open "a wide door for idleness and vice"; hinted broadly at the foreign
origin of the agitation; declared that all combinations intending to
regulate the value of labor by abridging the working day were in a high
degree unjust and injurious to the other classes in the community;
announced their resolution to support the masters at the sacrifice of
suspending building altogether; and bound themselves not to employ any
journeyman or master who might enforce the ten-hour day. The strike
failed.

The renewed trade-union activities brought forth a fresh crop of trials
for conspiracy.[3] One case involved Philadelphia master shoemakers who
combined to reduce wages, two were against journeymen tailors in
Philadelphia and Buffalo and the fourth was a hatters' case in New
York. The masters were acquitted and the hatters were found guilty of
combining to deprive a non-union man of his livelihood. In the
Philadelphia tailors' case, the journeymen were convicted on the charge
of intimidation. Of the Buffalo tailors' case it is only known that it
ended in the conviction of the journeymen.


(2) _Equal Citizenship, 1827-1832_

So far we have dealt only with trade societies but not yet with a labor
movement. A labor movement presupposes a feeling of solidarity which
goes beyond the boundaries of a single trade and extends to other wage
earners. The American labor movement began in 1827, when the several
trades in Philadelphia organized the Mechanics' Union of Trade
Associations, which was, so far as now known, the first city central
organization of trades in the world. This Union, originally intended as
an economic organization, changed to a political one the following year