Social Science Text-Books
EDITED BY RICHARD T. ELY
A HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES
BY
SELIG PERLMAN, PH.D.
Assistant Professor of Economics in the University of Wisconsin;
Co-author of the History of Labour in the United States
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
1922
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. October, 1922.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The present _History of Trade Unionism in the United States_ is in part
a summary of work in labor history by Professor John R. Commons and
collaborators at the University of Wisconsin from 1904 to 1918, and in
part an attempt by the author to carry the work further. Part I of the
present book is based on the _History of Labour in the United States_ by
Commons and Associates (Introduction: John R. Commons; Colonial and
Federal Beginnings, to 1827: David J. Saposs; Citizenship, 1827-1833:
Helen L. Summer; Trade Unionism, 1833-1839: Edward B. Mittelman;
Humanitarianism, 1840-1860: Henry E. Hoagland; Nationalization,
1860-1877: John B. Andrews; and Upheaval and Reorganization, 1876-1896:
by the present author), published by the Macmillan Company in 1918 in
two volumes.
Part II, "The Larger Career of Unionism," brings the story from 1897
down to date; and Part III, "Conclusions and Inferences," is an attempt
to bring together several of the general ideas suggested by the History.
Chapter 12, entitled "An Economic Interpretation," follows the line of
analysis laid down by Professor Commons in his study of the American
shoemakers, 1648-1895.[1]
The author wishes to express his strong gratitude to Professors Richard
T. Ely and John R. Commons for their kind aid at every stage of this
work. He also wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Edwin E.
Witte, Director of the Wisconsin State Legislative Reference Library,
upon whose extensive and still unpublished researches he based his
summary of the history of the injunction; and to Professor Frederick L.
Paxson, who subjected the manuscript to criticism from the point of view
of General American History.
S.P.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] See his _Labor and Administration_, Chapter XIV (Macmillan, 1913).
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
PART I. THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL
CHAPTER
1 LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
(1) Early Beginnings, to 1827 8
(2) Equal Citizenship, 1827-1832 9
(3) The Period of the "Wild-Cat" Prosperity,
1833-1837 18
(4) The Long Depression, 1837-1862 29
2 THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 42
3 THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OF
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 68
4 REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 81
5 THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM AND THE FINAL
FAILURE OF PRODUCERS' COOPERATION 106
6 STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 130
7 TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 146
PART II. THE LARGER CAREER OF UNIONISM
8 PARTIAL RECOGNITION AND NEW DIFFICULTIES,
1898-1914 163
(1) The Miners 167
(2) The Railway Men 180
(3) The Machinery and Metal Trades 186
(4) The Employers' Reaction 190
(5) Legislation, Courts, and Politics 198
9 RADICAL UNIONISM AND A "COUNTER-REFORMATION" 208
10 THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 226
11 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 245
PART III. CONCLUSIONS AND INFERENCES
12 AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 265
13 THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR 279
14 WHY THERE IS NOT AN AMERICAN LABOR PARTY 285
15 THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND
TRADE UNIONISM 295
BIBLIOGRAPHY 307
PART I
THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL
HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM IN THE U.S.
CHAPTER 1
LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
(1) _Early Beginnings, to 1827_
The customary chronology records the first American labor strike in
1741. In that year the New York bakers went out on strike. A closer
analysis discloses, however, that this outbreak was a protest of master
bakers against a municipal regulation of the price of bread, not a wage
earners' strike against employers. The earliest genuine labor strike in
America occurred, as far as known, in 1786, when the Philadelphia
printers "turned out" for a minimum wage of six dollars a week. The
second strike on record was in 1791 by Philadelphia house carpenters for
the ten-hour day. The Baltimore sailors were successful in advancing
their wages through strikes in the years 1795, 1805, and 1807, but their
endeavors were recurrent, not permanent. Even more ephemeral were
several riotous sailors' strikes as well as a ship builders' strike in
1817 at Medford, Massachusetts. Doubtless many other such outbreaks
occurred during the period to 1820, but left no record of their
existence.
A strike undoubtedly is a symptom of discontent. However, one can
hardly speak of a beginning of trade unionism until such discontent has
become expressed in an organization that keeps alive after a strike, or
between strikes. Such permanent organizations existed prior to the
twenties only in two trades, namely, shoemaking and printing.
The first continuous organization of wage earners was that of the
Philadelphia shoemakers, organized in 1792. This society, however,
existed for less than a year and did not even leave us its name. The
shoemakers of Philadelphia again organized in 1794 under the name of the
Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers and maintained their existence
as such at least until 1806. In 1799 the society conducted the first
organized strike, which lasted nine or ten weeks. Prior to 1799, the
only recorded strikes of any workmen were "unorganized" and, indeed,
such were the majority of the strikes that occurred prior to the decade
of the thirties in the nineteenth century.
The printers organized their first society in 1794 in New York under the
name of The Typographical Society and it continued in existence for ten
years and six months. The printers of Philadelphia, who had struck in
1786, neglected to keep up an organization after winning their demands.
Between the years 1800 and 1805, the shoemakers and the printers had
continuous organizations in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. In
1809 the shoemakers of Pittsburgh and the Boston printers were added to
the list, and somewhat later the Albany and Washington printers. In 1810
the printers organized in New Orleans.
The separation of the journeymen from the masters, first shown in the
formation of these organizations, was emphasized in the attitude toward
employer members. The question arose over the continuation in membership
of those who became employers. The shoemakers excluded such members from
the organization. The printers, on the other hand, were more liberal.
But in 1817 the New York society put them out on the ground that "the
interests of the journeymen are _separate_ and in some respects
_opposite_ to those of the employers."
The strike was the chief weapon of these early societies. Generally a
committee was chosen by the society to present a price list or scale of
wages to the masters individually. The first complete wage scale
presented in this country was drawn up by the organized printers of New
York in 1800. The strikes were mainly over wages and were generally
conducted in an orderly and comparatively peaceful manner. In only one
instance, that of the Philadelphia shoemakers of 1806, is there evidence
of violence and intimidation. In that case "scabs" were beaten and
employers intimidated by demonstrations in front of the shop or by
breaking shop windows. During a strike the duties of "picketing" were
discharged by tramping committees. The Philadelphia shoemakers, however,
as early as 1799, employed for this purpose a paid officer. This strike
was for higher wages for workers on boots. Although those who worked on
shoes made no demands of their own, they were obliged to strike, much
against their will. We thus meet with the first sympathetic strike on
record. In 1809 the New York shoemakers, starting with a strike against
one firm, ordered a general strike when they discovered that that firm
was getting its work done in other shops. The payment of strike benefits
dates from the first authenticated strike, namely in 1786. The method of
payment varied from society to society, but the constitution of the New
York shoemakers, as early as 1805, provided for a permanent strike fund.
The aggressive trade unionism of these early trade societies forced the
masters to combine against them. Associations of masters in their
capacity as merchants had usually preceded the journeymen's societies.
Their function was to counteract destructive competition from
"advertisers" and sellers in the "public market" at low prices. As soon,
however, as the wage question became serious, the masters' associations
proceeded to take on the function of dealing with labor--mostly aiming
to break up the trade societies. Generally they sought to create an
available force of non-union labor by means of advertising, but often
they turned to the courts and brought action against the journeymen's
societies on the ground of conspiracy.
The bitterness of the masters' associations against the the journeymen's
societies perhaps was caused not so much by their resistance to
reductions in wages as by their imposition of working rules, such as the
limitation of the number of apprentices, the minimum wage, and what we
would now call the "closed shop." The conspiracy trials largely turned
upon the "closed shop" and in these the shoemakers figured
exclusively.[2]
Altogether six criminal conspiracy cases are recorded against the
shoemakers from 1806 to 1815. One occurred in Philadelphia in 1806; one
in New York in 1809; two in Baltimore in 1809; and two in Pittsburgh,
the first in 1814 and the other in 1815. Each case was tried before a
jury which was judge both of law and fact. Four of the cases were
decided against the journeymen. In one of the Baltimore cases judgment
was rendered in favor of the journeymen. The Pittsburgh case of 1815 was
compromised, the shoemakers paying the costs and returning to work at
the old wages. The outcome in the other cases is not definitely known.
It was brought out in the testimony that the masters financed, in part
at least, the New York and Pittsburgh prosecutions.
Effective as the convictions in court for conspiracy may have been in
checking the early trade societies, of much greater consequence was the
industrial depression which set in after the conclusion of the
Napoleonic Wars. The lifting of the Embargo enabled the foreign traders
and manufacturers to dump their products upon the American market. The
incipient American industries were in no position to withstand this
destructive competition. Conditions were made worse by past over
investment and by the collapse of currency inflation.
Trade unionism for the time being had to come to an end. The effect on
the journeymen's societies was paralyzing. Only those survived which
turned to mutual insurance. Several of the printers' societies had
already instituted benefit features, and these now helped them
considerably to maintain their organization. The shoe-makers' societies
on the other hand had remained to the end purely trade-regulating
organizations and went to the wall.
Depression reached its ebb in 1820. Thereafter conditions improved,
giving rise to aggressive organizations of wage earners in several
industries. We find strikes and permanent organizations among hatters,
tailors, weavers, nailers, and cabinet makers. And for the first time we
meet with organizations of factory workers--female workers.
Beginning with 1824 and running through 1825, the year which saw the
culmination of a period of high prices, a number of strikes occurred in
the important industrial centers. The majority were called to enforce
higher wages. In Philadelphia, 2900 weavers out of about 4500 in the
city were on strike. But the strike that attracted the most public
attention was that of the Boston house carpenters for the ten-hour day
in 1825.
The Boston journeymen carpenters chose the most strategic time for their
strike. They called it in the spring of the year when there was a great
demand for carpenters owing to a recent fire. Close to six hundred
journeymen were involved in this struggle. The journeymen's demand for
the ten-hour day drew a characteristic reply from the "gentlemen engaged
in building," the customers of the master builders. They condemned the
journeymen on the moral ground that an agitation for a shorter day would
open "a wide door for idleness and vice"; hinted broadly at the foreign
origin of the agitation; declared that all combinations intending to
regulate the value of labor by abridging the working day were in a high
degree unjust and injurious to the other classes in the community;
announced their resolution to support the masters at the sacrifice of
suspending building altogether; and bound themselves not to employ any
journeyman or master who might enforce the ten-hour day. The strike
failed.
The renewed trade-union activities brought forth a fresh crop of trials
for conspiracy.[3] One case involved Philadelphia master shoemakers who
combined to reduce wages, two were against journeymen tailors in
Philadelphia and Buffalo and the fourth was a hatters' case in New
York. The masters were acquitted and the hatters were found guilty of
combining to deprive a non-union man of his livelihood. In the
Philadelphia tailors' case, the journeymen were convicted on the charge
of intimidation. Of the Buffalo tailors' case it is only known that it
ended in the conviction of the journeymen.
(2) _Equal Citizenship, 1827-1832_
So far we have dealt only with trade societies but not yet with a labor
movement. A labor movement presupposes a feeling of solidarity which
goes beyond the boundaries of a single trade and extends to other wage
earners. The American labor movement began in 1827, when the several
trades in Philadelphia organized the Mechanics' Union of Trade
Associations, which was, so far as now known, the first city central
organization of trades in the world. This Union, originally intended as
an economic organization, changed to a political one the following year
and initiated what was probably the most interesting and most typically
American labor movement--a struggle for "equality of citizenship." It
was brought to a head by the severe industrial depression of the time.
But the decisive impulse came from the nation-wide democratic upheaval
led by Andrew Jackson, for which the poorer classes in the cities
displayed no less enthusiasm than the agricultural West. To the wage
earner this outburst of democratic fervor offered an opportunity to try
out his recently acquired franchise. Of the then industrial States,
Massachusetts granted suffrage to the workingmen in 1820 and New York in
1822. In Pennsylvania the constitution of 1790 had extended the right of
suffrage to those who paid any kind of a state or county tax, however
small.
The wage earners' Jacksonianism struck a note all its own. If the
farmer and country merchant, who had passed through the abstract stage
of political aspiration with the Jeffersonian democratic movement, were
now, with Jackson, reaching out for the material advantages which
political power might yield, the wage earners, being as yet novices in
politics, naturally were more strongly impressed with that aspect of the
democratic upheaval which emphasized the rights of man in general and
social equality in particular. If the middle class Jacksonian was
probably thinking first of reducing the debt on his farm or perchance of
getting a political office, and only as an after-thought proceeding to
look for a justification in the Declaration of Independence, as yet the
wage earner was starting with the abstract notion of equal citizenship
as contained in the Declaration, and only then proceeding to search for
the remedies which would square reality with the idea. Hence it was that
the aspiration toward equal citizenship became the keynote of labor's
earliest political movement. The issue was drawn primarily between the
rich and the poor, not between the functional classes, employers and
employes. While the workmen took good care to exclude from their ranks
"persons not living by some useful occupation, such as bankers, brokers,
rich men, etc.," they did not draw the line on employers as such, master
workmen and independent "producers."
The workingmen's bill of complaints, as set forth in the Philadelphia
_Mechanic's Free Press_ and other labor papers, clearly marks off the
movement as a rebellion by the class of newly enfranchised wage earners
against conditions which made them feel degraded in their own eyes as
full fledged citizens of the commonwealth.
The complaints were of different sorts but revolved around the charge
of the usurpation of government by an "aristocracy." Incontrovertible
proof of this charge was found in special legislation chartering banks
and other corporations. The banks were indicted upon two counts. First,
the unstable bank paper money defrauded the wage earner of a
considerable portion of the purchasing power of his wages. Second, banks
restricted competition and shut off avenues for the "man on the make."
The latter accusation may be understood only if we keep in mind that
this was a period when bank credits began to play an essential part in
the conduct of industry; that with the extension of the market into the
States and territories South and West, with the resulting delay in
collections, business could be carried on only by those who enjoyed
credit facilities at the banks. Now, as credit generally follows access
to the market, it was inevitable that the beneficiary of the banking
system should not be the master or journeyman but the merchant for whom
both worked.[4] To the uninitiated, however, this arrangement could only
appear in the light of a huge conspiracy entered into by the chartered
monopolies, the banks, and the unchartered monopolist, the merchant, to
shut out the possible competition by the master and journeyman. The
grievance appeared all the more serious since all banks were chartered
by special enactments of the legislature, which thus appeared as an
accomplice in the conspiracy.
In addition to giving active help to the rich, the workingmen argued,
the government was too callous to the suffering of the poor and pointed
to the practice of imprisonment for debt. The Boston Prison Discipline
Society, a philanthropic organization, estimated in 1829 that about
75,000 persons were annually imprisoned for debt in the United States.
Many of these were imprisoned for very small debts. In one Massachusetts
prison, for example, out of 37 cases, 20 were for less than $20. The
Philadelphia printer and philanthropist, Mathew Carey, father of the
economist Henry C. Carey, cited a contemporary Boston case of a blind
man with a family dependent on him imprisoned for a debt of six dollars.
A labor paper reported an astounding case of a widow in Providence,
Rhode Island, whose husband had lost his life in a fire while attempting
to save the property of the man who later caused her imprisonment for a
debt of 68 cents. The physical conditions in debtors' jails were
appalling, according to unimpeachable contemporary reports. Little did
such treatment of the poor accord with their newly acquired dignity as
citizens.
Another grievance, particularly exasperating because the government was
responsible, grew in Pennsylvania out of the administration of the
compulsory militia system. Service was obligatory upon all male citizens
and non-attendance was punished by fine or imprisonment. The rich
delinquent did not mind, but the poor delinquent when unable to pay was
given a jail sentence.
Other complaints by workingmen went back to the failure of government to
protect the poorer citizen's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." The lack of a mechanic's lien law, which would protect his
wages in the case of his employer's bankruptcy, was keenly felt by the
workingmen. A labor paper estimated in 1829 that, owing to the lack of a
lien law on buildings, not less than three or four hundred thousand
dollars in wages were annually lost.
But the most distinctive demands of the workingmen went much further.
This was an age of egalitarianism. The Western frontiersmen demanded
equality with the wealthy Eastern merchant and banker, and found in
Andrew Jackson an ideal spokesman. For a brief moment it seemed that by
equality the workingmen meant an equal division of all property. That
was the program which received temporary endorsement at the first
workingmen's meeting in New York in April 1829. "Equal division" was
advocated by a self-taught mechanic by the name of Thomas Skidmore, who
elaborated his ideas in a book bearing the self-revealing title of "_The
Rights of Man to Property: being a Proposition to make it Equal among
the Adults of the Present Generation: and to Provide for its Equal
Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation, on
Arriving at the Age of Maturity_," published in 1829. This Skidmorian
program was better known as "agrarianism," probably from the title of a
book by Thomas Paine, _Agrarian Justice, as Opposed to Agrarian Law and
to Agrarian Monopoly_, published in 1797 in London, which advocated
equal division by means of an inheritance tax. Its adoption by the New
York workingmen was little more than a stratagem, for their intention
was to forestall any attempts by employers to lengthen the working day
to eleven hours by raising the question of "the nature of the tenure by
which all men hold title to their property." Apparently the stratagem
worked, for the employers immediately dropped the eleven-hour issue.
But, although the workingmen quickly thereafter repudiated agrarianism,
they succeeded only too well in affixing to their movement the mark of
the beast in the eyes of their opponents and the general public.
Except during the brief but damaging "agrarian" episode, the demand for
free public education or "Republican" education occupied the foreground.
We, who live in an age when free education at the expense of the
community is considered practically an inalienable right of every child,
find it extremely difficult to understand the vehemence of the
opposition which the demand aroused on the part of the press and the
"conservative" classes, when first brought up by the workingmen. The
explanation lies partly in the political situation, partly in the moral
character of the "intellectual" spokesmen for the workingmen, and partly
in the inborn conservatism of the tax-paying classes upon whom the
financial burden would fall. That the educational situation was
deplorable much proof is unnecessary. Pennsylvania had some public
schools, but parents had to declare themselves too poor to send their
children to a private school before they were allowed the privilege of
sending them there. In fact so much odium attached to these schools that
they were practically useless and the State became distinguished for the
number of children not attending school. As late as 1837 a labor paper
estimated that 250,000 out of 400,000 children in Pennsylvania of school
age were not in any school. The Public School Society of New York
estimated in a report for 1829 that in New York City alone there were
24,200 children between the ages of five and fifteen years not attending
any school whatever.
To meet these conditions the workingmen outlined a comprehensive
educational program. It was not merely a literary education that the
workingmen desired. The idea of industrial education, or training for a
vocation, which is even now young in this country, was undoubtedly first
introduced by the leaders of this early labor movement. They demanded a
system of public education which would "combine a knowledge of the
practical arts with that of the useful sciences." The idea of industrial
education appears to have originated in a group of which two
"intellectuals," Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright, were the leading
spirits.
Robert Dale Owen was the eldest son of Robert Owen, the famous English
manufacturer-philanthropist, who originated the system of socialism
known as "Owenism." Born in Scotland, he was educated at Hofwyl,
Switzerland, in a school conducted by Emmanuel von Fellenberg, the
associate of the famous Pestalozzi, as a self-governing children's
republic on the manner of the present "Julior Republics." Owen himself
said that he owed his abiding faith in human virtue and social progress
to his years at Hofwyl. In 1825 Robert Dale left England to join his
father in a communistic experiment at New Harmony, Indiana, and together
they lived through the vicissitudes which attended that experiment.
There he met Frances Wright, America's first suffragist, with whom he
formed an intimate friendship lasting through many years. The failure at
New Harmony convinced him that his father had overlooked the importance
of the anti-social habits which the members had formed before they
joined; and he concluded that those could be prevented only by applying
a rational system of education to the young. These conclusions, together
with the recollections of his experience at Hofwyl, led him to advocate
a new system of education, which came to be called "state guardianship."
State guardianship was a demand for the establishment by the state of
boarding schools where children should receive, not only equal
instruction, general as well as industrial, but equal food and equal
clothing at the public expense. Under this system, it was asserted,
public schools would become "not schools of charity, but schools of the
nation, to the support of which all would contribute; and instead of
being almost a disgrace, it would become an honor to have been educated
there." It was urged as an especial advantage that, as children would be
clothed and cared for at all times, the fact that poor parents could not
afford to dress their children "as decently as their neighbors" would
not prevent their attendance.
State guardianship became the battle cry of an important faction in the
Workingmen's party in New York. Elsewhere a less radical program was
advocated. In Philadelphia the workingmen demanded only that high
schools be on the Hofwyl model, whereas in the smaller cities and towns
in both Pennsylvania and New York the demand was for "literary" day
schools. Yet the underlying principle was the same everywhere. A labor
candidate for Congress in the First Congressional District of
Philadelphia in 1830 expressed it succinctly during his campaign. He
made his plea on the ground that "he is the friend and indefatigable
defender of a system of general education, which will place the citizens
of this extensive Republic on an equality; a system that will fit the
children of the poor, as well as the rich, to become our future
legislators; a system that will bring the children of the poor and the
rich to mix together as a band of Republican brethren."
In New England the workingmen's movement for equal citizenship was
simultaneously a reaction against the factory system. To the cry for a
Republican system of education was added an anti-child labor crusade.
One who did more than any other to call attention to the evils of the
factory system of that day was a lawyer by the name of Seth Luther, who,
according to his own account, had "for years lived among cotton mills,
worked in them, travelled among them." His "_Address to the Working Men
of New England on the State of Education, and on the Condition of the
Producing Classes in Europe and America, with Particular Reference to
the Effect of Manufacturing (as now conducted) on the Health and
Happiness of the Poor, and on the Safety of our Republic_" was delivered
widely and undoubtedly had considerable influence over the labor
movement of the period. The average working day in the best factories at
that time was nearly thirteen hours. For the children who were sent into
the factories at an early age these hours precluded, of course, any
possibility of obtaining even the most rudimentary education.
The New England movement was an effort to unite producers of all kinds,
including not only farmers but factory workers with mechanics and city
workingmen. In many parts of the State of New York the workingmen's
parties included the three classes--"farmers, mechanics, and working
men,"--but New England added a fourth class, the factory operatives. It
was early found, however, that the movement could expect little or no
help from the factory operatives, who were for the most part women and
children.
The years 1828, 1829, and 1830 were years of political labor movements
and labor parties. Philadelphia originated the first workingmen's party,
then came New York and Boston, and finally state-wide movements and
political organizations in each of the three States. In New York the
workingmen scored their most striking single success, when in 1829 they
cast 6000 votes out of a total of 21,000. In Philadelphia the labor
ticket polled 2400 in 1828 and the labor party gained the balance of
power in the city. But the inexperience of the labor politicians coupled
with machinations on the part of "designing men" of both older parties
soon lost the labor parties their advantage. In New York Tammany made
the demand for a mechanics' lien law its own and later saw that it
became enacted into law. In New York, also, the situation became
complicated by factional strife between the Skidmorian "agrarians," the
Owenite state guardianship faction, and a third faction which eschewed
either "panacea." Then, too, the opposition parties and press seized
upon agrarianism and Owen's alleged atheism to brand the whole labor
movement. The labor party was decidedly unfortunate in its choice of
intellectuals and "ideologists."
It would be, however, a mistake to conclude that the Philadelphia, New
York, or New England political movements were totally without results.
Though unsuccessful in electing their candidates to office, they did
succeed in placing their demands to advantage before the public.
Humanitarians, like Horace Mann, took up independently the fight for
free public education and carried it to success. In Pennsylvania, public
schools, free from the taint of charity, date since 1836. In New York
City the public school system was established in 1832. The same is true
of the demand for a mechanics' lien law, of the abolition of
imprisonment for debt, and of others.
(3) _The Period of the "Wild-cat" Prosperity, 1833-1837_
With the break-up of the workingmen's parties, labor's newly acquired
sense of solidarity was temporarily lost, leaving only the restricted
solidarity of the isolated trade society. Within that limit, however,
important progress began to be made. In 1833, there were in New York
twenty-nine organized trades; in Philadelphia, twenty-one; and in
Baltimore, seventeen. Among those organized in Philadelphia were
hand-loom weavers, plasterers, bricklayers, black and white smiths,
cigar makers, plumbers, and women workers including tailoresses,
seamstresses, binders, folders, milliners, corset makers, and mantua
workers. Several trades, such as the printers and tailors in New York
and the Philadelphia carpenters, which formerly were organized upon the
benevolent basis, were now reorganized as trade societies. The
benevolent New York Typographical Society was reduced to secondary
importance by the appearance in 1831 of the New York Typographical
Association.
But the factor that compelled labor to organize on a much larger scale
was the remarkable rise in prices from 1835 to 1837. This rise in prices
was coincident with the "wild-cat" prosperity, which followed a rapid
multiplication of state banks with the right of issue of paper
currency--largely irredeemable "wild-cat" currency. Cost of living
having doubled, the subject of wages became a burning issue. At the same
time the general business prosperity rendered demands for higher wages
easily attainable. The outcome was a luxuriant growth of trade unionism.
In 1836 there were in Philadelphia fifty-eight trade unions; in Newark,
New Jersey, sixteen; in New York, fifty-two; in Pittsburgh, thirteen; in
Cincinnati, fourteen; and in Louisville, seven. In Buffalo the
journeymen builders' association included all the building trades. The
tailors of Louisville, Cincinnati, and St. Louis made a concentrated
effort against their employers in these three cities.
The wave of organization reached at last the women workers. In 1830 the
well-known Philadelphia philanthropist, Mathew Carey, asserted that
there were in the cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore about 20,000 women who could not by constant employment for
sixteen hours out of twenty-four earn more than $1.25 a week. These were
mostly seamstresses and tailoresses, umbrella makers, shoe binders,
cigar makers, and book binders. In New York there was in 1835 a Female
Union Association, in Baltimore a United Seamstresses' Society, and in
Philadelphia probably the first federation of women workers in this
country. In Lynn, Massachusetts, a "Female Society of Lynn and Vicinity
for the Protection and Promotion of Female Industry" operated during
1833 and 1834 among the shoe binders and had at one time 1000 members,
who, like the seamstresses, were home workers and earned scanty wages.
Where nearly every trade was in motion, it did not take long to discover
a common direction and a common purpose. This was expressed in city
"trades' unions," or federations of all organized trades in a city, and
in its ascendency over the individual trade societies.
The first trades' union was organized August 14, 1833, in New York.
Baltimore followed in September, Philadelphia in November, and Boston in
March 1834. New York after 1820 was the metropolis of the country and
also the largest industrial and commercial center. There the house
carpenters had struck for higher wages in the latter part of May 1833,
and fifteen other trades met and pledged their support. Out of this grew
the New York Trades' Union. It had an official organ in a weekly, the
_National Trades' Union_, published from 1834 to 1836, and a daily, _The
Union_, issued in 1836. Ely Moore, a printer, was made president. Moore
was elected a few months later as the first representative of labor in
Congress.
In addition, trades' unions were organized in Washington; in New
Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey; in Albany, Troy, and Schenectady, New
York; and in the "Far West"--Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville.
Except in Boston, the trades' unions felt anxious to draw the line
between themselves and the political labor organizations of the
preceding years. In Philadelphia, where as we have seen, the formation
of an analogous organization, the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations
of 1828, had served as a preliminary for a political movement, the
General Trades' Union took especial precaution and provided in the
constitution that "no party, political or religious questions shall at
any time be agitated in or acted upon in the Union." Its official organ,
the _National Laborer_, declared that "_the Trades' Union never will be
political_ because its members have learned from experience that the
introduction of politics into their societies has thwarted every effort
to ameliorate their conditions."
The repudiation of active politics did not carry with it a condemnation
of legislative action or "lobbying." On the contrary, these years
witnessed the first sustained legislative campaign that was ever
conducted by a labor organization, namely the campaign by the New York
Trades' Union for the suppression of the competition from prison-made
goods. Under the pressure of the New York Union the State Legislature
created in 1834 a special commission on prison labor with its president,
Ely Moore, as one of the three commissioners. On this question of
prison labor the trade unionists clashed with the humanitarian prison
reformers, who regarded productive labor by prisoners as a necessary
means of their reform to an honest mode of living; and the humanitarian
won. After several months' work the commission submitted what was to the
Union an entirely unsatisfactory report. It approved the prison-labor
system as a whole and recommended only minor changes. Ely Moore signed
the report, but a public meeting of workingmen condemned it.
The rediscovered solidarity between the several trades now embodied in
the city trades' unions found its first expression on a large scale in a
ten-hour movement.
The first concerted demand for the ten-hour day was made by the
workingmen of Baltimore in August 1833, and extended over seventeen
trades. But the mechanics' aspiration for a ten-hour day--perhaps the
strongest spiritual inheritance from the preceding movement for equal
citizenship,[5] had to await a change in the general condition of
industry to render trade union effort effective before it could turn
into a well sustained movement. That change finally came with the
prosperous year of 1835.
The movement was precipitated in Boston. There, as we saw, the
carpenters had been defeated in an effort to establish a ten-hour day in
1825,[6] but made another attempt in the spring of 1835. This time,
however, they did not stand alone but were joined by the masons and
stone-cutters. As before, the principal attack was directed against the
"capitalists," that is, the owners of the buildings and the real estate
speculators. The employer or small contractor was viewed
sympathetically. "We would not be too severe on our employers," said the
strikers' circular, which was sent out broadcast over the country, "they
are slaves to the capitalists, as we are to them."
The strike was protracted. The details of it are not known, but we know
that it won sympathy throughout the country. A committee visited in July
the different cities on the Atlantic coast to solicit aid for the
strikers. In Philadelphia, when the committee arrived in company with
delegates from New York, Newark, and Paterson, the Trades' Union held a
special meeting and resolved to stand by the "Boston House Wrights" who,
"in imitation of the noble and decided stand taken by their
Revolutionary Fathers, have determined to throw off the shackles of more
mercenary tyrants than theirs." Many societies voted varying sums of
money in aid of the strikers.
The Boston strike was lost, but the sympathy which it evoked among
mechanics in various cities was quickly turned to account. Wherever the
Boston circular reached, it acted like a spark upon powder. In
Philadelphia the ten-hour movement took on the aspect of a crusade. Not
only the building trades, as in Boston, but most of the mechanical
branches were involved. Street parades and mass meetings were held. The
public press, both friendly and hostile, discussed it at length. Work
was suspended and after but a brief "standout" the whole ended in a
complete victory for the workingmen. Unskilled laborers, too, struck for
the ten-hour day and, in the attempt to prevent others from taking their
jobs, riotous scenes occurred which attracted considerable attention.
The movement proved so irresistible that the Common Council announced a
ten-hour day for public servants. Lawyers, physicians, merchants, and
politicians took up the cause of the workingmen. On June 8 the master
carpenters granted the ten-hour day and by June 22 the victory was
complete.
The victory in Philadelphia was so overwhelming and was given so much
publicity that its influence extended to many smaller towns. In fact,
the ten-hour system, which remained in vogue in this country in the
skilled trades until the nineties, dates largely from this movement in
the middle of the thirties.
The great advance in the cost of living during 1835 and 1836 compelled
an extensive movement for higher wages. Prices had in some instances
more than doubled. Most of these strikes were hastily undertaken.
Prices, of course, were rising rapidly but the societies were new and
lacked balance. A strike in one trade was an example to others to
strike. In a few instances, however, there was considerable planning and
reserve.
The strike epidemic affected even the girls who worked in the textile
factories. The first strike of factory girls on record had occurred in
Dover, New Hampshire, in 1828. A factory strike in Paterson, New Jersey,
which occurred in the same year, occasioned the first recorded calling
out of militia to quell labor disturbances. There the strikers were,
however, for the most part men. But the factory strike which attracted
the greatest public attention was the Lowell strike in February, 1834,
against a 15 percent reduction in wages. The strike was short and
unsuccessful, notwithstanding that 800 striking girls at first exhibited
a determination to carry their struggle to the end. It appears that
public opinion in New England was disagreeably impressed by this early
manifestation of feminism. Another notable factory strike was one in
Paterson in July 1835. Unlike similar strikes, it had been preceded by
an organization. The chief demand was the eleven-hour day. The strike
involved twenty mills and 2000 persons. Two weeks later the employers
reduced hours from thirteen and a half to twelve hours for five days and
to nine hours on Saturday. This broke the strike. The character of the
agitation among the factory workers stamps it as ephemeral. Even more
ephemeral was the agitation among immigrant laborers, mostly Irish, on
canals and roads, which usually took the form of riots.
As in the preceding period, the aggressiveness of the trade societies
eventually gave rise to combative masters' associations. These, goaded
by restrictive union practices, notably the closed shop, appealed to the
courts for relief. By 1836 employers' associations appeared in nearly
every trade in which labor was aggressive; in New York there were at
least eight and in Philadelphia seven. In Philadelphia, at the
initiative of the master carpenters and cordwainers, there came to exist
an informal federation of the masters' associations in the several
trades.
From 1829 to 1842 there were eight recorded prosecutions of labor
organizations for conspiracy. The workingmen were convicted in two
cases; in two other cases the courts sustained demurrers to the
indictments; in three cases the defendants were acquitted after jury
trials; and the outcome of one case is unknown. Finally, in 1842, long
after the offending societies had gone out of existence under the stress
of unemployment and depressions, the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts handed down a decision, which for forty years laid to
rest the doctrine of conspiracy as applied to labor unions.[7]
The unity of action of the several trades displayed in the city trades'
unions engendered before long a still wider solidarity in the form of a
National Trades' Union. It came together in August 1834, in New York
City upon the invitation of the General Trades' Union of New York. The
delegates were from the trades' unions of New York, Philadelphia,
Boston, Brooklyn, Poughkeepsie, and Newark. Ely Moore, then labor
candidate for Congress, was elected president. An attempt by the only
"intellectual" present, a Doctor Charles Douglass, representing the
Boston Trades' Union, to strike a political note was immediately
squelched. A second convention was held in 1835 and a third one in 1837.
The National Trades' Union played a conspicuous part in securing the
ten-hour day for government employes. The victory of the ten-hour
principle in private employment in 1835 generally led to its adoption by
states and municipalities. However, the Federal government was slow to
follow the example, since Federal officials were immune from the direct
political pressure which the workingmen were able to use with advantage
upon locally elected office holders.
In October 1835, the mechanics employed in the New York and Brooklyn
Navy Yards petitioned the Secretary of the Navy for a reduction of the
hours of labor to ten. The latter referred the petition to the Board of
Navy Commissioners, who returned the petition with the opinion that it
would be detrimental to the government to accede to their request. This
forced the matter into the attention of the National Trades' Union. At
its second convention in 1835 it decided to petition Congress for a
ten-hour day for employes on government works. The petition was
introduced by the labor Congressman from New York, Ely Moore. Congress
curtly replied, however, that it was not a matter for legislation but
"that the persons employed should redress their own grievances." With
Congress in such a mood, the hopes of the workingmen turned to the
President.
A first step was made in the summer of 1836, when the workers in the
Navy Yard at Philadelphia struck for a ten-hour day and appealed to
President Jackson for relief. They would have nothing further to do with
Congress. They had supported President Jackson in his fight against the
United States Bank and now sought a return favor. At a town meeting of
"citizens, mechanics, and working men," a committee was appointed to lay
the issue before him. He proved indeed more responsive than Congress and
ordered the ten-hour system established.
But the order applied only to the localities where the strike occurred.
The agitation had been chiefly local. Besides Philadelphia and New York
the mechanics secured the ten-hour day in Baltimore and Annapolis, but
in the District of Columbia and elsewhere they were still working twelve
or fourteen hours. In other words, the ten-hour day was secured only
where trade societies existed.
But the organized labor movement did not rest with a partial success.
The campaign of pressure on the President went on. Finally, although
somewhat belatedly, President Van Buren issued on March 31, 1840, the
famous executive order establishing the ten-hour day on government work
without a reduction in wages.
The victory came after the National Trades' Union had gone out of
existence and should be, more correctly, correlated with a labor
political movement. Early in 1837 came a financial panic. The industrial
depression wiped out in a short time every form of labor organization
from the trade societies to the National Trades' Union. Labor stood
defenseless against the economic storm. In this emergency it turned to
politics as a measure of despair.
The political dissatisfaction assumed the form of hostility towards
banks and corporations in general. The workingmen held the banks
responsible for the existing anarchy in currency, from which they
suffered both as consumers and producers. Moreover, they felt that there
was something uncanny and threatening about corporations with their
continuous existence and limited liability. Even while their attention
had been engrossed by trade unionism, the workingmen were awake to the
issue of monopoly. Together with their employers they had therefore
supported Jackson in his assault upon the largest "monster" of them
all--the Bank of the United States. The local organizations of the
Democratic party, however, did not always remain true to faith. In such
circumstances the workingmen, again acting in conjunction with their
masters, frequently extended their support to the "insurgent"
anti-monopoly candidates in the Democratic party conventions. Such a
revolt took place in Philadelphia in 1835; and in New York, although
Tammany had elected Ely Moore, the President of the General Trades'
Union of New York, to Congress in 1834, a similar revolt occurred. The
upshot was a triumphant return of the rebels into the fold of Tammany in
1837. During the next twenty years, Tammany came nearer to being a
workingmen's organization than at any other time in its career.
(4) _The Long Depression, 1837-1862_
The twenty-five years which elapsed from 1837 to 1862 form a period of
business depression and industrial disorganization only briefly
interrupted during 1850-1853 by the gold discoveries in California. The
aggressive unions of the thirties practically disappeared. With industry
disorganized, trade unionism, or the effort to protect the standard of
living by means of strikes, was out of question. As the prospect for
immediate amelioration became dimmed by circumstances, an opportunity
arrived for theories and philosophies of radical social reform. Once the
sun with its life-giving heat has set, one begins to see the cold and
distant stars.
The uniqueness of the period of the forties in the labor movement
proceeds not only from the large volume of star-gazing, but also from
the accompanying fact that, for the first and only time in American
history, the labor movement was dominated by men and women from the
educated class, the "intellectuals," who thus served in the capacity of
expert astrologers.
And there was no lack of stars in the heaven of social reform to occupy
both intellectual and wage earner. First, there was the efficiency
scheme of the followers of Charles Fourier, the French socialist, or, as
they preferred to call themselves, the Associationists. Theirs was a
proposal aiming directly to meet the issue of the prevailing industrial
disorganization and wasteful competition. Albert Brisbane, Horace
Greeley, and the Brook Farm enthusiasts and "Associationists" of the
forties, made famous by their intimate association with Ralph Waldo
Emerson, had much in common with the present-day efficiency engineers.
This "old" efficiency of theirs, like the new one, was chiefly concerned
with increasing the production of wealth through the application of the
"natural" laws of human nature. With the enormous increase in production
to be brought about by "Fourierism" and "Association," the question of
justice in distribution was relegated to a secondary place. Where they
differed from the new efficiency was in method, for they believed
efficiency would be attained if only the human instincts or "passions"
were given free play, while the efficiency engineers of today trust less
to unguided instinct and more to "scientific management" of human
"passions."
Midway between trade unionism and the simon-pure, idealistic reform
philosophies stood producers' and consumers' cooperation. It had the
merit of being a practical program most suitable to a time of
depression, while on its spiritual side it did not fail to satisfy the
loftiest intellectual. It was the resultant of the two most potent
forces which acted upon the movement of the forties, the pressure of an
inadequate income of the wage earner and the influence of the
intellectuals. During no other period has there been, relatively
speaking, so much effort along that line.
Although, as we shall see, the eighties were properly the era of
producers' cooperation on a large scale, the self-governing workshop had
always been familiar to the American labor movement. The earliest
attempt, as far as we have knowledge, occurred in Philadelphia in 1791,
when the house carpenters out on strike offered by way of retaliation
against their employers to undertake contracts at 25 percent less than
the price charged by the masters. Fourteen years later, in 1806, the
journeymen cordwainers of the same city, following their conviction in
court on the charge of conspiracy brought in by their masters, opened up
a cooperative shoe warehouse and store. As a rule the workingmen took up
productive cooperation when they had failed in strikes.
In 1836 many of the trade societies began to lose their strikes and
turned to cooperation. The cordwainers working on ladies' shoes entered
upon a strike for higher wages in March 1836, and opened three months
later a "manufactory" or a warehouse of their own. The handloom weavers
in two of the suburbs of Philadelphia started cooperative associations
at the same time. At the end of 1836 the hand-loom weavers of
Philadelphia proper had two cooperative shops and were planning to open
a third. In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the journeymen cordwainers opened
a shop after an unsuccessful strike early in 1836; likewise the tailors
of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville. In New York the carpenters had
done so already in 1833, and the painters of New York and Brooklyn
opened their shops in 1837.
Before long the spirit became so contagious that the Trades' Union of
Philadelphia, the city federation of trade societies, was obliged to
take notice. Early in 1837 a conference of about 200 delegates requested
each trade society to submit estimates for a shop to employ ten members.
However, further steps were prevented by the financial panic and
business depression.
The forties witnessed several similar attempts. When the iron molders of
Cincinnati failed to win a strike in the autumn of 1847, a few of their
number collected what funds they could and organized a sort of
joint-stock company which they called "The Journeymen Molders' Union
Foundry." Two local philanthropists erected their buildings. In
Pittsburgh a group of puddlers tried to raise money by selling stock to
anyone who wished to take an interest in their cooperative venture.
The cooperative ventures multiplied in 1850 and 1851, following a
widespread failure of strikes and were entered upon with particular
readiness by the German immigrants. Among the Germans was an attitude
towards producers' cooperation, based more nearly on general principles
than the practical exigencies of a strike. Fresh from the scenes of
revolutions in Europe, they were more given to dreams about
reconstructing society and more trustful in the honesty and integrity of
their leaders. The cooperative movement among the Germans was identified
with the name of Wilhelm Weitling, the well-known German communist, who
settled in America about 1850. This movement centered in and around New
York. The cooperative principle met with success among the
English-speaking people only outside the larger cities. In Buffalo,
after an unsuccessful strike, the tailors formed an association with a
membership of 108 and in October 1850, were able to give employment to
80 of that number.
Again, following an unsuccessful Pittsburgh strike of iron founders in
1849, about a dozen of the strikers went to Wheeling, Virginia, each
investing $3000, and opened a cooperative foundry shop. Two other
foundries were opened on a similar basis in Stetsonville, Ohio, and
Sharon, Pennsylvania. These associations of iron founders, however,
might better be called association of small capitalists or
master-workmen.
During the forties, consumers' or distributive cooperation was also
given a trial. The early history of consumers' cooperation is but
fragmentary and, so far as we know, the first cooperative attempt which
had for its exclusive aim "competence to purchaser" was made in
Philadelphia early in 1829. A store was established on North Fifth
Street, which sold goods at wholesale prices to members, who paid twenty
cents a month for its privileges.
In 1831 distributive cooperation was much discussed in Boston by a "New
England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Other Working Men." A
half dozen cooperative attempts are mentioned in the Cooperator,
published in Utica in 1832, but only in the case of the journeymen
cordwainers of Lynn do we discover an undertaking which can with
certainty be considered as an effort to achieve distributive
cooperation. Several germs of cooperative effort are found between 1833
and 1845, but all that is known about them is that their promoters
sought to effect a saving by the purchase of goods in large quantities
which were then broken up and distributed at a slight advance above
original cost in order to meet expenses. The managers were unpaid, the
members' interest in the business was not maintained, and the stores
soon failed, or passed into the possession of private owners.
It was the depression of 1846-1849 which supplied the movement for
distributive cooperation with the needed stimulus, especially in New
England. Although the matter was discussed in New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even as far west as Ohio and Illinois, yet
in none of the industrial centers of these States, except perhaps in New
York, was it put into successful operation.
In New England, however, the conditions were exceptionally favorable. A
strike movement for higher wages during a partial industrial revival of
1843-1844 had failed completely. This failure, added to the fact that
women and girls were employed under very unsatisfactory conditions,
strengthened the interest of humanitarians in the laboring people and
especially in cooperation as a possible means of alleviating their
distress.
Under the stimulus of these agitations, the New England Protective Union
was formed in 1845. Until 1849, however, it bore the name of the Working
Men's Protective Union. As often happens, prosperity brought disunion
and, in 1853, a schism occurred in the organization due to personal
differences. The seceders formed a separate organization known as the
American Protective Union.
The Working Men's Protective Union embodied a larger conception of the
cooperative idea than had been expressed before. The important thought
was that an economy of a few dollars a year in the purchase of
commodities was a poor way out of labor difficulties, but was valuable
only as a preparation for something better.
Though the resources of these laborers were small, they began the work
with great hopes. This business, starting so unpretentiously, assumed
larger and increasing proportions until in October, 1852, the Union
embraced 403 divisions of which 167 reported a capital of $241,712 and
165 of these announced annual sales amounting to $1,696,825. Though the
schism of 1853, mentioned above, weakened the body, the agent of the
American Protective Union claimed for the divisions comprising it sales
aggregating in value over nine and one-fourth millions dollars in the
seven years ending in 1859.
It is not possible to tell what might have been the outcome of this
cooperative movement had the peaceful development of the country
remained uninterrupted. As it happened, the disturbed era of the Civil
War witnessed the near annihilation of all workingmen's cooperation.
It is not difficult to see the causes which led to the destruction of
the still tender plant. Men left their homes for the battle field,
foreigners poured into New England towns and replaced the Americans in
the shops, while share-holders frequently became frightened at the state
of trade and gladly saw the entire cooperative enterprise pass into the
hands of the storekeeper.
This first American cooperative movement on a large scale resembled the
British movement in many respects, namely open membership, equal voting
by members irrespective of number of shares, cash sales and federation
of societies for wholesale purchases, but differed in that goods were
sold to members nearly at cost rather than at the market price. Dr.
James Ford in his _Cooperation in New England, Urban and Rural_,[8]
describes two survivals from this period, the Central Union Association
of New Bedford, Massachusetts, founded in 1848, and the Acushnet
Cooperative Association, also of New Bedford, which began business in
1849.
But the most characteristic labor movement of the forties was a
resurgence of the old Agrarianism of the twenties.
Skidmore's "equal division" of all property appealed to the workingmen
of New York because it seemed to be based on equality of opportunity.
One of Skidmore's temporary associates, a Welshman by the name of George
Henry Evans, drew from him an inspiration for a new kind of agrarianism
to which few could object. This new doctrine was a true Agrarianism,
since it followed in the steps of the original "Agrarians," the brothers
Gracchi in ancient Rome. Like the Gracchi, Evans centered his plan
around the "ager publicum"--the vast American public domain. Evans began
his agitation about 1844.
Man's right to life, according to Evans, logically implied his right to
use the materials of nature necessary for being. For practical reasons
he would not interfere with natural resources which have already passed
under private ownership. Evans proposed instead that Congress give each
would-be settler land for a homestead free of charge.
As late as 1852 debaters in Congress pointed out that in the preceding
sixty years only 100,000,000 acres of the public lands had been sold and
that 1,400,000,000 acres still remained at the disposal of the
government. Estimates of the required time to dispose of this residuum
at the same rate of sale varied from 400 or 500 to 900 years. With the
exaggerated views prevalent, it is no wonder that Evans believed that
the right of the individual to as much land as his right to live calls
for would remain a living right for as long a period in the future as a
practical statesman may be required to take into account.
The consequences of free homesteads were not hard to picture. The
landless wage earners could be furnished transportation and an outfit,
for the money spent for poor relief would be more profitably expended in
sending the poor to the land. Private societies and trade unions, when
laborers were too numerous, could aid in transporting the surplus to the
waiting homesteads and towns that would grow up. With the immobility of
labor thus offering no serious obstacle to the execution of the plan,
the wage earners of the East would have the option of continuing to work
for wages or of taking up their share of the vacant lands. Moreover,
mechanics could set up as independent producers in the new settlements.
Enough at least would go West to force employers to offer better wages
and shorter hours. Those unable to meet the expenses of moving would
profit by higher wages at home. An equal opportunity to go on land would
benefit both pioneer and stay-at-home.
But Evans would go still further in assuring equality of opportunity. He
would make the individual's right to the resources of nature safe
against the creditors through a law exempting homesteads from attachment
for debts and even against himself by making the homestead inalienable.
Moreover to assure that right to the American people _in perpetuo_ he
would prohibit future disposal of the public land in large blocks to
moneyed purchasers as practiced by the government heretofore. Thus the
program of the new agrarianism: free homesteads, homestead exemption,
and land limitation.
Evans had a plan of political action, which was as unique as his
economic program. His previous political experiences with the New York
Workingmen's party had taught him that a minority party could not hope
to win by its own votes and that the politicians cared more for offices
than for measures. They would endorse any measure which was supported by
voters who held the balance of power. His plan of action was, therefore,
to ask all candidates to pledge their support to his measures. In
exchange for such a pledge, the candidates would receive the votes of
the workingmen. In case neither candidate would sign the pledge, it
might be necessary to nominate an independent as a warning to future
candidates; but not as an indication of a new party organization.
Evans' ideas quickly won the adherence of the few labor papers then
existing. Horace Greeley's New York Tribune endorsed the homestead
movement as early as 1845. The next five years witnessed a remarkable
spread of the ideas of the free homestead movement in the press of the
country. It was estimated in 1845 that 2000 papers were published in the
United States and that in 1850, 600 of these supported land reform.
Petitions and memorials having proved of little avail, the land
reformers tried Evans' pet plan of bargaining votes for the support of
their principles. Tammany was quick to start the bidding. In May, 1851,
a mass-meeting was held at Tammany Hall "of all those in favor of land
and other industrial reform, to be made elements in the Presidential
contest of 1852." A platform was adopted which proclaimed man's right to
the soil and urged that freedom of the public lands be endorsed by the
Democratic party. Senator Isaac A. Walker of Wisconsin was nominated as
the candidate of the party for President.
For a while the professional politician triumphed over the too trusting
workingman reformer. But the cause found strong allies in the other
classes of the American community. From the poor whites of the upland
region of the South came a similar demand formulated by the Tennessee
tailor, Andrew Johnson, later President of the United States, who
introduced his first homestead bill in 1845. From the Western pioneers
and settlers came the demand for increased population and development of
resources, leading both to homesteads for settlers and land grants for
railways. The opposition came from manufacturers and landowners of the
East and from the Southern slave owners. The West and East finally
combined and the policy of the West prevailed, but not before the South
had seceded from the Union.
Not the entire reform was accepted. The Western spirit dominated. The
homestead law, as finally adopted in 1862, granted one hundred and sixty
acres as a free gift to every settler. But the same Congress launched
upon a policy of extensive land grants to railways. The homestead
legislation doubtless prevented great estates similar to those which
sprang of a different policy of the Australian colonies, but did not
carry out the broad principles of inalienability and land limitation of
the original Agrarians.
Their principle of homestead exemption, however, is now almost
universally adopted. Thus the homestead agitation begun by Evans and a
group of wage earners and farmers in 1844 was carried to victory, though
to an incomplete victory. It contained a fruitful lesson to labor in
politics. The vested interests in the East were seen ultimately to
capitulate before a popular movement which at no time aspired toward
political power and office, but, concentrating on one issue, endeavored
instead to permeate with its ideas the public opinion of the country at
large.
Of all the "isms" so prevalent during the forties, "Agrarianism" alone
came close to modern socialism, as it alone advocated class struggle and
carried it into the political field, although, owing to the peculiarity
of the American party structure, it urged a policy of "reward your
friends, and punish your enemies" rather than an out and out labor
party. It is noteworthy that of all social reform movements of the
forties Agrarianism alone was not initiated by the intellectuals. On
the other hand, another movement for legislative reform, namely the
shorter-hour movement for women and children working in the mills and
factories, was entirely managed by humanitarians. Its philosophy was the
furthest removed from the class struggle idea.
For only a short year or two did prosperity show itself from behind the
clouds to cause a mushroom growth of trade unions, once in 1850-1851 and
again in 1853-1854, following the gold discoveries in California. During
these few years unionism disentangled itself from humanitarianism and
cooperationism and came out in its wholly modern form of restrictive
craft unionism, only to be again suppressed by the business depressions
that preceded and followed the panic of 1857. Considered as a whole,
however, the period of the forties and fifties was the zenith in
American history of theories of social reform, of "panaceas," of
humanitarianism.
The trade union wave of the fifties was so short lived and the trade
unionists were so preoccupied with the pressing need of advancing their
wages to keep pace with the soaring prices caused by the influx of
California gold, that we miss the tendency which was so strong in the
thirties to reach out for a wider basis of labor organization in city
trades' unions, and ultimately in a National Trades' Union. On the other
hand, the fifties foreshadowed a new form of expansion of labor
organization--the joining together in a nation-wide organization of all
local unions of one trade. The printers[9] organized nationally in
1850, the locomotive engineers and the hat-finishers in 1854; and the
iron molders, and the machinists and blacksmiths in 1859; in addition
there were at least a half dozen less successful attempts in other
trades.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See below, 147-148.
[3] See below, 148-149.
[4] See below, 270-272.
[5] The workingmen felt that they required leisure to be able to
exercise their rights of citizens.
[6] The ship carpenters had been similarly defeated in 1832.
[7] For a detailed discussion of these trials see below, 149-152.
[8] Published in 1916 by the Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 16-18.
[9] The printers had organized nationally for the first time in 1836,
but the organization lasted less than two years; likewise the
cordwainers or shoemakers. But we must keep in mind that what
constituted national organization in the thirties would pass only for
regional or sectional organization in later years.