2000 Ap World History Dbq

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Recommended: The American Revolution and the significant effects

Ever since unfair British legislation, such as the Intolerable Acts, led to the American Revolution, banding together as a group proved effective in making a change. Organized labor is only another example of how sizable groups make more of an impact on large corporations than one person does. Labor unions improved the positions of workers by causing employers to think twice about wages, giving legal recognition such as lowering work hours and drawing attention to the issue of child labor. The increase in awareness that organized groups caused is what ultimately decided the court case of Muller v, Oregon in 1908, which made it illegal for women to work for more than ten hours a day. Between 1875 and 1891, wages rose from 169.2 to 172.5 and hours declined from 9.9 to 9.4 per day, indicating that the usage of unions attracted the attention of the heads of industry and caused for less work time and better compensation overall (DOC A). Peaceful labor forces, such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886 by Samuel Gompers, demonstrated a different approach to the battle for better work conditions. Rather than violent riots, Gompers and other members of the group instead seeked to …show more content…

During the Railroad Strike of 1877, when large crowds in Baltimore attempted to attack militia breaking up the strike, President Hayes got word of the uprising and personally sent his troops to quell it (DOC B). Many witnesses of the strike used Yellow Journalism to make it seem as if Communists were causing the strike through the use of political cartoons in newspapers, such as “Always killing the goose that lays the golden egg” (DOC C), where the strike was purposefully invalidated to break up the labor movement. Nevertheless, the largeness of the uprising made strikes become more widely-known, causing employers to be slower to slash wages in fear of a bigger

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