The Lack of Effective Labor

The lack of effective labor-based parties in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Introduction

The lack of effective labor-based parties in the United States is mainly said to lie within the American society. The establishment and sustainability of any organization and institution depends much on the visions and mission of the people forming the organization.

According to the information sources, the United States society has been much organized politically in the capitalism and socialism ways. Though such organizations have been at certain moments weak and without fulfilling their objectives, the labor based parties in the US are perceived as the most wavering organizations especial during the late 18th c and early 19th century. Despite the large numbers of workers in the United States at this particular era, the success of such parties was undoubtedly enormous which left most of the leaders of the parties with immense surprises.

The failure issue of labor-based parties has for long time therefore remained a heated debate of which examining the major factors that led to the collapsing and unsuccessful growth of these early parties open and mitigates ways of strengthening workforce parties. This would be based on the considerations several factors employed which were eminent during the particular era.

Capitalism factor

The ending of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century are depicted as period during which the ideology of capitalism was coming up to its culmination. During this period, most of the Americans were gaining the insight of wealth accumulation. The idea of wealth accumulation was in the public memory and this entrenched ideology led the people thinking to be geared towards property accumulations. However, the poor man made is good and living through the merit of hard work. The poor indigenous Americans were less hit than the other people from other regions.

The American forefathers of this particular epoch had the easy time and utilized little efforts to accumulate the wealth they required. It only took their precious time to move across the land in westward direction to claim the land as part of wealthy accumulation. The simplicity of wealth accumulation in term of land was of paramount draw back to the formation and development of labor based parties. This effortless acquisition of the land muted their reasoning ability focus on exploitation making them to feel much comfortable under workplace conditions which halted the need to organize and sustain labor based parties.

Slavery and oppression Factor

The success of the union and parties is only guaranteed by the freedom and right to exercise all the responsibilities and obligation of the organization. The conditions which are observed at this era are much scaring for the workers to have got the guarantee of exercising such obligations. As far as the workers’ environment is concerned, fears and scaring workplace conditions were rampant. This conspicuous unfavorable condition within the organizations of employment made many workers to spare themselves punishable indulgency in such organizations. This led to small number of the workers participants in those parties.

Apart from the authenticity of the worker’s parties, workers had to endure undeserving and inhuman work conditions. The mistreatment of workers by the employers was not quite unusual. Despite these inhuman and mistreatment activities, workers would often go on strikes but would rarely yield to substantial results due lack of supports from such organization.

During the declaration of strikes, oppression and suppression were some of the commonly used strategies to the employees a case which was much implemented under the employers’ support of their security officials. The battle between the workers and their employers was also agitated by the involvement of other parties and the weak workers would receive much humiliating conditions from the government. This is because in case of the employers being vanquished by their employees, the authorities of the government would command to offer support violently against such workers.

The combined efforts against the employees from the employers and the government always left them as losers, with many parties ending up as disbanded unions. For instance, in the 1877, workers from the railroads went on rioting with the local police over the huge reduction on wages and unemployment that made them dissatisfied. At the end of the struggle, thousand of live were claimed lost in the workers side which resulted to immeasurable others remaining depressed. The consequences of such uprising of the employers and employees led to the worsening of unemployment conditions; hence, there parties were greatly weakened in most of the states.

The wit of the employers was to get cheap labors from the society. The persistence of high unemployment rates was thus an advantage to the employers. This gave them a good number from were they could select the cheap labor. They used the discrimination methodology whereby the enlightened workers would remain jobless due to the fact that they were party members. This kind of employers’ strategy deterred most workers from registering as labor party members. Immigration and social factor

According to the Marxist perception, work force must rise to the level of realizing the exploitation imposed on them. This instigates the idea of forming and sustaining a labor party in a nation. This was rarely the case with most of the workers in the United States in this era. In spites of the overt exploitation in the US, the coming together of workers in solidarity was quite difficult. Farmers and miners likewise were being exploited and forced to work. Some farmers were being forced to move from their farming fields to the cities were they can be exploited; however, they did not come as one group to fight against the vice.

The disunity portrayed among the workers is well rooted from the manner in which they settled from their parts of origins. During the immigration time of the communities that settled in the US cities, the people occupied these regions according to ethnic groups. The various cities were populated by people of same community rather than work class. This perhaps was driven by the need for security and social satisfaction. This implies that those from the blacks would overpopulate a given area and in the same ways, the Asian, Indians and any other groups had their own territories. The settlement of the people in distinct zones on racial basis cut down the possibility of political integration and many other issues that the people could share as workers. This included sharing of cultural and traditional practices.

The lack of intense interaction among the immigrants who were seen as the source of cheap labor therefore hindered the intense cohesion of solidarity among the workers. In such a situation, one ethnic group could be misused to fight against the other and make their unity in labors party impossible.

Reference:

• Edmunds, R. 2008, The Enduring Nation, University of Illinois press
• Hareven, K. 1995: Amoskeag: UPNE publisher
• William J, 1896, Across of Gold= speech to the 1896 Democratic convention, Retrieved from peoples party readings and why the farmers revolted on 27th March 2009