In this era of
machinery the forces of technical evolution decisively joined hands
with the older forces of marketing evolution to depress the conditions
of the wage bargain. It is needless to dilate upon the effects of
machine technique on labor conditions--they have become a commonplace of
political economy. The shoemakers were first among the organized trades
to feel the effects. In the later sixties they organized what was then
the largest trade union in the world, the Order of the Knights of St.
Crispin,[104] to ward off the menace of "green hands" set to work on
machines. With the machinists and the metal trades in general, the
invasion of unskilled and little skilled competitors began a decade
later. But the main and general invasion came in the eighties, the
proper era from which to date machine production in America. It was
during the eighties that we witness an attempted fusion into one
organization, the Order of the Knights of Labor, of the machine-menaced
mechanics and the hordes of the unskilled.[105]
With the nineties a change comes at last. The manufacturer finally wins
his independence.
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