The Great Railroad Strike Essay -- American History

The Great Railroad StrikeIn the first half of the 19th Century the work contour in the newly industrializing American society suffered many forms of exploitation. The working class of the mid-nineteenth century, with ceaseless oppression by the capitalist and by the division between class, race, and ethnicity, do it difficult to form solidarity. After years of oppression and exploitation by the ruling class, the working class struck back and briefly paralyze American commerce. The strike, which only lasted a few weeks, was the spark needed to awaken a national revolt by the working class with the closely violent labor upheavals of the century.Railroads were the big business of the mid-nineteenth century. The rail companies employed thousands of tribe and ran operations nationwide. The railway transformed American society from a rural, farming(prenominal) society to an urban, industrialized one. The railroads contributed to an economic boom which pulled millions of peasant i mmigrants from southern and east Europe in search of job opportunities and a better life. However, this alike(p) industry took advantage of a vast labor surplus and ill-used its workers. A record number of immigrants were admitted into the U.S. during the mid-nineteenth century. Attracted mainly by job opportunities and cheapjack passage from all corners of southern and eastern Europe, a wave of immigrants fill up the American economy. This mass immigration created a labor surplus which produced a marketplace where workers could be hired and fired at will and had to give away their labor for whatever the going rate labor had become a commodity. Adding to the surplus in available labor was the boom- fag out cycle. The depression of 1873 undermined the position of many worke... ...ctuals to the conditions laborers faced. This would lead to the progressive movement at the start of the twentieth century. The railroad was Americas first big business. It pulled people from farm lab or and individual proprietors to working for wages for a large corporation. Workers were now being treated as a commodity. They were exploited to keep corporate dividends high during an economic bust cycle. In an attempt to stand up to big business minuscule craft unions began to form but they represented a very shrimpy segment of the working class. Strike power seemed the only chance to crowd backto take a stand for a minimal life-balance. though the strikes themselves did little to improve things, it brought national attention to the varying middle class as to their labor conditions. This national attention would help launch a new reform movement called progressivism.