The Boston strike was lost, but the sympathy which it evoked among mechanics in various cities was quickly turned to account.  Wherever the Boston circular reached, it acted like a spark upon powder.  In Philadelphia the ten-hour movement took on the aspect of a crusade.  Not only the building trades, as in Boston, but most of the mechanical branches were involved.  Street parades and mass meetings were held.  The public press, both friendly and hostile, discussed it at length.  Work was suspended and after but a brief “standout” the whole ended in a complete victory for the workingmen.  Unskilled laborers, too, struck for the ten-hour day and, in the attempt to prevent others from taking their jobs, riotous scenes occurred which attracted considerable attention.  The movement proved so irresistible that the Common Council announced a ten-hour day for public servants.  Lawyers, physicians, merchants, and politicians took up the cause of the workingmen.  On June 8 the master carpenters granted the ten-hour day and by June 22 the victory was complete.

The victory in Philadelphia was so overwhelming and was given so much publicity that its influence extended to many smaller towns.  In fact, the ten-hour system, which remained in vogue in this country in the skilled trades until the nineties, dates largely from this movement in the middle of the thirties.

The great advance in the cost of living during 1835 and 1836 compelled an extensive movement for higher wages.  Prices had in some instances more than doubled.  Most of these strikes were hastily undertaken.  Prices, of course, were rising rapidly but the societies were new and lacked balance.  A strike in one trade was an example to others to strike.  In a few instances, however, there was considerable planning and reserve.

The strike epidemic affected even the girls who worked in the textile factories.  The first strike of factory girls on record had occurred in Dover, New Hampshire, in 1828.  A factory strike in Paterson, New Jersey, which occurred in the same year, occasioned the first recorded calling out of militia to quell labor disturbances.  There the strikers were, however, for the most part men.  But the factory strike which attracted the greatest public attention was the Lowell strike in February, 1834, against a 15 percent reduction in wages.  The strike was short and unsuccessful, notwithstanding that 800 striking girls at first exhibited a determination to carry their struggle to the end.  It appears that public opinion in New England was disagreeably impressed by this early manifestation of feminism.  Another notable factory strike was one in Paterson in July 1835.  Unlike similar strikes, it had been preceded by an organization.  The chief demand was the eleven-hour day.  The strike involved twenty mills and 2000 persons.  Two weeks later the employers reduced hours from thirteen and a half to twelve hours for five days and to nine hours on Saturday.  This broke the strike.  The character of the agitation among the factory workers stamps it as ephemeral.  Even more ephemeral was the agitation among immigrant laborers, mostly Irish, on canals and roads, which usually took the form of riots.