A History of Trade Unionism in the United States | Page 9

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