st stand upon." In this ambitious spirit "they commenced
business with a box of soap and half a chest of tea." In 1852 they
had 167 branches, a capital of $241,7191.66, and a business of nearly
$91,000,000 a year.

In the meantime similar cooperative movements began elsewhere. The
tailors of Boston struck for higher wages in 1850 and, after fourteen
weeks of futile struggle, decided that their salvation lay in
cooperation rather than in trade unionism, which at best afforded only
temporary relief. About seventy of them raised $700 as a cooperative
nest egg and netted a profit of $510.60 the first year. In the same
year the Philadelphia printers, disappointed at their failure to force a
higher wage, organized a cooperative printing press.

The movement spread to New York, where a strike of the tailors was in
progress. The strikers were addressed at a great mass meeting by Albert
Brisbane, an ardent disciple of Fourier, the French social economist,
and were told that they must do away with servitude to capital. "What we
want to know," said Brisbane, "is how to change, peacefully, the system
of today. The first great principle is combination." Another meeting
was addressed by a German, a follower of Karl Marx, who uttered in his
native tongue these words that sound like a modern I.W.W. prophet: "Many
of us have fought for liberty in the fatherland. We came here because we
were opposed, and what have we gained? Nothing but misery, hunger, and
treading down. But we are in a free country and it is our fault if we
do not get our rights.... Let those who strike eat; the rest starve.
Butchers and bakers must withhold supplies. Yes, they must all strike,
and then the aristocrat will starve. We must have a revolution. We
cannot submit any longer." The cry of "Revolution! Revolution!" was
taken up by the throng.

In the midst of this agitation a New York branch of the New England
Protective Union was organized as an attempt at peaceful revolution by
cooperation. The New York Protective Union went a step farther than the
New England Union. Its members established their own shops and so became
their own employers. And in many other cities striking workmen and eager
reformers joined hands in modest endeavors to change the face of things.
The revolutionary movements of Europe at this period were having a
seismic effect upon American labor. But all these attempts of the
workingmen to tourney a rough world with a needle were foredoomed