A History of Trade Unionism in the United States | Page 8

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