A short history of the American labor movement

Front matter

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT

MARY BEARD

HD Beard, Mary Ritter

Preface

This little book is intended as a brief and simple story of the labor movement in the United States from the day of independence to the present time. Although there are many special studies, including the great treatise by John R. Commons and his Associates, there is no single, comprehensive volume of moderate size for the busy citizen. It seems hardly necessary to dwell upon the importance of more exact and more widespread knowledge of the history, aims and methods of labor organizations in this country.

This volume is largely based upon the monumental History of Labor in the United States by Professor Commons and his Associates. Several other books, however, have been used with the Commons text, especially for the history since 1905. Among these supplementary books may be mentioned: P. F. Brissenden, The I. W. W.; a Study in American Syndicalism (Columbia University Studies) ; M. Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States; Report of the Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor; Stanwood, History of the Presidency (Vols. I and II) for all party platforms; F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific; C. Becker, History of Political Parties in the Province of New York; Alice Henry, The Trade Union Woman; Edith Abbott, Woman in Industry; and Samuel Gompers, Labor and the Common Welfare.

Maky Ritter Beakd.

Contents

CBAPTBB PAGE

I. Nature and Significance of the Labor Movement 1

II. Origin of American Trade Unions .... 10

CHAPTER II ORIGIN OF AMERICAN TRADE UNIONS Local labor organizations in colonial times

There were no trade unions in the modern sense in the American colonies under British dominion. There were labor organizations in the towns but they Vere friendly and benevolent societies formed by mechanics and journeymen. They were similar in spirit to those formed among master employers. Their main purpose was to take care of members in times of illness or financial distress. They were friendly societies in an age when public hospitals, homes for the aged, poor farms, pensions, and charitable institutions were not sustained on a large scale by public taxation. They were formed by the new town-dwellers — printers, shoemakers, smiths, and carpenters, — who had been separated from the soil and therefore had no individual resources to fall back upon in an emergency. Just as members of the same church, race, or neighborhood drew together for mutual aid, so the mechanics drew together to help one another. As there were no banks or credit societies, these early trade societies kept chests for

ORIGIx\ OF AMERICAN TRADE UNIONS 11

the deposit of money and, on occasion, loaned money to members in need. In addition to their benevolent features, they acted as censors of the quality of the work of their members and even censored morals as well as workmanship. When they were legally incorporated, it was with the express stipulation that they were not to interfere with wages, hours of labor, and similai' economic matters. In short, they were not trade unions as we understand that term to-day.

Independence opens a new era in industry and labor. — With American independence, an entirely new set of forces came into play. Great Britain had supervised and restricted American enterprise in the interest of the mother country. When her restraints were thrown off, Americans thought they could develop their own industries in their own way. They could trade with all countries of the world and thus widely extend their markets, increasing the demand for their goods. Great Britain, being anxious to retain industries for herself, had sought to keep the colonies agricultural in character. British control being broken, the Americans leaped with zeal into the industrial field. They had an abundance of natural resources of all kinds, and they no longer had an outside force to stay their hands.

The adoption of the Constitution marks a commercial revolution. — The period that followed inde^ pendence (1776) was one of war and weakness, but when the new form of government was established in

1789, giving strength to the union of states and security to business, American enterprise was soon manifest. Under the Constitution, a national bank was founded to give a common medium of exchange throughout the country ; uniform currency was introduced ; treaties with foreign powers were negotiated ; the tariffs which the states had formerly imposed on goods coming from other states were broken dovsm. In a word, the American market was extended over the entire United States. Commercial warfare between the states was stopped. Finances were put on a sound basis. American credit abroad was established firmly and foreign capital to develop iron, steel, ship building and other industries was secured in abundance. With social order guaranteed, plenty of capital at hand, unlimited natural resources, a national market available, a world market opened, a generous supply of European labor assured through immigration, American business men could swing forward with their industries on a large scale.

The great market opened by the merchant capitalist.— The great market was first opened by a peculiar type of business man, the merchant capitalist. He was not usually the owner of industries nor the employer of artisans. He was a trader and middle-man, mediating between the producer and the consumer. He specialized in buying and selling. His motto was: "Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest market." He therefore bought up

ORIGIN OP AMERICAN TRADE UNIONS 13

immense supplies, sometimes in Europe, and sometimes in Boston, Providence, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia and wherever they could be found. These he accumulated in warehouses at one or more points and soli in large quantities to local storekeepers, competing sharply with the local master and his workman.

The merchant capitalist conquers local employers.— The community market was being supplanted by a national and even international market Now the cheapest market in which to buy was the market in which production was the most advanced and, as American industries were far behind those of Europe, the merchant capitalist bought most of his goods abroad. Thus he incurred the odium of American employers, employees, and patriots like Washington and Hamilton who wanted to develop home industries. Americans who thought they could capture the European market by being freed from England found themselves captured instead by traders in foreign goods. The merchant capitalist made steady headway, bringing under his thumb the local employer whose community market he invaded, undercutting him in the sale of goods. The employer, who in older and simpler days could take sides with his workmen against the community in fixing wages and prices, could no longer do this. He lost his monopoly over prices in his own market. If he met the competition of cheap goods from abroad, or from other American towns, he had to cut wages.

Employers and workmen seek protection. — The merchant capitalist thus found natural enemies in both American employers and workmen. Out of the struggle against him four important results ensued: (1) a national protective tariif policy; (2) attempts of masters and men to increase the quantity and improve the quality of their output; (3) the separation of the employees from their employers and the formation of unions designed to uphold wages; (4) the recognition by the workmen of themselves as a distinct gi-oup in the community with interests of their own in markets and wages to be sustained by the strength of organization against all comers.

At first as anxious as their employers to secure protection against cheap foreign goods brought in by the merchant capitalist, workmen supported the adoption of the new federal Constitution and approved the enactment of tariff laws laying duties on imports. They also combined with their master employers in associations to improve their respective trades and crafts. An Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers was formed in Providence in 1789 "for the purpose of promoting industry and giving a just encouragement to ingenuity." In Boston and Charleston, shipwrights and caulkers offered premiums for inventions and made every effort to spur the younger workers to use their minds in improv-

ORIGIN OF AMERICAN TRADE UNIONS 15

ing metliods and tools. In Boston the printers employed chemists to perfect type, paper, ink and other products. A patent law passed in 1790 gave protection to American inventors. Apprentice schools and libraries were established in ISTew York and Philadelphia with a view to increasing the skill and productiveness of workmen and masters. Every encouragement was given to young men to establish shops of their own in order that skill and independence might be blended in American labor in the future as in colonial times. Even loan funds were created, Benjamin Franklin leaving £1000 for this object because he had been established in the printing business in this manner. Thus labor and employers united in a common protection against the merchant capitalist who was invading American markets with cheap goods.

Labor breaks away from employers. — With all

their efforts at self-protection and improvement in the technique of their industry, the industrial workers, however, saw a steady trend toward cheap wares and low wages. In all parts of the country, the merchant capitalist carried on his operations, buying and selling domestic products as well as disposing of his foreign stocks. Societies of master employers, which had been mainly benevolent, now changed to associations to keep down wages in order that they might secure contracts with the middleman, the merchant capitalist. Labor associations with benevolent purposes gave way to trade unions organized for protection against the invader wlio cut prices and wages and looked solely to profits. Labor also began to divorce itself from societies of manufacturers and master mechanics formed to train apprentices and improve methods of production. Workingmen began to say : ''What is the use of improving our skill and increasing our output, if we cannot protect ourselves against falling wages ?"

The rise of the trade union. — Such were the circumstances in the latter part of the eighteenth century which gave birth to the trade union and the labor movement. Even before the Constitution had been adopted, some ISTew York workmen saw what was coming and organized in 1785 a society to forestall the wholesaler, the merchant capitalist, the middleman who invaded and destroyed the peace of the community market. About the same time other societies began to spring up rapidly. These organizations were made up of skilled workers only: like printers, shoemakers, tailors, and carpenters. All records of many of these early local labor societies have disappeared ; but we know that the shoemakers of Philadelphia were organized in 1792 ; that the printers of New York had their Typogi-aphical Society as early as 1794 and were organized in Baltimore and Philadelphia during the opening years of the nineteenth century. The Boston printers were

ORIGIN OF AMERICAN TRADE UNIONS 17

associated on a permanent basis in 1809, and in New Orleans a year later.

During tte quarter of a century that followed the inauguration of Washington as first President of the United States in 1789, the skilled workmen of the American towns formed powerful local organizations to take part in the fixing of wages, hours, and the conditions of the industries generally. During the same period, trade unions drew slowly away from employers, finally excluding from membership those journeymen who became masters. In 1817 the !New York printers expelled a member who had become an employer, saying: "This is a society of journej^Tnen printers; and as the interests of the journeymen are separate and in some respects opposite to those of the employers we deem it improper that they should have any voice or influence in our deliberations."

These organizations of employees, united as a class to fight their own battles, were purely local associations of local workmen in specific trades. There was no consistent, combined action among the members of the several trade unions in any single town. The printers carried on their own affairs and the shoemakers theirs. They were not indifferent, of course, to the struggles of their fellow workmen of other crafts. There were correspondence and friendly co-operation among the various craft unions of a single city and among the unions of a single craft in several cities, but it was not until long afterward that strikes, politics, and battles against judicial decisions began to turn the minds of trade unionists to organization on a municipal, state, and national scale. The day of the great newspaper, the railway, and the telegraph had not yet arrived. Trade unionism was local and confined to separate crafts.

CHAPTER III THE CENTURY-OLD TACTICS OE LABOR Labor tactics as important as labor organization

— An organization without policy and action is, of course, powerless to accomplish results. Naturally, therefore, the early local associations of craftsmen had to decide just what methods they were to follow in dealing with their employers. In the old days when they worked side by side with the master, and there were only a few in the shop, it was a simple matter for them to talk over in a friendly way any problems or differences that arose. As the cities grew in size and the shops increased in number, as the employees began firmly to close their unions to masters, the question of how best to formulate their demands, present them to their employers, and enforce them became a live issue. One by one the elements of the problem were worked out and a program of tactics and policies developed.

Collective bargaining. — Collective bargaining, meaning negotiations carried on between employers (or their representatives), on the one hand, and the

chosen representatives of the trade union, on the other hand, appeared in the early days of the American lahor movement. It is recorded that the first attempt at regular collective bargaining of this kind was made by the Philadelphia shoemakers in 1799 when a "deputation from the society waited upon the employers with an offer of compromise." In this case the employers said they would consider the offer and appointed a committee of their own to meet with the journeymen. In 1802 the printers and shoemakers of Philadelphia and the shoemakers of Pittsburgh sent a committee to visit various employers and confer with them over the wage scales.

In 1809, when the !New York printers submitted their lists to the masters, this courteous reply came back from the employers' association : "In presenting [a set of resolutions] to the consideration of the Typographical society, they [the employers] think it proper to remark that, although no circumstances have come to their knowledge which would justify on the part of the journeymen a demand for more than the customary wages, yet, desirous of meeting them in the spirit of conciliation and harmony and to remove every obstacle that might have a tendency to interrupt a mutual good understanding, the master printers have made considerable advances on the prices hitherto given and to as great an extent as the present state of the printing business would admit. The scale which is now offered may therefore be considered as a maximum beyond which it would be highly injurious, if not ruinous, to the interests of the trade to venture." As a result of this courtesy on the part of the employing printers, committees representing both sides of the controversy met and finally agreed upon a compromise scale of wages. All over the country similar attempts weve made so that we may say the nineteenth century opened with the principle of collective bargaining well un- ^ derstood in labor and employing circles and frequently applied in trade disputes.

Strikes. — The strike, meaning the action of workmen in quitting their employment in a body, is, of course, a natural corollary of organization and the formulation of demands as to wages and hours. Labor early recognized this fact. Ten years after the Declaration of American Independence in 1776, the printers of Philadelphia, after providing for a strike fund for the benefit of members, struck against their employers. In 1799 the skilled shoemakers of Baltimore and Pittsburgh struck for higher wages, against the competition of Lynn, Massachusetts, which had become a large center for the manufacture of coarse shoes — a center of cheap shoes and cheap labor. The practice thus early established was followed quite regularly when agreements over wages could not be reached by negotiations.

For the most part, it seems, these first trade disputes were conducted without any considerable disturbance. The journeymen simply remained away from work until the employers gave in, or they were compelled to yield, or a compromise was reached. Violence and intimidation did however occasionally appear, as in the case of the shoemakers' strike in Philadelphia in 1806 when ^'scabs were beaten and employers intimidated by demonstrations in front of the shop or by breaking shop windows."

The walking delegate. — As soon as a labor organization began to fix a "price list" or wage scale, it adopted the practice of sending the paper around to employers. One of the representatives of the union might "walk" around to see the masters. In 1800 the Franklin Typogi-aphical Society of New York drew up the first complete wage scale in the country and sent it to the individual employers of printers. Some labor societies selected "tramping committees" to visit the various shops to see whether the workmen in the unions were abiding by the wage scale and were "honest to the cause." This took a great deal of time and it was not thought fair to ask members to do such work without remuneration. As early as 1799, the Philadelphia shoemakers substituted one delegate for the committee and arranged to pay him for his labor. Thus the paid walking delegate appeared on the scene. It was a long time, however, before the tramping committee was entirely set aside in favor of the paid agent.

The closed shop. — The term "closed shop" is of modern origin but the exclusive policy which it implies appeared in the labor movement as early as 1794 when the cordwainers of Philadelphia and elsewhere compelled each employer to retain none but union members in his shop. This was an old principle applied in the organization of guilds in the middle ages and by the lawyers and other professional classes. The Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburgh cordwainers, as soon as they were well organized, required every member of the craft to join the society on entering the town. One manufacturer who refused to recognize only members of the cordwainers' society was forced to move out of Philadelphia after fighting the closed shop idea for a year and a half. Employers were sometimes compelled to pay fines to the union for employing non-union members. During a strike of the New York Cordwainers in 1810, the lawyer for the society explained what the trouble was all about: "If the majority of the workmen were content with their wages, the majority would be harmless; but if an individual will seek to better himself at the expense of his fellows, when they are suffering privation to obtain better terms, it is not hard that they leave him to his employers ; and the most inoffensive manner in which they can show their displeasure is by shaking the dust off their feet and leaving the shop where he is engaged."

The boycott. — This modern term means "to combine (a) in refusing to work for, buy from, sell to, give assistance to, or to have any dealings with; and (b) in preventing others from working for, buying from, selling to, assisting, or having any kind of dealings with" another person or company. The term originated in Ireland in 1880, but the practice which it implies appeared very early in the American labor movement in the form of discrimination against non-union workmen. The boycott of the non-union man was first applied, not to the master who employed him or to the goods he made, but to the boarding house where he ate. Social intercourse with him was forbidden. Sometimes he was roughly handled and compelled to pay a fine to the union for refusing to join.

Control over apprenticeship. — No union can effectively control wages without reference to the supply of trained workmen ready to enter the craft. For this reason, the American local unions, at the very outset, took a stand on apprenticeship. They naturally objected strenuously to the unskilled worker whose low standard tended to cut wages and bring about sharp competition both in the quality of work and the compensation received for it. The New York Typogi*aphical Society, for instance, in 1809, complained that "a superabundance of learners, runaway apprentices, and half-way journeymen as well as adults who had served less than half time at their trade, had a depressing effect upon the wages of full-fledged workers." In a like manner, the New York cordwainers protested against the way the masters crowded "their shops with more apprentices than they could instruct." The printers also protested against "taking full grown men [foreigners] as apprentices for some twelve or fifteen months when they are to be turned into the situations of the men who are masters of their business, which men are to be turned out of their places by miserable botches because they will work for what they can get." Attempts, however, to regulate apprenticeship were not very effective on account of the rapid growth of the population, the influx of foreigners, and the continual shifting of the people from city to city. The old English rule of "six year apprentice^ ship" was merely a custom more often neglected than observed. Labor unions struggled to maintain it, but they had varying success.

The minimum wage. — Skilled workers were forced to rely upon the minimum wage or standard piece rate as a means of defense against the inferior workman or half-trained apprentice. From the first they insisted upon a minimum wage below which no worker could fall, while the more skilled might rise above it if he could. If employers had to pay that wage they naturally would not choose unskilled workmen. The minimum wage was bound up also with the price for which the given product could be sold in the market. Workers refused to permit a master to sell his goods at such a price that the minimum wage could not be paid. This in effect merely meant continuing as far as possible the practice of the old days when master and men by agreement decided upon a "fair wage" and a "fair price" for the goods which they sold to their neighbors in the community, but it was only by a strong union that it could be maintained after the invasion of the market by the merchant capitalist and the factory system.

Employers' Associations. — It is sometimes said that employers' associations were older than trade unions and were formed for the purpose of cutting down wages. The evidence in the case, however, seems to point to the contrary. There were, it is true, employers' organizations very early in the history of the labor movement. The Master Cordwainers were organized in 1789, but their aim was rather to raise prices than to reduce wages. As soon as the wages question became serious, as the result of the formation of strong trade unions, organizations of m.aS'ters were established to resist the demands of the workmen. When workers were scarce they negotiated with them in a conciliatory way. As the unions grew in strength the masters often sought an opportunity to "break them up altogether, root and branch." They advertised out of town for new workmen; they agreed among themselves to resist high wage scales; and they united in appealing to the courts for aid against employees'

"conspiracies in restraint of trade," as they called strikes and concerted wage demands.

Labor's battles in the courts.— The contest between masters and trade unions was carried into the courts in Philadelphia as early as 1806, in N'ew York in 1809, and in Pittsburgh in 1814. In the latter two cases it appears that the masters had raised considerable sums of money to aid in the prosecution of strikers for criminal conspiracy. There is no doubt that employers all over the country were interested in the outcome of the legal battles; for the reporter of the Pittsburgh case said in the preface to his report :

Perhaps he would not . . . have undertaken to report it, but for the pressing soUcitations of many respectable Mechanics and Manufacturers. . . . The verdict of the jury is most important to the manufacturing interests of the community ; it puts an end to those associations which have been so prejudicial to the successful enterprize of the capitalists of the western country. But this case is not important to this country alone ; it proves beyond possibility of doubt that notwithstanding the adjudications in New York and Philadelphia, there still exist in those cities combinations which extend their deleterious influence to every part of the union. The inhabitants of those cities, the manufacturers particularly, are boimd by their interests, as well as the duties they owe [the] community, to watch those combinations with a jealous eye, and to prosecute to conviction and

28 AMEBIOAN LABOR MOVEMENT

subject to the penalties of the law, conspiracies so subversive to the best interests of the country.

The legal issue involved in the conspiracy cases was whether, in the absence of a statute or act of the legislature on the point, the old common law doctrine of England applied in this country; if it did, any combination of workmen to raise wages was to be regarded as a conspiracy against the public. On this point American citizens were divided. The Federalists, or conservative followers of Alexander Hamilton, held that the English law did apply in America. The followers of Jefferson, who were certainly radical in their opinion for their day, took the opposite view. Of six legal cases arising between 1806 and 1815, four were decided against the workmen. A Baltimore case ended in a verdict for the journeymen, and a Pittsburgh case resulted in a compromise in which the workmen in fact lost the strike and paid the costs of the legal battle.

The conviction of the union men in Philadelphia and New York was followed by a hot political dispute between the conservative Federalists and the radical Jeffersonian Democrats. Indeed, during the contest in the courts the Jeffersonian papers attacked the legal doctrine of English common law that combinations of workmen were in restraint of trade and therefore illegal. In the elections shortly afterward the issue was carried to the polls and the Jeffersonians succeeded in electing judges more favorable to the contention of labor, but the contest was not closed for all time. On the contrary, it continued to be a live question discussed with much passion whenever strikes and labor disputes brought it to the front.

A careful analysis of the opinions expressed on both sides in the early stages of the struggle shows how old and American are many ideas that seem strange, perverse, and perhaps alien in character to those who do not know our history. On behalf of the employers who sought the dissolution of combinations of workmen formed to raise wages, it was said: ''Those best acquainted with our situation believe that manufactures will bye and bye become one of its chief means of support. A vast quantity of manufactured articles are already exported to the West Indies and the southern states; we rival supplies from England in many things and great sums are annually received in return. It is then proper to support this manuf actui-e. Will you permit men to destroy it, who have no permanent stake in the city; men who can pack up their all in a knapsack or cai-ry them in their pockets to E'ew York or Baltimore?" Such was the impassioned declaration of the prosecutor in the Philadelphia case.

The Pittsburgh judge in his charge to the jurors warned them that such combinations would drive manufacturing out of the city, adding: "Is this a slight consideration in a manufacturing town ? And can they be guiltless who enter into combinations which have a manifest tendency to produce such a result?" The jurors were furthermore reminded that they were consumers and that higher wages meant higher prices. They were told that liberty and equality were on the side of the employers. The prosecutors were represented as men who "merely stood as the guardians of the community from imposition and rapacity," upholding freedom and liberty against oppression by organized workmen.

The spokesmen of labor on their part also used arguments that seem to have a modern ring. They laid claim to the highest kind of patriotism. They argued that recognition of labor's claims "will increase our commerce, encourage our manufactures, and promote peace and prosperity." They said to the consumer:

Temptations are held out to procure a conviction. . . . You are told that you will get your cossacks and slippers made cheaper by convicting the defendants [the workmen]. . . . Rest assured that they will not fox a boot or heel tap a shoe, one farthing cheaper for a conviction ... If you banish from this place (as it is morally certain you will) a great number of the best workmen, by a verdict of guilty, can you reasonably expect that labor will be cheaper? Will it not rise in value in exact proportion to the scarcity of hands and the demand for boots and shoes like every other article in the market?

CENTUEY-OLD TACTICS OF LABOR 31

Labor's advocate in Philadelphia in arguing for liberty and democracy declared: "I would not barter away our dear bought rights and American liberty for all the warehouses of London and Liverpool and the manufactures of Birmingham and Manchester; no, not if were to be added to them the gold of Mexico, the silver of Peru, and the diamonds of Brazil." The striking shoemakers under prosecution in Philadelphia, in a JefFersonian newspaper, made their appeal for political support in this language: "The master shoemakers . . . who in truth live upon the work of our hands, are generally men of large property to whom the suspension of business, though it is a loss, is not so great a loss as the total suspension of the means of subsistence is to us who obtain our income from week to week. . . . The name of freedom is but a shadow, if for doing what the laws of our country authorize we are to have taskmasters to measure out our pittance of subsistence— if we are to be torn from our firesides for endeavoring to obtain a fair and just support for our families, and if we are to be treated as felons and murderers only for asserting our right to take or refuse what we deem an adequate reward for our labor."