A History of Trade Unionism in the United States

by Selig Perlman

But the results of the Troy experiment, typical of the others, show how far from a successful solution of the labor problem is productive cooperation. Although this "Troy Cooperative Iron Founders' Association" was planned with great deliberation and launched at a time when the regular stove manufacturers were embarrassed by strikes, and although it was regularly incorporated with a provision that each member was entitled to but one vote whether he held one share at $100, or the maximum privilege of fifty in the total of two thousand shares, it failed as did the others in furnishing permanent relief to the workers as a class. At the end of the third year of this enterprise, the American Workman published a sympathetic account of its progress unconsciously disclosing its fatal weakness, namely, the inevitable tendency of cooperators to adopt the capitalistic view. The writer of this account quotes from these cooperators to show that "the fewer the stockholders in the company the greater its success."

A similar instance is furnished by the Cooperative Foundry Company of Rochester. This venture has also been a financial success, though a partial failure as a cooperative enterprise. When it was established in 1867 all employes were stockholders and profits were divided as follows: Twelve percent on capital and the balance in proportion to the earnings of the men. But the capitalist was stronger than the cooperative brother. Dividends on capital were advanced in a few years to seventeen and one-half percent, then to twenty-five, and finally the distribution of any part of the profits in proportion to wages was discontinued. Money was made every year and dividends paid, which in 1884 amounted to forty percent on the capital. At that time about one-fifth of the employes were stockholders. Also in this case cooperation did not prevent the usual conflict between employer and employe, as is shown in a strike of three and a half months' duration. It is interesting to notice that one of the strikers, a member of the Molders' Union, owned stock to the amount of $7000.

The machinists, too, throughout this period took an active interest in cooperation. Their convention which met in October, 1865, appointed a committee to report on a plan of action to establish a cooperative shop under the auspices of the International Union. The plan failed of adoption, but of machinists' shops on the joint-stock plan there were a good many. Two other trades noted for their enthusiasm for cooperation at this time were the shoemakers and the coopers. The former, organized in the Order of St. Crispin, then the largest trade union in the country, advocated cooperation even when their success in strikes was at its height. "The present demand of the Crispin is steady employment and fair wages, but his future is self-employment" was one of their mottoes. During the seventies they repeatedly attempted to carry this motto into effect. The seventies also saw the beginning of the most successful single venture in productive cooperation ever undertaken in this country, namely, the eight cooperative cooperage shops in Minneapolis, which were established at varying intervals from 1874 to 1886. The coopers took care to enforce true cooperation by providing for equal holding of stock and for a division of ordinary profits and losses in proportion to wages. The cooper shops prospered, but already ten years later four out of the eight existing in 1886 had passed into private hands.

In 1866 when the eight-hour demand was as yet uppermost, the National Labor Union resolved for an independent labor party. The espousal of greenbackism in 1867 only reenforced that resolution. The leaders realized only too well that neither the Republican nor Democratic party would voluntarily make an issue of a scheme purporting to assist the wage earner to become an independent producer. Accordingly, the history of the National Labor Union became largely the history of labor's first attempt to play a lone political hand on a national scale.

Each annual session of the National Labor Union faithfully reaffirmed the decision to "cut loose" from the old parties. But such a vast undertaking demanded time. It was not until 1872 that the National Labor Union met as a political convention to nominate a national ticket. From the first the stars were inauspicious. Charges were made that political aspirants sought to control the convention in order to influence nominations by the Republican and Democratic parties. A "greenback" platform was adopted as a matter of course and the new party was christened the National Labor and Reform Party. On the first formal ballot for nomination for President, Judge David Davis of Illinois, a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, received 88 votes, Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist, 52, and the remainder scattered. On the third ballot Davis was nominated. Governor J. Parker of New Jersey was nominated for Vice-President. At first Judge Davis accepted the nomination, but resigned after the Democrats had nominated Horace Greeley. The loss of the candidate spelled the death of the party. The National Labor Union itself had been only an empty shell since 1870, when the national trade unions, disaffected with the turn towards politics, withdrew. Now, its pet project a failure, it, too, broke up.

In 1873, on the eve of the financial panic, the national trade unions attempted to reconstruct a national labor federation on a purely trade-union basis in the form of a National Industrial Congress. But the economic disaster of the panic nipped it in the bud just as it cut off the life of the overwhelming majority of the existing labor organizations. Another attempt to get together on a national basis was made in the National Labor Congress at Pittsburgh in 1876. But those who responded were not interested in trade unionism and, mirroring the prevailing labor sentiment during the long years of depressions, had only politics on their mind, greenback or socialist. As neither greenbacker nor socialist would meet the other half-way, the attempt naturally came to naught.

Greenbackism was popular with the working people during the depressed seventies because it now meant to them primarily currency inflation and a rise of prices and, consequently, industrial prosperity—not the phantastic scheme of the National Labor Union. Yet in the Presidential election of 1876 the Greenback party candidate, Peter Cooper, the well known manufacturer and philanthropist, drew only a poor 100,000, which came practically from the rural districts only. It was not until the great strikes of 1877 had brought in their train a political labor upheaval that the greenback movement assumed a formidable form.

The strikes of 1877, which on account of the wide area affected, the degree of violence displayed, and the amount of life and property lost, impressed contemporaries as being nothing short of social revolution, were precipitated by a general ten percent reduction in wages on the three trunk lines running West, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the New York Central, in June and July 1877. This reduction came on top of an earlier ten percent reduction after the panic. The railway men were practically unorganized so that the steadying influence of previous organization was totally lacking in the critical situation of unrest which the newly announced wage reduction created. One must take also into account that in the four terrible years which elapsed since the panic, America had developed a new type of a man—the tramp—who naturally gravitated towards places where trouble was expected.

The first outbreak occurred at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on July 17, the day after the ten percent reduction had gone into effect. The strike spread like wildfire over the adjacent sections of the Baltimore & Ohio road, the strikers assuming absolute control at many points. The militia was either unwilling or powerless to cope with the violence. In Baltimore, where in the interest of public safety all the freight trains had stopped running, two companies of militia were beleaguered by a mob to prevent their being dispatched to Cumberland, where the strikers were in control. Order was restored only when Federal troops arrived.

But these occurrences fade into insignificance when compared with the destructive effects of the strike on the Pennsylvania in and around Pittsburgh. The situation there was aggravated by a hatred of the Pennsylvania railway corporation shared by nearly all residents on the ground of an alleged rate discrimination against the city. The Pittsburgh militia fraternized with the strikers, and when 600 troops which arrived from Philadelphia attempted to restore order and killed about twenty rioters, they were besieged in a roundhouse by a furious mob. In the battle the railway yards were set on fire. Damages amounting to about $5,000,000 were caused. The besieged militia men finally gained egress and retreated fighting rear-guard actions. At last order was restored by patrols of citizens. The strike spread also to the Erie railway and caused disturbances in several places, but not nearly of the same serious nature as on the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania. The other places to which the strike spread were Toledo, Louisville, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco.