panic forced many unions to disband. It was a period marked by an extraordinary amount of unemployment, unrest and suffering, by reductions of wages, and by strikes and lockouts.[1] In the later years of the period, many secret organizations of workingmen appeared. In the spring of 1874, a writer in a labor paper asserted, doubtless with some exaggeration, that "to-day there is not a Trade or Labor Union in existence but gives the greatest publicity to its aims and objects."[2] It was intimated that opposition on the part of employers would cause secret unions to spring up. One year later, the National Labor Tribune contained an editorial entitled, "The Spread of Secret Orders"—meaning labor organizations.[3] Pinkerton, the detective, writing in 1878, asserted that there were scores of secret labor organizations.[4] Labor difficulties culminated with the railway strikes of 1877. These were precipitated by cuts in wages. The year 1879 ushered in a more prosperous period.
The two quotations following represent fairly well the attitude of the discontented wage earners in 1876, the centennial year.
Symbolize if you can the American laborer of 1876. Show him as he is, without liberty of thought or action, oppressed, cheated, trodden on, vilified by press and public opinion, condemned by the pulpit and the platform, reduced to serfdom by a combination of capitalists and monopolists; bring such a picture among your grand paintings, produce such an image among your statuary, and look on this picture and then on that, and ask what has the public of America accomplished for the cause of humanity.[5]
The chairman of an "Immense Mass Meeting of Workingmen" held at Cooper Institute, June 17, 1876, under the auspices of the Independent Labor Party, declared:
The lands, the money, the property of the nation have passed into the hands of the few, and the many are idle, homeless and starving.
The agitation and unrest among the workers led to repressive measures on the part of various city officials.
On the announcement of public meetings of the unemployed, the conscience-pricked communities took alarm and feared that the bringing together of so many heretofore patient sufferers might imperil their lives and property. From the earliest days of the agitation of the question of the relations of labor and capital, free speech had often been restrained and sometimes forbidden. This had been especially true in those smaller towns and manufacturing centers.[6]
In New York City, the city officials revoked a permit to hold a meeting of laboring people in Tompkins Square, and drove out the people who came to attend the meeting. This was frequently referred to as "The Tompkins Square Outrage."
- ↑ Rhodes, "History of the United States," Vol. 7: 52–53.
- ↑ Iron Moulders' International Journal, quoted in The Toiler, June 27, 1874.
- ↑ April 24, 1875.
- ↑ Pinkerton, "Strikes, Communists, Tramps and Detectives," p. 89.
- ↑ National Labor Tribune, April 24, 1875.
- ↑ McNeill, "The Labor Movement," p. 147.
