Causes of Labourist Groups in the US
Introduction
The Chapter, “Capital and Labor” was from the contributions from writers such as Andrew Baker, Nicholas Blood, and Justin Clark. The authors are all professionals from the fields of Political Economy, Business, and History. They, therefore, give well-researched information about the labourist movements in the United States through the secondary source document. The audience of the document is the Americans at large as shown in the quote at the beginning of the conclusion, “The march of capital transformed patterns of American life.” It is therefore evident that the chapter was written to explain the effects Industrial capitalism had on America, and how it helped to shape the country. One way in which the authors explain the labourist movements in the country is illustrating how one movement evolved and led to another. The Great Railway Strike was among the first labor movements in America. Through this strike, we see other activist groups that also stormed in the streets to demand their rights. The essay seeks to explain the events that led to the occurrence of these movements.
Thesis Statement
According to the authors, labourist movements were mainly as a result of the increased industrialization and widening chasm in social classes.
Causes of Labourist Movements
Firstly, the authors explain that a drastic increase in industrialization rendered manual laborers more and more insignificant, thereby motivating them to rally in the streets to express their insecurities. The period after the Civil War, that is, after 1861, was marked with increased inventions that elevated efficiency in agriculture and railway transport, the core sectors in the country’s economy then. Baker et.al, (2018) point out inventions such as the development of the mechanical reapers that were used in the harvesting of wheat, hence cutting off the amount of time that was spent in farms during harvesting. Production per unit time was consequently increased. The skills from the workers became redundant, “Skills mattered less and less in an industrialized, mass-producing economy, and their strength as individuals seemed ever smaller and more insignificant when companies grew in size and power…” (Baker et.al, 2018). The rise in numbers of people being laid off by the more efficient machines galvanized boycotts from manual laborers.
In the same line of thought, the authors stipulate that the growing scientific era paved the way for new strategies of production that increasingly cut the amount of labor necessary in the industries. Scientific management such as Taylorism became very popular in the 19th century for increasing efficiency through mass production, “Taylorism increased the scale and scope of manufacturing and allowed for the flowering of mass production,” (Baker et.al, 2018). He cites examples such as the McCormick’s Company that realizes great economies of scale with the employment of these strategies.
Secondly, the authors also show that elevation of inequality in the state led to an impoverished class of people that were enraged by the little share they had in the robust American economy. The extreme growth of the wealthy and the poor in the capitalist nation became a great wonder, as shown in the quote, “The sudden appearance of the extreme wealth of industrial and financial leaders alongside the crippling squalor of the urban and rural poor shocked Americans,” (Baker et.al, 2018). The richest Americans were only 1% of the population and owned nearly 75% of the national assets. Some of the magnates that were present during this time are still some of the wealthiest today, the Vanderbilts, for example. The tremendous amount of wealth these companies had created is thus very evident. The large numbers of low and middle-class citizens felt that their efforts to building the nation’s economy were not reflected in their wages, and therefore decided to strike.
Conclusion
Labourist movements were caused by the development of the Industrial Revolution and extremism in social class. One question left unanswered by the authors is if the real impact these movements had on the overall decisions made by the government. The Republican Party for example made protests to abolish black slavery in the United States but unfortunately, centuries later, we are still fighting some of the issues that were rallied for during these movements. Poverty hasn’t been erased in the United States. There are still people who do a lot of work with little salaries. Did these movements have a lasting impact on the country?
References
Baker A., et al. (2018) “Capital and Labor,” Joseph Locke, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.