America did not become a cisatlantic Britain, as some of the colonial adventurers had hoped.A wider destiny awaited her.Here were economic conditions which upset all notions of the fixity of class distinctions.Here was a continent of free land, luring the disaffected or disappointed artisan and enabling him to achieve economic independence.Hither streamed ceaselessly hordes of immigrants from Europe, constantly shifting the social equilibrium.Here the demand for labor was constant, except during the rare intervals of financial stagnation, and here the door of opportunity swung wide to the energetic and able artisan.
The records of American industry are replete with names of prominent leaders who began at the apprentice's bench.
The old class distinctions brought from the home country, however, had survived for many years in the primeval forests of Virginia and Maryland and even among the hills of New England.
Indeed, until the Revolution and for some time thereafter, a man's clothes were the badge of his calling.The gentleman wore powdered queue and ruffled shirt; the workman, coarse buckskin breeches, ponderous shoes with brass buckles, and usually a leather apron, well greased to keep it pliable.Just before the Revolution the lot of the common laborer was not an enviable one.
His house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and without variety.His wage was two shillings a day, and prison --usually an indescribably filthy hole awaited him the moment he ran into debt.The artisan fared somewhat better.He had spent, as a rule, seven years learning his trade, and his skill and energy demanded and generally received a reasonable return.The account books that have come down to us from colonial days show that his handiwork earned him a fair living.This, however, was before machinery had made inroads upon the product of cabinetmaker, tailor, shoemaker, locksmith, and silversmith, and when the main street of every village was picturesque with the signs of the crafts that maintained the decent independence of the community.
Such labor organizations as existed before the Revolution were limited to the skilled trades.In 1648 the coopers and the shoemakers of Boston were granted permission to organize guilds, which embraced both master and journeyman, and there were a few similar organizations in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
But these were not unions like those of today."There are," says Richard T.Ely, "no traces of anything like a modern trades'
union in the colonial period of American history, and it is evident on reflection that there was little need, if any, of organization on the part of labor, at that time."** "The Labor Movement in America," by Richard T.Ely (1905), p.
86.
A new epoch for labor came in with the Revolution.Within a decade wages rose fifty per cent, and John Jay in 1784 writes of the "wages of mechanics and laborers" as "very extravagant."Though the industries were small and depended on a local market within a circumscribed area of communication, they grew rapidly.
The period following the Revolution is marked by considerable industrial restiveness and by the formation of many labor organizations, which were, however, benevolent or friendly societies rather than unions and were often incorporated by an act of the legislature.In New York, between 1800 and 1810, twenty-four such societies were incorporated.Only in the larger cities were they composed of artisans of one trade, such as the New York Masons Society (1807) or the New York Society of Journeymen Shipwrights (1807).Elsewhere they included artisans of many trades, such as the Albany Mechanical Society (1801).In Philadelphia the cordwainers, printers, and hatters had societies.In Baltimore the tailors were the first to organize, and they conducted in 1795 one of the first strikes in America.
Ten years later they struck again, and succeeded in raising their pay from seven shillings sixpence the job to eight shillings ninepence and "extras." At the same time the pay of unskilled labor was rising rapidly, for workers were scarce owing to the call of the merchant marine in those years of the rising splendor of the American sailing ship, and the lure of western lands.The wages of common laborers rose to a dollar and more a day.
There occurred in 1805 an important strike of the Philadelphia cordwainers.Theirs was one of the oldest labor organizations in the country, and it had conducted several successful strikes.
This particular occasion, however, is significant, because the strikers were tried for conspiracy in the mayor's court, with the result that they were found guilty and fined eight dollars each, with costs.As the court permitted both sides to tell their story in detail, a full report of the proceedings survives to give us, as it were, a photograph of the labor conditions of that time.
