employers were likewise busy in the struggle. They sent out circulars to employers in other cities, requesting them not to employ Cincinnati men and above all not to pay more than their prices. 48

The strike lasted eighteen weeks, finally concluding with a victory for the cigar makers. But the victory soon turned into failure. At the end of the strike the employers introduced the mould, and the union, foreseeing a reduction in wages and fearing another struggle, voluntarily reduced the price it had thus secured after a long fight.

A succinct statement of the reasons why the cigar makers objected to the use of the mould is given in the Report of the Bureau of Labour Statistics of Ohio (1878):

"In 1870 a cigar machine [the mould] was introduced into the town of Cincinnati. The men claimed that it did not save labour but instead added thereto. One firm purchased fifty of the machines and their employees refused to use them and the result was that men were discharged to the number of seventy-five and girls and boys were hired in their places, and this was the commencement of the female cigar workers in Cincinnati. A cigar machine company then came into operation having men, at first, but as there was no extra profit in their labour they were discharged and women and girls were brought to make cigars, they in turn being discharged for other learners receiving but little if any wages. By this means a so-called large number of female cigar makers were competing with the men for the privilege of work. Wages rapidly fell until a week's wages were not sufficient to pay the board of a single

In October the cigar makers held their convention at Syracuse. It was the largest convention since 1867. The mould question was settled by adopting a constitutional amendment stating that "no local union shall allow its members to work with a filler breaker." 49 The provision was more far reaching than it really seems. It meant that the national took a stand against splitting up the trade between bunch breakers and rollers. It also really meant a stand against the introduction of the mould which invariably was worked by filler break

48 Chicago

Feb. 5, 1870.

Workingman's Advocate,

49 Constitution, 1870, Art. XI, Sec. 4;

Chicago Workingman's Advocate, Nov. 5 and 12, 1870.

ers.

Legislating against the filler breaker thus meant legislating against the mould.

But the union was too weak to enforce its rules everywhere. Many locals permitted their members to work with "filler breakers" in spite of the law and grew lukewarm towards the International. At the convention of 1870, 42 locals were represented; 2 years later only 17 sent delegates. At this latter convention of 1872 the president, Edwin Johnson, in his annual address foretold the inevitable. "I admit it is a great evil to the trade this filler breaking system, but a minority can never accomplish anything in the way of breaking up this way of working. While we have the large majority outside of our organisation, working directly in the opposite all the time, I can see but one way of accomplishing anything that will be beneficial to our trade generally .. Let us lay aside a little of our spirit of selfishness, make our laws liberal, and our platform broad enough to hold all, and let us endeavour to unite the whole into one grand organisation." 50

...

In spite of this advice when the question of the filler breaker rule came up for consideration, whether it should be retained or dropped, the sentiment was strongly in favour of retaining it. What is more, the rule was amended so that it became more restrictive than before. As amended, it read: "No local union shall allow its members to work with filler breakers or non-union men." "Or non-union men was added now and the whole adopted, thirteen votes in favour and four against. The strike fund was also increased. Instead of 2 cents per member, each month, 10 cents were to be levied thereafter.

These measures were of no avail. The mould came to stay. The hostility towards it was continued for another year, when at the convention of 1873, with other changes in the constitution, the filler breaker clause was amended so as to read, "Local unions may allow their members to work in shops where filler-breakers are employed, provided that no member of the union has permitted himself to work in conjunction with filler breakers." The constitution as revised and including this clause was sub

50 Chicago Workingman's Advocate, Oct. 1, 1872.

mitted to a vote of the locals and was returned 60 in favour and 17 opposed.

The adoption of this amendment was a virtual acceptance of the mould. Although the union man could not work in conjunction with a filler breaker, the mould was admitted into the shop and once there it gradually replaced hand work for the great bulk of cigars made.

THE COOPERS

Another cause which brought large nationals into existence, especially in the latter part of the ten-year period, was the introduction of machinery. The unions that sprang up as a direct result of the change in the methods of manufacture were particularly the Knights of St. Crispin and the coopers.

The effects of machinery on the coopers' trade may be seen from the following extract taken from the Coopers' Monthly Journal, October, 1872, in a series of articles entitled "What I know about Machinery.' "" "Whenever our craftsman demanded an increase of wages and it was refused, some employers would buy barrel machinery because they would not strike." The article then goes on to give an account of a cooperage works in St. Louis. Some two years ago a company was started in St. Louis under the name of the St. Louis Barrel Works for the manufacture of pork barrels. The stockholders were men of means and money was not sparingly used to furnish the factory with all the modern improvements. The barrels were raised by boys, clamped and trussed by machinery, the heads were turned by machines and put into the barrels by boys, and there was nothing left for the coopers to do but plane, shave up and hoop the package. When a barrel was finished, it generally leaked at every joint. . . . But the staves were kiln dried and by pouring from one to four pints of water in each barrel it could be made to pass. All this was very well and as the company warranted every package they were not in want of a market."

The effect of such a change in making barrels is obvious. The cooper was now deprived of the protection afforded by his skill. His part in the process now was trimming the barrel

instead of making it. The importance of a large, powerful organisation to counteract the advantages which the employer gained over him through these improvements is plainly to be seen. On March 19, 1870, when the nation was about to start on a three-year lap of prosperity, Martin A. Foran, then president of the Central Union of Ohio, sent a call to the coopers to meet in Cleveland, May, 1870. The Cleveland coopers had just gone through a strike- that fact and the powerful personality of Foran account for the calling of a convention at this time and place.51 Suggestions for a national union had been made as far back as the spring of 1868, when a correspondent of the Advocate reported the coopers in New York on a strike and expressed surprise that "with the number of coopers in the United States . . . they do not take steps to organise a national union." 52

...

The international was organised and grew very rapidly. The first convention met in May, 1870, with 13 delegates representing 1,576 members. Five months later another convention was held in Baltimore. Here 41 unions were represented with a membership of 3,350.53 But circulars sent out by Foran to locals which allied themselves with the national show returns of 142 unions in good standing embracing a membership of 6,723. The next convention was held in 1873 after the panic. Here 157 locals were reported in good standing. Seventy-two unions were organised or reorganised during these 2 years, but 72 disbanded, which left the international just about where it was in 1871.

In spite of its rocket-like career the coopers' national union permanently influenced the labour movement. It brought to the front in the labour ranks its second president, Robert

51 The career of Martin A. Foran of Cleveland is a prominent example of an American labour leader. Born in Susquehanna County, Penn., Nov. 11, 1844, he received a public school education and the beginnings of a higher education. He was a cooper by trade, but he had also taught school for three years. Having achieved prominence in the labour movement, first as the president of the Coopers' International Union, which he organised, and later in 1872, as the foremost leader in the movement for a federation of the national trade unions, he entered politics

as a member of the Ohio constitutional convention in 1873. During the next year he was admitted to the practice of law and in 1874 was elected, on the Democratic ticket, city attorney of Cleveland. He was elected to Congress in 1884 and was several times re-elected. He never lost connection with the labour movement and remained a champion of labour bills throughout his congressional career.

52 Chicago Workingman's Advocate, May 9, 1868.

53 Coopers' International Union, Proceedings, 1871, 10, 11.

Schilling, of Cleveland, and later of Milwaukee, who became so impressed with the inadequacy of the existing basis of the movement that, according to his own statement, he formulated a new set of principles which in 1878 came to be adopted as the Preamble of the Order of the Knights of Labor.

In still another respect the coopers anticipated during this period the labour movement of the eighties. In 1870 a number of unionised coopers in Minneapolis, after several attempts, succeeded in organising a co-operative association for the making of barrels. The example was soon followed by others and there were altogether seven co-operative shops which manufactured the bulk of the barrels demanded by the flour mills in that city. When the Knights of Labour revived the co-operative movement during the middle of the eighties, they could well keep in mind the successful example of the Minneapolis coopers."

54

THE KNIGHTS OF ST. CRISPIN

The shoemakers' organisations reached their greatest strength in 1869 and 1870. During the preceding years machinery had exercised but little influence on the labour movement, either in this or in other occupations. As a rule skilled labour remained the basis of industry, and although the mechanic suffered from evils which were serious enough, no one questioned that he was indispensable. However, there were three notable exceptions: the textile, cooperage, and shoe industries. In the textile industry machine production had been introduced as early as the thirties; the shoe industry entered upon the factory stage of production in the sixties; and the cooperage in the early seventies.

The first step toward a factory system in the shoe industry came with the invention in 1846 and utilisation in 1852 of a sewing machine for stitching uppers. But the invention destined to revolutionise the industry occurred in 1862, when McKay succeeded in perfecting a pegging machine. Between 1860 and 1870 the utilisation of these machines and of other inventions proceeded at a rapid pace, and the skilled mechanic

54 See Shaw, "Co-operation in a Western City," in American Economic Association Publications, I, 129-172.