Franz Freund of the Northern Confederation.
Franz Freund was an Austro-North American labor organizer who founded the Northern Confederation's first major labor union, the Grand Consolidated Union, and its political arm, the Laborers' Alliance.
Freund emigrated to the N.C. in the early 1830s. As an academic with an interest in labor issues, Freund was dissatisfied with the condition of the N.C.'s industrial workers, and he set about remedying the situation by founding the Grand Consolidated Union in 1835. Unlike other labor unions of the time, which were limited to a single trade or a single company, the Consolidated was intended to organize all urban workers throughout the N.C. Freund had little success at first, being an intellectual rather than an activist. However, the economic crisis brought on by the Panic of 1836 led to massive unemployment, a lack of confidence in Governor Daniel Webster, and growing hardship in the cities of the N.C. These all served to give the Consolidated a new lease on life, and by 1839 the union had locals in every major city in the N.C., and organizers in every firm.
The goal of the Consolidated was initially to enact a more liberal franchise which would allow workers to elect representatives to the legislature, and in time take over the governorship of the N.C. To achieve this goal, Freund created the Laborers' Alliance as an explicitly worker-centered party. Once the Consolidated had gained political power, it would enact a program of government regulation of key industries such as shipbuilding, railroads, and textiles. A heavy tax on business profits would be used to improve workers' wages and living standards. The ultimate aim of the Consolidated was to carry out a radical transformation of society in which the workers would control the factories and the railroads.
The Laborers' Alliance campaigned vigorously for local and provincial offices in the 1839 elections. The ruling Liberal Party's strength was reduced, but still maintained a majority in the Northern Confederation Council, and Webster was returned to office as Governor. Freund attempted to gain passage of legislation to alleviate the suffering of workers, but some members of the Consolidated resorted to terror tactics, assassinating government officials and business leaders who laid off workers and cut wages.
Growing restlessness among industrial workers in the summer of 1840 led to a general strike throughout the Northern Confederation, and several cities were dominated by mobs, with Webster lacking the troops to put them down. On 4 September 1840 a radical worker named Matthew Hale stabbed Webster, in part for attending the inauguration of Mexican President Miguel Huddleston the year before. Webster died of his wounds on 7 September, and was succeeded as Governor by Henry Gilpin of Pennsylvania.
Gilpin worked together with the N.C.'s leading manufacturers to suppress the Grand Consolidated Union and the Laborers' Alliance. The manufacturers assembled private armies, and working together with the Northern Confederation Army, launched a coordinated attack on the Consolidated, destroying union headquarters throughout the confederation, and killing tens of thousands of union members. Gilpin claimed that "there is no room for violence in the N.C., but the situation is so critical that strong measures are needed." By March 1841, over 40,000 people had been killed and 78,000 injured, and the Grand Consolidated Union and Laborers' Alliance had been crushed, with many of their leaders fleeing the N.C. to avoid capture, and some eventually settling in Jefferson City.
Freund himself survived the suppression of the Consolidated, possibly because he had gained a seat on the N.C. Council in 1839, and was one of the leading figures in the Brant Convention of September 1841. In a speech to the delegates, he said, "Color and status have divided us in the past. Common persecution and suffering will unite us in the future." Freund's memoirs, The Work of Three Decades, were published in New York City in 1869.
Sobel's sources for Freund's life include his memoirs, as well as William Reuss' The Origins of Unionism in the N.C. (New York, 1950).