Daniel Raymond
Daniel Raymond was the first important political economist to appear in the United States. He authored Thoughts on Political Economy (1820) and The Elements of Political Economy(1823).
He theorized that "labor creates wealth," which may have been an improvement based on the thinking of Adam Smith of Europe. Daniel Raymond thought that the economy of England was actually the economy of the higher-ranking members of that society, and not the economy of the entire nation. He held that wealth is not an aggregation of exchange values, as Adam Smith had conceived it. Daniel Raymond held that wealth is the capacity or opportunity to acquire the necessaries and conveniences of life by labor.
His writings affected the political developments that shaped the United States. States Rights Democrats appeared in the United States Congress for the first time when James Hamilton Jr. of South Carolina was elected in 1822. Congressman Hamilton was a staunch Pro-Slavery advocate of nullification, as was Robert Y. Hayne, the first Pro-Slavery Democrat to be elected to the United States Senate, in 1823.
Americans became more dependent on "labor" for wealth-building, and relied less on God for the providing of wealth. "Labor" became an honorable thing. Pro-Slavery Democrats grew into the leading political party in the United States. The colonization of free Negroes to Liberia by the American Colonization Society or the National Colonization Society of America fell out of favor. Laborers were needed in the United states because "labor" created wealth.
In his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln advised the slaves whom he was manumitting to "labor" for employers so that they could earn money and take care of themselves.
Emigrants
The first law on immigration was designed to attract laborers from Europe. In Congress, a special Committee on Immigration was formed on 16 December 1863. A bill to encourage immigration (H. R. 411) was read a third time on April 16th, 1864, and passed. "An Act to encourage Immigration" (S. 125) was approved on July 4, 1864. It created the United States Emigrant Office in New York City with a small staff of employees. In 1866, a proposed amendment to the law called for an expansion to other cities, but it was unsuccessful. Some citizens remonstrated against the giving of pecuniary aid to immigrants. The law of 1864 expired on 30 March 1868.
Promptly thereafter, two new bills were introduced in Congress on June 1st, 1868. They called for the establishment of unpaid emigrant agencies in Europe where emigrants could arrange for transportation to North America while away from the close scrutiny that existed in the United States. In the House of Representatives, emigrants were called a "great source of national wealth" (in H.R. 1139); the second bill (H.R. 1145), called for the establishment of an unpaid emigrant agency at Liverpool.
Motions were made in congress in 1870 (H.R. 964 and H.R. 1663) to create laws that assisted immigrants in moving westwards into unoccupied territories where workers were needed to improve the lands.
Labor developments
Turmoil in Germany in 1848 caused many educated Germans to emigrate to the United States. Some of those immigrants promoted socialism in the United States, but socialism was rebuffed by many citizens of the United States because it attacked religion and the marriage of men and women.
The International Workingmen's Association adopted the 8-hour work day in its first Congress at Geneva in 1866. The realization that productivity did not suffer with the installation of the 8-hour work day was only slowly grasped by employers. Observations of munitions workers made during the world-wide war of 1914-1918 convinced many leaders in England that the 8-hour work day did not cause a drop in productivity.
In general, after 1895, in various nations, a tendency to limit the 8-hour work day and minimum wage laws to women and children existed. The Australian colony of Victoria established boards with the authority to fix minimum wage laws in 1896, which led to a great deal of interest in minimum wage laws in the United States and England after 1905. Many new laws soon appeared in the various jurisdictions of those two nations.
A significant event in regard to the 8-hour work day took place in 1923 when the steel industry of the United States abandoned the two-shift system based on two 12-hour shifts in favor of the three-shift system based on three 8-hour shifts.
Trade unions
An emphasis on insurance, on exclusion, and conservative methods were characteristics of the trade unions that had developed in England in the 18th century. The first trade union of record to appear in the United States was the New York Society of Journeymen Shipwrights, which was incorporated in 1803. In 1864, the International Workingmen's Association began the trade-union movement on continental Europe.
Non-trade organizations
In England, trade unions proved to be unsuitable for the large work forces that the industrial revolution had required. Broadly-based organizations were created following the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824.
In the United States, in 1829, a workingman's ticket was placed in nomination in New York and one delegate to the State Assembly was elected. In general, trade unions amalgamated to form less-restrictive organizations. In 1832, the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Workingmen was organized at Boston.
The trend towards the inclusion of many different types of workers continued; progressing to include diverse types such as women and unskilled laborers. Socialists were attracted to the movements. The abolition of slavery, women's rights, and land nationalization were advocated. In 1845, Robert Owen addressed the initial meeting of the New England Workingmen's Association. Albert Brisbane, "the father of socialism in America", also spoke. Americans rejected the policies that the socialists were promoting, and organisms that embraced socialism failed. Founded in London in 1864, the International Workingmen's Association moved its headquarters to New York in 1872 where it failed under the domination of Karl Marx.
Organized at Philadelphia in 1869, the Knights of Labor was a highly successful labor organization. At first, its political aims were kept a secret. In 1882, it became known that the organization advocated the unlimited coinage of silver, compulsory arbitration, equal rights for both sexes, the ownership by the government of telegraphs, telephones, and railroads, and the common ownership of land. The organization had waned by 1916, the year that Congress passed the Adamson Eight Hour Law or Adamson Act which specified that in contracts for labor and service "eight hours...be deemed a day's work" after January 1st, 1917.
Radical organizations
In June, 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World held its first convention at Chicago, and adopted a platform opposed to those of the conservative trade unions. The IWW advocated the abolition of the wage system, and the abolition of employers, too. Its membership never exceeded 150,000.
Guild Socialism appeared in England about 1905. The movement was chiefly intellectual. It advocated the abolition of the wage system and the establishment by the workers of self-government in industry. As for the relations between the guilds and the community there were many conflicting theories.
The name of National Guilds' League was adopted on Easter, 1915, even though British trade unionists were rather unresponsive to guild ideas. The National Guilds' League published The Guild Socialist from March, 1919 to May, 1923, then merged with the National Guilds' Council.
The guild idea exerted some influence in France, Germany, Russia, Hungary, Italy, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Africa. Some of the more important guildsmen wrote books on Guild Socialism.
Sinn Fein ("we ourselves") was an Irish Society founded in 1905 to develop nationalism and to promote home industries.
The American Federation of Labor
On August 2nd, 1881, at Terre Haute, Indiana, a preliminary convention was held by the Knights of Industry and the Amalgamated Labor Union. In November of that year, the adoption of the name Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada took place at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At Columbus, Ohio, on December 8th, 1886, a merger with an independent trade union occurred, and the name American Federation of Labor was adopted.
Socialistic elements within the American Federation of Labor failed to gain control of the organization. They withdrew and formed the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. Another faction departed in 1938 and formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The American Federation of Labor is regarded as being the most successful labor organization in the history of the United States.
Minimum wage laws
The Australian colony of Victoria passed a law in 1896 that authorized minimum wages in six trades. By 1915, it covered 141 trades, employing over 150,000 workmen. After 1905, Great Britain and the United States passed many varied minimum wage laws. The earliest minimum wage laws in the United States applied only to women and minors. In 1912, Massachusetts passed the first American minimum wage law that applied to men. The law was not mandatory and depended for its enforcement on public sentiment. Sweatshops and child labor did not affect men. Occupations that employed men demanded strong physicalities which women and children did not possess. Men earned much higher wages than those required by the minimum wage laws. No mandatory minimum wage law that included men existed in the United States in 1923.