The Armies of Labor | Page 7

to resent
the unsanitary and burdensome conditions under which they were
compelled to live and to work. So actual grievances were added to fear
of what might happen, and in their common cause experience soon
taught them unity of action. Parliament was petitioned, agitations were
organized, sick-benefits were inaugurated, and when these methods
failed, machinery was destroyed, factories were burned, and the strike
became a common weapon of self-defense.
Though a few labor organizations can be traced as far back as 1700,

their growth during the eighteenth century was slow and irregular.
There was no unity in their methods, and they were known by many
names, such as associations, unions, union societies, trade clubs, and
trade societies. These societies had no legal status and their meetings
were usually held in secret. And the Webbs in their "History of Trade
Unionism" allude to the traditions of "the midnight meeting of patriots
in the corner of the field, the buried box of records, the secret oath, the
long terms of imprisonment of the leading officials." Some of these
tales were unquestionably apocryphal, others were exaggerated by
feverish repetition. But they indicate the aversion with which the
authorities looked upon these combinations.
There were two legal doctrines long invoked by the English courts
against combined action--doctrines that became a heritage of the United
States and have had a profound effect upon the labor movements in
America. The first of these was the doctrine of conspiracy, a doctrine
so ancient that its sources are obscure. It was the natural product of a
government and of a time that looked askance at all combined action,
fearing sedition, intrigue, and revolution. As far back as 1305 there was
enacted a statute defining conspiracy and outlining the offense. It did
not aim at any definite social class but embraced all persons who
combined for a "malicious enterprise." Such an enterprise was the
breaking of a law. So when Parliament passed acts regulating wages,
conditions of employment, or prices of commodities, those who
combined secretly or openly to circumvent the act, to raise wages or
lower them, or to raise prices and curtail markets, at once fell under the
ban of conspiracy. The law operated alike on conspiring employers and
conniving employees.
The new class of employers during the early years of the machine age
eagerly embraced the doctrine of conspiracy. They readily brought
under the legal definition the secret connivings of the wage-earners.
Political conditions now also worked against the laboring class. The
unrest in the colonies that culminated in the independence of America
and the fury of the French Revolution combined to make kings and
aristocracies wary of all organizations and associations of plain folk.
And when we add to this the favor which the new employing class, the

industrial masters, were able to extort from the governing class,
because of their power over foreign trade and domestic finance, we can
understand the compulsory laws at length declaring against all
combinations of working men.
The second legal doctrine which Americans have inherited from
England and which has played a leading role in labor controversies is
the doctrine that declares unlawful all combinations in restraint of trade.
Like its twin doctrine of conspiracy, it is of remote historical origin.
One of the earliest uses, perhaps the first use, of the term by Parliament
was in the statute of 1436 forbidding guilds and trading companies
from adopting by-laws "in restraint of trade," and forbidding practices
in price manipulations "for their own profit and to the common hurt of
the people." This doctrine thus early invoked, and repeatedly reasserted
against combinations of traders and masters, was incorporated in the
general statute of 1800 which declared all combinations of journeymen
illegal. But in spite of legal doctrines, of innumerable laws and court
decisions, strikes and combinations multiplied, and devices were found
for evading statutory wages.
In 1824 an act of Parliament removed the general prohibition of
combinations and accorded to workingmen the right to bargain
collectively. Three men were responsible for this noteworthy reform,
each one a new type in British politics. The first was Francis Place, a
tailor who had taken active part in various strikes. He was secretary of
the London Corresponding Society, a powerful labor union, which in
1795 had twenty branches in London. Most of the officers of this
organization were at one time or another arrested, and some were kept
in prison three years without a trial. Place, schooled in such experience,
became a radical politician of great influence, a friend of Bentham,
Owen, and the elder Mill. The second type of new reformer was
represented by Joseph Hume, a physician who had accumulated wealth
in the India Service, who had returned home to enter public life, and
who was converted from Toryism to Radicalism by a