now helped them
considerably to maintain their organization. The shoe-makers' societies
on the other hand had remained to the end purely trade-regulating
organizations and went to the wall.

Depression reached its ebb in 1820. Thereafter conditions improved,
giving rise to aggressive organizations of wage earners in several
industries. We find strikes and permanent organizations among hatters,
tailors, weavers, nailers, and cabinet makers. And for the first time we
meet with organizations of factory workers--female workers.

Beginning with 1824 and running through 1825, the year which saw the
culmination of a period of high prices, a number of strikes occurred in
the important industrial centers. The majority were called to enforce
higher wages. In Philadelphia, 2900 weavers out of about 4500 in the
city were on strike. But the strike that attracted the most public
attention was that of the Boston house carpenters for the ten-hour day
in 1825.

The Boston journeymen carpenters chose the most strategic time for their
strike. They called it in the spring of the year when there was a great
demand for carpenters owing to a recent fire. Close to six hundred
journeymen were involved in this struggle. The journeymen's demand for
the ten-hour day drew a characteristic reply from the "gentlemen engaged
in building," the customers of the master builders. They condemned the
journeymen on the moral ground that an agitation for a shorter day would
open "a wide door for idleness and vice"; hinted broadly at the foreign
origin of the agitation; declared that all combinations intending to
regulate the value of labor by abridging the working day were in a high
degree unjust and injurious to the other classes in the community;
announced their resolution to support the masters at the sacrifice of
suspending building altogether; and bound themselves not to employ any
journeyman or master who might enforce the ten-hour day. The strike
failed.

The renewed trade-union activities brought forth a fresh crop of trials
for conspiracy.[3] One case involved Philadelphia master shoemakers who
combined to reduce wages, two were against journeymen tailors in
Philadelphia and Buffalo and the fourth was a hatters' case in New
York. The masters were acquitted and the hatters were found guilty of
combining to deprive a non-union man of his livelihood. In the
Philadelphia tailors' case, the journeymen were convicted on the charge
of intimidation. Of