democratic upheaval which emphasized the rights of man in general and social equality in particular.  If the middle class Jacksonian was probably thinking first of reducing the debt on his farm or perchance of getting a political office, and only as an after-thought proceeding to look for a justification in the Declaration of Independence, as yet the wage earner was starting with the abstract notion of equal citizenship as contained in the Declaration, and only then proceeding to search for the remedies which would square reality with the idea.  Hence it was that the aspiration toward equal citizenship became the keynote of labor’s earliest political movement.  The issue was drawn primarily between the rich and the poor, not between the functional classes, employers and employes.  While the workmen took good care to exclude from their ranks “persons not living by some useful occupation, such as bankers, brokers, rich men, etc.,” they did not draw the line on employers as such, master workmen and independent “producers.”

The workingmen’s bill of complaints, as set forth in the Philadelphia Mechanic’s Free Press and other labor papers, clearly marks off the movement as a rebellion by the class of newly enfranchised wage earners against conditions which made them feel degraded in their own eyes as full fledged citizens of the commonwealth.

The complaints were of different sorts but revolved around the charge of the usurpation of government by an “aristocracy.”  Incontrovertible proof of this charge was found in special legislation chartering banks and other corporations.  The banks were indicted upon two counts.  First, the unstable bank paper money defrauded the wage earner of a considerable portion of the purchasing power of his wages.  Second, banks restricted competition and shut off avenues for the “man on the make.”  The latter accusation may be understood only if we keep in mind that this was a period when bank credits began to play an essential part in the conduct of industry; that with the extension of the market into the States and territories South and West, with the resulting delay in collections, business could be carried on only by those who enjoyed credit facilities at the banks.  Now, as credit generally follows access to the market, it was inevitable that the beneficiary of the banking system should not be the master or journeyman but the merchant for whom both worked.[4] To the uninitiated, however, this arrangement could only appear in the light of a huge conspiracy entered into by the chartered monopolies, the banks, and the unchartered monopolist, the merchant, to shut out the possible competition by the master and journeyman.  The grievance appeared all the more serious since all banks were chartered by special enactments of the legislature, which thus appeared as an accomplice in the conspiracy.