Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor, officially the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was the largest American labor movement of the 19th century, claiming for a time nearly one million members. It operated in the United States as well in Canada, and had chapters also in Great Britain and Australia. Terence V. Powderly was one of the most notable leaders of the organization as he was the leader during its rapid rise and decline. The Knights of Labor promoted the social and cultural uplift of the worker, and demanded the eight-hour day. In some cases it acted as a labor union, negotiating with employers, but it was never well organized or funded. It was notable in its ambition to organize across lines of gender and race and in the inclusion of both skilled and unskilled labor. It grouped all workers, regardless of occupation, into a single body. After a rapid expansion in the mid-1880s, it suddenly lost its new members and succumbed to a jurisdictional battle with the new American Federation of Labor. The Knights of Labor had served as the first mass organization of the working class in the United States.
Founded by Uriah Stephens on December 28, 1869, the Knights of Labor reached 28,000 members in 1880, and 100,000 in 1884. By 1886, it had nearly 800,000 members: 20% of all workers. Its frail organizational structure could not cope as charges of failure, violence, allegations, and backlash following the 1886 Haymarket Square riot battered it. Most members abandoned the movement in 1886–1887, leaving at most 100,000 members in 1890. Many opted to join groups that helped to identify their specific needs instead of the KOL which addressed many different types of issues. The Panic of 1893, the largest economic depression in US history at the time, ended the Knights of Labor's importance. While their national headquarters closed in 1917, remnants of the Knights of Labor survived until 1949, when the group's last 50-member local dropped its affiliation.
Origins
In 1869, Uriah Smith Stephens, James L. Wright, and a small group of Philadelphia tailors founded a secret organization known as the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor. The collapse of the National Labor Union in 1873 left a vacuum for workers looking for organization. The Knights became better organized with a national vision when, in 1879, they replaced Stephens with Terence V. Powderly, who was just 30 years old at the time. The body became popular with trade unions and Pennsylvania coal miners during the economic depression of the mid-1870s, then it grew rapidly. The KOL was a diverse industrial union open to all workers. The leaders felt that it was best to have a versatile population in order to get points of view from all aspects. The Knights of Labor barred five groups from membership: bankers, land speculators, lawyers, liquor dealers and gamblers. Its members included low skilled workers, railroad workers, immigrants, and steel workers. This helped the workers to get an organizational identity. As one of the largest labor organizations in the nineteenth century, Knights wanted to classify the workers, as it was a time when large scale factories and industries were rapidly growing. Even though skilled workers were prioritized at the beginning 1880s, by the time of 1886, nearly a million workers were enrolled.As membership expanded, the Knights began to function more as a labor union and less as a secret organization. During the 1880s, the Knights of Labor played a massive role in independent and third-party movements. Local assemblies began to emphasize cooperative enterprises and initiate strikes to win concessions from employers. The Knights of Labor brought together workers of different religions, races, and genders and helped them all create a bond and unify all for the exact cause. The new leader, Powderly, opposed strikes as a "relic of barbarism", but the size and the diversity of the Knights afforded local assemblies a great deal of autonomy.
In 1882, the Knights ended their membership rituals and removed the words "Noble Order" from their name. This was intended to mollify the concerns of Catholic members and the bishops who wanted to avoid any resemblance to freemasonry. Though initially averse to strikes to advance their goals, the Knights did aid various strikes and boycotts. The Wabash Railroad strike in 1885 became successful thanks to the support of the railroad brotherhoods and communities along the railroad. The railroad communities were also able to successfully strike against one of the railroad financiers, Jay Gould. The strike included stopping track, yard, engine maintenance, the control or sabotage of equipment, and the occupation of shops and roundhouses. Gould met with Powderly and told him any strike that is against the Texas and Pacific would be considered as a contest between his order and the laws of land. This gave momentum to the Knights and membership surged. By 1886, the Knights had more than 700,000 members.
The Knights' primary demand was for the eight-hour workday. They also called for legislation to end child and convict labor as well as a graduated income tax. They also supported cooperatives. The only woman to hold office in the Knights of Labor, Leonora Barry, worked as an investigator. She described the horrific conditions in factories employing women and children. These reports made Barry the first person to collect national statistics on the American working woman. In 1887, 65,000 women joined the labor movement, which represented about 10 percent of the Knights' total membership.
Powderly and the Knights tried to avoid divisive political issues, but in the early 1880s, many Knights had become followers of Henry George's ideology known now as Georgism. In 1883, Powderly officially recommended George's book and announced his support of "single tax" on land values. During the New York mayoral election of 1886, Powderly was able to successfully push the organization towards the favor of Henry George. In 1886, the Knights became of the part of the short lived United Labor Party, an alliance of labor organizations formed in support of George's campaign in the 1886 New York City mayoral election.
The Knights of Labor helped to bring together many different types of people from all walks of life; for example, Catholic and Protestant Irish-born workers. The KOL appealed to them because they worked very closely with the Irish Land League. The Knights had a mixed record on inclusiveness and exclusiveness. They accepted women and African Americans and their employers as members and advocated the admission of blacks into local assemblies. However, the organization tolerated the segregation of assemblies in the South. Bankers, doctors, lawyers, stockholders, and liquor manufacturers were excluded because they were considered unproductive members of society. Asians were also excluded, and in November 1885, a branch of the Knights in Tacoma, Washington violently expelled the city's Chinese workers, who amounted to nearly a tenth of the overall city population at the time. Black membership stood at 60,000 in 1886, and there were 400 all-black locals, primarily in the south.
The Union Pacific Railroad came into conflict with the Knights. When the Knights in Wyoming refused to work more hours in 1885, the railroad hired Chinese workers as strikebreakers and to stir up racial animosity. The result was the Rock Springs massacre, that killed scores of Chinese workers, and drove the rest out of Wyoming. About 50 African-American sugar-cane laborers organized by the Knights went on strike and were murdered by strikebreakers in the 1887 Thibodaux massacre in Louisiana. The Knights strongly supported passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Contract Labor Law of 1885, as did many other labor groups, demonstrating the limits of their commitment to solidarity. While they claimed to not be "against immigration", their anti-Asian racism demonstrated the limits and inconsistency of their anti-racist platform.
Geography
Nearly 12,000 Knights Assemblies have been identified and mapped by historian Jonathan Garland. They were located in more than 5,600 cities and towns across every state and territory of the United States, with others in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. In the peak year, 1886, the Knights reported 729,677 members in 5,892 Local Assemblies. But Garland explains that "this was actually an undercount. The organization had trouble keeping track of local assemblies and membership in the midst of this growth period." The actual membership approached one million.In the first decade, 1869–1879, the organization was concentrated in coal mining towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Illinois. But in the early 1880s, craft assemblies and mixed assemblies appeared in big cities and small towns across the Midwest, then after 1885 the movement surged into the South and through the mining and railroad towns of the West.