The Labor of Women and Children.If the industries,canals,and railways of the country were largely manned by foreign labor,still important native sources must not be overlooked;above all,the women and children of the New England textile districts.Spinning and weaving,by a tradition that runs far beyond the written records of mankind,belonged to women.Indeed it was the dexterous housewives,spinsters,and boys and girls that laid the foundations of the textile industry in America,foundations upon which the mechanical revolution was built.As the wheel and loom were taken out of the homes to the factories operated by water power or the steam engine,the women and,to use Hamilton's phrase,"the children of tender years,"followed as a matter of course."The cotton manufacture alone employs six thousand persons in Lowell,"wrote a French observer in 1836;"of this number nearly five thousand are young women from seventeen to twenty-four years of age,the daughters of farmers from the different New England states."It was not until after the middle of the century that foreign lands proved to be the chief source from which workers were recruited for the factories of New England.It was then that the daughters of the Puritans,outdone by the competition of foreign labor,both of men and women,left the spinning jenny and the loom to other hands.
The Rise of Organized Labor.-The changing conditions of American life,marked by the spreading mill towns of New England,New York,and Penn-sylvania and the growth of cities like Buffalo,Cincinnati,Louisville,St.Louis,Detroit,and Chicago in the West,naturally brought changes,as Jefferson had prophesied,in "manners and morals."A few mechanics,smiths,carpenters,and masons,widely scattered through farming regions and rural villages,raise no such problems as tens of thousands of workers collected in one center in daily intercourse,learning the power of co?peration and union.
Even before the coming of steam and machinery,in the "good old days"ofFirst Model of Howe's Sewing Machinehandicrafts,laborers in many trades-printers,shoemakers,carpenters,for example-had begun to draw together in the towns for the advancement of their interests in the form of higher wages,shorter days,and milder laws.The shoemakers of Philadelphia,organized in 1794,conducted a strike in 1799and held together until indicted seven years later for conspiracy.During the twenties and thirties,local labor unions sprang up in all industrial centers and they led almost immediately to city federations of the several crafts.
As the thousands who were dependent
upon their daily labor for their livelihood mounted into the millions and industries spread across the continent,the local unions of craftsmen grew into national craft organizations bound together by the newspapers,the telegraph,and the railways.Before 1860there were several such national trade unions,including the plumbers,printers,mule spinners,iron molders,and stone cutters.All over the North labor leaders arose-men unknown to general history but forceful and resourceful characters who forged links binding scattered and individual workers into a common brotherhood.An attempt was even made in 1834to federate all the crafts into a permanent national organization;but it perished within three years through lack of support.Half a century had to elapse before the American Federation of Labor was to accomplish this task.
All the manifestations of the modern labor movement had appeared,in germ at least,by the time the mid-century was reached:unions,labor leaders,strikes,a labor press,a labor political program,and a labor political party.In every great city industrial disputes were a common occurrence.The papers recorded about four hundred in two years,1853-54,local affairs but forecasting economic struggles in a larger field.The labor press seems to have begun with the founding of the Mechanics'Free Press in Philadelphia in 1828and the establishment of the New York Workingman's Advocate shortly afterward.These semi-political papers were in later years followed by regular trade papers designed to weld together and advance the interests of particular crafts.Edited by able leaders,these little sheets with limited circulation wielded an enormous influence in the ranks of the workers.
Labor and Politics.-As for the political program of labor,the main plankswere clear and specific:the abolition of imprisonment for debt,manhood suf-frage in states where property qualifications still prevailed,free and universal education,laws protecting the safety and health of workers in mills and facto-ries,abolition of lotteries,repeal of laws requiring militia service,and free land in the West.
Into the labor papers and platforms there sometimes crept a note of hostility to the masters of industry,a sign of bitterness that excited little alarm while cheap land in the West was open to the discontented.The Philadelphia workmen,in issuing a call for a local convention,invited "all those of our fellow citizens who live by their own labor and none other."In Newcastle county,Delaware,the association of working people complained in 1830:"The poor have no laws;the laws are made by the rich and of course for the rich."Here and there an extremist went to the length of advocating an equal division of wealth among all the people-the crudest kind of communism.