Background
Richard Trevellick was born in May of 1830 on St. Mary's, one of the Scilly Islands.
Richard Trevellick was born in May of 1830 on St. Mary's, one of the Scilly Islands.
Like many boys of modest means, Trevellick was destined for manual labor. He was apprenticed to a joiner when he was fourteen but returned to farming three years later when his master died.
He became a ship's carpenter, worked in a Southampton shipyard, and later, as a seaman, visited Africa, India, China, and the Antipodes. As a youth he became known among his fellows as a debater, agitator, and advocate of the eight-hour day for workers. In Auckland, New Zealand, in 1852, and in Melbourne, Australia, in 1854, he attained prominence in controversies raging about this subject.
His wanderings brought him at length, in 1857, to New Orleans, La. , where he worked at his trade and became president of the ship carpenters' and caulkers' union, in which rôle he led a successful fight for the nine-hour day.
On the outbreak of the Civil War he settled in Detroit, and in 1864 became the first president of the Detroit Trades' Assembly. That same year he was a delegate to the Louisville Convention which set up the short-lived International Industrial Assembly of North America. In 1865 he was made president of the International Union of Ship Carpenters and Caulkers. He represented the Detroit Trades' Assembly and the Michigan Grand Eight Hours League at the congress of the National Labor Union in 1867, and in that year was elected a delegate to the International Workingmen's Association, meeting at Lausanne, Switzerland, but could not attend because of lack of funds. In 1869, 1871, and 1872 he served as president of the National Labor Union, the leading labor organization of the day. When, in 1872, it split into two sections, he attended the meetings of both factions. Later he carried on organization work for the Knights of Labor.
In 1867-68 he toured the West, making 270 addresses to labor audiences and organizing forty-seven unions. In 1869 he spent 169 days on the road, especially in the industrially backward South and the Pennsylvania anthracite fields. In 1870 he covered sixteen states.
He died in Detroit.
He was profoundly influenced by the evangelical brand of Methodism and its related social justice movements to which his family adhered.
Paying his own expenses, Trevellick in 1868 led one of the first successful labor lobbies, pushing through Congress an act instituting the eight-hour day for federal workmen, mechanics, and laborers. With William H. Sylvis and Andrew C. Cameron, he led an agitation against subsequent efforts to make proportionate wage reductions.
Trevellick also led the fight against the blacklist, from which he himself suffered seriously. He opposed the importation of Chinese labor under contract, and, in 1870 capitulated to the majority in the National Labor Union when it accepted the California idea of complete exclusion of Chinese. He espoused the unpopular idea of abolishing the color-line then generally drawn in labor unions against negro workers.
As a leader in the National Labor Union he advocated the relief of the working classes from capitalist exploitation. The collapse of organization after organization never undermined his belief in the general principle of organized labor struggle. With the decline in unionism under employers' attacks after the crisis of 1873, however, he fell under the influence of the Greenback movement, and thenceforth advocated relieving industrial depression by means of inflationary price-boosting schemes.
He helped establish the Greenback Party and was a delegate to the convention of 1876 which nominated Peter Cooper for the presidency; he also served as temporary chairman of the convention of 1878 at Toledo which formed the National Greenback Labor Party, and as chairman of the convention of 1880 which nominated James B. Weaver.
His energy was boundless. In every major industrial center of the country his black beard, fierce eyes, and ringing phrases were well known to workers.
He converted to temperance and vegetarianism.
He was married, and was survived by four of his five children.