e. In
this situation very many prominent trade union leaders declared publicly
for Bryan. President Gompers, however, issued a warning to all
affiliated unions to keep out of partisan politics. Notwithstanding this
Secretary McGraith, at the next convention of the Federation, charged
President Gompers with acting in collusion with the Democratic
headquarters throughout the campaign in aid of Bryan's candidacy. After
a lengthy secret session the convention approved the conduct of Gompers.
Free silver continued to be endorsed annually down to the convention of
1898, when the return of industrial prosperity and rising prices put an
end to it as a demand advocated by labor.

The depressed nineties demonstrated conclusively that a new era had
arrived. No longer was the labor movement a mere plaything of the
alternating waves of prosperity and depression. Formerly, as we saw, it
had centered on economic or trade-union action during prosperity only to
change abruptly to "panaceas" and politics with the descent of
depression. Now the movement, notwithstanding possible changes in
membership, and persistent political leanings in some portions of it, as
a whole for the first time became stable in purpose and action. Trade
unionism has won over politics.

This victory was synchronous with the first successful working out of a
national trade agreement and the institutionalization of trade unionism
in a leading industry, namely stove molding. While one of the earliest
stable trade agreements in a conspicuous trade covering a local field
was a bricklayers' agreement in Chicago in 1887, the era of trade
agreements really dates from the national system established in the
stove foundry industry in 1891. It is true also that the iron and steel
workers had worked under a national trade agreement since 1866. However,
that trade was too exceptionally strong to be typical.

The stove industry had early reached a high degree of development and
organization. There had existed since 1872 the National Association of
Stove Manufacturers, an organization dealing with prices and embracing
in its membership the largest stove manufacturers of the country. The
stove foundrymen, therefore, unlike the manufacturers in practically all
other industries at that time, controlled in a large measure their own
market. Furthermore, the product had been completely standardized and
reduced to a piecework basis, and machinery had not taken the place of
the molde