3 Majors Eras in Labor History

There have been many years throughout American labor history that have changed the ways that the affected communities live. Many movements have shifted styles of working, changed the nature of the working-class life, and have brought about such things as unions that we still possess today. In particular there are three major eras that have brought about such changes and one that is of the most importance. The progressive era brought us many changes in the workforce along with changes in technology. Also the roaring twenties was a period that started with great wealth extravagance and ended in the great depression that changed the entire country. Then there was the 1930’s where FDR proposed the New Deal and had great ideas of where to take the country. Each of these eras created significant differences in the way the people worked and lived and will be further discussed in detail.

The progressive era began in the late 1890’s with a depression that led to one of the greatest movements of the era, the Pullman strike. The Pullman strike was started because of the depression and because of the fact that George Pullman, the man who owned Pullman Palace Car Company, fired a third of his employees and then cut the wages of the rest by 25 to 40%. The worked were left with hardly anything to bring home and they met to organize this strike. It became a national strike because nearly every railroad had Pullmans and there was no other way to transport the goods across country. The strike eventually became so large that it was halted by the government and ultimately ended in great violence. However, the Pullman strike was a success; it created organization amongst workers and gave workers a voice for the first time. Another large movement during this era was the influx of new immigrants and the emergence of nativism. Segregation was still a large part of the American life however now immigrants began moving to the country and they faced a greater prejudice than had all other earlier groups. An anti-immigration sentiment swept the nation and led to what is called nativism. Nativists believed that the immigrants caused corruption, kept wages low, and blamed them for political turmoil and were even discriminated for living in poverty and having peasant habits. This led to the first restriction on immigration in which paupers and convicts were denied entrance to the country. Also any person who was believed to have a contagious disease was also denied entrance. Nativism was an important factor because immigration was alive and real and the American population was divided on how to deal with it. Employers were happy because immigrants provide cheap labor but on the other hand American workers felt their jobs were being taken and that it was causing a detriment to society. A third labor issue of this era was a positive one when the idea of scientific management was adopted and brought about Taylorism. Maximum efficiency was the idea in mind when this idea was adopted and in which Taylor analyzed his workers, broke down jobs into steps and then timed his workers. This led to mass production and broke the jobs down into steps, such as assembly lines. This created many new jobs for both skilled and unskilled workers. It became a very efficient and effective means of producing goods and not only increased employers control over the workforce, but also increased their production and profits.

The Roaring Twenties is an era in which people think of great prosperity and extravagance however it was a period where unemployment rose quietly and led to great hardships amongst the country. The single most important product in the 1920’s was the automobile and during this era manufacturers tripled the production of cars and by 1929 almost half of the families in the U.S. owned a car. It was a huge movement in the country because it changed the way workers spent