Work and money in USA

TRADE UNIONS

The first important national organization of workers was "The Knights of Labor", founded as a secret union in 1869. Its main aim was to win shorter hours, higher wages and satisfactory working conditions. Although it had nearly a million members by 1886, its mixture of all different types of workers prevented it from being effective. This led to the creation of the American Federation of Labor (A.F.L.), which was a federation of separate, quite autonomous, craft unions. The growing dispute over whether to organize the unions according to crafts or trades, or on an industrial basis (i.e. incorporating all the workers in a given industry) led to the creation of an independent federation — the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.) — in 1938. With the continual increase in mass production and unskilled workers, the A.F.L. also began to organize itself on an industrial basis instead of according to craft. The two organizations then merged in 1955 to found a new federation: the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Unions have never been able to achieve the same levels of membership as in most Western countries. The political power of the giant corporations and the non-interference policy of the government have frequently resulted in restrictive laws being made by Congress and individual States against unions, especially in periods when numerous strikes occurred.

WALL STREET

Wall Street itself is a short street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, which takes its name from the town wall built in 1653 across Manhattan Island to protect the Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam from both the Native American Indians and the English. Symbolically, however, "Wall Street" means the financial center of the United States (just as the "City" of London is the financial center of the United Kingdom) because of the concentration of business institutions in the area: stock-brokerage companies, banks, trusts, insurance corporations, commodity exchanges (coffee, cotton, metal, corn) and, of course, the New York Stock Exchange.

The Exchange — sometimes called "the nation's market place" — was founded on May 17, 1792, when Alexander Hamilton, the first US Secretary of the Treasury, decided to issue government bonds to consolidate and refund the debts incurred during the War for American Independence; a "market place" for the selling and buying of these bonds became necessary.

The Exchange deals only in "listed" stocks, i.e. stocks which are on the official trading list of the Exchange. In order to be listed, a company must have at least 2,000 stockholders, with at least 1 million shares distributed among them, and an annual turnover of at least $2.5 million. In 1998, there were more than 2,500 listed stocks.