USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 56
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75
Table 16. Number of women employed in New York State, 1900-1950.
Year
Women employed
Percentage women of total employed
1900
667,373
22.4
1910
982,434
24.6
1920
1,134,561
25.2
1930
1,414,736
25.6
1940
1,453,355
29.4
1944
1,988,800
33.1
1950
1,741,766
31.0
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1950.
During World War II women played an essential and dramatic part in war production. In 1944 one out of every three workers in the major war industries in the state was a woman; then there were 350,000 women employed in plants producing war materials. The efficiency of women was notable not only in the war industries but also in all other manu- facturing and civilian industries. Of the approximately two million women working in New York State in 1944, close to 800,000, or two in every five, were employed in manufacturing plants. Following manufacture as the largest woman-employing industry was the wholesale and retail trade, with 294,000 women. Next in importance were professional serv- ices, with 241,000, and domestic service with 178,000 (the latter a drop of 20 per cent in comparison with 1940).
A further examination of the above table indicates that the war effort alone was not responsible for the heavy employment of women. Rather, it is a growing and longtime trend. Women are increasingly reluctant to go into low-paying occupations. It is for this reason, in part, that there has been a decided shift of women from domestic service and from the comparatively low-paying professions of teaching and nursing into better- paying activities.
526
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
Irrespective of source, the ever-increasing labor supply of the state since 1865 has kept pace with the employment demands of its rapidly expanding industrial needs. During the ten-year period 1940-1950, the state's employed labor force increased 16 per cent, bringing the total number to 5,762,000 persons. During the last sixty years jobs of all kinds have multiplied much faster in New York City than in the state or nation. The city's large population and diversity of economic activities and cultural opportunities are the principal explanatory factors. They also help to explain why, in the largest center of manufacturing America, considerably more than half of its working population are clerical workers, salesmen, professionals, or employees in other nonmanufacturing oc- cupations.
The state's labor supply underwent revolutionary change in the hun- dred years 1850-1950. In fact, not until one compares the status of the worker prior to the Industrial Revolution with his status in the age of machine production, can he fully appreciate the transformation which occurred in the worker's way of life and outlook.
Before the widespread application of machinery to the manufacturing process, the worker was often a skilled craftsman. He usually owned his own tools which, along with his skills, enabled him to approach the status of the creative artist. Frequently he performed all the operations in the manufacture of a single product. Often he worked in his own home or was employed in the home of a neighbor. In either case he was an individualist and, as such, had certain freedoms which the workers of the machine age were not privileged to enjoy. For example, when the growth of the factory system compelled the craftsman to become a ma- chine tender, he lost some of his most precious possessions. In place of his tools which had been his servants was a machine that he did not own and that left him little or no scope for individual initiative. As a machine tender he was forced to subordinate his creative instincts to the relent- less motions of the machine. Even the product which the machine pro- duced was not of his design.
The machine also robbed many workers of their sense of security. Before the coming of the machine, the worker as craftsman had pos- sessed an undeniable asset when he bargained with an employer. He knew, as did the employer, that he and other workers with similar skills alone could perform certain operations in the manufacturing process. But as a mere machine tender he had comparatively little bargaining power as an individual. Almost any person of average intelligence could tend a machine, and if he complained about his wage or sought shorter hours or in any other way expressed dissatisfaction with his job he could be discharged and another man easily found to take his place.
527
CHANGING STATUS OF LABOR
Especially was this true at a time of frequent depressions and when a never-ending stream of immigrants poured into the state.
When a craftsman was virtually compelled to exchange his own tools for a machine that belonged to his employer, he relinquished what- ever control he, as a craftsman, had once had over his working condi- tions. Wage, hours, and the physical environment of the factory were all determined by the employer. If the worker lost his job, he knew that the possibility of finding another position depended more upon luck than any ability he might possess. Moreover, there was always the pos- sibility that he might become unfit for any type of manual labor through accident or sickness. If he lost a foot or a hand in the machine he was tending, he not only lost his job but often was unable to obtain an- other. If he became too old to keep up with the pace of the machine he was "fired." If he lost his job through no fault of his own but was dis- charged or "laid off" because of a business recession or some other reason, he received no financial aid or unemployment insurance.
With the rapid mechanization and concentration of some of the state's industries following the Civil War, the worker's situation became even worse. Before the coming of the machine and the corporation, manu- facturing establishments were small. Often the owner worked alongside his employees. He knew them personally and frequently helped them with their more pressing home problems such as family illness, mortgage indebtedness, and other hardships. Employer and employee greeted each other by their first names. As business became mechanized and cor- porate, this close personal relationship between employer and employee disappeared. Labor became a mere bookkeeping item in an enterprise whose principal goal was the realization of financial profit to manage- ment and stockholders. The consequences to the worker during the closing decades of the nineteenth century were little short of disastrous: the hours of labor were long; economic warfare between employer and employee frequently prevailed; cyclical and seasonal unemployment con- stantly threatened; physical conditions of employment, particularly in some industries and especially in the City of New York, were intolerable; the health of many workers was seriously impaired; the percentage of accidents was high; and, above all, the morale of the majority of the workers was low. The sense of belonging or being appreciated for one's contribution as a human being to the enterprise which his labor, in part, made possible was almost entirely lacking.
If the individual worker sought to improve the conditions of em- ployment brought into being by the Industrial Revolution, he quickly learned that he was powerless to do so. He was in competition with other wage earners whose necessity for a job was as great as his own.
528
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
Moreover, if he agitated for change, his employer was glad to get rid of him and to replace him with one more docile. This was one reason why many of the state's employers welcomed the coming of the immi- grant, who frequently arrived with only a few cents in his pocket and the clothes on his back and was virtually impelled to take whatever kind of work was offered without raising questions about wages and conditions of employment. It was for this reason that the native-born worker opposed the coming of the immigrant. This attitude on the part of the American-born worker plus the lack of training for the better and higher-paid jobs also account for the fact that everywhere in the state the more menial and often most hazardous and poorly paid jobs were assigned to the immigrant or Negro. But whether native born or a new- comer from a foreign land, the worker could not, singlehanded, better the conditions of his employment. This could be done only by means of unionization and the passage of protective legislation. Recourse was had to both of these devices with gratifying results, especially after 1900.
New York has long been the greatest center of organized labor in the United States. Indeed, organization of workers for the purpose of im- proving their economic status was not unknown in New York City in the late 1820's and early 1830's. The budding labor movement, however, was too weak to withstand the impact of the Panic of 1837 and was completely crushed. In the 1850's trade unionism reappeared only to be checked again by the depression of 1857. Nevertheless, a few unions, notably the printers, stonecutters, machinists, and hatworkers, managed to survive. During the Civil War and the years immediately following, the labor movement gathered strength. New trade unions composed of skilled workers were founded, but the mass of unskilled workers remained un- organized.
During this period the trade unions were primarily concerned with preventing their members from being reduced to a proletarian status. They were far more interested in restoring economic individualism than in de- veloping class consciousness. Most of the demands of organized New York labor during the 1870's were not unlike what they had been prior to the Civil War. Heading the list was the demand for a shorter working day. Many, inspired by the argument of Ira Steward of Boston, a member of the Machinists and Blacksmiths Union, advocated an eight-hour day for all workers, but insisted that this reform be achieved by legislation rather than by use of the strike. Organized labor also struggled to pre- vent wage cuts and in many cases to increase the workers' daily or weekly pay. Some labor spokesmen, in the hopes of discovering some way to escape the growing hardships of the machine age, advocated the estab- lishment of co-operative stores in which workers could purchase goods and co-operative factories owned and managed by the workers, who
529
CHANGING STATUS OF LABOR
would share in any profits which might accrue. The co-operative ventures launched during these years were, for the most part, dismal failures, either because of mismanagement or the superior power exercised by private enterprise in the same industry.
During the 1880's, at the very time when the Knights of Labor move- ment-a national movement for one big labor union-was at its peak and when the common man felt that he was the victim of corporate greed and monopoly, New York City suffered from an epidemic of strikes. Of these none did more to center attention on the status of labor than the 1882 strike of the freight handlers at the city's railway terminals in New York and Jersey City. The strikers sought a three-cent increase in their then seventeen-cents-an-hour wage (for a fourteen- to sixteen-hour day). The average weekly wage was from $7.50 to $9.00, which was barely enough to provide food. Many of the merchants, who also suffered at the hands of the railroads, supported the workers. Otherwise, their pleas for assistance did not meet with favorable response. Of the press, only Justice, an antimonopoly newspaper, rallied to the strikers' support. Despite the fairness of their demands, the strikers failed to win. Meanwhile, under the leadership of two New York officials of the cigarmakers union, Samuel Gompers and Adolph Strasser, the American Federation of Labor was in process of formation, an organization which by the 1890's was the most important labor body in the United States.
A loose alliance of national trade unions, the American Federation of Labor was essentially a conservative organization that was committed to few changes in the status quo. It shunned political and economic reforms and centered its attention almost exclusively upon attempts to raise wages and shorten the work week. To it the strike was a class- conscious weapon to be used only when employers refused to co-operate with labor in signing collective-bargaining contracts. By restricting its membership to highly skilled workers, the A.F. of L. did little for the masses of unskilled workingmen.
From 1886, when Gompers was elected to the presidency of the Federa- tion, to the present, labor within the state and particularly in New York City has experienced numerous changes of fortune which need not be detailed here. Nevertheless, certain summary observations should be noted: (1) prior to 1930, with some exceptions, unionism was most suc- cessful in industries dominated by the small employer as, for example, in the apparel industries; (2) during the period 1865-1900 little headway was made in organizing labor in the larger industries in upstate New York; (3) since the founding of the American Federation of Labor, New York City labor leaders have played an important role in the American labor movement; (4) in economic, political, and ideological matters New York labor has exhibited a variety of views, running all the way from the
-
530
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
communism of the furriers union to the conservatism of the craft unions in the building industry; (5) labor legislation within the state, and to a considerable degree within the nation, has been the result of powerful labor pressure; (6) several of the unions active within the state have been increasingly interested in labor education both for union officers and rank and file (with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union leading the way); (7) in the older unions of the state and especially those blessed with wise leadership, there has been in recent decades increasing evidence of growing maturity and responsibility on the part of organized labor (here again with the needle-trades unions and Local No. 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in the forefront ); (8) and, finally, one is impressed by the great strides made during the last quarter of a century in the membership growth of organized labor in the state.
Anyone who examines the history of labor in New York State during the last hundred years, and especially during the decades between Ap- pomattox and the beginning of World War I when the workingmen of the state were fighting an uphill battle to improve their social and eco- nomic status, is impressed by the fact that with a few exceptions the wage earners of the state were not attracted by the preachments of left- wing theorists and agitators. The reasons for their lack of interest are not difficult to explain. Those who espoused the gospel of Karl Marx and sought to induce the American workingman to undertake a revolution that would overthrow American capitalism were mainly immigrants. It was difficult for immigrants of one nationality to win over other foreign groups to their ideas, and it was virtually impossible to interest native- born Americans. They failed utterly to appreciate that they were directing their appeal to workers who, living in an essentially fluid social order, had little or no sense of class consciousness so prevalent in the rigidly class-structured Old World. The American workingman, whether native or foreign born, had no desire to overthrow the American economic sys- tem; all he wanted was what he believed to be his rights and his just share of the fruits of capitalistic enterprise.
Of the leading critics of American capitalism during these decades none was more outspoken and vitriolic than Daniel De Leon. Born on the island of Curaçao and educated in Germany and Holland, De Leon migrated to New York City in the mid 1870's. He studied law at Columbia University and taught for a short time. Having become interested in various labor movements, he abandoned both the law and teaching, joined the Knights of Labor in 1888, and thereafter devoted the remain- ing years of his life (he died in 1914) to propagating his version of socialism. An out-and-out Marxist, he took a militant stand against traditional trade unions, whose leaders, including Gompers, he termed
531
CHANGING STATUS OF LABOR
"labor fakers," and urged all workingmen to join in an independent political movement which would win control of the government and establish a "socialist or cooperative commonwealth whereby the instru- ments of production shall be made the property of the whole people." In 1892 De Leon joined the Socialist Labor party and the following year became its candidate for governor of New York. Meanwhile, as a member of the Knights of Labor, he made an unsuccessful attempt to capture control of that organization. In 1895 he withdrew from the Knights to form the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, which devoted its prin- cipal efforts to attacking the conservative leadership of the American Federation of Labor and the wing of the Socialist party that lent its support to the existing structure of trade unionism in America. De Leon was both autocratic and doctrinaire, and he soon alienated all but a small coterie of his most devoted followers. Unable to destroy Gomperism, he joined the Independent Workers of the World in 1905. Even this anarchistic organization ousted him. A rival workers' International In- dustrial Union, which he then founded, did not flourish. Wholly apart from the character of his leadership, De Leon's ideology did not fit America. Were it to have found acceptance anywhere in the United States it would have been in the City of New York, but even here it failed to make headway.
The greatest gains achieved by New York labor in its quest to improve its status have been won in legislative halls-both state and federal- rather than on the picket lines. Labor laws enacted by the federal government during the half century after the termination of the Civil War affected only a small percentage of the workers of the state. The creation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1884 and the Department of Labor in 1913 were possible exceptions. The other federal measures enacted during this period, however, were limited in application either to government workers or to those employed by firms engaged in inter- state trade. In sharp contrast to the labor legislation in Washington was that accomplished at Albany, particularly after 1883. Several factors ac- count for this growth in state regulatory legislation.
Labor itself, increasingly conscious of its strength when organized, ex- erted tremendous pressure from time to time upon both the public and the legislature. Of the spokesmen for labor in this respect none was more influential than the New York State Federation of Labor. This organization, which antedated the formation of the American Federation of Labor by two decades, was organized in 1865 under the name of the New York State Trades Assembly. It had its inception when, in 1864, antilabor representatives in the legislature attempted to strengthen ex- isting legislation prohibiting combinations of workers for the purpose of conducting a strike. The trade unions protested vigorously, holding mass
532
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
meetings in Albany and New York. In 1898 the Trades Assembly changed its name to the New York Workingmen's Federation of the State of New York and again in 1910 to the New York State Federation of Labor. The "political branch" of the organization, formed in 1882, existed until 1888, when a regular legislative committee with an active chairman as sole legislative agent was created.
Although the organization has changed its name, its purpose remains the same:
To agitate such questions as may be for the benefit of the working classes in order that we may obtain the enactment of such measures by the State Legislature as will be beneficial to all of us and the repeal of all repressive laws which now exist; to use all means consistent with honor and integrity to so correct the abuses under which the laboring classes are laboring as to insure to them their just rights and privileges; to use our utmost endeavors to impress upon the various divisions of workingmen the necessity of a close and thorough organization and of forming themselves into local unions wherever practicable.
The history of the State Federation of Labor roughly parallels the great legislative efforts at industrial reform. As far back as 1870, the federation was principally responsible for the enactment of legislation circumventing the common-law ruling that a labor union was an un- lawful conspiracy which could be punished criminally.
But the New York State Federation of Labor should not alone be credited for the imposing body of labor legislation enacted during these years. Among the other contributing factors has been the weight of public opinion. Many forces are responsible for shaping people's minds. Among these are incidents which arouse public indignation and spur the demand for reform. For example, probably the most far-reaching single reform in the field of labor legislation ever enacted in New York State was the outcome of a disastrous fire in the Triangle Shirt Waist factory on Washington Square, New York City, in 1910 in which 143 workers (mostly girls) were killed. The immediate result of this tragedy was a mass meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House. This in turn re- sulted in the formation of a Citizens Committee on Safety to make investigations and to promote public policies for the prevention of in- dustrial accidents and fires. On the basis of data furnished by this com- mittee, the State Factory Investigating Commission, headed by Robert F. Wagner with Alfred E. Smith as vice-chairman, was appointed in Albany in June 1911. The purpose of the investigation, as Smith later wrote, was "the conservation of human life," and the three volumes of its report contain an appalling record of the destruction of human life. Men, women, and children worked at night as well as during the day
533
CHANGING STATUS OF LABOR
in inadequately ventilated and poorly lighted factories and tenement houses. Many workers suffered from occupational diseases, and there were few safeguards against accidents or fire. In the state's canneries, where conditions were particularly bad, women and small children worked as much as sixteen hours a day. Few factories contained the necessary sanitary facilities. In several industries wages were so low that every member of a family was forced to seek employment. Finally, the existing state's labor laws were almost never enforced, and factory inspection was a farce. The outgrowth of the extended investigation by this com- mission was not only a new set of labor laws, as we shall see, but the creation of the State Industrial Commission with broad powers.
The vote of the worker is another factor which accounts for the large body of industrial legislation affecting labor enacted during this period. Also, severe cyclical changes, like that which produced the Depression of 1929, often affect adversely not only the workers but the majority of the state's population as well. Out of these conditions come demands for reform and the passage of social-economic legislation. To illustrate: Late in 1933 the state legislature enacted a "baby" N.R.A. (National Recovery Act), which was declared unconstitutional by the New York Court of Appeals in 1935. In the same year, out of Albany came a "baby" Norris-La Guardia Act in the form of Section 876-a of the Civil Practice Act. In many respects, too, the New York State Labor Relations Act was a "baby" Wagner Act. These and other legislative measures were the direct results of a long period of industrial depression and of the efforts of the state administration to raise wages and afford the worker greater economic security.
The main body of labor legislation enacted during the last hundred years has been concerned with: (1) the regulation of woman and child labor, (2) safety and sanitation, (3) prevention and insurance of in- dustrial accidents, (4) insurance for old age and unemployment, (5) laws pertaining to trade unions, and (6) the administration of labor law. Distinct from the slow development of legal measures to deal with these problems was the comparatively rapid enactment of the Ives- Quinn Law forbidding racial and religious discrimination in employ- ment (1945). This is discussed at length in Chapter 33.
Prior to 1880, when the number of gainfully occupied in the state numbered 360,000, protective labor legislation was rudimentary and badly administered. Enforcement was practically nonexistent. The work of women in stores and factories was wholly unregulated until 1881, when a law was passed requiring employers of women in stores and factories to provide seats for their use. Legislation concerning the em- ployment of women has centered on such problems as reducing hours of labor, prohibiting night work, limiting the occupations in which women
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.