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A History of Trade Unionism in the United States by Selig Perlman

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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upon whose extensive and still unpublished researches he based his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."

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