The rise in the numbers of workers in manufacturing paralleled growing activities by workers to organize for their benefits. Some have argued that the origin of the labor movement and the original labor-management problem sprang from the separation of workers from their tools. It is claimed that artisans, who owned their trade implements, lost their identity and independence when employer capitalists furnished the equipment. Like most generalizations, this one has its uses, but it may lead to false inferences (Economic Reasoning Proposition 5, evidence matters, applies here). The Industrial Revolution placed great numbers of laborers in a position of uncertainty and insecurity, making them depend on the vagaries of economic fluctuations and the mercy of employers. Yet the first impetus to a genuine labor movement was furnished by workers who were by no means separated from their tools. Craftsmen in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston founded craft labor societies in the 1790s, the prototypes of modern unions. Most of these societies were established in the hopes of securing increases in real wages (i. e., of pushing up monetary wages faster than the prices of consumer goods), although attempts were also made to gain shorter working hours, to establish and maintain a closed shop, and to regulate the conditions of apprenticeship. Invariably, there was considerable fraternal motivation for these societies as well, as people who made a living in the same way easily forged a social bond. In nearly all the major cities, shoemakers (cordwainers) and printers were among the first to form “workingmen’s societies”; carpenters, masons, hatters, riggers, and tailors also found it worthwhile to organize. Again, these organizations were separated by craft and initiated by skilled workers (Economic Reasoning Proposition 1, scarcity forces us to make choices).
World History
