A History of Trade Unionism in the United States

stitute by themselves a labor movement. It needed the industrial prosperity caused by t

Philadelphia, in which a great labor leader of the sixties, William H. Sylvis, President of the International Molders' Union, took a prominent part and pronounced in favor of the compromise solution advanced by Congressman Crittenden of Kentucky. But

mployment. The existing labor organizations nearly all went to the wall. The p

, namely until 1879, when the government resumed the redemption of greenbacks in gold, prices of commodities and labor expressed in terms of paper money showed varying degrees of inflation; h

ces rose to 70 percent and wages to 30 percent above 1860; and in July 1865, prices rose to 76 percent and wages only to

h America. Local trade unions were organized literally in every trade beginning in the second half of 1862. The first trades' assembly was formed in Rochester, New York, in March 1863; and before long there was one in every town of importance. The International Industrial Assembly was attempted in 1864, but failed to live up to the expectations: The ti

hich reached its lowest depth in 1867 and continued until 1869. Accordingly, not a single national union was organized in 1866 and only one in 1867. In 1868 two new national labor unions were organized. In 1869 two more unions were formed-a total of seven for the four depressed years, compared with ten in the preceding two prosperous years. In the s

y hazardous. The New York Herald estimated it in August 1869, to be about 170,000. A labor leader claimed at the same time that the

y built federation of national trade unions, city trades' assemblies, local trade unions, and reform organizations of various descriptions, from philosophical anarchists to socialists and woman suffragists. The National Labor Union did not excel in practical

n the demand to reduce the working day to eight hours. But eight hours had by that time come to signify more than a means to increase employment. The eight-hour movement drew its inspiration from an economic theory advanced by a self-taug

e wage earner will refuse to work for less than enough to maintain his standard of living. Steward possessed such abundant faith in this purely psychological check on the employer that he made it the cornerstone of his theory of social progress. Raise the worker's standard of living, he said, and the employer will be immediately forced to raise wages; no more can wages fall below the level of the worker's standard of living than New England can be ruled against her will. The lever for raising the standard of living

hopeful and speedy one. Steward knew that appeals to the humanity of the employers had largely failed; efforts to secure the reform by cooperation had f

rdinate leagues in the State, afterwards to be created. Of a total of about eighty local leagues in existence from 1865 to 1877, about twenty were in Massachusetts, eight elsewhere in New England, at least twenty-five in Michigan, four or five in Pennsylvania, abou

ough the operation of the law of supply and demand, for it was realized that this would be practically negligible, but rather through its contagious effect on the minds of employes and even employers. It will be recalled that, at the time of the ten-hour agitation of the thirties, the Fe

ident Andrew Johnson. The President pointed to his past record favorable to the workingmen but refrained from any definite promises. Finally, an eight-hour bill for gove

g hours must of necessity bring with it a corresponding reduction in wages. The officials' view of the situation was given by Secretary Gideon Wells. He pointed out that Congress, by reducing the hours of labor in government work, had forced upon the department of the Navy the employment of a larger number of men in order to accomplish the necessary work; and that at the same time Congress

depression during the seventies took up all the impetus in that direction which the law may have generated. Even as far as government work is concern

ts for success were not entirely hopeless, hard as the road may seem to travel. The other and far more ambitious object of the workingman of the sixties, that of enacting general eight-hour laws in the several State

ermit of longer hours than those named in the law, provided they were so specified in the contract. A contract requiring ten or more hours a day was perfectly legal. The eight-hour day was the legal day only "when the contract was silent on the subject or where there is no express contract to the contrary," as stated in the Wisconsin law. But the greatest weakness was a lack of a provision for enforcement. New

d passed in any American State. This law, which was passed in 1874, provides that "no minor under the age of eighteen years, and no woman over that age" shall be employe

cal, limiting their hours by agreement with employers. The national unions, however, for the most part left the matter to the local unions for settlement as their strength or local conditions mi

y was at its height. This year witnessed in New York City a general eight-hour strike. However, it succeeded in only a few trades, an

ion in 1867 the enthusiasm was transferred from eight-hour laws

their control over credit and thereby furnishing credit and capital through the aid of the government to the producers of physical products. On its face greenbackism was a program

f interest on the government bonds to three percent and by making them convertible into legal tender currency and convertible back into bonds, at the will of the holder of either. In other words, the greenback currency, instead of being, as it was at the time, an irredeemable promise to pay in specie, would be redeemable in government bonds. On the other hand, if a government bondholder could secure slightly more than three percent by lending to a private borrower, he would return his bonds to the government, take out the corresponding amount in greenbacks and lend it to the producer on his p

1867, they concluded that no system of combination or cooperation could secure to labor its natural rights as long as the credit system enabled non-producers to accumulate wealth faster than labor was able to add to the national wealth. Cooperatio

this kind to attract wide attention was the formation in December 1862, of the Union Cooperative Association of Philadelphia, which opened a store. The prime mover and the financial secretary of this organization was Thomas Phillips, a shoemaker who came from England in 1852, fired with the principles of the Rochdale pioneers, that is, cash sales, dividends on purchases rather than on stock, and "one man, one vote." By 1866 the movement had exten

orkers, nailers, ship carpenters, and calkers, glass blowers, hatters, boiler makers, plumbers, iron rollers, tailors, printers, needle women, and molders. A large proportion of these attempts grew out of unsuccess

ghteen months by ten more-one each in Rochester, Chicago, Quincy, Louisville, Somerset, Pittsburgh, and two each in Troy and Cleveland. The original foundry at Troy was an immediate financial success and was hailed with joy by those who believed that under the name of cooperationists the baffl

d although it was regularly incorporated with a provision that each member was entitled to but one vote whether he held one share at $100, or the maximum privilege of fifty in the total of two thousand shares, it failed as did the others in furnishing permanent relief to the workers as a class. At the end of the third year of this enter

the men. But the capitalist was stronger than the cooperative brother. Dividends on capital were advanced in a few years to seventeen and one-half percent, then to twenty-five, and finally the distribution of any part of the profits in proportion to wages was discontinued. Money was made every year and dividends paid, which in 1884 amounted to forty percen

rs. The former, organized in the Order of St. Crispin, then the largest trade union in the country, advocated cooperation even when their success in strikes was at its height. "The present demand of the Crispin is steady employment and fair wages, but his future is self-employment" was one of their mottoes. During the seventies they repeatedly attempted to carry this motto into effect. The seventies also saw the beginning of the most successful single venture in p

esolution. The leaders realized only too well that neither the Republican nor Democratic party would voluntarily make an issue of a scheme purporting to assist the wage earner to bec

the Republican and Democratic parties. A "greenback" platform was adopted as a matter of course and the new party was christened the National Labor and Reform Party. On the first formal ballot for nomination for President, Judge David Davis of Illinois, a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, received 88 votes, Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist, 52, and the remainder scattered. On the third ballot Davis was nominated. Governor J

just as it cut off the life of the overwhelming majority of the existing labor organizations. Another attempt to get together on a national basis was made in the National Labor Congress at Pittsburgh in 1876. But those who responded were not interested in tr

e phantastic scheme of the National Labor Union. Yet in the Presidential election of 1876 the Greenback party candidate, Peter Cooper, the well known manufacturer and philanthropist, drew only a poor 100,00

ning West, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the New York Central, in June and July 1877. This reduction came on top of an earlier ten percent reduction after the panic. The railway men were practically unorganized so that the steadying influence of previous organization was totally lacking

Ohio road, the strikers assuming absolute control at many points. The militia was either unwilling or powerless to cope with the violence. In Baltimore, where in the interest of public safety all the freight tra

aternized with the strikers, and when 600 troops which arrived from Philadelphia attempted to restore order and killed about twenty rioters, they were besieged in a roundhouse by a furious mob. In the battle the railway yards were set on fire. Damages amounting to about $5,000,000 were caused. The besieged militia men finally gained egress and retreated fig

ommune of Paris of 1871 and feared for the foundations of the established order. The wage earners, on the other hand, felt that

ocal Greenback-Labor parties were being organized everywhere and a national Greenback-Labor party was not far behind in forming. The continued industrial depression was a decisive factor, the winter of 1877-1878 marking perhaps the point of its gr

total vote in both Connecticut and New Hampshire, and from 4 to 6 percent, in the other States. In Maine the greenbackers elected 32 members of the upper house and 151 members of the lower house and one Congressman, Thompson Murch of Rochland, who was secretary of the National Granite Cutters' Union. However, the bulk of th

f its existence. In addition, one month after the election of 1878, its principal issue disappeared. January 1, 1879, was the date fixed by the act for re

years 1876-1878, reached over $1,111,000,000. Under these conditions, all that remained available to the platform-makers and propagandists of the party was

banker. The financial issue once settled, or at least suspended, the object of the attack by labor became the employer, and that of the attack by the farmer-the railway corporation and the warehouse man. Prosperity had mitiga

nback platform. The political issue after 1877 was racial, not financial, and the weapon was not merely the ballot, but also "direct action"-violence. The anti-Chinese agitation in California, culminating as it did in the Exclusion Law passed by Congress i

vement was organized by the "Sovereigns of Industry," a secret order, founded at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1874 by one William H. Earle. The sp

ionality, or occupation; not founded for the purpose of waging any war of aggression upon any other class, or for fostering any antagonis

te council, comprising representatives from the local councils and a National Council in which the State

nd forty-three percent in Massachusetts. Though the Order extended into other States and even reached the territories, its chief strength always remained in New England and the Middle States.

which in 1875 built the "Sovereign Block" at a cost of $35,500. In his address at the fourth annual session in Washington, President Earle stated that the store in Springfield led all the other

rks an event thought to be the forerunner of a new era. There is indeed a certain pathos in the high hopes expressed in the Address of Dedicati

ge scale[11] to inoculate the American workingmen with the sort

fferent writers. Great emphasis has been laid upon the lack of capital, the lack of suitable legislation on the subject of cooperation, the mutual isolation of

and the sort of leader who is of a combative spirit, who possesses the organizing ability and the "personal magnetism" to keep his men in line; and for this kind of ability the business world offers no particular demand. On the other hand, the qualifications which go to make a successful manager of a cooperative store, namely, steadiness, conservatism of judgment, attention to detai

ven between country and country. American labor, however, native as well as immigrant, is probably more mobile than capital; for, tradition and habit which keep the great majority of European wage earners in the place where their fathers and forefathers had lived before them are generally absent i

of kind." This is further aggravated by competition and a continuous displacement in industry of nationalities of a high standard of living by those of a lower one. This conflict of nationalities, which lies also at the root of the closed shop policy of many of the American trade unions, is probably the most effective carrier that there is to a w

TNO

the issue was brought home to the Eastern wage earners following the importation

rted effort to duplicate the venture of the Sovereigns was attempte

and, its achievements have been all that its most ardent champions could have desired.

maintains an open democracy, through the control of this democracy of consumers it has directly or indirectly kept down prices, and protected the wage-earning class from exploitation by the Credit System and from the extortions of monopolist traders and speculators. By this same device on purchases, and the automatic accumulation of part of the profit in the capital of each society and in that of the Wholesales, it has demonstratedly added to the personal wealth of the manual working class, and has, alike in Great Britain, and in other countries, afforded both a valuable financial reserve to t

operators of whom one-third lived in Great Britain and not less than two and a half millions in Germany. In England and Scotland alone, the 1400 stores and two Wholesale Cooperative So