CHAPTER IX

THE GREAT UPHEAVAL, 1884-1886

New Economic Conditions. The difference between the labour movements in the early and the middle eighties, 357. The unskilled, 357. Extension of the railways into the outlying districts, 358. Resultant intensification of competition among mechanics, 358. Industrial expansion, 358. Growth of cities, 359. Extension of the market and the supremacy of the wholesale jobber, 359. Impossibility of trade agreements, 359. Pools, 360. Immigration, 360. The exhaustion of the public domain, 360. Peculiarities of the depression, 1883–1885, 361. Reduction in wages, 361. Effect of the depression on the other economic classes, 362. The antimonopoly slogan, 362.

Strikes and Boycotts, 1884-1885. Fall River spinners' strike, 362. Troy stove mounters' strike, 363. The Cincinnati cigar makers' strike, 363. Hocking Valley coal miners' strike, 363. The vogue of the boycott, 364. Extremes in boycotting, 365. Boycott statistics, 1884-1885, 365. Resumption of the strike movement, 366. The Saginaw Valley, Michigan, strike, 366. Quarrymen's strike in Illinois, 367. Other strikes, 367. Shopmen's strikes on the Union Pacific in 1884, and the Knights of Labor, 367. Joseph R. Buchanan, 367. The Gould railway strike in 1885, 308. Gould's surrender, 369. Its enormous moral effect, 370. The general press and the Order, 370. Keen public interest in the Order, 370. The New York Sun "story," 371. Effect on Congress, 372. The contract immigrant labour evil, 372. Situation in the glass-blowing industry, 372. The Knights and the anti-contract labour law, 373. "The Knights of Labor - the liberator of the oppressed," 373. Beginning of the upheaval, 373. Unrestrained class hatred, 374. Labour's refusal to arbitrate disputes, 374. Readiness to commit violence, 374.

The Eight-Hour Issue and the Strike. Growth of trade unions, 375. New trade unions formed, 1884-1885, 375. Convention of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, in 1884, 376. The eight-hour issue, 376. Invitation to the Knights to co-operate, 377. Referendum vote by the affiliated organisations, 377. Advantage to the trade unions from the eighthour issue, 378. Lukewarmness of the national leaders of the Knights, 378. Powderly's attitude, 378. Enthusiasm of the rank and file, 379. Pecuniary interest of the Order's organisers in furthering the eight-hour agitation, 380. Marvellous increase in the membership of the Knights, 381. Membership statistics for various States, 381. Racial composition, 382. Composition by trades, 382. The pace of organisation in Illinois by months, 382. The Southwest railway strike, 383. Its cause, 383. Its unusual violence, 383. Its failure, 384. The eight-hour strike, 384. Degree of its immediate success, 384. Its ultimate failure, 385. Unequal prestige of the Knights and the trade unions as a result of the strike, 385.

The Chicago Catastrophe. Effect of the Haymarket bomb on the eight

hour strike, 386. Spread of the "syndicalist " influence among the German trade unions in 1884, 387. Formation of the Central Labor Union, 387. Its relation to the "syndicalists," 387. Its declaration of principles, 388. Relation of individual trade unions to the "syndicalists" in Chicago and St. Louis, 388. Agitation among the English-speaking element, 389. The Alarm, 389. Strength of the Black International in Chicago and elsewhere, 390. Attitude of the Chicago Central Labor Union towards the eight-hour movement, 391. The Eight-Hour Association of Chicago, 391. The McCormick Reaper Company lockout, 392. Beginning of the eight-hour strike in Chicago, 392. Riot near the McCormick works, 392. The "revenge circular," 392. Meeting of protest on Haymarket Square, 393. The bomb, 393. The trial, 393. Attitude of the labour organisations, 394. Governor Altgeld's Reasons for Pardoning Fielden, et al., 393. Judge Gary's reply, 393.

NEW ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

THE organisation of labour during the early eighties was typical of a period of rising prices. It was practically restricted to skilled workmen, who organised to wrest from employers still better conditions than those which prosperity would have given under individual bargaining. The movement was essentially opportunistic and displayed no particular class feeling and no revolutionary tendencies. The solidarity of labour was not denied by the trade unions, but they did not try to reduce it to practice: each trade coped more or less successfully with its own employers. Even the Knights of Labor, the organisation par excellence of the solidarity of labour, was at this time, in so far as practical efforts went, merely a faint replica of the trade unions.

The situation radically changed during the depression of 1884--1885. The unskilled and the semi-skilled, affected as they were by wage reductions and unemployment even in a larger measure than the skilled, were drawn into the movement. Labour organisations assumed the nature of a real class movement. The idea of the solidarity of labour ceased to be merely verbal, and took on flesh and life; general strikes, sympathetic strikes, nation-wide boycotts, and nation-wide political movements became the order of the day. Although the upheaval came with the depression, it was the product of permanent and far-reaching economic changes which had taken place during the seventies and the early eighties.

The sixties had witnessed the first creation of a national

market, resulting from the consolidation of the principal railway lines into trunk lines and the opening up of transcontinental railway communication. The financial panic of 1873 put an end to rapid railway building, but nevertheless the total mileage constructed during the seventies amounted to 41,000. When we analyse the character of this construction, we discover that, while during the previous decade the large cities alone had become connected by railways, during the seventies railway communication was extended to a considerable number of smaller cities and towns in New England, the Middle States, and the Middle Western States. The 1,829 miles built in New England represented, in the main, short extensions, branches, or local roads; of the 11,492 miles constructed in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, at least 7,000 went into short local roads or short extensions, and only about 3,000 into distinctly new roads. In the Southern States the new mileage was approximately 4,000. But the heaviest construction of the decade was in the Western States, where the railway opened up new regions for agricultural settlement.1 The railway building in the seventies, therefore, operated both to bring the mechanics of the small towns into more direct competition with the machine production of the industrial centres, and to create for the latter an additional market in the new regions of the West.

The eighties were years of marvellous industrial expansion. For instance, Bradstreet's 2 estimates that one-tenth more wageearners were employed in 1882 than during the census year of 1880. The dominant feature was the introduction of machinery upon an unprecedented scale.3 Indeed, the factory system of production, for the first time, became general during the eighties. This is amply attested by the remarkable development in the production of machinery. In foundries and machine-shops the total capital invested increased two and a half times between 1880 and 1890. At the same time the aver

1 Ringwalt, Development of Transportation Systems in the United States, 222224.

2 Dec. 20, 1884.

3 The number of patents issued in

creased from an annual average of about 13,000 for the seventies to about 21,000 for the eighties. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1915, p. 705.

age investment increased twofold for each establishment and 50 per cent for each employé.*

The factory system led to a large increase in the class of unskilled and semi-skilled labour, with inferior bargaining power. Accompanying this was the shifting of population from country to city. During the seventies the increase of 11,600,000 in the total population had raised the ratio of dwellers in cities having over 8,000 inhabitants 1.6 per cent." On the other hand, during the eighties an increase of 12,500,000 brought up the ratio 6.6 per cent.R But there was still another change which added to the downward pressure on wages.

The wide areas over which manufactured products were now to be distributed called, more than ever before, for the services of the wholesaler. As the market extended, he sent out his travelling men, established business connections, and advertised the articles which bore his special trademark. His control of the market opened up credit with the banks, while the manufacturer, who with the exception of his patents, possessed only physical capital and no market opportunities, found it difficult to obtain credit. Moreover, the rapid introduction of machinery tied up all of his available capital and forced him to turn his products into money as rapidly as possible, with the inevitable result that the merchant had an enormous bargaining advantage over him. Had the extension of the market and the introduction of machinery proceeded at a less rapid pace, the manufacturer probably would have been able to obtain greater control over market opportunities. Also the larger credit which this would have given him, combined with the accumulation of his own capital, might have been sufficient to meet his needs. However, as the situation really developed, the jobber obtained a much superior bargaining power, and by playing off the competing manufacturers one against another, produced a cutthroat competition, low prices, low profits, and consequently a steady and insistent pressure upon wages." The manufacturers, on their part, frequently sought to

4 U. S. Census, 1890, Compendium, Pt. iii, 672-685.

5 From 20.98 per cent to 22.57 per cent. U. S. Census, 1890, I, p. lxv.

6 From 22.57 per cent to 29.20 per cent. Ibid.

7

7 A description of the functions of the wholesale jobber and a few historical glimpses may be found in J. H. Ritter, "Present Day Jobbing," in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1908, XXII, 451.

remedy the situation by combinations. The eighties were essentially a period of industrial pools. Henry D. Lloyd, who was first to raise in a forcible way a warning voice against the progress of monopoly in this country, enumerated, in 1884, pools in lumber, slaughtering and packing (in buying cattle), in bituminous coal mining, coke coal mining, stove manufacturing, matches, wall paper, crackers, burial cases, nails, barbed wire, pig iron, cotton fabrics (in the South), whiskey, and many others, besides the well-established monopolies in anthracite mining and oil refining.8

These pools, while they temporarily brought high profits, were constantly breaking up, but usually they were renewed after periods of cutthroat competition, so that they were an influence making for instability and insecurity. The bearing of this fact upon the labour situation becomes obvious when we take into account the basis of the trade agreement. No fixed agreement can survive for any length of time when prices are fixed alternately by combination and by cutthroat competition.

Other factors aggravating the situation were an unusually large immigration and the exhaustion of the public domain. The eighties were the banner decade of the entire century for immigration. The aggregate number of immigrants arriving was 5,246,613; two and a half millions larger than during the seventies and one million and a half larger than during the nineties. The eighties also witnessed the highest tide of immigration from Great Britain and the North of Europe and the beginnings of the tide of South and East European immigration.9

Şimultaneously with the stocking up of the labour market by a record-breaking immigration, settlers were moving into the last unoccupied portion of the public domain. In a bulletin of the census for 1890 appear the following significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has so been broken into

8 Lloyd, "Lords of Industry," in North American Review (1884), OXXXVIII, 536-558.

9 The number arriving from Great Britain was 1,462,889; from Germany, 1,452,970; from Norway and Sweden, 568,362;

from British North America, 892,802; from Austria, 858,719; from Italy, 807,809; and from Russia, 265,088. Statis tical Abstract of the United States, 1915, pp. 90, 91.