<P> As a result of the spate of convictions against combinations of laborers, the typical narrative of early American labor law states that, prior to Hunt in Massachusetts in 1842, peaceable combinations of workingmen to raise wages, shorten hours or ensure employment, were illegal in the United States, as they had been under English common law . In England, criminal conspiracy laws were first held to include combinations in restraint of trade in the Court of Star Chamber early in the 17th century . The precedent was solidified in 1721 by R v Journeymen Tailors of Cambridge, which found tailors guilty of a conspiracy to raise wages . Leonard Levy went so far as to refer to Hunt as the "Magna Carta of American trade - unionism", illustrating its perceived standing as the major point of divergence in the American and English legal treatment of unions which, "removed the stigma of criminality from labor organizations". </P> <P> However, case law in America prior to Hunt was mixed . Pullis was actually unusual in strictly following the English common law and holding that a combination to raise wages was by itself illegal . More often combination cases prior to Hunt did not hold that unions were illegal per se, but rather found some other justification for a conviction . After Pullis in 1806, eighteen other prosecutions of laborers for conspiracies followed within the next three decades . However, only one such case, People v. Fisher, also held that a combination for the purpose of raising wages was illegal . Several other cases held that the methods used by the unions, rather than the unions themselves, were illegal . For instance, in People v. Melvin, cordwainers were again convicted of a conspiracy to raise wages . Unlike in Pullis, however, the court held that the combination's existence itself was not unlawful, but nevertheless reached a conviction because the cordwainers had refused to work for any master who paid lower wages, or with any laborer who accepted lower wages, than what the combination had stipulated . The court held that methods used to obtain higher wages would be unlawful if they were judged to be deleterious to the general welfare of the community . Commonwealth v. Morrow continued to refine this standard, stating that, "an agreement of two or more to the prejudice of the rights of others or of society" would be illegal . Another line of cases, led by Justice John Gibson of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania's decision in Commonwealth v. Carlisle, held that motive of the combination, rather than simply its existence, was the key to illegality . Gibson wrote, "Where the act is lawful for an individual, it can be the subject of a conspiracy, when done in concert, only where there is a direct intention that injury shall result from it". Still other courts rejected Pullis' rule of per se illegality in favor of a rule that asked whether the combination was a but - for cause of injury . Thus, as economist Edwin Witte stated, "The doctrine that a combination to raise wages is illegal was allowed to die by common consent . No leading case was required for its overthrow". Nevertheless, while Hunt was not the first case to hold that labor combinations were legal, it was the first to do so explicitly and in clear terms . </P> <P> The National Labor Union (NLU), founded in 1866, was the first national labor federation in the United States . It was dissolved in 1872 . </P> <P> The regional Order of the Knights of St. Crispin was founded in the northeast in 1867 and claimed 50,000 members by 1870, by far the largest union in the country . A closely associated union of women, the Daughters of St. Crispin, formed in 1870 . In 1879 the Knights formally admitted women, who by 1886 comprised 10% of the union's membership, but it was poorly organized and soon declined . They fought encroachments of machinery and unskilled labor on autonomy of skilled shoe workers . One provision in the Crispin constitution explicitly sought to limit the entry of "green hands" into the trade, but this failed because the new machines could be operated by semi-skilled workers and produce more shoes than hand sewing . </P>

In 1866 the first attempt in the united states at a union for workers was called the