They obtained the
support of other workers, notably the tailors, printers,
brushmakers, tobacconists, and masons, and succeeded in winning
their strike in one month. The printers, who have always been
alert and active in New York City, elated by the success of this
coordinate effort, sent out a circular calling for a general
convention of all the trades societies of the city. After a
preliminary meeting in July, a mass meeting was held in December,
at which there were present about four thousand persons
representing twenty-one societies. The outcome of the meeting was
the organization of the General Trades' Union of New York City.
It happened in the following year that Ely Moore of the
Typographical Association and the first president of the new
union, a powerful orator and a sagacious organizer, was elected
to Congress on the Jackson ticket. He was backed by Tammany Hall,
always on the alert for winners, and was supported by the
mechanics, artisans, and workingmen. He was the first man to take
his seat in Washington as the avowed representative of labor.
The movement for a ten-hour day was now in full swing, and the
years 1834-7 were full of strikes. The most spectacular of these
struggles was the strike of the tailors of New York in 1836, in
the course of which twenty strikers were arrested for conspiracy.
After a spirited trial attended by throngs of spectators, the men
were found guilty by a jury which took only thirty minutes for
deliberation.
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