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Part Eighty-Two: Consequences of the Silver Depression

Striking Forward:
The Silver Depression, along with having a devastating effect on the United States economy, created significant social problems and pressures as well. Particularly, the tensions between corporations which were becoming increasingly consolidated and labor and worker organizations continued escalating as worsened economic conditions continued. Renewed efforts by President Cleveland and Democrats in Congress to put the United States on the gold standard only increased labor unrest in the western United States as miners decried the potential loss of their silver profits.

The unrest resulted in several strikes during Cleveland's presidency and throughout the 1890s as unrest among miners in the west grew into a general labor unrest in the entire country. In 1890, the first major railroad strike in the United States hit the Missouri and South Platte Railroad. On May 1st, 1890, railroad workers in Saint Louis, Chicago, and Saint Joseph planned demonstrations protesting wage cuts and extensions of work hours enacted by the railroad as part of the Silver Depression. Within a week, workers on the Union Pacific Railroad also started striking and the strikes had spread through much of the Old Northwest. The strikes lasted just over a month as the strikes were put down by company-paid militias and federal troops.

Despite the growing threat of strike to the country's economy and a backlash among the Democratic administration, there were some advances in labor conditions during Grover Cleveland's presidency. These advances primarily occurred at the state level, such as in New Jersey. Spearheaded by Republican governor Leon Abbett[1], several bills were proposed and passed by the New Jersey state legislature in the early 1890s. In 1891, New Jersey became the first state to ban child labor in factories. The law required that people working in manufacturing facilities had to be over the age of fifteen. Abbett also signed a minimum wage law into effect in 1893, but the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Stephen Johnson Field held that a law enforcing a minimum wage violated the right to freedom of contract guaranteed under the due process clause of the Fifteenth Amendment[2].


Oregon Ho!:
The Silver Depression also created a new wave of westward migration. As economic conditions worsened, many lower class workers, especially from the Old Northwest and the South traveled on the railroads west to Oregon Territory. They were joined by prospectors following the discovery of silver and gold deposits in Kootenay. With this new influx of people along with a small but steady stream of immigrants from Asia, cities along the Pacific coast and the Columbia River boomed in the 1880s and 1890s. Tacoma, Astoria, and Langley developed into important ports for the United States with Tacoma serving as the primary Pacific port for the country during the early 20th century.

In 1891, Congress passed the Enabling Act of 1891, which allowed for the territorial legislatures of Oregon and Kootenay to create state constitutions and be admitted to the union. Cleveland passed the act in the hopes that with the large amount of immigration from the pro-Democratic southern states, the new states would give a more Democratic representation in Congress and give the Democrats more votes in the 1892 election. Oregon and Kootenay were both admitted as states to the United States in October of 1891. However, with continuing discontent over the slowly recovering economy and the influx of East Asians, the two states went Republican in the 1892 election.

[1] An OTL Democratic governor of New Jersey who did a lot to advance working conditions in the state.
[2] I loosely based this case on OTL's Lochner v. New York.