CHAPTER 2
THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879
The few national trade unions which were formed at the close of the
fifties did not constitute by themselves a labor movement. It needed the
industrial prosperity caused by the price inflation of the Civil War
time to bring forth again a mass movement of labor.
We shall say little of labor's attitude towards the question of war and
peace before the War had started. Like many other citizens of the North
and the Border States the handful of organized workers favored a
compromise. They held a labor convention in Philadelphia, in which a
great labor leader of the sixties, William H. Sylvis, President of the
International Molders' Union, took a prominent part and pronounced in
favor of the compromise solution advanced by Congressman Crittenden of
Kentucky. But no sooner had Fort Sumter been fired upon by the
secessionists than labor rallied to the support of the Federal Union.
Entire local unions enlisted at the call of President Lincoln, and
Sylvis himself assisted in recruiting a company composed of molders.
The first effect of the War was a paralysis of business and an increase
of unemployment.
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