(4) The Long Depression, 1837-1862

The twenty-five years which elapsed from 1837 to 1862 form a period of business depression and industrial disorganization only briefly interrupted during 1850-1853 by the gold discoveries in California.  The aggressive unions of the thirties practically disappeared.  With industry disorganized, trade unionism, or the effort to protect the standard of living by means of strikes, was out of question.  As the prospect for immediate amelioration became dimmed by circumstances, an opportunity arrived for theories and philosophies of radical social reform.  Once the sun with its life-giving heat has set, one begins to see the cold and distant stars.

The uniqueness of the period of the forties in the labor movement proceeds not only from the large volume of star-gazing, but also from the accompanying fact that, for the first and only time in American history, the labor movement was dominated by men and women from the educated class, the “intellectuals,” who thus served in the capacity of expert astrologers.

And there was no lack of stars in the heaven of social reform to occupy both intellectual and wage earner.  First, there was the efficiency scheme of the followers of Charles Fourier, the French socialist, or, as they preferred to call themselves, the Associationists.  Theirs was a proposal aiming directly to meet the issue of the prevailing industrial disorganization and wasteful competition.  Albert Brisbane, Horace Greeley, and the Brook Farm enthusiasts and “Associationists” of the forties, made famous by their intimate association with Ralph Waldo Emerson, had much in common with the present-day efficiency engineers.  This “old” efficiency of theirs, like the new one, was chiefly concerned with increasing the production of wealth through the application of the “natural” laws of human nature.  With the enormous increase in production to be brought about by “Fourierism” and “Association,” the question of justice in distribution was relegated to a secondary place.  Where they differed from the new efficiency was in method, for they believed efficiency would be attained if only the human instincts or “passions” were given free play, while the efficiency engineers of today trust less to unguided instinct and more to “scientific management” of human “passions.”

Midway between trade unionism and the simon-pure, idealistic reform philosophies stood producers’ and consumers’ cooperation.  It had the merit of being a practical program most suitable to a time of depression, while on its spiritual side it did not fail to satisfy the loftiest intellectual.  It was the resultant of the two most potent forces which acted upon the movement of the forties, the pressure of an inadequate income of the wage earner and the influence of the intellectuals.  During no other period has there been, relatively speaking, so much effort along that line.