Industrial Revolution Dbq

The Industrial Revolution, with its radical innovations, creation of capital, and shift towards urbanization, also brought a plethora of issues for the common laborer. These issues, such as low wages, unbearable working conditions, and strenuous working hours were greatly protested by the working class, yet were unable to be resolved. However, it cannot be argued that this failure to create a resolution was largely due to the fact that American corporate leaders had implemented a successful strategy to suppress the cries of laborers; several other more significant reasons contributed to the failure of workers to adopt a powerful solution to overcome their situation. In addition to the minor reason that corporate leaders created powerful tactics

to subdue protesters, American workers were unable to change the worker-owner relationship due to the failure to properly unionize, the negative attitudes they faced from the society they lived in, and the detrimental and discriminatory attitudes within their own class.
Unionization was the working class’s strongest shield against large corporations; therefore, the failure to unionize properly was the greatest setback to the goal of changing worker/owner relationships. Unions across the nation were ridden with issues that prevented them from functioning as intended-for example, Samuel Gompers’s AF of L. Besides discouraging the inclusion of African Americans, women, and immigrants, the American Federation of Labor ignored the elephant in the room- industrial unionization. The Industrial Revolution was the sole reason for the existence of the worker’s rights movement in the first place, and “only a union that represented all the workers in each plant, regardless of occupation, could hope to exert much leverage against management” (Livesay 92). Due to the irrelevance of trade unions in industrial and corporate issues, the AF of L, the most favorable representation of unions during this time period, was unable to successfully and completely change the worker/owner relationship.
As if the struggles with unionism did not suffice, the American labor movement faced discouragement from the upper and middle classes of society, the second most predominant reason that prevented a mutually beneficial worker/owner relationship. Although the lack of advocation from the upper class was expected, the fact that this sentiment was shared by the middle class only served to fuel the fire of large American corporate leaders. These middle class and newly rich citizens “had pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps; hence, they concluded that those who stayed poor must be lazy and lacking in enterprise” (Bailey 525). This emerging and widely embraced concept of Social Darwinism only encouraged the rest of society to turn a deaf ear to the cries of laborers, thereby allying itself with corporations and making the path to a healthy worker/owner relationship difficult to tread. This led to more dangerous and substantial concept: strikes, and the theme of unionism behind it, were unpatriotic. The “American” Dream so fondly referenced as the foundation of a nation stated that any person willing to work hard will reach the top of the economic ladder, and even expressing in any way that this was untrue was unpatriotic: it was the very antithesis of what America was built upon. Proof of this was apparent in the overall attitude of citizens towards the working class- “To many Americans it looked as though there lurked in the ranks of labor a significant element ready for riot, sabotage, arson, pillage, and even murder” (Livesay 82). Faced with their own problems (and very little free time to fix them), the working class lost a vital ally that would have surely catalyzed the achievement of necessary reforms. Therefore, society’s general disposition towards distrust and discouragement of the working class was a nationally apparent phenomenon that delayed the attainment of a mutually desired worker/owner relationship.
Although there existed external problems for the working class, detrimental philosophies within their own echelon were an equal factor in sabotaging their objective to establish a satisfactory worker/owner relationship. According to Livesay, “most of the mass-production industries moved swiftly. . . to replace skilled workers with semiskilled or unskilled, including and ever-increasing number of blacks, women, and immigrants; as a result, racism, sexism, and the antiimmigrant mentality of . . . the craft union form of organization stood in the way of organizing the industrial labor force” (92). This “industrial labor force” suffered many blows in pursuing their goals with these negative ideologies. An example would be the existence of scabs- immigrants that were “willing to act as strikebreakers” and not prevented from doing so because they were shunned from the folds of unionism (Bailey 531). This progressed to such an extreme that “robber-baron” Jay Gould declared, “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half” (Bailey 531). In this example, the universal anti-immigrant attitudes lead to obstacles in achieving a worker/owner relationship, because scabs offered resistance to defensive measures taken by unions. These negative attitudes also prevented the working class from assembling a formidable force against maltreatment, such as in the case of America’s once leading union, the AF of L. “For the AF of L, the consequences of intolerance proved devastating, because prejudice against blacks, women, foreigners, and unskilled workers of all kinds combined with the prevailing craft-union mentality to prevent a program of industrial unionism” (Livesay 95). The feelings of superiority to certain ethnicities, sexes, and careers ultimately backfired during the attempts to establish a mutually desired worker/owner relationship, and was therefore a significant factor in the failure to do so.
As the greater hand in the worker/owner relationship, it can be argued that the implementation of a “successful strategy” by American corporate leaders was the greatest factor in preventing a desired solution for their grievances-after all, they were the ones that provided jobs to the working class.

However, all American corporate leaders that sought to control the worker/owner relationship recognized the factors (if wielded properly) that leveraged or weakened their authority. For example, Carnegie manipulatively sought to ensure the security of his labor force after the Braddock Lockout by targeting unions- if “[his former employees] wanted to return to work, they could sign an ironclad agreement that barred membership in the union” (Krause 237). In another example, Carnegie expounds upon his “Gospel of Wealth,” saying that it had made him “a custodian of the public good,” reinforcing the Social Darwinist attitudes and garnering the support of the general public (Krause 240). Although it is also true that corporations “could call upon federal courts” to take actions in their favor, it is the fault of unions to repeatedly try a failed approach instead of unifying and strengthening themselves to try a radical one (Bailey 531). Another widespread tactic for corporations was blacklisting, a strategy that was easy to use because of the replaceable nature of “unskilled” workers. However, if these workers had been part of a union instead of prevented from being so, the working class surely would have had enough leverage to demand universal rights for laborers due to the sheer population of the group; the “gravest weakness of organized labor was that it still embraced only a small minority of all workingpeople-about 3 percent” (Bailey 536). In culmination, it is apparent that American corporate tactics, although effective in ensuring the failure of establishing a healthy worker/owner relationship, were based on the root causes that stemmed partially from the working

class.
This renders them incapable of being the single most important contributing factor to the failure to achieve the goals of the working class.
Although corporate leaders created powerful tactics to subdue protesters, American workers were unable to change the worker/owner relationship mostly due to the failure to unionize effectively, the fact that they faced apathy and discouragement from other social classes, and the negative philosophies they employed within their own class. They failed to include most of the working population and unify their unions, which reduced their power in the face of corporations. They met with dissuasion and distrust from society, which hindered their attempts to create a radical movement, and encouraged detrimental ideologies within their class which undermined their goals. Ultimately, their failures created an unchanging image of corporation superiority in America, until the country adapted to its new lifestyle in due course, altering America forever. Perhaps if the working class had been successful in their measures to attain a satisfactory worker/owner relationship, America would not be the same as we know it today.