The Jazz Age: 1920s

Postwar Labor Tensions

Post War Labor Tensions

• After World War I, due to the high wartime inflations, social tensions began to spread. Food prices went up, strikes broke out, and changes came in labor laws. Many more changes came like child labor laws and minimum wage laws for women.

The Steel Strike of 1919"Earned Forty-two cents an hour and worked for twelve hours

and 14 hours with no overtime." Claiton Mills, George Milkulvich

General Strike of Seattle in 1919"Amalgamated association of Iron workers and Steel workers... reached a

total of twenty-four thousand members at its peak." The Nonunion Era. By David Brody

New Labor Demands - "The labor union movement came into being as a movement of hunger."

Samuel Gompers, letter to Bishop William Quayle, May 22, 1920

Why did labor laws cause strikes and "labor turmoil"

throughout the 1920s?