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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002
The panic of 1837 temporarily halted the remarkable progress of the
previous decade. Along with most other trades unions, the Newark group
expired during the long depression, and in 1840 labor sacrificed its tiny
political independence to the Whig onslaught against the "panic-making"
Democrats. The following quarter of a century was marked by the growth
or reform movements rather than militant trade unionism. Labor neglected
organization for Fourierism, land reform and the struggle for the 10-hour
day. Perth Amboy and Trenton were centers of the reform movements;
workingmen in the latter city were mainly responsible for the passage in
1851 of the 10-hour working day law which also prohibited labor of children under 10 years of age.
Out of this law, which characteristically carried no provisions for its
enforcement, developed the Paterson textile strike of 1851. This struggle
lacked the united front of the 1835 strike, and, although there was some
attempt to form a union to sustain the law, most of the strikers lost their
demands or agreed to work the 10-hour day at a reduction of wages.
Three years later a spectacular dispute arose between the directors and
the engineers of the Erie Railroad. The engineers objected to a company
rule which made them solely responsible for the safety of the trains. They
tied up the railroad's traffic, and were charged with violence against strike-breakers. The difficulties were compromised, but in 1856 a new strike occurred when the company discharged 10 members of a negotiating
committee which was seeking to revise the objectionable rules. The Erie
employed a strong police force to guard the non-strikers; contemporary journals warned readers against traveling on the road during the strike. Although the struggle was won by the company, the engineers were prepared for participation in the national railroad organization that grew up
after 1852.
Despite an epidemic of strikes in the late fifties, organization activities
fell off during the Civil War. When they were resumed after 1865 it was
on a broader, more nearly national basis. New Jersey contributed to this
widening through the work of Uriah Smith Stevens, a native of Cape May,
who founded the Knights of Labor in Philadelphia in 1869. This organization (whose sessions were secret until after 1878) sought to form a
national alliance of skilled and unskilled workers, women as well as men,
but its progress was impeded for almost a decade by the results of the
panic of 1873. One of the earliest New Jersey groups to join was that of
the ship carpenters and caulkers of Camden, organized in 1873 as Local
31. Other State locals were formed by Trenton printers, Jersey City mechanics, and Newark brewery and leather workers.
During this period the State was the scene of two important events that
indicated labor's rising strength. In 1877 the Socialist Labor Party, the
oldest labor party in the country, was founded at Newark at the second
convention of the so-called Working Men's Party of the United States.
This early organization had grown from a union of various socialist groups
(1874-76). In 1882 Peter McGuire of Camden and Matthew Maguire of
Jersey City started to campaign for the establishment of an official Labor
Day. Despite these significant trends, it was said in 1882 that the window
glass workers of New Jersey constituted the only large body of workers
in the State that had steadily maintained a trade organization throughout
the previous 15 years.
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