strong unions, friendly to the Federation, though not affiliated with it.  Such, for example, were the Railway Brotherhoods with more than half a million members.  By the opening of 1920 the total strength of organized labor was put at about 4,000,000 members, meaning, if we include their families, that nearly one-fifth of the people of the United States were in some positive way dependent upon the operations of trade unions.

=Historical Background.=—­This was the culmination of a long and significant history.  Before the end of the eighteenth century, the skilled workmen—­printers, shoemakers, tailors, and carpenters—­had, as we have seen, formed local unions in the large cities.  Between 1830 and 1860, several aggressive steps were taken in the American labor movement.  For one thing, the number of local unions increased by leaps and bounds in all the industrial towns.  For another, there was established in every large manufacturing city a central labor body composed of delegates from the unions of the separate trades.  In the local union the printers or the cordwainers, for example, considered only their special trade problems.  In the central labor union, printers, cordwainers, iron molders, and other craftsmen considered common problems and learned to cooeperate with one another in enforcing the demands of each craft.  A third step was the federation of the unions of the same craftsmen in different cities.  The printers of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other towns, for instance, drew together and formed a national trade union of printers built upon the local unions of that craft.  By the eve of the Civil War there were four or five powerful national unions of this character.  The expansion of the railway made travel and correspondence easier and national conventions possible even for workmen of small means.  About 1834 an attempt was made to federate the unions of all the different crafts into a national organization; but the effort was premature.

The National Labor Union.—­The plan which failed in 1834 was tried again in the sixties.  During the war, industries and railways had flourished as never before; prices had risen rapidly; the demand for labor had increased; wages had mounted slowly, but steadily.  Hundreds of new local unions had been founded and eight or ten national trade unions had sprung into being.  The time was ripe, it seemed, for a national consolidation of all labor’s forces; and in 1866, the year after the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, the “National Labor Union” was formed at Baltimore under the leadership of an experienced organizer, W.H.  Sylvis of the iron molders.  The purpose of the National Labor Union was not merely to secure labor’s standard demands touching hours, wages, and conditions of work or to maintain the gains already won.  It leaned toward political action and radical opinions.  Above all, it sought to eliminate the conflict between capital and labor by making workingmen the owners of shops through the formation of cooeperative industries.  For six years the National Labor Union continued to hold conferences and carry on its propaganda; but most of the cooeperative enterprises failed, political dissensions arose, and by 1872 the experiment had come to an end.