§ 547]

AND POLITICS

459

This second stage in labor organization spread swiftly. New York had its General Trades' Union in 18311 and the like was soon true of the remaining large cities. Such a federation held considerable authority over the several local "associations" which composed it. It usually maintained a Trades' Union hall, with courses of public lectures and a labor paper, and it took an active part in supporting strikes (when approved by it) from the general treasury and by public meetings.

The third stage came in 1834, when the various city Trades' Unions organized a national federation. This "republic of labor " held conventions in 1834, 1835, 1836, and 1837; but the organization was imperfect, and in 1837 it was ingulfed in the industrial depression that followed the panic (§ 590).

547. Recent extension of the franchise had made voters out of the mechanics (§ 563); and, from the first, the labor organizations turned to political activity. On August 11, 1828, the Philadelphia Trades' Union, at a public meeting, recommended

"to the Mechanics and Working Men of the city to support such men only for the City Councils and State Legislature, as shall have pledged themselves to support the interests and claims of the Working Classes."

The "Delegates of the Working Men," accordingly, sent a circular letter to fourteen candidates for the legislature "to obtain your views in relation to the following subjects:

"First. An equal and general system of Education.

"Second. The banking system, and all other exclusive monopolies. "Third. Lotteries: whether a total abolishment of them is not essential to the moral as well as to the pecuniary interest of society."2

1 Growing out of a successful carpenters' strike for higher wages, a contest in which the carpenters had been supported actively by other trades.

66

2" There are at present," says another address from the same source a little later, not less than 200 lottery offices in Philadelphia, and as many, if not more, persons engaged in hawking tickets." Special complaint is directed at these "itinerant venders" who "assail the poor man at his labor, enter the abode of the needy, and, by holding out false promises of wealth, induce him to hazard his little all in the demoralizing system."

Then, after a strong paragraph expressing the special interest of the working class in the first question, the circular concludes:

"If your views, on these matters should be in accordance with those we represent, we request you to allow us to place your name upon our ticket.”

Soon definite Workingmen's parties appeared in various localities. In 1830 in New York a " Workingman's party" nominated a State ticket. Its candidate for governor got only 3000 votes, but three labor candidates were chosen to the legislature, and Ely Moore (president of the New York City Trades' Union) was sent to Congress. In 1834, in far-away eastern Tennessee a labor party brought the tailor Andrew Johnson into public life as alderman in a mountain village. And a Boston Convention of the "New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Other Workingmen" urged

...

"the organization of the whole laboring population" in order to revise "our social and political system," hoping "to imbue . . . our offspring with . . . abhorrence for the usurpation of aristocracy so... that they shall dedicate their lives to a completion of the work which their ancestors commenced in their struggle for national, and their sires have continued in their contest for personal, independence."

548. No national labor party was formed. But the old political parties began at once to bid eagerly for the labor vote, and bit by bit, much of its program was placed in the statute books.

In New York, one wing of the new Democratic party was especially friendly. This was the "Equal Rights" party, or the Loco Focos, who, like the labor organizations, opposed all special privileges and the monopoly of the United States Bank. In 1835 the Loco Focos absorbed bodily the Workingman's party in New York State.

Soon after, the labor organizations in other States were lost in the fully developed Democratic party. For some years that party remained in large degree a workingman's party. When it surrendered to the Slave Power, the political labor movement received a fatal blow. The remnants of the labor forces made a leading

§ 550]

MAN OR THE DOLLAR?

461

element in the various Liberty and Free Soil parties (§§ 678, 687 ff.), but the movement for a distinct labor organization did not revive until after the Civil War.

549. The strikes of the years 1825-1837 aimed: (1) to raise wages; (2) to secure what we now call the "closed shop" (i.e. to compel the employment of union labor only, to the exclusion of non-union men, known even then as "rats" and "scabs "); and (3) to shorten the working-day to ten hours.

But, in its political action, the Workingman's party turned away from these problems, vital as they were, to broader social reforms. They sought to abolish monopolies and lotteries and imprisonment for debt;' to exempt a workingman's home and tools from seizure for debt; to give him a lien on his work for his wages; to make it easier for him to get a home out of the public domain; to give women "equal rights with men in all respects"; and to establish a noble system of public schools-far ahead of any practice in that day.

The closed-shop principle failed when the unions fell in the "panic" of 1837. Rights for women, too, had to wait long. The other demands were attained fully or in fair measure. Some of them deserve a few words more (§§ 550-552).

550. This labor movement was the first clear demand in America that society should put " man above the dollar." Forty years before, the makers of the Constitution agreed that the end of government was to protect property. But the laborer now demanded, as a right, that the rich should help pay for his children's schooling; that his person should no longer be seized for debt, nor his means of livelihood; and that, when a creditor, his wages should have a first lien, ahead of other creditors' claims.

These demands, disregarding the old "rights" of property, rested on the broad claim that they aimed to advance general human welfare. Many good people called them communistic. But modern society has come to see all this as did the workingmen of the thirties. The laborer's wages, we agree, should

1 McMaster estimates that in the early thirties 75,000 men were imprisoned for debt each year.

have preference over the capitalist's profits. The one may add to the graces of life for the few: the other means life itself, and a decent standard of living, for the many. So we have adopted this part of the early labor program.

551. The demand for a ten-hour day, in place of the inhuman dawn-to-dark day, was long resisted by the employer class as though it would overturn all social order. When the carpenter journeymen of Philadelphia organized in 1827 to get that shorter day (§ 546), the employers united in an address to the public, in which:

(1) They complained of the attempt to " deprive employers of about one-fifth part of their usual time"; (2) they "regretted "the formation of 66 a society that has a tendency to subvert good order, and coerce or mislead those who have been industriously pursuing their avocation and honestly maintaining their families"; and (3) they declared their united resolution not to "employ any Journeyman who will not give his time and labor as usual, in as much as we believe the present mode has not been, and is not now, oppressive to the workmen.”1

The strike failed, as did several others in Philadelphia for the same purpose. But public sympathy was won for the cause, and monster petitions began to pour in upon the city government to adopt the shorter day for workingmen employed for the city. June 4, 1835, the city council yielded, and private concerns slowly followed this example.

In Baltimore, the same year, a general strike established the ten-hour day for all business, public and private. But, in the Boston district, three great strikes for this object were crushed by irresistible combinations of capitalists pledged publicly to force their employees to keep the old "dawn-to-dark" day.

Success there, and in the rest of the country, came through the example of the Federal government. Van Buren (Jackson's successor) had been closely associated with the New York

1 The journeymen replied with an appeal for public sympathy: "Citizens of Philadelphia, to you we appeal; with you rests the ultimate success or failure of our cause. Will you not assist us? Remember we are men... ... and say will you combine with our employers to force us to be slaves?"

§ 552]

THE FIGHT FOR FREE SCHOOLS

463 Loco Focos (§ 548); and the National Convention of Trades" Unions in 1836 brought all possible pressure to bear upon him, during his campaign for the Presidency. In 1840, as President, Van Buren redeemed his promises. He issued a notable order directing a ten-hour day in the navy yards and in all "public establishments" of the government. During the next ten years ten hours became the regular labor day for artisans and

Breakfast before commencing work in Nov Dec. Jan Feb.

FACSIMILE OF TIME CARD OF MACHINE SHOP IN PROVIDENCE, R. I., FOR. 1848. From Tarbell's "Golden Rule in Business" in the American Magazine for April, 1915.

factories throughout the country, though in some districts, especially in New England, a twelve-hour day remained the rule down to the Civil War.

552. Foremost in the program of the workingmen stood the demand for free schools supported by public taxes and controlled by the public will. In New England this ancient principle of the Puritans had been largely abandoned, and the surviving