A Historical Overview of Pennsylvania
© 2004 Rickie Lazzerini

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Pennsylvania's growing industries and the cheap laborers they employed made it a hotbed of agitation and the site of some of labor's biggest strikes. Many Pennsylvanians formed unions and went on to be leaders of national labor unions. William Sylvis, from Indiana County, was a founder of the Iron-Molders International Union and went on to lead the National Labor Union in 1868-69. Uriah Stephens of Philadelphia and Terence Powderly of Scranton were leaders of the Knights of Labor, the most important national union between 1871 and 1886. From the Civil War until 1877 a secret group called the Molly Maguires was powerful in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. The group was sympathetic to Irish coal miners but was broken up by a private anti-union police force in 1877. Unrest in the coal mines continued and gave rise to the United Mine Workers Union, a union that grew to incorporate all mine workers. With the growth of labor unions came strikes. Pennsylvania was a part of some of the most famous strikes in the history of the nation, such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Homestead Strike of 1892. Page 12 By Rickie Lazzerini Historian BA History University of California, Santa Barbara © Rickie Lazzerini, All Rights Reserved This page may be freely linked to but may not be reproduced in any form without prior written consent by the author.
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