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IV. SETTLER TRADE-<br />
UNIONISM<br />
1. The Rise of White Labor<br />
Settler Amerika got the reinforcements it needed<br />
to advance into Empire from the great European immigration<br />
of the 19th Century. Between 1830-1860 some 4.5<br />
Million Europeans (two-thirds of them Irish and German)<br />
arrived to help the settler beachhead on the Eastern shore<br />
push outward.(l) The impact of these reinforcements on<br />
the tide of battle can be guessed from the fact that they<br />
numbered more than the total settler population of 1800.<br />
At a time when the young settler nation was dangerously<br />
dependent on the rebellious Afrikan colony in the South,<br />
and on the continental battleground greatly outnumbered<br />
by the various Indian, Mexican and Afrikan nations, these<br />
new legions of Europeans played a decisive role.<br />
The fact that this flood of new Europeans also<br />
helped create contradictions within the settler ranks has led<br />
to honest confusions. Some comrades mistakenly believe<br />
that a white proletariat was born, whose trade-union and<br />
socialist activities placed it in the historic position of a<br />
primary force for revolution (and thus our eventual ally).<br />
The key is to see what was dominant in the material life<br />
and political consciousness of this new labor stratum, then<br />
and now.<br />
The earlier settler society of the English colonies<br />
was relatively "fluid" and still unformed in terms of class<br />
structure. After all, the original ruling class of Amerika<br />
was back in England, and even the large Virginia planter<br />
capitalists were seen by the English aristocracy as mere<br />
middle-men between them and the Afrikan proletarians<br />
who actually created the wealth. To them George<br />
Washington was just an overpaid foreman. And while<br />
there were great differences in wealth and power, there was<br />
a shared privilege among settlers. Few were exploited in the<br />
scientific socialist sense of being a wage-slave of capital; in<br />
fact, wage labor for another man was looked down upon<br />
by whites as a mark of failure (and still is by many). Up until<br />
the mid-1800's settler society then was characterized by<br />
the unequal but general opportunities for land ownership<br />
and the extraordinary fluidity of personal fortunes by Old<br />
European standards.<br />
This era of early settlerism rapidly drew to a close<br />
as Amerikan capitalism matured. Good Indian land and<br />
cheap Afrikan slaves became more and more difficult for<br />
ordinary settlers to obtain. In the South the ranks of the<br />
planters began tightening, concentrating as capital itself<br />
was. One historian writes:<br />
slaveowners as so many succeeded in doing ... But the day<br />
of the farmer began to wane rapidly after 1850. If he had<br />
not already obtained good land, it became doubtful he<br />
could ever improve his fortunes. All the fertile soil that was<br />
not under cultivation was generally held by speculators at<br />
mounting prices. "(2)<br />
While in the cities of the North, the small, local<br />
business of the independent master craftsman (shoemaker,<br />
blacksmith, cooper, etc.) was giving way step by step to the<br />
large merchant, with his regional business and his capitalist<br />
workshop/factory. This was the inevitable casualty list of<br />
industrialism. At the beginning of the 1800's it was still<br />
true that every ambitious, young Euro-Amerikan apprentice<br />
worker could expect to eventually become a master,<br />
owning his own little business (and often his own slaves).<br />
There is no exaggeration in saying this. We know, for example,<br />
that in the Philadelphia of the 1820's craft masters<br />
actually outnumbered their jn~lrneymen employees by 3 to<br />
2-and that various tradesmen, masters and professionals<br />
were an absolute majority of the Euro-Amerikan male<br />
population. (3)<br />
But by 1860 the number of journeymen workers<br />
compared to masters had tripled, and a majority of Euro-<br />
Amerikan men were now wage-earners.(4) Working for a<br />
master or merchant was no longer just a temporary<br />
stepping-stone to becoming an independent landowner or<br />
shopkeeper. This new white workforce for the first time<br />
had little prospect of advancing beyond wage-slavery.<br />
Unemployment and wage-slashing were common<br />
phenomena, and an increasing class strife and discontent<br />
entered the world of the settlers.<br />
In this scene the new millions of immigrant European<br />
workers, many with Old European experiences of<br />
class struggle, furnished the final element in the hardening<br />
of a settler class structure. The political development was<br />
very rapid once the nodal point was reached: From artisan<br />
guilds to craft associations to local unions. National<br />
unions and labor journals soon appeared. And in the<br />
workers' movements the championing of various socialist<br />
and even Marxist ideas was widespread and popular, particularly<br />
since these immigrant masses were salted with<br />
radical political exiles (Marx, in the Inaugural Address to<br />
the 1st International in 1864, says: "...crushed by the iron<br />
hand of force, the most advanced sons of labor fled in<br />
despair to the transatlantic Republic.. .")<br />
"During the earlier decades, when the lower South All this was but the outward form of proletarian<br />
was being settled, farmers stood every chance of becoming class consciousness, made all the more convincing because<br />
planters. Until late in the fifties (1850's-ed.) most those white workers subjectively believed that they were<br />
planters or their fathers before them started life as proletarians-"the exploited", "the creators of<br />
yeomen, occasionally with a few slaves, but generally all wealth", "the sons of toil", etc. etc. In actuality this<br />
without any hands except their own. The heyday of these was clearly untrue. While there were many exploited and<br />
poor people lasted as long as land and slaves Gere cheap, poverty-stricken immigrant proletarians, these new Euroenabling<br />
them to realize their ambition to be planters and 24 Arnerikan workers as a whole were a privileged labor