house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and
without variety. His wage was two shillings a day, and prison--usually
an indescribably filthy hole awaited him the moment he ran into debt.
The artisan fared somewhat better. He had spent, as a rule, seven years
learning his trade, and his skill and energy demanded and generally
received a reasonable return. The account books that have come down to
us from colonial days show that his handiwork earned him a fair living.
This, however, was before machinery had made inroads upon the product
of cabinetmaker, tailor, shoemaker, locksmith, and silversmith, and when
the main street of every village was picturesque with the signs of the
crafts that maintained the decent independence of the community.

Such labor organizations as existed before the Revolution were limited
to the skilled trades. In 1648 the coopers and the shoemakers of Boston
were granted permission to organize guilds, which embraced both master
and journeyman, and there were a few similar organizations in New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. But these were not unions like those of
today. "There are," says Richard T. Ely, "no traces of anything like a
modern trades' union in the colonial period of American history, and
it is evident on reflection that there was little need, if any, of
organization on the part of labor, at that time." *

* "The Labor Movement in America," by Richard T. Ely (1905),
p. 86.

A new epoch for labor came in with the Revolution. Within a decade
wages rose fifty per cent, and John Jay in 1784 writes of the "wages
of mechanics and laborers" as "very extravagant." Though the industries
were small and depended on a local market within a circumscribed area of
communication, they grew rapidly. The period following the Revolution
is marked by considerable industrial restiveness and by the formation
of many labor organizations, which were, however, benevolent or friendly
societies rather than unions and were often incorporated by an act of
the legislature. In New York, between 1800 and 1810, twenty-four
such societies were incorporated. Only in the larger cities were they
composed of artisans of one trade, such as the New York Masons Society
(1807) or the New York Society of Journeymen Shipwrights (1807).
Elsewhere they included artisans of many trades, such as the Albany
Mechanical Society (1801). In Philadelphia the cordwainers, printers,
and hatters had societie