As most jobs in cotton factories required neither great strength nor special skills, the owners thought women could do the work as well as or better than men. In addition, they were more compliant. The New England region was home to many young, single farm girls who might be recruited. But would stern New England farmers allow their daughters to work in factories? The great majority of them would not. They believed that sooner or later factory workers would be exploited and would sink into hopeless poverty. Economic "laws" would force them to work harder and harder for less and less pay.

How, then, were the factory owners able to recruit farm girls as laborers? They did it by building decent houses in which the girls could live. These houses were supervised by older women who made sure that

Not until 1842 was the way opened again for workers to organize. That year several union shoemakers in Boston were brought to trial. They were charged with refusing to work with non-union shoemakers. A municipal court judge found the men guilty of conspiracy. But an appeal to a higher court resulted in a victory for labor unions generally. Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled that it was not unlawful for workers to engage peacefully in union activity. It was their right to organize, he said. Shaw's decision was widely accepted. For many years following this decision, unions did not have to fear conspiracy charges.

This document was provided by THE UNITED STATES INFORMATION AGENCY(1986; revised 1991) in the About the United States series. For more information, contact your local USIS cultural office

Probably the most violent confrontation between labor and employers was the Great Railway Strike of 1877. The nation had been in the grip of a severe depression for four years. During that time, the railroads had decreased the wages of railway workers by 20 percent. Many trainmen complained that they could not support their families adequately. There was little that the trainmen could do about the wage decreases. At that time, unions were weak and workers feared going on strike; there were too many unemployed men who might take their jobs. Yet some workers secretly formed a Trainmen's Union to oppose the railroads.

The garment workers came to two conclusions: Secrecy was needed to protect union members against employer spies. Labor organizations would fail if they were divided into separate craft unions. Instead, labor should be organized in one big union of both skilled and unskilled workers.

At this time, many workers in Europe were joining revolutionary labor movements which advocated the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a new socialist economic system. Most American workers, however, followed the lead of Gompers, with his highly pragmatic approach to problems of labor. They strove to organize strong unions so that they could demand a greater share in the wealth that they helped to produce. They were not interested in destroying the economic structure of the country but in making it work more effectively for their benefit.

Some common words found in the essay are:
AFL-CIO LABOR, Knights Labor, LOWELL EXPERIMENT, Anti-trust Act, Progressives AFL, Knights AFL, Debs IWW, GROWTH FACTORY, Lowell Massachusetts, LAWS Employers, labor unions, knights labor, congress passed, craft unions, industrial workers, factory system, wage earners, organized labor, union membership, passed laws, american federation labor, increase union membership, union represent workers, sherman anti-trust act, railway strike 1877,
Approximate Word count = 5100
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page double spaced)