al in England by two years.*

* "Labor Organization and Labor Politics," 1827-37; in the "Quarterly
Journal of Economics," February, 1907.

The union had its inception in the first general building strike called
in America. In the summer of 1827 the carpenters struck for a ten-hour
day. They were soon joined by the bricklayers, painters, and glaziers,
and members of other trades. But the strike failed of its immediate
object. A second effort to combine the various trades into one
organization was made in 1833, when the Trades' Union of the City
and County of Philadelphia, was formed. Three years later this union
embraced some fifty societies with over ten thousand members. In June,
1835, this organization undertook what was probably the first successful
general strike in America. It began among the cordwainers, spread to
the workers in the building trades, and was presently joined in by
cigarmakers, carters, saddlers and harness makers, smiths, plumbers,
bakers, printers, and even by the unskilled workers on the docks. The
strikers' demand for a ten-hour day received a great deal of support
from the influential men in the community. After a mass meeting of
citizens had adopted resolutions endorsing the demands of the union, the
city council agreed to a ten-hour day for all municipal employees.

In 1833 the carpenters of New York City struck for an increase in wages.
They were receiving a dollar thirty-seven and a half cents a day;
they asked for a dollar and a half. They obtained the support of other
workers, notably the tailors, printers, brushmakers, tobacconists,
and masons, and succeeded in winning their strike in one month. The
printers, who have always been alert and active in New York City, elated
by the success of this coordinate effort, sent out a circular calling
for a general convention of all the trades societies of the city. After
a preliminary meeting in July, a mass meeting was held in December,
at which there were present about four thousand persons representing
twenty-one societies. The outcome of the meeting was the organization of
the General Trades' Union of New York City.

It happened in the following year that Ely Moore of the Typographical
Association and the first president of the new union, a powerful orator
and a sagacious organizer, was elected to Congress on the Jackson
ticket. He was backed by Tammany Hall, always on the alert for winners,
and was supported by the mechanics, artisans, a