8.3Labor fights back

Industrial workers faced long hours, low pay, and hazardous conditions, and they organized to resist. Labor unions such as the Knights of Labor and later the American Federation of Labor pressed for shorter hours and better wages. The struggle was often violent.

Major upheavals punctuated the era: the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket affair of 1886, the Homestead strike of 1892, and the Pullman strike of 1894. Employers, backed by courts and troops, frequently broke strikes by force. Though the labor movement won few immediate victories, it planted the idea that workers had collective rights—an idea that would grow powerful in the next century.