Newspaper Research

     I began by searching "labor strike" between 1870 and 1890 and found a newspaper called The St. Landry Democrat from Opelousas, Louisiana on September 17, 1881. I read an article at the beginning that is headed with "New Orleans Gossip." It speaks of a cotton labor strike in the "Crescent City" and how excitement is following it. This strike was caused by greed and skilled workmen that felt unappreciated. The cotton industry was thriving and profits were increasing, so the workmen kindly asked their employers for an increase in wages as well. This was declined and claimed as impractical so the men stopped working. The employers began to recognize that this was hard work and it would be hard to find replacements, but they still did with the abundance of cotton workers in the South. The strikers gave up and accepted defeat only to go back to work. This is an interesting story relating to what we have already studied from the textbook. With some fields of work, striking doesn't necessarily work, as seen here. If it is not a very common skill to have and the company is smaller, then the story may have been different, but this happened often during this time in history. The workers had a good reason to ask for more but it does not always work out and they ended up having to settle with what they had, unlike some other cases where violence was frequently a result. As I compare this case to the Homestead Strike that I have already studied, some details are similar while others are not. In both cases, the workers resulted in defeat, but with the Homestead Strike, the controversy was much larger and violence was a significant outcome with the workers defeating the pinkertons only to be defeated by National Guard troops right after. When violence gets seriously involved, the government will find a way to shut it down as displayed, though the cotton strike did not involve violence at all and one side just accepted the outcome.
Image result for cotton strike 1800s
Cotton Strike in the late 1800s

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