Of all the “isms” so prevalent during the forties, “Agrarianism” alone came close to modern socialism, as it alone advocated class struggle and carried it into the political field, although, owing to the peculiarity of the American party structure, it urged a policy of “reward your friends, and punish your enemies” rather than an out and out labor party.  It is noteworthy that of all social reform movements of the forties Agrarianism alone was not initiated by the intellectuals.  On the other hand, another movement for legislative reform, namely the shorter-hour movement for women and children working in the mills and factories, was entirely managed by humanitarians.  Its philosophy was the furthest removed from the class struggle idea.

For only a short year or two did prosperity show itself from behind the clouds to cause a mushroom growth of trade unions, once in 1850-1851 and again in 1853-1854, following the gold discoveries in California.  During these few years unionism disentangled itself from humanitarianism and cooperationism and came out in its wholly modern form of restrictive craft unionism, only to be again suppressed by the business depressions that preceded and followed the panic of 1857.  Considered as a whole, however, the period of the forties and fifties was the zenith in American history of theories of social reform, of “panaceas,” of humanitarianism.

The trade union wave of the fifties was so short lived and the trade unionists were so preoccupied with the pressing need of advancing their wages to keep pace with the soaring prices caused by the influx of California gold, that we miss the tendency which was so strong in the thirties to reach out for a wider basis of labor organization in city trades’ unions, and ultimately in a National Trades’ Union.  On the other hand, the fifties foreshadowed a new form of expansion of labor organization—­the joining together in a nation-wide organization of all local unions of one trade.  The printers[9] organized nationally in 1850, the locomotive engineers and the hat-finishers in 1854; and the iron molders, and the machinists and blacksmiths in 1859; in addition there were at least a half dozen less successful attempts in other trades.

FOOTNOTES: 

[2] See below, 147-148.

[3] See below, 148-149.

[4] See below, 270-272.

[5] The workingmen felt that they required leisure to be able to exercise their rights of citizens.

[6] The ship carpenters had been similarly defeated in 1832.

[7] For a detailed discussion of these trials see below, 149-152.

[8] Published in 1916 by the Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 16-18.

[9] The printers had organized nationally for the first time in 1836, but the organization lasted less than two years; likewise the cordwainers or shoemakers.  But we must keep in mind that what constituted national organization in the thirties would pass only for regional or sectional organization in later years.