sons of self-restraint. Moreover, in the sudden expansion and
great enterprises of these days, labor even more than capital lost in
stability. One great steadying influence, the old personal relation
between master and servant, which prevailed during the days of
handicraft and even of the small factory, had disappeared almost
completely. Now labor was put up on the market--a heartless term
descriptive of a condition from which human beings might be expected to
react violently--and they did, for human nature refused to be an inert,
marketable thing.

The labor market must expand with the trader's market. In 1860 there
were about one and a third million wage-earners in the United States;
in 1870 well over two million; in 1880 nearly two and three-quarters
million; and in 1890 over four and a quarter million. The city sucked
them in from the country; but by far the larger augmentation came
from Europe; and the immigrant, normally optimistic, often untaught,
sometimes sullen and filled with a destructive resentment, and always
accustomed to low standards of living, added to the armies of labor his
vast and complex bulk.

There were two paramount issues--wages and the hours of labor--to
which all other issues were and always have been secondary. Wages tend
constantly to become inadequate when the standard of living is steadily
rising, and they consequently require periodical readjustment. Hours
of labor, of course, are not subject in the same degree to external
conditions. But the tendency has always been toward a shorter day. In a
previous chapter, the inception of the ten-hour movement was outlined.
Presently there began the eight-hour movement. As early as 1842
the carpenters and caulkers of the Charleston Navy Yard achieved an
eight-hour day; but 1863 may more properly be taken as the beginning of
the movement. In this year societies were organized in Boston and its
vicinity for the precise purpose of winning the eight-hour day, and
soon afterwards a national Eight-Hour League was established with local
leagues extending from New England to San Francisco and New Orleans.

This movement received an intelligible philosophy, and so a new
vitality, from Ira Steward, a member of the Boston Machinists' and
Blacksmiths' Union. Writing as a workingman for workingmen, Steward
found in the standard of living the true reason for a shorter workday.
With beautiful simplicity he pointed out to the laboring man that the
shorter peri