EPHEMERAL LABOR MOVEMENTS 503 



ployers," and hoped to be able to solve the difficulties arising because of 

 combinations of workingmen. The prevention of strikes seemed to be 

 one important problem. The Beventh question asked whether unionists 

 had given trouble and whether it would be easy to displace them. The 

 at read: " Wbat Restrictions arc imposed upon yon as an Employer 

 by Combinal ions of workmen assuming to regulate the pay or other con- 

 ditions of Labor? 1 ' Another circular letter emanating from the same 

 source requested employers to meet personally with the executive com- 

 mittee. This committee "are in session every day from 10 o'clock A.M. 



to 10 o'clock p.m." 67 There is rea on to believe that this employers 1 



association was not a weak organization. In a speech given at a mass 

 meeting held in New York City in June, 1876, a member of the " execu- 

 tive committee of the Independent Labor Party" said : 



Less than five years ago we had over 79,000 organized men in the city; but 

 200 or 300 men gathered together in a hotel on Fifth Ave., combined against you 

 by using the government, by going to Albany, to Washington, and to the Board 

 of Aldermen. They have destroyed the Trade Union system, and reduced the 

 workmen of the city to a condition of beggary and starvation. 



The employers' associations of the seventies and eighties used many 

 of the weapons which similar bodies of a more recent date have fre- 

 quently used — blacklist, detectives, coal and iron police, the labor spy, 

 promotion of labor leaders in order to weaken the union, discharge of 

 union men, and the like. 68 



In conclusion, the chief peculiarities of the labor movements of the 

 quarter of a century, 18GG-1889, may be briefly summarized: 



1. Unstable — ebbed and flowed with industrial changes and disputes. 



2. Undisciplined — demanded of leaders immediate and strenuous 

 action. Many strikes, usually of short duration. 



'A. No very definite class consciousness, except in the eighties. The 

 chief demands were of the purely trade-union type — higher wages, 

 shorter hours, better working and living conditions, etc. — for political 

 reform — elimination of money or land monopoly, labor bureaus, etc. — 

 or for cooperation. 



4. Time after time leaders asserted that a transition period was just 

 ahead and that especial efforts were needed at that particular time and 

 place. 



5. Repeatedly the attention is directed to the concentration of 

 wealth and the growing menace of monopoly power. 



G. The labor leaders of the period were muckrakers ; they attacked 

 the political rottenness of the time. 



7. Immigration of Chinese laborers (coolies) was feared — not only 

 in the west but also in the east. 



8. Many persistent, but futile, attempts were made to weld labor 



into a strong political party. 



57 Circulars in New York Public Library. 

 sa McNeill, ' ' The Labor Movement, ' ' p. 266. 



