Speed Up, Stretch Out, Shut Up! Labor in Industrial America

Speed Up, Stretch Out, Shut Up!Labor in Industrial America

TAH Osceola County19 September 2009

Cordwainer

“The Ten Footer” (1880)

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Children at Work in a Vegetable Cannery, 1912

“Bobbin Boys” at a Textile Mill, 1909

“Breaker Boys” at a Colliery, Late 19th Century

Comparative Safety of British and American Railroad Workers, 1889 - 1901(Fatality Rates per Thousand Workers per Year)

  1889 1895 1901

British railroad workersAll causes 1.14 0.95 0.89

British trainmena

All causes 4.26 3.22 2.21

Coupling 0.94 0.83 0.74

American Railroad workersAll causes 2.67 2.31 2.50

American trainmenAll causes 8.52 6.45 7.35

Coupling 1.73 1.20 0.78

Brakingb 3.25 2.44 2.03

Source: Aldrich, Safety First, Table 1 and Great Britain Board of Trade, General Report.

Upton Sinclair

Chicago SaloonsEarly 20th Century

“The Spark” (1877)

Terrance Powderly and the Knights of Labor

HaymarketSquare

1886

Samuel Gompers

1900

Iron “Puddling”

Carnegie, The Hard Driver

Henry Clay Frick

“Beehive” Coke Oven in Pennsylvania

“Making Bessemer Steel at Pittsburgh” (1886)

U.S. Steel