Labor in the Age of Big Business

1. Traditional Labor Relations
   1. Small shops
   2. Personal Relations Between Masters and Workers
   3. Shop-Floor Culture
      1. Loose Discipline--Task-Oriented, Rather Than Clock-Oriented
      2. Lack of Central Control
         1. Foreman Fiefdoms
         2. Workers as Subcontractors
      3. Worker Pride--"The Boss's Brains Are Under the Worker's Cap"
2. Early Management Response--"Deskilling"
   1. A Case Study, Textiles
      1. Mule Spinners--Skilled, Independent, Militant
      2. Ring Spinners--Unskilled, Often Children, Powerless
   2. Other Industries
3. The Late Nineteenth Century--Big Business and the Crisis of Labor
   1. Preconditions
      1. Sharpened Competition
      2. Radical Technological and Organizational Innovation
      3. Obsession With Controlling Costs
   2. Outcome--An Age of Labor Violence
      1. Representative Events
         1. The Railroad Strike of 1877
         2. The McCormick Strike and the Haymarket Riot (1886)
         3. The Pullman Strike (1894)
         4. The Homestead Strike (1892)
      2. General Patterns
         1. Worker Defeat
         2. Frequent Local Support for Strikers--"Island Communities" Against Big Business
         3. New Forms of Labor Organization
            1. The National Labor Union
            2. The Knights of Labor--Pining for the Golden Age of the "Producer"
            3. Samuel Gompers, the American Federation of Labor, and "Pure and Simple" Unionism
      3. Advancing Management Control
         1. Centralizing Control Over the Shop Floor--The Modern Personnel Department
         2. Deskilling Continued--"Scientific Management" and Frederick W. Taylor
         3. The Worker as Machine--Toward the Assembly Line