From 1879 till 1882 the labor movement was typical of a period of rising
prices. It was practically restricted to skilled workmen, who organized
to wrest from employers still better conditions than those which
prosperity would have given under individual bargaining. The movement
was essentially opportunistic and displayed no particular class feeling
and no revolutionary tendencies. The solidarity of labor was not denied
by the trade unions, but they did not try to reduce the idea to
practice: each trade coped more or less successfully with its own
employers. Even the Knights of Labor, the organization _par excellence_
of the solidarity of labor, was at this time, in so far as practical
efforts went, merely a faint echo of the trade unions.
But the situation radically changed during the depression of 1884-1885.
The unskilled and the semi-skilled, affected as they were by wage
reductions and unemployment even in a larger measure than the skilled,
were drawn into the movement. Labor organizations assumed the nature of
a real class movement. The idea of the solidarity of labor ceased to be
merely verbal and took on life! General strikes, sympathetic strikes,
nationwide boycotts and nation-wide political movements became the order
of the day.
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