lacked balance. A strike in one trade was an example to others to
strike. In a few instances, however, there was considerable planning and
reserve.

The strike epidemic affected even the girls who worked in the textile
factories. The first strike of factory girls on record had occurred in
Dover, New Hampshire, in 1828. A factory strike in Paterson, New Jersey,
which occurred in the same year, occasioned the first recorded calling
out of militia to quell labor disturbances. There the strikers were,
however, for the most part men. But the factory strike which attracted
the greatest public attention was the Lowell strike in February, 1834,
against a 15 percent reduction in wages. The strike was short and
unsuccessful, notwithstanding that 800 striking girls at first exhibited
a determination to carry their struggle to the end. It appears that
public opinion in New England was disagreeably impressed by this early
manifestation of feminism. Another notable factory strike was one in
Paterson in July 1835. Unlike similar strikes, it had been preceded by
an organization. The chief demand was the eleven-hour day. The strike
involved twenty mills and 2000 persons. Two weeks later the employers
reduced hours from thirteen and a half to twelve hours for five days and
to nine hours on Saturday. This broke the strike. The character of the
agitation among the factory workers stamps it as ephemeral. Even more
ephemeral was the agitation among immigrant laborers, mostly Irish, on
canals and roads, which usually took the form of riots.

As in the preceding period, the aggressiveness of the trade societies
eventually gave rise to combative masters' associations. These, goaded
by restrictive union practices, notably the closed shop, appealed to the
courts for relief. By 1836 employers' associations appeared in nearly
every trade in which labor was aggressive; in New York there were at