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 opinion that it would be detrimental to the government to accede to their request. This forced the matter into the attention of the National Trades' Union. At its second convention in 1835 it decided to petition Congress for a ten-hour day for employes on government works. The petition was introduced by the labor Congressman from New York, Ely Moore. Congress curtly replied, however, that it was not a matter for legislation but "that the persons employed should redress their own grievances." With Congress in such a mood, the hopes of the workingmen turned to the President.

A first step was made in the summer of 1836, when the workers in the Navy Yard at Philadelphia struck for a ten-hour day and appealed to President Jackson for relief. They would have nothing further to do with Congress. They had supported President Jackson in his fight against the United States Bank and now sought a return favor. At a town meeting of "citizens, mechanics, and working men," a committee was appointed to lay the issue before him. He proved indeed more responsive than Congress and ordered the ten-hour system established.

But the order applied only to the localities where the strike occurred. The agitation had been chiefly local. Besides Philadelphia and New York the mechanics secured the ten-hour day in Baltimore and Annapolis, but in the District of Columbia and elsewhere they were still working twelve or fourteen hours. In other words, the ten-hour day was secured only where trade societies existed.

But the organized labor movement did not rest with a partial success. The campaign of pressure on the President went on. Finally, although somewhat belatedly, President Van Buren issued on March 31, 1840, the famous executive order establishing the ten-hour day on government work without a reduction in wages.

The victory came after the National Trades' Union had gone out of existence and should be, more correctly, correlated with a labor political movement. Early in 1837 came a financial panic. The industrial depression wiped out in a short time every form of labor organization from the trade societies to the National Trades' Union. Labor stood defenseless against the economic storm. In this emergency it turned to politics as a measure of despair.

The political dissatisfaction assumed the form of hostility towards banks and corporations in general. The workingmen held the banks responsible for the existing anarchy in currency, from which they suffered both as consumers and producers. Moreover, they felt that there was something uncanny and threatening about corporations with their continuous existence and limited liability. Even while their attention had been engrossed by trade unionism, the workingmen were awake to the issue of monopoly. Together with their employers they had therefore supported Jackson in his assault upon the largest "monster" of them all—the Bank of the United States. The local organizations of the Democratic party, however, did not always remain true to faith. In such circumstances the workingmen, again acting in conjunction with their masters, frequently extended their support to the "insurgent" anti-monopoly candidates in the Democratic party conventions. Such a revolt took place in Philadelphia in 1835; and in New York, although Tammany had elected Ely Moore, the President of the General Trades' Union of New York, to Congress in 1834, a similar revolt occurred. The upshot was a triumphant return of the rebels into the fold of Tammany in 1837. During the next twenty years, Tammany came nearer to being a workingmen's organization than at any other time in its career.

(4) The Long Depression, 1837-1862

The twenty-five years which elapsed from 1837 to 1862 form a period of business depression and industrial disorganization only briefly interrupted during 1850-1853 by the gold discoveries in California. The aggressive unions of the thirties practically disappeared. With industry disorganized, trade unionism, or the effort to protect the standard of living by means of strikes, was out of question. As the prospect for immediate amelioration became dimmed by circumstances, an opportunity arrived for theories and philosophies of radical social reform. Once the sun with its life-giving heat has set, one begins to see the cold and distant stars.

The uniqueness of the period of the forties in the labor movement proceeds not only from the large volume of star-gazing, but also from the accompanying fact that, for the first and only time in American history, the labor movement was dominated by men and women from the educated class, the "intellectuals," who thus served in the capacity of expert astrologers.

And there was no lack of stars in the heaven of social reform to occupy both intellectual and wage earner. First, there was the efficiency scheme of the followers of Charles Fourier, the French socialist, or, as they preferred to call themselves, the Associationists. Theirs was a proposal aiming directly to meet the issue of the prevailing industrial disorganization and wasteful competition. Albert Brisbane, Horace Greeley, and