representing twenty-one societies. The outcome of the meeting was
the organization of the General Trades' Union of New York City.

It happened in the following year that Ely Moore of the
Typographical Association and the first president of the new
union, a powerful orator and a sagacious organizer, was elected
to Congress on the Jackson ticket. He was backed by Tammany Hall,
always on the alert for winners, and was supported by the
mechanics, artisans, and workingmen. He was the first man to take
his seat in Washington as the avowed representative of labor.

The movement for a ten-hour day was now in full swing, and the
years 1834-7 were full of strikes. The most spectacular of these
struggles was the strike of the tailors of New York in 1836, in
the course of which twenty strikers were arrested for conspiracy.
After a spirited trial attended by throngs of spectators, the men
were found guilty by a jury which took only thirty minutes for
deliberation. The strikers were fined $50 each, except the
president of the society, who was fined $150. After the trial
there was held a mass meeting which was attended, according to
the "Evening Post," by twenty-seven thousand persons. Resolutions
were passed declaring that "to all acts of tyranny and injustice,
resistance is just and therefore necessary," and "that the
construction given to the law in the case of the journeymen
tailors is not only ridiculous and weak in practice but unjust in
principle and subversive of the rights and liberties of American
citizens." The town was placarded with "coffin" handbills, a
practice not uncommon in those days.

Enclosed in a device representing a coffin were these words: