husetts Board of Education in 1837, a new day dawned for
American public schools.

While these and other substantial improvements were under way, the
charlatan and the faddist were not without their opportunities or their
votaries. Spirit rappings beguiled or awed the villagers; thousands
of religious zealots in 1844 abandoned their vocations and, drawing on
white robes, awaited expectantly the second coming of Christ; every cult
from free love to celibate austerity found zealous followers; the "new
woman" declared her independence in short hair and bloomers;
people sought social salvation in new health codes, in vegetarian
boarding-houses, and in physical culture clubs; and some pursued the way
to perfection through sensual religious exercises.

In this seething milieu, this medley of practical humanitarianism and
social fantasies, the labor movement was revived. In the forties, Thomas
Mooney, an observant Irish traveler who had spent several years in the
United States wrote as follows *:

"The average value of a common uneducated labourer is eighty cents a
day. Of educated or mechanical labour, one hundred twenty-five and two
hundred cents a day; of female labour forty cents a day. Against meat,
flour, vegetables, and groceries at one-third less than they rate in
Great Britain and Ireland; against clothing, house rent and fuel at
about equal; against public taxes at about three-fourths less; and a
certainty of employment, and a facility of acquiring homes and lands,
and education for children, a hundred to one greater. The further you
penetrate into the country, Patrick, the higher in general will you
find the value of labour, and the cheaper the price of all kinds of
living.... The food of the American farmer, mechanic or labourer is the
best I believe enjoyed by any similar classes in the whole world. At
every meal there is meat or fish or both; indeed I think the women,
children, and sedentary classes eat too much meat for their own good
health."

* "Nine Years in America" (1850). p. 22.

This highly optimistic picture, written by a sanguine observer from
the land of greatest agrarian oppression, must be shaded by contrasting
details. The truck system of payment, prevalent in mining regions and
many factory towns, reduced the actual wage by almost one-half. In the
cities, unskilled immigrants had so overcrowded the common labor market
that competition had reduced them to a pitiable state. Hours of labor