From ten to twelve hands were employed in the shop where I worked—­a rather heterogeneous assemblage.  The foreman and one or two others were Americans, and the rest were Germans, French, and Irish—­I being the only Englishman.  Notwithstanding the diversity of nation, there was but little in sentiment, for with the exception of the apprentice, who was not a free agent, and myself, they all determined to ‘turn out,’ and many a taunt had I to bear for refusing to join them.  Our boss was a man well to do in the world.  Having of course heard of the threatened strike, he said:  ’Well, you can do just as you like.  There’s no boss in the city pays better prices than I do, and they wont go up a cent the higher for all your striking.’

For my part, I was quite taken by surprise by the strike; it was the last thing I should have expected to see in America.  But there it was, sure enough; and now that the boss had so unequivocally declared his sentiments, the shop became the more demonstrative in the expression of theirs.  They were not going to be slaves for anybody; it was a free country; they had a right to higher wages, and higher wages they would have.  The Britisher wasn’t half a man; he was a sneak, who ought to have stayed in his own tyrannical country; and much more to the same effect.  Consequently, on the day fixed, they just shewed themselves at the shop for a few minutes after breakfast, and then went off in a body to a great ‘mass meeting,’ called for the first day of the strike; and all the while emigrants from Europe were pouring into the city at the rate of ten or twelve hundred every week.

A first measure was to ascertain the numbers who had struck, how many were recusants, and in what shops they were working, with a view to devise means for procuring a total cessation of work in all the shops of the city.  Advertisements of the proceedings speedily appeared in the daily papers, chiefly in those which, being sold at a cent apiece, circulated most largely among the working population.  The masters were warned, that holding out on their part would be of little avail; and as for the ‘misguided men’ who persisted in working, they were invited to join the ranks of the insurgents, with promises of work at twelve dollars a week, or the option of being stigmatised as unworthy members of society.  Compared with the ‘turn-outs,’ the number of those who persisted in their labour was very small.  As for myself, it seemed at first uncommonly dull to hear only the noise of my own tools, or of the apprentice’s, echoing through the workshop.  But the weather was fine; my ‘job,’ a ‘secretary bookcase,’ was one that I liked; and I kept on without a single misgiving as to the propriety of my determination.