in the District of Columbia and elsewhere they were still working twelve
or fourteen hours. In other words, the ten-hour day was secured only
where trade societies existed.

But the organized labor movement did not rest with a partial success.
The campaign of pressure on the President went on. Finally, although
somewhat belatedly, President Van Buren issued on March 31, 1840, the
famous executive order establishing the ten-hour day on government work
without a reduction in wages.

The victory came after the National Trades' Union had gone out of
existence and should be, more correctly, correlated with a labor
political movement. Early in 1837 came a financial panic. The industrial
depression wiped out in a short time every form of labor organization
from the trade societies to the National Trades' Union. Labor stood
defenseless against the economic storm. In this emergency it turned to
politics as a measure of despair.

The political dissatisfaction assumed the form of hostility towards
banks and corporations in general. The workingmen held the banks
responsible for the existing anarchy in currency, from which they
suffered both as consumers and producers. Moreover, they felt that there
was something uncanny and threatening about corporations with their
continuous existence and limited liability. Even while their attention
had been engrossed by trade unionism, the workingmen were awake to the
issue of monopoly. Together with their employers they had therefore
supported Jackson in his assault upon the largest "monster" of them
all--the Bank of the United States. The local organizations of the
Democratic party, however, did not always remain true to faith. In such
circumstances the workingmen, again acting in conjunction with their