The American Labor Movement - Research Article from Development of the Industrial U.S. Reference Library

This encyclopedia article consists of approximately 19 pages of information about The American Labor Movement.

The American Labor Movement - Research Article from Development of the Industrial U.S. Reference Library

This encyclopedia article consists of approximately 19 pages of information about The American Labor Movement.
This section contains 5,472 words
(approx. 19 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy The American Labor Movement Encyclopedia Article

The rise of the huge and powerful railroads and other giant industries during and after the American Civil War (1861–65) signaled a loss of voice for workers. In the small, employer-owned businesses of earlier times, the worker and employer usually came to terms with each other as individuals, settling their differences and agreeing on wages, hours, and other issues through face-to-face discussions. This changed drastically in post-Civil War industry, when the owners hired professional managers to streamline the work. In the new era of mass production, in which goods are produced on a large scale, getting the most work from laborers at the lowest possible wages was a matter of company policy. With machines taking over many jobs, more labor became unskilled. Less value was placed upon the skills of the craftsmen, and workers were easily replaced. Large national labor unions arose to...

(read more)

This section contains 5,472 words
(approx. 19 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy The American Labor Movement Encyclopedia Article
Copyrights
UXL
The American Labor Movement from UXL. ©2005-2006 by U•X•L. U•X•L is an imprint of Thomson Gale, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. All rights reserved.