and Charleston, Massachusetts. During 1864 stores opened in Providence and Woonsocket, Rhode Island; in Springfield and Fitchburg, Massachusetts; in Albany, Troy, Ilion, Brownsville, and Schenectady, New York; and farther west in Cincinnati, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan. The following year witnessed the spread of distributive co-operation from Biddeford, Maine, to Carondelet, Missouri, with new stores announced also in Worcester, Pawtucket, Bridgeport, New York, Trenton, Baltimore, Pittston, and Evansville. The agitation continued and in the early months of 1866 stores were added in Lowell, Chelsea, Taunton, Cohoes, St. Clair, Cleveland, Kensington, and Chicago.

There was continued writing and speaking on the subject during the following year, and the movement had extended until practically every important industrial town between Boston and San Francisco had some kind of distributive co-operation. Disastrous failures, however, toward the end of 1865 foreshadowed the end of the movement in the sixties. With the fall of prices immediately after the close of the War, accompanied not only by a lessening of interest in co-operative grocery stores but also by the failure of strikes, there developed suddenly, as we shall later see, a pronounced movement toward productive co-operation.

CHAPTER III

THE NATIONAL TRADE UNIONS, 1864-1873

Causes and General Progress. Effect of the nationalisation of the market, 43. National trade unions in the thirties, 43. Effect of national labour competition, 44. Effect of employers' associations, 44. Effect of machinery and the division of labour, 44. Organisation of national trade unions, 1861-1873, 45. Growth of their membership, 47. The national trade union the paramount aspect of nationalisation, 48.

The Moulders. The epitomisation of the labour movement, 48. Activities during the War, 48. Beginning of employers' associations, 49. The lull in the organisation of employers during the period of prosperity, 49. West and East, 50. The American National Stove Manufacturers' and Iron Founders' Association, 50. The apprenticeship question, 50. Strike in Albany and Troy, 51. Withdrawal of the Buffalo and St. Louis foundrymen from the Association, 51. General strike against wage reductions, 51. Defeat of the union, 52. Restriction on strikes by the national union, 52. The turn to co-operation, 53. Sylvis' view on the solution of the labour question, 53. The co-operative shops, 53. The Troy shops, 54. Their business success but failure as co-operative enterprises, 54. Disintegration of the employers' association, 55. Revival of trade unionism, 55.

Machinists and Blacksmiths. Intellectual ascendency of the machinists in the labour movement, 56. Employers' associations, 56. Effect of the depression, 57. Effect of the eight-hour agitation on the union, 57. Revival in 1870, 58.

Printers. The National Typographical Union, 58. "Conditional membership," 58. National strike fund, 59. Persistent localist tendency, 59. The Northwestern Publishers' Association, 61.

Locomotive Engineers. Cause of nationalisation, 61. Piece work, 62. Brotherhood of the Footboard, 62. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 62. Charles Wilson, and his attitude towards public opinion, 63. Strike on the Michigan Southern, 64. Railways' blacklist, 64. Brotherhood's attitude towards incorporation, 66. Brotherhood's conservatism, 65. Discontent of the local branches, 66. in Congress, 67. Growth of the from office, 67. P. M. Arthur, 67. Cigar Makers. The effect of the War revenue law, 69. Growth of the international union, 1864-1869, 70. Introduction of the mould, 71. Strike against the mould, 72. Attitude towards the mould of the conventions of 1867 and 1872, 72. Failure of the anti-mould policy, 73.

Wilson's incorporation move, 66. Failure opposition to Wilson, 67. His removal The benefit system, 68.

Coopers. Effect of the machine, 74. Martin A. Foran, 75. Career of the International Coopers' Union, 75. Robert Schilling, 76. Co-operative attempts, 76.

Knights of St. Crispin. The factory system, 76. "Green hands," 77. Aim of the Crispins, 77. Crispin strikes, 78. Their principal causes, 78. Attitude towards co-operation, 79.

Sons of Vulcan. The puddler's bargaining advantage, 80. The sliding scale agreement, 80.

Restrictive Policies - Apprenticeship. The beginning of restrictive policies, 81. Effect of the wider market on apprenticeship, 81. Effect of the increased scale of production, 81. The "botches," 82. Sylvis' view, 82. Limitation of numbers, 82. Policies of the national trade unions, 83. Regulation of apprenticeship in the printer's trade, 83.

CAUSES AND GENERAL PROGRESS

In a sense every period in the industrial development of a country may be called a period of transition. However, this characterisation would apply with greater strength than usual to the sixties. At the present time, when Marx and Sombart have been popularised, we generally think of technical evolution alone when we speak of the evolution of industry. Yet we forget that no change in technique, not including even the utilisation of steam as a motive power, has ever had so simultaneous an effect upon all industries as had the sudden extension of the market due to the railway consolidation of the fifties, an effect which awaited only the years of prosperity of the sixties to become visible. Steam had revolutionised the textile industry at an early date, but for a long time it had left the other industries almost unaffected. The creation of a national market fundamentally changed the price-fixing forces in the majority of the industries, and therefore could not help producing a most thoroughgoing effect upon the struggle between industrial classes.

In the field of trade unionism the nationalisation of the market gave birth to the national trade union. To be sure, there had been some attempt at "national" trade unions during the thirties, such as the national conventions of the printers and cordwainers. It is nevertheless true that it was only dur ing the sixties that labour organisations began to think and act on a lasting national basis. Moreover the "nation" over which the unions of the thirties had spread their activities was, properly speaking, nothing more than a region of neighbouring towns such as the "greater industrial New York" of to-day.

There were four distinct sets of causes which operated during the sixties to bring about nationalisation: two grew out of

changes in transportation, and two were largely independent of such changes.

The first and most far-reaching cause, as illustrated by the stove moulders, was the competition of the products of different localities side by side in the same market. Wherever that was the case, nationalisation was destined to proceed to its utmost length. In order that union conditions should be maintained even in the best organised centres, it then became imperatively necessary to equalise competitive conditions in the various localities. That led to a well-knit national organisation to control working conditions, trade rules, and strikes. In other trades, where the competitive area of the product was still restricted to the locality, the paramount nationalising influence was the competition for employment between migratory outof-town journeymen and the locally organised mechanics. This describes the situation in the printing trade, where the bulk of the work was still newspaper and not book and job printing. Accordingly, the printers did not need to entrust their national officers with anything more than the control of the travelling journeymen, and the result was that the local unions remained practically independent. The third cause of concerted national action in a trade was the organisation of employers. When the power of a local union began to be threatened by an employers' association, the next logical step was to combine in a national union. Thus it transpired that the numerous local employers' associations which sprang up during 1864 and 1865 gave the impetus to the nationalisation of the labour movement.

66

The fourth cause was the application of machinery and the introduction of division of labour, which split up the old established trades and laid industry open to invasion by green hands." The shoemaking industry which, during the sixties had reached the factory stage, illustrates this in a most striking manner. Few other industries experienced anything like a similar change during this period.

Of course, none of the causes of nationalisation here enumerated operated in entire isolation. In some trades one cause, in other trades other causes, had the predominating influence. Consequently, in some trades the national union resembled an

agglomeration of loosely allied states, each one reserving the right to engage in independent warfare and expecting from its allies no more than a benevolent neutrality. In other trades, on the contrary, the national union was supreme in declaring war and in making peace, and even claimed absolute right to formulate the "civil" laws of the trade for times of industrial peace.

Although some nationals were organised before 1864, it is at this time that an appreciable movement started towards nationalisation. Four nationals were organised in this year as compared to two organised in 1863, none in 1862, and one in 1861. A call was also issued from the tin, sheet iron, and copper workers, the upholsterers, and house painters, but there is no evidence that these unions met. The nationals organised before the War took a leap forward. The National Typographical Union at its session of 1864 reported 14 new charters issued, against 6 reported in 1863 and 1 in 1862. No convention was held in 1861.1 The Iron Molders' Union reported in that same year (1864) 46 new charters and a total membership of 6,778 as compared to 3,500 in 1863.2 The Machinists and Blacksmiths' Union was the only national that did not recover the strength it enjoyed prior to the War, having 87 locals before the War commenced and reporting in 1864 a smaller representation than in former sessions.3

This process of nationalisation once started, lasted for ten years, the number of nationals cropping up and the number of members gained by those already in existence varying with the prosperity or depression in business during that time. During the period of intense business activity which lasted from 1863 to 1866, caused by the inflation of greenbacks and the demands of the War, ten national unions sprang up in two years: the Plasterers' National Union, National Union of Journeymen Curriers, the Ship Carpenters' and Caulkers' International Union, National Union of Cigar Makers in 1864, and the Coach Makers' International Union, the Journeymen Painters' National Union, National Union of Heaters, Tailors'

1 National Typographical Union, Proceedings, 1864, including the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth sessions, held at New York, Cleveland, and Louisville, Ky., May

5, 1862, May 4, 1863, and May 2, 1864. 2 Iron Molders' International Union, Proceedings, 1865.

3 See above, II, 9.