns based on race and ethnicity. In 1890, for example, only 3 percent of white married women worked for wages outside their homes. In contrast, 25 percent of black married women were employed outside their homes, many of them as domestics.
The Knights of Labor, a prominent labor organization of the late nineteenth century that advocated a "universal brotherhood" of all workers, pursued
broad social reforms. → The Knights of Labor pursued broad social reforms, including the establishment of an income tax, public ownership of the railroads, equal pay for women workers, and the abolition of child labor. They believed that the interests of employers and employees were compatible and sought to remove class distinctions.
For many nineteenth-century American workers, the redefinition of labor as "machine tending" cultivated a sense of individual helplessness that caused workers to
exercise the power of collective action. → Industrialists often cut prices and costs by investing in new machines that allowed them to replace skilled workers with unskilled labor. Workers were disheartened by the fact that labor increasingly was reduced to machine tending; this would help spur labor activism, as workers realized that they were helpless as individuals but could be powerful acting collectively.
By the late nineteenth century, many middle-class Americans felt that the United States was turning into a
society ruled by the rich. → Gilded Age millionaires were exceptionally rich and ostentatious (they spent millions of dollars on houses, parties, and clothes) and appeared to be largely unconcerned about the general welfare of the people as a whole. Given that the wealthiest 1 percent of the population owned more than half the real and personal property in the nation, many Americans were concerned that the country was turning into a plutocracy, or a society ruled by the rich.