This is a brief history of the labor movement in the United States from the late eighteen hundreds to the present. In 1881 a movementtoward organized labor was beginning to be inforced. A group ofpeople from a few trades and industries such as carpenters, cigar-makers, the printers, merchants, and the steel workers met and formedThe Federation of Organized Trades And Labor Unions. Althoughit had little power, the organization was defanantly and the side as the workers. It stated that a eight hour work day was considered a full dayand asked that all affiliated unions include this as part of there law byMay 1, 1886. Dispite some success it was felt that the organization needed reorganizing to make it a more effective center for the trade unions.It was now that the American Federation of Labor came to be.Gompers was elected president and was a leader in the nationalcigar makers union as well. The newly formed American Federationof Labor (AFL) began to recognize that women should be representedthrough organized unions. In 1894 it adapted a resolution that "womenshould be organized into trade unions to the end that they mayscientifically and permanently abolish the terrible evils accompanying their weakend, unorganized state; and we demand that they receive equal compensation with men for equal services performed." While 8 hour day strike movement was generally peaceful, there wassome acts of violence that set the labor movement back. The McCormick Harvester Company in Chicago learned ahead of time ofa planned strike and so locked out all its employees who held unioncards. Because of this fights broke out and police opened fire on the union members killing four of them. A public rally to protest thesekillings at Haymarket Square drew a large crowd. When a bomb wentoff, killing seven police officers and wounding fifty more, the police began to fire into the crowd and several more people were killed and about two-hundred wounded. Th...
