A History of Trade Unionism in the United States | Page 7

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