OwlSheets Students
← Exit

Two Views of a Steel Town, 1891

0 / 11

Two Views of a Steel Town, 1891

Corroborate a newspaper and a worker's letter about big business, unions and immigration.

Background: the age of steel

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

Big Business, Workers and Newcomers

1After the Civil War, American businesses grew to a size the country had never seen. Railroads needed steel rails, and cities needed steel for bridges and buildings. Andrew Carnegie built steel mills near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that used the Bessemer process to make steel quickly and cheaply. He also bought iron mines, coal fields, ships and railroads, so his company controlled each step from raw ore to finished steel. In oil, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil combined many companies into one trust and by about 1880 refined roughly 90 percent of the nation's oil.

2The new mills and factories needed huge numbers of workers. In many steel mills, men worked twelve-hour shifts, often six or seven days a week, around furnaces and heavy machines. Injuries were common, and in most states there were no laws that made companies pay workers who were hurt. Wages for unskilled laborers were often less than two dollars a day.

3Workers formed labor unions so they could bargain as a group instead of one by one. The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, welcomed both skilled and unskilled workers and grew to roughly 700,000 members by 1886. The American Federation of Labor, formed in 1886 and led by Samuel Gompers, organized skilled workers by craft and pushed for higher pay and an eight-hour day. When talks failed, unions sometimes went on strike. Owners often fought back by hiring replacement workers and private guards, and governors and courts often sided with the companies. Large strikes at Carnegie's Homestead steel works in 1892 and at the Pullman railroad car company in 1894 ended in defeat for the unions.

4Many of the new workers were immigrants. From the 1880s on, more and more of them came from southern and eastern Europe, from countries such as Italy, Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire. Some left villages where there was too little farmland to divide among children; Jewish families fled violent attacks in the Russian Empire. Steamships made the ocean crossing take about one or two weeks instead of a month or more. Immigrants were drawn by jobs that paid cash wages and by relatives and neighbors who had already settled in industrial cities. Many sent part of their pay home.

1.
According to paragraph 1, why did Carnegie buy iron mines, coal fields and railroads?
Question 1 options
2.
Draw a line from each term to its meaning in the passage.
3.
Use paragraph 4. Sort each reason immigrants came: was it a push away from home or a pull toward American cities?

Two accounts of Ironvale

Ironvale and the Keystone Steel Works are invented, and so are these two accounts. They are based on the kinds of newspapers and letters historians study from the 1890s.

Account A: from the Ironvale Ledger, May 1891. The Ledger was owned by a group of local store owners and businessmen.
"The Keystone works has made Ironvale. Ten years ago this was a village of 800 people; today more than 9,000 live here, and the mill pays its 1,200 men over $40,000 in wages each month. Any man willing to work can find a place, and a laborer here earns more than he ever could in the old country. Mr. Harlan Price, the owner, has built the town a library. Yet some men now listen to union speakers who would tell Mr. Price how to run his own mill. A strike would close the works and leave families without bread. Wise workers will trust the man who built the mill."
Account B: from a letter by Jozef, a Slovak laborer at the Keystone works, to his brother in Austria-Hungary, June 1891 (translated).
"You ask if you should come. There is work, it is true, and the pay is more than at home. I earn $1.40 a day. But the day is twelve hours, and every other Sunday we work twenty-four hours straight when the shifts change. Last month a crane chain broke and two men from our boardinghouse were hurt, and the company paid them nothing. Rent and food take much of what I earn, but I send ten dollars home each month. The bosses call the union men troublemakers, yet the union asks only for an eight-hour day and help for the injured. Come if you choose, but come knowing it is hard."
4.
Use the note about who owned the Ledger. Why might Account A describe the mill so favorably?
Question 4 options
5.
Corroborate the accounts. Sort each statement: does it appear in both accounts, only in Account A, or only in Account B?
6.
Underline the sentence from Jozef's letter that best supports the union's call for an eight-hour day.

7.
Use Jozef's letter. Count a regular week as six twelve-hour days.

In a regular week, Jozef works hours. With the union's eight-hour day and the same six days, he would work hours.

8.
Jozef wrote to his brother, not for the public. How does this most likely affect his letter's value as a source?
Question 8 options

Make a claim

Use the passage and both accounts.

9.
In 1893, the union at the Keystone works votes on whether to strike. Based on paragraph 3, which risk would the workers most likely face?
Question 9 options
10.
Both accounts agree that a laborer at Ironvale earned more than in Europe. What does this agreement help explain?
Question 10 options
11.
Did the workers at the Keystone works need a union? Make a claim, support it with evidence from both accounts and the passage, and explain your reasoning. Tell which account you trust more on this question and why.