They protested workplace hazards and the treatment of workers like disposable commodities when laborers became injured, sick, or old. The Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor were two of the earliest labor organizations. However, legislation and government actions suppressing the strikers and a failure by the legislature or the legal system to acknowledge the suffering of laborers lead to violent confrontations between workers, managers, and the law. These workers felt as though the benefits of capitalist consumer society were being gained through their blood, sweat, tears, and lives, and they had no voice other than violence.
The railroad strikes of 1877, the Haymarket riot, and the Homestead and Pullman strikes all resulted in bloodshed on both sides. The emerging middle-class grew hostile to labor and began to associate it with violence. Class divisions intensified in American society. Ideologies such as Social Darwinism or that 'survival of the fittest' justified unchecked capitalism became popular. Defenders the system advanced the idea that those who failed to flourish earned their fates and had to fall to ensure for the improvement of the human race.
Not all changes were bad -- technology did make life easier and healthier for many Americans. Processed foods and canning made it easier for people to survive harsh winters without starving to death and made the American diet more varied, while sanitation and medical care improved. Women began to enter the workforce in greater...
Although women laboring in factories rarely benefited from their work because of the harshness of their conditions, women in administrative positions often were able to eke out a middle class existence and independence from their family, although their promotion prospects and wages were not comparable to their male colleagues. Still, this sense of empowerment was later to reenergize the suffrage movement for women's right to vote.
Congress did act in some measure against the vices of the era, such as through its passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, although the conservative U.S. Supreme Court at the time failed to support its full exercise to curtail the excesses of big business. Monopolies were still common after the Act passed, as industrialists banded together to protect their common interests. A more moderate face for business, rather than abolition of capitalism was still needed. And in industrialism, something was clearly lost, not simply the lives of workers who suffered so a minority of Americans could prosper, but also an older, closer, and more humane way of life that valued the individual. Modern capitalism demanded efficiency, and although some entrepreneurs like Henry Ford were creative, Ford's creativity and wealth came at a price of his worker's autonomy, freedom, and sense that what they created mattered in a personal fashion to their employer.
Works Cited
Norton, Mary Beth. A People and a Nation. 7th Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
