EPHEMERAL LABOR MOVEMENTS 501 



trolled by the unions. 48 The dark pictures painted by the labor leaders 

 of the decade should be studied. 



Absorbed in the task of getting large dividends, the employer seldom in- 

 quired of his superintendent how he managed the business intrusted to his keep- 

 ing, or how he treated the employees. In thousands of places throughout the 

 United States, as many superintendents, foremen or petty bosses are interested 

 in stores, corner groceries or saloons. In many places the employee is told 

 plainly that he must deal at the store, or get his liquor from the saloon in which 

 his boss has an interest; in others he is given to understand that he must deal 

 in these stores or saloons, or forfeit his situation.^ 



Worse conditions never existed in any industry in this country than those 

 of the Hocking Valley region of Ohio in 1884. Slavery was heaven compared 

 with what the miners of the Hocking Valley had to endure. 50 



A new era was in the making ; and the wage earners were being pre- 

 pared for more definite and firm organization. But it was also a period 

 in which capitalism was becoming strong and immigration was multi- 

 plying. The old individualistic ideals were still generally accepted; 

 and were not displaced without much social friction. Strikes were of 

 frequent occurrence and the boycott a popular weapon. 



The fall and winter of 1884 will long be remembered by men active in the 

 labor movement at that time as a period of great stress. Strikes and lockouts 

 were prevalent as never before in this country, and labor was often a heavy 

 loser. Capitalism was beginning to look upon the militia as its natural ally, and 

 labor was not sufficiently well organized to make politicians who had charge of 

 the state machinery respect or fear its power.si 



What is the spectacle presented to our view? Crime reaching a magnitude it 

 never did before; poverty increasing with frightful rapidity; intense and stead- 

 ily increasing competition with labor in nearly every vocation of industry; an 

 army of idlers crowding upon the workers everywhere; the man who is driven by 

 necessity or want to work or die of starvation is compelled to fight his own 

 fellows or be guarded by the police in the discharge of his duties. A decrepit, 

 homeless humanity, swelling in numbers every day, audible groans of want, woe 

 and misery coming up from every mining, manufacturing and commercial dis- 

 trict, and from many agricultural districts throughout the civilized world. 

 Strikes on every hand and general discontent prevailing.52 



Finally, what would to-day be called " direct action " was advocated, 

 and the Haymarket Square episode followed. The decade of the eighties 

 was an era of capitalistic combination in the form of " pools " ; but the 

 spirit of solidarity among the wage earners was still very weak. The 

 "separating influences of shops in one town, theories about general 

 principles, language, nationality, or the division of labor, split the 

 workers on one and the same product into bickering factions." 53 



•48 Cherouny, "The Historical Development of the Labor Question," pp. 240- 

 244. 



49Powderly in "Labor: Its Rights and Wrongs" (1886). Also, in North 

 American Review, May, 1886. 



50 Buchanan, ' ' The Story of a Labor Agitator. ' ' 



si Ibid., p. 128. 



52 Morgan, "History of the Wheel and Alliance," p. 662 (1889). 



53 Cherouny, ' ' The Historical Development of the Labor Question. ' ' 



