High School Unit III

Activity 1: George McNeill’s Work

Have students read the Mass Moments essay and Document HS III-2 and respond to the questions on the document.

If the class is working with a timeline,

add McNeill’s activities.
using the Suggested Resources for this unit, add key labor events.
add dates of economic recessions and depressions. Identify and explain any relationships between economic trends and labor events.

Document HS III-2: How is a Contract Created? Excerpt from The Labor Movement: The Problem of Today, by George McNeill, 1886

…. Under the wage-system, no congregated form of labor is conducted on the theory of freedom of contract. At a recent hearing before a legislative body, the treasurer of a large manufactory was asked if he ever consulted with his help in reference to the matter of wages, "Do you suppose I run my establishment on the town-meeting plan?" In other words, he confessed, as all employers confess, that they do not propose to allow any freedom of contract as between them and their employees. The contract, so-called, is an agreement that the employer or corporation shall name all of the conditions to the bargain.

Quoted in Boston's Workers: A Labor History, by James R. Green and Hugh Carter Donahue (Boston Public Library, 1972).