The History of Labor Day
For other Labor Day information, visit our Labor Day 2009 page.
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
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那一条线被污染掉了,我再上一条线,谢绝跟贴!
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8小时工作制的来历
http://montreal.blogbus.com/logs/8088596.html
Tag: 8小时工作制 工人运动 劳动节 生活
上一篇我们提到美国和加拿大的劳动节为什么在9月而不是在5月,这一篇就来看看8小时工作制的来历吧。
19世纪80年代的美国,工人们每天要劳动14至16个小时,有的甚至长达18个小时,但工资却很低。马萨诸塞州一个鞋厂的监工说:“让一个身强力壮体格健全的18岁小伙子,在这里的任何一架机器旁边工作,我能够使他在22岁时头发变成灰白。”沉重的阶级压迫激起了无产者巨大的愤怒。他们知道,要争取生存的条件,就只有团结起来,通过罢工运动与资本家作斗争。工人们提出的罢工口号,就是要求实行八小时工作制。
1877年,美国历史上第一次全国罢工开始了。工人阶级走向街头游行示威,向政府提出改善劳动与生活条件,要求缩短工时,实行八小时工作制。罢工不久,队伍日渐扩大,工会会员人数激增,各地工人也纷纷参加罢工运动。
在工人运动的强大压力下,美国国会被迫制定了八小时工作制的法律。但是,狠毒的资本家根本不予理睬,这项法律只不过是一纸空文,工人们仍然是生活在水深火热之中,倍受资本家的折磨。忍无可忍的工人们决定将这场争取生存权利的斗争,推向一个新的高潮,准备举行更大规模的罢工运动。
1884年10月,美国和加拿大的八个国际性和全国性工人团体,在美国芝加哥举行一个集会,决定于1886年5月1日举行总罢工,迫使资本家实施八小时工作制。这一天终于来到了。5月1日,美国2万多个企业的35万工人停工上街,举行了声势浩大的示威游行,各种肤色,各个工种的工人一齐进行总罢工。仅芝加哥一个城市,就有4.5万名工人涌上街头。这下,美国的主要工业部门处于瘫痪状态,火车变成了僵蛇,商店更是鸦雀无声,所有的仓库也都关门并贴上封条。当时在罢工工人中流行着一首“八小时之歌”,歌中唱道:
“我们要把世界变个样,
我们厌倦了白白的辛劳,
光得到仅能糊口的工饷,
从没有时间让我们去思考。
我们要闻闻花香,
我们要晒晒太阳,
我们相信:
上帝只允许八小时工作日。
我们从船坞、车间和工场,
召集了我们的队伍,争取
八小时工作,八小时休息,
八小时归自己!”
激昂的歌声唱出了工人的心声,唱出了全世界无产者的共同愿望,也感染了广大的群众,他们纷纷声援工人的罢工运动,将罢工运动推向新的高潮。
罢工运动所表现的巨大力量使政府当局和资本家极为恐慌,他们不甘心答应工人的条件,便露出他们狰狞的一面。5月3日,芝加哥政府当局终于撕下了 “民主”的假面具,用暴力镇压工人。他们组织罢工破坏者在警察的保护下混进工人的罢工队伍,故意制造混乱,以此为借口,当场开枪打死六个工人。这一暴行,激起了全市工人的极大愤慨,他们决心为死难的工人兄弟们报仇!
第二天晚上7点,3000多名工人聚集芝加哥秣市广场,怀着沉痛的心情,为死难工友们举行追悼会,声讨政府当局的暴行。会议秩序井然,快10点钟时,大会即将结束,突然,有200名武装警察冲进了会场。一名警官大声叫道:
“散开!快散开!不准在这里聚众闹事!”
工人们纷纷抗议道:“为什么不准我们开追悼大会?”
“你们故意制造血案,还不许我们为死难者默哀,还有天理没有?!”
“少费话?我们奉令驱散非法集会!如果不听劝告,我们将用武力解决!”这位警官蛮横地叫道。
“举行集会是我们的自由,你们无权驱散!”工人们拒理力争。
警官见势不妙,举枪叫道:“弟兄们,把这帮穷工人立即驱赶出去!”如狼似虎的警察马上冲进广场,抡起棍子,朝工人头上、身上打去,工人们奋起反抗,广场顿时大乱。
“轰!”突然响起了一阵强烈的爆炸声。原来,这是埋伏在工人队伍中的资本家走狗,故意向人群投掷的一颗炸弹。四名工人当场倒卧在血泊之中,几名警察也炸死炸伤了。
这是资本家故意制造的事端,以给政府当局大规模镇压工人一个借口。这下,政府立即调动大批军警,疯狂向工人队伍开枪,有200多名工人被打死打伤,更多的工人被逮捕起来。
随之,资产阶级的报纸大造舆论,诬蔑提出八小时工作制的人是“投掷炸弹者”。--最近的玩具召回事件,美国资产阶级再一次利用他们媒体的控制力,将责任全部推卸到中国生产厂商的身上,连工厂老板都自杀了,随后工厂关闭,数千工人失业。这种手段是不是如出一辙?
政府当局顺手推舟,把八名工人领袖交付法院,诬告他们犯了杀人罪。陪审团主要是由大工厂的工头组成,而出庭作证的,则是被警察局收买的工贼。
结果,8月20日,法院判处七人绞刑,一人15年徒刑。工人不服,向州最高法院上诉,裁决是维持原判。后又向联邦最高法院上诉,他们根本就不受理此案。
这下,激起美国各地工人群众的强烈抗议,他们联合起来,纷纷举行抗议集会。但政府当局仍然于次年11月杀害了其中四名工人领袖,三名改判无期徒刑。一名则死于狱中。美国芝加哥工人的鲜血,燃起了全国工人斗争的烈火,并迅速漫延到欧洲和其它大洲。全世界的工人阶级纷纷举行罢工运动,与万恶的资本家做殊死的斗争。
在世界进步舆论的广泛支持下,尤其是全世界工人运动的斗争下,美国政府终于在一个月后,宣布实施八小时工作制。美国工人运动终于取得初步的胜利。
为纪念美国工人1886年5月11日的罢工运动,为推动整个世界工人阶级的斗争热情,就把这一天定为国际无产阶级的共同节日。在以后的每年5月1日,各国的工人阶级都举行大规模的示威游行,以争取自身的权利。
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兼听则明。。。现在劳工要么被歧视,要么被染污,什么老墨,老黑
,Yellowman即是。我公司的体力劳动者,都还有工会。
再声明一次,谢绝跟贴!
- posted on 09/10/2009
Engels. The Condition of the Working Class in England
Preface to the American Edition
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Source: Marx Engels On Britain, Progress Publishers 1953;
Written: by Frederick Engels, London, January 26, 1887;
First Published: in the American edition of The Condition of the Working-Class in England, New York, 1887;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1887/01/26.htm
The Labor Movement in America
Ten months have elapsed since, at the translator’s wish, I wrote the Appendix[1] to this book; and during these ten months, a revolution has been accomplished in American society such as, in any other country, would have taken at least ten years. In February 1885, American public opinion was almost unanimous on this one point; that there was no working class, in the European sense of the word, in America; that consequently no class struggle between workmen and capitalists, such as tore European society to pieces, was possible in the American Republic; and that, therefore, Socialism was a thing of foreign importation which could never take root on American soil.[2] And yet, at that moment, the coming class struggle was casting its gigantic shadow before it in the strikes of the Pennsylvania coal-miners, and of many other trades, and especially in the preparations, all over the country, for the great Eight Hours’ movement which was to come off, and did come off, in the May following. That I then duly appreciated these symptoms, that I anticipated a working-class movement on a national scale, my “Appendix” shows; but no one could then foresee that in such a short time the movement would burst out with such irresistible force, would spread with the rapidity of a prairie-fire, would shake American society to its very foundations.
The fact is there, stubborn and indisputable. To what an extent it had struck with terror the American ruling classes, was revealed to me, in an amusing way, by American journalists who did me the honor of calling on me last summer; the “new departure” had put them into a state of helpless fright and perplexity. But at that time the movement was only just on the start; there was but a series of confused and apparently !disconnected upheavals of that class which, by the suppression of negro slavery and the rapid development of manufactures, had become the lowest stratum of American society. Before the year closed, these bewildering social convulsions began to take a definite direction. The spontaneous, instinctive movements of these vast masses of working people, over a vast extent of country, the simultaneous outburst of their common discontent with a miserable social condition, the same everywhere and due .to the same causes, made them conscious of the fact, that they formed a new and distinct class of American society; a class of — practically speaking — more or less hereditary wage-workers, ,proletarians. And with true American instinct this consciousness led them at once to take the next step towards their deliverance: the formation of a political working-men’s party, with a platform of its own, and with the conquest of the Capitol and the White House for its goal. In May the struggle for the Eight Hours’ working-day, the troubles in Chicago, Milwaukee, etc., the attempts of the ruling class to crush the nascent uprising of Labor by brute force and brutal class-justice; in November the new Labor Party organized in all great centres, and the New York, Chicago and Milwaukee elections. May and November have hitherto reminded the American bourgeoisie only of the payment of coupons of U.S. bonds; henceforth May and November will remind them, too, of the dates on which the American working-class presented their coupons for payment.
In European countries, it took the working class years and years before they fully realized the fact that they formed a distinct and, under the existing social conditions, a permanent class of modern society; and it took years again until this class consciousness led them to form themselves into a distinct political party, independent of, and opposed to, all the old political parties formed by the various sections of the ruling classes. On the more favored soil of America, where no mediæval ruins bar the way, where history begins with the elements of modern bourgeois society as evolved in the seventeenth century, the working class passed through these two stages of its development within ten months.,
Still, all this is but a beginning. That the laboring masses should feel their community of grievances and of interests, their solidarity as a class in opposition to all other classes; that in order to give expression and effect to this feeling, they should set in motion the political machinery provided for that purpose in every free country — that is the first step only. The next step is to find the common remedy for these common grievances, and to embody it in the platform of the new Labor Party. And this — the most important and the most difficult step in the movement — has Yet to be taken in America.
A new party must have a distinct positive platform; a platform which may vary in details as circumstances vary and as the party itself develops, but still one upon which the party, for the time being, is agreed. So long as such a platform has not been worked out, or exists but in a rudimentary form, so long the new party, too, will have but a rudimentary existence; it may exist locally but not. yet nationally, it will be a party potentially but not actually.
That platform, whatever may be its first shape, must develop in a direction which may be determined beforehand. The causes that brought into existence the abyss between the working class and the capitalist class are the same in America as in Europe; the means of filling up that abyss are equally the same everywhere. Consequently, the platform of the American proletariat will in the long run coincide, as to the ultimate end to be attained, with the one which, after sixty years of dissensions and discussions, has become the adopted platform of the great mass of the European militant proletariat. It will proclaim, as the ultimate end, the conquest of political supremacy by the working class, in order to effect the direct appropriation of all means of production — land, railways, mines, machinery, etc. — by society at large, to be worked in common by all for the account and benefit of all.
But if the new American party, like all political parties everywhere, by the very fact of its formation aspires to the conquest of political power, it is as yet far from agreed upon what to do with that power when once attained. In New York and the other great cities of the East, the organization of the working class has proceeded upon the lines of Trades’ Societies, forming in each city a powerful Central Labor Union. In New York the Central Labor Union, last November, chose for its standard-bearer Henry George, and consequently its temporary electoral platform has been largely imbued with his principles. In the great cities of the North-West the electoral battle was fought upon a rather indefinite labor platform, and the influence of Henry George’s theories was scarcely, if at all, visible. And while in these great centres of population and of industry the new class movement came to a political head, we find all over the country two wide-spread labor organizations: the “Knights of Labor” and the “Socialist Labor Party,” of which only the latter has a platform in harmony with the modern European standpoint as summarized above.
Of the three more or less definite forms under which the American labor movement thus presents itself, the first, the Henry George movement in New York, is for the moment of a chiefly local significance. No doubt New York is by far the most important city of the States; but New York is not Paris and the United States are not France. And it seems to me that the Henry George platform, in its present shape, is too narrow to form the basis for anything but a local movement, or at best for a short-lived phase of the general movement. To Henry George, the expropriation of the mass of the people from the land is the great and universal cause of the splitting up of the people into Rich and Poor. Now this is not quite correct historically. In Asiatic and classical antiquity, the predominant form of class oppression was slavery, that is to say, not so much the expropriation of the masses from the land as the appropriation of their persons. When, in the decline of the Roman Republic, the free Italian peasants were expropriated from their farms, they formed a class of “poor whites” similar to that of the Southern Slave States before 1861; and between slaves and poor whites, two classes equally unfit for self-emancipation, the old world went to pieces. In the middle ages, it was not the expropriation of the people from, but on the contrary, their appropriation to the land which became the source of feudal oppression. The peasant retained his land, but was attached to it as a serf or villein, and made liable to tribute to the lord in labor and in produce. It was only at the dawn of modern times, towards the end of the fifteenth century, that the expropriation of the peasantry on a large scale laid the foundation .for the modern class of wage-workers who possess nothing but their labor-power and can live only by the selling of that labor-power to others. But if the expropriation from the land brought this class into existence, it was the development of capitalist production, of modern industry and agriculture on a large scale which perpetuated it, increased it, and shaped it into a distinct class with distinct interests and a distinct historical mission. All this has been fully expounded by Marx (“Capital,” Part VIII: “The So-Called Primitive Accumulation”). According to Marx, the cause of the present antagonism of the classes and of the social degradation of the working class is their expropriation from all means of production, in which the land is of course included.
If Henry George declares land-monopolization to be the sole cause of poverty and misery, he naturally finds the remedy in the resumption of the land by society at large. Now, the Socialists of the school of Marx, too, demand the resumption, by society, of the land, and not only of the land but of all other means of production likewise. But even if we leave these out of the question, there is another difference. What is to be done with the land? Modern Socialists, as represented by Marx, demand that it should be held and worked in common and for common account, and the same with all other means of social production, mines, railways, factories, etc.; Henry George would confine himself to letting it out to individuals as at present, merely regulating its distribution and applying the rents for public, instead of, as at present, for private purposes. What the Socialists demand, implies a total revolution of the whole system of social production; what Henry George demands, leaves the present mode of social production untouched, and has, in fact, been anticipated by the extreme section of Ricardian bourgeois economists who, too, demanded the confiscation of the rent of land by the State.
It would of course be unfair to suppose that Henry George has said his last word once for all. But I am bound to take his theory as I find it.
The second great section of the American movement is formed by the Knights of Labor.[3] And that seems to Se the section most typical of the present state of the movement, as it is undoubtedly by far the strongest. An immense association spread over an immense extent of country in innumerable “assemblies,” representing all shades of individual and local opinion within the working class; the whole of them sheltered under a platform of corresponding indistinctness and held together much less by their impracticable constitution than by the instinctive feeling that the very fact of their clubbing together for their common aspiration makes them a great power in the country; a truly American paradox clothing the most modern tendencies in the most mediaeval mummeries, and hiding the most democratic and even rebellious spirit behind an apparent, but really powerless despotism — such is the picture the Knights of Labor offer to a European observer. But if we are not arrested by mere outside whimsicalities, we cannot help seeing in this vast agglomeration an immense amount of potential energy evolving slowly but surely into actual force. The Knights of Labor are the first national organization created by the American working class as a whole; whatever be their origin and history, whatever their shortcomings and little absurdities, whatever their platform and their constitution, here they are, the work of practically the whole class of American wage-workers, the only national bond that holds them together, that makes their strength felt to themselves not less than to their ,enemies, and that fills them with the proud hope of future victories. For it would not be exact to say, that the Knights ,of Labor are liable to development. They are constantly in full process of development and revolution; a heaving, fermenting mass of plastic material seeking the shape and form appropriate to its inherent nature. That form will be attained as surely as historical evolution has, like natural evolution, its own immanent laws. Whether the Knights of Labor will then retain their present name or not, makes no difference, but to an outsider it appears evident that here is the raw material out of which the future of the American working-class movement, and along with it, the future of American society at large, has to be shaped.
The third section consists of the Socialist Labor Party.[4] This section is a party but in name, for nowhere in America has it, up to now, been able actually to take its stand as a political party. It is, moreover, to a certain extent foreign to America, having until lately been made up almost exclusively by German immigrants, using their own language and for the most part, conversant with the common language of the country. But if it came from a foreign stock, it came, at the same time, armed with the experience earned during long years of class struggle in Europe, and with an insight into the general conditions of working-class emancipation, far superior to that hitherto gained by American working-men. This is a fortunate circumstance for the American proletarians who thus are enabled to appropriate, and to take advantage of, the intellectual and moral fruits of the forty years’ struggle of their European classmates, and thus to hasten on the time of their own victory. For, as I said before, there cannot be any doubt that the ultimate platform of the American working class must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by the whole militant working class of Europe, the same as that of the German-American Socialist Labor Party. In so far this party is called upon to play a very important part in the movement. But in order to do so they will have to doff every remnant of their foreign garb. They will have to become out and out American. They cannot expect the Americans to come to them; they, the minority and the immigrants, must go to the Americans, who are the vast majority and the natives. And to do that, they must above all things learn English.
The process of fusing together these various elements of the vast moving mass — elements not really discordant, but indeed mutually isolated by their various starting-points — will take some time and will not come off without a deal of friction, such as is visible at different points even now. The Knights of Labor, for instance, are here and there, in the Eastern cities, locally at war with the organized Trades Unions. But then this same friction exists within the Knights of Labor themselves, where there is anything but peace and harmony. These are not symptoms of decay, for capitalists to crow over. They are merely signs that the innumerable hosts of workers, for the first time set in motion in a common direction, have as yet found out neither the adequate expression for their common interests, nor the form of organization best adapted to the struggle, nor the discipline required to insure victory. They are as yet the first levies en masse of the great revolutionary war, raised and equipped locally and independently, all converging to form one common army, but as yet without regular organization and common plan of campaign. The converging columns cross each other here and there: confusion, angry disputes, even threats of conflict arise. But the community of ultimate purpose in the end overcomes all minor troubles; ere long the straggling and squabbling battalions will be formed in a long line of battle array, presenting to the enemy a well-ordered front, ominously silent under their glittering arms, supported by bold skirmishers in front and by unshakeable reserves in the rear.
To bring about this result, the unification of the various independent bodies into one national Labor Army, with no matter how inadequate a provisional platform, provided it be a truly working-class platform — that is the next great step to be accomplished in America. To effect this, and to make that platform worthy of the cause, the Socialist Labor Party can contribute a great deal, if they will only act in the same way as the European Socialists have acted at the time when they were but a small minority of the working class. That line of action was first laid down in the “Communist Manifesto” of 1847 in the following words:
“The Communists” — that was the name we took at the time and which even now we are far from repudiating — “the Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.
“They have no interests separate and apart from the interests of the whole working class.
“They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and model the proletarian movement.
“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries they point out, and bring to the front, the common interests of the whole proletariat, interests independent of all nationality; 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of all countries, that section which ever pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have, over the great mass of the proletarians, the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
“Thus they fight for the attainment of the immediate ends, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they represent and take care of the future of the movement.”
That is the line of action which the great founder of Modern Socialism, Karl Marx, and with him, I and the Socialists of all nations who worked along with us, have followed for more than forty years, with the result that it has led to victory everywhere, and that at this moment the mass of European Socialists, in Germany and in France, in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in Denmark and Sweden as well as in Spain and Portugal, are Fighting as one common army under one and the same flag.
Notes
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1. The Appendix to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England was, except for the paragraph quoted in the next footnote, used by Engels as the basis of his Preface to the English edition of 1892. (See present volume, pp. 17-33.)
2. In the Appendix Engels wrote:
“There were two circumstances which for a long time prevented the unavoidable consequences of the Capitalist system from showing themselves in the full glare of day in America. These were the easy access to the ownership of cheap land, and the influx of immigration. They allowed, for many years, the great mass of the native American population to “retire” in early manhood from wage-labour and to become’ farmers, dealers, or employers of labour, while the hard work for wages, the position of a proletarian for life, mostly fell to the lot of immigrants. But America has outgrown this early stage. The boundless backwoods have disappeared, and the still more boundless prairies are faster and faster passing from the hands of the Nation and the States into those of private owners. The great safety-valve against the formation of a permanent proletarian class has practically ceased to act. A class of life-long and even hereditary proletarians exists at this hour in America. A nation of sixty millions striving hard to become — and with every chance of success, too — the leading manufacturing nation of the world — such a nation cannot permanently import its own wage-working class; riot even if immigrants pour in at the rate of half a million a year. The tendency of the Capitalist system towards the ultimate splitting-up of society into two classes, a few millionaires on the one hand, and a great mass of mere wage-workers on the other, this tendency, though constantly crossed and counteracted by other social agencies, works nowhere with greater force than in America; and the result has been the production of a class of native American wage-workers, who form, indeed, the aristocracy of the wage-working class as compared with the immigrants, but who become conscious more and more every day of their solidarity with the latter and who feel all the more acutely their present condemnation to life-long wage-toil, because they still remember the bygone days, when it was comparatively easy to rise to a higher social level.”
3. The Noble Order of the Knights of Labour: A working-class organisation founded in Philadelphia in 1869. Existing illegally until 1878 it observed a semi-mysterial ritual. That year the organisation emerged from the underground, retaining some of its secret features. The Knights of Labour aimed at the liberation of the workers by means of co-operatives. They took in all skilled and even unskilled trades, without discrimination on account of sex, race, nationality or religion. The organisation reached the highest point of its activity during the eighties, when, under the pressure of the masses, the leaders of the Order were compelled to consent to an extensive strike movement. Its membership at that time was over 700,000, including 60,000 Negroes. However, on account of the opportunist tactics of the leaders, who were opposed to revolutionary class struggle, the Order forfeited its prestige among the masses. Its activity expired the next decade.
4. The Socialist Labour Party came into existence in 1876 as a result of the union of the American sections of the First International with other working-class socialist organisations in the United States. This party consisted mainly of immigrants, particularly Germans. Its activities were sectarian and its leaders were incapable of heading the mass movement of the American workers, as they refused to work in the trade unions.
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