The turmoil had hardly subsided when, in 1880, new strikes broke
out. In the long catalogue of the strikers of that year are found
the ribbon weavers of Philadelphia, Paterson, and New York, the
stablemen of New York, New Jersey, and San Francisco, the cotton
yard workers of New Orleans, the cotton weavers of New England
and New York, the stockyard employees of Chicago and Omaha, the
potters of Green Point, Long Island, the puddlers of Johnstown
and Columbia, Pennsylvania, the machinists of Buffalo, the
tailors of New York, and the shoemakers of Indiana. The year 1881
was scarcely less restive. But 1886 is marked in labor annals as
"the year of the great uprising," when twice as many strikes as
in any previous year were reported by the United States
Commissioner of Labor, and when these strikes reached a tragic
climax in the Chicago Haymarket riots.
It was during this feverish epoch that organized labor first
entered the arena of national politics. When the policy as to the
national currency became an issue, the lure of cheap money drew
labor into an alliance in 1880 with the Greenbackers, whose mad
cry added to the general unrest. In this, as in other fatuous
pursuits, labor was only responding to the forces and the spirit
of the hour. These have been called the years of amalgamation,
but they were also the years of tumult, for, while amalgamation
was achieved, discipline was not. Authority imposed from within
was not sufficient to overcome the decentralizing forces, and
just as big business had yet to learn by self-imposed discipline
how to overcome the extremely individualistic tendencies which
resulted in trade anarchy, so labor had yet to learn through
discipline the lessons of self-restraint.
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