People's History: Labor 1830-80 (Chap 10)
Music: Female Choir
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Summary Is history about the heroes, leaders, great accomplishments and victories that resonate throughout the ages? Or the masses: women, men, and children toiling, falling back, and then returning to the field or factory, constructing nations in obscurity. Chapter Jacksonian Democracy aimed rhetoric at common people, while the body politic was mollified by promises and perks and patronage. For most, essential public works were nonexistent -- filthy water, mounds of waste "alive with rats" as modern business, in its haste for tariffs, open markets, eminent domain, and labor policy, endeavored to restrain the working man and woman, challenging "The Myth" of thriving immigrants, as mason, tinker, smith, and seamstress built the nation for a special few. The Civil War allowed the cream and residue of all the northern states to blend in unity awhile, as human dignity through "Liberty" became the cry of passion from the rich, but worse than ever was the poorman's plight: the public purse ran dry, and prices rose, and strikers were attacked by men for hire and troops, and the Sedition Act curtailed the voice of protest. Poor men went to war while rich men, North and South, made payoffs to ignore the call to arms. And business said "conspiracies to hamper trade" described the unions, though with ease they handled most. But soon the call of agony from hunger ("Burn the den of aristocracy!") was heard throughout New York and Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, as the rich man's Shangri-La was shaken by demand for wages and humane conditions -- "Lowell Girls" refusing to remain in smoky noisy sweaty weaving rooms through days of 14 hours; and shoe repairers in displays of anti-capital dissent. The violence of railroad strikes resounded; as a consequence the "Party of the Workingman" would motivate the workers to demand their rights, and cultivate a Socialist approach, St. Louis in the lead. Despite the workers' willingness to strike (and bleed!), the rich, who used militia men to apprehend the union leaders, would be winners in the end. |