This League was formed in August 1867 after meetings of Ezra Heywood with others. It unofficially affiliated to William Sylvis’ National Labor Union, one of the first post Civil War labor organizations. Heywood attended the second session as a delegate of the New York Congress of the National Labor Union on Sept. 21, 1868, in which land and money reformers predominated.
The account of the formation is narrated by Heywood in the Preface of Wm. B. Greene’s Mutual Banking, 1870 ed.