The lean years following the panic of 1837 saw little activity in the labor world. The ris ing prices following the partial business revival of 1843 witnessed some sporadic union activity. Factory operatives now began to take part in the movement, but their real significance be longs to a later period.
The period of the forties is one of the most loquacious in all our history. It was a "hot air" period and the heat of discussion germi nated a great many issues, some of which have taken root. The old democracy had stood for a negative, laiskes•faire' policy. The ca11 'now was for a constructive democracy, one that Would take hold and guide and help. There were two avenues of approach, that of higher idealism along which came the humanitarians and transcendentalists; the lower, on which the workers traveled. The former called for justice; the latter demanded rights. Gradu ally, especially after the panic of 1837, the transcendentalists got down to earth and sought to experience the feelings of labor. It assumed concrete form in the experiment at Brook Farm (q.v.) and the various efforts to establish Fourierism (q.v.) and Owenism. The tran scendentalists soon vanished into thin air, but not before they had served a useful pur pose. They opened the eyes of society as they had not been opened before to the grievances of labor, and touched a chord of sympathy; in the laboring class they at least touched the chord of aspiration and caused them to think a little more of duties if no less of rights. One of the most powerful agents in bringing about these results and a partial fusion of the two ideals was Horace Greeley.
The Homestead Act.— The most signifi cant concrete thing in the labor movement of this period was the agitation which led to the passage of the Homestead Act. Among the natural rights ascribed to man in the Declara tion of Independence was the right' to °life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.* In the thirties men had begun to look upon the right to pursue happiness as illusory, unless they also had the right to the road of pursuit. Men had as much right to land as to air. George Henry Evans now gathered up these ideas and evolved out of them a constructive policy. Wages, he said, were low and strikes were fu tile because the Western lands were bottled up and the vacant lands of the East were in the hands of speculators. If these lands were opened up, enough settlers would be drawn off to cause a rise in wages. In 1844, mainly through his activity, the National Reformers' Association was organized for the purpose of restoring man to his "natural right to land," and proceeded to demand of candidates a pledge to vote for a homestead law. At first Greeley
opposed, holding that the ills of labor were social, not political, and that they were to be remedied by mutual agreement in a congress made up of representatives of employers and employees. The first "Industrial Congress' met at New York in October 1845. It stood for land reform and a 10-hour law. It con tinued to meet at intervals until 1856, hut Gree ley soon saw the futility of its efforts and came out for legislative action (1845), endors ing in particular the homestead idea. In 1848 he introduced such a bill in Congress. In 1852 Andrew Johnson introduced another. Ten years later it became a law.
Along with this went the movement to ex empt homesteads from execution for debt, the first response to which came from Wisconsin in 1847, though similar laws had been enacted in several Southern States prior to this. En tailment or absolute inalienability was de manded by some, but voluntary alienation un der mortgage was allowed everywhere.
Weary of waiting on philosophy and legisla lation the workers again resorted to strikes fol lowing the period of 1843, 'generally with suc cess. However, the Phalanx denounced the ((degrading bitterness and insufficency of this attempt at a of the rights of la boring men, holding that it did not the terms of dependence on masters and only converted them from 12 and 14 hours to 10 hour slaves.'" The only remedy was ((to asso ciate and combine"' and secure ownership of 'the land on which they live and the tools and machinery with which they The influence of the Fourierists appears in the action of a convention representing several unions. It endorsed the homestead proposi tion, the 10-hour movement and the Working men's Protection Union which was working out distributive co-operation and rejected a pro posal looking to political action. All efforts to secure a 10-hour law failed in Massachu setts, but they were successful in New Hamp shire (1847), Pennsylvania (1848), New Jer sey (1857). Ohio (1852) and Rhode Island (1853). However, the laws were not en forced. The movement for co-operation (q.v.) had some tangible results and by 1838, 769 co operative stores had been started. About this time the movement began to decline and by the opening of the Civil War the stores had all dis appeared or passed into private ownership. The failure was due to two things, bad manage ment and greed for gain. The Boston Tailors' Association Union (1849) was organized for productive co-operation, but lasted only a few years.