But it was one thing to write a statute and another to enforce it.American laws were, after all, based upon the ancient Anglo-Saxon principle of private contract.A man could agree to work for as many hours as he chose, and each employer could drive his own bargain.The cotton mill owners of Allegheny City, for example, declared that they would be compelled to run their mills twelve hours a day.They would not, of course, employ children under twelve, although they felt deeply concerned for the widows who would thereby lose the wages of their children.But they must run on a twelve-hour schedule to meet competition from other States.So they attempted to make special contracts with each employee.The workmen objected to this and struck.Finally they compromised on a ten-hour day and a sixteen per cent reduction in wages.Such an arrangement became a common occurrence in the industrial world of the middle of the century.
In the meantime the factory system was rapidly recruiting women workers, especially in the New England textile mills.Indeed, as early as 1825 "tailoresses" of New York and other cities had formed protective societies.In 1829 the mill girls of Dover, New Hampshire, caused a sensation by striking.Several hundred of them paraded the streets and, according to accounts, "fired off a lot of gunpowder." In 1836 the women workers in the Lowell factories struck for higher wages and later organized a Factory Girls' Association which included more than 2,500 members.It was aimed against the strict regimen of the boarding houses, which were owned and managed by the mills."As our fathers resisted unto blood the lordly avarice of the British Ministry," cried the strikers, "so we, their daughters, never will wear the yoke which has been prepared for us."In this vibrant atmosphere was born the powerful woman's labor union, the Female Labor Reform Association, later called the Lowell Female Industrial Reform and Mutual Aid Society.Lowell became the center of a far-reaching propaganda characterized by energy and a definite conception of what was wanted.The women joined in strikes, carried banners, sent delegates to the labor conventions, and were zealous in propaganda.It was the women workers of Massachusetts who first forced the legislature to investigate labor conditions and who aroused public sentiment to a pitch that finally compelled the enactment of laws for the bettering of their conditions.When the mill owners in Massachusetts demanded in 1846 that their weavers tend four looms instead of three, the women promptly resolved that "we will not tend a fourth loom unless we receive the same pay per piece as on three....This we most solemnly pledge ourselves to obtain."In New York, in 1845, the Female Industry Association was organized at a large meeting held in the court house.It included "tailoresses, plain and coarse sewing, shirt makers, book-folders and stickers, capmakers, straw-workers, dressmakers, crimpers, fringe and lacemakers," and other trades open to women "who were like oppressed." The New York Herald reported "about 700 females generally of the most interesting age and appearance" in attendance.The president of the meeting unfolded a pitiable condition of affairs.She mentioned several employers by name who paid only from ten to eighteen cents a day, and she stated that, after acquiring skill in some of the trades and by working twelve to fourteen hours a day, a woman might earn twenty-five cents a day! "How is it possible," she exclaimed, "that at such an income we can support ourselves decently and honestly?"So we come to the fifties, when the rapid rise in the cost of living due to the influx of gold from the newly discovered California mines created new economic conditions.By 1853, the cost of living had risen so high that the length of the working day was quite forgotten because of the utter inadequacy of the wage to meet the new altitude of prices.Hotels issued statements that they were compelled to raise their rates for board from a dollar and a half to two dollars a day.Newspapers raised their advertising rates.Drinks went up from six cents to ten and twelve and a half cents.In Baltimore, the men in the Baltimore and Ohio Railway shops struck.They were followed by all the conductors, brakemen, and locomotive engineers.Machinists employed in other shops soon joined them, and the city's industries were virtually paralyzed.In New York nearly every industry was stopped by strikes.In Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, in cities large and small, the striking workmen made their demands known.
