onducted by a labor organization, namely the campaign by the New York
Trades' Union for the suppression of the competition from prison-made
goods. Under the pressure of the New York Union the State Legislature
created in 1834 a special commission on prison labor with its president,
Ely Moore, as one of the three commissioners. On this question of
prison labor the trade unionists clashed with the humanitarian prison
reformers, who regarded productive labor by prisoners as a necessary
means of their reform to an honest mode of living; and the humanitarian
won. After several months' work the commission submitted what was to the
Union an entirely unsatisfactory report. It approved the prison-labor
system as a whole and recommended only minor changes. Ely Moore signed
the report, but a public meeting of workingmen condemned it.

The rediscovered solidarity between the several trades now embodied in
the city trades' unions found its first expression on a large scale in a
ten-hour movement.

The first concerted demand for the ten-hour day was made by the
workingmen of Baltimore in August 1833, and extended over seventeen
trades. But the mechanics' aspiration for a ten-hour day--perhaps the
strongest spiritual inheritance from the preceding movement for equal
citizenship,[5] had to await a change in the general condition of
industry to render trade union effort effective before it could turn
into a well sustained movement. That change finally came with the
prosperous year of 1835.

The movement was precipitated in Boston. There, as we saw, the
carpenters had been defeated in an effort to establish a ten-hour day in
1825,[6] but made another attempt in the spring of 1835. This time,
however, they did not stand alone but were joined by the masons and
stone-cutters. As before, the principal attack was directed against the
"capitalists," that is, the owners of the buildings and the real estate
speculators. The employer or small contractor was viewed
sympathetically. "We would not be too severe on our employers," said the
strikers' circular, which was sent out broadcast over the country, "they
are slaves to the capitalists, as we are to them."

The strike was protracted. The details of it are not known, but we know
that it won sympathy throughout the country. A committee visited in July
the different cities on the Atlantic coast to solicit aid for the
strikers. In Philadelphia, when the committee arrived in company with
delegate