lO ASSOCIATION OF IRON, STEEL AND TIN WORKERS [142 



Its Strength numerically is only about one-third of what it 

 was in 1892, and its relative importance has waned. 



As its name implies, the Amalgamated Association of 

 Iron and Steel Workers of the United States is the result 

 primarily of the consolidation of three orders or societies. 

 The present society was organized at Pittsburgh in August, 

 1876. The unions which were consolidated were known as 

 the United Sons of Vulcan, consisting of boilers and pud- 

 dlers, the Associated Brotherhood of Iron and Steel Heat- 

 ers, Rollers and Roughers of the United States, composed 

 of men employed at the furnaces and rolls, and the Iron and 

 Steel Roll Hands' Union, which included in its membership 

 catchers, hookers, helpers, and others engaged about the 

 trains of works. A fourth organization, less important, in- 

 cluded in the amalgamation, was the United Nailers, com- 

 posed of a few local unions in the nail industry. 



The Pittsburgh puddlers were the pioneers in the labor 

 movement in the iron industry. Miles S. Humphreys has 

 given an admirable account of the conditions which pre- 

 vailed in the iron industry before there is any record of 

 union activity.^ The first great strike occurred in 1849^ and 

 lasted from the twentieth of December of that year until 

 the twelfth of the following May.'* The manufacturers 

 succeeding in reducing the price of puddling,^ and the work- 



2 Pennsylvania Annual Report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs, 

 part 3, Industrial Statistics, 1878-1879. pp. 150-151. 



^ The price paid for boiling in 1837 was $7.00 per ton ; for puddling, 

 $4.25. By 1842, boiling was reduced to $5.00 and puddling to $3.50. 

 The first strike of the boilers on record was caused by a reduction 

 in the price from $5.50 to $S-00 per ton in February, 1842. The strike 

 was ended on the 9th of July by the surrender of the strikers, and 

 $5.00 was paid until 1845. In May of that year, an advance of one 

 dollar per ton was demanded and refused. A strike followed, which 

 ended successfully in the latter part of August, and $6.00 was paid 

 until the close of 1849. Early in 1848, the puddlers at tiie Phoenix- 

 ville Rolling Mills, Chester County, Pa., struck against a reduction 

 from $5.00 to $3.50 per ton, but were beaten. In conducting these 

 strikes some form of organization must have been created ; but it 

 was probably crude and not permanent. 



* Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, May 30. 1882. 



^ The proposed reduction in the wages of the ironworkers in Pitts- 

 burgh was as follows: Puddlers, from $4.00 to $350 per ton; boilers, 



