There is Power in a Union

by Philip Dray

  At stake was what economists call “the labor theory of value,” the idea that capital is dependent upon labor, and would not be created at all without labor’s exertions. Certainly enterprise played a role organizing the workplaces, offering jobs, and paying wages, but it was labor that made things and in so doing fulfilled human needs. This dynamic could only suffer as industry grew and came to employ hundreds rather than dozens of workers. At the same time, when craftsmen entered the mass production factory they forfeited their individuality as well as the creativity of self-directed work; their new jobs called on their muscle and brains but less often their skill or judgment. “The image of the artisan seemed to dissolve before their eyes,” writes Alan Dawley, “and in its place they saw an image of the industrial worker taking shape.”5

  All of these tensions were in play during the 1850s as the expansion of shoe manufacturing built a sizable business concentration at Lynn. Toward decade’s end, however, the nation entered a precipitous economic recession. When Lynn factories announced wage cuts, the shoemakers proposed instead a mutually governed work stoppage, in which the factories would contribute financially to the subsistence of idle employees while the businesses reconstituted their operations and sold off their sizable inventories. Owners backed away from any such pact, and instead began running their plants at reduced pay rates. Outraged workers saw an effort to degrade permanently the wages paid shoemakers in Lynn and declared a strike, demanding a standardized wage.6

  On Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1860, the shoemakers marched in protest, holding aloft placards bearing images of the first president along with American flags and a banner that declared, OUR CAUSE IS JUST AND OUR UNION PERFECT. Arriving trains brought sympathetic workers from nearby towns, including a shoemaker from nearby Marblehead wearing a paper hat that read, “I HAVE STRUCK.” He was immediately hoisted into a wheelbarrow, the crowd pushing him along a sidewalk in imitation of a visiting dignitary.7 As fire companies rang their bells, a sea of ten thousand people flowed through the streets to a nearby park, where the Lynn Cornet Band entertained between rallying speeches.

  The next day was far less jubilant. The factories, it was said, were secretly sending shoes to market. A wagon driver from Marblehead suspected of hauling the contraband was roughly pulled from his rig, and cases of shoe stock were removed from another vehicle and strewn about. City Marshal Thomas Thurston had his hat knocked off and his coat torn while trying to restore order. Soon, a large crate was noticed at a loading dock by the train depot. “Shoes! Shoes!” the cry went up. A town constable who intervened was mobbed, knocked down, and dragged along the ground; he escaped only by drawing his gun.8 Lynn took pride in being an enlightened New England town, with several newspapers, bookstores, lyceums, and a record of staunch abolitionism (citizens had once come to Frederick Douglass’s rescue when a local railroad tried to evict him from a first-class train car). Thus the violence connected with the strike was deeply troubling.

  The following day Lynn sustained an even worse insult, when a squad of thirty Boston policemen arrived by train. “They were a fine looking set of men,” the editor of the Bay State wrote. “But good citizens, it was outrageous to bring the Boston police here.”9 The paper recorded that “groans and hisses” greeted the officers as they marched, followed by a crowd that chanted in derision, “Brass Buttons! Brass Buttons!” When the police reached the corner of Washington Street and Railroad Avenue, a stone was thrown that struck one of them, an Officer Fogg, on the head, sparking a melee in which several people were bludgeoned by police clubs or trampled by their own fleeing comrades.10

  The next day the Boston police were withdrawn, to widespread relief, and the remaining strike events were spirited if far less menacing. Almost every day there were rallies and speeches. Town historian Alonzo Lewis contributed his “Cordwainers’ Song,” written expressly for the strike:

  The workman is worthy of his hire,

  No tyrant shall hold us in thrall;

  They may order their soldiers to fire,

  But we’ll stick to the hammer and awl.

  Yes, we’ll stick to the hammer and awl.11

  One grand march in Lynn—described by the Bay State as “an all-pervading, animated wave of humanity”—featured twenty-six American flags and boisterous delegations from nearby South Danvers, Saugus, South Reading, Stoneham, Beverly, and Salem.12 When not parading, the strikers kept their morale up with potluck suppers, clambakes, and even a “candy party,” to which each Lynn neighborhood brought its own kettle and distinctive sugary recipe. Three thousand men, women, and children, it was said, danced and ate “the lasses’ candy,” as the Lynn Cornet Band, who alone seemed to be enjoying full employment, “discoursed sweet music.”13

  But the lasses intended to do more than watch candy thicken in a pot. When the newly formed Lynn Mechanics Association convened in Lyceum Hall, founder and president Alonzo Draper requested the support of the female shoemakers. “Remember, ladies, especially you young and blooming ones,” he said, “that if you want husbands, wages must go up, for no one can get married at present prices.”14 He was voicing the not-unfamiliar refrain that women’s role in labor disputes was to help safeguard, by the withholding of their own labor, a decent wage for male workers. The women, particularly the factory workers, saw the situation differently. They also demanded a raise. Clara Brown, a twenty-one-year-old machine stitcher, advocated using the factory girls’ numbers and strong bargaining position to break the exploitive practices of the factory owners. She astutely questioned the town’s professed “industrial morality” of temperance and hard work, when the local capitalists were guilty of the far greater immorality of driving rates down, causing hardship for workers and their families. Brown said that very morning she had visited a friend’s place of work where the going rate was 8 cents per pair of uppers. “Girls of Lynn! Girls of Lynn!” she cried. “Do you hear that and will you stand for it? Never, never, never! Strike then—strike at once; demand 8½ cents for your work when the binding isn’t closed and you will get it. Don’t let them make niggers of you!”

  “Shame,” someone said, “there are colored persons here.”

  “I meant Southern niggers,” corrected Brown. “Keep still; don’t work your machines; let them lie still till we get all we ask, and then go at it, as did our mothers in the Revolution.”15

  At a follow-up meeting of women and girls on February 28, President Draper repeated his suggestion that female factory hands wield their power on behalf of their husbands. A dispute ensued between the machine girls, who were younger women, often not native to Lynn, and the outworkers, many of whom were older residents. After several minutes Willard Oliver, the chair, demanded: “Ladies! Stop this wrangling. Do you care for your noble cause? Are you descendants of old Molly Stark or not? Did you ever hear of the Spirit of ’76?” Hundred of voices assured him they had. Molly Stark, whose name was often invoked during the Lynn strike, was a regional heroine of the American Revolution whose fame rested chiefly on an utterance made by her husband, General John Stark, at the Battle of Bennington in August 1777. “There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories,” General Stark had urged his men. “They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow.” The American forces had been victorious, and Molly Stark’s name entered into legend.16 “Well, then,” said Draper, “do behave yourselves. There ain’t nobody nowhere who will aid you if you don’t show them that you’re regular built Moll Starks over again.”17

  Draper, concerned that the demands by Clara Brown and the other factory girls would derail the men’s strike, reconvened the women the following night. Mary Damon and Mrs. William Graham, home workers, insisted that backing the men should take precedence. Graham said 7 cents per pair of uppers was the best they could get, and that, in any case, talk of 9 cents was out of the question, while others worried that higher wages paid at the factory would bring an end to all piecework, or that manufacturers would simply take their businesses elsewhe
re. Brown accused her sisters of timidity; she was sure a higher wage was within reach. “Only the Lynn girls can bind shoes as they should be bound and the competition of the girls from out of town is no account,” she said. Another young woman echoed Brown, urging the pieceworkers, “Don’t be bluffed. We shall get our prices if we are not faint-hearted.”18

  By the time a fourth meeting of the women gathered on March 2, sentiment appeared to have turned against the factory girls and their demands; the Mechanics Association had worked with the women loyal to the home workers to submit a lower wage demand for female labor. The home stitchers were so confident of their strength that they even invited the hated reporter from the New York Times, who signed his pieces “HOWARD,” to attend. HOWARD had made himself unwelcome in Lynn by writing that if the local women didn’t settle with the factories soon, they’d be impoverished and forced into prostitution; as a result, he reported to his readers back in New York, clumps of mud were being thrown at him each time he ventured from his hotel. But before the March 2 gathering one of the home workers told him “they were going to have high old times, and if Clara B dared to open her head, she was to be kicked down [the] stairs.”19

  Clara Brown, however, continued to argue that the women had greater power over the local shoemaking establishment than they knew, and that if they would remain militant they could assert their will. She said she and other factory women would not support a lame bill of demands. “Where is the use of striking,” she asked, “if you gain nothing by it? It has come to a pretty pass if the machine bosses of Lynn were to govern the girls as they chose. If Mr. Fred Ignalls—the meanest man in Lynn—can rule us as he pleases, then where is the use of the strike? His machines are worth nothing if he can’t get his girls to work them; and if they only hold out, the list would have to be met by the bosses.” There were cheers for Brown but also some booing. Mrs. Damon stood to remind the room that unity with the men’s strike was a priority, words that enraged Brown, who leaped to her feet, declaring, “For God’s sake, don’t act like a pack of fools!” Her words were greeted by hisses. “Mr. Oliver,” stated Brown, holding her ground, “I say if we are going to strike for anything, let’s strike for something worth having.”

  But James Dillon, vice president of the Mechanics Association, then rose and appealed effectively to the conservative hearth-and-home contingent. “We rest on you; you, who suckle us in our infancy,” he assured the women, “who court us in our prime, who succor, support, and comfort us in our old age and declining powers, we rest on you to help us here, now, at this time; give us, journeymen shoemakers, your encouragement and cooperation, and we’ll go on, on, on even to Death’s grim door.”20 Dillon’s allusions ultimately trumped Brown’s stridency and quieted her supporters, and approval was voted for the lower women’s wage demands. “Come,” said Oliver, urging the women to join a women’s march on March 7, “come without your silks, your satins, or your furbelo riggin’; come in your modestest attire, and the great God above you will be on your side; your bosses will give you the rates, and your beaux will be pleased.”21

  On March 7, as many as eight hundred women trudged in falling snow through the city’s main streets, bearing a banner that vowed, AMERICAN LADIES WILL NOT BE SLAVES: GIVE US A FAIR COMPENSATION AND WE WILL LABOUR CHEERFULLY. But another better reflected the spirit of the women’s compromise, WEAK IN PHYSICAL STRENGTH BUT STRONG IN MORAL COURAGE, WE DARE TO BATTLE FOR THE RIGHT, SHOULDER TO SHOULDER WITH OUR FATHERS, HUSBANDS, AND BROTHERS.

  The 1860 Lynn shoemaker strike against the authoritarian dictates of the factory system proved something of a last gasp. Technically it gained little in terms of better wages or working conditions. The manufacturers refused to sign any blanket agreement with the strikers, partly out of fear that if one factory signed others would not, although wages did soon increase. The manufacturers had benefited from the production slowdown created by the strike by selling off six hundred thousand pairs of shoes at a higher price than they would have ordinarily obtained, and the outbreak of the Civil War the following spring proved a boon to Lynn’s recovery, as the federal government turned to the town to provide boots and other leather goods for the Union army.

  As in the Ten-Hour movement and the earlier turnouts at Lowell, the Lynn shoemakers’ strike of 1860 can be judged a success more for its display of worker militancy and the free public discussion of labor issues than for any specific results. “The experience left an indelible mark on folk memory,” notes Dawley, “and for a generation it was recalled with the frequency and vividness people usually reserved for earthquakes and hurricanes.”22 Fifteen thousand male and two thousand female shoemakers had entered the fold of organized labor, and lasting connections had been made between workers of neighboring manufacturing towns.23 Politically energized, the local jours and stitchers soon founded a workers’ party that in fall 1860 elected a shoemaker to be the new mayor of Lynn. “The strike was a noble act on the part of the shoemakers,” concluded the Bay State, “and will show to the world that they know their rights, whether they obtain them or not; they strike for a principle, as our revolutionary fathers did who struck for self-government.”24 Those storied ancestors would have likely been gratified by one banner held aloft by the Lynn workers: LET TYRANTS TREMBLE WHEN THE PEOPLE RISE!

  ON MARCH 5, 1860, Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln was campaigning in Hartford when a reporter asked his opinion of the shoemakers’ strike then under way at Lynn. Lincoln’s chief opponent, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, had cited the Lynn turnout as an example of the potential disruption caused by free labor, but Lincoln scoffed at that view. “I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to,” he said, “where they are not obliged to labor whether you pay them or not. I like a system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might prevail everywhere.”25 Lincoln believed American workers deserved to participate fully in “the race of life,” and that the country and its citizens would best grow and prosper in a free marketplace. Joined with the related ideas that land should be available to those who would till it, and that the western states and territories entering the Union be kept nonslave, the belief in “free labor, free soil, free men” helped that fall to secure Lincoln and the Republican Party the presidency.

  With the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Northern workingmen returned Lincoln’s goodwill, some unions enlisting in their entirety so that members could fight shoulder to shoulder, much as they worked together in mine or mill. “This union stands adjourned until either the Union is safe or we are whipped,” one labor leader told his followers. Partly due to the policy that allowed men of means to satisfy Northern conscription orders by purchasing the services of a replacement for $300, the foot soldiers in the resulting federal victory were to a large extent drawn from America’s toiling class—immigrant Irish, Italians, and Jews from the North’s teeming cities, German and Scandinavian farmers from the wheat belt, as well as African Americans, free blacks but mostly freed slaves, who filled soldiers’ ranks in higher proportion to their overall population than any single group.

  The Northern victory sealed at Appomattox four years later served as a powerful vindication of the right of place in American society of even the most humble worker and citizen. Although not every laborer had agreed with the abolitionists or approved of equal rights for the freed slaves, the war had given America’s still-young industrial working class “a memorable vision of class struggle.”26 What had been secured for the wage earner, no less than the entrepreneur, was the dream of personal independence and the right to pursue property, mobility, and economic well-being.

  The conflict had also spurred an unprecedented wave of industrialization in the North, the vast war-spending reinvigorating a national economy staggered by the recession of 1857. Large monopolies took shape in oil, steel, and sugar, as the economic doctrine of laissez-faire allowed a concentration of wealth and power the likes of which th
e country had never known. Congress actively supported big business—making huge land grants to railroads, raising tariffs on foreign goods, and authorizing employers to import immigrant laborers. In response there occurred in the months after the war a parallel expansion of workers’ organizations, from fewer than one hundred in 1860 to nearly three hundred, corresponding with the explosive increase of industrial workers overall. Between 1860 and 1870 the number of factory hands grew from 1.3 million to 2 million, at which point the country’s manufacturing personnel for the first time surpassed the number of people working in agriculture. In addition to these, there were 3.6 million other wage earners active in various enterprises, creating a total of 5.5 million nonfarm workers out of a national population of 35.2 million.27

  Many of the new trade unions strived for national stature, most notably the National Typographical Union, the Iron Molders’ Union, the Machinists and Blacksmiths, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, and the ironworkers, who organized as the Sons of Vulcan. Labor organizing, apace with manufacturing, crossed state lines and even branched into Canada. Much as industrialists found themselves in competition with factories hundreds of miles distant, so now did workers in Chicago and Philadelphia vie for wages with workers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The surge in unionism was sympathetically covered by Fincher’s Trades’ Review, the era’s leading labor newspaper, which urged in partisan prose “one common platform, pledging ourselves, as fast friends, to scrupulously adhere to that unity of action which can alone enable us to successfully counteract the wily machinations of those heartless moneyed despots.”28