established in every large manufacturing city a central labor body
composed of delegates from the unions of the separate trades. In the
local union the printers or the cordwainers, for example, considered
only their special trade problems. In the central labor union, printers,
cordwainers, iron molders, and other craftsmen considered common
problems and learned to cooeperate with one another in enforcing the
demands of each craft. A third step was the federation of the unions of
the same craftsmen in different cities. The printers of New York,
Philadelphia, Boston, and other towns, for instance, drew together and
formed a national trade union of printers built upon the local unions of
that craft. By the eve of the Civil War there were four or five powerful
national unions of this character. The expansion of the railway made
travel and correspondence easier and national conventions possible even
for workmen of small means. About 1834 an attempt was made to federate
the unions of all the different crafts into a national organization; but
the effort was premature.

_The National Labor Union._--The plan which failed in 1834 was tried
again in the sixties. During the war, industries and railways had
flourished as never before; prices had risen rapidly; the demand for
labor had increased; wages had mounted slowly, but steadily. Hundreds of
new local unions had been founded and eight or ten national trade unions
had sprung into being. The time was ripe, it seemed, for a national
consolidation of all labor's forces; and in 1866, the year after the
surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, the "National Labor Union" was
formed at Baltimore under the leadership of an experienced organizer,
W.H. Sylvis of the iron molders. The purpose of the National Labor Union
was not merely to secure labor's standard demands touching hours, wages,
and conditions of work or to maintain the gains already won. It leaned
toward political action and radical opinions. Above all, it sought to
eliminate the conflict between capital and labor by making workingmen
the owners of shops through the formation of cooeperative industries. For
six years the National Labor Union continued to hold conferences and
carry on its propaganda; but most of the cooeperative enterprises failed,
political dissensions arose, and by 1872 the experiment had come to an
end.

_The Knights of Labor._--While the National Labor Union was
experimenting, there grew up in the industr