=The Rise of Organized Labor.=—­The changing conditions of American life, marked by the spreading mill towns of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania and the growth of cities like Buffalo, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago in the West, naturally brought changes, as Jefferson had prophesied, in “manners and morals.”  A few mechanics, smiths, carpenters, and masons, widely scattered through farming regions and rural villages, raise no such problems as tens of thousands of workers collected in one center in daily intercourse, learning the power of cooeperation and union.

Even before the coming of steam and machinery, in the “good old days” of handicrafts, laborers in many trades—­printers, shoemakers, carpenters, for example—­had begun to draw together in the towns for the advancement of their interests in the form of higher wages, shorter days, and milder laws.  The shoemakers of Philadelphia, organized in 1794, conducted a strike in 1799 and held together until indicted seven years later for conspiracy.  During the twenties and thirties, local labor unions sprang up in all industrial centers and they led almost immediately to city federations of the several crafts.

As the thousands who were dependent upon their daily labor for their livelihood mounted into the millions and industries spread across the continent, the local unions of craftsmen grew into national craft organizations bound together by the newspapers, the telegraph, and the railways.  Before 1860 there were several such national trade unions, including the plumbers, printers, mule spinners, iron molders, and stone cutters.  All over the North labor leaders arose—­men unknown to general history but forceful and resourceful characters who forged links binding scattered and individual workers into a common brotherhood.  An attempt was even made in 1834 to federate all the crafts into a permanent national organization; but it perished within three years through lack of support.  Half a century had to elapse before the American Federation of Labor was to accomplish this task.

All the manifestations of the modern labor movement had appeared, in germ at least, by the time the mid-century was reached:  unions, labor leaders, strikes, a labor press, a labor political program, and a labor political party.  In every great city industrial disputes were a common occurrence.  The papers recorded about four hundred in two years, 1853-54, local affairs but forecasting economic struggles in a larger field.  The labor press seems to have begun with the founding of the Mechanics’ Free Press in Philadelphia in 1828 and the establishment of the New York Workingman’s Advocate shortly afterward.  These semi-political papers were in later years followed by regular trade papers designed to weld together and advance the interests of particular crafts.  Edited by able leaders, these little sheets with limited circulation wielded an enormous influence in the ranks of the workers.