This Day in Labor History: May 25, 1806

On May 25, 1806, the Philadelphia Mayor’s Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Pullis. This is the first known court case in American history about a strike. Of course, being controlled by the elites, the court ruled against the workers, as the courts almost always have done to the present.

In 1794, shoemakers in Philadelphia organized an early proto-union called the Federal Society of Journeyman Cordwainers. The goal here was to ensure that they got paid well and on time, just like you might expect in an organizing struggle. They had some success in the first decade of their existence. Now, they and their employers should have had some common interest. They were both part of what was really still a craftsman system, with apprenticeships being a big part of this. Both employers and workers had an interest in ensuring that prices and thus profits were not undercut. They did not work together though because a lot of the conflicts were about labor. In short, the employers would love to hire scab labor and the cordwainers wanted to be sure that didn’t happen. That defined a lot of these early struggles. Their organizing led to a wage increase in 1798. A strike in 1799 failed and they lost those wages. Journeymen came to agree to reduced piece rates for “export orders,” which really meant orders for southern plantations. They idea was that they would make up for it in volume.

But in 1805, workers decided they needed to go on strike. The export orders were now just part of the job, nothing special, and the workers realized the employers had taken advantage of them. They went to employers and demanded higher rates all around, for both export orders and regular work. The employers told them where to go. A strike was called.

The employer class in Philadelphia were not having any of this strike business. In their opinion, striking was a criminal conspiracy to set wages. Were strikes legal? That was a question that was quite open in the early years of the republic. In fact, that wouldn’t be definitively decided in the affirmative until the late 1830s and early 1840s. What were the rights of people banding together in the United States to ensure their collective power in the economy? Was the nation made up of freeholders who needed to work individually? Were actions such as strikes collusions that could overthrow the burgeoning system of capitalism?

Well, the employers of Philadelphia definitely thought these striking cordwainers were a real threat to the structure of the economy. So they had the strike leaders arrested for conspiracy. Of course, the shoemakers did not accept any of this.

Now, we don’t know much about this case. That’s because in 1805, courts like this did not keep any proceedings. However, there was a guy named Thomas Lloyd. He was one of the inventors of shorthand. He had learned some of this in France and then emigrated to the U.S. He brought his techniques with him. He sat in on the case for reasons that are not clear to me, took his notes, and then published them. That’s the only reason why we know anything about all about this.

This case took on the politics of the time. The employers and prosecutors were all Federalists. For them, even admitting that unions could exist threatened the entire economy of the city. They painted a picture of anarchy–strikers could lead to civil war! The prosecutors used English common law to say that workers were not allowed to collude to set the price of labor.

The defense was led by Jeffersonians. One of the lead attorneys for the workers was Caesar Rodney, nephew of the man by the same name who was the most important of the Founders from Delaware. Rodney was later Attorney General in the Jefferson and Madison administrations. Their defense was that English common law no longer applied since this was not an English colony but an independent nation. They noted that shoemakers in New York and Baltimore made much more than did their colleagues in Philadelphia and that seeking the same wages as those cities was hardly outlandish or a threat to civil order, but in fact an entirely reasonable demand. Moreover, they claimed that workers standing up to employers was like the Americans standing up to the British in the American Revolution.

The court was not at all sympathetic to the workers. The judge was a man named Moises Levy and he was completely supportive of capital and made sure his jury instructions would tilt the case. He specifically told the jury that a combination of workers was illegal under common law, so he was hardly impartial here. He also claimed that the sheer existence of unions got in the way of laissez-faire capitalism and that interventions in the market to ensure worker rights were violations of this glorious law. It took three days to have the trial and convict the leaders of conspiracy. Eight leaders were found guilty and fined $8.

The union was crushed. A long history of rich people on courts crushing the rights of American workers began. It has not ended. In fact, it wasn’t until Massachusetts v. Hunt in 1842 that it became clear that unions themselves were legal entities. I’m sure Neil Gorsuch would be interested in revisiting that one.

The American political system has changed in some ways since 1806. But what ties the Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans together over time is their love of serving capital and crushing unions. One of the many reasons I hate the liberal bullshit that surrounded the play Hamilton is the complete and utter lack of even considering class when it came to creating a contemporary liberal hero out of that very terrible person whose policies for this nation included using maximum violence to crush the Whiskey Rebellion. Had Hamilton lived, there is no question he would have supported making all unions illegal.

This is the 604th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.