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Daniel Raymond was the first important political
economist to appear in the United States.  
He authored Thoughts on Political Economy (1820)
and The Elements of Political Economy(1823). 

He theorized that "labor creates wealth," which
may have been an improvement based on the thinking
of Adam Smith of Europe.  Daniel Raymond thought
that the economy of England was actually the
economy of the higher-ranking members of that
society, and not the economy of the entire nation.
  He held that wealth is not an aggregation of
exchange values, as Adam Smith  had conceived it. 
 Daniel Raymond  held that  wealth is the capacity
or opportunity to acquire  the necessaries and
conveniences of life by labor.  

His writings affected the political developments
that shaped the United States.  States Rights
Democrats appeared in the United States Congress
for the first time when James Hamilton Jr. of
South Carolina was elected in 1822.  Congressman
Hamilton was a staunch Pro-Slavery advocate of
nullification, as was Robert Y. Hayne, the first
Pro-Slavery Democrat to be elected to the United
States Senate, in 1823.  

Americans became more dependent on "labor" for
wealth-building, and relied less on God for the
providing of wealth.  "Labor" became an honorable
thing.  Pro-Slavery Democrats grew into the
leading political party in the United States.  The
colonization of free Negroes to Liberia by the
American Colonization Society or the National
Colonization Society of America fell out of favor.
 Laborers were needed in the United states because
"labor" created wealth.

In his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, U.S.
President Abraham Lincoln advised the slaves whom
he was manumitting to "labor" for employers so
that they could earn money and take care of
themselves. 

==Emigrants==
The first law on immigration was designed to
attract laborers from Europe.  In Congress, a
special Committee on Immigration was formed on 16
December 1863.  A bill to encourage immigration
(H. R. 411) was read a third time on April 16th,
1864, and passed.   "An Act to encourage
Immigration" (S. 125)  was approved on July 4,
1864.  It created the United States Emigrant
Office in New York City with a small staff of
employees.   In 1866, a  proposed amendment to the
law called for an expansion to other cities, but
it was unsuccessful.  Some citizens  remonstrated
against the giving of pecuniary aid to immigrants.
 The law of 1864 expired on 30 March 1868.  

Promptly thereafter, two new bills were introduced
in Congress on June 1st, 1868.  They called for
the establishment of unpaid emigrant agencies in
Europe  where emigrants could arrange for
transportation to  North America while away from
the close scrutiny that existed in the United
States.  In the House of Representatives, 
emigrants were called a "great source of national
wealth"  (in H.R. 1139);  the second bill  (H.R.
1145),  called for the establishment of an unpaid
emigrant agency at Liverpool.  

Motions were made in congress in 1870 (H.R. 964
and H.R. 1663) to create laws that assisted
immigrants  in moving westwards into unoccupied
territories where workers were needed to improve
the lands.  


==Labor developments==
Turmoil in Germany in 1848 caused many educated
German people|Germans to emigrate to the United
States.  Some of those immigrants promoted
socialism in the United States, but socialism was
rebuffed by many citizens of the United States
because it attacked religion and the marriage of
men and women.  

The International Workingmen's Association adopted
the 8-hour work day in its first Congress at 
Geneva in 1866.  The realization that productivity
did not suffer with the installation of the 8-hour
work day was only slowly grasped by employers. 
Observations of munitions workers made during the
world-wide war of 1914-1918 convinced many leaders
in England that the 8-hour work day did not cause
a drop in productivity.  

In general, after 1895, in various nations, a
tendency to limit the 8-hour work day and minimum
wage laws to women and children existed.  The
Australian colony of Victoria, Australia|Victoria
established boards with the authority to fix
minimum wage laws in 1896,  which led to a great
deal of interest in minimum wage laws in the
United States and England after 1905.  Many new
laws soon appeared in the various jurisdictions of
those two nations.  

A significant event in regard to the 8-hour work
day  took place in 1923 when the steel industry of
the  United States abandoned the two-shift system 
based on two 12-hour shifts in favor of the
three-shift system based on three 8-hour shifts.  
 

===Trade unions===
An emphasis on insurance, on exclusion, and
conservative methods were characteristics of the
trade unions that had developed in England in the
18th century.  The first trade union of record to
appear in the United States was the New York
Society of Journeymen Shipwrights, which was
incorporated in 1803.  In 1864, the International
Workingmen's Association began the trade-union
movement on continental Europe.

===Non-trade organizations===
In England, trade unions proved to be unsuitable
for the large work forces that the industrial
revolution had required.  Broadly-based
organizations were created following the repeal of
the Combination Acts in 1824. 

In the United States, in 1829, a workingman's
ticket was placed in nomination in New York and
one delegate to the State Assembly was elected. 
In general, trade unions amalgamated to form
less-restrictive organizations.  In 1832, the New
England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and
Workingmen was organized at Boston.  

The trend towards the inclusion of many different
types of workers continued; progressing to include
diverse types such as women and unskilled
laborers.  Socialists were attracted to the
movements.  The abolition of slavery, women's
rights, and land nationalization were advocated. 
In 1845, Robert Owen addressed the initial meeting
of the New England Workingmen's Association. 
Albert Brisbane, "the father of socialism in
United States|America", also spoke.  Americans
rejected the policies that the socialists were
promoting, and organisms that embraced socialism
failed.  Founded in London in 1864, the
International Workingmen's Association moved its
headquarters to New York in 1872 where it failed
under the domination of Karl Marx.  

Organized at Philadelphia in 1869, the Knights of
Labor was a highly successful labor organization. 
At first, its political aims were kept a secret. 
In 1882, it became known that the organization
advocated the unlimited coinage of silver,
compulsory arbitration, equal rights for both
sexes, the ownership by the government of
telegraphs, telephones, and railroads, and the
common ownership of land.  The organization had
waned by 1916, the year that Congress passed the
Adamson Eight Hour Law or Adamson Act which
specified that in contracts for labor and service
"eight hours...be deemed a day's work" after
January 1st, 1917.  

===Radical organizations===
In June, 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World
held its first convention at Chicago, and adopted
a platform opposed to those of the conservative
trade unions.  The IWW advocated the abolition of
the wage system, and the abolition of employers,
too.  Its membership never exceeded 150,000.

Guild Socialism appeared in England about 1905. 
The movement was chiefly intellectual.  It
advocated the abolition of the wage system and the
establishment by the workers of self-government in
industry.  As for the relations between the guilds
and the community there were many conflicting
theories.  

The name of National Guilds' League was adopted on
Easter, 1915, even though  British trade unionists
were rather unresponsive to guild ideas.  The
National Guilds' League published The Guild
Socialist from March, 1919 to May, 1923, then
merged with the National Guilds' Council. 

The guild idea exerted some influence in France,
Germany, Russia, Hungary, Italy, the United
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and
South Africa.  Some of the more important
guildsmen wrote books on Guild Socialism.  

Sinn Fein ("we ourselves") was an Ireland|Irish
Society founded in 1905 to develop nationalism and
to promote home industries.

==The American Federation of Labor==
On August 2nd, 1881, at Terre Haute, Indiana, a
preliminary convention was held by the Knights of
Industry and the Amalgamated Labor Union.  In
November of that year, the adoption of the name
Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of
the United States and Canada took place at
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  At Columbus,
Ohio|Columbus, Ohio, on December 8th, 1886, a
merger with an independent trade union occurred,
and the name American Federation of Labor was
adopted.  

Socialistic elements within the American
Federation of Labor failed to gain control of the
organization.  They withdrew and formed the
Industrial Workers of the World in 1905.  Another
faction departed in 1938 and formed the Congress
of Industrial Organizations.  

The American Federation of Labor is regarded as
being the most successful labor organization in
the history of the United States.

==Minimum wage laws==
The Australian colony of Victoria,
Australia|Victoria passed a law in 1896 that
authorized minimum wages in six trades.  By 1915,
it covered 141 trades, employing over 150,000
workmen.  After 1905, Great Britain and the United
States passed many varied minimum wage laws.  The
earliest minimum wage laws in the United States
applied only to women and minors.  In 1912,
Massachusetts passed the first American minimum
wage law that applied to men.  The law was not
mandatory and depended for its enforcement on
public sentiment.  Sweatshops and child labor did
not affect men.  Occupations that employed men
demanded strong physicalities which women and
children did not possess.  Men earned much higher
wages than those required by the minimum wage
laws.  No mandatory minimum wage law that 
included men existed in the United States in 1923.

==External links==
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/ Library of
Congress