In New England the workingmen’s movement for equal citizenship was simultaneously a reaction against the factory system.  To the cry for a Republican system of education was added an anti-child labor crusade.  One who did more than any other to call attention to the evils of the factory system of that day was a lawyer by the name of Seth Luther, who, according to his own account, had “for years lived among cotton mills, worked in them, travelled among them.”  His “Address to the Working Men of New England on the State of Education, and on the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and America, with Particular Reference to the Effect of Manufacturing (as now conducted) on the Health and Happiness of the Poor, and on the Safety of our Republic” was delivered widely and undoubtedly had considerable influence over the labor movement of the period.  The average working day in the best factories at that time was nearly thirteen hours.  For the children who were sent into the factories at an early age these hours precluded, of course, any possibility of obtaining even the most rudimentary education.

The New England movement was an effort to unite producers of all kinds, including not only farmers but factory workers with mechanics and city workingmen.  In many parts of the State of New York the workingmen’s parties included the three classes—­“farmers, mechanics, and working men,”—­but New England added a fourth class, the factory operatives.  It was early found, however, that the movement could expect little or no help from the factory operatives, who were for the most part women and children.

The years 1828, 1829, and 1830 were years of political labor movements and labor parties.  Philadelphia originated the first workingmen’s party, then came New York and Boston, and finally state-wide movements and political organizations in each of the three States.  In New York the workingmen scored their most striking single success, when in 1829 they cast 6000 votes out of a total of 21,000.  In Philadelphia the labor ticket polled 2400 in 1828 and the labor party gained the balance of power in the city.  But the inexperience of the labor politicians coupled with machinations on the part of “designing men” of both older parties soon lost the labor parties their advantage.  In New York Tammany made the demand for a mechanics’ lien law its own and later saw that it became enacted into law.  In New York, also, the situation became complicated by factional strife between the Skidmorian “agrarians,” the Owenite state guardianship faction, and a third faction which eschewed either “panacea.”  Then, too, the opposition parties and press seized upon agrarianism and Owen’s alleged atheism to brand the whole labor movement.  The labor party was decidedly unfortunate in its choice of intellectuals and “ideologists.”