Dec 01, 2011 - Sale 2263

Sale 2263 - Lot 165

Price Realized: $ 660
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(LABOR HISTORY.) Boycott!! We, the Undersigned Baker Union No. 1 . . . Request all Citizens and Ladies who have heretofore Bought from the Baker Boss Gray . . . to Transact no further Business with Him. Letterpress leaflet illustrated with the seal of the Central Labor Union of New York and Vicinity, 8 3/4 x 6 1/4 inches, with German translation on verso; toning, short closed tears with very minor loss. New York, [1886]
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A very early trade union boycott leaflet, the term "boycott" having only been coined in 1880. This boycott was launched against a downtown baker who refused to unionize, and who refused a request to "treat his workmen in a more humane manner, and not to ruin them mentally and bodily by overwork." German-American bakers during this period commonly worked 13-hour days, and worked up to 24 hours on Saturdays. The Journeyman Baker's National Union launched a series of boycotts nationally to improve conditions (see McNeill, The Labor Movement, page 368). This boycott was co-organized by the Central Labor Union, a radical New York organization then in opposition to the Knights of Labor. They were best known for the nation's first Labor Day observance just four years before.
New York Times articles from 9 to 13 April 1886 describe the bakery's response to the boycott. The first reports that "drunken and half drunken men were distributing handbills, and in some cases insulting ladies who passed on their way to the bakery." One copy of this important early labor artifact in WorldCat, and none known at auction.