The land question, which could have troubled no American when in
earlier days he felt himself part proprietor in a new world, was
beginning to be a problem to try the mettle of the keenest thinkers
and the most eager reformers. And even so early as the beginning of
this second period there was to be seen on the social horizon a small
cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, which was to grow and grow till in
a few years it was to blot out of sight all other matters of public
concern. This was the movement for the abolition of slavery. Till that
national anachronism was at least politically and legally cleared out
of the way, there was no great amount of public interest or public
effort to be spared for any other subject. And yet were there any, on
either side of that great question, who guessed that the passing of
that even then belated institution was to give rise to and leave in
its train problems quite as momentous as the abolition of slavery, and
far more tremendous in their scope and range? By these problems we
have been faced ever since, and continue to be faced by them today.
To grant to any set of people nominal freedom, and deny them economic
freedom is only half solving the difficulty. To deny economic freedom
to the colored person is in the end to deny it to the white person,
too.

The immediate cause which seems to have brought about the downfall of
the labor organizations of the first period (1825-1840) was the panic
of 1837, and the long financial depression which succeeded. We read,
on the other side of the water, of the "Hungry Forties," and although
no such period of famine and profound misery fell to the lot of the
people of the United States, as Great Britain and Ireland suffered,
the influence of the depression was long and widely felt in the
manufacturing districts of the Eastern states. Secondarily the workers
were to know of its effects still later, through the invasion of