The Great Railroad Strike Essay -- American History

The Great Railroad Strike In the first half of the 19th Century the working class in the newly industrializing American society suffered many forms of exploitation. The working class of the mid-nineteenth century, with constant oppression by the capitalist and by the division between class, race, and ethnicity, made it difficult to form solidarity. After years of oppression and exploitation by the ruling class, the working class struck back and briefly paralyzed American commerce. The strike, which only lasted a few weeks, was the spark needed to ignite a national revolt by the working class with the most violent labor upheavals of the century. Railroads were the big business of the mid-nineteenth century. The rail companies employed thousands of people and ran operations nationwide. The railroad transformed American society from a rural, agrarian society to an urban, industrialized one. The railroads contributed to an economic boom which pulled millions of peasant immigrants from southern and eastern Europe in search of job opportunities and a better life. However, this same industry took advantage of a vast labor surplus and exploited its workers. A record number of immigrants were admitted into the U.S. during the mid-nineteenth century. Attracted mainly by job opportunities and cheap passage from all corners of southern and eastern Europe, a wave of immigrants flooded 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 sell their labor for whatever the going rate; labor had become a commodity. Adding to the surplus in available labor was the boom-bust 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 America's first big business. It pulled people from farm labor 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 small craft unions began to form but they represented a very small segment of the working class. Strike power seemed the only chance to fight backÂâ€"to 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.