Exam 32: Volume

Answer would ideally include: Workers' Efforts, 1870-1920s: By the late nineteenth century, industrial workers had lost considerable ground in the workplace due to lower wages, longer hours, poorer working conditions, and the erosion of skill. In response to their declining position, workers began to fight back using labor unions, strikes, boycotts, and arbitration in an effort to achieve their demands. Their demands varied but covered the spectrum from public ownership of the railroads and the abolition of child labor to higher pay, the eight-hour workday, and better working conditions. The Knights of Labor aimed to organize workers regardless of skill, sex, race, or nationality and attempted to bridge the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, ideology, race and occupation in a badly fragmented society. The group championed arbitration and boycotts and also used strikes and other forms of labor militancy. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) coordinated the activities of craft unions throughout the United States. It aimed to organize skilled workers with the most bargaining power and to use strikes to gain immediate objectives such as higher pay and better working conditions. The AFL did not attempt to organize unskilled workers, women, or African Americans and, because of its emphasis on skilled labor, did not generally include recent immigrant workers. Labor reformers were successful in convincing many workers of the importance of their goals, but they were not so successful in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in actually reaching their goals. There were numerous strikes that ended in violence, such as the Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Pullman Strike of 1893. There were also nearly 3,600 strikes involving four million workers in 1919 alone, including a general strike in Seattle, a police strike in Boston, and a major steel strike. The large number of strikes did not meet with popular support, and workers eventually returned to their jobs without substantial gains. Governments of 1870s-1920s: In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, state and federal governments generally sided with industry in conflicts between workers and bosses. Governors did not generally hesitate to call in state militias to deal with striking workers (as in the Great Railroad Strike), and President Rutherford B. Hayes called out the army once the Great Railroad Strike had spread to nine states. During the Progressive Era, the federal government became increasingly involved in working to protect the rights of workers. Progressive president Theodore Roosevelt took the unprecedented step of intervening in a coal strike and giving moderate support to the union. World War I created an environment that facilitated labor reform. It ameliorated conditions for many by boosting the American economy, creating greater demand for workers at the same time that men were being diverted into the armed forces, and consequently raising wages. President Wilson's desire to manage the wartime economy also helped workers when the National War Labor Policies Board worked to maintain good labor relations by establishing long-sought reforms like an eight-hour workday and a living minimum wage. Change in the 1930s: The Depression resulted in part from the fact that many workers did not make enough money to consume the goods produced by American industry. Roosevelt's New Deal, therefore, sought to protect workers' wages and working conditions through programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Wagner Act. These reforms provided jobs for unemployed workers and protected workers' rights to organize, form labor unions, and engage in collective bargaining with their employers. But federal policies alone would not have been enough to create real improvement in workers' status; labor unions and workers' collective efforts were also necessary to create real change. The Wagner Act mobilized organizing drives in major industries, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations led major efforts to unionize all workers in the mining, textile, automobile, and steel industries. Because of union workers' courage and willingness to engage in actions like the 1937 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, workers had made great strides by the early 1940s.

Answer would ideally include: Access to Jobs: The conversion to a wartime economy in the United States created labor shortages that opened assembly-line jobs in defense to African Americans, causing black unemployment to drop by 80 percent during the war and giving new employment options to men and women who had previously been limited to agricultural and domestic labor. African Americans continued to earn only 50 percent of the average white worker's wages, but economic improvements made it possible for the black community to mount more visible and effective protests against racial discrimination. Demographic Shifts: The war brought a major wave of migration as 5.5 million African Americans moved from the rural South to centers of industrial production in the North and West, making a majority of African Americans city dwellers for the first time. Blacks' migration intensified racial antagonisms in many cities, but it also created denser black communities and a substantial black voting bloc that made national politicians more attentive to racism and discrimination and other issues that concerned African Americans. Emergence of Black Political Organizing: Black protest and organizations were as old as American racism but, until the 1940s, had limited visibility and influence. The growing black population in urban centers made higher levels of organizing possible. The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper, called for a "Double V" campaign for African Americans to seek "victory over our enemies at home and victory over our enemies on the battlefields abroad." Black organizations demanded that the federal government require companies receiving defense contracts to integrate their workforces and threatened to bring 100,000 African American marchers to Washington if the president did not comply. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People grew in this period and put more focus on court challenges to segregation. The Congress of Racial Equality formed in 1942 and organized pickets and sit-ins against Jim Crow restaurants and theaters. Groups like these formed the political basis for black organization in the 1950s and 1960s. Greater Federal Government's Intervention: Owing in large part to the demands of African American activists, the federal government took on a greater role in preventing racial discrimination in some parts of the country in the 1940s. In mid-1941, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, authorizing the Committee on Fair Employment Practices to investigate and prevent racial discrimination in employment in businesses that had federal defense contracts. At the end of the war the federal government created the G.I. Bill, which provided numerous benefits to black and white veterans, including job training, education, and low-interest loans to purchase homes and businesses. These benefits were not always administered equally, especially in the South, but thousands of African Americans did benefit economically. After the war, President Harry S. Truman acted more boldly on civil rights than any previous president. His successes were limited, but he did desegregate the armed services and create important groundwork for later presidents-including Eisenhower and Kennedy-to continue to address civil rights. Ideological/Cultural Shifts: The fight against Nazi Germany and its ideology of Aryan racial supremacy in the 1940s raised many whites' awareness of the extent and intensity of racial prejudice in the United States and broadened white sympathy for African Americans' struggles. The rhetoric of American freedom and democracy that was used during World War II and the Cold War also made white politicians and citizens more sensitive to racial issues. Political figures began to realize that racial segregation and discrimination in the United States endangered its claim that it was the leader of the free world. New awareness and sensitivity to racial issues created an opening for the civil rights movement to push more effectively for its goals and resulted in changes such as the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. International: World War II effectively ended European empires in Asia and Africa and spurred anticolonial struggles around the world. Anticolonial struggles in Asia and Africa provided rhetoric and models for black activism in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

Answer would ideally include: Populism: Building on the work of the Farmers' Alliance, the Populists joined with some urban workers and other social reformers to mount a political critique of industrial society. They called on the government to mediate between agriculture and business, and they demanded economic democracy. They conceived of the subtreasury as an idea to eliminate the crop lien system. They demanded land reform and the free coinage of silver, the direct election of senators, and the policies of recall and referendum. In order to join forces with urban workers, they supported the eight-hour workday. They also called for government ownership of the railroads and the telegraph system to put an end to discriminatory rates. Although some members of the southern Farmers' Alliance had made some effort to achieve common cause with black farmers in the 1880s, the Populist party platform of the 1890s reflected southern white farmers' racial animosities and did not address the problems of African Americans. Although the Populists never elected a president or won their demands while their party still existed, they did help redefine the agenda of American politics for the twentieth century. Progressivism: Progressives were a diverse group with a variety of motivations. The social gospel of activists and theologians motivated some reformers, while others feared that the social upheaval of the 1890s would continue unless some sort of corrective action was taken. Progressive politicians advocated an expanded role for government by arguing that they would be able to better manage services, and at a lower cost to consumers. Grassroots progressive reformers argued that humans could promote evolution by shaping the environment, in stark opposition to the laissez-faire approach to social problems grounded in social Darwinism. This idea helped defend reformers' attempts to use government and science to reform society. Like Populists, progressives' targets included wealthy individuals and powerful corporations, both of which reformers distrusted. Some progressives also feared new immigrants. Never a radical movement, progressivism always had as its goal the preservation and strengthening of traditional American social, political, economic, and cultural institutions. Progressive reformers in the 1910s did succeed in implementing some of the goals that had been articulated by Populists two decades earlier, such as the direct election of senators and the policies of referendum and recall. Contemporary critics and many historians have correctly assessed the limits of progressivism, charging that it neglected most groups who experienced discrimination and served primarily the needs of white men. New Deal: New Dealer Franklin D. Roosevelt and his supporters were committed to the belief that the government's primary role was to respond to the social needs of the country, not to defend abstract principles. Like progressives who feared the social upheaval of the 1890s, President Roosevelt was concerned about the crisis the United States was facing in 1932 and the threat it posed to U.S. capitalism and democracy. Although he was eager to try new remedies to ease the nation's economic plight, he was firmly committed to democracy and capitalism and harbored no desire to supplant America's traditional institutions with radical ones. His reformist impulses were directed less at tempering the power of individuals and corporations and more generally toward countering the most wrenching effects of the Depression by reviving the economy, using federal planning and coordination to restructure it and make it stable over the long term (even the agricultural sector), and meeting the needs of various social groups. The New Deal was also aimed at strengthening some American institutions-capitalism and democracy-but it did so by altering them in much more substantial and long-lasting ways. The most durable New Deal achievements were those reforms that stabilized agriculture, encouraged labor unions, and created the safety net of Social Security and fair labor standards. The New Deal, like Progressive Era reforms, benefited whites more than other groups. Unlike progressive reforms, however, New Deal legislation like the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act actually addressed the needs and concerns of workers and set a precedent for federal intervention that could later be used to benefit other groups as well. Because of his need to maintain the New Deal coalition, Roosevelt refused to confront the injustices of racial segregation with the same vigor he brought to bear on economic hardship.