The period from the 1860’s to 1900, also known as “the Gilded Age,” was a time wrought with conflict between business owners and their workers. At this point in time, there were not yet many government regulations of industry, leaving business owners to do as they please. With dangerous working conditions, long hours and low wages, the workers stepped in–or rather, out–to demand change, and they were right to do so.
There is a saying that regulations are written in blood, and the Gilded Age is most likely where that originated from. According to Khan Academy, “Between 1881 and 1900, 35,000 workers per year lost their lives in industrial and other accidents at work.” This is because, without anyone standing up to them, the business owners could do whatever they liked, and they cared a good deal more about production and lining their own pockets (and houses — the History.com article has some incredible examples) with money than they did about the people they were exploiting, and killing, to do that.
It was during this time period that many unions, like the Knights of Labor, were formed, and strikes became a more common occurrence. Two notable such strikes were the Homestead Strike at Homestead Steelworks, where a gunfight broke out between striking workers and the “strikebreakers” brought in to forcibly reopen the steelworks, and the Pullman Strike, in which railroad workers nationwide refused to move trains in protest of wage cuts without proportionate rent cuts in Pullman’s company town outside Chicago. In both cases government troops, in the former case state and in the latter, federal, were dispatched to end the strikes.
Not much progress was made during the Gilded Age. Management would crack down on the workers who dared to speak out, and when the government did get involved they consistently sided with the businesses over the workers. While some rights were won, those were on a business-by-business basis, rather than government regulations protecting the rights of the people. As a whole, little was accomplished for workers’ rights during this time. However, these strikes and the continued expression of discontent would pave the road for labor laws and industrial regulation in the future, providing us with the much safer working conditions we have today.
