In frontier Illinois the problems of labor were posed by nature to everyone alike.

The "boss" was each man's will to survive; and the worker's real tasks were to provide himself with the elements of food, clothing, and shelter. There was no division of labor and little distinction between "management" and "labor." For the first generation following statehood in 1818, nearly every man farmed, hunted, and spent whatever time remained in idleness. He felt little need for the things he could not produce himself.

In the sparsely populated north fur-trading remained the important economic activity. Game abounded and the pelts of deer, bear, raccoon, muskrat, otter, beaver, cat, fox, and mink were sent from the Illinois River region to the little settlement of Chicago. Voyageurs or engages, halfbreeds whose French and Indian ancestors roamed the wilderness for more than a century before, brought the peltry to collection points. Forcing loaded canoes or Mackinac boats over the water and portaging around falls or rapids was physically debilitating, and life expectancy was short.

In the more populated south the lack of transportation facilities and of a laboring class were marked. Because overland travel was slow and hazardous, settlers built cabins along the rivers where they could benefit from the steamboat traffic just beginning in 1818. The most logical solution to the labor shortage was the importation of worker, from the East. This was a slow process; few were attracted by frontier conditions, and as soon as men arrived they tended to seek independence by taking up cheap land. Skilled workers were scarce indeed.

A typical plea in the Illinois Intelligencer of 1818 read "Mechanics of every description are much wanted at Edwardsville more particularly the following, "a Taylor, Shoemaker, Waggon Maker, Hatter, Saddler, Tanner and Courier. From four to six Carpenters and Joiners, and from four to six ax-men, and from six to eight farming labourers will find immediate employment and good wages."

Salt works in Gallatin County and elsewhere were operated primarily by slaves from the surrounding areas, their labor in the salines authorized by the territorial legislature in 1814. Slavery was above all a system of labor. Its advocates pressed for its establishment in Illinois as one way to solve the labor shortage. The constitution of 1818 prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude but permitted an indenture system.

Until the 1830s Illinois received its population from neighboring states, but in that decade increasing numbers of Germans, Irish and Scandinavians began to arrive. Miners found work in the lead lines of Galena, still a boisterous camp in the wilderness of the '20s and '30s. Many laborers were required for the Illinois and Michigan Canal, begun in 1836 to connect the Illinois River with Lake Michigan. The Irish particularly settled in large groups along the canal, populating Joliet, Peru, LaSalle, and the adjoining counties.

Illinois continued to grow, and by 1850 the state had a population of some 851,470 with Chicago as its boom city of 29,963. The foundation for future growth had been laid by the muscle and sweat of its first generation of workers toiling on pioneer farms, on the canal, in the salt works, in the lead mines of Galena, and in the embryo industries of a frontier economy.

Manufacturing was still in the shop or handicraft stage, closely related to the pioneer home. The 200-odd manufacturing concerns in Chicago were small, employing some 1400 men, 250 of them in the meat-packing industry. They were apprentices, journeymen, and masters of an earlier age.

Employer and employee labored side by side, preventing all but periodic labor consciousness. Yet dissatisfaction over long hours, unhealthful conditions, stringent liquor regulations, and heartless foremen had already manifested itself on several occasions. The growth of cities and manufacturing awaited the railroads, and organized labor as we know it today awaited those developments.