The strike was the chief weapon of these early societies.  Generally a committee was chosen by the society to present a price list or scale of wages to the masters individually.  The first complete wage scale presented in this country was drawn up by the organized printers of New York in 1800.  The strikes were mainly over wages and were generally conducted in an orderly and comparatively peaceful manner.  In only one instance, that of the Philadelphia shoemakers of 1806, is there evidence of violence and intimidation.  In that case “scabs” were beaten and employers intimidated by demonstrations in front of the shop or by breaking shop windows.  During a strike the duties of “picketing” were discharged by tramping committees.  The Philadelphia shoemakers, however, as early as 1799, employed for this purpose a paid officer.  This strike was for higher wages for workers on boots.  Although those who worked on shoes made no demands of their own, they were obliged to strike, much against their will.  We thus meet with the first sympathetic strike on record.  In 1809 the New York shoemakers, starting with a strike against one firm, ordered a general strike when they discovered that that firm was getting its work done in other shops.  The payment of strike benefits dates from the first authenticated strike, namely in 1786.  The method of payment varied from society to society, but the constitution of the New York shoemakers, as early as 1805, provided for a permanent strike fund.

The aggressive trade unionism of these early trade societies forced the masters to combine against them.  Associations of masters in their capacity as merchants had usually preceded the journeymen’s societies.  Their function was to counteract destructive competition from “advertisers” and sellers in the “public market” at low prices.  As soon, however, as the wage question became serious, the masters’ associations proceeded to take on the function of dealing with labor—­mostly aiming to break up the trade societies.  Generally they sought to create an available force of non-union labor by means of advertising, but often they turned to the courts and brought action against the journeymen’s societies on the ground of conspiracy.

The bitterness of the masters’ associations against the the journeymen’s societies perhaps was caused not so much by their resistance to reductions in wages as by their imposition of working rules, such as the limitation of the number of apprentices, the minimum wage, and what we would now call the “closed shop.”  The conspiracy trials largely turned upon the “closed shop” and in these the shoemakers figured exclusively.[2]