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Labor ProblemsandAdvances Genesis of the Labor Movement. A labor consciousness began to stir in West Virginia as early as 1830, when a diversified economy had produced a distinct wage-earning class in the Wheeling area. In 1829 William Cooper Howells, fatherof the novelistWilliam Dean Howells, foundedatWheelingThe Eclectic Observer, and Working People's Advocate, which called for public education and for voting and office-holdingrights for unpropertied laborers. In the same year, workers in Wheeling petitioned the Virginia legislature for mechanic's lien laws to assurepayment of wages through the sale of property of employers in default. The labor movement languished after the Jacksonian era and, except for a few later unions, including those of Wheeling typographical workersand stogiemakers, did not revive substantiallyuntil afterthe CivilWar. A more durable growth of unionism in West Virginia coincided with the rise of the Knights of Labor, a national union formed in 1869 by Uriah S. Stephens.The union received a major test in the railroad strikeof 1877,the first nationwideindustrialstrike.On July 18,the day aten percentwagereduction for railway workers became effective, members of the Trainmen's Union at Martinsburg took possession of the Baltimore and Ohio lines and refused to allow trains to move. The strike spreadrapidly, with mounting violence in such cities as Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, Saint Louis, and San Francisco. When state militiamen proved unable to quell the troubles at Martinsburg, Governor Henry M. Mathews requested PresidentRutherford B. Hayes to send in federaltroops.The federal forces dispersedthe strikers, and by August3 most of the violence was over. Short-livedthough it was, the railroad strike gave workers a new sense of solidarity.In 1877the Knights of Labor established a district assembly at Paden City, and within the next few years Stephenshimself organized sixteen more in the state. In 1891the Knightshad forty assembliesin West Virginia. Meanwhile, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), composed of craft unions, was founded at Columbus, Ohio, in 1886by Samuel Gompers and Adolph Strasser. Affiliated craft unions in West Virginia increased from twenty-six in 1889 to fifty-four in 1899. Many industrial workers joined with farmers in 1878 to support the new Greenback-Laborparty, which advocatedcheap money, bureaus of labor in each state and in the federal government, and discouragement of monopolies. The Labor ProblemsandAdvances 221 party elected no West Virginians to federaloffice, but it made deep inroads into both the Democratic and Republican parties in some parts of the state, particularly the Kanawha Valley. In 1878Democrat John C. Montgomery of Coal Valley, now Montgomery,who ran as a Greenbacker, and two Republicans who had Greenback support unseated prominent Democratic legislators James H. Ferguson, William A. Quarrier, and E. Willis Wilson of Kanawha County. Republican stalwart Romeo H. Freer addressed a Greenback rally in Braxton County, and dyed-in-the-wool Democratic newspaperman Henry S. Walker introducedJames B. Weaver, the Greenbackpresidentialcandidate, at a dinner in Charleston. For several yearsthe Greenbackerspreserved their organizationin the state. In 1880their candidate for governor, Napoleon B. French, received 13,027of the 118,873 votes cast. In 1886 the party elected six members of the state legislature and enabled Robert S. Carr, an Independent Republican from Charleston, to win the presidencyof the state senate. Some Democrats, such as Montgomery, concluded that Greenbackism actually aided the Republicans, since the two parties often supported the same candidates, and returned to the Democratic fold. There was no clear line of movement from Greenbackismto Populism in West Virginia, although they shared many of the same principles. During the 1890s party alignments generally returned to their customary patterns . Workers usually responded more favorably to concerted union activity at municipal and state levelsthan to political approaches. The Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly, organizedat Wheeling in 1885,had forty-twocraft unions and over four thousand membersin 1903.Other cities with central labor unions in 1904included Fairmont, Clarksburg, Charleston, Hinton, Morgantown, and Parkersburg. Goals of central organizations included ordinances banning employment of children under fourteen years old, an eight-hour workday, arbitration of labor disputes, and establishment of reading rooms featuring laborrelated materials. A further consolidation of union efforts occurred with the founding of the West Virginia Federation of Labor in 1903.By then Gompers and other leaders of the American Federation of Labor were convinced that a state organization could do more than municipalbodiesto obtain desired legislationand influence state labor policies. The new state organizationrepresented 152craft locals, 46 trades, and 9,535 members, with special strength among iron, steel, and tin employees; transportation, railroad, and street railroad personnel; and...

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