For, as a rule, down to the World War, prices both wholesale and retail, fluctuated in America more violently than in England or the Continent. And twice, once in the thirties and again in the sixties, an irredeemable paper currency moved up the water mark of prices to tremendous heights followed by reactions of corresponding depth. From the war of 1812, the actual beginning of an industrial America, to the end of the century, the country went through several such complete industrial and business cycles. We therefore conveniently divide labor and trade union history into periods on the basis of the industrial cycle. It was only in the nineties, as we saw, that the response of the labor movement to price fluctuations ceased to mean a complete or nearly complete abandonment of trade unionism during depressions. A continuous and stable trade union movement consequently dates only from the nineties. The cooperative movement which was, as we saw, far less continuous than trade unionism, has also shown the effects of the business cycle. The career of distributive cooperation in America has always been intimately related to the movements of retail prices and wages. If, in the advance of wages and prices during the ascending portion of the industrial cycle, the cost of living happened to outdistance wages by a wide margin, the wage earners sought a remedy in distributive cooperation. They acted likewise during the descending portion of the industrial cycle, when retail prices happened to fall much less slowly than wages. Producers' cooperation in the United States has generally been a "hard times" remedy. When industrial prosperity has passed its high crest and strikes have begun to fail, producers' cooperation has often been used as a retaliatory measure to bring the employer to terms by menacing to underbid him in the market. Also, when in the further downward course of industry the point has been reached where cuts in wages and unemployment have become quite common, producers' cooperation has sometimes come in as an attempt to enable the wage earner to obtain both employment and high earnings bolstered through cooperative profits. FOOTNOTES: [101] The struggle for control, as carried on by trade unions, centers on such matters as methods of wage determination, the employer's right of discharge, hiring and lay-off, division of work, methods of enforcing shop discipline, introduction of machinery and division of labor, transfers of employes, promotions, the union or non-union shop, and similar subjects. [102] The first trade societies were organized by shoemakers. (See above, 4-7.) [103] See Chapter on "American Shoemakers," in _Labor and Administration_, by John R. Commons (Macmillan, 1913). [104] See Don D. Lescohier, _The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin_. [105] See above, 114-116. CHAPTER 13 THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR