CHAPTER 6 · The Flight from Ireland
How did replacing Irish strikers with Chinese workers give a factory owner power over nearby workers too?
A practice question that prepares your thinking for the aim. Study how the model works, then build your own answer to your assigned question.
The model paragraph
Replacing Irish strikers with Chinese workers strengthened a factory owner’s power by showing nearby workers that organized resistance could cost them their jobs. The Knights of St. Crispin, a shoemakers’ labor organization, used a strike to demand higher pay and shorter hours. However, the North Adams employer refused to negotiate with the union. Takaki writes, “Instead, the owner brought in seventy-five Chinese workers from San Francisco to replace the striking Crispins” (YPT 111). This says that the owner resumed production with a different workforce rather than accepting the strikers’ demands. It shows how access to replacement labor reduced the pressure workers could exert by refusing to work. The Chinese workers, laborers housed in the factory’s guarded and locked grounds, also faced restrictive conditions while the owner benefited from continued production. The effect spread beyond that factory: “Ten days after the Chinese workers arrived, the strikers at the other factories, fearful of losing their jobs, went back to work—at a 10 percent pay cut” (YPT 111). This says that nearby workers accepted lower wages after seeing the replacements arrive. It shows how a threat demonstrated at one workplace could weaken bargaining power elsewhere. This connects to Key Idea 1: Economic forces drive history. Owners’ interest in profit and workers’ need for wages shaped decisions that changed the balance of power at work. Because employers could set groups of workers against one another, lasting solidarity would require seeing how the same replacement strategy limited their shared power to demand better pay.
1 POINT TO NAME IT · 1 POINT TO EXPLAIN IT
How this model earns its key idea points
Gist
People make choices to get land, money, and the things they need. Those choices can change other people’s lives.
Check your understanding
Academic definition
Economic interests shape historical change when people use power to control resources, organize labor, and distribute wealth. Explain the decisions connecting an economic goal to its consequences.
Check your understanding
Elaboration
- Name the idea
- Key Idea 1: Economic forces drive history
- Point to the evidence
- Seventy-five replacement workers arrive, and nearby strikers return to work at a ten-percent pay cut (YPT 111).
- Explain how it works
- An employer’s access to another labor supply lowers the cost of refusing demands. Workers’ fear of losing income then weakens their ability to bargain, even at other factories.
- Make the connection explicit
- Name each group’s economic stake and trace the chain from replacement workers to fear of job loss to acceptance of lower pay. Do not treat the Chinese workers as a racial explanation for the conflict.
Check your understanding: explain how this model’s evidence shows its key idea without looking at the explanation above.
Compare your explanation
An employer’s access to another labor supply lowers the cost of refusing demands. Workers’ fear of losing income then weakens their ability to bargain, even at other factories.
How the argument builds
Follow what each move adds to the answer. Then map your own paragraph in your notebook.
- Answer the question
Replacement labor made the threat of job loss credible beyond one factory.
- First evidence
The owner hired seventy-five Chinese workers during a strike.
- Explain the leverage
Production could continue without agreement to the strikers’ demands.
- Second evidence
Nearby workers returned for lower pay.
- Connect the key idea
Competing needs for profit and income changed bargaining power.
- Develop the consequence
Understanding the employer’s strategy opens a case for worker solidarity.
Build your own sentences · Chapter 6
Choose the relationship your argument needs. These are sentence models to study; your paragraph should use your own reasoning and your assigned four words of the day.
Appositives · rename a noun precisely
A noun phrase between commas renames the noun before it. It adds useful information, not another sentence. You need two.
Check: remove the phrase between the commas. The main sentence should still work.
The Knights of St. Crispin, a shoemakers’ union demanding better wages and shorter hours, tried to negotiate with employers by withholding members’ labor during a strike.
YPT 110–111Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant who organized for workers’ rights, used speeches and a children’s march to challenge the idea that industrial prosperity justified exploiting young workers.
YPT 121–123Suffrage, the right to vote, helped Irish Americans elect politicians who rewarded supporters with municipal jobs and gave Irish-owned companies access to public contracts.
YPT 119–120John Kearney, an Irish immigrant who became a junk dealer, had sons who rose into city employment, illustrating the chapter’s account of advancement across generations.
YPT 119The Great Famine, a prolonged food crisis caused by repeated potato-crop failures, drove mass migration while landlords continued exporting food and evicting tenants who could not pay rent.
YPT 107–108Domestic servants, workers employed inside other people’s homes, received wages and housing but could face loneliness and demands that left them little control over their time.
YPT 115–116
The nine connectors · choose a relationship
But
Adds a contrast.
Irish immigrants faced hostility as Catholics and foreigners, but their legal classification as white gave them access to citizenship and voting that other groups were denied.
YPT 112 YPT 119So
Shows a result.
Irish voters helped elect politicians from their community, so access to the ballot became a route to public jobs and contracts for Irish businesses.
YPT 119–120Because
Gives a reason.
Many Irish women left home because declining opportunities for marriage and paid work narrowed their economic choices, while America offered employment and the possibility of independence.
YPT 114–115 YPT 117If
Names a condition.
If we describe Irish immigrants only as victims of prejudice, we overlook how some sought white acceptance by directing hostility toward Black workers competing for jobs.
YPT 112Unless
Means if not.
We cannot explain Irish advancement unless we consider both individual work and the citizenship rights, voting power, and ethnic networks that opened opportunities for the community.
YPT 119–120When
Means if with expectation.
When the North Adams factory owner hired Chinese workers during a strike, nearby strikers feared losing their jobs and accepted lower wages, revealing employers’ power over divided workers.
YPT 110–111Despite
Takes a noun phrase.
Despite facing English oppression in Ireland, many Irish newcomers in America directed resentment toward African Americans, showing that shared hardship did not automatically produce solidarity.
YPT 112–113Although
Takes a subject and a verb.
Although Irish laborers helped build roads, canals, and railroads, employers often assigned them dangerous tasks, making their economic importance compatible with exploitation and public contempt.
YPT 109However
Starts a new sentence.
Mother Jones’s march failed to obtain a presidential meeting. However, its speeches and public demonstrations drew attention to child labor and demanded a different standard of national progress.
YPT 122–124After despite, use a noun phrase. After although, use a subject and a verb. In your rubric’s pattern, put a period before however and a comma after it. The contrast must make sense in context.