attacks on the Knights of Labor, he supported a plea for "pure and simple" unionism with the contention that "the wage-workers of this continent ... are a distinct and particularly permanent class of modern society; and, consequently, have distinct and permanent common interests."

Artisans could not bring themselves, however, to renounce the hope of becoming "their own masters"—not necessarily by accumulating capital as individuals but by cooperatively owning the means of production. Socialists and trade unionists alike ridiculed workers' enthusiasm for cooperative schemes, but the prominent role of artisans in working-class movements makes this enthusiasm quite intelligible. For those who rejected the whole system of wage labor as a frontal assault on their crafts, cooperation was a perfectly rational alternative, as the shoemakers' union, the Knights of St. Crispin, explained in 1870.

If labor produces all the wealth of a country, why should it not claim ownership? ... We claim, that although the masses have advanced towards independence, they will never be completely free from vassalage until they have thrown off the system of working for hire. Men working for wages are, in a greater or less degree, in the bonds of serfdom. The demand and supply of labor makes them the football of circumstances. ... We cannot expect to overcome this law of demand and supply; yet we believe, that in proportion as a man becomes his own capitalist, in the same degree does he become independent of this law. How all men can become their own capitalist, is a question already decided by political economists. The answer is—cooperation.

The conventional identification of democracy with progress makes it hard to see that democratic movements in the nineteenth century took shape in opposition to innovation. The new breed of capitalists were the real progressives: working-class radicals, on the other hand, struggled to preserve a way of life that was under attack. Students of working-class movements have called attention again and again to their curious mixture of militancy and conservatism. "Workers were not fighting for control of the industrial revolution as much as against that revolution itself," writes Calhoun.

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