What position are we, the mechanics of America, to hold in society? Are we to receive an equivalent for our labor sufficient to maintain us in comparative independence and respectability, to procure the means with which to educate our children and qualify them to play their part in the world’s drama; or must we be forced to bow the suppliant knee to wealth, and earn by unprofitable toil a life too void of solace to confirm the very chains that bind us to our doom?

                                         ***********************************

We are no theorists; this is no visionary plan, but one eminently practicable . . . . There is not . . . any good reason why [our employers] should not pay us a fair wage for our labor. If the profits are not sufficient to remunerate them for the trouble of doing business, let the consumer make up the balance.

                                         ***********************************


We ask: Is it charitable, is it humane, is it honest, to take from the laborer, who is already fed, clothed, and lodged too poorly, a portion of his food and raiment and deprive his family of the necessaries of life, by the common resort - a reduction in wages? It must not be so. To rescue our trade from the condition into which it has fallen, and raise ourselves to that condition in society to which we, as mechanics, are justly entitled, and to place ourselves on a foundation sufficiently strong to secure us from further encroachment, and to elevate the moral, social, and intellectual condition of every moulder in the country, is the object of our international organization. . . .

From Address to the Convention 1859, International Molders Journal (July 1909):427-28