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.
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