The Worker's Oppression In The Workplace

The main backbone of America is not the corporations, the government or states. It is the people but one class of people created America from the ashes of the Civil War. The worker helped create America into what it is today, but they suffered oppression from both corporations and government. The workers had to fight for their liberty and were not aided by the government until they got their attention. Liberty is the ability of one having a voice or a choice and not being prosecuted or silenced for doing nothing wrong.
Oppression. To know what workers were fighting against it is essential that it is known. The working conditions of the factory and workplace were horrendous. The only light source was the sunlight that came through the window,
Also, they receive about eight to ten dollars a week, working at approximately ten cents per hour. While, the owners of the corporation were millionaires. Labour was cheap as there was a flood of immigrants that came to work and so most of the workers were expendable. Machines in the factory would spit out smoke and so the workers would come home covered in black soot. They were only given two breaks during the day, those breaks were for only lunch and dinner and it was back to work again. The little money the workers were earning forced them to live in slums. About five to nine people lived in a single room the size of an apartment. This caused diseases to have the perfect opportunity to spread and resulted in many deaths. The workers had no control over their situation, as they no say in determining the proper amount of hours of work and pay they should receive. As an effect of not being able to have a voice in determining pay they had to live in slums and would not have enough money to pay if someone was to catch a disease. If workers were to create a union they risked the possibility of losing their job. Since there was a major amount of immigrants coming from
The government did not support the workers forcing them to take action. Oppression did not stop workers from forming unions. These unions lead strikes against big corporations like Carnegie Steel and J.P. Morgan. Some famous strike includes the Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Coal Strike of 1902. The Homestead Strike took place in Homestead, Pennsylvania and was against Carnegie Steel. The workers fought back against the corporation for continuously cutting wages. 3,000 men planned a strike and took action. Henry Frick was head of the factory at that time and called in 300 Pinkerton guards agents to stop the strike. The Pinkertons were a union busting group who was paid by the corporations to stop worker strikes. The Pinkertons at that time had more men and guns than the whole U.S. army. The workers heard of the Pinkertons coming and met them by the river, where a shootout took place which injured and killed many people. This shootout ended with the Pinkertons being captured. To solve the conflict, the National Guard was sent in to stop the workers. A couple years before the Homestead strike, there was the Haymarket Square Riot. This took place in Chicago and was a considerably small public meeting to speak out against the Mccormick Corporation. Near the end of the meeting, the police started to make their way up the street to stop the meeting. As the police came close to the meeting an individual, still unknown to this day, threw a dynamite bomb into the police