What is the main idea of Chapter 10 of A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn?

Zinn defies
the usual division of United States history into pre-Civil War, Civil War, and post-Civil War
periods. Instead, he examines 1830€“1870 as a whole, from the perspective of
the working class struggle to obtain fair wages, shorter working days (such as the 12 or 10-hour
day), and safer working conditions. However, Zinn says, the working class struggle is often
obscured by historians, in part by the emphasis on the Civil War and slavery, as well as simple
neglect of the workers' stories and the workers' own prudent need to work quietly:

The full extent of the working-class consciousness of those
yearsas of any yearsis lost in history, but fragments
remain and make us wonder how much of this always existed underneath the very practical silence
of working people.

Zinn makes the point that working
class people toiling in northern factories, including women and children, fought almost nonstop
for a better deal, largely through strikes. At certain points, such as the economic...