Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,025

This is the grave of William Sylvis.

Born in 1828 in Armagh, Pennsylvania, Sylvis was a man of the 19th century working class. His father repaired canal boats and things like that. Like so many Americans, they found themselves betrayed by the promises of the nation in the Panic of 1837, the first really serious financial collapse of American capitalism. The family was poor at the best of times and during the Panic, William was sent to a local farmer to labor for his meals. But that family also taught the boy to read and write, which his parents hadn’t done. The farmer was pretty prosperous and was in the Pennsylvania legislature for a time and had a good sized library at home. Sylvis devoured it in his free time. Sylvis worked on the farm for several years before deciding to go into industry.

In 1846, at the age of 18, Sylvis became an iron molder, which was someone who poured hot slag into wooden patterns to shape the final product. This was hard, tough, dangerous work. He soon became active in Philadelphia’s union movement and was elected secretary of his local in 1857. That was also a tough economic year in America. His union went on strike and elected him secretary of what became Iron Moulders Union No. 1. In 1859, Sylvis called for a convention of all the iron moulders locals around the nation. He was elected president of what became the National Union of Iron Molders.

Sylvis was a Democrat like many working class Americans. He supported Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 election, but was also a Unionist and was not the type of Democrat to support treason in defense of slavery. He organized a regiment to fight for the Union, though his wife was so horrified by losing her husband in war that he did not join it himself. He spent the Civil War building the union where he instituted a number of innovations, including creating the first ever national strike fund, through mandatory dues payments by members. He also organized a militia company in Pennsylvania that he was in himself, much less risky.

Immediately after the war, Sylvis organized the National Labor Union, the first serious attempt to bring workers from all industries together to fight for each other and specifically for the 8-hour day. Sylvis was also a major supporter of unions of female workers, particularly Kate Mullaney’s Collar Laundry Union. Sylvis would later invite Mullaney into a leadership role within the NLU, making her the nation’s first female union executive.

The NLU did invite all workers, including farmers into the organization. But as would be the case with the AFL, its core membership was the skilled building trades. Also like the rest of the labor movement of the time, the NLU held white supremacy as a central guiding point. It was segregated and while there was a black chapter, it was ineffective and small. Sylvis actually opposed this segregation; although he supported Stephen Douglas in the 1860 election, he believed that all workers had the same issues and would have preferred one integrated organization. It took years of fighting recalcitrant unionists to even allowed the Colored National Labor Union to exist alongside the NLU. The federation also called for the exclusion of Chinese workers from the United States, which would eventually be the first legislative victory for the American labor movement in history.

The major legislative aim for the NLU was the passage of the 8-hour day. As capitalism developed, the 8-hour day would become the ultimate goal for much of the American labor movement. It was the call to arms for the Knights of Labor in the 1880s, so much so that the Knights basically lost control of its exploding membership by 1886. Union after union would call for this over the next decades and it was not achieved nationally until the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, and even then only partially.

Amazingly the NLU actually achieved an early victory on the 8-hour day when in 1868, the government created the 8-hour day for federal employees. But this was a very limited win as most of the government agencies then reduced wages to go along with it, which was very much not what the NLU wanted. When President Grant ordered departments to stop reducing wages, most just ignored him and he did not press the issue. Ultimately, little concrete benefit came of the 8-hour day announcement.

Frustrations with the federal employee 8-hour day and loopholes in laws in New York and California that made similar statues unworkable combined with the growing concern in the post-Civil War period about monetary policy to turn the NLU in a starkly political direction. It focused its energy on electoral politics and monetary reform, specifically the issuance of greenbacks, as well as providing public land for settlers as opposed to the huge land grants given to railroads as an incentive to build transcontinental lines. This did not exactly excite workers. Many locals believed in “pure and simple unionism” that kept workers out of politics. Thus the NLU became increasingly divided as it prioritized politics over workers’ concerns.

While Sylvis claimed the NLU had 600,000 members, he was exaggerating significantly. At its peak, it might have had 300,000. That number declined as the 1860s became the 1870s. Sylvis dying in 1869 at the age of 41 helped speed the decline as the federation lost its guiding light. The NLU dissolved in 1874 after its membership plummeted in the Panic of 1873.

William Sylvis is buried in Fernwood Cemetery, Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

If you would like this series to visit other American labor leaders, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Charles Pillard is in Amherst, New York and Ben Fletcher is in Brooklyn. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.