ganisers. Two pamphlets 13 were issued and widely distributed. On every important holiday mass meetings were held in the larger cities. On Labour Day, 1889, no less than 420 such mass meetings were held throughout the country.14 Yet it seems clear that the movement inaugurated by the convention of 1888 attracted much less public attention than that of 1886. Again the Knights of Labor came out against it.15

The convention of the Federation of 1889 materially modified the plan of campaign. The idea of a general strike for the eight-hour day in May, 1890, was abandoned, but the Executive Council was authorised to select one union, which alone should move for this object. After it had won out another union was to be selected, and so on until all organised labourers should have gained their demand. To assist the union selected to lead in the fight, the Executive Council was authorised to levy a special assessment of 2 cents per week per member for a period of five weeks upon all affiliated unions.16 This strike benefit amendment to the constitution was opposed by the representatives of the typographical, granite cutters, and tailors' unions, who were at this time committed to a nine-hour day, believing the eight-hour day unattainable.17

In March, 1890, the Executive Council selected the carpenters as the union which should make the demand on May 1, 1890. At the same time the United Mine Workers 18 were selected to move for the eight-hour day after the carpenters should have won their demands. To aid the carpenters, the special assessment provided for the convention of 1889 was levied. Though many unions failed to pay their quota, the assessment netted the carpenters a considerable sum. Organisers, also, were commissioned to help the carpenters.

19

The choice of the carpenters as the union to lead the fight for the eight-hour day was indeed fortunate. Beginning with 1886, that union had a rapid growth and was now the largest union affiliated with the Federation. For several years it had

13 The Eight-Hour Day Primer, by George E. McNeill, and The Economic and Social Importance of the Eight-Hour Movement, by George Gunton.

14 American Federation of Labor, Proceedings, 1889, p. 15.

15 Ibid., 30.

16 Ibid., 82.

17 Ibid., 32.

18 Formed in 1890 through the amalga mation of the National Trades Assembly 135 of the Knights of Labor and the National Progressive Union.

19 American Federation of Labor, Proceedings, 1890, p. 13.

been accumulating funds for the eight-hour day, and, when the movement was inaugurated in May, 1890, it achieved a large measure of success. According to Secretary P. J. McGuire, it won the eight-hour day in 137 cities, and gained a nine-hour day in most other places. 20 The carpenters kept up their struggle to make the eight-hour day universal. In 1892 their convention declared that strikes for that purpose should be given preference over all other movements.21

Contrary to the original plan, the miners' strike for the eight-hour day, which was to follow that of the carpenters, did not materialise. After the carpenters had so generally won their demand, it was too late for the miners to take up the battle in the same year. The convention of the Federation in 1890, therefore, designated them as the union which should move for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1891. The convention directed, also, that a special assessment of the same amount as that levied for the carpenters should be collected for the miners. 22 However, the contemplated movement came to naught. The selection of the miners to undertake the fight at this time was a fatal mistake. Less than one-tenth of the coal miners of the country were then organised. With the constant decline in coal prices, the miners' union had for years been losing ground. The selection of the other applicant for undertaking the movement in 1891, the typographical union, would appear to have been a preferable choice. Some months before May 1, 1891, the United Mine Workers had become involved in a disastrous strike in the Connellsville coke region. In this emergency the Executive Council of the Federation was asked to levy immediately the assessment authorised by the convention of 1890 in aid of the miners' eight-hour movement. This the Council refused to do. The United Mine Workers in their turn now refused to strike for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1891. A strike at that time, in fact, President Gompers admitted, would

20 Gompers, "Report," in ibid.

21 Carpenter, September, 1892. In the midst of the period of depression, the carpenters' convention of 1894 declared that the time was most opportune for establishing the eight-hour day universally, since contractors would not object to it while work was slack. (Carpenter, October, 1894.) Nevertheless, they made

very little progress for a long time after 1890. During the succeeding period of depression the union lost one-half of its membership. In consequence it lost in many places the shorter hours won in 1890. Cleveland Citizen, Nov. 9, 1895.

22 American Federation of Labor, Proceedings, 1890, pp. 40-42,

have been useless, since the operators had accumulated large stores of coal in anticipation of the strike, of which they had been warned so long in advance.23

The convention of the Federation in 1891 was asked to give its support to an eight-hour movement in 1892 by the bakers' union, and to a struggle for the nine-hour day by the typographical union. The convention, however, voted to leave to the Executive Council the choice of the union to lead the next effort. 24 The latter in turn found the time inopportune for beginning another struggle. The next convention, in 1892, merely instructed the Executive Council to keep up agitation for the eight-hour work-day, and especially to prepare some union to lead the next fight.

In this manner the eight-hour movement inaugurated by the convention of 1888 came to an end. Apart from the strike of the carpenters in 1890, it had not led to any general movement to gain the eight-hour work-day. During these years, however, the percentage of strikes for a reduction of the hours of labour was much greater than at any other time after 1886. In the reports of President Gompers during these years, it was claimed that hundreds of thousands of workingmen had won reduced hours of labour through these movements. Notable progress was made, not only by the carpenters, but by other unions in the building trades. By 1891 the eight-hour day had been secured for all branches of the industry in Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. In New York and Brooklyn the carpenters, stone cutters, painters, and plasterers worked eight hours, while the bricklayers, masons, and plumbers worked nine. In St. Paul the bricklayers alone worked nine hours, the remaining trades, eight.25 The backwardness of the bricklayers in these cities was due to their policy of aloofness from the general labour movement. Their national convention in 1890 declared, with regard to the eight-hour movement inaugurated by the Federation, that "the interests of the country are not yet of such a nature as would warrant our departure from our present effective system. . . and the time has not yet come when we could with safety and propriety make such

23 Ibid., 1891, p. 12.

24 Ibid., 45.

25 Convention of the National Associa

tion of Builders, Proceedings, 1891, p. 162.

demand, and [we desire] to retain our autonomy in all matters which pertain to our welfare as a trade." 26

It is significant that in 1891, when President Gompers asked the affiliated national unions to name the three things upon which the American Federation of Labor should concentrate its efforts, every one of them included among these the reduction of hours of labour.27 It is no less significant that throughout the eighties the argument of Ira Steward that shorter hours would lead to increased wages by raising the standard of life, receded into the background before the theory of "making work." Gompers declared in 1887 that "the answer to all opponents to the reduction of the hours of labor could well be given in these words: 'that so long as there is one man who seeks employment and cannot obtain it, the hours of labor are too long.'" 28 He expounded this philosophy of the eighthour movement at greater length to the convention of 1889. In speaking of "the hundreds of thousands of our fellows, who, through the ever-increasing inventions and improvements in the modern methods of production, are rendered 'superfluous,' he said, "we must find employment for our wretched Brothers and Sisters by reducing the hours of labor or we will be overwhelmed and destroyed." 29 Again in his report of 1893, he urged that "the only method by which a practical, just and safe equilibrium can be maintained in the industrial world for the fast and ever increasing introduction of machinery, is a commensurate reduction in the hours of labor." 30

The system of the settlement of trade disputes by arbitration, which had been advocated by William H. Sayward, the secretary of the National Builders' Association since its inception, was formally approved by the association in 1890. However, it carried a provision for the open shop and against the sympathetic strike,31 and the trade unions were not desirous even of giving it a trial. The exception to this rule also was the brick

26 Quoted from official records in manuscript history of the union. In 1886 the bricklayers had similarly refused to participate in the eight-hour movement and demanded instead, the nine-hour day, which they secured.

27 American Federation of Labor, Proceedings, 1891, p. 13.

28 Ibid., 1887, p. 10.

29 Ibid., 1889, p. 16.

30 Ibid., 1893, p. 11.

31 Stockton in his study of the closed shop in American trade unions said: "The campaign for the closed shop was carried on among a large number of unions between 1885 and 1893. The strong closed-shop unions already mentioned [during the seventies: the Iron and Steel Workers, Granite Cutters, Cigarmakers, Hatters, Printers, Moulders, and Brick

layers, who entered into a written agreement with the master masons' association in Boston in 1890.32

While one of the earliest stable trade agreements in a conspicuous trade covering a local field was the bricklayers' agreement in Chicago in 1887, the era of trade agreements really dates from the national system established in the stove foundry industry in 1891. It is true that the iron and steel workers had worked under a national trade agreement since 1866. However, the trade was so exceptionally strong that its example had no power to make other trades aspire with confidence towards the same.33

The stove industry had early reached a high degree of development and organisation. There had existed since 1872 the National Association of Stove Manufacturers, an organisation dealing with prices, and embracing in its membership the largest stove manufacturers of the country. The stove foundrymen, therefore, unlike the manufacturers in practically all other industries, controlled in a large measure their own market. Furthermore, the product had been completely standardised and reduced to a piece-work basis, and machinery had not taken the place of the moulders' skill. It consequently was no mere accident that the stove industry was the first to develop a system of permanent industrial peace. But, on the other hand, this was not automatically established as soon as the favourable external conditions were provided. In reality, only after years of struggle, of strikes and lockouts, and after the two sides had fought each other "to a standstill" was the system finally installed.

The eighties abounded in stove moulders' strikes, and in 1886 the national union began to render effective aid. The Stove Founders' National Defense Association was formed in 1886 as an employers' association, with its membership recruited from the mercantile association of stove manufacturers. The Defense Association aimed at a national labour policy; it was

layers] were joined by the Lasters, Glass Bottle Blowers, Window Glass Workers, Flint Glass Workers, Machinists, and many local unions in the metal, printing, building and miscellaneous trades. In a few of the building trades unions, as, for example the Painters, the closed shop, was practically obligatory on the local

unions." The Closed Shop in American Trade Unions," in Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1911, XXIX, 39-40.

32 W. H. Sayward, in Industrial Com mission, Report, 1900, VII, 841-860.

33 The trade agreements in the glass trades partook of the same exceptional character as in the iron and steel trades.