The Early 20th Century Labor Movement

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The early 1900s was a time of many movements, from the cities to the rural farms; people were uniting for various causes. One of the most widespread was the labor movement, which affected people far and wide. Conditions in the nation’s workplaces were notoriously poor, but New York City fostered the worst. Factories had started out in the city’s tenements, which were extremely cramped, poorly ventilated, and thoroughly unsanitary. With the advent of skyscrapers, factories were moved out of the tenements and into slightly larger buildings, which still had terrible conditions. Workers were forced to work long hours (around 12 hours long) six hours a day, often for extremely low pay. The pay was also extremely lower for women, who made up a large portion of the shirtwaist industry. If a worker were to openly contest an employer’s rule, they would be promptly fired and replaced immediately. Also, strength in numbers did not always work. Managers often hired brutal strikebreakers to shut movements down. The local police and justice were often of no help to the workers, even when women were being beaten. At the time, the workers needs were not taken seriously and profit was placed ahead of human life. This was not just a struggle for workers’ rights; it was also a movement for the working class’ freedom. Factory workers of this time had very little freedom. Aside from having to work outrageous hours for 6 days of the week, there was no job security, no solid way to survive day-to-day, and if a family member were to suffer an accident, families had no financial means to carry on. In the early 1900s, there were no labor laws, including the right to organize, an eight-hour day, safety standards, or unemployment/disability pensions. M... ... middle of paper ... ... Isaac Harris, and Max Steuer, just to name a few. Had Von Drehle not given these foreshadows, their importance in this event would have been lost. The epilogue was also an extremely important part of the book. Von Drehle uses this section to explain what happened to key figures after the fire, like Francis Perkins, who he explains came to become the first woman to hold a cabinet position under Franklin D. Roosevelt (Von Drehle, 263). Von Drehle also uses the epilogue to stress the importance the event played in shaping the meaning of liberalism in American politics, and how the event helped lead the Tammany machine from the old to the new (Von Drehle, 267). David Von Drehle did an amazing job of stressing the importance of the Triangle Fire had in the early 20th Century labor movement. Works Cited Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. David Von Drehle. 2003.

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