Essay About Labor Positions And Labor Unions

The Other Civil War
The Other Civil WarThe percentage of Americans living in cities increased between 1790 and 1840.Before the civil war, the growth of monopolies was accelerated by many different factors.  Some of these were tariffs such as the Morrill tariff as well as innovations in technology and ways of production.  Industrialization increased and individuals began joining together to increase their wealth.  As technology increased, the demand for capital increased, so more risks were taken.  In order to stabilize the ups and downs of the financials system, business owners tried to move toward monopolies.Another way to minimize risks was to make sure the government played its traditional role, going back to Alexander Hamilton and the first Congress, of helping the business interests. State legislatures gave charters to corporations giving them legal rights to conduct business, raise money- at first special charters, then general charters, so that any business meeting certain requirements could incorporate. Between 1790 and 1860, 2,300 corporations were chartered.The working class consciousness refers to the awareness of those holding labor positions about their conditions and the development of monopolies.a.  People organized into labor unions, such as the one developed by Francis Wright, a   woman who wondered if the new technology was not lowering the value of human labor, making people appendages to machines, crippling the minds and bodies of child laborers.  Others, such as George Henry Evans, a printer, editor of the Workingmans Advocate who wrote “The Working Mens Declaration of Independence,” wrote about the problems with the economic differences between laborers and owners and tried to inspire laborers to fight the oppression. Riots, such as the riot in Baltimore in the summer of 1835, when the Bank of Maryland collapsed and its depositors lost their savings, broke out, and the discontentment of the working class grew.  Many trade unions formed and demonstrations took place in many areas to protest the large corporationsb. The different forms of protest experience varying degrees of success.  Labor unions, while successful in some areas, often were ruled against in court cases and many companies tried to so away with them and break their strikes.  Although the workers fought and protested, in the end, they needed to eat and were forced to work for the owners of monopolies in whatever conditions the owners dictated.The workers wanted more legislation regarding the levying of taxes as well as regulating large corporations.  They didn’t want special privileges to be granted to the wealthy and wanted opportunities to rise in society and not be ruled by the extremely rich upper class.  They also wanted better public education so their children would be able to escape the cycle of poverty.  I believe their demands were reasonable, but the management was only interested in increasing their wealth.  While giving the workers what they requested, the company would not make as much money and they did not believe they were responsible for their workers.  The likely saw protests against them as conspiracy because they went against the corporations and the owners saw them as attempts to infringe upon the right of businesses to make money.  They could be seen as not conspiratorial because the workers only wanted basic rights as slightly better working conditions, not take away the profits of those in charge.The riot in Baltimore in the summer of 1835 occurred because the Bank of Maryland collapsed and its depositors lost their savings. Believing that a fraud had taken place, a mob formed and began breaking the windows of officials associated with the bank. When the rioters destroyed a house, the militia attacked, killing some twenty people, wounding a hundred. The next evening, other houses were attacked.They saw the decision as helping the rich while taking advantage of the poor.  They also opposed the precedent that the ruling established that workingmen have no right to regulate the price of labor, or, in other words, the rich are the only judges of the wants of the poor man.The Locofocos wanted a decrease in fuel, bread, rent, and meat prices.  Their main goal was to oppose monopolies that could charge as much as they wanted for goods.In 1835, fifty different trades organized unions in Philadelphia, and there was a successful general strike of laborers, factory workers, hook-binders, jewelers, coal heavers, butchers, cabinet workers- for the ten-hour day. Soon there were ten-hour laws in Pennsylvania and other states, but they provided that employers could have employees sign contracts for longer hours. The law at this time was developing a strong defense of contracts; it was pretended that work contracts were voluntary agreements between equals. Weavers in Philadelphia in the early 1840s-mostly Irish immigrants working at home for employers-struck for higher wages, attacked the homes of those refusing to strike, and destroyed their work. A sheriff’s posse tried to arrest some strikers, but it was broken up by four hundred weavers armed with muskets and sticks.In Newark, New Jersey, a rally of several thousand demanded the city give work to the unemployed.In 1825, Tailoresses demanded higher wages.In Exeter, New Hampshire, women mill workers went on strike (“turned out,” in the language of that day) because the overseer was setting the clocks back to get more time from them. Their strike succeeded in exacting a promise from the company that the overseers would set their watches right.They protested against the weaving rooms, which were poorly lit, badly ventilated, impossibly hot in the summer, damp and cold in the winter. In 1834, a cut in wages led the Lowell women to strike, proclaiming: “Union is power. Our present object is to have union and exertion, and we remain in possession of our own unquestionable rights. . . .”The Female Labor Reform Association in Lowell, which sent thousands of petitions to the Massachusetts legislature asking for a ten-hour day.They wanted their lunch hour moved back to noon after it was pushed back to 1:00.The shoemakers wanted equality and opposed the division of society into the producing and the non-producing classes, and the fact of the unequal distribution of value between the two, introduces us at once to another distinction-that of capital and labor.  The civil war caused less concern to be shown toward issues with class division, but a wide gap existed between labor and capital.  Classes of workers and non-workers had a lot of tension and conflicted over wealth in American.  The inequality of the laborers income and the companies profit was quite drastic and only increased after the civil war.  This required more labor which increased capital so the divide continued to grow.People were enraged of the Conscription Act of 1863 that forced whites to fight in the civil war, which was becoming more and more a war for black freedom.  Many whites were not willing to sacrifice their lives for this cause, and since the wealthy could buy their way out of the draft, further strife ensued. a.        Favoring the North West’s economy, the Morrill Tarrif allowed manufacturers in the United States to raise their prices because foreign goods were incredibly expensive.  Consumers were forced to “buy American” which forced the industry-lacking South to buy from the North and increase Northern capital. b.        The Homestead Act benefited the North and West because western land was being offered and could be voted on as free territory.  Also, the South’s economy and much of its wealth had been destroyed so few could afford western land.