Labor, Immigration & the Growing City
- Analyze the conditions that gave rise to the labor movement
- Explain the patterns and reception of "new immigration"
- Describe the challenges and politics of rapid urbanization
Workers organize
Industrial work brought long hours, low pay, and danger, and workers organized to fight back. The Knights of Labor welcomed nearly all workers and sought broad reform, but faded after the Haymarket affair (1886) tarred unions as violent radicals. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) under Samuel Gompers took a narrower, more durable approach: organizing skilled workers for concrete gains in wages and hours. Major strikes — the Great Railroad Strike (1877), Homestead (1892), and Pullman (1894) — often ended in defeat as government sided with business.
The new immigration
Immigration surged and shifted origin. Where earlier arrivals came mostly from northern and western Europe, the "new immigrants" of the 1880s–1900s came largely from southern and eastern Europe — Italians, Poles, Russian Jews — plus Chinese on the West Coast. They crowded into urban ethnic enclaves and supplied the labor for industry. Nativism rose in response: the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was the first major law to restrict immigration by nationality, reflecting fear and prejudice against newcomers.
Cities and machine politics
Industrialization drove explosive urbanization. Cities swelled with immigrants and rural migrants, straining housing, sanitation, and services, and producing crowded tenements. Into this gap stepped political machines like New York’s Tammany Hall, which traded services and jobs for immigrant votes — providing real help while feeding corruption. Reformers and journalists began to expose these conditions, setting the stage for the Progressive movement that would follow.
Briefly explain ONE reason industrial workers formed labor unions in the late nineteenth century.
- 1.Describe working conditions: factory labor often meant very long hours, low wages, and dangerous conditions with no job security.
- 2.Explain the logic of organizing: individual workers had little power against large corporations, but collectively they could bargain or strike.
- 3.State the goal: unions like the AFL sought better wages, shorter hours, and safer workplaces.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is historically significant because it
Distinguish the two major unions: the Knights of Labor were inclusive and reform-minded but declined after Haymarket; the AFL organized only skilled workers for bread-and-butter gains and lasted. Mixing them up is a common error on organization-matching questions.
Urban political machines like Tammany Hall maintained their power primarily by
Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.
Sign in to save your progress