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Economic Visions and Political Strategies: American Labor and the State,1865–1896

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Victoria Hattam
Victoria Hattam
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

After the Civil War, a new wave of workers' protest swept the country as trade lunions, third parties, eight-hour leagues, and a host of other reform associations sprang up in many cities and towns. For the three decades following the war, no one organization was hegemonic. Instead, there was a proliferation of associations, often advocating quite different programs of labor reform. Accounts of the more prominent organizations such as the Knights of Labor (KOL,) Populists, and American Federation of Labor (AFL) are well known. These institutions, however, represented only the tip of the iceberg and were surrounded by more obscure associations such as the Workingmen's Union, the Workingmen's Assembly, the Workingmen's Convention, the Union Labor party, and the United Labor party, to name only a few. Several attempts were made to unite these disparate associations into a single front, but the efforts were largely unsuccessful and often had difficulty surviving for more than a year. The Junior Sons of '76, the National Labor Union, and the United Labor party each disbanded as participants failed to agree on a common platform of postwar reform.

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Studies in American Political Development , Volume 4 , Spring 1990 , pp. 82 - 129
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

I would like to thank the editors and the following friends and colleagues for comments on earlier drafts of the paper: Suzanne Berger, Gerald Berk, David Brody, Cecelia Bucki, Walter Dean Burnham, Shelly Burtt, David Cameron, Colleen Dunlavy, Morton Horwitz, Steve Lewis, Richard Locke, David Mayhew, Terrence McDonald, Anne Norton, Richard Oestreicher, Chuck Sabel, Ron Schatz, Ian Shapiro, George Shulman, and Rogers Smith.

1. For discussion of the Junior Sons of'76 conventions, see Rayback, Joseph, History of American Labor (New York: Free Press, 1966), 144Google Scholar. For the United Labor party campaign of 1886, see Scobey's, David very interesting article, “Boycotting the Politics Factory: Labor Radicalism and the New York Mayoral Election of 1884,” Radical History Review 28–30 (1984): 280–325Google Scholar; and Steven Ross, J., “The Politicization of the Working Class: Production, Ideology, Culture and Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati,” Social History 11(2): 171–95 (05 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the National Labor Union, see text and sources following.

The exact number of participants involved in this new mobilization remains unclear, as membership figures were often unreliable. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, for example, contemporary estimates of labor-organization membership varied from 300,000 to 600,000 in the space of a few years. See Montgomery, David, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 140–41Google Scholar.

2. For three very interesting books which have adhered to these assumptions, see Fink, Leon, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Oestreicher, Richard Jules, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Ross, Steven J., Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

3. For earlier interpretations of the postwar labor movement, see Perlman, Selig, “Upheaval and Reorganization,” in Commons, John R. et al. , vol. 2, pt. 4History of Labor in the United States (New York: Macmillan Co., 1946)Google Scholar; Perlman, Selig, A Theory of the Labor Movement (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1978, first edition 1928)Google Scholar; Grob, Gerald N., Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900 (Northwestern University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

The phrase ideological affinity is Montgomery's. See Beyond Equality, Preface, p. x.

4. See Montgomery, Beyond Equality, chaps. 4, 5, especially pp. 135, 195.

5. Ibid., chaps. 4, 5, 11, and pp. 135–40, 441–47.

6. Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation. The distinction between the old and new labor history is taken from Brody, David, “The Old Labor History and the New: In Search of an American Working Class,” Labor History 20(1): 111–26 (Winter 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For work on the antebellum era, see Rock, Howard B., Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen in New York City in the Age of Jefferson (New York: New York University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Dawley, Alan, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Laurie, Bruce, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800–1850 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Faler, Paul, Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution: Lynn, Massachusetts, 1780–1860 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Stansell, Christine, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Wilentz, Sean, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. For the postbellum era, see Salvatore, Nick, Eugene v. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and works in n. 2.

7. My criticism of Montgomery's Beyond Equality has been developed at greater length elsewhere. See Victoria Hattam, “Ideological Divisions and American Labor: The Montgomery Thesis Reconsidered and an Alternative Analysis Proposed,” paper in possession of the author, Yale University.

8. William Jessup described the 1870 National Labor Congress proceedings as “inharmonious” in his report to the New York Workingmen's Assembly. Jessup's report is reprinted in full in Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Session of the Workingmen's Assembly, State of New York, January, 1871 (New York: Journeymen's Printers' Co-operative Association, 1871), 64. Here-after, all Workingmen's Assembly proceedings will be cited as Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings, followed by the year of session, except for the first time mentioned.

9. For example, both the New York Workingmen's Assembly and Friedrich Sorge's Labor Union No. 5 identified financial issues when breaking with the NLU. For the Workingmen's Assembly's views, see Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 64. For Sorge's views, see Todes, Charlotte, William H. Sylvis and the National Labor Union (New York: International Publishers, 1942), 90Google Scholar.

10. NLU proceedings were originally published in various labor newspapers. Excerpts have been collected in Commons, John R. et al. , eds., A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, 10 vols. (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1911)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as NLU Proceedings followed by the year of the congress. For debate over whether to seat Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the Woman's Suffrage Association at the 1868 congress, see NLU Proceedings (1868), 198. The Newark House Painters' Union withdrew their delegate from the NLU in 1868 over the Stanton question. See NLU Proceedings (1868), 219. For the debate over “negro labor,” see NLU Proceedings (1867), 185–88. For hostility to middle-class reformers, see Jessup's, discussion of membership in his report to the Workingmen's Assembly in Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 64Google Scholar. See also Walls', Henry letter to Jessup in Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 83Google Scholar.

11. The following unions identified independent political action as the bone of contention with the NLU: the Cigarmakers' International Union, the Cincinnati Trades Assembly, and the International Typographical Union. See the following sources: “What is the National Labor Union—I,” editorial in the Workingman's Advocate, 7(25), 18 February 1871; Walls', Henry letter to Jessup in Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 83Google Scholar; and Stevens, George A., New York Typographical Union No. 6: Study of a Modern Trade Union and Its Predecessors (Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon State Printers, 1913), 585Google Scholar.

12. See Jessup's, report in Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 64Google Scholar.

13. See Walls', letter in Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 82Google Scholar.

14. A list of the attending delegates is provided for each of the NLU congresses in the NLU Proceedings. The NLU changed its name in 1872 to the Industrial Congress. Despite the name change, the Industrial Congress was in many ways a continuation of the NLU, with a number of the same individuals participating in the new organization. There is no further record of the Industrial Congress after 1875.

15. Montgomery, Beyond Equality, 182.

16. Terence Powderly, the Grand Master Workman of the KOL, referred to the “industrial question”. See Powderly, Terence, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859–1889 (Columbus, Ohio: Excelsior Publishing House, 1889), 664Google Scholar. See also Report of the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations between Labor and Capital, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1885), hereafter cited as Report of the Senate, vol. 1, p. 36.

17. The fear of economic concentration was often expressed in terms of the unhealthy increase in monopolies. For examples, see the “Majority Report of Platform Committee,” in Proceedings of the Second Session of the National Labor Union, in Convention Assembled, New York City, 21 Sept. 1868 (Philadelphia: W. B. Selheimer, Printer, 1868), 33–34, 40, hereafter cited as NLU Proceedings, 2d sess. (1868).

The problem of monopoly was also discussed at the following New York Workingmen's Assembly sessions: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Session of the N.Y. State Workingmen's Assembly, January 1869 (New York: La Faye and Troup, Printers, 1869), 7; Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Session of the Workingmen's Assembly, State of New York, January 1870 (New York: Journeymen Printers' Co-operative Association, 1870), 5–6; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 80–81.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) also discussed monopoly at their first congress, FOTLU reports and AFL proceedings are collected in Proceedings of the American Federation of Labor (Bloomington, 111.: Pantagraph Printing and Stationery Co., 1906). Hereafter, proceedings from all FOTLU and AFL congresses will be cited as FOTLU Report and AFL Proceedings, followed by year of session. See FOTLU Report (1881), 19.

The Preamble of the KOL bemoaned the “recent alarming development and aggression of aggregated wealth,” in its opening line. See KOL Preamble. The platforms and proceedings of the KOL general assembly are in the “Papers of Terence Vincent Powderly, 1864–1924; and John William Hayes, 1880–1921” (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University), hereafter cited as Powderly Papers.

A quote from Terence Powderly captures the KOL'S view of corporations nicely: “Fancy a man whose arteries do not belong to him, whose heart-beats are directed by another, by one over whom he has no control, and the reader will form an idea of the condition of this country, with the public highways in the hands of corporations, acting independent of and in some instances in defiance of government.” See Powderly, Thirty Years, 387.

18. For example, both Samuel Gompers and John Junio were cigar makers. Yet these men responded very differently to the changes in the postbellum era. Gompers became a strong advocate of working-class organization, while Junio supported the Greenback Labor party in 1877 and was a strong advocate of the producers' alliance and program.

19. Joseph Labadie of Detroit was a member of the Socialist Labor party in 1877, then joined the KOL Local Assembly 901 in 1878. After the Haymarket Affair of 1886, Labadie unsuccessfully challenged Powderly, and eventually left the KOL to become first president of the Michigan Federation of Labor in 1889. See Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, 80, 90,209. Similarly, George Mc Neill, of Boston, was a leader of the Boston Eight-Hour League, International Labor Union, and KOL 1869–74; he later became a prominent figure in the Boston AFL. See Montgomery, Beyond Equality, 467.

The more common pattern was for men such as William Sylvis, Alfred Phelps, John Junio, and Richard F. Trevellick to be found supporting producer initiatives, while William Jessup, Henry Walls, Henry Keating, Conrad Kuhn, and M. R. Walsh argued for the trade union position. Interestingly, the organizations and trades that tended to dissent from the producers' assumptions generally were involved in quite intense industrial conflicts in the postwar decade. For example, the New York Bricklayers, Cigarmakers, and Typographical unions often questioned the producers' assumptions. There was, however, only a general tendency, rather than a direct correspondence, between occupation or economic position, and ideology.

20. Grob, in particular, divides the labor movement into Utopian reformers versus business unionists. See Grob, Workers and Utopia, 8–9, 14, 44, 187–88, 194. Selig Perlman made similar assumptions in his account of the postwar era. See Perlman, Theory of the Labor Movement, chap. 5, especially 198–99.

21. For a discussion of workers' extension of the republican legacy, see Amy Bridges, “Becoming American: The Organization and Disorganization of the American Working Class before the Civil War,” In Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide R., eds., Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Fink, Workingmen's Democracy; Wilentz, Chants Democratic; Salvatore, EugeneV. Debs,; Oestreicher, Richard, “Terence V. Powderly, the Knights of Labor, and Artisanal Republicanism,” in Dubovsky, Melvyn and Tine, Warren Van, eds., Labor Leaders in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

22. References to “virtue” can be found in a number of NLU sources. For example, see The Address of the National Labor Congress to the Workingmen of the United States, reprinted in Commons et al., Documentary History, 9, hereafter cited as NLU Address; NLU Address, 145; NLU Proceedings (1867), 181; and the “Majority Report of the Platform Committee,” in NLU Proceedings (1868), 34, 30.

23. The existence of a “producers' alliance” between skilled workers and small manufacturers permeates most of the primary source material. For example, most “labor organizations” before 1880 admitted small businessmen or employers to join their organizations and referred to themselves as the “producing classes.” For a fascinating discussion of cross-class alliances within the KOL, see Robert D. Layton testimony, Report of the Senate 1:3; and George Blair testimony, Report of the Senate 2:44; and Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, 10.

See the following sources for specific discussions of nineteenth-century class divisions: William Sylvis, “What is Money?” Sylvis's essay was originally published in three parts in the Chicago Workingman's Advocate, February to June 1869. The essay was reprinted by Sylvis's brother in 1872. See Sylvis, James C., The Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of William H. Sylvis (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsem Y. Haffelfinger, 1872), 365, 367Google Scholar. See also, Powderly, Thirty Years, 101–2, 150, 162, 503; Industrial Brotherhood Platform, plank no. 12, quoted in Powderly, Thirty Years, 119; Knights of Labor Platform, General Assembly Proceedings, 1878, plank 10, in Powderly Papers, 6.

On the producing classes, see particularly Fink, Workingmen's Democracy; Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs; Ross, Workers on the Edge; Cassity, Michael J., “Modernization and Social Crisis: The Knights of Labor and a Midwest Community, 1885–1886,” Journal of American History 66(1):41–61 (06 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schneider, Linda, “The Citizen Striker: Workers' Ideology in the Homestead Strike of 1892,” Labor History 23(1):47–66 (Winter 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.However, these accounts often fail to explore the substantive demands of the producers' ideology sufficiently, and stop short of rethinking our twentieth-century assumptions about the concept of class.

24. See J. G. A. Pocock, “Civic Humanism and Its Role in Anglo-American Thought,” and “Machiavelli, Harrington and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century,” in Pocock, J. G. A., Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1973)Google Scholar.

25. See NLU Proceedings (1867), 177. For discussion of these issues in the antebellum era, see Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 157–58.

26. For discussion of republican fears of concentrated power, see Pocock, “Civic Humanism,” 87–88; and Pocock, “Machiavelli,” 123. In the American context, see Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar, especially chap. 3.

For continuation of these fears into the postbellum era, see, for example, Sylvis, “What is Money?” 367. Sylvis writes: “A centralization of wealth is a centralization of power. When the few possess themselves of everything, and the many are reduced to that condition of dependence when it is compulsory to work or starve, then it is that the power of wealth and the rule of the few is absolute.”

27. For a superb discussion of the constitutive power of politics in the republican tradition and its influence on English chartism, see Jones, Gareth Stedman, “Rethinking Chartism,” in Jones, Gareth Stedman, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 90–178Google Scholar.Similar concerns can be seen in the following primary sources: NLU Address, 165–66; and Sylvis as quoted in Powderly, Thirty Years, 79.

28. NLU Address, 145.

29. Quoted in Powderly, Thirty Years, 478. Similar acceptance of “improved machinery” can be seen in Layton testimony, Report of the Senate 1:36; Blair testimony, Report of the Senate 2:45.

30. The producers' concern with size and scale of production can be seen in a number of sources. For example, Powderly claimed that railroad pools and farming syndicates had been far from beneficial and, in fact, had decreased healthy competition within these industries. See Powderly, Thirty Years, 455. Powderly also feared the erosion of the “middle ground” as producers were lured into the larger cities. See Powderly, Thirty Years, 387. For similar concerns, see Sylvis, “What is Money?” 358; and Layton testimony, Report of the Senate 1:5.

31. NLU Address, 145. In these early postbellum decades, capitalists were equated with nonproducers. See NLU Proceedings, 2d sess. (1868), 32, 33.

32. The preamble of both the Industrial Brotherhood and the KOL described the recent capital accumulation in these terms. The quotation can be found in Powderly, Thirty Years, 116–17, 243.

33. Quoted in Powderly, Thirty Years, 454–55.

34. The phrase “pauperization and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses” appears in the opening paragraph of the preamble to the KOL platform. See General Assembly Proceedings, 1878, in Powderly Papers, 3; and Powderly, Thirty Years, 409.

35. The phrase “fruits of his toil” is taken from the preamble of the KOL platform. See KOL General Assembly Proceedings, 1882, in Powderly Papers, 3.

The NLU and KOL concern that small producers were losing out to the larger industrialists can be seen in the following sources: Sylvis, “What is Money?” 362. For the NLU'S argument that increasing the money supply would lead to more balanced growth, see Sylvis, “What is Money?” 380, 384; and Powderly, Thirty Years, chap. 9.

36. NLU Address, 178. For a similar claim, see Powderly, Thirty Years, 396–97.

37. The importance of the financial question has been noted by previous scholars. See, for example, Destler, Chester McArthur, American Radicalism, 1865–1902: Essays and Documents (New London, Conn.: Connecticut College Monographs, 1946)Google Scholar. David Montgomery also laid out the financial issues in the last chapter of Beyond Equality. However, neither of these earlier accounts fully integrates the financial question into the analysis of workers' protest and labor movement development more generally.

38. Sylvis, “What is Money?” 355. Sylvis acknowledged his debt to the earlier work of Edward Kellogg who also believed the financial system to be crucial to labor. See Kellogg, Edward, Labor and Other Capital: The Rights of Each Secured and the Wrongs of Both Eradicated (New York: Edward Kellogg, 1849)Google Scholar. The NLU recommended Kellogg's book to delegates. See NLU Proceedings, 2d sess. (1868), 21.

39. The phrase “labor and talents” appears in a number of NLU documents. For example, see NLU Proceedings (1867), 176; and NLU Proceedings, 2d sess. (1868), 32. The phrase “levelling up” can be found in many nineteenth-century labor sources. For example, see Sylvis, “What is Money?” 369. The desire to decouple currency from gold and the definition of a democratic money both can be seen in Sylvis, “What is Money?” 380.

40. Sylvis, “What is Money?” 364. See also 362–63, 367–68, 384.

41. Ibid., 367.

42. The producers' view of industrial conflict as a last resort can be found in Layton testimony, Report of the Senate 1:16; Sylvis, “What is Money?” 365; Powderly, Thirty Years, 250, 275, 503, 511; and NLU Address, 155. For use of the phrase “industrial emancipation,” see Powderly, Thirty Years, 49; and the Greenbackers' 1876 Platform, reprinted in Donald Bruce Johnson and Kirk H. Porter, eds., National Party Platforms (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 52.

43. Powderly wrote of “unwise and corrupt legislation.” See Powderly, Thirty Years, 83. Similar concerns about poor legislation can be seen in NLU Address, 165–66; NLU Proceedings (1867), 177; and NLU Proceedings, 2d sess. (1868), 32.

44. For discussion of government promotion of internal improvements, see Handlin, Oscar and Handlin, Mary Flug, Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy, Massachusetts, 1774–1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947)Google Scholar; Hartz, Louis, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heath, Milton Sydney, Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lively, Robert A., “The American System, A Review Article,” Business History Review 29 (03 1955):81–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goodrich, Carter, “Internal Improvements Reconsidered,” The Journal of Economic History 30(2):289–311 (06 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cochran, Thomas C. and Miller, William, A Social History of Industrial America (New York: Harper & Row, 1961)Google Scholar, especially chap. 4.

45. A number of scholars have argued that there were indeed viable historical alternatives to mass production. For example, see Sabel, Charles and Zeitlin, Jonathan, “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth Century Industrialization,” Past and Present, no. 108 (08 1985): 133–76Google Scholar; Sabel, Charles F., Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brien, Patrick O' and Keyder, Caglar, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (London: Allen and Urwin, 1978)Google Scholar.

For more specific arguments along these lines applied to the American case, see Berk, Gerald P., “Corporations and Politics: American Railroads, 1870–1916” (Ph.D. diss., MIT, 1987)Google Scholar; Berk, , “Constituting Corporations and Markets: Railroads in Gilded Age Politics,” Studies in American Political Development 4 (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Goodwyn, Lawrence, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

46. For programs and platforms of major third parties contesting presidential elections between 1872 and 1900, see Johnson and Porter, eds., National Party Platforms.

47. The KOL General Master Workman called for “a revolution” in the economic system in a secret circular distributed 15 December 1884. After denouncing the French Revolution, the circular claimed: “Notwithstanding all of this, I wish to see some killing done; I wish to see the systems by which the worker is oppressed killed off; and I long to see a revolution in the working time of those who toil.” Quoted in Powderly, Thirty Years, 483. Similar calls for “a radical change in the existing industrial system” were expressed at the KOL General Assembly in 1884 when it was stated that the “attitude of our order to the existing industrial system is necessarily one of war.” Quoted in Dubofsky, Melvyn, Industrialism and the American Worker (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975), 55Google Scholar.

48. For discussion of producers' affiliation with the Democratic party in the antebellum era, see Meyers, Marvin, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

For labor's division between the two major parties after the Civil War, see Sharkey, Robert P., Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Montgomery, Beyond Equality, chaps. 7–9.

The producers' ambivalent attitude toward political action is captured in the following sources: NLU Address, 164–65; and Powderly, Thirty Years, chap. 6. See also Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, for an excellent discussion of the Knights' ambivalence toward political reform, especially 23–24.

49. On nationalization, see the KOL platform adopted in Philadelphia in 1884, plank 18, Powderly Papers. See also Powderly, Thirty Years, 388–90; and Greenback National Platform of 1884, plank 4, reprinted in Johnson and Porter, eds., National Party Platforms. Producers were well aware of the irony of advocating nationalization as a means of arresting economic concentration. See Powderly, Thirty Years, 409, 414; and Blair testimony, Report of the Senate 2:61–65.

On increased regulation of interstate commerce and particular support for the Interstate Commerce Bill, see Powderly, Thirty Years, 394; Greenback Platform 1880, plank 6; Anti-Monopoly Platform 1884, planks 5 and 7; and the Greenback National Platform of 1884, plank 4. Party platforms all reprinted in Johnson and Porter, eds., National Party Platforms. On arbitration, see the KOL Platform, 1878, plank 10; the Anti-Monopoly Platform of 1884, plank 6, and the Union Labor Platform of 1888, Preamble, Powderly Papers. On government control of currency and credit, see the KOL Platform, 1884, planks 14 and 15, Powderly Papers; Powderly, Thirty Years, chap. 9; and National Labor Union Platform reprinted in Sylvis, William Sylvis, 284–95.

50. Quoted in KOL General Assembly Proceedings, Title Page, in Powderly Papers.

51. Producers' views of organization as strictly a defensive and temporary strategy can be seen in Layton testimony, Report of the Senate 1:14; NLUAddress, 153; Powderly, Thirty Years, 78; Sylvis, “What is Money?” 359; George, Henry, The Labor Question, Being an Abridgment of the Condition of Labor (Cincinnati: Joseph Tels Fund of America, 1911)Google Scholar.

In 1884, the Knights modified their platform and added a new plank calling for the incorporation of workers' associations. This change in policy, however, did not signal an abandonment of their antimonopoly assumptions. The Knights continued to preface their calls for organization with qualifying remarks as to their temporary and defensive nature. The last plank in the very same platform, for example, continued to stress the importance of bonds between skilled workers and small manufacturers, an alliance that lay at the heart of the producers' vision. Differences between employers and employees must be arbitrated, the plank declared, “in order that the bonds of sympathy between them may be strengthened and that strikes may be rendered unnecessary.” See KOL General Assembly Proceedings, 1884, in Powderly Papers, 3.

52. The Sylvis, quotation first appeared in the Chicago Workingvmn's Advocate on 12 12 1868Google Scholar, in a letter from Sylvis addressed to the “Working People of the United States.” The Sylvis remark can also be found in Sylvis, William Sylvis, Title Page; and in Powderly, Thirty Years, 397.

53. For the producers' conception of a harmony of interests between employers and employees, see Carey, Henry Charles, The Harmony of Interests, Agricultural, Manufacturing and Commercial (Philadelphia: H. C. Baird, 1890, originally published 1852)Google Scholar; Lloyd, Henry Demarest, Wealth Against Commonwealth (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1894)Google Scholar; George, Henry, The Labor Question; Edward Atkinson, Labor and Capital: Allies not Enemies (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1879)Google Scholar; Layton testimony, Report of the Senate 1: 3–5; and Blair testimony, Report of the Senate 2: 44.

54. For the phrase “hydra headed monster” of monopoly, see Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 80. For references to the problem of railroads and public lands, see Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1869), 7; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 5–6; and Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 80–81.

55. For example, at the 1874 Industrial Congress, which met after the NLU disintegrated, a number of trade unions proposed that all nonwage earners be excluded from the organization. Interestingly, Henry Walls, of the Molders' International Union, sent a communication favoring restriction of membership to delegates from “national and international trade organizations.” See Commons et al., History of Labor 2:162. In his letter to Jessup in 1871, Walls also stressed the importance of establishing a “purely labor organization” through which the “concentration of the power of labor so much desired by its true friends and so much feared by its enemies would then be near a realization.” See Walls's letter to Jessup, , Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings, (1871), 83Google Scholar.

Jessup distinguished “bona-fide trade or labor organizations” from other reform associations. See Jessup's, report, Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 58Google Scholar.

56. Quoted in Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 42.

57. For New York Workingmen's Assembly demands for the incorporation of trade unions, see Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 45, 55; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 42; Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Convention of the Workingmen's Assembly of the State of New York, January 1887. Also, Proceedings of the Committee on Unfinished Business (New York: Oonoord Co-operative Printing Co., 1887), 6; and Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Convention of the State of New York, January 1889 (West Troy, N.Y.: James Treanor, Book and Job Printer, 1889), 36.

Unfortunately, Workingmen's Assembly proceedings for the years 1872–81 are missing, making it impossible to track assembly policy in these years. For Workingmen's Assembly efforts to repeal the conspiracy doctrine, see sources in n. 80 below. The FOTLU called for incorporation of trade unions as the first or second plank in each of their platforms. See FOTLU Reports, 1881–86. The FOTLU demanded that the conspiracy doctrine be repealed at almost all of its sessions between 1881 and 1885. See FOTLU Reports, 1881–85.

58. See: NLU Address, 152–53; NLU Proceedings (1866), 132. In 1884, the KOL revised its platform. One of the changes introduced was the inclusion of a plank calling for incorporaxtion of trade unions. Despite this plank, the KOL still declared collective action to be a defensive strategy. For example, see plank 22 of the 1884 platform in Powderly Papers.

59. The New York Workingmen's Assembly and FOTLU displayed their commitment to collective action by calling repeatedly for the incorporation of trade unions. See sources in n. 57.

See also Walls's letter to Jessup, , Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871)Google Scholar, 20. Similarly in 1883, Frank Foster, of the International Typographical Union and later secretary of the AFL, wrote: “The growing power of associated capital must needs be met by associated labor. Federation is the motto of the future.” Quoted in Foner, Philip, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1947), 524Google Scholar.

60. Quoted from Gompers' testimony, Report of the Senate 1:373. In addition, see Gompers' remarks at the second session of the FOTLU in 1882, FOTLU Reports (1882), 20; and sources in the preceding note.

61. Quoted from Gompers, “Labor and Its Attitude toward Trusts,” 881. For the AFL'S commitment to economic progress, see AFL Proceedings (1899), 15 (for a discussion of “concentrated capital-trusts”); AFL Proceedings (1888), 9–10; Gompers, Samuel, “Labor and Its Attitude toward Trusts,” American Federationist 14 (11, 1907):880–86Google Scholar; and Gompers, Samuel' autobiography, Seventy Years of Life and Labor: An Autobiography, vol. 11 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1925), chap. 26Google Scholar.

62. The AFL'S loss of faith with the producers' vision was manifest in several ways. For example, Gompers began to interpret the land question differently from his producer counterparts as early as 1882. See FOTLU Reports (1882), 20. Gompers also denied that the financial system was fundamental, as the producers had claimed. See Mandel, Bernard, Samuel Gompers: A Biography (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1963), 160Google Scholar. The AFL also distinguished its position on economic concentration from the producers' stance at the Annual Convention in 1890. See AFL Proceedings (1890), 16–17.

63. Quoted from AFL Proceedings (1899), 15. For the importance of collective action to the AFL, see AFL Proceedings (1890), 16–17, and (1899), 15; American Federationist 3 (1896):217, and 14 (1907):880–86; and Gompers, Samuel' discussion of the Sherman antitrust law in his “Attitude of Labor Toward Government Regulation of Industry,” Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science 32(1):75–81 (07 1908)Google Scholar.

64. Both the producers and trade unionists had a sense of class consciousness, albeit of different kinds. It is a mistake to privilege one faction over the other as more class conscious. Instead, it is more useful to distinguish different kinds of workers' consciousness that coexisted in the late nineteenth century.

65. Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 7.

66. See Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1887), 27–28; and Gompers' testimony, Report of the Senate 1: 281, 288–90, 376.

67. Quotation is from AFL Proceedings (1898), 5.

68. Aldolph Strasser, Peter J. McGiiire, J. P. McDonnell, and Joseph Labadie, for example, were associated with various socialist organizations and participated in the AFL or its immediate predecessor, the FOTLU.

69. Nick Salvatore's introduction to Gompers' autobiography raises similar themes to those developed here. See Salvatore, Nick, ed., Seventy Years of Life and Labor: An Autobiography, Samuel Gompers (New York: ILR Press, 1984), xviiGoogle Scholar.

70. The Knights' mixed assemblies are often seen as precursors of the industrial unions of the 1930s, and AFL exclusivity as a betrayal of this earlier radical potential. See Ware, Norman, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895 (Mass.: Peter Smith, 1959)Google Scholar.

From my perspective, the AFL was in many ways more class conscious in a Marxian sense than the Knights' mixed Assemblies, since the AFL tried to organize workers as wage earners rather than as producers. See AFL Proceedings (1898), 5–6.

71. I date the shift in AFL strategy from political work to business-unionism in the early 1890s. Obviously, individuals varied in the timing of this shift, but by 1896 the AFL sixteenth annual convention bemoaned the perils of political reform and described partisan politics as the “shoals and rocks upon which so many of labor's previous efforts were wrecked.” AFL Proceedings (1896), 21–22.

An earlier indication of disenchantment with legislative reform can be seen in the secretary's report to the FOTLU in 1884. The secretary, Frank Foster, described the struggle for the eight-hour legislation as follows:

This much has been determined by the history of the national eight-hour law–it is useless to wait for legislation in this matter. In the world of economic reform the working classes must depend upon themselves for the enforcement of measures as well as for their conception. A united demand for a shorter working day, backed by thorough organization, will prove vastly more effective than the enactment of a thousand laws depending for enforcement upon the pleasure of aspiring politicians [and] of sycophantic department officials.

Quoted from FOTLU Reports (1884), 11. However, despite Foster's plea for a change in tactics in 1884, the FOTLU, and later the AFL, continued to endorse political reform through the early 1890s. For examples of calls to political action in the 1880s, see FOTLU Reports (1886), 8; and AFL Proceedings (1887), 10.

By 1896, the AFL began to rely on direct negotiation with employers combined with shop-floor militance to press labor's case. See AFL Proceedings (1896), 21–22, and a fascinating discussion of the limits of state power to regulate trusts in AFL Proceedings (1899), 15. The shift in AFL strategy from political action to industrial organization and business unionism is described by Samuel Gompers himself. See Gompers, , Seventy Years of Life and Labor: An Autobiography vol. 1 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1925), chap. 11Google Scholar.

72. Commonwealth v. Pullis, 3 Doc. Hist. 15 (Pa. 1806) was identified as the first American labor conspiracy case by Cox, Archibald, Box, Derek, and Gorman, Robert in their Cases and Materials on Labor Law (New York: Foundation Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

Traditional accounts of conspiracy limit the doctrine to the period 1806–42. However, there is considerable documentation on a revival of the doctrine in labor disputes after the Civil War. See Witte, Edwin, “Early American Labor Cases,” Yale Law Journal 35:825 (1926)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kuritz, Hyman, “Criminal Conspiracy Cases in Post-Bellum Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History 18 (10 1950): 292–301Google Scholar; Kuritz, Hyman, “The Pennsylvania State Government and Labor Controls from 1865 to 1922” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1953)Google Scholar; and Hattam, Victoria, “Unions and Politics: The Courts and American Labor, 1806–1896” (Ph.D. diss., MIT, 1987)Google Scholar, especially chap. 4.

73. For an excellent discussion of the application of conspiracy to nonlabor cases, see R. S. Wright, The Law of Criminal Conspiracies and Agreements and the appended essay by Carson, Hampton L., The Law of Criminal Conspiracies and Agreements: As Found in the American Cases (Philadelphia: Blackstone Publishing Co., 1887)Google Scholar.

Moreover, the common law's longstanding concern for concentrated power can be seen in Edward Coke's discussion of antimonopoly in his Institutes. J. H. Baker's history of the common law also draws attention to the antimonopoly assumptions behind much commonlaw doctrine. See Baker, J. H., An Introduction to English Legal History (London: Butterworths, 1979), chap. 22Google Scholar.

74. For a discussion of government regulation of corporations, see Hurst, Willard, The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States: 1780–1970 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1970)Google Scholar; Horwitz, Morton “Santa Clara Revisited: The Development of Corporate Theory,” West Virginia Law Review 88:173 (1985–1986)Google Scholar; Barzelay, Michael and Smith, Rogers M., “The One Best System? A Political Analysis of Neoclassical Institutionalist Perspectives on the Modern Corporation,” in Samuels, Warren J. and Miller, Arthur S., eds., Corporations and Society: Power and Responsibility (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

75. The Workingmen's Assembly and FOTLU both maintained repeal of the conspiracy doctrine as one of their principal objectives in the years 1870–86. For the AFL, the labor injunction was the primary target. The AFL worked to restrict the injunction from the 1890s through the New Deal.

Recently, several scholars have begun to explore the impact of judicial regulation on American labor strategy. For example, see Ware, Karl, “Judicial Deradicalization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Consciousness, 1937–1941,”Minnesota Law Review 62:265 (1977–1978)Google Scholar; Stone, Katherine Van Wezel, “The Post War Paradigm in American Labor Law,” Yale Law Journal 90:7 (06 1981)Google Scholar; Tomlins, Christopher, The State arid the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Fink, Leon, “Labor, Liberty, and the Law: Trade Unionism and the Problem of the American Constitutional Order,” Journal of American History 74(3):904–25 (12 1987); Hattam, “Unions and Politics”CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurvitz, Haggai, “American Labor Law and the Doctrine of Entrepreneurial Property Rights: Boycotts, Courts and the Judicial Reorientation of 1886–1895,” Industrial Relations Law Journal 8(3):307–61 (1986)Google Scholar; William Forbath, “The Court-Dominated State and the American Labor Movement,” un-published paper; and Rogers, Joel, “Divide and Conquer: The Legal Foundations of Postwar U.S. Labor Policy” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1984)Google Scholar.

76. For accounts of postbellum industrial unrest, see Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9 (1880–1881):262–391; Schlegel, Marvin, “The Workingmen's Benevolent Association: First Union of Anthracite Miners,” Pennsylvania History 10 (10 1943): 243–67Google Scholar; Wieck, Edward, The American Miners' Association: A Record of the Origin of Coat Miners' Unions in the U.S. (New York: Russell Sage, 1940)Google Scholar.

77. Many American conspiracy cases, especially in the lower courts, went unreported. Thus, some cases can only be identified through local newspapers and government reports.

The following are the major postbellum conspiracy cases in New York and Pennsylvania identified to date: Master Stevedores Association v. Walsh 2 Daly (1867); People v. Van Nostrand (N.Y. 1867); Cigar-makers' Union No. 66, Kingston, New York, 1868, NLUProceedings, 2d sess. (1868), 12; Raybold and Frostevant v. Samuel R. Gaul of Bricklayers' Union No. 2, New York City, NLU Proceedings, 2d sess. (1868), 12; Iron Moulders' Union No. 22 v. Tuttle & Bailey, Brooklyn, New York, 1869, Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 23; Iron Moulders' Union No. 203, Harlem, New York v. United States Iron Works, 1869, Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 23; Commonwealth v. Curren, 3 Pitts. 143 (1869); Common-wealth v. Berry et al., Scranton Law Times 10 (1874); Xingo Parks and John Siney trial, Clearfield County, Pa. (1875), Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9:313–15; Common-wealth ex re. E. Vallette et al. v. Sherry, 15 Phil. 393 (1881); D. R.Jones trial, Westmoreland County, Pa., 1881, Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9:378–83; Newman et al. v. the Commonwealth, Pittsburgh Lawfournal 34:313 (1886); Knights of Labor Trials (1887) Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9:10; People v. Wilzig, 4 N.Y. Cr. 403 (1886); People v. Kostka, 4 N.Y. Cr. 429 (1886); and People ex rel. Gill v. Walsh, 110 N.Y. 633 (1888).

78. Interestingly, workers did not contest the antebellum conspiracy convictions. It was only after the Civil War that the doctrine was politicized for some labor organizations. For a discussion of labor and the courts in the antebellum era, see Hattam, “Unions and Politics,” chap. 3.

79. For an account of the founding and early work of the New York Workingmen's Assembly, see Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6, chap. 37.

Unfortunately there are few good secondary sources available on the New York Workingmen's Assembly. The material presented here is drawn primarily from proceedings of the assembly's annual conventions. Some information about the Workingmen's Assembly can be obtained from Groat, George Gorham, Trade Unions and the Law in New York: A Study of Some Legal Phases of Labor Organization (New York: AMS Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

80. In fact, the New York Workingmen's Assembly originated in an anticonspiracy protest in New York City in April 1864. Between 10,000 and 15,000 workers attended a mass meeting to protest “Folger's Anti-Trades Union Strike Bill,” which attempted to strengthen existing conspiracy law. The protest succeeded, and the proposed amendment was dropped. The protest movement provided the impetus for establishing a more permanent workers' organization, namely the New York State Workingmen's Assembly. See Stevens, New York Typographical Union, 586.

From the very first session, then, conspiracy convictions were identified as a problem by the Workingmen's Assembly, and were discussed at almost all sessions for which proceedings exist. See proceedings for the following annual sessions: Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1869), 19; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 5, 23, 33–36; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 3, 6; Convention of the Workingmens' [sic] Assembly of the State of New York: Nineteenth Annual Session, January 1885, 21; Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Session of the Political Branch of the State Workingmen's Assembly, September 1886, 3–4, 6, 8, 10–11; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1887), 6, 30, 37; Proceedings of the Twenth-second Annual Convention ofthe Workingmen's Assembly of the State of New York, January 1888 (West Troy, N.Y.: James Treanor, Book and Job Printer, 1888), 15, 16, 47; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (January 1889), 8, 14, 20–21, 36, 60; Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual Convention of the Workingmen's Assembly of the Stale of New York, December 1889 (Binghamton, N.Y.: O. R. Bacon, the Printer, 1890), 18, 31; Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Convention of the Workingmen's Assembly of the State of New York, January 1893 (Albany, N.Y.: Every Saturday Print, 1893), 4, 7, 15, 46, 60; Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Annual Convention of the Workingmen's Assembly of the Stale of New York, January 1894 (Albany, N.Y.: Every Saturday Print, 1894), 5, 8–9, 12, 14–17.

81. On drafting legislation, see Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (January 1889), 13; and Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (December 1889), 7. Workingmen's Assembly attendance at state legislature committee hearings can be seen in the following assembly proceedings: Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 34, 58; Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the State Trades Assembly, State of New York, January 1884 (Rochester, N.Y.: Truth Publishing Co., 1884), 4; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1885), 16; and Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1888), 21. On informing members on labor issues, see Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 48; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1889), 14–23. The Workingmen's Assembly's “legislative honors” list is mentioned or applied in the following years: Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings, Political Branch (1886), 1, 10–11; Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1888), 18–20, (January 1889), 12, (December 1889), 11, and (1893), 7–8.

82. Four conspiracy statutes were passed by the New York state legislature. See Laws of the State of New York: Passed at the One Hundred and Fourth Session of the Legislature (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1881), chaps. 18 and 19(1870); Penal Code sections 168 and 170(1881); chap. 384 (1882); and chap. 688 (1887).

83. Section 168 of the New York Penal Code (1881) illustrates nicely the limits placed on state protection of workers' right to organize. Section 168 includes the following statement: “If two or more persons conspire … [t]o prevent another from exercising a lawful trade or calling, or doing any other lawful act, by force, threats, intimidation, … [they are] guilty of a misdemeanor.” Quoted from Laws of the State of New York, 41.

84. Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1870), 5 and (1871), 6.

85. Collective action was considered intimidation in the following labor conspiracy cases: Commonwealth v. Curren, 3 Pitts 143 (Pa., 1869); Commonwealth Berry, v. et al. , Scranton Law Times 10 (Pa., 1874)Google Scholar; Xingo Parks and John Siney Trial, Clearfield County, Pa, (1875) Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9:313–15; D. R.Jones trial, Westmoreland County, Penn. (1881), Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9:378–83; Newman et al. v. the Commonwealth, Pittsburg Law Journal 34:313 (Penn., 1886); People v. Wilzig, 4 N.Y. Cr. 403 (N.Y. 1886); and People v. Kostka, 4 N.Y. Cr. 429 (N.Y. 1886).

86. People v. Wilzig, 413–14. The case was formally one of boycott and extortion, but, in fact, centered on application of the conspiracy doctrine to the current dispute.

87. See cases cited in n. 85 above.

88. See Laws of Pennsylvania P.L. 1260 (1869); P.L. 1175 (1872); P.L. 45 (1876); and P.L. 300. For a more extensive discussion of both the New York and Pennsylvania statutes and their enforcement, see Hattam, “Unions and Politics,” chap. 4.

89. The Waverly coal-miners' strike was not reported in the Pennsylvania law reports. Nevertheless, accounts of the trial can be found in the Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9 (1880–81):378–82. See also Kuritz, “Criminal Conspiracy Cases,” 299; and Witte, “Early American Labor Cases,” 830–31.

90. See Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics 9:380; and Witte, “Early American Labor Cases,” 830–31.

91. Excellent accounts of the 1867–75 struggle can be found in McCready, H. W., “British Labour's Lobby, 1867–75,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 22(2): 141–60 (05 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCready, H. W., “British Labour and the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, 1867–69,” University of Toronto Quarterly 24(4):390–409 (07 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCready, H. W., “The British Election of 1874: Frederic Harrison and the Liberal-Labour Dilemma,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 20(2): 166–75 (05 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cole, G. D. H., British Working Class Politics: 1832–1914 (London: Rutledge and Kegan Paul, 1941)Google Scholar, chap. 5, especially p. 55; and Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, The History of Trade Unionism (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1965)Google Scholar, chap. 5.

For discussion of earlier efforts by English labor to secure state protection of workers' industrial rights, see Orth, John V., “Combination and Conspiracy: The Legal Status of English Trade Unions, 1799–1871” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 09 1977)Google Scholar; Orth, John V., “The Law of Strikes, 1847–1871,” in Guy, j. A. and Beale, H. G., eds., law and Social Change in British History (London: Royal Historical Society, 1984)Google Scholar; Orth, John V., “English Law and Striking Workmen: The Molestation of Workmen Act, 1859,” Journal of Legal History 2(3):238–57 (12 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92. The three English statutes were the Trade Union Act, 35 Viet. c. 31 (1871); the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 35 Viet. c. 32 (1871); and the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 38, 39 Viet. c. 86 (1875).

The two 1871 statutes were originally presented as a single bill to the House of Commons. The proposed bill, as with the New York and Pennsylvania statutes, simultaneously protected trade unions from prosecution in section 2, while the dreaded “third clause” codified existing case law and specified a number of actions that would remain criminal even after the act was passed. The parliamentary committee of the Trades Union Congress objected strongly to this third clause and lobbied extensively to have it dropped from the bill. They were unable to defeat the third clause altogether, but did manage to split the bill in two. By separating off the third clause, labor could oppose this specific provision without jeopardizing the gains provided for in the other clauses that eventually became the Trade Union Act in 1871.

Despite their efforts to defeat the third clause, the bill passed along with the more favorable Trade Union Act and became the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1871, which, like the New York and Pennsylvania statutes, specified that the use of “violence, threats, intimidation, molestation or obstruction” during an industrial dispute remained illegal. The 1875 Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act narrowed the 1871 statute, but still left ample ground for criminal prosecution under section 7.

For further discussion of the English comparison, see Hattam, “Unions and Politics,” chap. 5, and Orth, “Combination and Conspiracy.”

93. Between 1875 and 1887, no prosecutions were brought under the 1875 statute, largely because unions presented little threat to employers during the Great Depression. With the emergence of the New Unionism at the end of the 1880s, the situation changed considerably. English employers responded to this new wave of labor militance by initiating a series of conspiracy charges under section 7. However, in contrast to the New York and Pennsylvania experience, English courts frequently denied prosecution arguments and acquitted workers. Two of the leading cases of the period provide an excellent comparison with the New York and Pennsylvania cases. See Curran v. Treleaven 2 Q. B. 553 (1891); and Gibson v. Lawson 2 Q. B. 547(1891).

94. For the phrase political work, see Gompers, Seventy Years, 192. On Gompers's support of political reform, see Livesay, Harold, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978)Google Scholar, chap. 4.

95. Gompers, Seventy Years, vol. 1, 189–90, 194. Gompers describes the range of tactics used by the Cigarmakers' Union, and the favorable outcome.

96. Ibid., 194.

97. Ibid., 197.

98. See Frankfurter, Felix and Greene, Nathan, The Labor Injunction (New York: Macmillan, 1930)Google Scholar; Hurvitz, “American Labor Law and the Doctrine of Entrepreneurial Property Rights,” 307–61.

99. For twentieth-century conspiracy cases, see Hyman Kuritz, “Pennsylvania State Government and Labor Controls,” especially chap. 5, p. 157; Landis, James McCauley and Manoff, Marcus, Cases of Labor Law (Chicago: Foundation Press, 1942), 832Google Scholar.

100. Quoted in Gompers, Seventy Years, 197. For discussion of the power of legal discourse within the AFL, see Tomlins, State and the Unions, chap. 5; and William Forbath, “Rethinking Law's Role in Labor History: The Labor Injunction, the Anti-Injunction Campaigns, and the Transformation of Labor's ‘Rights Consciousness’” (paper prepared for the conference on “Historical Perspectives on American Labor: An Interdisciplinary Approach,” New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 21–24 April 1988).

For accounts of the legalistic, contract-oriented system of collective bargaining established in the United States and the economic benefits it delivered for American workers, see Kochan, Thomas A., Katz, Hary C., and McKersie, Robert B., The Transformation of American Industrial Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1986)Google Scholar, especially chap. 2; Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era” (paper presented at conference on “Historical Perspectives on American Labor”) and Stephen Amberg, “The Old Politics of Inequality: The Autoworkers' Union in the Liberal Keynesian State” (paper prepared for the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, 27–30 December 1988, Cincinnati, Ohio).

101. Interestingly, Pocock points to a similar discontinuity between Republican and legal-rights discourse. See Pocock, , “Virtue, Rights, and Manners: A Model for Historians of Political Thought,” in Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce, and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 37–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102. It was usually trade-union delegates from New York in particular who raised the question of conspiracy. For example, William Jessup of the New York Workingmen's Assembly and Workingmen's Union, Henry C. Lucker of the Journeyman Tailors' Protective and Benefit Union, and Thomas J. Walsh of Bricklayers' Union No. 2 all raised the topic of conspiracy. See NLU Proceedings (1868), 200–201, 220, and (1869), 232, 238–39.

103. Workingmen's Assembly Proceedings (1871), 59.

104. The KOL routinely retained a plank in their platform calling for the “abrogation of all laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labor, the removal of unjust technicalities, delays, and discriminations in the administration of justice, and the adopting of measures providing for the health and safety of those engaged in mining, manufacturing, or building pursuits.” See KOL Proceedings of the General Assembly, 1878, Powderly Papers, 5.

105. The report is printed in the Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor, 11th regular sess., Minneapolis, Minnesota, 4–19 October 1887, Powderly Papers, 1653–68. For quotations, see pp. 1662, 1665, 1667.

106. Although the antimonopoly program did not attempt to change legal doctrine, a number of producer issues were challenged in the courts and subject to judicial review. For examples, see Veazie Bank v. Fenno 8 Wallace 533 (1869); Hepburn v. Griswold 8 Wallace 603 (1870); Knox v. Lee 12 Wallace 457 (1871); Parker v. Davis 12 Wallace 457 (1871); Munn v. Illinois 94 U.S. 113 (1877); Julliard v. Greenman 110U.S.421 (1884); Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railroad Co. v. Illinois 118 U.S. 557 (1886); Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad Co. v. Minnesota 134 U.S. 418 (1890); and U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co. 156 U.S. 1 (1895).

107. Decisions which favored the producers' program were handed down in the following cases: Knox v. Lee 12 Wallace 457 (1871); Parker v. Davis 12 Wallace 457 (1871); Munn v. Illinois 94 U.S. 113 (1877); Julliard v. Greenman 110 U.S. 421 (1884); Holden v. Hardy 169 U.S. 366 (1898); Addyston Pipe and Steel Co. v. U.S. 175 U.S. 211 (1899).

108. For example, corporation law and nonlabor conspiracy cases would both have been affected by state recognition of working-class organization. See Wright, Criminal Conspiracy; and Hattam, “Unions and Politics,” chap. 2.

109. For an excellent account of Haymarket, see Avrich, Paul, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

110. KOL membership figures are taken from Commons et al., History of Labor 2:381, 482, 494.

111. See Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 347–48; and David, Henry, History of Haymarket Affair: A Study in the American Social-Revolutionary and Labor Movements (New York: Russell and Russell, 1958), 410–12Google Scholar.

112. I would like to thank Cecelia Bucki for pointing out the tension between the formal program and organizing practice within the KOL. For dissension within the KOL over Hay-market, see General Assembly Proceedings 1886 and 1887, Powderly Papers; Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 348–50; and David, History of the Haymarket Affair, chap. 16.

113. District Assembly 49 in New York, Local Assembly 1307, and Women's Assembly 1789 in Chicago all withdrew from the order over the Haymarket Affair. See Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 348–50; and David, History of the Haymarket Affair, chap. 16.

114. For interpretations of Haymarket that focus on Powderly's inadequacies, see David, History of the Haymarket Affair, especially chap. 16; and Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 11.

115. For Powderly's tirade against the anarchists, see his Thirty Years, chaps. 12 and 13.

116. For accounts of these additional struggles over the nature and pattern of economic growth, see Godwyn, , The Populist Moment; Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; McCurdy, Charles, “American Law and the Marketing Structure of the Large Corporation, 1875–1890,” Journal of Economic History 38(3):631–49 (09 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berk, “Constituting Corporations and Markets”; and Hurvitz, “American Labor Law and the Doctrine of Entrepreneurial Property Rights.”

117. Discussion of the influence of politics on corporate authority can be found in: Handlin, Commonwealth; Hurst, The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation; McCurdy, “American Law and the Marketing Structure of the Large Corporation”; Horwitz, “Santa Clara Revisited”; Barzelay and Smith, “The One Best System?”; and Berk, “Corporations and Politics.”

118. See Santa Clara Co. v. Southern Pacific R.R. Co. 118 U.S. 394 (1886); In Re Debs 158 U.S. 564 (1895); U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co. 156 U.S. 1 (1895).

119. See Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific R.R. Co. v. Illinois 118 U.S. 557 (1886); U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co. 156 U.S. 1 (1895); ice v. Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific R.R. Co. 167 U.S. 479 (1897). This change in legal doctrine helps account for the more antagonistic relationship between the Populists and the courts in the 1890s than experienced by earlier producer organizations. For an excellent account of the Populists' interaction with the legal system, see Westin, Alan Furman, “The Supreme Court, the Populist Movement and the Campaign of 1896,” Journal of Politics 15(1):3–41 (02 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

120. For decline of the KOL and the rise of the AFL, see Commons et al., History of American Labor 2:472–95.

121. The new institutionalism has been described and a bibliography provided in March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78(3):734–49 (09 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

122. See, for example, the discussion of party politics in Dawley, Class and Community, Conclusion; and Wilentz, Chants Democratic, chap. 5. Neither of these accounts provides an adequate account of the impact of suffrage and party politics on the early workingmen's associations.

123. For instance, see William Forbath's discussion of the “court-dominated state,” in which the judiciary is declared to be the most powerful branch of government with no attention given to variation in judicial influence across labor organizations. See Forbath, “The Court-Dominated State,” and, to a lesser extent, Tomlins, The State and the Unions.