During the Gilded Age the formation of labor unions forever changed the workplace in American businesses. With groups such as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor, workers could finally stand against the powerful billionaires and corporate heads of America. Large manufacturing companies at the time, with their high demand for products and need to maximize profits, sought to hire a labor force willing to work for long hours in terrible conditions for little pay. The factories, being located mainly in cities, hired women and children to help keep labor costs down. Also many immigrants desperate for work were hired to work for the lowest wages possible(uneccessary--repetive), these low wages made it impossible for workers to afford anything most importantly the workers could not afford to leave, and this made the amount of poor living in the cities to dramatically increase.(unnecessary--confussing) Due to this rise in poverty the rise of poor workers (I would change "poor workers" to "immigrants" or "low-income immigrants"), many of the workers employed by the factories resorted were forced to resort to small? crime to try and make ends meet in order to survive. Labor unions sought to solve the problems that many workers had come to face, their main goal was to unite all workers behind the same causes , mainly living in poor urban areas, and : improved the working conditions in which they were suffering under, better pay, and fewer hours. One of these unions, The Knights of Labor , demanded basic improvements on the working conditions currently in place. They also demanded the end of child labor and prison labor, along with the prohibition of contract foreign labor. An eight hour workday, which was unheard of at the time, was also demanded by most of the labor unions of this time. Groups similar to this, such as the American Federation of Labor and the I.W.W. held the same basic principles when demanding changes from their management. A popular way for labor unions to get their demands was to go on strike, one of the many (list others from class notes) weapons in a union's arsenal of methods. In response to the actions taken by the workers, the management sometimes hired Pinkerton agents, otherwise known as "Bully Boys". The agents would physically harm and discourage the workers, trying to get them back into the factories without a compromise with the Union. Although Unions seemed like a great idea at the time they had many problems to face. Many unions were divided due to differences in race, ethnicity or gender preventing Labor Unions from being a total success.
Emphasize the "changes" here. That's the question we're trying to answer, anyway.
You should include more information - it sounded very repetitive
for each labor union you should mention major people involved in the organization, who it included/excluded, what their specific goals were, famous strikes they are affiliated with and their outcomes, their weakenesses/why they failed (you should probably also cover the National Labor Union) (its all in the text book starting on pg. 481)
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