and Columbia, Pennsylvania, the machinists of Buffalo, the
tailors of New York, and the shoemakers of Indiana. The year 1881
was scarcely less restive. But 1886 is marked in labor annals as
"the year of the great uprising," when twice as many strikes as
in any previous year were reported by the United States
Commissioner of Labor, and when these strikes reached a tragic
climax in the Chicago Haymarket riots.

It was during this feverish epoch that organized labor first
entered the arena of national politics. When the policy as to the
national currency became an issue, the lure of cheap money drew
labor into an alliance in 1880 with the Greenbackers, whose mad
cry added to the general unrest. In this, as in other fatuous
pursuits, labor was only responding to the forces and the spirit
of the hour. These have been called the years of amalgamation,
but they were also the years of tumult, for, while amalgamation
was achieved, discipline was not. Authority imposed from within
was not sufficient to overcome the decentralizing forces, and
just as big business had yet to learn by self-imposed discipline
how to overcome the extremely individualistic tendencies which
resulted in trade anarchy, so labor had yet to learn through
discipline the lessons of self-restraint. Moreover, in the sudden
expansion and great enterprises of these days, labor even more
than capital lost in stability. One great steadying influence,
the old personal relation between master and servant, which
prevailed during the days of handicraft and even of the small
factory, had disappeared almost completely. Now labor was put up
on the market--a heartless term descriptive of a condition from
which human beings might be expected to react violently--and they
did, for human nature refused to be an inert, marketable thing.