In the spring of 1835, during the height of the first labor crisis
in American history, New York City's National Trades' Union ran an article
called "Choice of a Wife." A week later, the paper, which served as the
official organ of the citywide General Trades' Union, followed up with
"New Way to Get a Husband." While scholars have used these same labor papers
to paint this historical moment as an era of crisis that inspired the formation
of early class consciousness, the discussion of gendered issues exemplified
by these anecdotes requires further investigation. This paper examines
1830s New York City labor newspapers and argues that these so-called light
reading articles were just as important to the construction of a masculine
worker identity as articles that cover more explicit "worker" issues.
The mid-1830s produced an unprecedented strike wave in the nation^Òs northern seaport cities, ushering in the first period of mass union-building in the country. With union members spread throughout New York City's fifteen wards, working in isolated five- or ten-man garrets, coordinated union communication was imperative to unified action. While mass meetings did occur on a monthly and weekly basis, it was the union newspapers that kept workers informed of daily events. By reading penny press papers like The Man, the National Trades' Union, and the Working Man's Advocate, artisans learned about the bank war, Democratic politics, and labor unrest. However, these were not the only articles that working men turned to the papers for; each edition also contained poetry, marriage announcements, humorous aphorisms, and other light reading. These articles were not just included as an afterthought; often they could occupy two full pages of a four page paper. Anti-bank discussions appeared side by side with anecdotes about how an artisan's wife should act and were not seen as mutually exclusive.
Labor issues still accounted for most of the discussion in the papers, but the two types of articles need to be viewed together as part of the same body of prescriptive literature. Both explicit labor and non-labor articles functioned in working men's papers as prescriptive literature that instructed artisans on the contours of the worker identity being formed in the new industrial economy. While the historical investigation into this worker identity has focused mostly on the creation of an economic consciousness, more work needs to be done to understand the whole picture. The inclusion of non-labor articles in these papers shows that at this crucial moment in the formation of early American trade unionism, the men involved were clearly sensitive to the importance of masculinity and gender imagery to working men's consciousness and needed to construct their identity around more than just economic issues.