CHAPTER VIII AMERICAN LABOR PROBLEMS The American Labor Movement has been a natural, evolutionary and inevitable development of the workers in self-protection against the encroachment of the industrial system upon human life. The very existence of the United States as an independent nation originated in collective action over a trade dispute. During the colonial period Great Britain had sought to develop and retain her own industries and to make the colonies an agricultural base for the supply of raw materials; but following American independence in 1789 there was a marked development of industry in the States. The trade unions came into being for the purpose of collective bargaining to protect individual workers against the heavy handicaps to which they were subjected under the industrial revolution. With the introduction of cheap foreign goods the workers had to meet the increasing pressure of low wages. The labor organizations in the American colonies in the seventeenth century had been mere friendly and benevolent societies, or craft guilds of workmen. The first organization of workers of a single trade and the first recorded strike occurred in 1786 among the printers in Philadelphia who went on strike for a minimum wage of $6.00 a week.1 The first cases of collective bargaining occurred among the Philadelphia cordwainers in 1799 and the New York printers in 1809. Thus "the nineteenth century opened 1 J. R. Commons, "History of Labor," Vol. I, p. 25. 174 with the principle of collective bargaining well understood in labor and employing circles and frequently applied in trade disputes." We find the masters combining during the same period and in their attitude to the workers' organizations they endeavored "to break them up altogether, root and branch." Even before 1800 we find instances of the punishment of scabs or strikebreakers, the use of the boycott and closed shop to protect apprentices and laborers. Within ten years of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 the Philadelphia printers had provided a strike fund.2 The walking delegate began his rounds to consult the masters on a common wage scale in 1799 and 1800, for the Philadelphia shoemakers and the Franklin Typographical Society of New York. Contests between employers and workers in the courts had already begun in Philadelphia, New York and Pittsburgh between 1806 and 1814. The organized labor movement in the United States may be said to have begun with the union of wage earners of various trades in Philadelphia in 1827.3 The carpenters had gone on strike for a ten-hour day and the other organized workmen of the city rallied to their support to prevent a "depreciation of the intrinsic value of human labor establishing a just balance of power, both mental, moral, political and scientific between all the various classes and individuals which constitute society at large."4 The following year marked the entrance of the "Me 1 Ibid., pp. 119-126. 2 Watkins, "Labor Problems," pp. 123, 126. Craft unions were organized among the Shoemakers of Philadelphia, 1792; the printers of New York, 1794; the carpenters of Philadelphia, 1791; the Baltimore tailors, 1795, etc. Watkins, "Labor Problems," pp. 2, 340. •Commons, "History of Labor," Vol. I, pp. 15, 190. chanics' Union" of Philadelphia into politics, by the election of a number of labor candidates on the city council and state legislature to "represent the interest of the working classes." This example was followed successfully in other cities. Soon there were local labor parties in fifteen states and at least fifty labor papers were established.1 2 The workers demanded a ten-hour day, the restriction of child labor, the abolition of sweat shops and many of the rights for which labor is still contending today after a century of effort. Partly to the agitation of organized labor a century ago, we owe the beginning of our public school system. As in the British movement, labor looked on education as the hope of the workingman. The first report at a convention of workingmen in New England showed 1,600 out of 4,000 factory hands were children from six to sixteen years of age, not allowed to go to school and compelled to work fourteen hours a day. By 1836 there were already some 300,000 organized workers in the seaboard cities. In spite of systematic efforts to crush the unions from 1829 to 1842 the movement not only spread but single trades began to organize on a national scale. During the second quarter of the nineteenth century from 1827 to 1850 labor became a significant factor in the United States. Craft unions began to combine in inter-trade associations and the National Trades Union held its first annual convention in 1834. The failure of labor's ventures in political action and the bankruptcy of the unions in the depression following the panic of 1837 led to a decade of experiments in humanitarian utopias, socialism and co-operative communities. Reformers, phil 1 M. Beard, "Short History of American Labor Movement," pp. 36, 37, 40. Commons, "History of Labor in the United States," Vol. I, pp. 170, 184, 224. anthropists and intellectuals like Horace Greeley, John G. Whittier and Robert Dale Owen worked for the amelioration of the lot of the workers. American workingmen, however, have never been greatly attracted by what they considered impractical idealism or utopian socialistic ventures. With their pragmatic and practical habit they soon returned to the revival of craft unionism and the immediate improvement of their wages, hours and conditions of work. Following the Civil War not less than thirty-two national unions were established before 1870. The Knights of Labor organized as a national amalgamation in a highly centralized movement in 1869. Gradually the movement became idealistic, political and impractical. It aimed to unite all workers, skilled and unskilled, in one centralized class organization. Its membership exceeded 700,000 in 1886, yet by 1900 it became practically extinct. Its failure may be traced to its being involved in costly strikes, its artificial theory of the identity of interest of all workers, its mixed composition, its political entanglements, its over-centralization and its impractical idealism. It failed because it rested upon false assumptions and was contrary to the reality of modern industrial forces.1 The American Federation of Labor was founded in 1886, at the height of the activity of the Knights of Labor, with Samuel Gompers as President. It turned from utopias to the vigorous prosecution of labor's immediate practical ends. It was founded on the autonomy of craft unions united in a loose federation. The craft union unites workers engaged in a single occupation, organized both locally and nationally. The indus1 Professor Hoxie, "Trade Unionism in the United States," p. 93. trial union seeks to unite all workers, skilled or unskilled, of all departments or crafts engaged in one industry like the United Mine Workers of America. The trades union federates unions of different crafts and industries in a city, state, national or international federation. Thus the Chicago Federation of Labor, the Illinois Federation of Labor and the American Federation of Labor unite workers of all crafts and industries. The American Federation of Labor began with its chief emphasis upon craft unionism, but has developed toward industrial unionism. Its growth was steady and normal from 584,321 in 1900 to 4,079,740 in 1920.1 It suffered a slight decrease in the years of depression that followed. The American Federation belongs to the right wing of labor, being perhaps the most conservative of all large labor movements of the world. While the Russians have turned to Communism, the Latin nations to Syndicalism, the Germans to Marxian State Socialism, the British to political, constitutional, Fabian tactics for a new social order, the American Labor Movement has refused all alliance with socialism and has held tenaciously to its practical industrial program. This has been due largely to the leadership of Mr. Samuel Gompers as President from 1886 until the present time, save for one year. He has refused to be drawn into radical economic theories, and has stood for the immediate practical ends of an eight-hour day, collective bargaining and protective labor legislation under the present capitalistic system. The movement has been one of the great 1 The growth of the A. F. of L. may be seen in the following table: |