Although, as we shall see, the eighties were properly the era of producers’ cooperation on a large scale, the self-governing workshop had always been familiar to the American labor movement.  The earliest attempt, as far as we have knowledge, occurred in Philadelphia in 1791, when the house carpenters out on strike offered by way of retaliation against their employers to undertake contracts at 25 percent less than the price charged by the masters.  Fourteen years later, in 1806, the journeymen cordwainers of the same city, following their conviction in court on the charge of conspiracy brought in by their masters, opened up a cooperative shoe warehouse and store.  As a rule the workingmen took up productive cooperation when they had failed in strikes.

In 1836 many of the trade societies began to lose their strikes and turned to cooperation.  The cordwainers working on ladies’ shoes entered upon a strike for higher wages in March 1836, and opened three months later a “manufactory” or a warehouse of their own.  The handloom weavers in two of the suburbs of Philadelphia started cooperative associations at the same time.  At the end of 1836 the hand-loom weavers of Philadelphia proper had two cooperative shops and were planning to open a third.  In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the journeymen cordwainers opened a shop after an unsuccessful strike early in 1836; likewise the tailors of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville.  In New York the carpenters had done so already in 1833, and the painters of New York and Brooklyn opened their shops in 1837.

Before long the spirit became so contagious that the Trades’ Union of Philadelphia, the city federation of trade societies, was obliged to take notice.  Early in 1837 a conference of about 200 delegates requested each trade society to submit estimates for a shop to employ ten members.  However, further steps were prevented by the financial panic and business depression.

The forties witnessed several similar attempts.  When the iron molders of Cincinnati failed to win a strike in the autumn of 1847, a few of their number collected what funds they could and organized a sort of joint-stock company which they called “The Journeymen Molders’ Union Foundry.”  Two local philanthropists erected their buildings.  In Pittsburgh a group of puddlers tried to raise money by selling stock to anyone who wished to take an interest in their cooperative venture.

The cooperative ventures multiplied in 1850 and 1851, following a widespread failure of strikes and were entered upon with particular readiness by the German immigrants.  Among the Germans was an attitude towards producers’ cooperation, based more nearly on general principles than the practical exigencies of a strike.  Fresh from the scenes of revolutions in Europe, they were more given to dreams about reconstructing society and more trustful in the honesty and integrity of their leaders.  The cooperative movement among