(MUSIC)
HARRY MONROE: Grover Cleveland approved a bill giving the government control over the cost of railroad transportation. The bill was called the Interstate Commerce Act. It limited the amount of money railroads could demand from people who needed to travel or transport their goods.
The law established the idea that the government could control industries, when necessary, for the public good.
President Cleveland also was concerned about a growing number of labor disputes that took place in the United States in the late eighteen hundreds. He proposed that Congress create a labor committee to help settle the disputes.
KAY GALLANT: Congress failed to act on this proposal. But its lack of action did not stop the rise of a labor organization that had been formed a few years earlier. The group soon would become the most important labor union in the United States. It was the American Federation of Labor, or A.F.L.
Led by Samuel Gompers, the A.F.L. was different from earlier labor groups. It did not try to put all workers into one union. Instead, it tied together a number of different unions and gave them general leadership.
HARRY MONROE: The A.F.L. was different in other ways. It did not oppose the economic system of capitalism. It said only that labor should get more of the earnings of capitalism. The A.F.L. also opposed extremists who used labor protests to change the social system.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25