On-Time Delivery! Get your 100% customized paper When wage earners from lumber mills, canning industries, etc., joined protesters from the railroad companies, they created a national problem that required the participation of the Federal government. It was felt by every wage worker who had to fight for their rights. In Chicago, “In addition to walkouts and protests by railroad workers, sympathetic actions by other wage workers brought the city to a state of a general strike.” 8 The economic depression experienced by railroad workers in Virginia or Philadelphia was not limited to the said industry. For the Sake of OrderĬrippling the railroads will definitely affect trade and industry in 19 th century America, but the railroad workers created something more – they inspired wage workers outside their industry to participate and empathize with them and thus creating a bigger problem for the government. It was impossible to stage a strike in Virginia without the rest of the country becoming aware of such an event. Moreover, the railroad system was linked to factories and other wage workers all over the country. 6Īs a result, the strike “…erupted into one of the largest civil disturbances in American history, and it quickly overwhelmed local law enforcement officials.” 7 One has to understand that the railroad systems in the 19 th century can be compared to the airline industry or the telecom industry of the 21 st century, meaning it is very vital to the economy. 5 This action started a chain-reaction of events, and strikes began to erupt in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Chicago. So on July 16, 1887, when railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, “…walked off the job to protest a 10 percent wage cut leveled by their employer, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad,” these men changed the course of history. In their calculation, they will die sooner or later. If they work, they face the possibility of death or permanent injury, and if they survive another day, they could not afford to feed their families. The workers could no longer bear the humiliation they faced at home and at work. Zinn traced the development of the great railroad strike through the following chronology of events: “It all began with wage cuts on the railway after railway, intense situations of already low wages ($1.75 a day for brakemen working twelve hours), scheming and profiteering by the rail companies, deaths, and injuries among the workers – loss of hands, feet, fingers, the crushing of men between cars.” 4 There is a widespread belief that the employers were making a ton of money while the workers had to endure slave-like conditions. By reducing their earning capabilities and forcing railroad workers to toil in unsafe working environments, these laborers were forced to contemplate staging a strike. It is one thing to experience hardships at home and another to be slighted at work. According to Howard Zinn, the Depression of 1877 created unbearable pain and suffering, “That summer, in the hot cities were poor families lived in cellars and drank infested water the children became sick in large numbers.” 3 The inability to find work resulted in the creation of poor communities where poverty did not only bring hunger but sickness and death. The inevitable will come to pass, which is unemployment and wage cuts. Thus, in a time of economic growth, large-scale employers hired thousands of workers and then faced the problem of overexpansion when the demand begins to slow down. Overproduction is the result of errors in predicting supply and demand as well as overexpansion. 1 Four years later, the economic conditions grew worse, and by 1877, “…roughly 3 million people were unemployed … Those who were able to keep a job worked six months a year, and their wages were cut by about 45 percent.” 2 It can be argued that while factories and railways created an economic boom – by allowing the mass production of cheap products and selling them even cheaper via a cost-efficient railroad system – these things also created the reverse, which is an economic glut. There was an economic depression that gripped the country beginning in the decade of 1870 and became very obvious in 1873. 308 qualified specialists online Learn more Depression in the 19 th Century
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