Abraham Lincoln on Labor and the Lynn Shoemakers’ Strike

On March 5, 1860, Lincoln gave a speech in Hartford, Connecticut during his tour of New England after his Cooper Union address. One of the issues that Lincoln tackled was the role of labor and the ongoing Lynn shoemakers’ strike. Lincoln pointed used the strike to point out the difference between the free labor of the North (i.e., the paid labor in which laborers are free to find better paying employers) versus the slave labor of the South (i.e., chattel slavery for the life of the person, their children, their children’s children, ad infinitum). The conservative party at the time complained that the Lynn strike was the result of antislavery agitation and sectional controversy. Lincoln noted:

Now whether this is so or not, I know one thing – there is a strike! And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.

He went on to acknowledge there was sectional controversy indeed involved, but only because the South had withdrawn their trade on a false accusation that somehow slavery was right and free labor was wrong. The Slave Powers argued that free labor in the North was worse than slavery because, after all, they claimed, slavery was a “positive good” in which enslaved people were given a way to rise up out of their natural inferiority. Lincoln replied incredulously by noting his surprise that no slaveholder was interested in desiring such a good thing for themselves, adding “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” Further supporting the idea of workers striking, he noted that if slavery were allowed to spread to the territories, then it was only a matter of time before all the jobs in free states would also be replaced with slave labor.

Lincoln had always valued labor. His views are succinctly stated in his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1861:

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class–neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families–wives, sons, and daughters–work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

I should note that what I’m calling the Lynn shoemakers’ strike goes way beyond Lynn, Massachusetts. Starting intentionally on February 22nd, George Washington’s birthday, around 3,000 workers walked out of shoe factories in protest of working conditions that included 16-hour days, low pay, and dangerous machines in what previously had been an individual artisan business. The strike quickly became known more broadly as the New England Shoemakers’ Strike as the cause grew to over 20,000 workers from more than 25 towns across the region.

Despite the widespread nature of the strike, it was ultimately unsuccessful. Most factory bosses refused to negotiate and after six weeks with no pay, most returned to work. The strike did, however, lead to some changes that helped future labor efforts and eventually to unions, which successfully changed labor laws to protect workers. We should keep in mind also that the Civil War was to begin about a year later and the national focus shifted to wartime production, ramping up manufacturing and stretching labor thin as men volunteered for the Union war effort.

Lincoln had universally fought for the ability of all men to better their own condition, which included the right to fight for better working conditions in an increasingly industrialized world.

[Photo of Don Sottile statue “A Welcome Conversation” in Hartford, CT by David J. Kent.]