EPHEMERAL LABOR MOVEMENTS 487 



EPHEMERAL LABOR MOVEMENTS, 1866-1889 



By Db. FRANK T. CARLTON 



ALBION COLLEGE 



THE history of labor organizations (1866-1889) is a record of ebb 

 and flow, agitation, organization and disintegration. It is, in- 

 deed, a strange blend of unionism and politics, of individualism and 

 socialism, of strikes, greenbackism and cooperation, of prosperity, 

 panics and concentration of industry. This quarter of a century is 

 preeminently one of preparation; in it are laid the economic and psy- 

 chological foundations upon which have been built, in a large meas- 

 ure, the trade-union organizations of to-da} r . Movements, ephemeral 

 and incohoate, but grand in conception, hasten nervously across the 

 stage. At intervals during the period writers in the numerous labor 

 papers declare that now is a time of transition and that organization 

 at this particular moment will be unusually fruitful of good results. 

 The workers, distrustful and individualistic but harassed by the fear 

 of monopoly, the competition of unskilled labor, the introduction of 

 machinery and lower wages, cohere for a brief period under the pres- 

 sure of extraordinary conditions or the influence of enthusiastic lead- 

 ers, only to repel each other as their financial skies appear to clear. 

 But, by the end of the period, the labor organization had become one 

 of the permanent institutions of the nation. 



When the civil war ended labor organizations of the trade-union 

 type were multiplying and waxing stronger. The return of the soldiers 

 to peaceful pursuits, the continued influx of immigrants from the old 

 world, and the growing power of industrial combinations, all contrib- 

 uted to arouse the wage earners of the nation to activity. The years 

 1866 and 1867, probably represent the period of maximum activity 

 during the era immediately following the surrender at Appomattox. 

 In 1864, an unsuccessful attempt had been made to organize a national 

 federation of trade unions. Two years later the National Labor Union 

 was organized at a National Labor Congress held in Baltimore. This 

 was the first successful national federation of trade unions formed since 

 the National Trades' Union disappeared in 1837. In 1865, a state 

 federation of trade unions was organized in New York — The Working- 

 men's Assembly. This continued until merged in 1897 with the state 

 organization affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Its 

 chief purpose seems to have been to influence legislation. " The distinc- 

 tive features of the organization are Protective, Benovelent and 

 Secret." 1 In the early years of the Assembly, nearly all of the affiliated 



1 Proceedings of Fifth Annual Session, January, 1869. 



