foundry workers, nailers, ship carpenters, and calkers, glass blowers,
hatters, boiler makers, plumbers, iron rollers, tailors, printers,
needle women, and molders. A large proportion of these attempts grew out
of unsuccessful strikes. The most important undertakings were among the
workers in iron, undoubtedly due in large measure to the indefatigable
efforts of William H. Sylvis, the founder of the Iron Molders'
International Union.

At the close of 1869 members of the Iron Molders' International Union
owned and operated many cooperative foundries chiefly in New York and
Pennsylvania. The first of the foundries established at Troy in the
early summer of 1866 was followed quickly by one in Albany and then
during the next eighteen months by ten more--one each in Rochester,
Chicago, Quincy, Louisville, Somerset, Pittsburgh, and two each in Troy
and Cleveland. The original foundry at Troy was an immediate financial
success and was hailed with joy by those who believed that under the
name of cooperationists the baffled trade unionists might yet conquer.
The New York _Sun_ congratulated the iron molders of Troy and declared
that Sylvis had checkmated the association of stove manufacturers and,
by the establishment of this cooperative foundry, had made the greatest
contribution of the year to the labor cause.

But the results of the Troy experiment, typical of the others, show how
far from a successful solution of the labor problem is productive
cooperation. Although this "Troy Cooperative Iron Founders' Association"
was planned with great deliberation and launched at a time when the
regular stove manufacturers were embarrassed by strikes, and although it
was regularly incorporated with a provision that each member was
entitled to but one vote whether he held one share at $100, or the
maximum privilege of fifty in the total of two thousand shares, it