Lesson 2: The Rise of New Unions

Lesson Focus

Facing poor pay and dangerous conditions, individual workers had little power. This lesson explores how they organized into powerful new unions, like the Knights of Labor and the AFL, to fight for better treatment and rights.

People to Know

Samuel Gompers, Terence V. Powderly, Eugene V. Debs

Learning Objectives

• Identify the two most powerful labor unions of the late 1800s and understand their core principles.
• Evaluate the successes and failures of these early unions in improving workers' wages, hours, and overall conditions.

Poor working conditions led workers to seek a unified voice.

In 1869, Terence V. Powderly led the Knights of Labor, a union welcoming all workers—skilled and unskilled. The Knights favored arbitration and sought broad social reforms.

After initial growth, the union declined rapidly after 1886 when it was wrongly associated with violence from the Haymarket Square riot and suffered from internal conflicts. This showed the difficulty of uniting very different groups of workers.

The failure of the Knights of Labor created an opening for a new strategy.

In 1886, Samuel Gompers formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which only accepted skilled workers into separate craft unions. This model focused on practical, day-to-day goals like higher wages and shorter hours rather than broad social changes.

Pay special attention to how this exclusive but focused approach allowed the AFL to survive economic crises and grow steadily through 1900.

The AFL’s focus on skilled labor left many unskilled workers unrepresented.

Eugene V. Debs, a railway union officer, believed separating workers by craft weakened them. In 1893, he formed the American Railway Union (ARU), an industrial union that united all classes of workers within the railroad industry.

This new structure proved its power by forcing a major railroad owner to reverse wage cuts, demonstrating the potential strength of industry-wide unity.

The Pullman Company cut worker wages, prompting a massive walkout.

The ARU supported the workers in the 1894 Pullman Strike by boycotting trains with Pullman cars. In response, President Cleveland sent federal troops, and a court issued an injunction, a legal order to stop the strike.

Eugene V. Debs was jailed for defying the order, causing the strike and the ARU to collapse. Employers then began using the injunction as a powerful anti-strike weapon.

Despite major defeats like the Pullman Strike, unions' persistence began to create change.

By fighting for better wages, shorter hours, and safer conditions, organized labor slowly gained political influence. Though only 4% of workers were unionized by 1900, their efforts were not in vain.

Note that by the end of the late 1800s, states began passing laws to regulate working conditions, showing that unions successfully laid the groundwork for future workers' rights.