at subsequent sessions but never became a law. In 1885 each branch of Congress passed a bill to regulate interstate commerce, but the two houses failed to agree on a common bill.

The debates on these various bills disclosed some of the inconsistencies of railway rating; for instance, goods could be shipped from Pittsburg to Cincinnati by the Ohio River and thence to Philadelphia by rail cheaper than they could be sent direct from Pittsburg to Philadelphia by rail, for the Pennsylvania had a monopoly between these cities, while Cincinnati was favored with several competing lines to Philadelphia. A car-load of freight could be shipped from Omaha to San Francisco, it was said, and returned to stations in Nevada cheaper than if shipped direct to Nevada points.1

The people manifested their interest in the correction of these abuses by presenting hundreds of petitions to Congress in 1881 and 1882, asking federal regulation of railway rates. It will be remembered that the Supreme Court, in the Granger cases, established the right of a state to regulate its local traffic and even to operate indirectly upon outside commerce until Congress legislated on traffic between the states. State legislatures took comparatively no advantage of this suggestion, and the privilege was withdrawn in the Wabash case, in 1886, when the Supreme Court reviewed its former decision. It now held that regulation of goods 1 Cong. Record, 46 Cong., 3 Sess., 365.

transferred under one contract from the interior of the state of Illinois to New York was national in its character and belonged exclusively to Congress. "Notwithstanding what was said in Munn vs. Illinois and other cases, this court holds that a statute of a state intended to regulate or to tax or to impose any other restrictions on the transmission of persons, property, or telegraphic messages from one state to another is not within that class of legislation which states may enact in the absence of legislation by Congress." 1

This limitation of the power of the state hastened action on the report of the Cullom committee, which had investigated railway conditions; and, in 1885, reported to the Senate in favor of establishing a federal railway commission. The final result was the interstate commerce act of 1887, as described in a later volume.3

2

As the country recovered from the financial difficulties of 1873, the railroad situation gradually improved; and by 1881 only five important lines remained in the hands of receivers. The short agricultural crop of 1883 might have brought another period of disaster, but it was averted because powerful combinations of capital had absorbed the smaller lines, and from the earnings on some portions of the system were able to carry the less remunera

1 Wabash, St. L. & P. Ry. Co. vs. Illinois, 118 U. S., 557. 2 Senate Report, 49 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 46.

Dewey, National Problems (Am. Nation, XXIV.), chap. vị.

tive. Organization, solidarity, and economy told in the management of the railroads, as better construction, longer trains, and increased earnings told in their operation. In 1882 the railroads of the United States paid total dividends amounting to one hundred million dollars,' the new states in the Northwest making the best showing, where population was rapidly extending. To absorb the small lines, the large companies secured their stock, often listed at values far above their cost, and thus caused the securities of twenty of the largest roads to aggregate nearly half a billion dollars. The railways were the first forms of industrialism to combine; and their employés soon imitated their example.

U. S. Statistical Abstract, 1900, p. 385.

CHAPTER V

INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS

(1875-1885)

HE spasmodic labor organizations and accom

THE

1

panying labor troubles, which had been known since the Revolution, assumed importance with the dawn of the industrial age. The agitation for a limited number of hours for a working-day won a victory in 1840 when President Van Buren by executive order established the "ten-hour system" for the labor of federal employés. Following the Civil War, which placed a new value on free labor by ending slave labor, an agitation was begun for an eight-hour laboring-day, for better conditions for the working-man, for fixed hours and cash payment of wages, for sanctity of contract, and for liability of employers. Congress in 1868 constituted eight hours a day's work for all laborers, workmen, and mechanics employed by the government, and President Grant by proclamation ordered no reduction of pay because of the shortened time of labor.

1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, III., 602.
U. S. Statutes at Large, XV.

Richardson, Messages and Papers, VII., 15, 175.

2

3

No demand was made for uniform wages by legislation, but united demands for changes of conditions in individual crafts and workshops were growing more frequent. Injunctions and “conspiracies were products of a later period.1 Influenced by requests for these and similar laws, as well as by accompanying complaints and grievances, Massachusetts in 1864 created a labor bureau, an example followed before 1890 by twenty-two other states. The chief officer of the state bureaus was known as a commissioner, a chief, or a secretary, and in many cases he was a member of some labor organization.

The oldest labor union now in existence in the United States is said to be that of the printers, organized in New York City in 1853. It followed very largely the lines of the trades-unions of England, as these in turn followed the principles of the guild of the Middle Ages. The locomotive engineers organized a union in 1863, the cigar-makers in 1864, the bricklayers in 1865, the railway conductors in 1868, the railway firemen in 1869, and the iron and steel workers in 1876.2 By this time hostility was apparent between organized capital and organized labor." "Capital has assumed to itself the right to own and control labor for its own greedy and selfish end," said the organized bricklayers in

' Wright, Industrial Evolution of U. S., chap. xix.; Dewey, National Problems (Am. Nation, XXIV.), chap. iii.

2 McNeill, Labor Movement, 324-329.

• Commons, Trade-Unionism and Labor Problems, chap. xxi.