Essay about Matewan

After the end of the Civil War, industrialization and urbanization blossomed and changed the nation. Instead of presidential power, men were aiming to be industrial tycoons for their wealth and power. To the people, these capitalists were regarded as either admirable “captains of industry” or corrupt “robber barons”. Even though to some people they may seem like “captains of industry”, but they were actually corrupt “robber barons” for several reasons regarding corruption, employee issues, and matters of the social classes.

8. In what way do the above documents on labor union membership and the Knights of Labor philosophy reflect concerns of J.P. Morgan? The chart shows the rising number of workers, but an unstable number of union members,

In the film Norma Rae, the textile workers were unsatisfied with many aspects of their Capitalistic work environment. They fought to form a union so that they could change the undesirable characteristics to better meet their needs. Political, environmental and cultural processes all played a part in the workers struggle to form an effective union.

Gompers’ address depicts the wealthy or the employer as the enemy of laborers and of labor unions. He says that the employer can care less whether the laborers are destroyed or preserved, because the laborer is looked at as a machine which is “thrown out as soon as all the work possible has been squeezed out of him”2. This is why he encouraged and promoted the old saying that there is “strength in numbers”. He encouraged the laborers to band together in order to organize themselves and preserve their rapidly dwindling rights. Gompers argued that it was only through organization that the laborers would be able to have their rights to a way of life recognized, to secure their rights and liberties, and in general to “maintain their manhood”2. This goes against Carnegie’s work, where he encouraged the laborers and the people of lower economic stature to happily rely on the wealthy and trust that they will spend the money that they have on their behalf. Gompers wanted the laborers to be self-reliant and to be able to come together in effective labor unions. These labor unions in the long run ended up being a protection for many of the laborers during that

Matewan, a film directed and written by John Sayles, tells a similar narrative of the Appalachian miners. Based on the Matewan Massacre, the film tells a historical story of the event and how it came to be. In the beginning of the film, the setting takes place in West Virginia after the coal companies already control the land. The miners are already found in a seemingly hopeless situation. Then a labor organizer, Joe Kenehan, travels to the town of Matewan with the hopes of bringing the miners together and establishing a union. Between striking work and having gunfights with

Politically, the Company controls its workers using fear to enforce its policies. Employing two “feudal knights,” or detectives, from the Baldwin/Phelps Detective Agency, the Stone Mountain Coal Company enforces rules by cruelly instilling fear in their workers. Using scare tactics, such as throwing people out of their homes, taking their possessions, and

Labors did not have very good wages and it was problem during the Gilded Age. Labors’ had to live by paternalism, meaning that George Pullman owned them. It seems as if labors never got a profit for the long hours that they worked in the sweatshops. All the money goes straight back to Pullman, because they had to pay for rent and their goods and groceries provided by him. So basically, Pullman didn’t consider them valuable because there was always someone looking for a job. These reasons led to several unionizations like the Knights of Labor where they had to pay their dues to go on strike and fight for them. Anyone from radical to bosses could join this union except bankers and lawyers, which made no sense. They fought for workplace rights but where they did wrong is when they demanded outside workplace rights such as free public schools for their children. This union caused deaths

The mill workers felt that they simply did not have any other options and feared the punitive steps management would take if they unionized. Indeed, this appeared to be the case. When several employees expressed a tentative interest in the union, management reduced their work days, and, consequently, their pay. The mill’s management used many other scare tactics to try and persuade employees to reject the union.

After the coal companies began to move into the area, they set up camps. Many of the residents who were forced off their land then worked for the coal companies. C.J.’s family instead had decided to move to the Justice farm, which was owned by C.J.’s grandfather’s cousin, Ermel. Ermel had relinquished the rights to his land, and the coal companies had not yet come for it. The residents that worked for the coal company lived in camps, worked for very low pay in “scrip” (company dollars) in horrible conditions, and ultimately had no other choice.

The beginnings of labor unions travel as far back as the colonial era when craft workers

The movie starts off by introducing a man named Kenehan who is coming to the town of Matewan. He was the organizer for the united mine workers and helps form the union. He portrayed the right approach by believing that violence will only weaken their cause. Baldwin-Felts men, Hickey, and Griggs enters the town to start a campaign against the miners. From here, there is already a set status of the powerful and the minority. The tension is further inflamed where one of the miners was tortured and killed because he did not name five union miners when asked by the authority figure. This eventually leads to a climatic gunfight between the

The start of private ownership of the means of production was a break away from the middle ages. Wealthy businessmen had the peasants produce textiles, which broke the guild’s monopoly. The law of supply and demand determines prices kept prices fixed. The sharp distinction and little contact with the workers and the capitalist who owns the means of the production lasted between the guild master and their laborers. The gap between capitalists and their workers would prove to be a serious problem in the Industrial Revolution of the 1800's. The profit motive was restricted by the church against charging more than fair price. The creation of the profit motive changed the attitudes and values in European civilization. Over all, capitalism paved the way for the rise of national monarchs in Europe by providing them with the capital to build up strong and professional armies and bureaucracies. The powerhouses of Europe would be the states who best adapted to capitalism, and they would eventually establish dominance of the world in later centuries.

Hadji Murat, Tolstoy's second book with the Caucasus as its setting can be considered a work of historical fiction that is a beautiful tale of resistance, and a window into not only the Caucasian War of the mid-nineteenth century, but also the culture of the Russian Empire during this period. As a work of fiction the reader must be wary of depictions of actual persons such as Tsar Nicholas I, whom Tolstoy was not enamored with, to say the least, but many insights about the period and its people can be gleaned from the story. The novel is one of great contrasts between Chechens and Russians and also of what life was like during this time.

Reuben Warshovsky is a labor organizer from New York representing the Textile Workers Union of America is committed to convincing the workplace that unionization will increase wages and better working conditions at the O. P. Henley Textile Mill. With the assistance of Norma Rae and by working day and night he was able to pull off an impossible feat of unionizing the workers at the plant. Manipulation, bribery, retaliation and intimidation are one of the few issues Norma Rae, Reuben Warshovsky and other textile workers encountered. The film reveals what the type of strings management was willing to pull in order to prevent unionization in the workplace

Zen, also known as Ch’an Buddhism in China, is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that was established in China about 1500 years ago. Zen is a form of religious practice of mainly concentrating the mind to a single point in which then results in self-realization and/or enlightenment. Zen philosophy is interpreted that all humans are capable of reaching enlightenment, which is generally blocked by ignorance. The idea emphasizes enlightened masters over forms of scriptures, and is the least “academic” of all the Buddhist schools.