USA > New York > New York City > New York panorama : a comprehensive view of the metropolis > Part 39
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378 TRADE AND INDUSTRY
666,000,000-a drop of $2,242,000,000 from the 1929 total of $5,90 000,000. The economic losses resulting from this reduction in indust activity were catastrophic; the consequent suffering and misery have pr ably surpassed anything ever before experienced in a modern indust community.
X. LABOR ust pro ust
Mechanics' Bell
V THE Webb Institute of Naval Architecture in the Bronx there has sted silently for several decades a great 900-pound throat of bronze. nis is Mechanics' Bell, which shipwrights hung a hundred years ago at anton and Goerck Streets, in lower Manhattan. From its point of van- ge near the shipyards on the East River, this bell signalled the end of ch ten-hour day, in defiance of the custom of the 1830's which demanded at artisans work "from dark to dark." The shipwrights who rested its toulder on odd pieces of scaffolding and tied a length of tarry rope to its ngue were unaware that its pealing symbolized not only their struggle or a ten-hour working day but something much more significant-a new vision of society and the emergence of a new class of which these arti- ns as yet but dimly felt themselves a part. Mechanics' Bell rang in the se of the merchant-capitalist and the first of a cycle of financial crises hich were to become so terrible a part of the new economy; the separa- on of trade societies, where masters and men were on an equal footing, to trade unions of workers on the one hand and associations of employ- 's on the other; the beginning of a remarkable series of intellectual move- ients clustering around workers' educational, political and economic aims. The storing of Mechanics' Bell in the Bronx, several miles from the south of the East River, in 1897, was coincident with the close of a great ra. The technique of collective bargaining had been adopted and perfected. rade unions, at first regarded as conspiracies, had become legally recog- ized bodies. The vote had been gained for wage earners, imprisonment or debt abolished, education made universal and free. Thomas Skidmore, George Henry Evans, Robert Dale Owen, Frances Wright, Albert Bris- ane, Horace Greeley, William Weitling, Joseph Weydemeyer, J. P. Mc- Donnell, John Swinton, Henry George, Father McGlynn, Daniel DeLeon, ad spoken to two generations of workers in New York City. The Work- ngmen's Party, the Equal Rights Party, the Phalanxists, the Single Taxers, he Workingmen's Alliance had embodied the political aspirations of var-
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ious groups. The Knights of Labor had yielded to the American Fede ga tion of Labor. For the first time in American history, national trade uniclics had succeeded in weathering a major business crisis, and felt confident tl Com they could survive future crises. The population of New York City washe about three million, a rush of foreign-born was storming Ellis Island, a Wall Street was the symbol of a concentration of wealth that in the ne A 30 years was to have as profound an effect on the lives of the majority had the rise of the merchant-capitalist.
By 1930 the working population of New York had grown to a figuer greater than the city's entire population in 1897. More than three milli tarp persons worked for wage, salary, fee or commission. The majority of water earners were engaged in manufacturing. More than a million persons weger employed in the manufacture of iron and steel, leather and shoes, paj and printing, textiles, clothing and in other manufactures. Clothing vean the largest single manufacturing industry, with 141,202 persons engag therein. Building trades mechanics accounted for nearly a quarter milli workers, including 53,569 carpenters, 54,122 painters and glaziers, albo 62,528 laborers. There were 297,809 transportation and communicati employees. Among the largest groups of workers were domestic and p sonal service employees, numbering 448,838, of whom 135,939 were hot M
servants other than cooks.
When New York became the nation's business and financial cent every important national firm felt a need, real or fancied, of maintaini an office in the city. This contributed to the growth of a comparative large white collar class. In 1930 there were more than a half million off or clerical workers not in stores, and a quarter million professional a: white collar workers other than clerks and sales persons, including 49,3 teachers. Retail store and commission salesmen totalled 195,358.
New York also became a major intellectual center, not only for lite! ture, science and art, but for labor. New developments such as the Ame can Labor Party, originating in New York City, had profound influer. on the direction of workers' political movements throughout the count. Also of importance to workers elsewhere was the fact that in the nation business, financial and cultural center and in its greatest industrial city least one-third of all those who worked for a living belonged to lab unions. By 1938, union organization was the rule in New York City all manufacturing industries, in transportation, and in the building trac and miscellaneous industries. Unions were established in a less degi among municipal employees, professionals and utility workers, Largely u
Jon
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Federrganized, though there was some unionization among them, were domes- uniocs and other servants, clerical and office workers and store salesmen. nt thompany-dominated organizations or company unions in 1938 were estab- ity wshed chiefly among clerical workers in some of the larger offices.
he ne prity An organized class of highly specialized workers did not exist in colo- ial New York. Labor was not hired, but bound, and consisted of inden- tred servants and apprentices, or of convicts and slaves. Among the in- figujentured servants were not only skilled workers such as dyers, weavers, millidurpenters and barbers, but doctors and surgeons, dancing masters and f wajachers of fencing, writing, drawing and arithmetic. Many of these in- s weentured servants became freemen, joining the large body of free residents pap-merchants, retailers, mechanics and free servants-in the New Amster- g wam of the 1650's. Unless he managed to acquire land, however, the free- gaghan had no voice in the management of the colony.
illid When in 1628 a body of emigrants erected on Manhattan 30 rude log- , arouses thatched with reeds, a counting house, a sawmill and a flour mill caticzere all that their simple community economy required. In the century I pend a half following, the number of skilled workers gradually increased. houLany mechanics fought as soldiers of the Revolution. But the winning of olitical freedom for the colonies did not yet mean political freedom for ntene mechanic. Under the constitution of New York of 1777 he could vote inianly if he held land in freehold.
tive Negroes acquired rights gradually and incompletely. Under the Dutch, offinfranchised Negroes were allowed to acquire and hold land. After the aringlish acquired possession of the Colony, however, this practice was ex- 38ressly prohibited. As early as 1684, the colonial General Assembly passed law that "no servant or slave shall either give, sell or truck any commod- terty whatever during their term of service." This law was reenacted in 1726, bernd again in 1778. By 1790 there were 5,915 Negroes in New York City. en With the emancipation of Negro slaves by the acts of 1799, 1817 and tr: 827, Negroes began to engage in the trades and professions, and records ogindicate the existence in 1835 of Negro carpenters and joiners, shoemakers, ailors, dress and cloakmakers, clockmakers and teachers.
Many a master workman successfully operated his own business, and after the Revolutionary War masters and journeymen banded together in dcommon organizations for the purpose of furthering their trade. The Gen- eral Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen was founded in New York in u1785 to resist the competition of foreign goods, and held meetings and
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parades to influence public opinion. In 1821 this society founded a schoevo and a library to further the education of apprentices. But the position $" the master workman slowly grew less secure, and from George Washin rty ton's to Andrew Jackson's day he struggled desperately to retain contrciet of his trade. By the 1830's the merchant-capitalist was definitely in conga mand. As early as 1817, New York printers expelled an employer memberce from their society and declared, with italic emphasis: "This society isuty society of journeymen printers; and as the interests of the journeymen acore separate and in some respects opposite to those of the employers, we deej the it improper that they should have any voice or influence in our delibert sc tions."
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Union organization, however, was still regarded as a conspiracy againliliti the public order, and in 1818 the New York Typographical Society were refused articles of incorporation because these did not provide that the s Pro ciety would not "at any time pass any law or regulation respecting thon price or wages of labour or workmen." Eight years before, the cordwaincaine of New York had been forced to defend themselves in court on the charwhich of conspiracy. At the trial their counsel put the case for the "closed shojf so as follows: "If an individual will seek to better himself at the expense ft of his fellows, when they are suffering privation to obtain terms, it is nfet hard that they leave him to his employers; and the most inoffensive maccan ner in which they can show their displeasure is by shaking the dust (fith their feet, and leaving the shop where he is engaged." The term "union's was used for the first time in New York in its modern labor sense in 182enti with the forming of the Nailers' and the Weavers' Unions. IN
In 1830 Manhattan was about the size of Syracuse a hundred years lateore with a population of 202,589. Many poor workingmen owing sums frc 828 $2 to $100 were annually sent to debtors' prison, where they were givmig a single quart of soup every 24 hours, but neither bed nor fuel. There werith no tax-supported schools, and the Public School Society of New York Cilndr estimated that some 24,000 children between the ages of five and 15 yea As were deprived of schooling. Even in the so-called public schools a fee wiew charged until 1832.
Male citizens had held the vote since 1821, but not until 1829 dfhes mechanics organize a political party of their own-the Workingmerlind Party of New York City. After a whirlwind campaign of two weeks don 1830, the party elected an assemblyman and a State senator. A New Yo tam assemblyman of the old school described this political organization workmen as "more dangerous than any . . . in the days of the Fren don,
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cho volution." The press called members of the Workingmen's Party "level- n" and "workies," and described their movement as the "dirty-shirt ninety" of a "ring-streaked and speckled rabble," whose leaders were "lost to ntr ciety, to earth and to heaven, godless and hopeless, clothed and fed by steal- cong and blasphemy." The Commercial Advertiser and the Journal of Com- mberce attacked the system of universal suffrage that could bring into being a is tty "which is emerging from the slime of this community, and which is apre beastly and terrible than the Egyptian Typhoon." Yet the platform leel ber the Workingmen's Party called merely for the establishing of free pub- schools, the reform of banking, the curbing of monopoly, the abolition imprisonment for debt, improvement in election methods, reform of the ainklitia system, payment of adequate fees to jurors and witnesses, civil serv- w: reform, religious freedom and the abolition of capital punishment.
s| Prominent in the political and reform movements of the 1830's was thomas Skidmore, a machinist strongly influenced by the ideas of Thomas neline. Skidmore published in 1829 The Rights of Man to Property in argich he maintained that the unequal division of property caused the ills opf society. George Henry Evans, brother of the famous Shaker, became edi- e or of the New York Working Man's Advocate in 1829, and devoted his nie to land reform. Robert Dale Owen, son of the famous philanthropist, hancame editor of the Free Enquirer in New York, where he was associated ath Frances Wright, rationalist, social reformer, and champion of wom- om's rights. Other workers' papers established in these years were the Daily 32 ntinel and the Evening Enquirer.
New York workers supported the free land movement for which Skid- tejore and Evans carried on unremitting propaganda for a generation after roß328. It was the alliance of Eastern wage earners interested in stimulating venigration to the West (thus improving the market for their own labor) elith frontiersmen in national politics that made possible the election of Cindrew Jackson and later the election of Abraham Lincoln.
eal As the century advanced, however, and the infant commercial system wiew stronger, political action yielded to the more immediate task of union ganization. In 1833 there were at least 15 organized trades in New York. dithese included several trades mainly employing women, such as book- ending, in which the binders formed in 1835 the Female Union Associa- on and struck for higher wages, and the garment industry, in which og amstresses organized a union in 1836. From February to December of (336 no fewer than 13 strikes of skilled workers were recorded-in addi- don, no doubt, to many others unrecorded. A central union body organ-
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ized in 1833, published a paper, The National Trades' Union, from 18 3un to 1836. Most of these early unions feared that participation in politi N would bring division into their primarily economic organizations, and then adhered to immediate demands for higher wages and shorter hours. This, first national convention of trades unions was held in 1836, and the fir so national body set up; it prematurely and unsuccessfully attempted to rej "} resent all working men. In its place, national organizations of various craf ith were formed. oth
With the panic of 1837, the labor movement was crushed out of exismer ence. Unions, city trades unions and councils, national federations, and thegar labor press disappeared. Wages were reduced and thousands lost their jobrod 6,000 building workers being discharged in New York City alone in 183 A A "dense multitude of many thousands" gathered in the park in front cada City Hall in February 1837 to demonstrate for "bread, meat, rent antear. fuel." This demonstration and others were sponsored by the newly orgar out ized Equal Rights Party, formed by workingmen who had seen their traci unions dissolve in the panic and who sought some alternate means of gaiman ing security. The party defeated Tammany in the city elections in 183 dain Tammany, now early in its career putting into effect its principle of " top ye can't lick 'em jine 'em," in the next elections placed on its ticket five members of the Equal Rights Party, on condition that the latter withdra asp its other candidates-and thus embarked on a policy, the main source ( T for its strength for almost a hundred years, of organizing the labor vote.
The panic of 1837 deepened into a long depression, the "hard timestt of the 1840's. The merchant-capitalists, who had been busy fighting thork trade unions, now turned to fighting the business crisis-a large part cifer their strategy consisting in attempting to undermine one another. Althought tr the weaker ones vanished, the remaining merchant-capitalists becam cco stronger than ever. Fac
The "occult power" of machinery, as the land reformer Thomas A Devyr phrased it, was now rapidly overtaking handicraft, and in the conti sequent shifts and readjustments the new class rung so bravely into beinkil by Mechanics' Bell suffered incredible hardship. The first great wave cegu unskilled laborers from Europe arrived to swell the labor market. "Harti times" brought to the working men a feeling of frustration. Their union excl had all but vanished, the Workingmen's Party was a thing of the past, thara Equal Rights Party had been absorbed by Tammany. The right to vot ts held for about 20 years, had served only to strengthen merchant-capitali policies. Small wonder that a band of beckoning spirits, the intellectual d
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183 nd in the 1840's many followers among workers. Robert Dale Owen, olitid New York after the failure of New Harmony, Josiah Warren, the I thænder of "time stores" and of the American school of intellectual anarch- . Thì, Albert Brisbane, and the rest, although preaching diverse methods firssolving the problems of society, had a common aim: the introduction rep"harmony" into the productive world, the collaboration of the consumer crafth the producer and of the entrepreneur with the laborer. They opposed h political action and trade union organization. Brisbane, returning to existherica in 1834 a convert to Fourier, announced that society must be d thganized into "groups," "series," and "sacred legions" based not on jobødes of production but on men's passions and desires.
837As editor of the New York Tribune from 1841 to 1872, Horace Greeley ot od an enormous influence on the temper of the age. His philosophy, never andarly defined, contained elements of land reform, currency reform, garurierism and abolitionism. William Weitling, a German immigrant, who rad| 1850 founded in New York the Republik der Arbeiter, saw more clearly gainun Brisbane or Greeley that producing and distributing cooperatives re- 83Lined at the mercy of the bankers who supplied the capital. He therefore "opposed the organization, not of more cooperative ventures, but of "banks fivj exchange," or cooperative banks, which in his view would effectively rasplace the merchant-capitalist.
e of The cooperative propaganda of the 1840's found a fertile field in New ork, and a number of societies were set up, both of the producers' and es the consumers' type. Most of them failed. The reason assigned by the thorkers themselves, as reported in Greeley's Tribune, was the rapid turn- ofer of the membership. Too many leaders were drawn away to the West igl tried to start little businesses of their own. This factor of mobility also mlcounts largely for the apparent desultoriness and lack of stamina in the ade unions of these years.
A With the rush of immigrants to New York and the rise in business ontivity in the early 1850's, there began the separation of skilled from un- ingilled labor, and the rise of craft unions solidly organized on the basis of olgular dues, fixed meetings and contracts with employers. As the earlier ur tisans had expelled employers from their ranks, the skilled workers now included from their unions all "friends of labor" not working at the trade. harallel to the growth of craft unions was the new tendency among work- te's speaking a foreign language to make up a single local or union. Prices isegan to rise rapidly, and the skilled workers, whose wages lagged con- Isderably behind the rising cost of living, made great gains in organiza-
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tion. In 1853 and 1854, Greeley's Tribune sometimes recorded in a sing issue as many as 25 or 30 strikes, while Greeley himself in an adjoinil editorial would thunder against the trade unions, which he alternately c on posed and cajoled during the rest of his career. Weitling, too, was strong opposed to trade unionism, maintaining that it was a device of capital B hold the workers in check.
The hard times of the 1840's were scarcely over when a new depressi,den in 1854-5 deepened into the panic of 1857. Mobs of desperate men ai ieri women roamed the streets of New York shouting "Bread or death !" aigre threatened to attack the Subtreasury Building. Had it not been for tm safety-valve of the westward migration and the increasing tension over tiga slavery question, the revolutionary events in Europe might have had parallel in American industrial cities such as New York. 4
Many workers in New York had ardently supported the abolition mowym ment, but the attempt made during the Civil War to apply the Conscri
int el tion Act in New York resulted in mob fighting and the erection of bar cades in the streets. The provision of this act permitting a man of dralate age to purchase immunity from military service for the sum of $300 w strongly resented. The average worker, to whom the sum represented large share of his annual income, and who was aware that some of themno who thus purchased their freedom were making huge war profits, felt thing the entire burden of the war was on his shoulders. Riots began on Mofo day, July 13, 1863, and continued until Friday. What began as a demot stration against the unfairness of the Conscription Act ended in bitt street warfare, the destruction of property, the sacking of buildings. Net York employers had on numerous occasions made use of Negro workeW as strike-breakers, and the mob, many of whom saw the slavery issue the single cause of the war, dragged Negroes from their homes, beat anz in some instances killed them, and attempted to sack the office of Greeleypl abolitionist Tribune. Not until the city had been occupied by 10,000 troo le was order restored. Nearly a thousand rioters and three policemen lost theta lives during the week.
Organized labor, however, did not participate in these riots. Neith did the German workers, influenced by revolutionary doctrines of Euro- which maintained that the Civil War represented a struggle between tif? merchant-capitalists of the North and the landlords of the South, arts hence was generally in the direction of progress. Whole locals of unio in New York, in fact, enlisted on the side of the North.
The period immediately following the Civil War saw the rise of tyle
tha
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singharacteristically American movements. Greenbackism began as currency iidform and developed into an attempt at complete industrial organiza- y oon by displacing bankers and middlemen from their positions in the ongonomy of production. The eight-hour day movement began as an at- tal Impt by workmen to shorten their hours of work, but soon accumulated a dy of theory aimed at solving the problems of capital and labor by a ssidneral rise in purchasing power. Other important developments of this 1 an riod were the invention of the trade union label, the first national trade agreement, the first eight-hour legislation, the formation of a national r thaployers' association and of a national labor party, the first laws directed r thainst "conspiracy" and "intimidation" by trade unions, and the begin- ng of jurisdictional disputes between unions.
The National Labor Union, founded in 1866 at Baltimore, held its third nual meeting in New York in 1868; and at that meeting it appointed cri legates to the International Workmen's Association, established by Karl arx and British trade unionists in 1864. The National Labor Union affil- arm dralted with the International in 1870, and the American section devoted whost of its practical efforts toward international regulation of immigration edad the attempt to avert what seemed an inevitable war between England hoad the United States. A National Labor Congress, representing 600,000 thganized American workers and counting among its leaders Ezra A. Hey- fogood, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and A. C. Cameron met New York on September 21, 1868.
The Communist Club of New York, organized in 1857, affiliated with le International in 1867; as did the more powerful General German orkingmen's Union, the latter becoming Section I of New York of the ternational. Originally, the German Workingmen's Union, while recog- an ey zing that "in Europe only a general revolution can form the means of lifting the working people," hoped for the abolition of the capitalist ethod of production in the adopted country by "the education of the 3 asses" and "the use of the ballot." In 1866 the Union received an invi- hel
tion from the county committee of the Republican Party to send delegates he the county nominating convention. Most sections of the International New York City were made up of foreign workers, but Sections 9 and th2 were composed largely of native Americans and were headed by two sters, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. Section 12 was a great in ial to the central committee of the International in London, which finally kpelled it for addressing, without authority, an appeal "to the citizens of e Union" which called for the right of women to vote and hold office,
itt Ve ke
ad
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the formation of a universal language, and freedom of sexual relation For a while, after the Congress of The Hague in 1872 and the expulsi of Bakunin, the general council of the International, fearing the influer. of the Bakuninists, had its headquarters in New York. The Internatior in America was dissolved in 1876.
The panic of 1873 forced about 3,000,000 workers into unemployment throughout the country. In New York State approximately 182,000 skill union workers were idle, and trade union membership in New York C fell from about 44,000 to about 5,000. A great demonstration and para of the unemployed was called for January 13, 1874, with permission the city authorities; but at the last moment, when it was too late for th leaders to inform the paraders, the officials withdrew their consent. At t appointed hour a great crowd of men, women and children poured ir Tompkins Square. Suddenly, in the midst of speeches, a force of polite charged upon the gathering, and many persons were clubbed or otherwo injured.
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