Worksheet
Two Views of a Steel Town, 1891
Grade 8 sourcing practice: compare a mill-town newspaper and an immigrant steelworker's letter to explain big business, labor unions and immigration.
Grade 8Social StudiesInteractive · Printable
Aligned toECO.8.3
What’s included
- Single worksheet
- Auto-graded online
- 1 C3 Framework standard
- Printable answer key
- 11 questions
- Classroom-ready
Details
- Format
- Interactive · Printable
- Grade
- Grade 8
- Subject
- Social Studies
- Question types
- Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer
About this worksheet
What students practice
- Students explain how big businesses such as steel companies grew in the late 1800s.
- Students explain why workers formed labor unions and why immigrants came to industrial cities.
- Students corroborate two accounts that disagree and judge each source's point of view.
How to use
Read the background passage first, then read the two accounts aloud in two voices. Students answer on their own and compare their open responses in pairs.
Curriculum
C3 Framework standard covered
Explain the growth of big business, the rise of labor unions and why immigrants came to American cities in the late 1800s.
Preview
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Two Views of a Steel Town, 1891
Corroborate a newspaper and a worker's letter about big business, unions and immigration.
Background: the age of steel
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
Big Business, Workers and Newcomers
1After the Civil War, American businesses grew to a size the country had never seen. Railroads needed steel rails, and cities needed steel for bridges and buildings. Andrew Carnegie built steel mills near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that used the Bessemer process to make steel quickly and cheaply. He also bought iron mines, coal fields, ships and railroads, so his company controlled each step from raw ore to finished steel. In oil, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil combined many companies into one trust and by about 1880 refined roughly 90 percent of the nation's oil.
2The new mills and factories needed huge numbers of workers. In many steel mills, men worked twelve-hour shifts, often six or seven days a week, around furnaces and heavy machines. Injuries were common, and in most states there were no laws that made companies pay workers who were hurt. Wages for unskilled laborers were often less than two dollars a day.
3Workers formed labor unions so they could bargain as a group instead of one by one. The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, welcomed both skilled and unskilled workers and grew to roughly 700,000 members by 1886. The American Federation of Labor, formed in 1886 and led by Samuel Gompers, organized skilled workers by craft and pushed for higher pay and an eight-hour day. When talks failed, unions sometimes went on strike. Owners often fought back by hiring replacement workers and private guards, and governors and courts often sided with the companies. Large strikes at Carnegie's Homestead steel works in 1892 and at the Pullman railroad car company in 1894 ended in defeat for the unions.
4Many of the new workers were immigrants. From the 1880s on, more and more of them came from southern and eastern Europe, from countries such as Italy, Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire. Some left villages where there was too little farmland to divide among children; Jewish families fled violent attacks in the Russian Empire. Steamships made the ocean crossing take about one or two weeks instead of a month or more. Immigrants were drawn by jobs that paid cash wages and by relatives and neighbors who had already settled in industrial cities. Many sent part of their pay home.
- A. To build bridges and buildings for city governments
- B. To combine with Standard Oil into one trust
- C. To give each of his workers a share of the profits
- D. To control his supplies and shipping and cut costs
- Knights of Labor
- American Federation of Labor
- Strike
- Trust
- A. A union of skilled workers organized by craft
- B. Workers stop work together to press for changes
- C. Many companies combined under one control
- D. A union open to skilled and unskilled workers
| Push (from home) | Pull (to American cities) |
|---|---|
Two accounts of Ironvale
Ironvale and the Keystone Steel Works are invented, and so are these two accounts. They are based on the kinds of newspapers and letters historians study from the 1890s.
"The Keystone works has made Ironvale. Ten years ago this was a village of 800 people; today more than 9,000 live here, and the mill pays its 1,200 men over $40,000 in wages each month. Any man willing to work can find a place, and a laborer here earns more than he ever could in the old country. Mr. Harlan Price, the owner, has built the town a library. Yet some men now listen to union speakers who would tell Mr. Price how to run his own mill. A strike would close the works and leave families without bread. Wise workers will trust the man who built the mill."
"You ask if you should come. There is work, it is true, and the pay is more than at home. I earn $1.40 a day. But the day is twelve hours, and every other Sunday we work twenty-four hours straight when the shifts change. Last month a crane chain broke and two men from our boardinghouse were hurt, and the company paid them nothing. Rent and food take much of what I earn, but I send ten dollars home each month. The bosses call the union men troublemakers, yet the union asks only for an eight-hour day and help for the injured. Come if you choose, but come knowing it is hard."
- A. Its owners' businesses did well when the mill was running.
- B. Newspapers then had to print what mill owners wrote.
- C. Its writer had worked a twelve-hour shift at the mill.
- D. Its writer was a union leader writing for mill workers.
| Both accounts | Only Account A | Only Account B |
|---|---|---|
There is work, it is true, and the pay is more than at home.But the day is twelve hours, and every other Sunday we work twenty-four hours straight when the shifts change.Rent and food take much of what I earn, but I send ten dollars home each month.Come if you choose, but come knowing it is hard.
In a regular week, Jozef works hours. With the union's eight-hour day and the same six days, he would work hours.
- A. It explains the owner's plans for the mill's future.
- B. It tells us how most steelworkers in the country felt.
- C. He had little reason to make mill life sound better than it was.
- D. It is less useful because it was translated into English.
Make a claim
Use the passage and both accounts.
- A. The owner might hire replacement workers, and the strike could fail.
- B. The national government might take over and run the mill.
- C. A court might order the owner to grant an eight-hour day.
- D. The union might have to pay the owner for lost steel.
- A. Why the Ledger's owners supported the union
- B. Why immigrants kept coming though the work was hard
- C. Why Carnegie bought iron mines and railroads
- D. Why the mill stopped hiring new workers in 1891
