The harsh facts of the hour, however, soon began to call for
united action. The cities were expanding with such eager haste
that proper housing conditions were overlooked. Workingmen were
obliged to live in wretched structures. Moreover, human beings
were still levied on for debt and imprisoned for default of
payment. Children of less than sixteen years of age were working
twelve or more hours a day, and if they received any education at
all, it was usually in schools charitably called "ragged schools"
or "poor schools," or "pauper schools." There was no adequate
redress for the mechanic if his wages were in default, for lien
laws had not yet found their way into the statute books. Militia
service was oppressive, permitting only the rich to buy
exemption. It was still considered an unlawful conspiracy to act
in unison for an increase in pay or a lessening of working hours.
By 1840 the pay of unskilled labor had dropped to about
seventy-five cents a day in the overcrowded cities, and in the
winter, in either city or country, many unskilled workers were
glad to work for merely their board. The lot of women workers was
especially pitiful. A seamstress by hard toil, working fifteen
hours a day might stitch enough shirts to earn from seventy-two
cents to a dollar and twelve cents a week. Skilled labor, while
faring better in wages, shared with the unskilled in the
universal working day which lasted from sun to sun. Such in brief
were the conditions that brought home to the laboring masses that
homogeneous consciousness which alone makes a group powerful in a
democracy.

The movement can most clearly be discerned in the cities.
Philadelphia claims precedence as the home of the first Trades'
Union. The master cordwainers had organized a society in 1792,