The conception of a national trade unity was now well formed;
compactly organized national and local trade unions with very
definite industrial aims were soon to take the place of
ephemeral, loose-jointed associations with vast and vague
ambitions. Early in this period a new impetus was given to
organized labor by the historic decision of Chief Justice Shaw of
Massachusetts in a case* brought against seven bootmakers charged
with conspiracy. Their offense consisted in attempting to induce
all the workmen of a given shop to join the union and compel the
master to employ only union men. The trial court found them
guilty; but the Chief Justice decided that he did not "perceive
that it is criminal for men to agree together to exercise their
own acknowledged rights in such a manner as best to subserve
their own interests." In order to show criminal conspiracy,
therefore, on the part of a labor union, it was necessary to
prove that either the intent or the method was criminal, for it
was not a criminal offense to combine for the purpose of raising
wages or bettering conditions or seeking to have all laborers
join the union. The liberalizing influence of this decision upon
labor law can hardly be over-estimated.

* Commonwealth vs. Hunt.


The period closed amidst general disturbances and forebodings,
political and economic. In 1857 occurred a panic which thrust the
problem of unemployment, on a vast scale, before the American
consciousness. Instead of demanding higher wages, multitudes now
cried for work. The marching masses, in New York, carried banners
asking for bread, while soldiers from Governor's Island and