American labor’s two conspiracies, against slavery and for the ten-hour day, diverged

Evidence

The artisans and mechanics of whom Douglass complained pioneered in the building of unions, and it was natural that the unions reflected their outlook. In 1822, a carpenter and thirty-four other proletarians were hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, for planning an uprising against slavery. At the same time, journeymen millwrights and machine workers, reawakening after the depression of 1819 to 1822, were meeting at a tavern in Philadelphia, plotting to establish the ten-hour day as standard for their trades. Just as racial slavery was the distinctive feature of American growth, the distinctive feature of American labor history is that these two conspiracies of labor, instead of coming to form part of a single movement, profoundly diverged. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 368