Labour, Immigration and Populism

Two union strategies

• Knights of Labor — open to skilled and unskilled, Black and white, men and women. Broad reform goals. Collapsed after being blamed for the Haymarket bombing (1886).
• American Federation of Labor (Gompers) — skilled workers only, organised by craft, pursuing "bread and butter" aims: wages, hours, safety. It did not challenge capitalism, and it survived.

The pattern is the exam's point: the union that asked for less, more specifically lasted; the one that asked to reorganise society was crushed.

Major strikes — Great Railroad Strike (1877), Homestead (1892), Pullman (1894) — share a feature worth noting: federal troops or injunctions were used against workers.

Immigration

The "new immigration" after 1880 came largely from southern and eastern Europe — Italians, Poles, Jews, Greeks — rather than from Britain, Ireland and Germany. They were poorer, more often Catholic or Jewish, and settled in urban ethnic enclaves.

Nativist reaction produced the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) — the first US law barring a group by nationality. Political machines like Tammany Hall traded services for immigrant votes, providing real help and real corruption at once.

Populism

Farmers faced falling crop prices, high railroad rates, and debts that grew heavier as deflation raised the real value of money owed. The Grange and then the People's Party demanded railroad regulation, a graduated income tax, direct election of senators, and free silver to inflate the currency.

Bryan lost in 1896 and the party faded. But almost every Populist demand became law within three decades — through the Progressives. Losing an election is not the same as losing the argument.