organising trade unions in case the unions resolved to form a labour party, and it granted unqualified and enthusiastic endorsement to the eight-hour movement. The platform as well as the constitution were overhauled. The preamble was entirely rewritten by Lucien Sanial and remodelled after the Declaration of Independence. The Lassallean demand for state credit to co-operative associations was struck out.

Only a small number of sections remained loyal to Rosenberg. Their convention met on October 2, decided for vigorous and immediate political action, revoked the clause in the constitution, which demanded that at least two-thirds of the members of each section should be wage-earners, and passed by in complete silence the subject of trade unions. The section in Cincinnati was the leading one of this faction and, for this reason, the organisation was known as the Socialist Labor party of the " Cincinnati persuasion." It continued down to 1897, when it amalgamated with the Debs-Berger Social Democracy of America.

The regular Socialist Labor party, of which the trade union faction was now in undisputed control, abstained from any participation at the state election in New York in the fall of 1889, for the reason that the trade unions were still unprepared for political action. The relations with the Federation of Labor were extremely friendly, and, in March 1890, the Executive Council of the Federation appointed the well-known socialist, Paul Grottkau, traveling agitator for the eight-hour movement, along with George E. McNeill.

In New York City the socialists were unable to keep on friendly terms with the old established central body of trade unions, the Central Labor Union, which became famous during the George campaign. The latter had, during 1888, fallen under the influence of the Knights of Labor and the conservative trade unions, and, as the socialists charged, of corrupt politicians also. The socialists had therefore organised the Central Labor Federation in February, 1889, which received a charter from the American Federation of Labor. In December, 1889, the Central Labor Federation effected a reconciliation with the Central Labor Union and fused with it. However, the lukewarmness of the the Central Labor

Union toward the eight-hour movement and principally the suspicion of political corruption drove the socialists for a second time to secession, and in June, 1890, they resurrected the Central Labor Federation. Soon the socialists were given cause to doubt the friendship of the American Federation of Labor, for it refused a charter to the Central Labor Federation on the ground that it had affiliated with itself besides thirty-eight trade unions, also the section of the Socialist Labor party. The matter was thoroughly threshed out in a nine-hour debate at the convention of the Federation at Detroit in December, 1890. The outcome was that Lucien Sanial, who held credentials from the Central Labor Federation, was refused a seat. Ultimately, the Socialist Labor party withdrew from the central labour bodies in the sixteen cities 41 in which it had hitherto been represented. The socialists felt disappointed, but still maintained their hope of winning over the American Federation of Labor to socialism. In 1891, however, Weissman, of the bakers' union, with encouragement from Gompers, organised the Federation of Labor of New York, which purported to be free from any political influence, socialist as well as any other. This placed a third central body alongside the Central Labor Union and the Central Labor Federation. In 1892, after lengthy negotiations between the three bodies, the Central Labor Union and the Federation of Labor amalgamated, but the socialistic Central Labor Federation decided to remain independent.

The conflict considerably cooled the hopes of the socialists for an easy conquest of the American Federation of Labor. However, the mild methods were not replaced by more aggressive ones until the control of the party had solidified in the hands of Daniel De Leon, 42 about 1892. Under De Leon's leadership the party adopted more vigorous tactics. In 1892

41 Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cleveland, Dayton, Detroit, Evansville (Ind.), Hudson County, Paterson, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Providence, Sandusky, and Sheboygan (Wis.). In practically every case these were organisations of German trade unions,

42 De Leon was born in Curaçao, Dutch West Indies, in 1852. He came to the United States from Europe in 1872,

studied law at the Columbia Law School, and subsequently became a lecturer on diplomacy at the Columbia University. He was active in the Henry George campaign of 1886, joined the Knights of Labor in 1888, and became interested in nationalism in 1889. In 1890 he joined the Socialist Labor party and founded the weekly People in 1892. He died in 1915.

it nominated for the first time a presidential ticket. The candidates were Simon Wing, a photographer of Boston and an old abolitionist, and Charles Matchett, a New York telephone mechanician, prominent among the Knights of Labor. Both were recent recruits to the Socialist Labor party. The ticket polled 21,157 votes, of which 18,147 were cast in the state of New York, including 6,100 in New York City. With regard to labour organisation the policy was still more aggressive. At the national convention in July, 1893, the opinion was generally shared that it was sheer utopianism to look for a natural transformation of the American Federation of Labor into a labour party. In order that the latter might come into existence, energetic action on the part of the socialists was required.

Energetic measures were, however, first tried on the Knights of Labor, and the instrument was the United Hebrew Trades.

The United Hebrew Trades 43 had been organised in 1888 as the central body of the Jewish trade unions in New York. There had existed from 1884 to 1887 a Jewish Workmen's Society, the first labour organisation of the Russian immigrants of that race. Along with propaganda for socialism, it aided in the organisation of unions in the Jewish trades. But by 1888 all of these, except the printers' union, had gone to pieces. They were mostly in the needle trades, and the rock upon which they split was the Jewish sweat-shop workman's easy elevation from wage-earner to sweat-shop boss.

The United Hebrew Trades, starting with only 1 union in 1888, had, 2 years later, 40 affiliated unions with 13,500 members. The largest unions were those of the tailors and cloak makers, each running well into the thousands. During 1892 its strength fell off, mainly owing to the ardent agitation for the socialist ticket in the presidential campaign, which drew off from trade union work many of the more energetic members. But in 1893 it again recovered and retained some strength until weakened by the business depression. The Jewish unions conducted many memorable wage struggles from 1888 to 1893, notably those of the cloak makers' union. This union

43 In the following account of the early Jewish labour movement the author drew largely from an unpublished monograph

by Wm. M. Leiserson, The Jewish Labor Movement in New York.

44 The Jews cast 1,500 socialist votes in New York, or one-fourth of the total.

achieved enormous strength, based on the closed shop, during 1890, but fell asunder after the conviction of its leader, Joseph Barondess, in 1891, on a charge of extortion.

The United Hebrew Trades joined the Knights of Labor in 1893 and De Leon at once became a power in the famous but declining District Assembly 49 of New York. He and several other socialists were elected among the delegates to the General Assembly of 1893, where they combined with Powderly's enemies and elected Sovereign grand master workman. The socialists carried the election of officers in District Assembly 49 in 1894 and had 8 delegates out of a total of 63 at the General Assembly of 1894. Sovereign saw their strength, and, as the socialists afterwards claimed, promised to appoint Lucien Sanial as editor of the Journal of the Knights of Labor. As he did not comply with his alleged promise and as the socialists were at the same time beaten also in the American Federation of Labor the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance was started in December, 1895, as a rival to all existing non-socialistic labour organisations. The socialistic Central Labor Federation of New York, Brooklyn, and Newark, the United Hebrew Trades, and District Assembly 49, with an aggregate membership of about 15,000, merged into the new organisation. However, it proved a failure, and the only outcome, apart from a socialist vote for president of 36,564 in 1896, was the irre parable loss of the socialist cause within the American Federation of Labor.

With the returning prosperity in the latter nineties, the formative stage of trade unionism was complete. The wageearning class was permanently separated from the middle-class. Wage consciousness permanently displaced middle-class panaceas, such as productive co-operation, currency, and land reform. The separation from the outside was accompanied by a closing up of the ranks within. Yet the new solidarity was not the emotional solidarity of the Knights of Labor, but a solidarity expressing itself in the co-operation of the national trade unions within the Federation and with the growing industrial unionism. Alongside developed a recognition of partnership with the employers -not the partnership of the in

45 See above, II, 512, 518.

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dividual employé with his employer, as preached by the " cial harmony" advocates but the partnership of the wageearning class, organised in a national trade or industrial union, with the employing class, organised in a national employers' association. This recognition of partnership took full cognizance of the existing antagonism between the two classes but proposed to bridge it by the trade agreement.

The ideal of the trade agreement was the main achievement of the nineties. It led the way from an industrial system which alternately was either despotism or anarchy to a constitutional form of government in industry. Without the trade agree ment the labour movement could hardly come to eschew "panaceas" and to reconstitute itself upon the basis of opportunism. The coming in of the trade agreement, whether national, sectional, or local, was also the chief factor in stabilising the movement against industrial depressions.

But one should not overlook the other agencies in the labour struggle which made their appearance about the same time, namely, the trusts and court injunctions. Enriched on the one side by the lessons of the past and by the possession of a concrete goal in the trade agreement, but pressed on the other side by a new form of legal attack and by the growing consolidation of industry, the labour movement in 1897 had started upon a career of new power and new difficulty.