Reasons for the Development of Unions

The history of American unionism is frequently dated from 1792, when a local union was formed by the journeymen cord workers (shoemakers) of Philadelphia. Within the next ten years unions of shoemakers, carpenters, and printers were founded in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and several other cities.

What accounts for the appearance of these associations? They cannot be traced to particular oppression of workers at that time. On the contrary, most workers were better off in 1800 than they had been in 1780.

It is significant also that unions did not appear at first among the most exploited groups ---- the cotton-mill workers, and home workers on piece rates ----but among skilled tradesmen such as the printers, carpenters, and shoemakers. 

In the United States, as in most other industrial countries, the relatively skilled and prosperous workers organized first. The first unions in Great Britain, for example, consisted of building and printing trades workers, who were followed shortly afterward by unions of tailors and wool combers. In Sweden, the first union was formed by the printers, next by the carpenters, and next by the skilled metal-trades workers.

Neither can the rise of unionism be traced to the introduction of machine production. None of the industries organized during the period 1790 to 1830 had been significantly affected by machine methods. An important stimulus to union organization in some industries however, was the broadening of the domestic market for manufactures, which resulted from the improvement of transportation facilities.

This expansion meant intensified competition in the sale of goods---shoes made in Philadelphia competed increasingly with shoes made in New York, Baltimore, and other cities. The merchant capitalist appeared, playing off small masters against each other and forcing them to cut wages in order to survive. This activity threatened the journeymen's customary standard of life and forced them into defensive organizations.

The growth of the market also fostered division of labor and development of larger production units. Even without mechanization of production, this meant that it took more capital to set oneself up in business and that it was increasingly difficult for journeymen to rise to the master class. The gulf between worker and employer widened. For the first time there appeared a group of permanent wage earners, who had little expectation of becoming masters in the future.

Moreover, greater specialization of tasks reduced the element of skill in the production process. The semiskilled operative appeared and the need for fully skilled workers diminished. This threat to the skilled worker's skill was unpleasant in itself and also threatened his earning power.

The extension of the market for manufactures can scarcely explain the rise of unionism in industries such as printing and building construction, which continued to cater to purely local markets. While product markets in these industries remained local, however, the labor market broadened steadily as improved transportation increased the mobility of labor.

Printers, carpenters, and bricklayers began to move about the country in considerable numbers and were sometimes used by employers to undercut local wage scales. Some means had to be found for controlling this competition.

Moreover in local-market as well as national-market industries, employers were sometimes led by business depression or price competition to make a direct onslaught on established wage scales and working conditions. The development of local unions was a natural protective response to this pressure.

Until after the Civil War , almost all unions were local unions of workers in a particular trade or industry, and they were confined largely to a few cities along the Atlantic seaboard. These early unions were strikingly modern in objectives and methods. From the beginning, regulation of wages was the main issue and the strike was the main weapon. 

There was little, it is true, which could be termed "collective bargaining" during this period . In the beginning, the union simply decided on its "price" (that is wage rate), and the members pledged themselves not to work below this price.

A little later, it became customary for a union committee to visit each employer and request his adherence to the union rate. Those who refused to agree were struck. There was still no written agreement with employers, and the procedure could scarcely be called bargaining. The wage scale was determined unilaterally by the union, and employers were given the choice of conforming or not conforming.

When nonconforming employers were struck, the walking delegate, who at first was an unpaid worker but later became a paid official, went from shop to shop to make sure that all union members were out. 

Strikebreakers were deemed rats and later scabs. The locals of the same trade in different cities exchanged lists of scabs and agreed not to admit them to membership. This activity was almost the only contract between local unions in the early days. Strikes were financed by levies on the membership. They were relatively peaceful, and except in depression periods, most of them were successful.

Another policy of the earliest trade unions was not to work with non-union men. The union shop, like the union wage scale, was enforced directly through a pledge by unionists "not to work for anybody who does not pay the rate nor beside anyone who does not get the rate."

Non-unionists were also boycotted socially; union men would not live in the same boarding houses or eat at the same places as non-union men. Thus the union shop, which is sometimes pictured as a new invention, actually dates from the earliest days of unionism in this country.

Apprenticeship regulations were another major concern of the early unions. Their main purpose was to prevent employers from replacing journeymen with learners, runaway apprentices, and women at wage rates below the union scale. The number of apprentices which an employer might train was usually limited to a certain proportion of the number of journeymen employed.

They were required to serve a specified period of apprenticeship, and only journeymen who had completed this apprenticeship were admitted to the union and allowed to work in union shops.

These unions, though few in number, were sufficiently strong and aggressive to arouse consternation among employers. Editorial writers denounced unionism, employers' associations were formed to combat it, and conspiracy cases were launched against unions in the courts. The antiunion arguments, like the union tactics of the day, have a surprisingly modern ring. *(see caption below)

Time has brought little change in the issues at stake and the arguments advanced on either side. Many of the arguments put forward today might easily have been copied from newspapers and speeches of a hundred years ago.

An important characteristic of these early unions was their inability to withstand business depression. They sprang up and flourished in good years but were nearly all wiped out during depression periods. After the Civil War, however, the situation began to change. T

he depression of the years 1873 to 1878 reduced union membership from about 300,000 to 50,000; but it did not wipe out unionism completely, as earlier depressions had done. With this development, and the foundation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, we enter a new period of trade union history.

*The master carpenters of Boston, for example, when confronted in 1825 with a demand for a ten hour day, replied that they could not believe "this project to have originated with any of the faithful and industrious sons of New England, but are compelled to consider it an evil of foreign growth, and one which we hope and trust will not take root in the favored soil of Massachusetts. And especially that our city, the early rising and industry of whose inhabitants are universally proverbial, may not be infected with the unnatural production.