against the great railroad baron, Jay policemen and at least four workers
Gould, in 1885 . Within a year they were reported killed . Some 60 police
added 500,000 workers to their rolls, officers were injured .
but, not attuned to pragmatic trade
In 1892, at Carnegie’s steel works
unionism and unable to repeat this in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a
success, the Knights soon fell into group of 300 Pinkerton detectives
a decline .
the company had hired to break a
Their place in the labor move- bitter strike by the Amalgamated
ment was gradually taken by the Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin
American Federation of Labor Workers fought a fierce and losing
(AFL) . Rather than open member- gun battle with strikers . The Na-
ship to all, the AFL, under former ci- tional Guard was called in to protect
gar union official Samuel Gompers, non-union workers and the strike
was a group of unions focused on was broken . Unions were not let back
skilled workers . Its objectives were into the plant until 1937 .
“pure and simple” and apolitical: in-
In 1894, wage cuts at the Pullman
creasing wages, reducing hours, and Company just outside Chicago led to
improving working conditions . It a strike, which, with the support of
did much to turn the labor move- the American Railway Union, soon
ment away from the socialist views tied up much of the country’s rail
of most European labor movements . system . As the situation deteriorat-
Nonetheless, both before the ed, U .S . Attorney General Richard
founding of the AFL and after, Olney, himself a former railroad
American labor history was violent . lawyer, deputized over 3,000 men in
In the Great Rail Strike of 1877, rail an attempt to keep the rails open .
workers across the nation went out This was followed by a federal court
in response to a 10-percent pay cut . injunction against union interfer-
Attempts to break the strike led to ri- ence with the trains . When rioting
oting and wide-scale destruction in ensued, President Cleveland sent in
several cities: Baltimore, Maryland; federal troops, and the strike was
Chicago, Illinois; Pittsburgh, Penn- eventually broken .
sylvania; Buffalo, New York; and San
The most militant of the strike-
Francisco, California . Federal troops favoring unions was the Industri-
had to be sent to several locations al Workers of the World (IWW) .
before the strike was ended .
Formed from an amalgam of unions
Nine years later, in Chicago’s fighting for better conditions in the
Haymarket Square incident, some- West’s mining industry, the IWW,
one threw a bomb at police about or “Wobblies” as they were com-
to break up an anarchist rally in monly known, gained particular
support of an ongoing strike at the prominence from the Colorado mine
McCormick Harvester Company in clashes of 1903 and the singularly
Chicago . In the ensuing melee, seven brutal fashion in which they were
194
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
put down . Influenced by militant country’s political foundations had
anarchism and openly calling for endured the vicissitudes of foreign
class warfare, the Wobblies gained and civil war, the tides of prosper-
many adherents after they won a dif- ity and depression . Immense strides
ficult strike battle in the textile mills had been made in agriculture and
of Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 . industry . Free public education had
Their call for work stoppages in the been largely realized and a free press
midst of World War I, however, led maintained . The ideal of religious
to a government crackdown in 1917 freedom had been sustained . The
that virtually destroyed them .
influence of big business was now
more firmly entrenched than ever,
THE REFORM IMPULSE
however, and local and municipal
T
government often was in the hands
he presidential election of 1900 of corrupt politicians .
gave the American people a chance
In response to the excesses of
to pass judgment on the Republican 19th-century capitalism and politi-
administration of President McKin- cal corruption, a reform movement
ley, especially its foreign policy . called “progressivism” arose, which
Meeting at Philadelphia, the Repub- gave American politics and thought
licans expressed jubilation over the its special character from approxi-
successful outcome of the war with mately 1890 until the American en-
Spain, the restoration of prosperity, try into World War I in 1917 . The
and the effort to obtain new mar- Progressives had diverse objec-
kets through the Open Door policy . tives . In general, however, they saw
McKinley easily defeated his oppo- themselves as engaged in a demo-
nent, once again William Jennings cratic crusade against the abuses of
Bryan . But the president did not urban political bosses and the cor-
live to enjoy his victory . In Septem- rupt “robber barons” of big business .
ber 1901, while attending an expo- Their goals were greater democracy
sition in Buffalo, New York, he was and social justice, honest govern-
shot down by an assassin, the third ment, more effective regulation of
president to be assassinated since the business, and a revived commitment
Civil War .
to public service . They believed that
Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley’s expanding the scope of government
vice president, assumed the presi- would ensure the progress of U .S . so-
dency . Roosevelt’s accession coin- ciety and the welfare of its citizens .
cided with a new epoch in American
The years 1902 to 1908 marked
political life and international rela- the era of greatest reform activity,
tions . The continent was peopled; as writers and journalists strongly
the frontier was disappearing . A protested practices and principles
small, formerly struggling repub- inherited from the 18th-century
lic had become a world power . The rural republic that were proving
195