The few national trade unions which were formed at the close of the
fifties did not constitute by themselves a labor movement. It needed the
industrial prosperity caused by the price inflation of the Civil War
time to bring forth again a mass movement of labor.

We shall say little of labor's attitude towards the question of war and
peace before the War had started. Like many other citizens of the North
and the Border States the handful of organized workers favored a
compromise. They held a labor convention in Philadelphia, in which a
great labor leader of the sixties, William H. Sylvis, President of the
International Molders' Union, took a prominent part and pronounced in
favor of the compromise solution advanced by Congressman Crittenden of
Kentucky. But no sooner had Fort Sumter been fired upon by the
secessionists than labor rallied to the support of the Federal Union.
Entire local unions enlisted at the call of President Lincoln, and
Sylvis himself assisted in recruiting a company composed of molders.

The first effect of the War was a paralysis of business and an increase
of unemployment. The existing labor organizations nearly all went to the
wall. The period of industrial stagnation, however, lasted only until
the middle of 1862.

The legal tender acts of 1862 and 1863 authorized the issue of paper
currency of "greenbacks" to the amount of $1,050,000,000, and
immediately prices began to soar. For the next sixteen years, namely
until 1879, when the government resumed the redemption of greenbacks in
gold, prices of commodities and labor expressed in terms of paper money
showed varying degrees of inflation; hence the term "greenback" period.
During the War the advance in prices was due in part to the
extraordinary demand by the government for the supply of the army and,