Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor (Contributions in Labor Studies)

GRAND MASTER WORKMAN: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor

Craig Phelan

Greenwood Press

Grand Master Workman

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GRAND MASTER WORKMAN Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor Craig Phelan

Contributions in Labor Studies, Number 55

Greenwood Press Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Phelan, Craig, 1958– Grand Master Workman : Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor / Craig Phelan. p. cm.—(Contributions in labor studies, ISSN 0886–8239) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–30948–5 (alk. paper) 1. Powderly, Terence Vincent, 1849–1924. 2. Knights of Labor— History. 3. Labor unions—United States—History. 4. Labor movement—United States—History. 5. Radicalism—United States— History. I. Title. II. Series. HD8055.K7P47 2000 331.88'092 [B]—dc21 99–16145 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright
2000 by Craig Phelan All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99–16145 ISBN: 0–313–30948–5 ISSN: 0886–8239 First published in 2000 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America TM

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright Acknowledgment The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for the use of the following material: Excerpts from the Terence Vincent Powderly Papers are reprinted by permission of the Catholic University of America.

In loving memory of Roy Phelan and Darwin Dowling

Contents Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

1

A Child of Industrial America: January 1849– September 1879

11

Building a National Movement: September 1879– September 1881

47

Growth and Its Discontents: September 1881– September 1883

87

Chapter 4

A Multiplicity of Goals: September 1883–September 1885

129

Chapter 5

The Great Upheaval: September 1885–September 1888

171

Chapter 6

Failure of a Dream: September 1888–June 1924

227

Conclusion

271

Selected Bibliography

279

Index

289

Introduction Terence Powderly was the first American working-class hero of national stature. As Grand Master Workman of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, he presided over the most significant and ambitious labor organization of the Gilded Age during its most critical period (1879–1893). Less than seven years after assuming office, at a time when employers and the public regarded labor associations with contempt, he helped to transform a weak and secretive body of less than 10,000 members into a powerful, public movement that effectively challenged corporate control at the workplace and the hegemony of the two major parties at the polls. His clarion call for the solidarity of all who toiled helped to rally more than three-quarters of a million workers from every conceivable background—skilled and unskilled, black and white, male and female, immigrant and native-born—to the banner of Knighthood in 1886. No other American labor leader before or since has even approached the level of respect and adulation accorded Powderly. “I have never seen or heard you but once,” gushed a Nashville furniture worker in a typical expression of unbridled admiration, “but I fell in love with you with a love that will burn till I die.” Gilded Age working people of all descriptions wrote poems, songs, and plays in his honor, hung his portrait in their homes and in their assembly halls, greeted his arrival in their communities as a triumphal celebration, and named their sons, their assemblies, and even their towns after him. In the eyes of his many followers, Powderly epitomized the ideals of the movement he led— courage, manliness, honor, and unswerving dedication to the principle of soli-

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darity. He symbolized the promise of the Knights to combat the pernicious impact of industrial capitalism and to remake the nation along lines defined by workers themselves rather than corporate capitalists. Most agreed with the Indiana telegrapher who called him “our Moses,” the man chosen by working people to “lead us through this ‘Valley of the Shadow’ of cursed rock-ridden monopoly and wage slavery.”1 His immense popularity rested in large part on an ability to articulate, forcefully and eloquently, the founding philosophy of the Knights. The Knights held that the periodic depressions and mass unemployment on a scale unknown before the Civil War, the relentless efforts of employers to assume unilateral control over the labor process, and the increasing concentration of economic power in the hands of monopolists—all undermined the artisans’ independent status by reducing them to “wage slaves.” Unless checked, capital concentration would soon undermine the promise of the republic itself. Rather than a glorious expression of equal rights, equal opportunity, and vigilant citizenry, America would become a land in which the degraded and pauperized masses were ruled by a handful of economic elites. In short, Powderly and the Knights tried to give voice to the righteous indignation of working people as industrialization convulsed their lives and their nation. Challenging corporate power, Powderly argued, required new strategies and tactics. The methods of the past—organization of skilled workers along trade lines and striking for both higher wages and the maintenance of traditional rights at the workplace—were by themselves incapable of redressing grievances. The mass of unskilled workers must be brought into the fold, common problems facing all workers identified, and appropriate strategies hashed out through rational discussion in democratic fashion. Once such a grand “army of the discontented”2 was assembled, informed, disciplined, and committed to a course of action, he believed, no power could resist it. The ideals of America’s revolutionary heritage would at last be safeguarded and made real. But Powderly understood all too well that working-class resistance rarely proceeded along such rational lines. Indeed, his career and that of the Knights were both made and unmade by the two greatest paroxysms of industrial discontent in the nineteenth century. Although founded in 1869, the Knights only became a national organization in the wake of the great railroad strikes of 1877, when the accumulated animosities of the depression erupted in the most ferocious display of spontaneous strike action the world had yet seen. In a dozen cities across the nation, railroad workers, miners, and many other wage-earners fought corporations, the state militia, and at times even federal troops. The upsurge was remarkable, but the resulting loss of property and life weakened the labor movement for years by convincing employers, politicians, and mainstream journalists that a sinister, alien ideology lay behind the disturbances. All labor organizations were tarred with the brush of radical un-Americanism. In Scranton, Pennsylvania, the imposition of martial law and the destruction of

Introduction

3

unions led workers to express their anger through the ballot, and in February 1878 they elected Terence Powderly to the first of his three terms as mayor. The peak years of the Knights of Labor coincided with an even more impressive demonstration of worker militancy, the Great Upheaval of 1885–1887, when an unparalleled wave of strikes, boycotts, and local labor party activity washed over the nation. Although recognizing that this outpouring of frustration had swelled the ranks of the Order and made it a force to be reckoned with, Powderly rightly worried that the Knights were still too weak and divided among themselves to unify their attack and strike a decisive blow. With frightened employers and politicians combining for a powerful counteroffensive, Powderly did his best to appease the forces of repression and maintain unity and discipline within the organization. But events were far beyond the control of any one man. Although the Order was crushed soon thereafter by industrialists and statesmen fearful of the growing might of his forces, Powderly’s vision lingered for years as a vivid reminder of the unlimited possibilities inherent in an all-inclusive workers’ crusade for empowerment. Although Powderly’s followers regarded him as a genuine and progressive labor leader valiantly struggling to create working-class solidarity, historians have painted a dramatically different portrait. Although agreeing on little else, virtually all historians insist that Powderly is unworthy of our respect and attention. The first professional labor historians, writing in the early twentieth century, championed the largely apolitical, conservative craft unionism of the then dominant American Federation of Labor (AFL). Powderly and the Knights, in their view, represented the last gasp of the utopian traditions of the antebellum years, which were unsuited to the economic realities of the Gilded Age. Plagued by meddling middle-class cranks, hamstrung by its attraction to politics, the Order was merely “a bushwhacking annoyance on the heels of its successor,” the AFL. Powderly himself was “foreign to the spirit of wage-consciousness,” lacked “the aggressive qualifications required for a successful leader,” and possessed an undue sensitivity to public opinion that consistently led him to “overlook the sentiments of the masses whom he led.”3 For decades after his death in 1924, historians continued to vilify both Powderly and the Knights. He was “a windbag” who “acted more like Queen Victoria” than a labor leader, observed Norman Ware in 1929. “Sensitive and vain,” and bloated with “intellectual arrogance,” Powderly “always talked big, but his actions, unless some personal slight was involved, never matched his words.” In 1955, Philip Foner blasted Powderly’s “rule or ruin” leadership and accused him of being “more concerned with . . . earning applause from employers and their allies than in gaining basic improvements for the workers.” And Gerald Grob, in his influential 1961 study, found in Powderly a leader “endowed with an exaggerated notion of his own abilities,” who “frequently manifested a lack of adaptability” and “did little more than issue complaint after complaint.”4 In the early 1980s, scholarly opinion on the Order underwent a remarkable

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Grand Master Workman

transformation. Rather than a remnant of antebellum reform, the Order was at last recognized as an authentic working-class organization based on a compelling critique of industrial capitalism. During its heyday in the mid-1880s, the Knights aggressively challenged existing social relations by providing, as Susan Levine put it, a “counter-vision of cooperation, equality, and social responsibility.” Its “movement culture” provided an effective mechanism to establish real and lasting solidarity among all who toiled. And when it was destroyed, the American labor movement became, for the first time, weaker and more timid than its European counterparts. As Kim Voss explains, “[t]he failure of the Knights marks the moment when, from a comparative perspective, the American labor movement began to look exceptional.”5 Although modern researchers have rewritten the history of the Order, they continue to castigate Powderly’s attitudes and actions in much the same language as the “old” labor historians. “Self-centered and self-glorifying,” Powderly was an antistrike zealot, “indifferent to the plight of striking members,” which “provoked astonishment and then outrage among strikers” and undermined solidarity.6 His “small-town moralism” contrasted with the increasingly strident demands of an urban proletariat, thus paving the way for factional disputes that helped to cripple the Order.7 When it came to strikes, boycotts, political action, or any other form of protest, modern scholars agree that “Powderly was a vacillating, often ineffectual leader, who was more timid and less militant than many of his members.”8 No other labor leader elicits such unanimous hostility. How are we to reconcile the generally positive assessment of contemporaries with the contempt of historians? That Progressive Era historians, so enamored by the AFL, should see little merit in the Knights or its leader is hardly surprising. Nor is it surprising that Norman Ware found fault with the Grand Master Workman’s leadership. Without access to the voluminous Powderly Papers, he was forced to rely on the jaundiced views of John W. Hayes, a long-time Powderly booster who had turned against his mentor in the early 1890s and played a key role in his 1893 overthrow. It is remarkable that modern scholars, who hold the Order in such high regard and challenge their predecessors on every score, have contented themselves with trumpeting the criticisms of the past. In part Powderly has been an accidental casualty of the current historical emphasis on community. Every major study of the Knights in the past two decades has centered on one or more cities and towns.9 The shift in perspective from national to local affairs was based on the recognition that, as Daniel J. Walkowitz put it, “the local community constituted the main arena of intellectual, social, and political life” for wage workers in the late nineteenth century.10 As a result, we now have a far more accurate understanding of how the Knights functioned in particular locales. Gregory Kealey and Bryan Palmer’s groundbreaking analysis of Knights in Ontario, Leon Fink’s superlative study of the Knights’ political behavior in five separate communities, Richard Oestreicher’s masterful examination of Detroit Knights, Peter Rachleff’s account of the

Introduction

5

Knights’ struggle to overcome racial divisions in Richmond, Susan Levine’s discussion of gender and its meaning for Knighthood in Yonkers, and numerous other works—all demonstrate the power of the community study as a methodological tool for analyzing the Order.11 With their eyes fixed on local affairs, community scholars have paid scant attention to Powderly, but given their enormous contributions to our knowledge of class formation in the Gilded Age, any slight to the historical reputation of one man seems a minor point at best. Yet the exclusive focus on community has left a larger hole in our knowledge. Our appreciation of the Knights as a national institution has progressed little since 1929. Most of our ideas regarding Powderly and other national leaders, the complex and shifting relationship between the leadership and rank and file, the key debates at General Assemblies (GAs) and General Executive Board (GEB) meetings, the establishment and implementation of national policies, the structural relationship between locals, districts, the national office and other administrative bodies, the intrigues and factionalism that plagued the Order from the outset, and the internal reasons for success or ultimate decline—indeed every possible line of inquiry regarding the first undeniably significant national working-class institution—are either based on old and often unreliable texts, extrapolations from local studies, or mere speculation. So thorough is our ignorance of the Order as a national institution that all scholars have accepted the myth that a mysterious group of New York radicals and their allies across the country (known as the Home Club) captured a majority of the Order’s decision-making posts at the Cleveland GA in June 1886 and did not relinquish control for two years.12 Even more significantly, lack of knowledge has led to interpretive inconsistencies. Community scholars contend that the Order was a loose collection of discrete local movements with only the weakest ties to the national organization. Powderly is thus given little credit for membership growth or gains made in the early years. But many of these same scholars depend heavily on Powderly as their bogey man when looking for internal explanations of the Order’s subsequent collapse. He emerges as a twodimensional ogre capable of destroying that which he had no hand in creating: His supposed failure to sustain strikes quickly discouraged new recruits; his refusal to speak out for the men accused of the Haymarket bombing split the movement at all levels; and his supposed abhorrence of trade unionism led to the defection of skilled workers and the creation of the rival AFL. When putting the finishing touches on his autobiography in 1920, Powderly reflected on the contrast between hero-worshiping members and hostile historians. “Some of my friends saw in me a demi-god,” while enemies at the time and historians ever since “saw only a demon . . . I was not good enough to be the former or bad enough to be the latter.” Progressive Era historians “attributed to me certain motives, ambitions, and intentions that I never dreamed of,” and they either “endowed me with a firmness I never possessed or a weakness most unparalleled.” Although an avid reader of history himself, the gulf between his memories and the accounts of scholars left him skeptical of the historian’s ability

6

Grand Master Workman

to discover and record the truth: “It does not do, therefore, to take the historian too seriously; at best he but weaves the warp of fancy into the woof of fact and gives us the web called history.”13 This slim volume offers a reappraisal of Powderly’s leadership by exploring the “community” in which he operated—the Order’s ever-changing array of grand officers, executive board members, district chiefs, heads of factions, cooperative enthusiasts, political aspirants, trade union ideologues, labor journalists, and GA delegates. The fascinating story of this loosely structured national leadership has never been told, yet without it there is no context for Powderly’s pronouncements and actions, no basis to judge what was possible and what was necessary. Only when we understand the complexity of his world, the incredible diversity of the pressures he faced, and the bases and limitations of his authority can we begin to reevaluate both his leadership and the potential of the organization as a national movement. Once placed in proper context, Powderly appears far different from the man historians describe. It is my contention that Powderly, despite many shortcomings, possessed the makings of a great leader. A superlative orator, a true believer who devoted his boundless energies to the cause, Powderly was also one of the most charismatic men of his day. His personal magnetism, his message of redemption, and his growing reputation were often so powerful that his very presence in a community could help to spark an explosion of organizational activity. He and other national leaders played a significant role in the expansion of the Knights, and it was in part because of their efforts that the Order became the organizational vehicle of the working class during the Great Upheaval. Even more importantly, Powderly sought to manage the Order as the embryo of the cooperative commonwealth he envisioned. In most instances, he dedicated himself to the twin principles of solidarity and democracy. Remarkably sensitive to the members’ desire to shape their own destiny without excessive interference, he rarely intervened in local or district affairs without an appeal for assistance. Indeed, Powderly’s great hope was that the diverse membership, by sharing their experiences on a wide number of issues, would eventually agree on strategies that the majority could accept. Programs of action would emerge from the bottom up rather than the top down. “EDUCATE yourself as to what you want,” he impressed on the membership, and he promised to fight tooth and nail for whatever policies the majority adopted.14 Despite its attractiveness, democratic leadership all but precluded the centralization of authority necessary to ensure the Order’s survival in a hostile environment. The very basis of the Knights’ popularity—community control— engendered a lack of trust in any central authority, including one of the members’ own making. Like the Order’s philosophy, such fears stemmed from America’s revolutionary heritage, and they denied the movement national unity of purpose, a bureaucratic apparatus capable of imposing discipline and adherence to law, a powerful treasury, and a clear chain of command that could squelch

Introduction

7

debilitating internal dissent. When class war raged during the Great Upheaval, the weak, fractured, and impoverished Order was no match for the powerful combination of forces arrayed against it. The demise of the Knights thus underscored the inherent tensions between the appeal of democracy and the necessity for discipline and unity of purpose in times of crisis. The successes and ultimate failure of Powderly’s democratic approach to building strength and solidarity afford a fresh perspective on the principal dilemma of Gilded Age labor historiography. Ironically, the wealth of knowledge gleaned from the community study has led to something of an impasse. Workers’ experience with Knighthood, it seems, varied radically from city to city, even neighborhood to neighborhood, depending on the specific manufacturing base, job market, ethnic and religious mix of the working-class population, disposition of employers, strength of local political machines, and a whole host of other variables. Even as community studies continue to be written, historians have searched for what is becoming the Holy Grail of labor history—synthesis—the identification of common patterns in the endless variety of local experiences. Like modern-day scholars, Powderly also searched for synthesis, a way to bind together the disparate forces under his command. That he ultimately failed to unify Knighthood through democratic means reveals not poor leadership but rather the virtual impossibility of harmonizing the cacophonous voices of a working class fractured along the lines of skill, gender, race, ethnicity, and geographic parochialism. His failure begs the question of whether democracy in a heterogenous movement can ever give rise to effective solidarity. The story of Powderly and the national leadership also has relevance for those concerned with the recent indications of revival in the American labor movement. When 1,500 labor activists and scholars gathered in October 1996 for Columbia University’s “Teach-in with the Labor Movement,” the resulting diversity of opinions and programs of action, the complexity of the issues, and the expectation that labor could lead the way toward the “social reconstruction of America”—all sounded very much like a session of the GA more than a century earlier. Those such as Betty Friedan who called for a labor movement that would “revitalize our vision of the common good” by emphasizing “people’s lives” rather than the “corporate bottom line,” those such as Manning Marable who pleaded for a movement that would “address class and racial issues simultaneously,” those such as Jose´ La Luz who pressed for workers’ education as a means of empowering the rank and file, and those such as Cornel West who envisioned a labor movement that would serve as a “cultural space for people who care about you”—all had their counterparts in the Knights.15 How to build such an all-inclusive, all-encompassing movement, one that meshed local priorities and national interests, one that addressed both cultural and material concerns, was exactly the quandary facing Powderly and other national leaders. Their story is an object lesson in the promise and pitfalls of creating true labor solidarity.

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Grand Master Workman

NOTES 1. Sophus Nelson to Terence Vincent Powderly (hereinafter TVP), August 26, 1885; L. P. Custer to TVP, July 16, 1886, Terence Vincent Powderly Papers (hereinafter cited as PP). 2. TVP, “The Army of the Discontented,” North American Review (April 1885): pp. 369–377. 3. John R. Commons, et al., A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1909–1911), vol. 9, p. 51; John R. Commons, et al., History of Labour in the United States (New York, 1918), vol. 2, pp. 347, 420. Selig Perlman was the author of the second volume. 4. Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895 (New York, 1929), pp. xvi, 85–87; Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, (New York, 1955), vol. 2, pp. 168–169; Gerald Grob, Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900 (Evanston, Ill., 1961), pp. 135–136. 5. Susan Levine, Labor’s True Woman: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age (Philadelphia, 1984), p. 83; on the Knight’s movement culture, see Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989), chapter 5; Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1993), p. 235. 6. Richard Oestreicher, “Terence Powderly, the Knights of Labor, and Artisinal Republicanism,” in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, eds., Labor Leaders in America (Urbana, 1987), p. 52. 7. Robert Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club: The Knights of Labor Joust among Themselves,” Labor History 34, No. 1 (Winter 1993): 57. 8. Voss, Making of American Exceptionalism, p. 239. 9. The sole exception is Robert Weir, Beyond Labor’s Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor (University Park, Pa., 1996), an intriguing analysis of the Order’s material and literary culture. 10. Daniel J. Walkowitz, Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton-Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855–1884 (Urbana, 1978), p. 13. 11. Gregory S. Kealey and Bryan D. Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900 (New York, 1982); Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983); Richard Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900 (Urbana, 1986); Peter Rachleff, Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890 (Philadelphia, 1984); Susan Levine, Labor’s True Woman. See also, among numerous others, Steven Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati (New York, 1985); David Brundage, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver’s Organized Workers, 1878–1905 (Urbana, 1994); Richard Schneirov, “The Knights of Labor in the Chicago Labor Movement and in Municipal Politics, 1877–1887,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, 1984; and Judith Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing, and Change: The Knights of Labor in Philadelphia, 1869–1890,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1985. 12. For traditional accounts of the Home Club, see Ware, Labor Movement in the United States, pp. 103–112; Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, pp.

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78–79, 132, 134, 136, 138, 139; Grob, Workers and Utopia, pp. 113, 115–116, 136; Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club,” pp. 84–113. I seek to set the record straight in my “The Warp of Fancy: The Knights of Labor and the Home Club Takeover Myth,” Labor History 40 (Summer 1999): 283–299. 13. Harry J. Carman, Henry David, and Paul N. Guthrie, eds., The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York, 1940), pp. 3–4, 102. 14. Journal of United Labor, August 15, 1880. 15. Steven Fraser and Joshua Freeman, eds., Audacious Democracy: Labor, Intellectuals, and the Social Reconstruction of America (Boston, 1997). Friedan’s quote is found on p. 31; Marable, p. 210; West, p. 266.

Chapter 1

A Child of Industrial America: January 1849–September 1879 Terence Powderly was an unlikely candidate for the role of working-class hero. Born on January 22, 1849, he was the eleventh of twelve children of Irish Catholic immigrants when anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment was rife; he was raised in a remote and grimy company town (Carbondale) in the anthracite fields of northeast Pennsylvania, a town that was already in decline by the time he was old enough to work; and when it came to health and physique, he was, as he later admitted, the “shake of the bag.” Scrawny and sickly, young Terry was also deaf in one ear as a result of scarlet fever, afflicted with a variety of throat and respiratory ailments, and cursed by severe nearsightedness that was not corrected until he obtained his first pair of glasses at age eighteen. Incompetent at sports, invariably attired in preposterously oversized hand-me-downs, and bookish by nature, Powderly often had to fend off local toughs who performed the age-old ritual of identifying and crucifying the weakling.1 Yet these disadvantages were offset by two blessings—keen intelligence and a close-knit, supportive family. “I was born of poor but Irish parents,” he recalled, “and that made up for a whole lot.”2 From his father, who toiled for fifteen years as a mine laborer before becoming a mine superintendent and later a skilled mechanic, he inherited a rigorous work ethic and the fervent belief that in America success was guaranteed to those prepared to struggle and sacrifice.3 From his five older brothers, respected mechanics who often sat before the coal fire in the evenings engrossed in books, he developed a passion for reading and an appreciation of self-education as a means to advancement. From his mother,

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Grand Master Workman

“a pronounced abolitionist” with whom he enjoyed an especially close relationship, he learned tolerance and sympathy for those less fortunate. He sharpened his verbal skills by participating in family debates, cultivated an abundance of wit and charm, became the golden boy of his family circle, and never doubted that he had the talent and drive to make a name for himself.4 Like his brothers, Powderly’s formal education was limited to that received in the “common school” located in the basement of the church that his father had helped to build.5 Leaving school at age thirteen, he began his first job for the Delaware and Hudson Company (D&H), a New York–controlled coal, canal, and railroad firm that had built the town of Carbondale in the late 1820s and dominated it thereafter. Not only did the D&H own all the coal land and most of the commercial property, it also served as virtually the only employer in town through its “linkage industries” related to coal production, including machine and car shops to make engines and railroad cars, repair and paint shops, and an iron foundry and sawmill to produce rails and mine shafts.6 His father had served the company dutifully from the very beginning, and through his contacts he provided his sons with an enormous advantage—the chance to avoid the pits and become machinists, the aristocrats of the working class. After three years of proving his fitness and loyalty to the D&H by working as switch tender, car examiner, car repairer, and finally brakeman on its railroads, Powderly, at age seventeen, began his three-year machinist apprenticeship. His instructor was Scots-born James Dickson, master mechanic for all the D&H shops. Like Powderly’s father, Dickson had arrived in the town’s early years, ascended the D&H ladder, and instilled in his sons, Thomas and George, the will to succeed. By the time Terry started his apprenticeship, Thomas and George owned a lucrative industrial enterprise of their own in nearby Scranton (the Dickson Manufacturing Company) and were well on their way to becoming two of the wealthiest men in the entire region. This was the kind of tangible and material success Powderly’s father had in mind for his youngest son. Powderly himself was by no means averse to this prospect, but it competed with other dreams, such as becoming a novelist or poet. Thus Powderly took up his trade convinced that an even brighter future awaited him. “I had higher aspirations,” he wrote later, “but that would do for a starter.”7 He developed a love-hate relationship with both his apprenticeship and “old Dickson.” On the one hand, he moaned about the low pay (he received just $675 for the entire three years), he chafed under the harsh discipline imposed by the master mechanic, and the dust and iron filings in the shop aggravated his already labored breathing and weak eyesight. Several months before completion, he even tried to break the contract. “Had another blow with old Dickson,” he scrawled in his diary. “Told him to give me my time (card) but he didn’t.” On the other hand, he took great pride in his growing knowledge of all aspects of the work, came to develop both respect and affection for his boss, and later railed against the passing away of an apprenticeship program that had maintained the best traditions of craftsmanship. On August 1, 1869, he com-

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pleted his program and began his career as a journeyman, but the twenty-yearold did not rejoice. An ongoing miners’ strike had forced the D&H to cut back all its operations. Powderly was dismissed on August 4, his first lesson in both the interdependency of industrial activity and the often unseen consequences of strike action.8 Getting ahead, or simply getting a job, now meant getting out of Carbondale, which had begun to stagnate as early as 1860 and by 1870 was clearly dwarfed by the new industrial center of northern anthracite, Scranton. Ironically, Carbondale declined for the very reason it arose. The D&H provided jobs and avenues of mobility for a handful of early settlers such as Powderly’s father and instructor, but by controlling all economic life in the town, the company soon drove away many would-be entrepreneurs. As early as the mid-1850s, Carbondale began losing its most ambitious men to Scranton, a new city only sixteen miles away, where they could take advantage of business opportunities beyond the control of the D&H. A dozen or so talented entrepreneurs joined Thomas and George Dickson, and thousands of workers followed in their wake to take up the jobs these and other men created. Whereas Carbondale’s population rose from 5,000 to 6,400 between 1850 and 1870, in those same years Scranton’s climbed spectacularly from 1,000 to 35,000.9 In December 1869, Powderly moved to Scranton, where he remained for the next twenty-eight years. It was an especially ugly industrial city, dominated by the blast furnaces and steel and iron mills of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company (LIC) and the coal depots and railroad shops and yards of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western (DLW) Railroad. The city’s founding family, headed by Colonel George Scranton, had established the LIC in the 1840s by supplying rails for the Erie Railroad and formed the DLW Railroad a decade later to provide direct rail access to New York City. The constant need for capital, however, led the Colonel to seek outside investors, and by 1870, both firms were controlled by interlocking directorates headquartered in New York. The Scranton clan nevertheless retained their local dominance through real estate and banking interests and ownership of the city’s gas and water companies. One of the colonel’s nephews, William (often referred to as “King” Scranton), served as general manager of the LIC in the 1870s before starting his own rival steel company in 1880, and another, Joseph, owned the city’s leading newspaper and was the principal force behind the local Republican party.10 James Dickson knew William Scranton through his sons, whose Dickson Manufacturing Company made and repaired some of the engines for the DLW Railroad, and young Powderly took advantage of this connection by appealing directly to Scranton for a job.11 On December 16, he began work as a machinist repairing engines for the DLW, a job he loved dearly and held for nearly four years. Residing in a boardinghouse in the largely Welsh Hyde Park section, he rose at six o’clock every day except Sunday, which gave him ample time to bathe, eat, and walk to the shop before the seven o’clock bell. The job itself paid well (he averaged $2.50 per day) and proved enormously satisfying. Each

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engine was a unique technical masterpiece, and each challenged his budding expertise. His diary is replete with the names of the engines and the thought and labor required to service them, and his fascination with all aspects of the railroad engine—“that beautiful piece of machinery stands on the track almost a thing of life”—continued throughout his life. “I never saw the wheels turn under an engine I built without experiencing a feeling of pride,” he noted in his autobiography. “It was my work.”12 Powderly also enjoyed the shop floor culture. John “Smitty” Goodwin, John Heenan, and all the “boys” in the shop were bound by membership in a skilled fraternity, a camaraderie reinforced by practical jokes and friendly insults. Powderly stuck pins in his friends’ behinds, joked with Protestants by suggesting that they were on the Molly Maguires’s death list, and along with others swiped paintbrushes and other small items from the shop. Although all the boys were on good terms with the assistant master mechanic, William Walsh, all joined hands to resist the impositions of the imperious Walter Dawson, the master mechanic. Dawson earned the ire of Powderly and others by, at one time or another, attempting to shorten the lunch break from one hour to thirty minutes, introduce an eight-hour day without a raise in pay, and make his employees account for every minute of their time in the shop. Collectively “dodging Dawson” and negating his various plans became an integral part of Powderly’s work experience. He joined the machinists’ union in 1871, and he had little time for those who unhesitatingly sided with management. Among the “rules” he learned at the DLW, one became a cornerstone of his labor leadership: “Beware of the man who does not possess the confidence of his shop mates.”13 Away from work, Powderly was in many ways a typical, fun-loving youth. Although he remained thin and prone to illness, he was no longer the emaciated adolescent and object of ridicule. His physical development built confidence in his social skills, and he gave free reign to his natural charm and humor, which made him a favorite among his increasingly wide circle of friends. His typical Saturday afternoon might include conversing with pals at the barbershop or playing cards at the saloon, and at night he might attend a dance or a party and get up to some harmless mischief that could keep him out until early in the morning. Soon after arriving in Scranton he met Hannah Dever, the daughter of a Scranton mine worker. Powderly was soon smitten, and he filled a journal with gushing love poetry in her honor. He became a fixture in the Dever’s house and counted Hannah’s brothers, Johnny and Ed, among his closest friends. Terry and Hannah tied the knot on September 19, 1872, publicly declaring a love for each other that would last until her death nearly thirty-five years later.14 In other ways, Powderly was extraordinary. His boundless, almost manic energy, his ability to master almost any task, and his unending quest to improve himself all set him apart from his peers. “Onward and Upward”—he wrote these words twice in his diary at the end of 1870, and beside them he drew crude portraits of himself peering into the distance. The words and drawings served as reminders of the virtually limitless opportunities awaiting him if he continued

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to strengthen his mind, body, and character. With a few of his shop mates he attended night school in his Hyde Park neighborhood, and he steeped himself in the books and manuals relevant to his trade. But self-improvement meant developing all his talents, and to this end, he learned how to sketch and paint, became proficient on the piano, accordion, and flute (even writing his own music), read an astonishing number of novels, history books, and magazines, kept alive his childhood dream of becoming a writer by practicing his poetry and prose, and honed his considerable verbal abilities by participating in a debating society.15 Self-improvement also meant avoiding potentially harmful activities and associations. “Have lived one year out of Carbondale,” he wrote in his diary. Although he had “been out later nights,” he was “never once in bad company” and “never touch(ed) a drop of intoxicating beverages.” Frequenting saloons for meals and chats did not disturb him, nor did he object when friends drank in his presence, but he regarded alcohol as a waste of both time and money and a fundamental breach of self-discipline. He even joined a local Catholic temperance organization, the Father Matthew Total Abstinence and Benevolent Union. Along with thousands of other industrial craftsmen across the nation, young Powderly came to regard alcohol as one of many pitfalls on the road to success, “a menace to health and steady income.”16 Even a dedicated and multitalented young man could not expect success to come knocking on his door, and Powderly made certain that the city’s “best men” took notice of him. Although the vast majority of America’s Irish, including his father, were Democrats, Powderly became an active Republican. In part this reflected his mother’s influence, for she was outspoken in her support for the party of the Emancipation Proclamation, but it also revealed an eagerness to identify himself with Joseph Scranton and those who controlled both the city and county government. Throwing himself into the 1872 presidential campaign, Powderly urged the creation of a local U. S. Grant Club and wrote a poem for the city’s leading daily newspaper accusing Grant’s opponent, Horace Greeley, of an anti-Irish bias. More directly, Powderly cultivated friendly relations with the Scranton brothers, whom he often met in the street or in a shop. Each chance meeting was deemed worthy of comment in his diary, and he was especially proud on those occasions when William Scranton treated him with respect, such as when he introduced him to his daughter or offered him the barber’s chair when they arrived in the shop at the same time.17 In 1873, Powderly was an accomplished twenty-four-year-old. Highly intelligent and articulate, well read and well connected, and a leader in virtually every group he had joined, he could well justify his confidence that he would some day take his place among the city’s elite. The one possible blemish on his resume was his Irish Catholicism, which he neither abandoned nor called attention to, but his most abiding faith was placed in America’s celebrated meritocracy, its promise of success for those possessing talent, pluck, and moral fiber. He certainly did not reckon on the financial panic that gripped Wall Street in

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September of that year, a panic that quickly engulfed the nation in a ferocious depression. Powderly not only lost his job, he lost his faith. Denied the success due him, he began to reassess the unexamined assumptions that had guided him since childhood. And with his characteristic exuberance, he threw himself into new associations of similarly aggrieved working people, associations that not only helped him to make sense of his plight but also offered new avenues to push “Onward and Upward.” Controlled as they were by New York investors, Scranton firms quickly retrenched when the panic hit. Almost immediately the DLW Railroad imposed wage cuts and layoffs, and on the afternoon of Saturday, October 11, management informed Powderly of his dismissal. Although he complained to master mechanic Walter Dawson, he no doubt believed the setback was only temporary. That evening he “went to town with my little darling,” but on Monday he picked up his tools, and by Tuesday he began what proved to be a vain search for work. By early November, he and Hannah were forced to vacate their apartment and move in with her parents. He stayed in his room all that evening and resolved that, if necessary, he would travel to obtain work. By the end of December, his resolve was tested when the Dickson Manufacturing Company offered him a job in its shop at Wilkes-Barre, a city twenty-five miles away. His profound ambivalence—the relief of earning money again and the pain of separation from his beloved—lasted but a short spell. After just two months, the axe fell again.18 “Things look very black,” he moaned in late March 1874, but things were about to get worse. As he tried to keep busy by reading a biography of Napoleon and helping his mother-in-law hang wallpaper, Johnny and Ed Dever came home to announce that they, too, had been discharged. Like many unemployed workers in Scranton’s Irish neighborhoods, the Dever boys complained that they had been discriminated against because of their ethnic background. Powderly, perhaps for the first time, confronted the fact that ethnic prejudice often played a critical role in the hiring and firing process, that it could impinge directly on one’s material well-being. In a fit of desperation, he approached George Dickson as the manufacturer emerged from his lunch at the city’s finest hotel and begged for his help in finding a job, but his pathetic supplication “didn’t do no good.”19 Whether Powderly was convinced that ethnicity had anything to do with his own initial firing, he was certain that his increasingly active role in the Machinists and Blacksmiths International Union (M&BIU) had undermined his job search. He had joined Scranton’s Local No. 2 as a matter of course on November 7, 1871, and as in most of his associations he had quickly risen to the top, winning election to the presidency in February 1873. With the leisure time that unemployment gave him, he at once sought and gained election as recording secretary, a more demanding post. He then opened a correspondence with John Fehrenbatch, the M&BIU president, and investigated a major strike against the Erie Railroad at Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Stirred by the plight of these strikers, he placed an advertisement in a local paper pleading with unemployed

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Scrantonians not to scab. This and other acts on behalf of the union, he believed, turned Walter Dawson and other master mechanics against him. “Won’t get no job in this town I am afraid,” he wrote after seeing his published advertisement.20 If burgeoning union sympathies strained his relations with Scranton’s elites, they also offered tangible benefits, for it was the M&BIU that found him a wellpaid job in the shops of the Oil Creek and Allegheney Valley Railroad at Oil City in western Pennsylvania. This demonstrated ability to assist him during his personal crisis helped to transform Powderly into a fully committed labor activist. “I shall remain a member of the international as long as it and I live,” he declared within a week of his arrival in April 1874. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the affairs of Oil City’s Local No. 6, and his brothers rewarded his enthusiasm by electing him vice president in July and sending him to the district meeting at Franklin, Pennsylvania, at which he was appointed delegate to the union’s national convention, held in Louisville, Kentucky, in September.21 Unlike the Scranton industrialists Powderly had worked so hard to impress, John Fehrenbatch at once recognized the young man’s talents and energy, and it was he who first provided avenues for Powderly to display his intelligence and communication skills beyond the local level. In the summer of 1874, on Fehrenbatch’s recommendation, Powderly was appointed western Pennsylvania’s chief organizer for the Industrial Congress. Later renamed the Industrial Brotherhood, the Industrial Congress was launched in 1873 as a successor to the National Labor Union (NLU). Spearheaded by some of the nation’s most influential trade unionists, including Robert Schilling and Martin Foran (Coopers’ International Union), and William Saffin (Iron Molders’ International Union), the short-lived Congress was an attempt to sustain the vision of an allinclusive and multifaceted labor movement while avoiding the dangerous shoals of independent political action that had helped to founder the NLU. “The recent and alarming development and aggression of aggravated wealth, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses.” So began the Congress’s preamble, written largely by Schilling, which was suffused with the labor reform rhetoric so prevalent in the depression decade. Schilling’s words eloquently articulated Powderly’s own experience in these years, and Powderly enthusiastically “talked Industrial Congress to the boys” whenever an opportunity arose, establishing locals in Oil City, Pittsburgh, and other places. Indeed, Powderly was so enthralled by the Congress’s goal of organizing “every department of productive industry” in an effort to make “industrial, moral and social worth—not wealth—the true standard of individual and national greatness” that he prevailed upon the Knights of Labor to adopt this preamble as their own in 1878.22 Powderly’s brief experience as Industrial Congress organizer was a turning point in many respects. Immersing himself in this collective cause, he found a meaningful substitute for his shattered dreams of individual success. In its rhetoric he discovered satisfying explanations for his own predicament. His inability to achieve material well-being was not rooted in personal failings, he learned,

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but rather the process of industrialization in which economic elites had undermined America’s promise to reward merit and effort. If American ideals were ever to be meshed with industrial advancement, “aggravated wealth” would have to be challenged on both the economic and political fronts by a popular crusade of all who toiled. And since the crusade was as yet in its infancy, there were opportunities for talented individuals such as Powderly to gain the respect and status denied them by elites. An equal measure of both ambition and idealism thus prompted the young machinist to turn to labor activism. Within the M&BIU, Fehrenbatch groomed Powderly for leadership, even inviting him to his Cleveland home before the September convention. The train trip to Louisville gave Fehrenbatch an opportunity to discuss with his new prote´ge´ the principal issues facing the union, discussions that continued throughout the convention itself. As were all unions during the depression, the M&BIU was losing its struggle to maintain membership and wage rates, and Fehrenbatch counseled the imposition of secrecy to shield members from employer hostility, the admission of boilermakers to provide the union greater leverage at the workplace, and the centralization of authority to curtail doomed strikes and more ably assist promising ones. Powderly’s responses no doubt pleased the union president, for at Louisville he was placed on key committees dealing with credentials and finance.23 Powderly’s newfound commitment to organize all wage workers, as well as his value as a prote´ge´, were amply demonstrated when the issue of admitting boilermakers was raised. Many skilled machinists resisted the need to organize their less skilled brethren. Admitting men who were often “nothing more than laborers,” they argued, would degrade their union and their trade. “The admission of Boiler makers would not be advancing in that social and intellectual scale that is desirable,” bellowed the machinists of Buffalo’s Local No. 5. Anxious to put the Congress’ teaching into practice and prove his worth to Fehrenbatch, Powderly countered this opposition not through parliamentary maneuvering or invective but by a simple poem in which he attacked trade elitism with biting sarcasm: Aristocrats of labor, we Are up on airs and graces. We wear clean collars, cuffs, and shirts, Likewise we wash our faces. There’s no one quite so good as we In all the ranks of labor, The boilermaker we despise, Although he is our neighbor.24

Soon after the Louisville convention, the up-and-coming labor leader received a job offer from the Dickson Manufacturing Company, and he immediately returned to Scranton to be reunited with his wife. A week later he quit to take

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another job with the D&H, but this move proved unfortunate as the D&H laid him off soon after. “Oh how I wish I never left Oil City,” he cried. In March 1875, after four particularly demoralizing months of unemployment, he landed a job at the LIC, and in November he rejoined the Dickson firm at their Scranton Cliff Works. Here he remained until May 31, 1877. Although grateful that he had at last secured work in his adopted city, he cursed every time the depressionwracked company lowered his wages, and he questioned the justice of an economic system in which an hour’s labor by a skilled machinist was worth but $1.56.25 Steady employment by no means dampened his enthusiasm for the labor movement, but by late 1875, the continuing depression had killed the Industrial Brotherhood and left the M&BIU in its death throes. In a preview of what would transpire in the Knights during its decline in the late 1880s, the moribund M&BIU succumbed to ruinous internecine strife. Fehrenbatch’s controversial proposals at the Louisville convention were stymied by a truculent executive board, which issued a referendum charging the union president with highhandedness and calling for a diminution of his powers. Fehrenbatch responded by canceling union conventions and elections until 1878. The board thereupon accused Fehrenbatch of dictatorial control, misuse of funds, and inattention to business (for embarking on a successful campaign to win election to the Ohio state legislature). Stunned by Fehrenbatch’s apparent contempt for democratic leadership, Powderly himself turned against his mentor, sided with the insurgents, and pressed for legislation that would empower the executive board “to remove John Fehrenbatch.”26 Fired by youthful idealism, Powderly then precipitated a schism within the union by championing an unauthorized strike of nearly one thousand shop hands against the DLW Railroad in October 1876.27 His Local No. 2 had agreed that Powderly and other machinists employed at the Dickson Manufacturing Company would remain at work and coordinate strike support. Brazenly defying Fehrenbatch’s edict that all strikes receive the sanction of his office, Powderly issued a stirring appeal to local unions across the country. For those desiring to remain true to Fehrenbatch, Powderly’s disregard of established channels was seen as yet another symptom of decay. For the insurgents, his appeal served as a rallying point. The strike failed in November, but the intraunion breach continued to widen.28 In May 1877, Powderly and his cohorts created a rival M&BIU, a short-lived organization that held but one convention before collapsing later that same year. The Fehrenbatch group, now calling itself the Mechanical Engineers of North America and bereft of its leader who had taken a federal post, disbanded about the same time.29 Powderly’s role as an M&BIU militant insurgent—willing to run roughshod over union laws to support strike action and smear an incumbent perceived as overly cautious and dictatorial—would prove glaringly ironic by 1887, when his opponents in the Knights engaged in similar activities and made identical charges against him. As late as 1884, Powderly remained convinced that the

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“crimes” of Fehrenbatch had precipitated the breakup of the noble M&BIU. It was only late in his life, after his own reputation had been destroyed by internal opposition, that he began to wonder whether he had been too quick to subvert the union’s constitution and too eager to accept the veracity of the executive board’s charges. “I was led into the error of criticizing him harshly by representations made to me,” but he had since grown “heartily sorry” for his recklessness.30 The DLW strike had a profound impact on the Scranton labor scene and Powderly’s future. The militancy unleashed in the city’s first major strike during the terrible depression would spread like contagion until it vented itself on August 1, 1877. By contributing to the splintering of the M&BIU, it led machinists to seek refuge in the strange and secret Knights of Labor, where they joined forces with hard coal miners and other disaffected workers who had also watched in horror as their wages were slashed and their trade unions demolished. Acting collectively for the first time, the working people of Scranton would decide that labor’s problems demanded political solutions and that Terence Powderly was the most qualified among them to represent their interests. Upon his return to Scranton from Oil City, Powderly devoted the lion’s share of his time to labor matters. Reassuming command of Local No. 2 and coordinating strike support for DLW workers were just two manifestations of his growing commitment. In the fall of 1876, for instance, he established a Peter Cooper Club to stimulate local enthusiasm for the Independent (or Greenback) party’s presidential candidate. Although the party platform largely reflected agrarian control, prominent labor figures such as Robert Schilling and Richard Trevellick had been active in the party since its birth in 1874, and labor had long expressed vocal support for currency reform. The NLU, M&BIU, Industrial Congress (and Brotherhood), the Knights of Labor, and numerous other labor associations had an abiding interest in the greenback issue, and it is hardly surprising that Powderly’s concern dated from 1874 when he joined the Congress. He echoed what other laborites were expressing, and showed the extent of his attitudinal shift since creating the U. S. Grant Club four years earlier, when he told the editor of the M&BIU Journal that “good times” would only result when “we are thoroughly organized; when we elect Peter Cooper president, [and] when we demand and receive the ten, twenty and thirty percent taken from our wages during the last three years.” Despite Powderly’s efforts, Cooper polled just sixty-six votes in Scranton; nationwide he received less than one percent of the total.31 Another indication of his labor loyalties was greater identification with his ethnic and religious heritage. Having previously deemphasized his Irish Catholicism in a vain effort to appeal to elites, he now wore it as a badge of honor and a means to identify with the majority of the city’s working-class population. In the spring of 1876, he joined the St. Columbkilles Young Men’s Literary and Benevolent Society and at once created a debating club under its auspices. Every Friday night and Sunday afternoon, the public was invited to listen to him and

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other Irish Catholics ruminate on the leading issues of the day. In April, he began contributing to America’s foremost organ of Irish and Irish-American affairs, the New York–based Irish World.32 Powderly’s developing ability to articulate the collective grievances of Irish Catholics, the “first genuine American proletariat,” not only helps to account for his local political success but also his undisputed leadership of both the Land League and Clan na Gael in northeast Pennsylvania in the early 1880s.33 Only in retrospect was his initiation into the Knights of Labor on September 6, 1876, the most important part of his immersion in the labor world. At the time, he ascribed little importance to the act, noting only that he “joined a labor organization” in his Hyde Park neighborhood.34 Uriah Stephens and eight fellow Philadelphia garment cutters had founded the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor on December 9, 1869. At first conceived as little more than a replacement for their shattered local craft union, the Order soon came to reflect the more expansive idealism of its leading light. Like the NLU and Industrial Congress before it, the Knights of Labor sought to bring all workers into a single organization, to create meaningful solidarity through mutual understanding, and to alter existing social relations through an all-powerful labor crusade active in the economic, political, and cultural arenas. Unlike the weak and shortlived Industrial Congress, the Knights survived and eventually succeeded in inspiring hundreds of thousands of workers from every conceivable background. Why did the Knights succeed where the Congress had failed? Certainly part of the answer lies in the particular combination of secrecy, fraternalism, ritualism, and rhetoric of Christian brotherhood that distinguished the Knights from earlier movements emphasizing solidarity. Profound secrecy regarding membership, meeting times and places, and even the name of the organization shielded members from the wrath of employers in an age when, as a delegation of visiting French workers observed in 1876, to be a union member in America was to be “hunted like a mad dog.” The Order’s fraternalism and ritualism, borrowed from the Masons and other popular fraternal groups, tapped into one of the most powerful aspects of working-class culture in the Gilded Age and were “essential in building psychic community” among members. And Stephens’s early training for the Baptist ministry led him to put an appealing evangelical spin on the standard rhetoric about the need to combat wage slavery. The Order aimed at nothing less than “the annihilation of the great anti-Christ of civilization manifest in the idolatry of wealth,” Stephens thundered, “and its baneful effects upon heaven-ordained labor.”35 Yet this attractive organizational package had made little headway outside the Philadelphia area prior to 1875, and despite its expansive rhetoric had attracted only skilled artisans in a handful of trades. Survival and growth resulted from factors over which Stephens and the cofounders had no control. Knight organizers began forays outside Philadelphia at precisely the moment when the once vibrant trade union movement of the Reconstruction Era had been virtually destroyed and its surviving remnants forced “underground.” Thirty healthy na-

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tional trade unions existed at the outbreak of the 1873 panic; by 1878, only nine decimated national unions survived. Once mighty associations such as Powderly’s M&BIU, the 50,000-member shoemakers’ Knights of St. Crispin, the 35,000-member Miners’ National Association in the bituminous fields, and the 35,000-member anthracite miners’ Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, had all been crushed. Nationwide, union membership plummeted from an estimated 300,000 to less than 50,000. The Order was saved from oblivion only when dedicated labor activists from the hard coal region in northeastern Pennsylvania and the soft coal fields surrounding Pittsburgh enlisted in a desperate attempt to keep the labor movement alive.36 As John M. Davis, editor of the National Labor Tribune, built up the Order in the Pittsburgh area by appealing to coal diggers and disaffected urban craftsmen, cofounder James L. Wright and Fred Turner got the ball rolling in anthracite by organizing Local Assembly (LA) 88 in Scranton on May 15, 1875. At first, only skilled stationary engineers working in the mines were eligible for membership, but when Wright and Turner visited again a year later they granted the LA the privilege to admit “sojourners,” members of other trades who would eventually form locals of their own. The first sojourners were mine workers, who created LA 216 on July 3, 1876, and numerous other locals soon thereafter. Carpenters established LA 217 on August 29, and on October 14, Powderly spearheaded the creation of LA 222, composed of Dickson Manufacturing Company employees. Not surprisingly, one of LA 222’s first official acts was to elect Powderly Master Workman (MW).37 Powderly and other machinists turned to the Knights out of practical necessity, not out of fondness for the elaborate rituals and ceremonies concocted in Philadelphia by Stephens and James L. Wright. The sanctuary of LA 1 in Philadelphia was chock full of paraphernalia, and initiation rites read aloud by a disguised “Unknown Knight,” opening and closing incantations, and other longwinded ceremonial practices often consumed the greater portion of an evening’s session. Not all such practices were copied in Scranton. Powderly was “disgusted” by the disguises worn during initiations, for instance, because it appealed “more to a man’s cowardice and ignorance than his intelligence.” As for ceremonial objects, he was amazed when he first visited Stephens’s LA 1 in June 1878. Scranton locals never had “any of those proper things Brother Stephens exhibited to us.” At the same time, he confessed his continuing difficulty with the Order’s mysterious terminology: “I never can think of the word sanctuary.” He even poked fun at some of the passages in the sacrosanct Adelphon Kruptos (AK), the Order’s book of rituals.38 The Order did provide a viable alternative to the moribund machinists’ union. “About the M&BIU,” opined Thomas King, a Reading machinist and MW of District Assembly (DA) 4, “I think my self [sic] there is no more use for it and [it] will have to make way for our Noble and Holy Order.” Powderly agreed. He continued to attend meetings of his M&BIU local, but by the end of 1877, the sheer hopelessness of rescuing the union from decline and bitter factionalism

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led him and other machinists to abandon that organization and commit their energies to LA 222. The decentralized nature of the Knights made this transition easy. The Order had no national officers or constitution until 1878, and although district organizations were being erected, locals were largely free to pursue their own agendas on their own terms. King believed that the one great organizational advantage of the Order was its absence of national officers who demanded substantial salaries and were motivated by personal ambitions that invariably led to “wrongdoing.”39 Powderly and his LA 222 brothers took full advantage of localized control by conducting their affairs with little guidance from the founders. LA 222 was not a mere replica of M&BIU Local No. 2, however, for members were captivated by the Order’s emphasis on solidarity and fraternalism. Whereas the M&BIU had squabbled over the admission of boilermakers, Powderly and the other machinists who founded LA 222 were eager to organize all who worked in the Dickson shops. Blacksmiths, boilermakers, pattern makers, grinders, molders, laborers, and “helpers” were all welcomed as equals, and fraternal camaraderie was encouraged among members and sojourners through entertainment of their own making whenever time permitted. Powderly kicked off this trend at the very first meeting by reciting a Patrick Henry speech. By January 1877, with sixty or so men huddled in a cold Red Man’s hall in the heart of a depressed industrial city, warm feelings of brotherhood were kindled when a blacksmith sang a song, a machinist gave a recitation, a stone cutter performed a dance, a laborer read a poem, a printer played a violin solo, and a machinist sang several more songs before Powderly displayed his own oratorical talents.40 Yet feelings of brotherhood were often fragile and fleeting, strained to the breaking point whenever controversial issues were raised. Members readily agreed on certain actions, such as confronting the mayor and city councils in January 1877 with their “committee on relief for the unemployed and distressed,” which Powderly headed, or petitioning Congress for passage of prolabor legislation. But the DLW Railroad strike of October–November 1876 created as much acrimony within LA 222 as it did in the M&BIU. Some pressed for all Dickson workers to strike in sympathy, and Powderly returned from one “stormy” meeting thoroughly disgusted: “Harry Barnes sickened me preaching about the strike.” Members eventually agreed to boycott all goods transported on the railroad and to approach the town’s merchants to “induce them to purchase their goods elsewhere to avoid transportation over said road,” but ill will lingered for some time.41 An even more significant challenge to brotherhood was religious and ethnic prejudice, an issue that prompted Powderly to contemplate withdrawal from the Order. He was aghast when he learned from his friend John Lee that two leaders of carpenters’ LA 217, Duncan Wright and George Starkey, were members of a mysterious “anti-Catholic society,” and he was even more shocked to discover that several members of his own LA 222 were associated with this group. Unwilling to stand by while Protestant bigotry was tolerated in a movement aiming

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at the solidarity of all who toiled, Powderly resigned as MW on November 8 after serving less than a month. “If Starkey is not expelled I [will] leave altogether,” he fumed, although he eventually decided not to do so out of “fear it might influence others to do the same.” He sought the advice of Thomas King, but over the next several months, the issue threatened to tear Scranton Knighthood asunder. Charges and countercharges consumed several LAs, pitting Welsh and English Protestants against Irish Catholics, and a feud erupted between Starkey and King.42 In April 1877, Powderly and John Lee leveled formal charges against the anti-Catholics in LA 217. We “exploded a bombshell,” he confessed. Three days later, he delivered a carefully prepared speech before his own LA 222, copies of which were sent to all locals in the city: “Brothers, Protestant and Catholic, I call upon you . . . to join hands in the amelioration of Labor for God knows we have enemies enough arrayed against us in the ranks of Capital without our creating new ones among ourselves.” His eloquent appeal induced LA 222 to create an investigating committee, composed of three Catholics and three Protestants, which censured but did not expel the anti-Catholics. Similar action was taken in LA 217.43 The episode highlighted Powderly’s growing sensitivity to ethnic and religious prejudice, and it underscored one of the many fragmenting impulses that stymied labor solidarity. Powderly’s leading role in exposing bigotry and thereby upholding the ideals of the Order, and his apparently selfless act of resigning as MW in protest, won the approval of a majority of Scranton Knights. King warned him that his rise in the Order might be impeded because some members “no doubt they think you are too smart, and would not like to see you advance,” but his LA 222 brothers nevertheless elected him as one of their three representatives to the new citywide district, DA 5 (renamed DA 16 a year later). At the district’s first official gathering in February 1877, he was elected corresponding secretary, and one month later, he was chosen as one of the district’s two paid organizers. The extent of Powderly’s idealistic commitment to the vision of Knighthood was amply demonstrated at the end of May, when he quit his job at the Dickson Manufacturing Company, which was then paying him around $150 a month, to devote all his energies to organizing, which promised him $40 a month but rarely delivered even that sum.44 The emotional rewards outweighed the enormous financial sacrifice, and Powderly never worked as a machinist again. Powderly’s increasingly prominent role in what remained a small and ineffective organization coincided with mounting working-class frustration and anger. After three-and-a-half years of depression, employers stepped up their campaign of wage reductions and layoffs in the early months of 1877. As a result of wage cuts imposed in March, skilled miners lucky enough to maintain full-time work earned but $1.50 a day and mine laborers but $1.15. Most miners worked at reduced hours, however, and could expect a pitiful sixty cents a day (forty-five cents for laborers). Cuts imposed at the collieries set the trend for other workers. Semiskilled laborers in the iron and steel mills, for instance,

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earned just $1 for a twelve-hour day. At the same time, the price of foodstuffs continued to rise. A barrel of flour worth eight cents in March cost twelve cents in April.45 Added to the desperation of acute financial insecurity was the growing sense among Irish workers that discrimination had led to disproportionate suffering in their communities. These feelings were greatly exacerbated in June when Frank Beamish, ex-mayor and Irish community leader, was given a four-year jail term for embezzlement, which precipitated protest rallies in several Irish neighborhoods. Irish outrage took an even more ominous turn later that month after the first group of Molly Maguires, convicted of murder in the southern anthracite fields after a sham trial in 1876, were led to the gallows.46 Powderly and other leading Scranton Knights worked diligently to defuse the explosive situation. Although respecting the Order’s secrecy, they coordinated a series of mass meetings beginning in November 1876 under the slogan “work or bread.” They then sought to translate these peaceful protests into public works and relief schemes by pressuring Mayor Robert McKune and the city councils. McKune verbally endorsed these plans, even visiting a local assembly to demonstrate his good will, but his failure to uphold his pledges soon earned him the nickname “Slippery Bob.” Although Powderly and others in the DA debated how best to channel the growing rage of the city’s workers, the Order in Scranton was too small and too novel, and its appeals fell on deaf ears when the city was engulfed by the fervor of national events.47 When railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, walked off their jobs on July 17 to protest the latest in a series of wage cuts imposed by the Baltimore and Ohio, they initiated “the first great American mass strike,” a spontaneous uprising that immediately spread to dozens of cities and towns across the nation. Events in Scranton over the next few weeks were part of this national workingclass reckoning with the first major depression in the new industrial order. Unorganized workers from a host of occupations joined with railroaders to vent their rage against joblessness, poverty, and intolerable working conditions, graphically illustrating the enormous and previously untapped power of collective labor action.48 Developments in Scranton proceeded at an extraordinary pace. Even before the brakemen and firemen on the D&H and DLW Railroads voted to join what amounted to a national rail strike on the evening of July 24, the one thousand iron and steel workers at the LIC had already walked out over a wage dispute earlier that day. When the miners and laborers employed by the D&H and DLW collieries demanded a 25 percent wage increase and struck on July 25, the city was virtually paralyzed. Employers nevertheless refused to bargain, and Mayor McKune quickly organized a force of two hundred men to serve as an auxiliary police unit known as the Scranton Citizens Corps.49 Well aware of the bloody confrontations that had already taken place elsewhere under similar circumstances (eight killed and twenty wounded on July 25 in Reading, fifteen killed the following day in Chicago, for instance), Powderly

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and representatives from the various Knight assemblies in Scranton gathered to discuss the emergency. “We extend our moral aid to those who are engaged in this struggle, and pledge to them our best efforts to bring the strike to a successful termination through counsel and advice,” they resolved. At the same time, they pleaded with strikers to avoid the rioting and destruction of property that had taken place in Reading and provoked shocking acts of retaliatory violence. “We urge upon our members to exercise the greatest caution, so that no evil effects may be visited upon them.” Finally, they requested that strikers “refrain from visiting saloons” and attend only those public meetings “called at the order of responsible persons, who may be authorized to call such meetings.”50 Sound advice perhaps, but events were well beyond the Order’s control. For a moment, it appeared that Scranton would avoid the violent fate of other cities. On July 30, the DLW offered an acceptable compromise wage package to their rail employees, and the following day, trains were moving once again. “The bubble has burst,” declared the leading city daily. Employers and city officials smugly assumed that other groups of workers would quickly capitulate now that they had been abandoned by the railroaders, but they underestimated the resolve of the mine workers, whose determination to carry on with their struggle was in no way weakened by the actions of the brakemen and firemen.51 On the morning of August 1, some 5,000 mine workers attended a rally about two miles outside Scranton. All listened intently to an unidentified man who read aloud what he purported to be a letter from William “King” Scranton, who remained notorious among local coal diggers since crushing an 1871 strike. The forged document asserted, among other things, that Scranton intended to reduce the wages of skilled miners to thirty-five cents per day. Almost at once the crowd turned toward the city. Knights attending the rally preached calm with some effect, but they could not placate the 1,500 or so who demanded instant retribution. On the way to Scranton, they were joined by others as they broke into the foundry and machine shops of the DLW, the LIC’s blast furnaces, and several stores, destroying what they could and severely beating those they found working. When they reached the city’s business district, Mayor McKune approached them, asking for peace. After breaking his jaw and clubbing him unconscious, the rioters squared off against the Citizens Corp, headed by none other than William Scranton himself. The mob greeted its opposition with clubs, rocks, and a few pistol shots, and the Citizens Corp, predictably, responded with a fusillade from their Remington rifles. Three Irish miners lay dead, a fourth mortally wounded, and twenty-five seriously injured. Three thousand members of the state militia patrolled the streets the next day, and federal troops arrived by the end of the week. Such was the climax of the Great Labor Uprising in northern anthracite.52 Powderly played no role in the August 1 drama, but it had an abiding impact on his labor views and he showed little hesitation in apportioning blame. In his estimation, the chief villains were the anonymous man with the forged letter, who turned a peaceful assembly into a riotous mob; Mayor McKune, who gave

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legal status to a Citizens Corps that was little more than the private army of the LIC; and especially William Scranton, who delivered a completely unjustified “shoot to kill” order to his Citizens Corps before confronting the mob. Along with his wife and the majority of the city’s workforce, Powderly was incensed by Scranton’s behavior and wondered whether there was any way of “putting an end to King Scranton.” In her rage, Hannah even suggested that someone should “blow up” the man and his company with nitroglycerine. Yet Powderly was already beginning to appreciate the nature of class conflict in America: “When violence is once invoked in a labor trouble, the odds are from that time against the success of the strikers.” He set himself to more constructive tasks, such as raising funds for the families of the dead men, boycotting merchants who opposed the continuing miners’ strike, establishing a cooperative grocery store to assist the strikers, organizing the outraged into local assemblies, and, above all, setting the wheels in motion to defeat employers and their political henchmen during the next elections.53 Political action was only one of the Order’s many competing interests, but in the wake of the 1877 strikes, it was the most important one. The use of police, militia, and federal troops to squelch strikes and riots had exposed the repressive alliance of the state and corporate capital, and workers in the affected areas exhibited greater enthusiasm for third-party action than ever before. And even though the Order had played little role during the uprising itself, it benefited almost immediately thereafter as defeated workers sought membership. “This great strike has opened the workingmen’s eyes,” an excited Fred Turner wrote from Philadelphia. “They are getting interested in the Order and no doubt it will steadily increase.” Growth was particularly impressive in the Scranton area, where miners maintained their strike until October. Powderly was inundated with requests for LA charters throughout August and September, and most of those making these requests were surcharged with third-party enthusiasm. “We are both willing and anxious to go to work to place good responsible candidates in the Field, and not leave it to corporations Monopolies or Merchants to send their Hirelings as they have done heretofore,” offered a Carbondale miner in a typical missive. “We the workingmen must and shall have representatives in office. . . . If we elect them how those (Blasted) Politicians will howl.”54 Although keen to follow the rising membership’s lead, leading Knights were haunted by the unmitigated disaster of 1872, when the NLU had reconstituted itself as the National Labor Reform Party, plunged headlong into the electoral campaigns of that year, and suffered a humiliating defeat from which it never recovered. “The lesson drawn from the N.L.U. experience,” observed one historian, “was not to shun reform politics, but rather to segregate clearly the tradeunion and electoral functions of the movement.” Prior to 1877, the Order had sought to apply this lesson by encouraging its assemblies to steer clear of all discussion of party politics. Thus the constitution of Scranton’s DA contained the usual clause prohibiting such discussion in the sanctuaries, and Powderly had warned Scranton Knights that because most of the Welsh were wedded to

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the Republicans, most of the Irish to the Democrats, and a few such as himself were hoping to establish a viable third party, “politics” was truly a dangerous “rock on which we may ground.”55 Knights were of course free to engage in party politics as individuals, and as we have seen, numerous Knights such as Powderly had been active in the Greenback party’s weak campaign of 1876. Hoping to exploit the new political mood, Philadelphia Knights devised an expedient. At the conclusion of an assembly’s regular meeting, all those wishing to discuss politics would remain and reconvene as a Committee on Progress. Powderly at once instructed all Scranton area assemblies to follow this procedure, and although a few questioned its legality, it served as the basis of the Order’s foray into the Luzerne County elections slated for November 6. Powderly then invited all Committees on Progress in the area to send representatives to the nearby mining town of Pittston on September 11, where they created a new “Greenback-Labor party” and selected a slate of candidates. “The wage worker has no hope of redress through either of the old parties,” the platform declared.56 Eager to prove the benefits of Knighthood to its new members, Powderly threw himself into the campaign. He brought in labor speakers from around the state, wrote and distributed much of the campaign literature, arranged for the publication of a labor newsletter (the Industrial Advocate), spoke at Committees on Progress and public gatherings throughout the county, met with farmers in an effort to secure their support, coordinated the work of canvassers, and organized a corps of “poll watchers” to maintain the integrity of the elections. His enthusiasm was matched by many local activists, and on election day, the county Greenback-Labor party garnered over 14,000 of the 26,000 votes cast, capturing all five offices contested. Flushed with victory, the new party set its sights on the Scranton city elections, scheduled for February 1878.57 On December 21, the party rewarded Powderly’s heroic efforts in the fall campaign by nominating him for mayor of Scranton. This choice was to be expected from a party that served as the political wing of DA 16. As secretary, organizer, and political leader of that district, Powderly was by now well known and well respected in the shops and mines from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre. “No man in the Organization has such influence in this locality,” enthused the MW of a mine workers’ assembly in nearby Plains, whose only worry was that as mayor Powderly might have to assume a lesser role in the Knights. For the Irish Catholics who comprised a majority of Scranton Knights, Powderly’s nomination on a third-party ticket offered hope that they could be freed from subservience to the Democratic party, an association of “bribed and corrupt place mongers and vile traders in the people’s confidence.” As one Irish workingman put it, “[I]n you not only my countrymen but the whole working public have at last found a worthy representative.”58 Although at times wildly enthusiastic about the possibility that workers would now wrest control of city government, Powderly and other party leaders reflected the widespread ambivalence of Gilded Age labor radicals toward the “uses of

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political power.” Their party platform for the most part did not envision dramatically increased governmental powers to be wielded for the benefit of working people. First, like most Knights caught up in the political upheaval of the mid-1880s, Scranton workers hoped to oust elites to demonstrate that “they could do what had previously been done for them” and “that they could do it better.” In this regard, Powderly promised to attack a municipal debt that was spiraling out of control and introduce greater efficiency in the mayor’s office. Second, they sought to curb the repressive power of the state in an effort to protect themselves and their organizations. The use of a quasi-legal Citizens Corps, as well as the state militia and federal troops, to squelch the uprising of the summer had been a mainspring of the Greenback-Labor insurgency, and Powderly vowed to create a professional, disinterested, and “efficient police force to protect the lives and property of our citizens.”59 In other ways, however, Powderly envisioned a more positive role for the state. He believed that the success of his administration depended on passage of greenback legislation at the national level, which would allow cities such as Scranton to borrow large sums at low interest from the federal government. With such funds, he would initiate grandiose public works schemes that would “effect a double benefit, work for the unemployed and the economical improvement of the city.” More provocatively, he outdistanced the vast majority of greenback-laborites and foreshadowed early twentieth-century socialists by calling for municipally owned gas and water works that would strip the Scranton family of control over these utilities.60 All participants and observers regarded the campaign as a vigorous workingclass challenge to the status quo. “I think with a working man for mayor some of the blue bloods will just die,” chuckled an old friend from the machinist shops in a typical expression of support. Powderly’s rhetoric certainly encouraged such thinking. “To effect a radical cure, radical means must be resorted to,” he trumpeted. “Give us a good cause or in the words of Jefferson every eleven years a Revolution.” The Republican daily considered the upstart workers’ party an expression of undiluted “communism,” akin to the “rising of the [Paris] commune.” Although some leading Democrats bolted their own party to join hands with the insurgents, most shunned Powderly as a Molly Maguire and fused with frightened Republicans to create a Citizens party dedicated to the “protection of property-owners” against the threat of “dastardly radicals.”61 Faced with the real possibility of defeat, opposition leaders engaged in a variety of reprehensible campaign practices. Aware that the workers’ party was the political offspring of the Knights, they echoed the Catholic Church’s objections to secret, oath-bound societies. They placed a “mole” in Powderly’s LA 222 who penned sensational accounts for the papers under the heading of “Communism.” Their most successful gambit was an attempt to undermine worker solidarity by reviving the ethnic hatreds that had temporary receded during the turmoil. “Shall we have an Irish-Catholic Chief of Police, with an entirely Irish force?” wailed the Republicans. “If you do your duty as Welshmen he [Pow-

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derly] won’t be elected, [and] by God, he must be defeated,” cried the Democrats. In a transparent effort to dislodge Welsh workers from the insurgents, the Citizens party put forth D. M. Jones, editor of the city’s Welsh-language newspaper, as their mayoral candidate.62 On election day, February 19, Powderly defeated Jones (2,935 to 2,411 votes), and Scranton workers could boast of their efforts in electing one of the nation’s few genuine labor mayors. The mayor-elect could boast as well, for he had played a leading role in building the organization that had secured his victory, and he beamed with pride when informing others that “[T]he Knights of Labor elected me.” Yet while the victory was significant, it was not total. The opposition’s decision to form a fusion ticket and appeal to ethnicity, and the waning of the excitement that had fueled the November elections, meant that Powderly would face hostile majorities in both city councils. Of the twenty contested seats on the city’s Select Council, fourteen went to Citizens party candidates and only six to Greenback-Laborites. The latter grabbed twenty-eight seats on the Common Council, but twenty-nine went to the former. Election returns revealed that, in the space of three months, the unity of the workers’ cause had broken down and the Welsh had returned to their traditional party loyalties.63 Political enthusiasm shaped the Order’s development in numerous ways. It stimulated substantial if temporary membership growth in many places; it validated the Order’s vision by forging meaningful if fleeting solidarity among diverse groups of workers at the local level; and it also prompted leading Knights to overlook some of the conflicts and jealousies that had sabotaged all prior attempts to create a national structure. Indeed, the drive toward greater centralization within the Order was largely inspired by political currents. Because Powderly proved to be one of the most successful Knights in the political arena, his prominence in the new national organization was all but guaranteed. But the chief reason for his meteoric ascent in the new national Order was the indispensable role he played in creating it. By 1877, Knight assemblies dotted the landscape from Massachusetts to Kentucky. Membership remained heavily concentrated among miners in northeast Pennsylvania’s anthracite region and the bituminous fields in the southeast portion of that state, but indefatigable organizers from Pittsburgh were busily planting the seeds among soft coal miners and skilled craftsmen throughout the Midwest, while Philadelphia organizers were slowly making gains on the eastern seaboard. The Order may have been growing, but extreme secrecy and the absence of a national administration meant that no one had any idea of the extent or nature of that growth. Locals and districts received little guidance from the Philadelphia founders, and many remained woefully ignorant of the Order’s aims and objects, let alone its regulations and rituals.64 Uriah Stephens and his cohorts had recognized the need for some coordination of activity as early as July 1876, when they held the organization’s first national convention. Unaware of the existence of assemblies they had not founded, all

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but one of the thirty-five delegates who attended that convention were from eastern Pennsylvania and the New York City area. Indignant Pittsburgh Knights, led by John M. Davis, held their own national convention in May 1877, but it is questionable whether any Philadelphians attended. Scranton Knights had not been invited to either gathering, and Powderly was thoroughly confused when he received a summary of Pittsburgh proceedings that detailed new regulations and a slate of national officers. In an effort to determine the authenticity of these proceedings, he contacted Thomas King of Reading’s DA 4, who could neither shed light on the matter nor provide him with the addresses of the Recording Secretaries in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.65 Unwilling to remain in the dark, Powderly tracked down the addresses of George Blair, a New York City Knight organizer with close ties to the founders, and L. J. Booker, the chief organizer in the Pittsburgh area. Through these men he first learned of the petty rivalries and substantive issues that accounted for the chaotic state of affairs and jeopardized the health and prosperity of the Order. Pittsburgh Knights, he was informed, were unwilling to submit to the dictation of the founders, whose obsession with rituals and ceremonies left little time for sound bureaucratic management. Pittsburgh Knights believed it was time to make the name of the Order public to stimulate growth, and they also demanded that a national administration be erected at once. “We do not care about . . . the ritual at all,” Booker bellowed. For their part, leading Philadelphia Knights were offended by the “high-handed” John M. Davis who dared to undermine their authority. “The call for a national convention must come from DA 1,” insisted Blair. Harmony and efficiency would never develop until all Knights evidenced “discipline and respect for obligation.” Powderly counseled peace on both sides, and in part through his efforts the founders eventually agreed to hold a truly representative national convention at the neutral site of Reading in early January 1878.66 The establishment of goodwill between the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia wings owed much to the favorable political climate. On September 10, 1877, Knights from these and other Pennsylvania cities met at Harrisburg and formed the United Labor party, which at once decided on a merger with the state Greenback party at the latter’s September 19 convention at Williamsport. Powderly did not attend the Harrisburg meeting, but he rubbed shoulders with its prime movers when his county party sent him to Williamsport. He played a key role in effecting the merger, which created the United Greenback-Labor party and placed cofounder James L. Wright on its ticket for state treasurer. Those named to the party’s central committee included a veritable who’s who in Pennsylvania Knighthood: Thomas Armstrong of Pittsburgh, who had succeeded John M. Davis as editor of the National Labor Tribune; Fred Turner, the Recording Secretary of Philadelphia’s DA 1; Uriah Stephens; and Terence Powderly. If Powderly failed to impress these men when they chatted at the hotel that evening, his ability to deliver over 14,000 votes for the state ticket in November,

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more than the combined total for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, certainly attracted their attention. “Hurrah for Luzerne,” Turner gushed. “It is glorious to think that we can look upon at least one spot and say the sun shines there.”67 Inspired by the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh rapprochement, Powderly took it upon himself to make certain that the call for the Reading convention reached every assembly. He established correspondence with recently established locals in such places as Chicago, Massachusetts, and St. Louis, which had little contact with either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, and Knights in these places naturally turned to him rather than the founders when looking for information and supplies. He provided them with copies of his own local and district proceedings to use as models, and he instructed them on how to set up districts, commission organizers, and engage in politics. When internal dissent erupted in St. Louis, for instance, the members immediately wrote to Powderly for advice. When Chicago Knights required a copy of the AK in the Polish language, they asked for his assistance. By selflessly assuming the responsibilities that the founders had neglected, Powderly not only began the process of unifying the Order but earned the admiration of many Knights around the country. “This A[ssembly] in regular session tenders Bro. T. V. Powderly a vote of thanks . . . for the eminent services that he has rendered the Organization,” a St. Louis local resolved. When the delegates from these places reached Reading, they turned to him once again for guidance.68 On New Year’s Day 1878, thirty-three delegates gathered in Crouse’s Hall in Reading for the first GA of the Knights of Labor; over the next three days, they hammered out the framework for a national organization. Taking a respite from his mayoral campaign, Powderly immersed himself in what he later described as an “experiment” in institution building. Unlike other valiant attempts to unite all workers within the folds of a single society, the Order was not simply a federation of existing trade unions or a series of annual congresses. It had been growing from the “bottom up” since 1869. Locals and districts were already functioning by the time the national administration was established, and even as Powderly and other delegates busied themselves, they understood that subordinate bodies would seek to safeguard their prerogatives and resist the forceful imposition of centralized control. Indeed, Powderly later noted that delegates wondered whether locals and districts would accept their efforts with “sufficient enthusiasm” to ensure “the successful continuance of the General Assembly as the head of the order.”69 Powderly played a major role in this experiment. He and Robert Schilling, who had recently started a labor paper in Cleveland, headed the committee on constitution, and they had no difficulty convincing delegates to adopt the preamble and platform of the Industrial Congress virtually intact. Powderly also served as teller during elections for the Order’s first slate of national officers. To no one’s surprise, Uriah Stephens captured the office of Grand Master Workman (GMW), although Powderly proved popular enough to take second (fourteen votes to ten). The other top slot, that of Grand Secretary (GS), went to the

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former national secretary of the Crispins, Charles Litchman, and again Powderly was second in the balloting. Delegates then agreed to a system of per capita taxes, initiation and charter fees, and a general fund tax to be imposed on locals and districts before departing for home to see if they could collect any of it. The Reading GA, as we shall see, solved none of the Order’s problems. It was merely a necessary first step toward coordination of effort among disparate groups of Knights who had heretofore acted in near total ignorance of each other.70 Powderly never contemplated scaling back his activities in the Knights after April 1, 1878, when he began his first two-year term as mayor. Now a respected man about town, receiving a respectable salary of $800 a year, he appreciated that in many ways “I am a different person.” Whereas a few years earlier he had been begging for work, he now sat in a comfortable office and greeted streams of visitors requesting his assistance—desperate widows begging for handouts, workers in search of jobs, city council and board of trade members hoping to secure his influence, political aspirants seeking patronage, and reporters anxious for interviews. Although city council opposition frustrated all his radical schemes—the municipally owned gas and water works, a proposed cooperative boot and shoe factory, and a thorough restructuring of the city’s tax laws along lines suggested by Henry George—he quickly developed a taste for political life, secured reelection in 1880 and again in 1882, and dreamed of winning a seat in Congress. Yet his ideals and energies remained focused on the Order, so much so that city council members repeatedly questioned his priorities. “I am charged with neglect of duty by the city councils, and it’s true,” he confessed on numerous occasions.71 Ambition cannot account for his expanding commitment to the Order or the labor movement generally. Knighthood in Scranton was rapidly receding even as he took the oath of office, and he remained wedded to his local labor party long after it became a political liability. The fading of the emotional outcry following the bloodshed of August 1877, the collapse of the miners’ strike in October, the first stirring of the Catholic Church’s persecution of the Order, the dismissals and blacklisting that resulted when stooges joined assemblies to provide membership lists to reporters and corporations, and the sheer hopelessness of the continuing depression—all combined to lead Scranton workers out of the Order as fast as they had entered it. “The Scranton A[ssemblies] are in a bad condition,” he sighed in August 1878. At that date, he still entertained some hope for “a return to the good old days gone by when we had the halls packed,” but by the end of the year, he was grateful that the district had not collapsed altogether and would still be represented at the January 1879 St. Louis GA.72 Company spies, referred to as “telephones,” caused such damage in Powderly’s own LA 222 (Dickson employees) that it was forced to launch a “reobligation” drive in May to double check the loyalty of each member. When that failed it was deemed best to suspend activities indefinitely and rebuild the assembly one member at a time. Only in December 1878 did LA 222 reorganize,

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this time with Powderly as MW, but continuing fear of dismissal for membership kept interest at a minimum. As late as September 1879, LA 222 could claim but thirty-four members, and Powderly never forgot the damage caused by “the fiendish work of these reptiles” who betrayed their fellow workers. “Judas had the manhood after his treacherous act to commit suicide; but these things have no manhood at all.”73 Powderly sought to revive Scranton Knighthood through sheer force of will. Continuing as DA 16 secretary, he corresponded with and visited each local innumerable times to rekindle enthusiasm. “Call out the exertions of every earnest Brother for there is hard work ahead of us,” he urged one. “We allowed the best organization we ever had to fall to pieces,” he wrote another. “We can rebuild it if we try.” City council sessions and other scheduled mayoral activities were canceled whenever an assembly requested his services. “You know it would never do to disappoint the boys,” he informed aghast Wilkes-Barre politicians when rescheduling their conference to attend a miners’ assembly meeting. Certainly not blind to reality, he often lapsed into despair when months of effort failed to pay dividends. “There is no use trying to do anything for the workingmen of the coal regions,” he cursed after another local had lapsed. “They will not remain in an organization long enough to accomplish anything.”74 But through tireless efforts he and a handful of others made certain that the Knights maintained at least a nominal presence in northern anthracite. The decline of the Order in Scranton spelled doom for its political manifestation. Already splintering by the time of Powderly’s election, the local labor party was a shadow of its former self by the fall 1878 elections. With the return of industrial peace, Welsh workers returned to the Republican fold and Irish workers made amends with the Democrats. The year 1878 may have been the high-water mark for the greenback-labor cause nationwide, but as the February 1879 city elections approached, even those who remained committed to the local workers’ party recognized that fusion with the Democrats offered their only hope of success. Yet, even with his own political future in the balance, Powderly resisted the impetus toward fusion, refusing to abandon independent labor politics “for the grand and noble purpose of whipping the Republicans.” Only when the Democrats “adopt our entire platform and rules without change of name or principle” would he agree to fusion.75 He remained loyal to third-party politics because he shared the excitement of other leading Knights as they prepared for the fall 1878 state and national elections. The cause may have been dying in Scranton, but in other industrial centers, it was alive and well. Uriah Stephens attended the founding convention of the National (Greenback-Labor) party (NGLP) in February at Toledo, and he, James L. Wright, Robert Schilling, Charles Litchman, John M. Davis, Ralph Beaumont, and George Blair were among the Knights who ran for political office on that party’s ticket that fall. Along with other Pennsylvania Knights, Powderly traveled to Philadelphia in May for the state NGLP convention, which featured several acrimonious clashes between laborites and agrarian greenbackers. The

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balance of power was soon established when the former’s choice for state party chairperson (Powderly) went down to defeat by a vote of 126 to 84, and continuing friction was underscored when one greenbacker attacked Powderly and his Scranton area contingent as a “mob of Molly Maguires” during debates over the platform. In the end, the convention placed only one laborite on its list of candidates (James L. Wright for secretary of internal affairs) and selected Samuel Mason, a greenback lawyer, to run for governor. Despite their clear subservience to the greenbackers, the Knights embraced the ticket and entered the fall campaign with their enthusiasm largely undiminished.76 With the zeal of a missionary, Powderly ran himself ragged in behalf of the cause. “I am out every night stumping . . . for the success of the GreenbackLabor ticket,” he declared. “We intend to win.” Often speaking at two gatherings a day from late September until early November, temporarily reviving the lapsed labor newsletter, appealing to farmers as well as wage workers, and bringing Mason to Scranton for a series of speeches—Powderly did his utmost to keep third party politics alive. He adamantly refused to speak at gatherings sponsored even in part by the Democrats; he railed against state party leaders when they agreed to join forces with Democrats in weak congressional districts; and he even threatened to shift his support to the Republicans after hearing rumors that Mason would be left off the party ticket in favor of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Dill.77 Election results justified Powderly’s commitment. Over a million votes were cast for the NGLP nationwide. Workers in the East had combined successfully with other disgruntled elements in challenging the hegemony of the major parties. Thomas Murch, secretary of the granite cutters’ union, won election to Congress from Maine, and General Ben Butler captured the governorship of Massachusetts on an NGLP-Democrat fusion ticket. Pennsylvania greenbacklaborites saw their share of the vote jump from 8 to 12 percent in one year, and three of their candidates won congressional seats, although in each case through fusion. Scranton area voters gave the party little support, but the efforts of Powderly and other Knights were part of the larger success story of labor’s emerging political clout.78 Already well respected for his many contributions, Powderly revealed his true value to the Order by resolving its first major crisis as a national organization. One of the principal issues that had divided the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia factions before the Reading GA had been secrecy, with the former desiring to make the name of the Order public to spur organizing, dissociate the Knights and the Molly Maguires in the public mind, and shield Catholics from church opposition to oath-bound secret societies. The founders, however, insisted that profound secrecy was the rock upon which the Order was built. A majority of delegates at Reading, Powderly included, voted to uphold secrecy, but the issue reemerged with a vengeance immediately after the GA. A Catholic priest at Mahonoy in the anthracite region threatened to excommunicate all his parishioners who did not renounce the Order at once, and the Bishop of Scranton,

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William O’Hara, issued a pastoral letter denouncing all secret societies. Powderly tried to assure local Knights that O’Hara was not referring to the Order, for which he was attacked by both the Bishop and the local press.79 When distraught Knights approached Uriah Stephens about the potentially grave danger of church hostility at the state NGLP convention in May, the GMW acknowledged that the situation was serious enough to warrant the calling of a special session of the GA at Philadelphia the following month “to consider the expediency of making the name of the Order public.” Fifteen delegates attended, and when nine voted in favor of that expediency, Stephens was forced to safeguard his precious secrecy by arbitrarily deciding that the question required a two-thirds majority. The founders’ penchant for secrecy and ritual, it would seem, superseded their desire to protect the membership. At this point, Powderly intervened and successfully pressed for a referendum allowing the membershipat-large to decide the issue once and for all. And when weak communication channels between national officers and locals undermined this course (the ballots sent to GS Litchman were too “meager” to serve as the basis of action), Powderly engineered a compromise at the January 1879 St. Louis GA that gave locals and districts final authority to decide this vital question: “Any D. A. (or LA not attached to a DA) shall have the privilege of making the name of the Order public by a vote of two-thirds of the delegates present at a regular meeting.”80 In resolving this thorny issue at least temporarily to everyone’s satisfaction, he presaged his decentralized approach to managing the Order. When controversies could not be reconciled at the national level, harmony would be restored by placing power in the hands of subordinate bodies. Decentralization, he would learn, was the key to keeping an ever growing number of factions at peace within the organization. By pursuing this course in the fight over secrecy, he earned not only the goodwill of Catholics and other members who preferred organizational advancement to mystery but also the gratitude of Stephens, who had been unable to placate an opposition that had been forming since 1875.81 Although he maintained cordial relations with Stephens and appreciated his praise, Powderly was no sycophant. He identified not with the Philadelphia founders but with other up-and-coming Knights from around the country who, like himself, possessed solid trade union credentials, organizational skills, and political aspirations. By the summer of 1878, his most trusted confidantes at the national level were two long-serving officers of the defunct Knights of St. Crispin, GS Charles Litchman and Richard Griffiths, whom he regarded as “two of our best Noblemen.”82 Griffiths had depended on Powderly’s advice when planting the seeds of Knighthood in Chicago in 1877, and although the two men did not meet until the June 1878 special session, Griffiths expressed his confidence in Powderly’s abilities by granting him the right of proxy at the Reading GA when lack of funds prevented his own attendance. Powderly and Litchman, meanwhile, had become fast friends almost immediately after introducing themselves at Reading. The handsome and charismatic GS was already well known

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as an orator beyond the confines of his home in Massachusetts, and he cemented their friendship by offering to stump for Powderly during his mayoral campaign.83 In 1879, the Order remained a tiny and fragile organization. With fewer than 10,000 members grouped in small clusters across half a continent, with established locals and districts lapsing as quickly as new ones were erected, and with differences of opinion already being expressed about fundamental issues, the founders’ grandiose dream of an all-inclusive and all-powerful labor brotherhood seemed utopian if not completely ridiculous. Yet the very survival of the organization was dependent on those members who embraced that dream. Powderly was one of only a handful of such true believers. He had proven his worth not simply by translating worker unrest in Scranton into political victories, but by maintaining the organization in his district after enthusiasm had vanished, by taking upon himself the task of forging links with other Knights around the country, and by pursuing the compromises necessary to begin building a truly national movement. Fellow Knights acknowledged his commitment by electing him Grand Worthy Foreman, a largely honorary post, at the January 1879 St. Louis GA.84 When fifty-eight-year-old Uriah Stephens, beset by ill health and financial troubles at the garment shop he co-owned, declared his retirement on the eve of the September 1879 Chicago GA, no one was surprised when he recommended that delegates select either Richard Griffiths or Terence Powderly as his successor. “I do not feel that I can any longer bear the burden. It must rest upon other shoulders,” Stephens noted in his farewell address. “My preference lies between Brothers Powderly and Griffiths.” Delegates honored his wish by declining to nominate other candidates for the office, and fifteen of the nineteen who voted chose Powderly to succeed Stephens as the Order’s Grand Master Workman.85 Powderly was not the product of a bucolic “small-town America,” nor was he imbued with a quaint “small-town moralism.”86 He was the child of industrial capitalism. Blast furnaces, smokestacks, slag heaps, and towering coal tipples comprised the only environment he had ever known. Grime and coal dust coated much of his world, and the incessant sounds of factory whistles, railroad engines, and mine cars were inescapable. The majority of his neighbors were struggling immigrants from Britain and Ireland who worked for, and resisted the impositions of, powerful New York–based corporations. More fortunate than most, Powderly was nevertheless a wage worker who shared with his neighbors the danger, exploitation, deprivation, and insecurity that were part and parcel of the industrial experience. When he finally resolved to challenge the reality created by industrial capitalism, he did so by joining hands with other workers in an attempt to find collective solutions. He embraced the labor movement rather late in his life. The affection and attention his parents heaped upon their remarkable youngest son, the incredible variety of talents he possessed, the admiration of his peers, and his extraordinary energy—all helped to keep alive boyhood dreams of wealth and success well

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past his teens. It was not until he was twenty-five, after the depression had undermined his livelihood, destroyed his familial stability, and denied him any profitable outlet for his talents, that he immersed himself in the affairs of both the M&BIU and the Industrial Congress. Once involved, however, he participated with a single-minded dedication that few could equal and none could question. He discovered a calling worthy of his abilities, and the movement’s ideals at once became his own. Significantly, he committed himself to the movement during a period of rapid decline, when economic conditions and employer hostility had combined to destroy most unions and weaken the rest. Powderly had seen both the M&BIU and Industrial Congress perish, and like others hoping to keep the movement alive, he had joined a secret society. Over three years of hard effort and valuable service had earned him the right to lead that society. But the Order was still in its infancy. The expansiveness of its rhetoric greatly outstripped its performance, organizational stability and cohesion remained mere pipe dreams, and its veil of secrecy concealed the innumerable and virtually insoluble problems it would have to address to accomplish any of its stated goals. NOTES 1. On Carbondale in these years, see Burton Folsom, Urban Capitalists: Entrepreneurs and City Growth in Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna and Lehigh Regions, 1800–1920 (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 19–21, 86; Donald Miller and Richard Sharpless, The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 36–38; W. W. Munsell and Company, History of Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Wyoming Counties, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches (New York, 1880), pp. 439–443; John Durfee, Reminiscences of Carbondale, Dundaff, and Providence Forty Years Past (Philadelphia, 1875), pp. 35–38; Scranton Republican “Sesqui-Centennial Edition,” September 30, 1916; John Gallagher, “Scranton: Industry and Politics, 1835–1885,” Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1964, pp. 11–13. On TVP’s physical shortcomings, see Harry J. Carman, Henry David, and Paul N. Guthrie, eds., The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York, 1940), pp. 4, 8–9, 15, 17; TVP to Richard Griffiths, May 23, 1880, PP. 2. TVP, Path I Trod, p. 4. 3. Born in 1800 at Bryantown, Country Meath, Terrence (Powderly’s father) and his six brothers and several sisters were raised in the gripping poverty of rural Ireland. In 1826, he married Margery “Madge” Walsh from Drogheda, County Louth, the eldest of thirteen children. The couple set sail for Montreal a year later, and then took another boat up the Saint Lawrence to Ogdensburg, New York, landing on July 27, 1827. On July 26, Madge gave birth to Elizabeth, the first of her twelve children, only eight of whom survived to adulthood. After two years as a farm laborer, Terrence and his family made their way to Carbondale. See TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 4–6; Portrait and Biographical Record of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania (New York, 1897), pp. 131–132; TVP to J. T. Powderly, September 19, 1878; TVP to James Penteney, December 7, 1878; TVP to George Powderly, June 8, 1887; PP; birth records of the Powderlys and other helpful information graciously provided by Ruth Ziebarth, TVP’s grandniece; Thomas Murphy,

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Jubilee History of Lackawanna Country, Pennsylvania (Topeka, 1928), pp. 437, 441; Samuel Walker, “Terence V. Powderly, ‘Labor Mayor’: Workingmen’s Politics in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1870–1884,” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1973, pp. 117–119; Richard Oestreicher, “Terence Powderly, the Knights of Labor, and Artisinal Republicanism,” in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, eds., Labor Leaders in America (Urbana, 1987), pp. 31–32. Both Walker and Oestreicher echo Murphy’s claim that Terrence owned a coal mine outright, but this seems unlikely because the Delaware and Hudson “owned all of the coal land surrounding Carbondale” at an early date. Folsom, Urban Capitalists, p. 86. 4. TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 11, 14–16, 18. His brother later reminded him of his privileged place within the family circle: “There never has been violent measures used with you, every desire was only wanting the expression and it was granted. Nothing was left that time and circumstances permitted to make you comfortable and happy.” Hugh Powderly to TVP, August 15, 1871, PP. 5. Ibid., p. 6; Ben Lavin to TVP, May 10, 1886, PP. 6. Folsom, Urban Capitalists, pp. 19–21. 7. TVP, Path I Trod, 18–19; Portrait and Biographical Record, pp 131–132; TVP to John Barrett, January 15, 1889, PP. See also the apprenticeship indenture, signed by Dickson, TVP, and his father, in the PP. On the Dickson family, see Frederick Hitchcock, History of Scranton and Its People (New York, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 89–90, vol. 2, pp. 22– 24, 37–40; and Samuel Logan, The Life of Thomas Dickson: A Memorial (Scranton, 1888). 8. TVP, Diary, February 25, April 24, May 11, July 9, August 1 and 4, 1869; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 123–126; TVP, “Settle the Apprenticeship Question by Inaugurating Industrial Schools,” in Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sixth Annual Report (Lansing, 1888), pp. 293–297; and TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 19–23, which includes the apocryphal story of Dickson giving Powderly his set of tools upon the completion of his apprenticeship. 9. Folsom, Urban Capitalists, 20–23, 85–89. 10. On Scranton’s birth and growth, see Hitchcock, History of Scranton; Murphy, Jubilee History; David Craft, History of Scranton, Pennsylvania (Dayton, 1891); Benjamin Throop, A Half Century in Scranton (Scranton, 1895); Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 9–54; Miller and Sharpless, Kingdom of Coal, pp. 59–65. 11. TVP Diary, November 17, 22, and 24, 1869. 12. TVP, Diary, numerous entries starting from December 16, 1869; TVP to editor of The Trades, December 18, 1879, PP; TVP, Path I Trod, p. 278. 13. Joseph Goodwin to TVP, March 8, 1886; TVP, Diary, especially April 13, 1869, January 26, 1871, April 10, 1871, October 3, 1871, June 23, 1872, April 29, 1873, May 2, 1873; TVP to Joseph Fanning, January 10, 1884, PP. See also Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 128–132, 137–140. 14. TVP, Diary, numerous entries, especially March 31, 1870, October 22, 1870, April 10, 1871, June 12, 1872, September 19, 1872, February 17, 1874; TVP, Path I Trod, p. 26. 15. TVP, Diary, “memoranda” section at end of 1870, June 19, 1869, October 25, 1869, April 22, 1870, March 10, 1872, February 20, 1873; Joseph Goodwin to TVP, March 8, 1886, PP; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 140–143. 16. TVP, Diary, “memoranda” section at end of 1870, January 24, 1869, February 2, 1870, October 7, 1870; see also his Father Matthew’s membership card in the PP; Bruce

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Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989), pp. 184–185. 17. TVP, Path I Trod, p. 11; TVP, Diary, October 13, 1870, November 5, 1872, August 16, 1873, April 27, 1875, October 8, 1875; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 136– 137, 147–148. 18. TVP, Diary, October 11, 12, 13, November 3 and 11, 1873, December 22, 1873, “memoranda” section at end of 1873, January 4 and 12, 1874, March 2, 1874. 19. TVP, Diary, March 27, 30, and 31, April 6 and 18, 1874. Forty-five percent of Scranton’s population was foreign born in 1870, and experiences during the depression may well have been influenced by ethnicity. Scranton boasted the largest Welsh community in America with 3,616 Welsh-born residents. They and their offspring formed a cohesive community through their Protestant churches, their claim on the best jobs in the mines and the shops, and their staunch Republican loyalties. The Irish, twice as numerous (6,772), displayed a similar cohesion (virtually all were Catholics and Democrats), but the majority found only unskilled and semiskilled labor. Friction between the two groups was most pronounced during strikes, elections, and economic downturns. The Germans boasted a community almost as large as the Welsh (3,153), but they were divided by religious and occupational lines and played a less prominent role as a group. See Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 41–48. 20. TVP, Diary, November 7, 1871, February 18, 1873, December 4, 1873, “memoranda” section at end of 1873, April 10, 1874. His brother Hugh agreed: “Your connection with the union has injured you.” Hugh Powderly to TVP, March 14, 1875, PP. As soon as he became GMW in 1879, Powderly began to embellish his labor credentials. Among other things, he claimed that he had joined the union after hearing a stirring speech by John Siney, leader of the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, at the site of the 1869 Avondale mine disaster. But his diary reveals that he was not in Avondale at that time and did not meet Siney until 1875. See Journal of United Labor, June 15, 1880; TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 23–25; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 149–154. For an insightful study of the Susquehanna strike, see Herbert Gutman, “Trouble on the Railroads in 1873–1874: Prelude to the 1877 Crisis?” Labor History 2 (Spring 1961): 215–235. 21. TVP, “Oil City Journal,” May 6, 1874, p. 92; TVP, Diary, July 14, July 28, September 2, 1874. 22. TVP, Diary, July 26, 29, 30, 31, August 1 and 2, 1874; Robert Schilling to TVP, July 30 and August 15, 1874, PP. On the Industrial Congress and Brotherhood, see TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859–1889 (Philadelphia, 1889), pp. 106–130; John R. Commons, et al., History of Labour in the United States (New York, 1918), vol. 2, pp. 157–167; Edward James, “American Labor and Political Action, 1865–1896,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954, pp. 76–82; David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York, 1967), pp. 181–185, 192–196. 23. Fehrenbatch to TVP, September 7, 1874; TVP Diary, September 14–26, 1874; Fehrenbatch, “Address” to the Louisville convention, PP; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 175–177. 24. M&BIU Local No. 5, “To the Officers and Members of the various subordinate unions,” November 28, 1874, PP; TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 41–42. See also David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, The State and American Labor Activism (New York, 1987), pp. 196–198. 25. TVP, Diary, November 7, 16, 20, 30, December 4, 1874; March 27, September 30, November 27, 1875; May 31, 1877.

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26. Among numerous other letters and documents in the PP, see M&BIU, “Circular No. 38,” November 6, 1875; W. T. Blaeterman, et al., “to the Officers and Members of the various subordinate unions throughout the country,” no date (November 1875); Roddy Morgan to TVP, November 13, 1875; James Lawless to TVP, November 15, 1875; TVP and P. J. Kennedy to “Mr. President and members of No. 2 of Pennsylvania,” November 15, 1875. Fehrenbatch was disgusted by what he perceived as Powderly’s stab in the back (Fehrenbatch to Thomas Allen, December 9, 1875). 27. For details of this strike, which stemmed from a succession of wage cuts, see Scranton Daily Times, October 7, 8, 9, 11, 1876; Scranton Republican, October 8, 9, 11, 1876; New York Times, October 9, 1876; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 83–84. 28. M&BIU No. 2 of Pennsylvania “to the various subordinate bodies,” no date (October 1876); Joseph Wrigley to TVP, November 11; Fehrenbatch to TVP, November 13; Fred McFeely to TVP, November 19; Henry Dorn to “Officers and Members of M&BIU No. 2 of Pennsylvania,” November 21, 1876, PP. 29. Among numerous other letters and documents in the PP, see TVP, Diary, April 30–May 5, 1877; Joseph Wrigley, et al. “to the various subordinate unions throughout the continent,” November 1876; J. W. Lawless, et al., “to the various subordinate unions of North America,” February 23 and April 16, 1877; Charles Layard, et al., “to the various Machinists’ and Blacksmiths’ Unions of North America,” March 7, 1877; Fred McFeely to TVP, March 13, 1877; S. W. Henrickson “to the various subordinate unions throughout the organization,” April 17 and August 24, 1877; Jackson Wright to TVP, September 27, 1977; M&BIU, The Reporter, June 1877; Mechanical Engineers of North America, “Circular No. 1,” October 1, 1877. 30. TVP to Richard Griffiths, December 12, 1884, PP; TVP, Path I Trod, p. 40. 31. TVP, Diary, April 23 and December 22, 1874, November 2, 1875, September 16 and 25, October 9, November 6, 1876; Scranton Republican, November 10, 1876; Irish World, February 16, 1878; TVP to the editor of the M&BIU Journal, August 1876. See also Chester Destler, American Radicalism, 1865–1901 (Chicago, 1966), chapter 4; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 46–51, 55–57, 61, 64–65, 128–130; James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 110–121. 32. TVP, Diary, April 2 and 7, May 5 and 14, 1876; Irish World, April 29, 1876; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 188–191. On the Irish World, which connected Irish issues to reform movements in America, see James Rodechko, “Patrick Ford and His Search for America: A Case Study in Irish-American Journalism, 1870–1913,” Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1967; Thomas N. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 1870–1890 (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 37–57. 33. Unfortunately, page limitations preclude an examination of Powderly’s role in the Land League and Clan na Gael. At its first convention (January 1881), the Irish National Land League, a largely middle-class organization, elected him second vice president. He was even more active in working-class Land League branches loosely aligned with Patrick Ford’s Irish World. And in August 1881 he was given control over the Pennsylvania district of the Clan na Gael, the successor to the Fenian Brotherhood. His leadership helps explain why the Clan was particularly attractive to Irish-American workers in northeast Pennsylvania. For an excellent discussion of the rise and meaning of both the Clan and Land League, which pays some attention to anthracite but little to Powderly, see Eric Foner, “Class, Ethnicity, and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish-America,” Marxist Perspectives I (Summer 1978): 6–55. 34. TVP, Diary, September 6, 1876. Years later, he would claim that he was initiated

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in 1874. This was probably an attempt to claim greater seniority in the movement, although he may simply have confused the Knights with the Industrial Congress. TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 42–43; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 200–201. 35. Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (New York, 1955), vol. 1, p. 440; Robert Weir, Beyond Labor’s Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor (University Park, Pa., 1996), p. 26; Carroll D. Wright, “An Historical Sketch of the Knights of Labor,” Quarterly Journal of Economics I (January 1887): 141–142; Stephens quoted in TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, pp. 168–169. These topics have attracted much scholarly attention in recent years. See especially Weir, Beyond Labor’s Veil, chapter 1; Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1993), pp. 73–75; Richard Oestreicher, “Terence Powderly, the Knights of Labor, and Artisinal Republicanism,” in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, eds., Labor Leaders in America (Urbana, 1987), pp. 45–46. More general overviews include Mark Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, 1989); Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, 1989). 36. TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 121–192; James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 88–101; Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 1, p. 440; Foster Rhea Dulles and Melvyn Dubofsky, Labor in America: A History, 5th ed. (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1993), p. 106. 37. TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 194–196; Minutes of LA 222, October 14 and November 8, 1876. 38. TVP to L. H. Banford, October 22, 1883; TVP to Litchman, August 27, 1878; TVP to C. Curtis, August 30, 1878, PP. See also the routine violations of initiation rites in the Minutes of LA 222, October 14, 1876–April 26, 1877. 39. TVP, Diary, November 16 and 30, 1876; King to TVP, January 21, 1877, PP. 40. See the initiations in the Minutes of LA 222, October 14, 1876–April 26, 1877, and various entertainment activities, especially those on January 4, 1877. 41. TVP, Diary, October 19, 1876; Minutes of LA 222, November 1, 8, 16, 30, December 14, 1876. 42. TVP, Diary, October 10 and 11, 1876, “memoranda” section at end of 1877; Minutes of LA 222, November 8 and 16, 1876; King to TVP, April 24, 1877, PP. 43. TVP, Diary, April 23 and 26, 1877; TVP “to the officers and members of L.A. 222,” April 26, 1877, PP; Minutes of LA 222, April 26 and May 10, 1877; Minutes of DA 5, April 29, 1877. 44. King to TVP, May 16, 1877; TVP, Diary, January 19 and May 31, 1877; Minutes of LA 222, November 30 and December 21, 1876, April 5 and 26, 1877; Minutes of DA 5, February 24 and April 29, 1877; TVP, “Ledger Book” for 1877, PP. 45. Craft, History of Scranton, pp. 227–228; John Gallagher, “Scranton: Industry and Politics,” pp. 239–240; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” p. 87. 46. Scranton Republican, June 23 and 25, 1877; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 87–88; Wayne Broehl, The Molly Maguires (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. 307–339. 47. Minutes of LA 222, November 30, December 8 and 14, 1876, May 10 and 17, 1877; Minutes of DA 5, April 29, 1877; Scranton Republican, December 8, 1876, March 14 and 15, April 4, 1877; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 85–87. 48. Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Boston, 1972), p. 1. See also Philip Foner, The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 (New York, 1977); Robert Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence (Indianapolis, 1959).

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49. Samuel Logan, A City’s Danger and Defense, or Issues and Results of the Strikes of 1877 (Scranton, 1877), chapters 2–4; Hitchcock, History of Scranton, pp. 496–511; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 89–92; Gallagher, “Scranton: Industry and Politics,” pp. 240–242. 50. Bruce, 1877, pp. 295–296; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 209–211. 51. Scranton Republican, July 31, 1877, quoted in Walker, “Labor Mayor,” p. 92. 52. Scranton Republican, August 2 and 8, 1877; Logan, A City’s Danger, chapter 5; Hitchcock, History of Scranton, pp. 500–511; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 212–218. 53. TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 215–218; Hannah Powderly to TVP, August 3, 1877, PP; Minutes of LA 222, August 9, 1877; Minutes of DA 5, August 29, 1877. The miners continued their strike until October, when they returned to work thoroughly defeated. 54. See the dozens of letters in the PP from Scranton area miners requesting charters in August–September 1877. Fred Turner to TVP, August 16, 1877; TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 68–69; Bernard Fitzpatrick to TVP, August 18, 1877, PP. 55. Montgomery, Beyond Equality, pp. 186–196 (quote is from p. 195); James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 104–109; Thomas King to TVP, April 24, 1877; TVP “to the officers and members of L.A. 222,” April 26, 1877, PP. 56. Turner to TVP, August 7 and 16; James Clark “to the officers and members of D.A. No. 5,” August 10; Joseph Birmingham to TVP, August 27; John Lannon to TVP, September 6; Bernard Fitzpatrick to TVP, September 27; Michael Mangan to TVP, October 22; James Quinn to TVP, November 2, 1877, PP; Minutes of DA 5, August 30, 1877; Scranton Republican, September 13, 1877; Scranton Daily Times, September 13, 1877. 57. F. P. Dewees to TVP, October 15 and 19; George Boyle to TVP, October 16 and 24; Archie McQueen to TVP, October 16; Patrick Cullen to TVP, October 22; John Ross to TVP, October 23 and November 5; W. W. Jones to TVP, October 28; John Rutledge to TVP, October 30; Joseph Powderly to TVP, November 1, 1877, PP; Scranton Daily Times, November 8, 1877; Irish World, February 16, 1878. The contested offices were additional law judge, sheriff, coroner, recorder, and surveyor. 58. TVP, Diary, December 21, 1877; Scranton Republican, December 21, 1877; John Ross to TVP, December 23, 1877; J. P. Ryan to TVP, January 7, 1878, PP. 59. For a thoughtful discussion of the Knights and the “uses of political power,” see Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983), chapter 2 (quote is from p. 30); Scranton Daily Times, December 21, 1877, February 18, 1878. 60. Scranton Daily Times, December 21, 1877; Irish World, February 2, 1878; Scranton Republican, April 2, 1878. 61. James Bingham to TVP, January 3, 1878; TVP’s rhetoric is taken from his Diary, “memoranda” section at the end of 1877; Scranton Republican, February 9 and 19, 1878; Scranton Daily Times, February 11 and 19, 1878. See also Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 102–105. 62. Scranton Republican, February 9, 13, and 19; Scranton Daily Times, February 11 and 19, 1878. 63. Scranton Republican, February 20 and 21, 1878; TVP to Henry Fecker, August 7, 1879; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 106–108, 288. 64. Jonathan Garlock, “A Structural Analysis of the Knights of Labor: A Prolegomenon to the History of the Producing Classes,” Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1974,

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pp. 65–77, 236; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 186–193; George McNeill, The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-Day (Boston, 1887), pp. 403–405. 65. TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 223–236; James, “American Labor and Politics,” pp. 101– 104; Thomas King to TVP, June 3, 1877, PP. 66. L. J. Booker to TVP, June 28; George Blair to TVP, June 23, July 1 and 9, August 12; Fred Turner to TVP, August 7 and 16, 1877, PP; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 236–237. 67. TVP, Diary, September 14 and 19, 1877; F. P. Dewees to TVP, numerous letters from September through November, 1877, PP; Turner to TVP, September 3 and December 12, 1877; James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 140–149. 68. See, among other letters, William Singer to TVP, August 14, September 8, December 10; John Appleton to TVP, December 9 and 22; S. E. Burgess to TVP, December 19; George Fitslead to TVP, December 24; Charles Litchman to TVP, August 22; Richard Griffiths to TVP, August 28 and November 24, 1877, PP. 69. TVP, Thirty Years, p. 246. 70. Proceedings, 1878 Reading GA. Discussions of specific measures and the constitution adopted at Reading are addressed in chapter 2. See also Laurie, Artisans into Workers, pp. 150–153; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 238–251; Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895 (New York, 1929), pp. 56–64; James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 149–154; and Commons, History of Labour, vol. 2, pp. 335–338. 71. TVP, Diary, October 12, 1878; TVP to David Healy, January 20, 1882, PP. For other confessions of neglect of his mayoral duties, see TVP to Litchman, February 1, 1879; TVP to John Archibald, May 25, 1882; TVP to Edward Jones, August 9, 1883. For analyses of his performance as mayor, all of which credit him with reducing the city’s debt while expanding city services, see Walker, “Labor Mayor,” chapter 5; Vincent Falzone, Terence V. Powderly: Middle Class Reformer (Washington, D.C., 1978), chapter 3; Gallagher, “Scranton: Industry and Politics,” pp. 295–314. 72. TVP to Litchman, August 27, December 6 and 10, 1878, PP. 73. Minutes of LA 222, April 18 and 25, May 2, December 15, 1878; TVP to Thomas Coffey, June 20, 1879; TVP to Daniel Leary, December 4, 1879, PP; Proceedings, September 1879 Chicago GA, p. 113; Journal of United Labor, June 15, 1880. 74. TVP to J. J. McLaughlin, February 11, 1879; TVP to J. J. Kearney, April 30, 1879; TVP to James Gibbons, December 10, 1878; TVP to F. J. Conlan, March 11, 1879, PP. 75. TVP to J. K. Helmbold, July 2, 1879, PP. See also TVP, Diary, November 5; TVP to E. S. Watson, July 18; TVP to the editor of the Lackawanna Union, August 19, 1879, PP; Walker, “Labor Mayor,” pp. 244–247; Gallagher, “Scranton: Industry and Politics,” pp. 269–272. 76. New York Times, May 9 and 10, 1878; James L. Wright to TVP, March 23, 1878; TVP to Wright, March 25, 1878; Fred Turner to TVP, March 25; Uriah Stephens to TVP, March 28; TVP to Frank Heath, June 2, 1882; James, “American Labor and Politics,” pp. 158–161, 163–166. 77. TVP to M. J. Colligan, October 7; TVP to Thomas Parry, September 27; TVP to John Dunn, October 11; TVP to John Ross, October 21; TVP to E. R. Embody, October 21; TVP to Frank Devrees, October 23, 1878, PP. 78. Scranton Republican, November 16, 1878; James, “American Labor and Politics,” pp. 166–167. 79. Scranton Republican, February 19, 1878; Scranton Daily Times, May 20, 25, and

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28, 1878. See TVP’s distorted version of his scrape with O’Hara in Path I Trod, pp. 320–325. For a detailed look at these issues, see Henry Browne, The Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor (Washington, D.C., 1949), chapter 2. 80. Litchman to TVP, May 16 and 23, June 19; Stephens and Litchman “to the Fraternity wherever found,” May 16; Proceedings, May 1878 Philadelphia GA (special session), pp. 40, 44–45; Proceedings, January 1879 St. Louis GA, pp. 62–63, 75–76; TVP, Diary, January 6, 1879. See also TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 252–257, 627–628; Browne, Knights of Labor and the Catholic Church, pp. 50–54. TVP’s own DA 16 was one of the first to take advantage of the new law by voting to alow its locals to make the name public. Proceedings, DA 16, March 28, 1879. 81. The first official protest against extreme secrecy came from a Brooklyn flint glass workers’ assembly in 1875. TVP, Thirty Years, p. 224. 82. TVP to C. Curtis, August 30, 1878, PP. Of all the Crispin leaders to shift allegiances to the Knights in 1877 after attempts to revive their union had failed, Charles Litchman was the best known. A few months younger than Powderly, Litchman was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the son of a shoe manufacturer. As a teenager, he worked as a salesperson in his father’s firm, and in his early twenties, he took up legal studies and became a partner in his brother’s shoe firm. Both endeavors were cut short by the depression, which reduced him to wage labor in a mechanized shoe factory. He then worked his way up the hierarchy of the Crispins, involved himself in greenback politics, and in the fall of 1878, won election to the Massachusetts legislature on the NGLP ticket. His popularity as a Knight stemmed from his wide-ranging organizing and superlative oratorical skills, and he established the first locals in Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other places. On the Crispins, see D. D. Lescohier, The Knights of St. Crispin, 1867–1874 (Madison, 1910). Biographical sketches of Litchman include JUL, June 15, 1880; San Francisco Truth, June 28, 1882; and Robert Weir, “When Friends Fall Out: Charles Litchman and the Knights of Labor,” in Kenneth Fones-Wolf and Martin Kaufman, eds., Labor in Massachusetts: Selected Essays (Westfield, Mass., 1990), pp. 103–123. Litchman introduced Knighthood to Chicago in May 1877 while on a lecture tour. Before leaving town, he initiated Richard Griffiths, leader of the Chicago Crispins and national Deputy Grand Sir Knight of that organization. The Welsh-born Griffiths had been selected to lead the local Crispins lodge in the wake of an 1869 strike for higher wages. In 1870, he was one of the few trade unionists in the city to run for office as an independent, although he lost his bid for a seat in the state legislature. In 1874, Chicago shoe manufacturers locked out the city’s Crispins; Griffiths lost his job and may well have been blacklisted. He then opened a small cigar shop on Wells Street, and it was in the back room of this shop that he gathered approximately fifty leading trade unionists on August 19, 1877—three weeks after the railroad strikes and riots—to establish Chicago’s first local, LA 400. In October 1878, he was elected MW of the new district organization, DA 24, which claimed eleven locals and 1,018 members by September 1879. Under his direction, Chicago Knighthood represented a loose alliance of reformminded trade unionists and greenback-laborites searching for political solutions to labor’s plight. Biographical information on Griffiths can be found in Knights of Labor (Chicago), January 29, 1887; JUL, May 1883; and Montgomery, Beyond Equality, p. 465. Membership figures taken from Proceedings, September 1879 Chicago GA, p. 115. See also Richard Schneirov, “The Knights of Labor in the Chicago Labor Movement and in

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Municipal Politics, 1877–1887,” Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, 1984, chapter 2. 83. TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 239, 255; Litchman to TVP, January 11, 17, and 22, 1878, PP. 84. Proceedings, January 1879 St. Louis GA, pp. 76–77. Delegates at St. Louis resolved to hold future GAs in September rather than January to facilitate both travel and political action. See ibid., p. 83. 85. Proceedings, September 1879 Chicago GA, pp. 93, 133. 86. Laurie, Artisans into Workers, p. 147; Robert Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club: The Knights of Labor Joust among Themselves,” Labor History 34, No. 1 (Winter 1993): 57.

Chapter 2

Building a National Movement: September 1879–September 1881 Contemporaries were often taken aback by Powderly’s appearance because he did not fit their preconceived notions of how a labor leader should look. “I am not readily surprised,” one Chicago journalist remarked, “but the rather slight, well-formed person” who introduced himself as GMW “was an unexpected figure for the leader of brawny men.” He looked more “like a college professor rather than one who has swung a hammer.” John Swinton, the most famous labor reporter of his day, observed, “English novelists take men of Powderly’s look for their poets, gondola scullers, philosophers and heroes crossed in love but no one ever drew such a looking man as the leader of a million horneyfisted sons of toil.”1 Standing slightly over five-feet seven-inches, the thirty-year-old GMW was of average height. His thin and somewhat frail body, with noticeably small hands and feet, was invariably adorned by a dark, conventional Prince Albert frock coat with a starched stand-up collar and tie. His movements were graceful and measured, his bearing direct and masculine, his voice pleasing in tone. With deep-set and pale blue bespectacled eyes, a well-proportioned nose and jaw, and a large dimple in his chin, his visage was both highly intelligent and compassionate. His most distinctive facial feature—a red-tinged and walruslike mustache—hid most of his mouth and reached below his chin before curling upward. A “pleasant, open face and a slightly bald head showing a generous development of philanthropy,” noted a West Virginia reporter, matched his “prepossessing, gentlemanly bearing.”2

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This poised, slender man, contemporaries agreed, possessed in abundance that nebulous but all important leadership trait—charisma. Good looks, refinement, superlative oratorical skills, and an uncanny ability to remember names and faces—all these qualities made him “a man calculated to favorably impress an audience, and he did, at first sight.” But there was something more, an undefinable, captivating quality. Journalists often tried to put their finger on it, even in these early years when fame did not prejudice their views. “Mr. Powderly is a man of more than ordinary personal magnetism,” remarked one, “making him at once a favorite with all whom he comes in contact.” Another, also meeting Powderly for the first time, was likewise convinced that he was “one of the most stirring men of the day” who was “destined to leave his impress upon the age he lives in.”3 When the Order expanded, his charisma became inextricably intertwined with the promise of Knighthood, and his impact could be astonishing. Constantly reminded by his peers that he was a man of destiny, he never abandoned his boyhood dreams of greatness. In his first years as GMW, he set his sights on Congress, and in 1884, he pursued a presidential appointment as the first Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. He made no bones about his desire to succeed, even if some saw him as a grasper. “It is my duty to look after my own interests,” he informed Scranton area Knights, “and I am not made of the kind of clay that will throw away a chance to better my own condition, either physically, mentally, or morally because some enemy or envious grumbler abuses me.”4 Given his immense popularity, his aspirations were far from unrealistic, nor were they inconsistent with Knighthood. Uriah Stephens ran unsuccessfully for Congress, and Thomas Ferrell, a New Jersey Knight, was one of several who actually won a seat. Moreover, ambition did not reflect a lack of commitment to the Order or working people in general. Although there were aspects of his personality that allowed him to rise above his station, he never once forgot that his prominence ultimately rested on the collective spirit of the nation’s toilers. Charisma helps to account for Powderly’s rise to power, but his compassion and devotion to the cause made him a truly popular leader. At heart a warm and loving person, he formed countless friendships with those who could only repay him with affection. Despite his staggering workload, he kept in contact with his old workmates from the machinist shops in Scranton and Carbondale, assisting them whenever they needed a reference or a loan; he regularly responded to strangers who inquired about job prospects in Scranton; and when old friends coped with the death of loved ones or some other misfortune, he was invariably the first to offer his love and concern.5 Examples of his magnanimity would fill a separate volume, but one will suffice to demonstrate the point. Mary Josephine Keenan, his wife’s cousin who lived in Brooklyn, was a young adult who lived a troubled life. Overweight and unmarried, she lived with her mother and her mother’s brother—Uncle Hughy, who was chronically ill and verbally abusive—and spent long, unhappy days

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working in a corner shop. Painfully shy and lacking self-esteem, she had few friends in whom she could confide other than Powderly. “I dislike being stout so much,” she told him in a typical letter, “but I may as well like it as not for it can’t be helped.” Powderly wrote her often in an effort to lift her spirits. It was Powderly who kept in contact with this branch of the clan, inviting Mary Josephine and her mother up to Scranton on a regular basis, and visiting their home in Brooklyn whenever he traveled to New York City.6 He expressed a similarly warm and paternal concern for the membership. Even with a work schedule so hectic that it jeopardized his health, he tried his utmost to make himself available to any Knight needing assistance. Thomas Burns, the Recording Secretary (RS) of LA 230 (mine workers) in Mill Hollow, Pennsylvania, was one of numerous cases in point. As was true of many Knights, Burns lacked the education and time to fill out his local’s monthly reports properly, and when quarterly reports were introduced in the spring of 1880 he had even greater difficulty. Burns got everything wrong—the tax to be paid, the place to send the tax, everything. He even failed to figure out what “quarter” meant, filling out a report for two rather than three months. Having already explained the new reports in detail to Burns and other delegates at a DA 16 session, Powderly now explained them again in a three-page private letter. He even performed the math and told the RS the exact amount he should pay. Almost unbelievably, Burns filled out another report improperly a week later. Without complaint, Powderly arranged to travel twenty miles on a weekday night to instruct Burns in the sanctuary of the Mill Hollow LA, and he paid the expenses out of his own pocket.7 Such expressions of thankless dedication were replayed over and over throughout his tenure. His concern and commitment were periodically undercut by extended bouts of exhaustion, illness, melancholy, and even despair. A highly strung, emotional man, he exhibited throughout his career a tendency to collapse under the weight of his responsibilities. Since the age of nine he had been afflicted with quinsy, a chronic throat condition (marked by fevers and the formation of abscesses on the tonsils) that often confined him to bed for weeks at a time and swelled his throat to such an extent that eating was impossible. During these episodes, he could be consumed by dark thoughts, lash out at correspondents, and regret the life he had chosen. In the spring of 1881, for instance, he lay in bed for five weeks, all the while believing that he was dying and yet unable to think of anything but the chores he had left unattended. When he recovered, the accumulated pile of correspondence on his desk was “sickening to look at let alone answer.”8 This sickly and morose side of Powderly usually emerged during crises and, as we shall see, could at times play a pivotal role in the course of events. When healthy, Powderly immersed himself in a dizzying array of duties, associations, and activities. He usually spent several hours each day on the routine business affairs of the mayor’s office; he maintained his involvement in numerous organizations, such as the Clan na Gael and Father Matthew’s Tem-

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perance Society; he made frequent trips to Carbondale to visit his parents and sister Margery; he enjoyed socializing at Walsh’s Barber Shop with his good friends Patrick Barrett, Patrick Hughes, and his brother-in-law Johnny Dever; he loved gardening and had a special fondness for roses; he went to mass every Sunday; he took charge of major household repairs and chores; he read all the local papers, several labor papers, and the Irish World; he remained an active member of LA 222 and the RS of DA 16; and he still had time to take his wife out for an occasional play at the local theater. Because he spent most of each day either working or in the company of others, he prized those snippets of time spent alone with his wife Hannah. The childless couple enjoyed a tender, loving relationship, and they heaped affection on their dog Don. Hannah devoted most of her energy to household duties and caring for both sets of parents. She was an intelligent woman who kept abreast of local affairs and took an active role in fund-raising activities for the local parish church and the Ladies’ Land League branch. Women whom Powderly met through the Knights and his Irish associations valued her humor and warmth. Ellen Ford, who assisted her brother Patrick in running the Irish World, wrote and visited often, and Margaret Turner, the English-born wife of DA 1 (Philadelphia) RS Fred Turner, counted Hannah among her closest friends. Hannah never challenged her domestic role; she hated the limelight and was content to provide emotional sustenance to her juggernaut of a husband.9 Given his ferocious determination to make a success of the Knights, all his other activities and associations, including his mayoral duties and familial relationships, ultimately suffered from inattention. Priorities were established early. Immediately after getting off the train following the Chicago GA, and even before going home to see his wife, he went to the mayor’s office to begin his correspondence as GMW. Within weeks, he transformed the living room of his rented house at 450 Main Street into an office; a large $90 secretarial desk and piles of letters and documents now dominated the room and symbolized the impossibility of keeping his private and public affairs neatly divided. Diary entries for late 1879 indicate that he spent approximately four hours each day on Knights’ business, a figure that did not include his LA and DA duties, private meetings with Knights visiting Scranton, or trips to Marblehead, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago.10 Powderly’s magnetism, ambition, and tireless efforts on behalf of working people had earned him the right to oversee what would become the premier labor association of the nineteenth century. His election also proved fortunate for the Order, for he was a true believer in the cause, he was prepared to devote the bulk of his seemingly boundless energy to an organization that paid him only a pittance, and he possessed the administrative skills required to bind the disparate locals and districts into a truly national movement. No other Knight was better suited to the fill the shoes of Uriah Stephens.11 In 1879, the Order had none of the features of a modern organization. Its “headquarters” consisted of Powderly’s living room and Litchman’s rented of-

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fice in Marblehead, Massachusetts. These two men, working without full-time assistance of any kind, had to answer every letter from both members and nonmembers, print the GA Proceedings, distribute charters, commission organizers, collect and distribute money, lecture across the country, advise on constitutional matters, interpret GA resolutions and past GMW decisions, settle disputes between subordinate bodies, administer the locals attached directly to the GA, design and produce the Order’s paraphernalia, and hundreds of other timeconsuming duties. Moreover, both men could devote only part of their time to the work. From the outset Powderly was surcharged with genuine enthusiasm. His early missives were quick to proclaim that the minuscule Order would someday regenerate America, and he called on all members to exert the kind of effort he had been putting in for the past three and a half years. “My heart is in the work and I will never for one moment stop while there is any thing to do,” he declared. “I gave up all for it (the Order), and would to God every member would do the same then the evils we complain of could be righted.” Nor did he ever waste an opportunity to drum up support from stalwarts: “I will look to the old heads of the Order for advice and assistance. Trusting that your [sic] among the number [who] will be ever ready to respond.” And he always encouraged those whose enthusiasm was ebbing: “Don’t lose courage. Your wise counsel and influence will be required.”12 Commitment, enthusiasm, and energy would be a few of the hallmarks of Powderly’s leadership, but such qualities by no means guaranteed success for his administration or the organization. He presided over the most complex and contradictory labor society that ever existed, one that not only preached the gospel of solidarity among all toilers but also sought to erect a viable structure capable of unifying the myriad voices of working-class America into one harmonious chorus. No other labor society had ever expounded so grand a vision, and thus no other society experienced so many organizational difficulties. At the 1878 Reading GA, delegates had adopted not one but three constitutions, one for each level of authority. One granted locals “full power” to adopt any rules or by-laws they “deemed necessary”; another declared that the district had “full jurisdiction” and was the “highest tribunal” within its territorial limits; and the third held that the GA possessed “full and final jurisdiction” and was the “highest tribunal” of the entire Order.13 This legal confusion was perhaps inevitable, because both locals and districts, which existed prior to the creation of the GA, were reluctant to yield authority to the new national body. By providing for powerful locals, the constitutions encouraged a continuation of community control, one of the bases of the Knight’s popularity. But by creating overlapping jurisdictions and prerogatives, the constitutions all but precluded the centralization of power necessary to ensure national unity of purpose, the establishment of a powerful treasury, and a clear chain of command that could squelch debilitating internal dissent. The constitution provided for numerous grand officers to administer the Order

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at the national level when the GA was not in session, but only two wielded even a semblance of power before 1883. The grand worthy foreman was largely an honorary post, important only as the successor to the GMW if that officer stepped down before completing a term. The grand treasurer was equally insignificant, serving only as a guarantor for monies collected by the GS. Of even less importance were the venerable sage, grand inside esquire, and grand outside esquire, who performed exclusively ceremonial functions at GAs. Delegates at Reading had also established a five-man General Executive Board (GEB), invested with “general supervision and control over the Order,” but in practice the GEB met infrequently and exercised almost no authority prior to 1883. Although subsequent GAs added even more posts, such as auditor and statistician, these were without voice and vote on matters of policy. The GMW and GS thus controlled the Order at the national level when the GA was not in session. Their duties were onerous and their pay was slight (Powderly received just $200 and expenses his first year, Litchman $800 and expenses), but they had wide latitude in handling affairs under their jurisdiction as long as their actions were approved by the following GA.14 The official duties of the GMW were vague. He was to “enforce all laws” of the GA and was entrusted with the “general superintendence of the Order.” He had fiscal and legal responsibilities, was obligated to call a “special session” when districts from five states demanded one, and had undefined powers to “confirm” the appointment of organizers chosen by assemblies. He had no explicit power to expel subordinate bodies without GA approval, no power to appoint organizers in areas where a district already existed, and no explicit power to call a strike, a boycott, or engage the Order in political action. The GMW was thus a relatively weak post, and even as Powderly was elevated to it, delegates to the GA had demonstrated a determination to keep it weak. The GS was intended to be the strong arm of the national Order. He oversaw all money transactions and used threats of suspension to ensure that per capita payments were made. He controlled and authorized all essential paperwork— charters, membership cards, withdrawal and transfer cards, delegate credentials, quarterly reports—and all other supplies. When the Order finally established its own journal—the Journal of United Labor—in May 1880, the GS was placed in charge of that as well. Given the gross inefficiency of the Order and the amount of work the GS performed, money and paperwork problems and delays were commonplace. Although locals were extremely reluctant to fork over their per capita taxes to him, they were quick to believe that their money had been misappropriated, mismanaged, or just missing once they did send it. This was symptomatic of the Order’s great strength—community control—which engendered a lack of trust in any central authority, including one of the members’ own making. Because he handled funds and received a respectable salary, the GS often became the object of suspicion. Significantly, the GMW was not viewed in the same light. His was a position of moral authority that the vast majority of members approached with respect.

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Because he never handled funds and rarely imposed his will on an assembly without an appeal for help, he was perceived as above the fracas of day-to-day affairs. He was regarded as an intellectual and propagandist with enlightened views on all issues facing working people, an impartial judge ensuring that the laws of the Order applied equally to everyone, a teacher who offered guidance on both mundane and lofty matters, and the embodiment of committed and experienced Knighthood. Certainly not every member agreed with his pronouncements, but, especially in these early years, virtually all Knights paid homage to his office, his intelligence, and his impeccable character. Powderly could hardly reflect on his predecessor’s performance as an example of effective national leadership. Even though Uriah Stephens’s vision had created the Knights and sustained artisans in the Philadelphia area throughout the depression, once placed at the head of the national organization in January 1878 the Order had begun to deteriorate. Membership had dwindled to a paltry 9,287, and those who remained were deeply divided over fundamental issues, such as the centralization of power, secrecy and ritual, and political action. Finances were a mess and communication channels were virtually nonexistent. Many local secretaries did not even know the address of the GMW or GS; the grand officers did not even keep a list of subordinate bodies and were thus unaware of the existence of many locals; and the lack of a journal made certain that no single voice of Knighthood would be heard. Other than these shortcomings, the only things Stephens bequeathed to his successor was the constitution, which he had not written, a book of complex rituals known as the Adelphon Kruptos (AK), which was already the object of criticism, and a few letterbooks containing routine correspondence and the GMW’s “decisions” on constitutional questions. Thus, Powderly’s first task was to combat the chaotic management that marked the Order at all levels. Few master workmen or recording secretaries at the local or district level, let alone the rank and file, understood how to conduct meetings, keep proper minutes, make and implement policies, admit and expel members, elect delegates to DAs and the GA, and perform all the often petty chores necessary for the proper functioning of a national organization. Powderly also understood that members in different localities had widely divergent ideas regarding the objects of the Order, some believing it to be a purely political society, others simply a surrogate trade union, and still others a moral reform organization. But what demanded his utmost attention was the tendency of assemblies to rise and fall with alarming rapidity, which ensured that organizational stability would remain a pipe dream unless some action was taken. What action could be taken? Without effective bureaucratic controls, the grand officers were unable to establish systematic procedure. Because locals dotted the nation from coast to coast and Powderly was often shackled to the mayor’s desk in Scranton, he could not very well travel from local to local offering personal advice and instruction. At the start of his tenure, therefore, Powderly was largely cut off from his own rank and file, and he could only watch in horror as locals pursued their own goals without direction, unknow-

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ingly violated the rules of the Order, failed to pay taxes, engaged in unauthorized strikes, became consumed by meaningless squabbles, and, very often, disbanded even before receiving a clear understanding of the nature of the movement they had joined. Unwilling to follow Stephens’s laissez-faire leadership, Powderly, within six weeks of his election, hit upon the idea of “writing a series of homespun letters” through an independent labor journal to “give workingmen an idea of their duty,” which meant instruction in all aspects of membership. He selected as his medium The Trades, a struggling Philadelphia journal recently established by John M. Davis, the aging Pittsburgh Knight who had recently moved to the city of the founders. He wrote eight letters in all, which were published between November 1879 and February 1880.15 Given that Powderly had so many complex issues to address, it may have struck some readers as strange that three of the eight letters dealt with undeniably mundane topics, such as the election of local officers, the paying of dues, the need to attend local meetings, and the detrimental effect of needless bickering in the sanctuaries. Yet, as the GMW was painfully aware, these constituted some of the most formidable obstacles to the erection of a national organization. Thus, although he knew his letters might be deemed “the silliest that have ever been written,”16 he had good reason to focus on the humdrum. In his third letter, for instance, he addressed the subject of finance, “the rock upon which most trade unions founder,” and for a dozen or so paragraphs he lambasted those who failed to pay their per capital tax. Paying members soon grew disillusioned because the national administration accomplished so little, while nonpaying members squandered their money in the saloon, where a few drinks cost more than the annual per capita tax to the GA. “While wiping the froth from his mustache (if he’s not too mean to raise a mustache),” the member in arrears “ ‘damns’ the president of the society . . . and wonders ‘why in hell he don’t tend to the business of the order for which we pay him.’ He then goes home and beats his wife.” Powderly’s grotesque caricature of the irresponsible Knight—a drunken, ignorant, wife beater—illustrated one of his standard approaches to the rank and file. Borrowing heavily from the popular literature of the day, he portrayed the membership in terms of heavy-handed Victorian morality. This was a language very familiar to members, and he used it skilfully to create a sense of drama between good and evil within the Order. The nonpayer, for instance, had a fatal character flaw—cowardice. Although prepared to grumble about dues, he lacked the “manhood” to resist when wages were reduced and “cringingly” took up his tools at lower pay. Righteous dues-paying members even had their own martyr, “poor Jim,” a Scranton mine worker. When Jim was killed in an early morning mine explosion, his workmates discovered that his dinner pail was empty. Jim was willing to go hungry to pay his dues, and he had died in misery because others failed to do so. Such was the sorry fact of labor organizations: “[T]he men who suffer the most are always the most prompt in paying their dues.”17

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Other than cajolery, Powderly quickly determined that the only way to systematize and unify was by an ever increasing reliance on the Order’s constitution. As questions became more intricate, such as the proper procedure for making the name of the Order public in a given locality or relations between LAs and local trade unions, he invariably instructed the rank and file to look to the constitution. “Your only resort is the Constitution,” he harped. “Comply with its provisions and all will be well.” This insistence on law and formality represented an effort to force local officers to act according to uniform guidelines, to cut down on his own workload, and to exalt his status. As keeper of the law, he became, along with the law itself, the glue that held this disparate organization together. He grew very particular when citing the constitution, because his knowledge of the law was that which set him apart from the rank and file, and it was with the law that he hoped to establish a clear chain of command, from the GA to the district, local, and rank and file. Reliance on the law also shielded him from personal responsibility for his decisions: “On assuming the duties of G.M.W. I formed one resolution, viz. to live up to the strict letter of the law. Thus if any blame must be attached any where it must be attached to the law and not to me.”18 Even Powderly’s role as keeper of the law was undercut by financial constraints. An inability to ensure the rational collection of taxes meant that there was not enough money for the GS to print the Proceedings of the St. Louis and Chicago GAs or the new constitutions. Powderly was thus immediately thrown into an embarrassing situation. Without the laws of the Order before him, he could offer only the most general advice to members. Because most of his correspondents were asking for his official position on GA resolutions, he hardly knew what to tell them. He became so frustrated that a little over a month into his tenure, he made the first of many offhand threats to resign. Since becoming GMW, he fumed, he had “not given a satisfactory answer to a correspondent yet, and I will end the farce of the 31st of this month [October] by resigning.”19 The Proceedings were still not out at the end of the year, and rumblings from the rank and file began to surface. GEB member Edward A. Stevens was quick to condemn the GS, and he pressured the executive board of Chicago’s DA 24 to do something about “the neglect or breach of duty by Mr. Litchman.”20 H. F. Williams, the RS of DA 24, was nearly hysterical. The Order was growing in Chicago, but members had been waiting eighteen months for constitutions. “We must have them here soon or there will be rebellion.” The crisis unnerved Powderly, and Litchman was so harried by overwork and stress that he, too, wanted to quit. Even hiring Gilbert Rockwood as assistant GS did not reduce Litchman’s workload to manageable proportions. In January 1880, Litchman headed off for a week of rest in Washington, leaving Rockwood in charge. “I am running the ‘shebang,’ or at least trying to,” the assistant GS informed Powderly with his usual dollop of humor, “but if any man dares to insinuate to you that there isn’t much to do in this office, you put a head on him, and I will pay your fine if you are hauled up before the Mayor of Scranton.”21

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In February 1878, Litchman finally posted Proceedings and constitutions to locals, but by then the delay had earned him a vote of censure from DA 24. When at last the crisis had been resolved, Rockwood noted with both relief and sarcasm that “[t]he country is now safe.”22 This minor episode highlighted the financial and administrative chaos of the Order. An inability to collect taxes efficiently had led to the delays, which had serious ramifications at the local and district level, but the weak lines of communication between grand officers, district leaders, and the rank and file made it easy for members to blame problems on the personal failings of Powderly and Litchman. In this instance, Powderly stood by his friend, realizing that Litchman was overworked and operating without sufficient funds. But these and countless other administrative nightmares would plague the Order throughout its existence and inhibit the erection of a unified national movement. Powderly assumed the mantle of leadership when the nation was gripped by a rabid antilabor mentality and when the secretive Knights, whatever their administrative shortcomings, represented one of the healthiest national labor organizations. Surrounded by the corpses of once proud national trade unions and the wreckage of failed strikes, he and others assessed the lessons of the 1870s as they searched for more effective strategies. There were plenty to choose from. Although the urgency of the 1877 riots may have died away, the ideas generated during the long depression were still very much alive. Numerous programs of action, some chimerical and others quite sound, some novel and others reworkings of older ideas, were quietly being talked about and acted on around the country. Producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives, collective bargaining, boycotting, land reform, third-party political action and fusion tickets, centralized strike funds, worker-controlled sick and death benefit programs, currency reform, lobbying efforts at the state and national level—all these competing ideas and programs found a hearing in the Knights. The hostile economic and political environment was certainly not conducive to effective organizing, but for Powderly and others, the possibilities of collective action seemed limitless. Powderly was by no means a profound labor philosopher. His views on the principal issues facing the movement and the nature of class conflict did not stem from deep and abstract theoretical reasoning. His gift was an ability to stir the passions of others by popularizing ideas he had learned from the great thinkers of the 1860s, most notably William Sylvis and Ira Steward, as well as the leading lights of his generation. His rhetoric was thus replete with the language of radical republicanism: the belief that labor was the creator of all wealth and that capitalists, by illegitimately accumulating profit, denied workers the full product of their labor; the conviction that the vigilance of working people, acting as free and equal citizens, was necessary to maintain republican institutions from being used to promote unfair privileges for the few. Like all those who espoused radical republicanism, Powderly could sound quite extreme when calling for a war against “monopoly” or the “abolition of wage slavery.” At other times, his critique was curiously circumspect, as when he differentiated between produc-

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tive and unproductive capital. At no time did he endeavor to resolve the contradictions inherent in radical republicanism, nor was he interested in mapping out a grand strategy for the transition from competitive capitalism to the cooperative commonwealth.23 His concerns were far more immediate and practical. Knighthood represented a myriad manifestations of radical republicanism. Some locals and districts concentrated on economic goals through strike action or the establishment of cooperatives, whereas others highlighted political concerns through electoral or lobbying activity. Each assembly in its own way was struggling for justice and equality based on its experience with economic and social reality. As a consummate politician leading this multifaceted movement, Powderly possessed neither the desire nor the ability to impose his views. His goal was to begin the process of building consensus by identifying majority opinion on the key issues. He sought to create a single authoritative national movement out of the hundreds of locals pursuing their own objectives. Only then could the concentrated power of corporate capital be effectively challenged. This was a virtually impossible task to be sure, but one well suited to Powderly’s style of leadership. Never once did Powderly pretend to have all the answers. “The great question of labor requires for its solution a greater mind than mine” was his constant refrain in speeches and essays. Even when instructing delegates on pivotal GA votes, he refused to dictate: “Far be it for me to say that I can point the way out.” Indeed, Powderly’s great vision was that the diverse membership, by sharing their experiences on a wide number of issues, would eventually agree on strategies that the majority could accept. Programs of action would emerge from the bottom up rather than the top down. “EDUCATE yourself as to what you want,” he impressed on the membership, and he promised to fight tooth and nail for whatever policies the majority adopted.24 His relentless insistence on fair play and majority rule, his proficiency in identifying and articulating the majority viewpoint on any given issue, and his ability to convince minority factions to remain in the Order and press for their cause at future GA sessions—these comprised his principal leadership talents. They served the Order well, for few groups could ever complain that he had denied them a sympathetic hearing. His approach was nevertheless fraught with difficulties, because many locals and districts were determined to pursue their own agendas regardless of actions taken at the GA. This tendency became increasingly problematic when the Order expanded in the mid-1880s. The emergence of powerful factions prepared to violate GA laws often undermined the efforts of those searching for national consensus and unity of purpose. In the early years of his reign, however, his leadership succeeded because leading Knights exhibited a sufficient commonality of outlook. In step with virtually every labor leader, Powderly emerged from the devastation of the 1870s deeply ambivalent about the efficacy of strikes. Although historians have distorted his views on this vital topic,25 it is true that he consistently counseled arbitration and conciliation as an alternative, and he often

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blasted the strike as a “relic of barbarism.”26 In adopting this attitude, he simply echoed his trade union friends such as Dan McLaughlin, the foremost champion of soft coal diggers in the Midwest. After leading two major walkouts in 1874 and 1877, the last of which was crushed by the state militia, McLaughlin concluded that workers’ demands “had to be expressed in other ways than by strikes and rioting.”27 Likewise, the leaders of the Cigar Makers’ International Union, having watched their membership plummet from 5,800 in 1869 to 1,016 in 1877, moaned that too many strikes “will ultimately ruin the most powerful organization.” Even if strikes were successful, argued J. P. McDonnell, socialist editor of the Paterson Labor Standard, the results were often ruinous. Union meetings were soon neglected; “those who attend once in two or three months find fault; good men become discouraged; the union breaks up; . . . and wages are reduced.”28 Also like virtually all labor leaders, Powderly recognized that workers would continue to redress their grievances through strike action, that the strike constituted an essential weapon of last resort, and that strikes could be an effective means of organizing the unorganized. “I don’t mean to say a strike is always wrong,” he stressed, “for sometimes to not strike is cowardice.” Moreover, he realized that once workers “have struck it is a dangerous thing for an officer to disadvantage them,” and that authorized strikes deserved the full backing of the organization. “I believe that when you begin one [a strike],” he wrote, “you should make a success of it by every means.”29 Powderly’s ambivalence was also influenced by his trade background. Even though Gilded Age machinists were expected to live up to a strict ethical code that included a “manly bearing” toward their employers, they “rarely went on strike at all” before the 1890s. Even during the strike wave of the mid-1880s, machinists often refused to join with more militant workers, preferring to seek negotiated settlements with their employers in their efforts to reduce hours and raise wages.30 Equally important were his memories of the Scranton riot of 1877 and its aftermath. Unlike machinists, mine workers struck often. Years of militancy had culminated in bloodshed, martial law, and the destruction of their labor union. Indeed, the experience of 1877 was etched upon his mind, and he rightly feared that strikes undertaken in haste would bring the wrath of employers and the state upon the Order. Above all, his attitudes were shaped by institutional imperatives. As the head of a decentralized organization of disaffected urban craftsmen and militant miners who threw down their tools as a matter of course and left the Order when strikes failed or assistance was inadequate, he could hardly be expected to stand before the GA and encourage such activity. The national Order had no money at all for strike support during the entirety of Uriah Stephens’s reign as GMW and Powderly’s first year in that office. Equally important, Powderly had set about establishing unity through the Order’s laws, and other than the tenth plank of the preamble, which specifically called for “[t]he substitution of arbitration for strikes” whenever possible, the constitution was mute on the question of

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strike procedure. The GMW was powerless to issue compulsory assessments, voluntary appeals, or even constitutional advice to locals in dire straits. Thus, he had good reason to encourage the Knights to find “other means of righting wrongs.” And given the collapse of the WBA and other unions, he was not being unrealistic when he argued that one of the greatest impediments “to the progress of labor organizations is the haste with which members rush into Strikes.”31 In his view, which relied heavily on his reading of William Sylvis, strikes were not wrong because they created an unhealthy antagonism between employer and employee—this antagonism already existed: “So long as it is to the interest of one kind of men to purchase labor at the lowest possible figure, and so long as it is to the interest of another kind of men to sell their labor to the highest possible bidder, just so long will there exist an antagonism between the two.” The problem with strikes was that they could never remove this antagonism: “No strike can hit a blow sufficiently hard to break the hold with which unproductive capital to-day grasps labor by the throat.”32 Despite the silence of the law, the absence of strike funds, and the nearly universal understanding that strikes were often counterproductive, Powderly did his best to sustain striking Knights financially and emotionally in their battles for improved conditions. In the spring of 1880, for instance, he established the important precedent of voluntary appeals. Under the mistaken impression that Powderly could assess all members ten cents on their behalf, the can makers of Baltimore (LAs 520 and 1384) had struck for higher wages. Powderly set them straight as to the law, but he also ordered Litchman to send out a circular appeal asking all members to assist their brothers financially in this contest. And when some of the can makers refused to join the strike, he encouraged the MW of LA 1384 to bring suit in the LA court to establish the principle “that the Brother who remained at work while his fellow workers were struggling to better their condition was not fit to remain a member.”33 In this case, as in many others, the GMW was not offended by the desire to strike but rather by Knights who refused to honor their brothers’ picket line. In practice, Powderly had few qualms about Knights who struck, as long as their locals and districts were well organized and could take care of their own financial responsibilities. DA 3 (Pittsburgh) supported striking painters (LA 1397) by issuing an assessment, but some members of DA 3 resisted the assessment “on the grounds that the GA does not alow [sic] strikes.” Powderly informed his correspondent that DAs did in fact have authority to levy assessments for strikes as long as their by-laws had been approved by the GMW. As to those who refused to pay the assessment, he declared that “when men are struggling for their rights it is a duty (which requires no law to sanction it) upon them to support their brethren.”34 Refusal to pay strike assessments roused his fighting spirit on more than one occasion. John Grosscup, the RS of LA 1514 (Baltimore), wrote the GMW about complications resulting from a strike of cigar makers. There were, according to Grosscup, two local trade unions representing cigar makers; the strike was led

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by one, but it was not supported by the other. LA 1514 took in men from both trade unions and voted an assessment to assist the strikers. Some Knights, however, refused to pay the assessment because they did not wish to aid the striking trade union. “If the L.A. levied an assessment on its members, they are duty bound to pay it or suffer such consequences as your by-laws prescribe,” Powderly thundered. He did not condemn the strikers. Quite the contrary, he insisted that “every reduction which is made in our wages is an assessment levied on us to support Capital.”35 Powderly also encouraged organizing in the face of “iron clad” agreements, despite the real possibility that such action would precipitate strikes. In December 1879, as Grand Worthy Foreman (GWF) Richard Griffiths was busily organizing drivers and conductors who worked for Chicago’s South Side Street Car Company, the company demanded that their employees sign iron clads. A few “green hands” signed, but the rest were prepared to walk out in protest. Powderly urged Griffiths to carry on with the organizing drive, even though “[t]his may result in the men coming out on Strike.”36 He even used the promise of strike support to rekindle flagging interest in the Order in the Scranton area. When one coal company near Wilkes-Barre imposed “some tyrannical restrictions” in September 1879, the men struck, quickly idling several collieries. Although the strikers had not sought prior sanction for their walkout, Powderly and other delegates to the next DA 16 session voted to impose a fifty cents per member per week assessment for the duration of the six-week strike. In March 1880, Powderly and DA 16 supported another mining strike that lasted over a month.37 Although he proved quite flexible when it came to specific strike situations and often expressed genuine sympathy for strikers, the lack of available funds, the silence of the law, and the belief that more effective strategies could be found—all made certain that the Order would never become an organization exclusively committed to direct economic action. Even though Powderly had established the precedent of voluntary appeals, this tactic could never be more than a feeble stopgap measure. Without a central strike fund, he could not ape the trade union vanguard—the Cigar Makers’ International Union (CMIU) and the Iron Molders’ Union—by establishing bureaucratic and financial restraints on subordinate bodies’ right to strike. He sought the same end—the imposition of national control over local strikes—but his only weapon in this drive was the power of his argument. The 1870s provided lessons about trade unions as well as strikes. Some, such as Samuel Gompers of the CMIU, began rebuilding their trade unions and shoring up weaknesses by centralizing control, establishing large strike funds through the imposition high dues, and cultivating membership loyalty through a compulsory benefit system.38 Others, such as Powderly and Litchman, followed a different path, in part because their trade unions were beyond the point of rebuilding and in part because they believed the Knights’ structure had much to recommend it. “In comparison to isolated trade unions,” Powderly told del-

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egates to the 1880 GA, the Order “bears the same relation that the locomotive of to-day does to the stage-coach of half a century ago.” Trade unions tended to organize only the aristocracy of labor, skilled workers with leverage at the point of production. The Order, by contrast, was a “grander, mightier association, which recognizes the right of every honest man to come within its protecting folds.”39 Not only could the Knights organize all workers regardless of skill, and thus include women, African-Americans, the foreign-born, and other groups traditionally ignored by trade unions, but the interaction of men and women from a variety of occupations would necessarily force them to discuss and act on more than wages and working conditions. Such interaction would ultimately serve as the basis of solidarity among the entire working class. Moreover, the mixed local, because it included workers from a variety of occupations, could be established in isolated areas where there were too few in a given trade to form a trade union. Finally, by offering membership to virtually all workers, the Knights, if successful, could expect to wield great influence in the political arena. Powderly by no means despised trade unions. Like strikes, they were part of the industrial scene and could play a positive role in improving the living standards of their members. Indeed, he actively encouraged the formation of an independent miners’ union in the hard coal fields to replace the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association (WBA), urging Patrick Mooney, a leading Knight from Sugar Notch in the northern anthracite field, to proceed with his intention to “organize a (miners’) union outside the *****.” He offered the same message to Christopher Barnes, a leader of the Schuylkill county Knights in the lower anthracite field, asking whether mine workers in the home of the Molly Maguires had “seen hard times enough to know that a bread and butter society is a necessity.”40 He also assisted Peter J. McGuire in his efforts to build up the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in the Scranton area.41 At all times, he expected Knights to support trade unions in their locality when joint action was contemplated, but as he had argued since his days in the M&BIU when he pleaded for the admittance of boilermakers, Powderly wanted to move beyond trade unions by organizing the unskilled and by addressing political and social issues that did not relate directly to the concerns of individual trades. Historians have assumed that Powderly resisted the establishment of trade locals and districts in the Order, because these bodies would be comprised of workers in the same calling and have a tendency to focus solely on workplace demands. According to Norman Ware, the election of Powderly as GMW signaled the beginnings of hostility toward trade unions and trade organization within the Order. Uriah Stephens, claimed Ware, had consistently called for the establishment of national trade districts, so that workers engaged in the same occupation might combine nationally under the banner of Knighthood. Resolutions were passed to this effect at the St. Louis GA in January 1879, but all such laws were repealed at the September 1879 Chicago GA. “The Chicago

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convention marked in theory if not in fact the turning of the Order away from trade unions within and without,” Ware concluded. “It marked too the beginning of the Powderly regime and there may be some connection between the two.”42 Such an interpretation fails to jibe with the evidence. Powderly not only sided with the majority at St. Louis when delegates adopted a resolution that called for national trade districts, but he also rose to make a speech in support of another resolution that allowed LAs “composed of a particular trade or calling” to “exclude visitors of other trades or callings from the sanctuary” when discussing matters relating solely to its trade.43 Nor did Powderly manifest hostility toward trade organization upon his election as GMW. In the spring of 1880, for instance, Powderly approved the application of the window glass workers’ LA 300 to operate as a national union within the Order, even granting it the rights to appoint its own organizers, form “sublocals” throughout the country irrespective of the jurisdictional boundaries of existing DAs, and establish an administrative structure that diverged from the Order as a whole.44 And in the spring of 1882, as we shall see, he offered the same privileges to the telegraphers when he chartered DA 45. Although not averse to strike action or trade organization to attain “bread and butter” demands, he encouraged members to consider other options, in particular the fourth plank of the Order’s preamble: “The establishment of cooperative institutions, productive and distributive.” For nearly a year the GMW trumpeted the same message: “We could build our own shops, our own factories, own and operate our own mines, and railroads, if we wish.”45 Far more than any other proposal, his attitudes toward cooperation convinced earlier historians that he was utopian or “middle class” in his attitudes. Yet cooperation as advocated by the Order reflected neither a desire to recapture lost entrepreneurial status nor hostility toward trade unionism; it was a genuine expression of working-class aspirations advanced most forcefully by some of the best organized trades.46 Cooperative experiments dated back to the colonial period and received wide currency in the antebellum years as an alternative to wage labor. By the Gilded Age, cooperation was marked by an emphasis on production rather than distribution, which distinguished the American movement from its British counterpart, and by the extent to which trade unions and labor leaders embraced its ideals. William Sylvis, on whose teachings both the National Union of Iron Molders and the NLU were built, believed that trade unions were mere “preparatory institutions” for the establishment of cooperatives, which represented “the only true remedy for strikes, lockouts, and a thousand other impositions and annoyances to which workingmen are subjected.” The iron molders, one of the first trades to organize nationwide, committed itself to productive cooperation during the 1866 “Great Lockout” of union members in ten cities.47 Numerous other trades, including the machinists and cigar makers, also embraced cooperation in the 1860s and 1870s, but none more wholeheartedly than the shoemakers. Indeed, Powderly’s attitudes toward cooperation were clearly influenced by the activities of the Knights of St. Crispin, the foremost practi-

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tioners of cooperation in the 1870s. And when that union collapsed, its officers assumed leading roles in the Knights. Not only were GS Litchman and GWF Griffiths ex-Crispins and keen cooperators, but assistant GS Rockwood and future GWF Ralph Beaumont were also former Crispins who had organized successful shoemaker cooperatives in Spencer, Massachusetts, and Utica, New York.48 Another mainspring of cooperative enthusiasm was the Socialist Labor party. Two GEB members in Powderly’s first year as GMW, Philip Van Patten and Edward A. Stevens, and Detroit’s leading Knight, Joseph Labadie, belonged to that party, which, although primarily geared toward electoral action, embraced cooperation as a guiding principle. “There is no doubt in my mind that cooperation is the future system of economics,” Labadie assured Powderly.49 Unlike the Crispins, the socialists maintained the Lassallean line that successful cooperation required the financial assistance of the state. Nevertheless, when Litchman first pitched Knighthood to socialists in Detroit by discussing the Crispin’s cooperative ventures, his listeners considered his speech “socialistic” and joined the movement.50 Nor was cooperative fervor exclusive to labor leadership. Rank and file Knights bombarded Powderly with requests for information on how to start cooperatives, progress reports on schemes under way, and appeals to apply their Resistance Fund for cooperative purposes. Cigar makers and shoemakers in Chicago, iron workers in Leetonia, Ohio, metal miners in Webb City, Missouri, and coal miners in Osage City, Kansas, and Hampton, Iowa, were just a few of the dozens of experimenters who brought their schemes to his attention during his first months in office. He pored over the various preambles, by-laws, and manifestos of these and other local organizations, offering his advice and, in several instances, unofficially approving their requests to “borrow” from the Resistance Fund. So enthusiastic were his correspondents that he had no reason to doubt Egbert Hazard, an Ohio iron worker and Knight, when he claimed that “[t]he more I talk of the subject, the more I am impressed with its favorable reception by the people generally.”51 Surrounded as he was by the nation’s leading exponents of the cause, steeped in a labor reform tradition that extolled cooperation as the solution to the labor problem, and pressed by members anxious to embark on practical experiments, it would have strange indeed if Powderly did not arrive at the conclusion that cooperation “seems to be the coming cure for some of the ills we suffer under.” As early as 1878, he had pressured Litchman to “induce the Crispins” to establish a boot and shoe factory in Scranton, and he urged Scranton Knights to investigate “the desirability of starting a Street Railway on the co-operative plan.” Neither project got off the ground, however, and Powderly developed little practical knowledge of cooperation. His rhetoric remained fervent, but would-be cooperators who contacted him were increasingly referred to those Knights who were better informed, in particular Ralph Beaumont of New York and Samuel Leavitt of New Jersey.52

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Although he shared the general enthusiasm for cooperatives, Powderly, like many leading Knights in 1879–1880, remained a political animal committed to the belief that working-class unity in electoral politics could redeem the nation and solve the perennial labor question. And despite the continuing decay of greenback-laborism in the Scranton area, he remained hopeful that the NGLP could still serve as the vehicle to advance working-class interests both locally and nationally. Such idealism coexisted with more practical concerns as the February 1880 mayoral elections approached. The greenback-labor cause was so weak in northern anthracite in late 1879 that Powderly dissuaded Edward Watson, the chair of the NGLP’s state executive committee, from including Lackawanna county in his upcoming speaking tour. “You can do more good elsewhere,” he lamented. Nevertheless, he was determined to be reelected as a greenback-laborite in February 1880. His status among the major players in the Order hinged in part on his ability to remain the symbol of successful working-class political action, and he sorely wanted to cement his reputation as the foremost spokesman for that cause in the Order. But pitching the producerist messages of 1878 to an electorate that had reverted to traditional party loyalties filled him with foreboding. “I expect to be defeated by a small majority,” he confessed less than a month before the election.53 As in his first election drive, Powderly emphasized the intimate connection between the Order and politics. “Whether your [labor] society has anything to do with politics or not,” he declared, “politics will have something to do with your society.” If workingmen failed to keep a “jealous eye” on the political process, labor associations might well be legislated out of existence, leaving them unable to fight for living wages and thus “at the mercy of corporate capital.” This essentially negative view of the state—the need for vigilance to prevent the passage of restrictive legislation—coexisted with a more expansive and progressive view of the state as “the life and salvation of the country.”54 His simultaneous stress on politics and ambivalence toward the role of the state thus remained unchanged. So, too, did his attitudes toward party affiliation, which reverberated with the rhetoric of radical republicanism. “I would have every member of a labor society be a politician, but not a member of a party,” he preached. Politics, like the Order itself, was far grander than political parties, which tended to come under the thumb of “corrupt scoundrels” who, if not watched, “will be the death and damnation of this country and her institutions.” If workingmen could overcome whatever ethnic, geographic, or familial loyalties that bound them to a party, if they could step back and reflect on the relationship between their economic grievances and the political process, then the pure political spirit of working people would be liberated and all things would become possible. If every workingman “knew his duty, knew his rights, and had the manhood to maintain these rights, he would always stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother; and any party . . . that would dare to place unjust restrictions on labor would be sure to go down before the wrath of workingmen.”55 This message of hope, of national

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redemption through united working-class action at the ballot box, shaped his outlook during the campaign. Fortunately, the return of relative prosperity to the city and the absence of any crisis on a par with the riots of 1877 made certain that the three-way contest would focus on personalities rather than issues or ideology. As the incumbent with a squeaky clean personal life and professional record, Powderly had the edge. In the end, he retained his office by a mere ninety-nine votes over the Republican George Bushnell (2,607 to 2,508), whereas the Democrat Edward Mellon garnered a pitiful total of eight-nine votes. That Powderly’s victory largely represented his personal popularity rather than a revival of greenbacklaborism could be seen in the results for other offices. Other than Powderly, only one of fifty-two Greenback-Labor candidates emerged victorious, and the Republicans walked away with a majority on all legislative bodies.56 Nevertheless, Powderly was able to boast that he had fought all known enemies during the campaign—“corporations, Traitors, Republicans, Democrats, and the Devil, for there was one vote cast for him last Tuesday,” and he basked in the glow of praise from his comrades.57 The 1880 mayoral contest was significant for two reasons. First, Powderly remained one of the few labor leaders working in the Greenback-Labor movement to achieve electoral success. All other leading Knights who sought office by this route—Litchman, Uriah Stephens, James L. Wright, George Blair—had failed at the polls. His slim victory thus sustained his reputation as a major player in the world of labor politics. Second, although his success can be attributed to personal popularity, he was popular in part because he articulated a producerist ideology that continued to find lingering resonance among the workingmen of Scranton, and kept them—at least when voting for mayor—from slipping back to their traditional Democratic or Republican loyalties. Despite the weakness of his party, he could remain mildly enthusiastic about independent political action. In the midst of his mayoral campaign, the NGLP held a preliminary conference at Washington, D.C., where delegates agreed that the national nominating convention would open at Chicago in June. In the interim, he received numerous reports from NGLP activists urging a strong showing from the Knights at Chicago to offset the agrarian greenback bloc.58 Powderly also wanted to pack the convention, but he saw no way of ensuring a large delegation. “We have no journal,” he explained, and “no other means of reaching them.” Suffering from this ludicrous incapacity to communicate with his own membership, he despaired that greenback forces would dictate the Chicago convention. Like other Knights, he had “no hope” that the agrarian element would create the kind of campaign that leading Knights envisioned, because “the most prominent greenbackers are as much opposed to labor as either the Democrats or Republicans.”59 Powderly and Litchman took adjoining rooms at Chicago’s Palmer House, which they used as a central meeting point for Knights who made the journey. The Knights’ contingent included, among others, Chicagoans Richard Griffiths

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and Thomas Kavanaugh, Philadelphians James L. Wright and Fred Turner, New Yorker George Blair, and Socialist Labor party members Philip Van Patten, Edward A. Stevens, Joseph Labadie, George Schilling, and Albert Parsons. Also present was a little known RS from LA 1315 (New Brunswick, New Jersey) named John Hayes, an ambitious telegrapher already forging contacts with the Order’s elite.60 The Knights lacked sufficient presence to control the convention. Only one of the major party planks adopted at Chicago—calling for legislation to end monopoly in land—reflected the Order’s agenda. The selection of James B. Weaver as the party’s presidential candidate further evidenced agrarian control.61 One clear lesson at Chicago was that the Order was simply too weak to play an effective third-party role at the national level. Another lesson was that the Socialist Labor party remained an important force on the left, and if third-party efforts were ever to pay off, he would have to bolster his relationship with that organization. Van Patten, Stevens, Labadie, and other English-speaking party members were playing a risky game by embracing the NGLP in the 1880 elections. The German ideologues who controlled the Socialist Labor party were suspicious of both the Knights and the NGLP, and the flirtation of English-speaking members with both organizations threatened to erupt in a schism. Powderly involved himself directly in this dispute, and, more remarkably, he actually became a member of the Socialist Labor party at the Chicago convention. This by no means indicated a radical conversion on Powderly’s part, but rather a desire to cement his alliance with GEB members Van Patten and Stevens, to enhance the prestige of the English-speaking elements in their struggle with the Germans, and to encourage the Socialist Labor party as a whole to endorse the candidates and platform of the NGLP.62 Powderly’s relationship with Van Patten, Stevens, and Labadie is significant because it illustrates the similarity of outlook between “true” Knights and nativeborn socialists in the early 1880s. “Nonsocialist labor reformers . . . respected socialists as honest, courageous, and sincere labor reformers whose major error was a bit too much idealism,” observed a recent historian, whereas socialists regarded the Knights “as the embodiment of their vision of labor solidarity.”63 No leading socialist believed Powderly was in any way “conservative” at this time. All were quick to praise his contributions to The Trades and frequently sought his advice. In turn, he found that the Socialist Labor party men agreed with him on the fundamentals, and he appreciated their support because they were experienced agitators who traveled widely and could prove valuable allies.64 In his history of the Order, Powderly quoted from a dictionary definition of socialism: “A theory of society which advocates a more precise, orderly, and more harmonious arrangement of the social relations of mankind than that which has hitherto prevailed.” As GMW, he identified with this kind of nonideological, moralistic impulse. He was fighting, along with the socialists themselves, for “a more equitable form of government.” He was part of their crusade “to make the world better,” but he was reluctant to embrace the Socialist Labor party or any

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other socialist movement and he feared public identification of the Order with socialism, for solid reasons. Although he did not share Uriah Stephens’s assessment that socialists were “crafty, cunning, and unscrupulous” malcontents who sought admission to labor societies so that “they may be in a better position to break them up,” he did worry about public opinion. An agitator could advocate the principles of socialism without mentioning the term and “be regarded with favor by all classes,” Powderly noted, yet as soon as the word socialism left his lips, the public “will raise its hand in horror and forever after shun him as they would a plague.” Even though such hostility was based in ignorance, he could not afford to ignore it as the head of an organization determined to change the minds of the majority.65 Although wary, he had no qualms about joining hands with Van Patten to bolster a flagging third-party effort. In the wake of the Chicago convention, the Socialist Labor party held a referendum on whether to endorse Weaver and other NGLP candidates. If the majority of the membership sided with the Germans, Van Patten explained, “I fear we will have a split.” On July 22, before the referendum was concluded, Powderly wrote Van Patten a letter he knew would be shown to the Socialist Labor party’s executive board. The GMW discussed the aims and objects of the Order to allay lingering fears, and he preached the necessity of cooperation in the fall campaigns. “Your letter was gratifying in the extreme as it proved your soundness” on the issues facing labor, an elated Van Patten responded. The missive also “had a good effect upon the German members” of the executive board. When the ballots were counted in August, a majority favored endorsing the NGLP.66 Thus, Powderly not only became a member of the Socialist Labor party, but he also helped to shape its policy and prevent—at least temporarily—a devastating rupture. Despite Powderly’s efforts to keep alive the promise of third-party action, there was little in the fall 1880 campaign to inspire rank and file interest at the national level. With the agrarian element fully in control of the NGLP, and the riotous upheaval of 1877 a fading memory, independent working-class political activity waned. In areas where the NGLP still held promise, such as Birmingham, Alabama, and Stilson, Kansas, candidates sought the endorsement of one of the major parties as well. On its own, the NGLP wielded almost no influence. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the state party leader confessed that he had no funds to print and distribute campaign literature. In late September, he moaned, “So far we have received from the great State of Pennsylvania . . . $25 to run a Presidential campaign with.”67 Officially hitching the wagon of the Order to this fading star seemed the height of foolishness to most Knights, including the GMW, and the 1880 GA upheld a nonpartisan policy.68 That Powderly’s attitudes toward political action, strikes, and cooperation represented the majority viewpoint among leading Knights could be seen at the pivotal September 1880 Pittsburgh GA, held at the G.A.R. Hall on Fourth Avenue. When Powderly left his room at the St. James Hotel and headed toward the convention site on the morning of September 7, he could well afford a

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measure of optimism. Membership figures revealed substantial growth. Although Litchman’s ongoing administrative nightmares cast doubt on the accuracy of his statistics, as far as he was aware the number of Knights had tripled from 9,287 to 28,136 during Powderly’s first year. Growth was geographic as well as numerical; the Order was beginning to expand more successfully into eastern cities, the South, and the Far West. At least on paper, the Order’s finances were sound.69 The forty delegates at Pittsburgh exactly doubled the number who had attended the Chicago session, but the most remarkable feature of the delegate list was turnover. Excluding grand officers and GEB members, not a single delegate from the Chicago session showed up at Pittsburgh. Some of the men were nevertheless well known to Powderly. He was quite familiar with DA 1’s Fred Turner and James L. Wright, and he had been in close correspondence with David Swearer of LA 300, Harry Taylor of New York City’s LA 1563, and Daniel McLaughlin, the imposing Scots-born leader of miners in Braidwood, Illinois. Debates over the structure and ultimate purpose of the Order took center stage as delegates were asked to dispose of the Resistance Fund. The fund had been created in January 1878 when the first GA ordered each local to begin collecting five cents per member per month. This money had been accumulating in the local treasuries ever since, and now the GA would decide how best to spend it.70 The crucial question was whether the fund would be applied to strikes, cooperatives, or propaganda. That these forty men moved as a body to curb strike action revealed, not Powderly’s influence, but a general consensus that the unrestricted right to strike was detrimental to the interests of the Order and that producers’ cooperatives represented a viable and eminently more progressive alternative. Seven clear-cut plans were offered from the floor, only one of which even approximated a plea for a strike fund. DA 40 (miners in Pennsylvania’s Clearfield region) delegate James White came with instructions: “We find that strikes have proved a failure, and we think the time has come to ignore them and for Labor to realize a share of the profits of the commodity produced by the principles of cooperation.” DA 25 (miners in Maryland’s Cumberland region) delegate Robert Price urged that the Resistance Fund be renamed “The Miners’, Mechanics’, and Laborers’ Mutual Cooperation Fund.” Chicago’s Charles Kenyon moved that all monies “be used to found cooperative establishments,” and New York’s Harry Taylor called for a “plan of General Cooperation” supported by a mandatory tax on all members. Nor did the GEB desire to create a significantly more strike-minded Order. It castigated strikes as “by no means desirable,” and as causing “the greatest disaster and suffering,” and it proposed an elaborate system of strike approval that would have made GEB sanction all but impossible.71 Delegates eventually agreed to replace the Resistance Fund with a Defense Fund. Ten percent of this fund would be used for “educational purposes,” which

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meant the printing and circulating of propaganda on “industrial emancipation.” Thirty percent would be reserved for “approved strikes,” and the remaining sixty percent would be devoted to productive and distributive cooperation. Thirty-four of thirty-seven delegates voting adopted the GEB’s procedure for sanctioning strikes, which was intended to discourage inconclusive local skirmishes and preserve the Defense Fund for confrontations of national significance. The GA did not seek to outlaw local strikes, just inhibit their frequency by removing the possibility of funding from the national Order.72 The Order had committed itself to cooperation, but few had a clear notion of exactly what the term implied, how it was to be achieved, or what kind of society and economy would result. Most simply shared Powderly’s faith that it was the only system that could “give the laborer a fair proportion of the products of his toil” and establish the foundations of a society capable of “securing the greatest good to the greatest number.” And all delegates agreed that every member needed to study this topic in all its facets before embarking on any schemes. They voted that the sixty percent of the Defense Fund earmarked for cooperation “shall be kept intact until the next session of the G.A.,” giving the “best minds” an opportunity to cogitate.73 Yet, although delegates believed that cooperation would serve as a rallying cry to workers across the nation, the Order’s rank and file apparently decided that nothing the leadership could offer was worth the risk of membership. From the outset of his tenure, Powderly had been acutely aware of the problem of membership turnover, but overall his first year had been one of growth. Immediately after the 1880 GA, he began to receive more and more complaints about decline at both the local and district levels, and it soon became obvious that the Order was far from healthy. The chaotic state of the administration forced him to depend on anecdotal evidence, but before long the anecdotes indicated that the Order was beginning to unravel. “Our membership is getting rather slim in this district,” confessed the RS of DA 29 (Alabama coal miners), Dennis Leahy, who, just a few months earlier, had been confident enough to mount a challenge against Litchman. From once vigorous DA 17 in St. Louis, the cry was similar: “Our prospects are not very flattering. . . . There is not more than Two Assemblies in my District that are holding their own.” Peter Ward, the RS of miners’ DA 38 in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, complained that membership was down and even officers were quitting: “So you can see plainly where I am left: a bird alone. And I am a bird that is well plucked.” Even Dan McLaughlin could not sustain interest among miners in northern Illinois. From the town of Streator the RS lamented that the DA “seems to be busted up.” DA 23, Kentucky miners, was six months in arrears by February 1881, and it had not been in contact with the GS office for three months.74 Nowhere were coal diggers fleeing the Order faster than in northern anthracite. “If something is not done our A. will colapse [sic],” wailed the RS of LA 426 in Wyoming, Luzerne county. The local MW in Grand Tunnel, Luzerne county,

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complained that fellow mine workers “cannot or will not see the Light.” An anxious activist from Wilkes-Barre blamed the “apathy and indifference” of members for the demise of his local, and from Ashley, the MW sounded an all too familiar refrain: “The laboring men have taken no interest in it (the LA) at all, with a few exceptions, and consequently we have discontinued to meet.”75 What prompted this seemingly rapid decline beginning in late 1880? At first, Powderly believed that membership loss was connected to politics. Many mine workers in northeast Pennsylvania regarded the Knights as largely a political movement, and just as they had abandoned the NGLP they now forsook the Order. The reelection of Republican Senator Joseph Scranton, he reasoned, would force mine workers to reconsider the necessity of political action and thus rekindle faith in the Order. “The eyes of the men are opened now,” he told a local activist. “They can see the difference between corrupt designing politicians and men who are in earnest in the cause of labor.”76 At the January 1881 DA 16 gathering, the disillusionment of the rank and file dominated the discussion. Many believed that politics, rather than providing a solution to the problem of decline, was in fact the cause, and several delegates bemoaned the “introduction of politics into the Assemblies” during the recent campaign. As the leading politician in the district and the one most convinced that labor’s problems demanded political solutions, Powderly understood that many of these complaints were directed against him personally. “The man who will not join us because he is afraid of politics, is only afraid he would be asked to vote for principle instead of a promise of a job, fifty cents, or a glass of accursed rum,” he bellowed. In his opinion, political action had not crippled the district, but the readiness of those who feared politics to castigate those who embraced it undermined enthusiasm. “Stop growling, stop complaining, and never let me here you say you are afraid of Man, Corporation, or Politics again. You are American freemen and should scorn the imputation.”77 Political dissension, obviously, was not the sole cause of disinterest. Equally injurious was the general economic prosperity that finally reached anthracite in late 1880. Full employment and relative labor peace were undercutting both political involvement and enthusiasm for the Order in the region. When Fred Turner asked for Powderly’s cooperation in establishing a joint DA 1-DA 16 lobbying group at Harrisburg, the GMW promised to raise the idea at the next DA 16 session but held out little hope. “I am of the opinion that the miners of this region are content with their lot from the manner in which they are organizing,” he observed, “and hence won’t need a committee at Harrisburg as their condition is all right. Lots of work. Pay no object. Everything booming.”78 By far the greatest impediment to the Order in anthracite, and elsewhere in the nation, was neither politics nor prosperity but the opposition of the Catholic Church. Judging by the letters sent to Powderly, there is much truth in Norman Ware’s observation that secrecy may not have been the “only reason for the condition of the Order but it was the chief.” Although we have data on numerous aspects of the Order, no scholar has estimated the percentage of Knights who

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were Catholic. The figure was undoubtedly high, certainly well over half the membership in 1881, for the strength of the Order in its early years after Reading lay in America’s first proletariat, Irish and Irish-American Catholics. As late as October 1884, after membership had expanded dramatically, Powderly still believed that most members were Catholics.79 Daniel O’Leary, a miner from Clay county, Indiana, had tried to warn the September 1879 Chicago GA that steps were necessary to shield the organization from church hostility to secret societies and was “painfully surprised” when his caution went unheeded. Three months later, O’Leary’s local was on the verge of collapse. The local bishop, “an iron clad disciplinarian,” had condemned the Order by name. Convinced that coal operators “got his ear” and gave him “an awful notion of us,” O’Leary understood that the bishop’s influence forced many Knight diehards to abandon the Order.80 This complaint would be a mainstay of Powderly’s incoming correspondence for the next two years. Irish Catholic Knights, many of them isolated in mining patches in both soft and hard coal regions, could not withstand the enormous clout wielded by the church in their communities. Although not necessarily ardent believers in the faith, fear of social ostracism and the denial of sacramental rites for their families were too much to endure. As O’Leary made clear, the power of the church often combined with that of capital, a nearly unbeatable combination. Forty-five of the fifty members of a mine worker’s local in Shamokin, located near Wilkes-Barre, felt compelled to leave the Order “simply because of the opposition of the Catholic church.” In Pennsylvania’s Clearfield coal region, several locals were decimated when the clergy “completely denounced” the Knights, despite the fact that the mine workers had sent a delegation to visit the local bishop. “The mine owners have resorted to the old, old trick of appealing to the Church to use its influence to destroy our Order,” wrote Litchman when accounting for the collapse of an assembly in DuBois, Pennsylvania. The story was the same near Scranton. Dickson City Knights, all mine workers, fled the Order after the local priest censured it, and in Powderly’s hometown of Carbondale, once vibrant LA 239 folded soon after Father McGrath represented them as “dupes, Heretics and what not” at a Sunday mass. McGrath “has been induced to oppose us,” the Carbondale RS noted, “through the influence of some politicians who are trying to break us up.”81 After a similar complaint from Maryland miners, Powderly scrawled on the bottom of the letter: “I get any quantity of such letters. I am getting sick of it.”82 Certainly not all priests and bishops opposed the Knights because they maintained attitudes in line with, or were under the thumb of, employers and mainstream politicians. Many simply sought to enforce the church’s ban on secret and oath-bound societies. Indeed, many Knights who had spoken to priests understood that were the oath removed and the veil of secrecy lifted, the Order would be safeguarded. This was precisely the argument Powderly had been making since 1880. Although he did not mention secrecy and ritual in his address at the Pittsburgh GA, he pushed for changes during the secret sessions of

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the various committees. There is no reason to doubt his assertion that at both the Pittsburgh and Detroit GAs “I recommended that these objectionable ceremonies be abolished.”83 By the summer of 1881, when membership decline became truly alarming, Powderly was freely expressing his hope that the upcoming Detroit GA would abolish profound secrecy and replace the oath with a simple pledge of honor.84 Litchman and Rockwood agreed with their boss. So, too, did Grand Treasurer Dominic Hammer, whose own Canton, Ohio, local died in July 1881 due to priestly opposition.85 But not everyone was prepared for such a radical change. GWF Griffiths was aghast when his DA 24 voted to make the name of the Order public in Chicago, believing such action would “be the complete ruin of the Order here.” Edward A. Stevens represented the militantly anticlerical wing of the Socialist Labor party that would rather “see all the clergy in hell (always provided there is such a place) before I would change a word to suit them.” And Peter Ward put forth the view of some Catholics who argued that visiting priests and bishops to explain the aims of the Order was far preferable to fundamental revisions in the AK. Powderly, who visited eight priests in as many localities between the Pittsburgh and Detroit GAs, was not averse to such an approach, but he doubted the members’ ability to overcome clerics’ knee-jerk hostility to oaths and secrecy.86 A practicing Catholic but not a devout or an unquestioning one, Powderly was not inclined to reinvent the Order out of concern for his soul. Because the church was fully capable of crushing Knighthood altogether, he made a rational decision to appease that force and thereby protect the organization. The religious orientation of the membership meant little to him, he explained to New York Knight Harry Taylor, because “my whole time has been taken up with the . . . labor question.” Nor did he believe the oath had any practical value, because a rogue would violate an oath as quickly as he would a simple word of honor.87 By August 1881, Powderly was “tired of shilly shallying.” In June, a twoweek Jesuit mission had been held in Scranton, which led to further blasts against the Order from the pulpits. “We had a good mission here in all the Catholic churches in the city and the good Christians are leaving us,” Powderly noted sarcastically. The problem was as clear as the solution. Unless Knights were prepared to make the necessary changes when they assembled at Detroit, they might as well “disband and proclaim to the world that as an organization for the benefit of humanity we are a failure.”88 In addition to church opposition, the Knights faced a number of interrelated financial problems. One ongoing difficulty was the failure of locals to pay their per capita tax, which left a chronic shortage of funds and made publishing the Proceedings impossible. The shortage of money was so acute in early 1881 that the salaries of the grand officers and the routine expenses of the national Order could not be paid.89 A second problem resulted from a horrendous investment made by the GS. In August 1880, Litchman and Rockwood had purchased a small used printing press and type. The idea was to save money in the long run

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by doing all the Order’s printing chores in Litchman’s office. A good idea, perhaps, but its execution was an embarrassing display of incompetence. When they set up their new purchase at headquarters, they found the press too small to handle the tasks of printing the JUL and Proceedings! Not a total waste of money, the press could handle many of the minor printing needs, but the big jobs remained in the hands of the private publishing firm in Boston. Yet, because every penny in the coffers had been spent on the inadequate press, there was no money to pay the Boston firm. Litchman had been shouldering some of the Order’s operating expenses on his own credit, but he refused to dig deep enough into his pockets to pay for the big printing jobs.90 The third and most critical financial problem involved the collection of the Defense Fund as ordered by the 1880 GA. On December 15, 1880, Litchman issued a “Special Bulletin” summarizing the laws passed at Pittsburgh and officially calling in the monies. For assemblies this was truly a crisis. Ostensibly they had been collecting money for the Fund since their founding, but in fact a great number had not been collecting this money, or if they had, they had already spent it during a strike or some other campaign. Moreover, the call for Defense Fund money seemed arbitrary; because the Proceedings were still unpublished, few knew the details of the great decisions made at Pittsburgh. Litchman’s Special Bulletin created scores of protests from locals and districts across the country. Many pledged their fealty to Powderly and the Order while challenging the legality of the Fund’s collection and disposition. There was nothing illegal in the calling in of this Fund, but members balked at giving up control over their own money for some unknown purpose. Indeed, because the Order was a vehicle through which working people attempted to exercise some measure of control over their own destinies, the money they put aside in their local fund was crucial for any battle—strike or otherwise—in which they might engage. To hand this over to Litchman meant giving up such local control. Many were outraged because they were expected to hand over a large sum without full knowledge of action taken at Pittsburgh. Taking note of the reaction among Chicago Knights, Richard Griffiths warned that the “circular calling for the Defense Fund has set them wild.” Kansas City LAs, acting in unison, resolved “[t]hat it would not have been . . . more than justice had we been furnished with proceedings in full instead of special Bulletin.” Philadelphia Knights cried, “[W]e don’t want to be imposed on by being kept ignorant of what is going on in the Order.” Members in St. Louis simply refused to hand over the money until Powderly guaranteed them that the Special Bulletin reflected the laws adopted at Pittsburgh. Powderly thus found himself in the ludicrous position of having to defend the constitutionality of the Special Bulletin without the ability to cite specifics from the still unpublished GA Proceedings.91 Other locals and districts protested for different reasons. Some, such as DA 36 in Pennsylvania’s lower anthracite region, had already spent whatever funds they had collected on strikes. Some, such as DA 28 in Iowa, blasted the policy because they had never even collected funds. Others simply jumped on the

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bandwagon of protest in an effort to preserve their LA treasuries intact. One Pittsburgh local resolved not to comply, the RS explained, merely because “it is claimed that the L.A.’s are generally refusing to do so.” And, finally, numerous locals balked because their own officers had absconded with the funds. John Holloran fled Chicago in January 1881 after embezzling every penny from his LA 852, including the $148 in the Defense Fund. The RS of Baltimore’s DA 41 stole $100 from his district’s treasury, and, according to Litchman, exGEB member David Fitzgerald was “reported as crooked” by his local.92 If Powderly experienced a measure of wrath from an indignant and impoverished rank and file, Litchman, the author of the Special Bulletin and the man to whom the money was to be sent, felt the full brunt of the attack. “I am catching hell about the call for the Defence Fund,” he confided to Powderly. But Litchman possessed a hardened personality that allowed him to handle condemnation better than most. “I do not care [about the criticism] if enough comes in to square the debts I have contracted on my own personal credit.” As always, his smugness enabled him to turn the tables and criticize his criticizers: “It would make you smile to see the dense ignorance displayed in some of the letters I get.”93 To what extent was Litchman responsible for the financial and administrative woes of the Order? Would a more capable GS have been able to publish the JUL and Proceedings on time and establish a more responsive communication with the membership that would have elicited a calmer response to the collection of the Defense Fund? To a certain extent, Litchman was accountable for the crisis. He did not create the reluctance of locals to pay their per capita taxes, nor did he prompt the locals’ unwillingness to hand over their Defense Fund monies. Given the community basis of the Order, these feelings were to be expected, but Litchman exacerbated the natural friction between locals and the national office by giving the appearance of ineptitude, lack of commitment, and even financial impropriety. Despite repeated urging from Powderly and a constitutional requirement that Proceedings be distributed within a month of the GA’s close, Litchman never fully grasped the fundamental importance of keeping members informed or making them understand that the GA was the democratic expression of Knighthood rather than an exclusive club. Despite a sincere interest in the fate of the Order, Litchman had so many irons in the fire—political ventures, money-making schemes, lecture tours for profit—that members naturally wondered whether he spent any time at all running the GS office. In short, he made it easy for Knights at all levels not to trust him, to question his devotion and even his honesty. During the financial crisis of early 1881, for instance, Litchman was preoccupied with establishing his own newspaper, the Essex Statesman. He spent much of December searching for financial backers, and he eventually induced his old political mentor, Ben Butler, to loan him the requisite funds. The GS had his own paper up and running in January, and early subscriptions were plentiful enough to make him feel that his future was no longer dependent on

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the Order.94 Never once did he apologize for purchasing an inadequate press with existing funds, nor did he explain why the elected GS, who at $900 a year earned more than any other official, spent much of each working day on his own projects. With Knighthood unraveling at the seams, Powderly temporarily succumbed to despair. Ironically, he chose as his confessor the cause of some of his woes, Litchman, writing to him on May 14 as to the Defense Fund crisis, bewailing the members’ readiness to impugn his character for enforcing a policy adopted at the GA. “If you or I had it published in the daily papers that we laid some poor devil at night and . . . went through his pockets,” he suggested, “two thirds of the members would say, ‘I knew it. I always said they were as bad as highwaymen.’ ” He wondered whether they were “wasting away the best part of our lives for men who watch us for fear we’d rob them.” As to the crisis with the Catholic Church, he had met with priests and bishops and explained the purpose of the Knights a dozen times. All his efforts at appeasement having failed, he had turned his attention to removing the oath, at which the membership had thus far balked. He had done what he could, and he now suggested that the easiest solution would be for Catholic members to stand up like men and remain in the Order despite the sanctions of their clergy. “If workingmen don’t know enough to stay in the Order and help themselves in this world then go to hell when they die, in preference to leaving to accommodate the Church, remain in poverty all their lives and go to hell when they die, then I can’t help them one bit,” he raged.95 This lapse of self-pity was born of frustration. His beloved Order was dying while under his care, and there was no decisive action he could take to counteract events, unless he moved against Litchman. So desperate was the situation that he began mulling over this necessity in June 1881. The fact that the Proceedings of a September 1880 convention were still not available at that time forced his hand. The Proceedings, so necessary to the GMW’s job, were bound by early June, but, almost unbelievably, a mix-up at the Marblehead post office meant three more weeks of delay.96 As a first step toward saving the Order from total collapse, therefore, Powderly pondered the prospect of ousting his friend. Because the two men acted as a team, dumping Litchman required a certain amount of duplicity. He tested the water by hinting at such a move in a letter to Griffiths. “I have never lost faith in Charlie but I must confess he is acting very strange,” he wrote. Cataloging the important developments of the past six months as he saw them, he highlighted the printing delays that left him in such an “awkward position.” “In all of this I tried to avoid throwing any blame on him,” he continued. But now members accused the GMW of dereliction of duty because he could not provide any constitutional guidance. At the very least, Litchman could have given him a handwritten copy of the important decisions reached at Pittsburgh. “I know that Charlie could have helped me out of this scrape, for I know that I would make a far greater sacrifice for him.”97 On one hand, Powderly had confided in Litchman his contempt for the grum-

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blers, and on the other, he now suggested to Griffiths that the problems stemmed from the failures of the GS. Here was the politician’s mind at work. It was a duplicitous strategy, but it also said something about the state of the Order. At the national level, the Order was Powderly and Litchman. The two men had developed an intensely close, mutually supportive relationship that helped them perform the staggering grind of daily business. Now Litchman seemed to be falling down on the job, and Powderly’s confidence in his ally was undermined. But Powderly feared a direct confrontation, in case the crisis somehow blew over. Anything said directly to the man at this stage might subvert the friendship that formed the basis of their working partnership. These personal factors, whether a man was a friend, were for Powderly the essence of his politics in the Order. Whether the GMW was prepared to make further moves against Litchman will never be known, for in August the GS sealed his own fate. Needing to take some action to present a report at the GA the following month, the GEB sent Dan McLaughlin to Marblehead to investigate the state of the Order. In an effort to shield himself from the anticipated retribution of the GA, Litchman presented McLaughlin with a catalog of excuses for the printing delays. During the course of his explanation, Litchman foolishly provided McLaughlin with Powderly’s private letter of May 14, and he intimated that the GMW could have done more to ease the problems in the GS office. Such indiscretion proved that Litchman had become a loose cannon willing to take Powderly down with himself. Powderly immediately contacted McLaughlin, detailing the course of events that led to the writing of the May 14 letter, and paving the way for a condemnation of Litchman at the upcoming GA. “If he intimated to you or anyone else that I refused to co-operate with him he simply wrongs the best friend he had on earth.” He still had a strong regard for Charlie, but he would “allow no man to question my devotion to the Order and its interests.”98 Things could not have looked bleaker as Powderly prepared for the September 1881 Detroit GA. In addition to such fundamental problems as membership loss, church opposition, and the Defense Fund debacle, numerous other symptoms of decay were apparent. Important committees established at Pittsburgh, including one to set policy relating to women in the Order, had yet to meet because of financial constraints. A prominent Chicago Knight, Charles Kenyon, the RS of DA 24, had sabotaged his own future in the Order by showing up to a DA session in a drunken state, “with his eyes blacked, his forehead cut, his lips all swolled,” and all of the grand officers, with the exception of assistant GS Rockwood, were experiencing grave difficulties. GS Litchman was set for the chopping block. GWF Griffiths had presided over the collapse of his own LA 800 in July. Grand Treasurer (GT) Dominic Hammer’s LA had folded at the time of the Pittsburgh GA. He had not attended any local meeting since September 1880 and wondered, if he did show up at Detroit, “[H]ow shall I account for myself?”99 Powderly himself remained psychologically crippled by the desperate state of affairs, even suggesting that Detroit “may as well be the last G.A.”100

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The fifth regular session of the GA opened on September 6 at Ney’s Hall on Michigan Avenue. The thirty-four delegates were in a somber mood. Membership had plummeted from 28,136 to 19,422 in the past year. Whereas twentyfour DAs had sent delegates to Pittsburgh, only fifteen were represented at Detroit. Bookkeeping figures also reflected decline. Excluding the Defense Fund, the national office had received just $4,142.48 during the past year, a drop of over 32 percent from 1879–1880, while GS expenditures had increased dramatically from $6,053.14 to $9,995.31 (nearly 40 percent). This would have left the Order deeply in debt were in not for the Defense Fund monies.101 After the expansion of 1879–1880, the Order had taken a nosedive and there was nothing to bring a smile to even the most sanguine observer. Powderly’s address was far less exuberant than it had been at Pittsburgh a year earlier. “The office of the G.M.W. during the past year has been a most trying one,” and although it “would be most gratifying” to discuss membership increases, “I cannot do so,” he began. In Powderly’s estimation, “prosperity” was one cause of the problem. Good times, “whether real or imaginary, always thins the ranks of the trade union.” Another cause was acrimony concerning the Defense Fund. Being careful not to point the finger at anyone, he simply suggested that the law passed at Pittsburgh needed to be revamped. He had some ideas on how to proceed, but as was his policy, he would leave the decision making to the delegates: “You will be called on to settle this difficulty.”102 The bulk of his address dealt with the vexing problem of church opposition. “Night after night I have sat thinking and deliberating this matter over”; he came to the conclusion that if the Order wanted to organize men of all religions, “[W]e must make concessions to the church, for its influence is too vast to be idly passed over.” The concession he was prepared to make was the substitution of a word of honor for the oath. Because the church was opposed to oath-bound secret societies for fear that members might blacken their souls through perjury, Powderly was ready to remove this obstacle. The word of honor would be equally effective, because “a word of honor will bind a man of honor as securely as the most iron-clad oath, while a being will be bound by no obligation or law, either human or divine.”103 Litchman’s report was equally terse. He made a weak effort to defend his actions, but his concluding remarks sounded very much like a farewell. He wished to be remembered as “one who ever in freedom’s cause battled nobly, and when death came humanity wept because humanity had lost a friend.” Litchman provided his own epitaph because he was fully aware that the GEB would report that the GS had “illegally used” Defense Fund monies by spending more than the 10 percent earmarked for “education.” It would have been hard to ignore his overspending. The total amount of Defense Fund monies received was $7,862.70, and Litchman had spent $4,691.64 of it. Although the GEB report was “technically correct,” Litchman argued that there should have been close to $25,000 in the Fund and that he had paid $1,100 out of his own pocket to help cover expenses. Those who stood ready to criticize, he pleaded, should

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“ask themselves whether they would be willing to assume a similar burden and bear an equal responsibility.”104 Litchman then sat down and waited for events to unfold, but he knew that the condemnation of the GEB had sealed his fate. Delegates gave little thought to Litchman’s plight until the elections. Until then the all-consuming questions were whether to make the name of the Order public, and what changes if any should be made in the ritual. In this respect, the Detroit GA witnessed a replay of the old animosities that had divided the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh wings in the mid 1870s. At Detroit the majority of delegates gladly and knowingly threw off the mantle of Philadelphia’s influence, opting to resuscitate the Order by wholeheartedly embracing Pittsburgh as the new spiritual and physical headquarters of the Knights. In part, this reflected membership trends. Although most DAs had declined, Pittsburgh’s DA 3 had gained 815 members during the year, giving them 2,824 members altogether and making them twice as large as DA 1 with its 1,399 members.105 It also reflected a tacit understanding among many Knights, especially the miners who still dominated the Order, that the Philadelphia approach could not sustain growth during a time of relative prosperity, nor could it uphold the principle of solidarity, because it worked to the detriment of Catholics. According to Litchman, a majority of DAs were already operating in the open, and, from the limited information at his disposal, the majority of LAs favored the idea of abandoning secrecy. No one was surprised, therefore, when two delegates, acting independently, moved on the first day “[t]hat the name of the Order be made public universally.” Nor was anyone surprised that these measures were introduced by miners, Archibald Cowan of DA 9 (Allegheny county, Pennsylvania) and Thomas James of DA 7 (Shawnee, Ohio), who represented districts decimated by the Catholic Church. After James’s motion, “a lengthy discussion ensued” and the matter had to be tabled. The following morning, William J. Mathis of Louisville, Kentucky (DA 32, miners), pushed hard and successfully for James’s motion to be taken from the table, for which Robert Layton later hailed him as the “Daniel Boone of the Detroit session.” Another long debate followed, “participated in by nearly every Representative present.” Then, by an overwhelming vote of twenty-eight to six, the GA agreed to make the name of the Order public.106 Noteworthy were the names of the six men who voted to maintain secrecy: Harry Taylor of New York City, David Barry of Detroit, John T. Elliott of Baltimore, Henry Beckmeyer of Newark, James L. Wright of Philadelphia, and Theodore Cuno of Brooklyn. Other than Barry, all these men represented assemblies organized by, and devoted to, the Philadelphia founders. None of them were Catholics or miners, and all, again with the exception of Barry, hailed from East Coast urban centers. Equally noteworthy was the fact that Fred Turner, who would later be accused of membership in an extremist clique called the Home Club, which called for a return to secrecy, voted with the majority to make the name public. After this momentous vote, the GA resolved that the

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GMW and GS issue a public proclamation declaring the existence of the Order on January 1, 1882.107 Sensing their own weakness, the proponents of secrecy and ritual tried to head off any changes in their beloved AK through parliamentary maneuvering. Both Cuno and Taylor proposed that constitutional changes would henceforth require not just a two-thirds GA vote, as the existing constitution necessitated, but the approval of a majority of all members. When these proposals were defeated, Henry Beckmeyer, another champion of rituals, resolved that a committee be appointed to revise the constitution and report to the next GA. Gilbert Rockwood negated this attempt to preserve the AK intact for another year by successfully moving that this committee report to the present GA. Powderly saw his chance, and he immediately placed three allies on this committee—Dan McLaughlin; A. M. Owens of Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Thomas Ferrell of Camden, New Jersey. Two days later, McLaughlin’s committee claimed it was unable to accomplish its task before the close of the GA, so it recommended that the “entire revision and alteration” of both the constitution and the AK “be left to the supervision of the G.S. and G.M.W.” When delegates approved this recommendation, none but fools failed to understand that the GA had just given Powderly carte blanche to remove the oath.108 By an overwhelming majority, delegates had finally opted to abandon secrecy and had given the GMW authority to delete the obnoxious oath that was killing the Order. They had done so not because Powderly had asked them, but because they had firsthand knowledge that the Order had no future unless these dramatic steps were taken. The only question was whether the changes had come too late to check the decline in membership. Another radical change made at Detroit involved revamping the Defense Fund. All delegates agreed that the rules adopted at Pittsburgh in 1880 had helped to cripple the Order, but, of course, this being the Knights, there was little agreement on what changes were necessary. After lengthy wrangling, delegates agreed that henceforth each local was to retain its own Defense Fund until the GEB demanded it for emergency use. To bolster the finances of the national Order, the GA also moved to raise initiation fees and increase per capita taxes from one cent to two cents per month.109 Reworking the Defense Fund was just as necessary and significant as the end of secrecy and the removal of the oath. It meant that the national office would never have a sizeable fund at its disposal, whether for cooperatives, strikes, or any other purpose. The dramatic turn away from the ritualism and secrecy of the Philadelphia founders also manifested itself in the elections. Pittsburgh, the longtime foe of Philadelphia for control of the Order, emerged as the new unofficial headquarters, and Powderly, who had battled secrecy and ritual for years, was given increased authority over national policy. Delegates adopted a resolution that automatically placed both the GMW and GS on the five-man GEB, and that the former serve as chair and the latter as secretary of that body. Having declared

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Pittsburgh as the “recognized centre of American industries,” and perceiving the inefficiency of a GEB comprised of members separated by hundreds of miles, delegates then unanimously resolved that the three remaining seats on the GEB be reserved for delegates who resided in or near the city of Pittsburgh.110 Powderly was reelected without incident, as was GWF Griffiths and assistant GS Rockwood, but Pittsburgh clearly had assumed command. Litchman wisely declined to run for GS, and delegates promptly elevated the MW of Pittsburgh’s DA 3, Robert Layton, to that all-important post. Myles McPadden, DA 3’s organizer; Archibald Cowan, a miner from nearby Allegheny county (DA 9); and James Campbell, representing Pittsburgh’s LA 300 (window glass workers), were elected to the GEB.111 The change in personnel, the emergence of Pittsburgh as the Order’s hub, the abandonment of a potentially powerful central fund, the lifting of secrecy and the abolition of the oath—all amounted an organizational revolution, one made necessary by the catastrophic reverses of the past year, one that reflected Powderly’s long deferred dream, and one that boded well for membership advances in the future. Not surprisingly, the actions taken at Detroit thrilled the GMW. Not only had the veil of secrecy and the obnoxious oath been jettisoned, safeguarding Catholics within the Order, but the dead hand of the Philadelphia founders was finally removed. He had been placed in charge of a Pittsburgh-controlled and potentially vigorous GEB, and he was “glad of it.” The “best part” of the changes was that the “oath had been entirely done away with and a word of honor substituted.”112 After a year of unmitigated disaster, he believed the Order could now become the organization he had always envisioned.

NOTES 1. Knights of Labor (Chicago), June 26, 1886; John Swinton’s Paper, October 17, 1886. 2. Wheeling Register, May 9, 1882. 3. Pittsburgh Intelligencer, May 9, 1882; Wheeling News-Letter, May 14, 1882; Rochester Advocate and Mail, December 17, 1882. 4. TVP, “Address to D.A. 16,” January 5, 1881, PP. 5. See, among many others, TVP to James Lowrie, October 20, 1879; Thomas Gray to TVP, June 12 and 27, 1880; TVP to Gray, June 29, 1880; TVP to Lemuel Biddle, June 29, 1880; W. O. Wilson to TVP, June 4 and July 13, 1880; TVP to Mary May, September 15, 1880, PP. 6. See the dozens of letters from Mary Josephine Keenan to TVP in 1879 and 1880, especially those dated January 11 and February 15, 1881, PP. The quote is from the January 11 missive. Powderly’s letters to her are no longer extant, but she often referred to them in her own missives. 7. TVP to Thomas H. Burns, July 13 and July 30; Burns to TVP, July 28 and August 3; TVP to Litchman, August 8, 1880, PP. 8. TVP to Richard Griffiths, May 23, 1880; TVP to William Hughes, March 21, 1881; TVP to W. J. Mathis, May 25, 1881, PP.

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9. See, among dozens of other letters, Hannah Powderly to TVP, February 15, 1881; February 15 and March 18, 1884; January 28 (two letters), February 1 and 11, 1885; Ellen Ford to TVP, April 6, 1882; Emma Fickenscher to TVP, October 2, 1885, PP. 10. TVP to Richard Griffiths, September 10, 1879; TVP to L. V. Horton, March 22 and June 20, 1880; Horton to TVP, March 29, 1880; Diary, September 11, October 2– 6, and November 9, 1879, PP. 11. Interested readers may want to contrast my views on Powderly’s fitness for office with the relentlessly negative assessments of other historians who, without exception, regard him as self-absorbed, overly ambitious, haughty, and devoid of true sympathy for others. Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895 (New York, 1929), pp. xvi, 85–87; Gerald Grob, Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900 (Evanston, Ill., 1961), pp. 135–136; Richard Oestreicher, “Terence V. Powderly, the Knights of Labor, and Artisinal Republicanism,” in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, eds., Labor Leaders in America (Urbana, 1987), p. 58; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989), pp. 146–147. 12. TVP to Joseph Donley, October 14; TVP to Morris Welch, October 6, 1879; TVP to C. W. Snow, January 5, 1880, PP. 13. “Constitutions of the General Assembly, District Assemblies, and Local Assemblies of the *****,” adopted at Reading, Pa., January 1–4, 1878, pp. 151, 160, 164. 14. See “Constitutions” adopted at Reading, especially pp. 30–32; for salaries, see Proceedings, January 1878, Reading GA, p. 20. 15. TVP to Henry Fecker, October 25; TVP to Daniel P. ?, December 4, 1879, PP. In that time the circulation of The Trades jumped from 1,200 to 2,800. The issue containing the first letter, with a large picture of the GMW on the front page, had sold over 5,000 copies by March 1880, and requests for copies continued to pour in. Davis rightly acknowledged Powderly’s role in popularizing his paper. Davis to TVP, January 26, 1880; TVP “To Whom it may Concern,” March 9, 1880, PP. 16. TVP to the Editor of The Trades, No. 4, November 28, 1879, PP; reprinted in the Journal of United Labor (hereinafter JUL), October 15, 1880. 17. TVP to the Editor of The Trades, No. 3, November 21, 1879, PP; reprinted in the JUL, September 15, 1880. 18. TVP to Robert Curley, May 12; TVP to J. W. Kirk, May 12; TVP to John Coxson, May 19, 1880, PP. 19. TVP to Thomas Moore, October 7; TVP to C. Parly, October 7; TVP to Litchman, October 16, 1879, PP. 20. E. A. Stevens to TVP, December (?) and December 23, 1879; see also TVP to Henry Fecker, October 25; TVP to Peter Ward, November 21; TVP to Richard Griffiths, November 21; Griffiths to TVP, December (?); TVP to Griffiths, December 23; TVP to Stevens, December 28, 1879, PP. 21. H. F. Williams to TVP, December 19, 1879; Litchman to TVP, December 18 and December 25, 1879; Rockwood to TVP, January 8 and January 19, 1880, PP. 22. Litchman to TVP, December 31, 1879, January 22 and January 28, 1880; TVP to Litchman, February 27, 1880; GMW “Decision,” February 16, 1880; E. A. Stevens to TVP, February 3, 1880; TVP to L. E. McGann, February 4, 1880; TVP to John Poe, February 11, 1880; Rockwood to TVP, February 12, 1880, PP. 23. Interested readers should consult the ongoing debate over the meaning and viability of labor or radical republicanism in Sean Wilentz, “Against Exceptionalism: Class

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Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 1790–1920,” International Labor and Working Class History 26 (1984): 1–24; Nick Salvatore, “Response,” International Labor and Working Class History 26 (1984): 25–30; Michael Hanagan, “Response,” International Labor and Working Class History 26 (1984): 31–36. 24. Wheeling Register, May 9, 1882; Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, p. 170; JUL, August 15, 1880. 25. Both old and new labor historians, without exception, argue that Powderly, as a result of his “parochial perspective” (Laurie, Artisans into Workers, p. 167) was “indifferent to the plight of striking members” (Oestreicher, “Artisinal Republicanism,” p. 52), and pursued a “bankrupt policy” that resulted in a “conflict between the leadership and the rank-and-file” (Philip Foner, vol. 2, pp. 82–83). 26. TVP to Robert Lucas, December 6, 1879, PP. 27. Quoted in Craig Phelan, Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell (Albany, 1994), p. 11. 28. Both quotes are taken from the JUL, April 15, 1881. 29. TVP to Robert Lucas, December 6, 1879; TVP to C. C. Burnett, February 22, 1880; Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 278–279; Wheeling Register, May 9, 1882; TVP to T. B. Barry, August 17, 1882; Joseph Burton to TVP, June 14, 1880; TVP to Burton, June 20, 1880, PP. 30. David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 194, 203. 31. TVP to Robert Lucas, December 6, 1879; TVP to C. C. Burnett, February 22, 1880, PP. 32. Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, pp. 169–170. 33. Joseph Burton to TVP, June 14, 1880; TVP to Burton, June 20; Charles Smith to TVP, June 13; TVP to Smith, June 20, 1880, PP. 34. C. C. Burnett to TVP, April 3; TVP to Burnett, April 8, 1880, PP. 35. John Grosscup to TVP, June 16; TVP to Grosscup, June 23, 1880, PP. 36. Richard Griffiths to TVP, December 7; TVP to Griffiths, December 16, 1879, PP. 37. TVP to E. B. Jones, October 6, 1879; TVP to Michael Leary, December 4, 1879; TVP to William White, March 12, 1880, PP. 38. See Stuart Kaufman, Samuel Gompers and the Origins of the American Federation of Labor, 1848–1896 (Westport, Conn., 1973); John H. M. Laslett, “Samuel Gompers and the Rise of American Business Unionism,” in Dubofsky and Van Tine, eds., Labor Leaders in America, pp. 62–88. 39. Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, p. 169. 40. TVP to Patrick Mooney, March 30; TVP to Christopher Barnes, April 24, 1880, PP. 41. P. J. McGuire to TVP, May 21, 1881; TVP to McGuire, June 1, 1881, PP. 42. Ware, The Labor Movement, pp. 171–173; the quote is from p. 173. 43. Proceedings, January 1879 St. Louis GA, pp. 50, 69, 70, 72. 44. TVP to Litchman, May 14, 1880; JUL, May 15, 1880; Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, pp. 184, 189, 244–246. 45. JUL, August 15, 1880. For similar arguments in his correspondence, see TVP to William White, March 12; TVP to William Hughes, March 15; and TVP to Patrick Mooney, March 30, 1880, PP. 46. For the older interpretation of cooperation, see Commons, et al., History of La-

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bour, vol. 2, pp. 347, 430–438; Gerald Grob, Workers and Utopia, pp. 44–48. For more modern studies that discuss cooperation as consistent with both trade unionism and Gilded Age labor reform, see Clare Horner, “Producers’ Co-operatives in the United States, 1865–1890,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1978; Steve Leikin, “The Practical Utopians: Cooperation and the American Labor Movement, 1860–1890,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1992. 47. Horner, “Producers’ Co-operatives,” pp. 73–74; Sylvis in quoted in Ronald Fillipelli, Labor in the USA: A History (New York, 1984), p. 65. For an excellent discussion of Sylvis, see David Montgomery, “William Sylvis and the Search for Working-Class Citizenship,” in Dubofsky and Van Tine, Labor Leaders in America, pp. 3–29. 48. Horner, pp. 67–68; JUL, February 1883. 49. Labadie to TVP, December 7, 1879, PP. 50. Richard Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit (Urbana, 1987), pp. 89–90. 51. Egbert Hazard to TVP, August 21, 1880; see also TVP to James Boggs, December 16, 1879; TVP to Egbert Hazard, July 6 and October 4, 1880; TVP to John G. Moore, April 11, 1880; TVP to John Loftus, December 22, 1879; Loftus to TVP, December 24, 1879; A. Donall to TVP, February 5, 1880; TVP to Donall, February 23, 1880; C. Bonsall to TVP, February 29, 1880; TVP to Bonsall, March 9, 1880; unidentified to TVP, Hampton, March 7, 1879; E. B. Berrell to TVP, March 20, 1880; TVP to Berrell, March 28, 1880; PP. 52. TVP to James Boggs, December 16, 1879; TVP to Litchman, August 24, 1878 (two letters); TVP to B. B. Scully, September 24, 1878; TVP to James White, October 4, 1881; TVP to Brother Saunderson, November 15, 1882, PP. 53. TVP to E. S. Watson, October 20, 1879; TVP to John M. Davis, January 26, 1880, PP. 54. TVP to the Editor of The Trades, No. 8, January 20, 1880, PP; reprinted in the JUL, February 15, 1881. 55. TVP to the Editor of The Trades, No. 5, November 29, 1879, PP; reprinted in the JUL, November 15, 1880. TVP to the Editor of The Trades, No. 8, January 20, 1880, PP; reprinted in the JUL, February 15, 1881. 56. Samuel Walker, “Terence V. Powderly, ‘Labor Mayor’: Workingmen’s Politics in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1870–1884,” Ph.D. diss, Ohio State University, 1973, pp. 249–250; Scranton Republican, February 19 and 20, 1880; Scranton Daily Times, February 18, 1880. 57. TVP to C. C. Burnett, February 22; U. S. Stephens to TVP, February 21; Gilbert Rockwood to TVP, February 27; Litchman to TVP, February 25; James Kearney to TVP, February 19, 1880, PP. 58. Litchman to TVP, January 22 and March 27; Dyer D. Lum to TVP, January 21; Michael Haley to TVP, March 19; G. W. Madox to TVP, April 29; to TVP, March 27, 1880, PP. 59. TVP to Michael Haley, April 8; TVP to G. W. Madox, May 4; TVP to Richard Griffiths, May 23; TVP to John Campbell, June 3, 1880, PP. 60. TVP to Litchman, July 12 and July 27; TVP to J. H. Swerdfiger, June 28; TVP to Patrick Ford, May 23; William F. Otis to TVP, May 4; John W. Hayes to TVP, July 4; TVP to Hayes, July 8, 1880, PP. 61. Journal of the Knights of Labor, November 8, 1888; Van Patten to TVP, July 15, 1880, TVP to Turner, June 25, 1884, PP; New York Times, June 12, 1880; Edward

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James, “American Labor and Political Action, 1865–1896,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954, p. 173. 62. For evidence of Powderly’s Socialist Labor party membership, see Van Patten to TVP, July 15, August 13, 1880, PP. See also Powderly’s 1887 admission that he was a member. Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1586–1587. 63. Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, pp. 92–93. 64. TVP to E. A. Stevens, December 4, 1879; TVP to Labadie, December 22, 1879, March 9, 1880; Labadie to TVP, December 7, 1879, February 24, 1880, July 2, 1882, PP. 65. TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859–1889 (Philadelphia, 1889), pp. 536–538. Stephens’s letter is quoted on pp. 534–535. 66. Van Patten to TVP, July 15 and August 13, 1880; SLP, “Official Notice,” August 11, 1880, which provides the referendum results; TVP to Van Patten, July 22 and August 17, 1880; Powderly tore these letters from his letterbooks in an effort to sanitize his historical reputation, but he failed to tear out Van Patten’s replies, which are detailed enough to make the contents of the missing letters obvious. 67. Peter McDonnell to TVP, September 25; Dennis Leahy to TVP, August 9; E. S. Watson to TVP, September 25, 1880, PP. 68. Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, pp. 194, 231–232. 69. Proceedings, September 1879 Chicago GA, pp. 117, 122, 124; 1880 Pittsburgh GA, pp. 202, 215. 70. Proceedings, January 1878 Reading GA, pp. 9, 11–12, 14, 18; “Constitution” adopted at Reading, p. 32. 71. Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, pp. 183–196. 72. Ibid., pp. 199, 225, 252. 73. Ibid., pp. 170–171, 248. 74. Dennis Leahy to TVP, October 26, 1880; James Boggs to TVP, October 20, 1880; Peter Ward to TVP, November 5, 1880; W. W. Bean to TVP, March 6, 1881; Gilbert Rockwood to TVP, February 21, 1881, PP. 75. John McOwen to TVP, November 6; James Madison to TVP, November 26; John McMahon to TVP, November 27; C. F. Caffrey to TVP, December 15, 1880, PP. 76. TVP to James Madison, November 29, 1880, PP. 77. “Record of Proceedings of District Assembly, No. 16, of Pennsylvania,” January 5, 1881, PP. 78. Fred Turner to TVP, February 17; TVP to Turner, February 20, 1880, PP. 79. Ware, Labor Movement, p. 92; Eric Foner, “Class, Ethnicity, and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish America,” in Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (New York, 1980), p. 151; TVP to Rev. P. J. Ryan, October 24, 1884, PP. 80. Daniel O’Leary to TVP, December 24, 1879, PP. 81. Samuel Owen to TVP, June 1, 1880; John Huron to TVP, December 22, 1879; Charles Litchman to TVP, November 29, 1879; John Meehan to TVP, September 27, 1880; T. F. Mullaney to TVP, May 24, 1880, PP. 82. John Hart to TVP, April 19, 1880, PP. 83. TVP to Rev. P. J. Ryan, October 24, 1884, PP. 84. Dominic Hammer to TVP, July 20; TVP to Hammer, July 22, 1881, PP. 85. Litchman to TVP, April 9 and May 14; Rockwood to TVP, June 20; Dominic Hammer to TVP, July 20, 1881, PP.

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86. Richard Griffiths to TVP, April 5, 1881; E. A. Stevens to TVP, January 6, 1880; Peter Ward to TVP, May 17, 1881, PP. Proceedings, 1881 Detroit GA, pp. 271–272. 87. TVP to Harry Taylor, October 7; TVP to C. A. Lincoln, November 8, 1880, PP. 88. TVP to Litchman, June 15; TVP to Robert Nelson, August 17, 1881, PP. 89. TVP to James White, January 17, 1881; Litchman to TVP, December 18, 1880, PP. 90. Grand Secretary “To the Members of the Order Everywhere,” March 5, 1881, PP. 91. Richard Griffiths to TVP, February 10; Samuel Hall to TVP, January 29; James White to TVP, January 15; TVP to White, January 17; Theo Sandburg to TVP, January 12; TVP to Sandburg, January 17, 1881, PP. 92. Peter Ward to TVP, January 5, 1881; Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, pp. 199, 235; John Fetter to TVP, January 17, 1881; David McGann to Pow, February 14, 1881; Litchman to TVP, February 4, 1881, PP. 93. Litchman to TVP, January 29, 1881, PP. 94. Litchman to TVP, November 26 and 30, 1880, January 24, 1881; TVP to Griffiths, May 25, 1885, PP. 95. TVP to Litchman, May 17, 1881, PP. 96. TVP to Edward Bell, June 20, 1881, PP. 97. TVP to Griffiths, June 15, 1881, PP. 98. TVP to Daniel McLaughlin, August 17, 1881, PP. 99. Griffiths to TVP, July 16 and 18; Hammer to TVP, July 20, 1881, PP. 100. TVP to Griffiths, July 20; TVP to Litchman, August 18, 1881, PP. 101. For membership statistics, see Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, p. 215; 1881 Detroit GA, p. 344. For financial figures, see Proceedings, 1881 Detroit GA, pp. 319, 321. The Order had only three sources of income other than the Defense Fund: JUL subscriptions: $404.10; sale of supplies, such as charters and cards: $1766.07; and per capita tax: $1972.31. The JUL was a money loser, costing $456.71 to produce for the year. 102. Proceedings, 1881 Detroit GA, p. 271. 103. Ibid., pp. 271–272. 104. Ibid., pp. 282, 285–286, 318. 105. Ibid., p. 333. 106. Ibid., pp. 276, 287, 290, 302; Robert Layton to TVP, October 6, 1883, PP. 107. Ibid., pp. 302, 305–306. 108. Ibid., pp. 288, 296, 299, 303, 306, 308, 316–317. 109. Ibid., pp. 287, 291, 293, 295, 297, 304, 311, 312–313. 110. Ibid., pp. 296, 313–314, 325, 327–328. 111. Ibid., pp. 323–325. 112. TVP to Peter Ward, October 19, 1881, PP; see also TVP to Dominic Hammer, September 27, 1881, for a summary of what Powderly considered to be the major changes made at Detroit.

Chapter 3

Growth and Its Discontents: September 1881– September 1883 The 1881 Detroit GA revolutionized the Knights of Labor. Given the disintegration and disillusionment of 1881, it is unlikely that the Order could have survived much longer under the existing framework. Even had it limped on, the Order could not claim to be the voice of universal brotherhood, because the oath had virtually excluded Catholics. The explosion of activity in 1882, however, demonstrated the promise of Knighthood once its policies coincided with its rhetoric and once its message could be publicized. Much of the growth in 1882 took place in the industrial cities that dotted the landscape between Boston and Chicago, where skilled craftsmen used the Order to rebuild their local trade unions. Entire cities, especially Rochester and Chicago, caught Knight fever in 1882, thus foreshadowing developments that would occur across the nation in 1886. Powderly and other national leaders played a central role in the rebirth of the Order. Delegates at Detroit had been emphatic in their desire to shift the unofficial headquarters to Pittsburgh, where organization along trade lines and a more public stance had created the only oasis of success during the dismal days of 1881. And now the Pittsburgh approach was to be applied nationwide. With Powderly’s unqualified support, Myles McPadden successfully planted the seeds of Knighthood wherever he went. Indeed, the principal cities experiencing substantial growth in 1882 were the very ones McPadden visited. Not only did Powderly pave the way for expansion by engineering the Detroit revolution and wholeheartedly embracing the Pittsburgh approach, but he also played a more

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direct role through his propaganda, correspondence, lecture tours, and organizing efforts. Moreover, the lifting of secrecy meant that Powderly became the focus of media attention for the first time, and for many members, he came to epitomize its ideals of manliness, sobriety, honor, and courage. Powderly’s pride in both the Order and his exalted position in it, his conviction that the Order represented a breakthrough in organizational development and labor thought, his sense that he was riding the crest of a mighty wave that would alter industrial relations—all these grew as rapidly as the membership. At the same time, his ever-increasing workload, the ugly factionalism that tore at the very fiber of Knightly solidarity, the wearisome financial woes and administrative handicaps—all placed Powderly under enormous physical and emotional pressure. Perhaps better than anyone else, he understood that growth and the end of secrecy exacerbated existing problems and created a host of new ones. Personnel changes meant that Powderly had to establish from scratch a working relationship with GS Bob Layton and the other “Pittsburgh boys” who comprised the GEB. He had never met Layton before the Detroit GA, and in fact had never heard of him.1 Although Layton believed that Litchman was a screwup and shirker, he, too, soon found the post of GS overwhelming. Indeed, it was the daunting grind of daily work as much as anything else that brought Powderly and Layton together. Even though their partnership never approximated the intense bond Powderly had enjoyed with Litchman, Layton proved to be a ferocious defender of Powderly’s vision of Knighthood. Robert D. “Bob” Layton liked to think of himself as an ordinary, “lawabiding, quiet citizen,” who never ventured beyond the “usual walks” of life. On his election as GS, he was just shy of his thirty-fifth birthday, a short, bald, mustachioed, and somewhat delicate-looking man who seemed much older than his years. But his flashing dark eyes gave the lie to such adjectives as “delicate” and “quiet” and suggested his more belligerent personality. “There are two things I thank God for,” he was fond of saying. “One is that I can love my friends and the other is that I can intensely hate my enemies.”2 At sixteen, he had gone to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and quickly moved up to brakeman, but at twenty-three, he gave up railroading for ax making. In 1874, after a succession of jobs in the Midwest, he returned to Pittsburgh and found work at a stove factory, where he remained until early 1881. The doting father of three children, Layton had climbed the hierarchy of Pittsburgh’s DA 3, serving as financial secretary and ultimately as MW before his election as GS.3 Powderly found another potential ally in GEB member and organizer-at-large Myles McPadden. Born in Ireland, “Mac” had served as national secretary of the Iron Molders’ International Union in the early 1870s and had spent the last several years as DA 3’s indefatigable organizer. Active in the Clan na Gael, McPadden revered Powderly from the outset, and Powderly quickly came to regard him as crucial to the Order’s revival. Thoroughly conversant with the objects of the Order, the Irishman was also versatile, equally at home with

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miners, urban craftsmen, and factory hands. And despite frequent illnesses, he was a juggernaut who did not wait for Powderly or anyone else to give him orders.4 Powderly took comfort in the commitment exhibited by the key players in his new administration. Even more satisfying were early indications that the changes made at Detroit pleased the membership and spurred them to rebuild even before secrecy was dropped on the first day of January. And once the veil was officially lifted, the Order began to expand immediately and rapidly. Thirtyone new LAs were established in February 1882, thirty-four in March, and sixtyone in April. When discussing the figures for May, Rockwood and Layton, in their glee, presented the following dialogue in the JUL: “ ‘What was the last number assigned?’ inquired the Assistant Grand Secretary. . . . ‘Nineteen hundred and forty-eight,’ was the reply. ‘How many new Locals does that make for the month of May?’ ‘Seventy-one.’ ‘Very good. . . . It begins to look as though the predictions of Brother Layton, that we should reach number twentyfive hundred by the next session of the G. A., would be fulfilled.’ ”5 Although their skills as playwrights left much to be desired, Rockwood and Layton tried to capture the excitement of the grand officers as the Order rebounded. Within a matter of months, the gloom that pervaded the Detroit GA was replaced by exhilaration. Rockwood joked that Powderly should start exercising with ‘dumbbells’ to strengthen his right arm, as each LA charter required the GMW’s signature. Even ex-Grand Treasurer Dominic Hammer, who had been unable to attend the Detroit session because his LA had lapsed, revived his local and organized a few others in Canton, Ohio.6 Expansion clearly vindicated Powderly’s efforts to challenge the teachings of the Philadelphia saints. As was the case since the founding of the Order, the vast majority of locals formed in 1882 were organized along trade lines. Less than 30 percent of the 513 LAs established in 1882 were mixed, although the percentage of such locals rose steadily after that year. However, 1882 was significant in that it marked the first year since 1875 in which miners’ LAs did not represent the majority of trade locals organized. In 1880, for instance, 62 percent of all trade LAs established were either soft or hard coal mining locals, but only 14 percent of new trade LAs in 1882 represented miners, whereas communications, the building trades, and transportation accounted for 42 percent of new trade LAs. Although miners still dominated the membership, skilled workers from urban centers and industrial towns were beginning to join in large numbers.7 The lifting of secrecy, it would seem, led to a shift in organizational focus with profound implications. By the time of the Great Upheaval, the Order’s center of gravity had shifted from the mine patch to the industrial city, where it sank deep roots among a wide variety of occupational groups. Several trades exhibited a desire to band together beyond the LA, and in 1882–1883 Powderly had no qualms whatsoever about trade organization at any level. He supported the Philadelphia Knights, for instance, when they established separate locals for workers in the various branches of the shoe industry, a step

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that eventually led to a separate citywide district of that craft (DA 70).8 He actively encouraged the Chicago Knights to rebuild exclusively along trade lines.9 And when a New York Knight boasted that he could organize the nation’s machinists, Powderly vowed to support his “request to have laws framed similar to those of the glass workers.”10 Indeed, the example of LA 300, window glass workers, served as a beacon to many trades, but in 1882, only one other trade successfully followed it—the telegraphers. Powderly not only approved DA 45’s charter, granting it jurisdiction over all telegraphers nationwide, he also provided its leaders with a special dispensation to initiate members outside the sanctuary, a step deemed necessary because in small towns there might be only one or two telegraphers and no LA.11 Although numerous Knights helped to rebuild the Order after the Detroit GA, no one approached the success of Myles McPadden. “Mac” preached the Pittsburgh Knight alternative. LAs were to be formed along trade lines, using the remnants of local trade unions when available. Rather than finding a small number of “worthy” candidates and building the Order slowly, McPadden attempted to organize all workers at a given site, whether a factory, mill, workshop, or mine. Little emphasis was placed on rituals, although he did insist on strict compliance with the constitution as a means to ensure discipline. Although believing that Knighthood stood for something nobler than economic warfare, he often employed a selective strike in combination with a boycott. By targeting the city’s most hated employer, he hoped to demonstrate the power of collective action once harnessed by thorough organization. It was an effective strategy, but it also had obvious drawbacks in an organization without a central strike fund. The promise and pitfalls of the McPadden approach were illustrated in Rochester, New York. What he found on his arrival in December 1881 did not impress him. The eleven existing locals had a combined membership of 2,000, but the Order was in disarray. Meetings were not well attended, members were ignorant of proper procedures, and most believed that the Order was solely committed to strike action, an “illusion” that he “soon dispelled.” He also found the prerequisite for success—a militant mood. Less than three weeks later, McPadden departed, leaving behind him thirteen properly functioning trade LAs with 3,000 members and a new district organization (DA 44).12 McPadden also left behind plans for a selective strike against Cunningham & Sons, carriage makers, which paid substandard wages and imposed outrageous shop rules. LA 1709 and DA 44 then went through the entire grievance procedure until the GEB heard their case on February 16 and issued an assessment of fifteen cents per member.13 The carriage makers’ strike ended successfully in mid-March, creating a groundswell of enthusiasm for Knighthood throughout Rochester and across northern New York state. By the end of April, DA 44 MW Charles Robinson was pleased to bring Powderly the “good cheer.” Since the conclusion of the strike, DA 44 had organized ten locals outside the city, including one in Oneida, 120 miles away. In Rochester itself, a city of 100,000,

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the DA claimed forty-four locals, including five of the earliest all-female assemblies in the Order, and a total membership of 9,150. A cooperative foundry was already in operation, a cooperative carriage factory and printing office were “well under way,” and in the planning stages were a cooperative shoe shop and carpenters’ workshop. Knight fever was raging in Rochester.14 Such was the potential power of the Knights. Powderly, of course, could claim little credit. But if allowed to share the glory, he also had to reap the whirlwind that inevitably followed. In Rochester, as in every other city, when workers acted, employers reacted. “Employers are trying every means to beat us if they can,” Robinson grumbled in May. Rents were skyrocketing, materials and permits were being denied cooperators, and demands for wage increases were being challenged across the board. Whereas Rochester workers had once been the “meekest” in the country, they were now acting so “fearlessly” that the “capitalists are getting desperate at the prospect of losing their long lease of unilateral power.”15 At this point, the poverty of the Order undermined its ability to safeguard the gains made. Without funds to pay for full-time organizers other than McPadden, no representative from the national Order visited Rochester to prevent the lockouts and numerous failed strikes that erupted in May and June. McPadden, Powderly, and Layton were up to their eyes in other, equally important affairs. The GMW and GS each pressed the other to go, and the leaders of now penniless DA 44 wrongly accused Layton of failing to hand over all the funds collected through the strike assessment. Without the personnel, time, or resources to do anything else, Powderly was left no choice but to offer ineffectual advice through the mail. By the September 1882 GA, DA 44 had been greatly weakened by the counteroffensive. Although it still claimed 7,216 members, only twenty-two locals remained, and Knighthood would never again reach the pitch of the previous spring.16 The growth of the Order, therefore, was by no means smooth. In cities such as Rochester, Buffalo, and Chicago, effective organizers could rally a restive working-class population to the cause. Once united and emboldened, workers became targets for an employer backlash. The beleaguered and minuscule national administration, though generally willing to assist by offering appeals, assessments, and words of wisdom, stood by helplessly as many of the initial gains were wiped out. In the face of defeats, membership dropped and recriminations abounded, but enough working people remained loyal to the Order so that overall membership rates increased significantly and an institutional framework remained in place to accommodate future growth. Judging by the Rochester example alone, one might conclude that Powderly played at best a minimal role in this process of growth. A closer look at his activities reveals that his contributions were in fact indispensable. Having paved the way for expansion by eliminating secrecy and the oath, he demonstrated amazing skill and energy as publicist, organizer, and orator. Unanimous historical opinion to the contrary, the GMW was not a myopic pedant divorced from

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a vigorous rank and file. Members themselves recognized what labor historians, old and new, have not—that Powderly served as a powerful symbol of manhood, courage, and selfless dedication. Before the fracturing of the Order in 1886, the vast majority of Knights agreed with Rochester’s Charles Robinson: “[T]he name of T. V. Powderly holds a magic influence over D.A. 44.”17 By the spring of 1882, letters of enquiry began to flood into Powderly’s office, asking what the principles of the Order were, how assemblies were established, and how the Knights proposed to fight monopoly. He answered every question without clerical assistance, using pen and ink and making carbon copies, on a part-time basis in his own home. Although he often exaggerated the amount of mail he received, his estimate of twenty-five per day was fairly accurate for 1882. “They must be answered ere the morrow else I will have fifty,” he sighed. “I have no help, am not well enough off in this world’s goods to pay for it.”18 Even prominent individual lecturers like James Redmond of the Land League had a sizable staff to answer mundane questions, yet no one in the Order considered Powderly’s situation odd, inefficient, or worthy of correction. Powderly believed his to be a noble task, different but equally important to that of men who tramped from place to place to organize. His self-image as GMW was revealed in a letter to Richard Trevellick, the embodiment of the heroic traveling organizer: “Why must we who have so much yet to do grow old before we have made any apparent progress? . . . But it is our mission on this earth. Yours to travel though this vast country, using every means at your command to awake the sleeping thoughts and impel men forward. Mine to sit here day and night to write to them. Sometimes I weary of the self imposed task and throw down the pen in despair, only to pick it up again and reproach myself for losing so much time.”19 The growth of the Order did not leave Powderly imprisoned in his Scranton home. Although he did not enjoy leaving Hannah and the comforts of home, he often did, and he tried to group his lectures together in long trips. He detested making speeches, especially when he was forced to travel. “I am going to Brooklyn tonight to talk. Oh God how I hate it. The Assemblies and Land Leagues insist on having me make an ass of myself.” He possessed a natural gift for extemporaneous oratory, despite his protestations, and was often invited back time and time again by the same LA.20 Powderly’s organizing tour of April–May 1882, one of several he undertook during the year, illustrated the enormity of his commitment and the chaos of his office. When Land Leaguers in Middletown, Connecticut, expressed an interest in forming a Knights assembly, Powderly attended to them in person. But they would have to wait until he had a free day. He had prior engagements for the Knights, Land League, and Clan na Gael that included Sugar Notch on April 24, Wilkes-Barre on April 25, Towanda on April 26, Harrisburg on April 27, Altoona on April 28, Pittsburgh on April 29, Wheeling on May 1, and Baltimore on May 2. He promised to be in Middletown on May 3. Such whirlwind tours invariably involved speaking to more than one gathering in each city. Because

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of the poverty of the Order and parsimony of both the Land League and Clan na Gael, he had to arrange with each local organization to pay his travel and accommodation by the time he left. He did all this without the services of a secretary, and he almost always traveled alone.21 When assessing his workload, any one of his three major roles—mayor, GMW, and Clan chieftain—could have consumed the energies of mere mortals, and few would have had the capacity for any two. But Powderly performed all three as a matter of course, and numerous other less taxing ones as well. What he objected to was performing duties that did not require his leadership. Time wasted on minor chores drained his energies. “I can easily attend to legitimate duties . . . if I am not stuck on every committee and my time is thus frittered away,” he pleaded with Thomas Granahan, his junior partner in local matters for both the Clan and Knights. When it came to “legitimate” chores such as his upcoming tour, he believed he had matters well in hand, so much so that he planned to write a 4,200-word article for the North American Review.22 A week prior to his departure, Powderly succumbed to another attack of quinsy: “My old enemy took hold of me last Sunday and yesterday I had the doctor cut my throat on the inside” to burst the abscesses. Although “quite weak” from an inability to eat, he postponed but did not cancel his trip. He thus had to contact each of these places and make new arrangements. Even as he did so, his itinerary continued to lengthen. “The East is clamoring for admission to the Order,” he told Rockwood. He would visit Danbury and Hartford in addition to Middletown. If his health held out, he would also found an LA in East Rutherford, New Jersey. His only complaint was that he could not leave his house that evening to attend a session of his own DA 16.23 Almost without exception, Powderly’s arrival was a major attraction for working people. Although he disliked speaking at picnics and other venues where recreation rather than education was the primary focus, his reputation as an orator packed the meeting halls and theaters. Even though he was the only lecturer on the bill at Wheeling, for instance, reporters from two local and one Pittsburgh newspaper were on hand, and the hall was so crowded that many men were turned away. Before his speech, a black choir sang “Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming.” When Powderly walked on stage, all three reporters were struck by his “graceful” appearance, “personal magnetism,” and his “captivating” oratorical skills.24 His message, which was frequently interrupted by applause, stirred the audience. First taking note of the African-Americans in the audience, a rarity in the Gilded Age outside the Order, he stressed that the Knights had “no objection to the color of a man’s skin.” He then discussed the degradation of labor under the present system and humbly admitted that the “great question of labor requires for its solution a greater mind than mine.” He knew that the path toward a solution involved study and reasoned thought (“What the world wants is argument”) and, above all, solidarity. “I am not for one branch [of workers], but all workmen whose sweat runs down their faces.” And then he turned to the Order,

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an organization working for the day when “the injury to the poor workman on the railroad is felt and sympathized with by the man who guides the engine.” After stressing the need for a national eight-hour day law, Chinese exclusion laws, the need to curb strikes, and several other topics, the choir returned for a final number, and the audience thundered its approval. For the working people of Wheeling, the evening’s entertainment “did not fall short of their high expectations.”25 The only unusual aspect of the Wheeling visit was the presence of a significant number of African-Americans, for the Order at this time was primarily a white man’s domain. After the meeting, a delegation from Wheeling’s black local (LA 1357, coal miners) presented him with a $20 gold badge and informed him that on the wall of their sanctuary, alongside Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, hung an artistic rendering of one of his official “decisions”: “The [outside] color of a candidate shall not debar him from admission; rather let the coloring of his mind and heart be the test.” The kindness of these men touched him, and he beamed with pride as he informed a cousin that black Knights “think a great deal of me for it was I who first let down the bars for them to come in.” Uriah Stephens, on the other hand, “thought he was too good to associate with colored men.” Race was certainly not one of his priorities in 1882, but he never failed to address the issue when appropriate. Although tinged with paternalism, his message was always a clarion call for racial brotherhood at a time of worsening race relations. He fully understood the power of symbolic acts, such as his special welcome at the meeting. Even historians begrudgingly admit that “white supremacy was not one of Terence Powderly’s many shortcomings.”26 Upon his return, of course, he had his mayoral duties to attend to, and a sizable pile of accumulated mail. Among his unopened letters was a telegram berating him for “neglect and carelessness” for failing to respond to an earlier communication, and a missive from Buffalo upbraiding him for the late arrival of quarterly report forms. It was all part of the job. To the Buffalo Knight he wrote, after two paragraphs of explanation and apology: “Brother try and exercise patience for a while longer. Bear in mind the centuries of oppression that have rolled round unaddressed and surely a week or a month may not seem so long.”27 Perhaps to the Buffalo Knight this reply was infuriating, but to Powderly, with his Sisyphean burden of forever pushing his pile of papers to and from the post office, such an attitude was a prerequisite for the role he had assumed. The image of Powderly as a chronic complainer—a weakling without stamina—fails to hold up. True, he was sickly, but his physical frailty made his determination even more remarkable. True, he spent most of his time working at home, but unlike trade union officials in years to come, he was not assisted by a corps of clerks to take care of the mind-numbing details. If labor leadership can be seen as a spectrum, with the tramping William Sylvis and his ilk on one end and the bureaucratic William Green and his kind on the other, then certainly

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Powderly had far more in common with the pioneers. Like the noble warriors of the early days of unionism, who sacrificed all to unite the oppressed, Powderly worked and traveled to such an extent that idealism as much as ambition motivated him. He might well be regarded as the labor pioneer trapped in a primitive bureaucracy, working himself to exhaustion because he lacked the resources to lighten his load. If much of the Order’s growth in 1882 stemmed from the abandonment of secrecy and the oath, so, too, did many of its principal difficulties. Having led the crusade to make the name of the Order public, Powderly was also the first to identify and attack the potentially damaging consequences of that move. What consequences? First, those who fought the end of secrecy and change in rituals at Detroit continued their opposition once they returned to their locals in Brooklyn, New York City, and Philadelphia. Led by Uriah Stephens, these “fundamentalists” emerged as a powerful and aggressive anti-Powderly faction. Second, the end of secrecy placed the Order’s political stance in the spotlight, and some Knights attempted to gain office by publicly identifying themselves with the Order. When Powderly sought to sidestep such a move by refusing the NGLP nomination for state office in May, not only did many leading Knights accuse him of “selling out,” but he inadvertently divided Knighthood in Pittsburgh, the Order’s headquarters. And third, by stimulating growth and thus raising the expectations of workers, the end of secrecy in part accounted for an increase in strike action that the Knights were ill-equipped to handle. Indeed, the inability to win a major coal strike in Maryland’s Cumberland region compelled mining leaders to consider the necessity for an independent union of that craft. That such problems arose could be expected, that Powderly approached them with a preposterous insufficiency of resources was his lot as GMW. But what is lost in the standard thematic histories of the Knights is the crisis atmosphere that resulted when Powderly had to reckon with these and numerous other problems at exactly the same time. The confusion of names, issues, and organizations, difficult enough for the disinterested scholar to keep straight, bombarded Powderly on a daily basis. For the first time, his talent for recalling men’s names, identifying their motives, and retaining information began to reveal itself, a talent that became increasingly valuable as both the Order and its problems mushroomed. The first indication of trouble with the fundamentalists arose in October 1881. The Detroit GA had resolved to commission an official history of the Order, and Powderly had assigned the task to cofounders James L. Wright and Uriah Stephens, and DA 1 (Philadelphia) RS Fred Turner.28 Stephens not only asked to be excused from the committee but demanded that his name not be mentioned in the Proceedings. “The Order has drifted so far away from the Primary landmarks, has so completely changed from the original,” he wailed, “that a strong feeling begins to manifest itself in my LA to sever its connection with the organization.” The threat of losing LA 1 and its eleven members was hardly

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cause for alarm, but the idea that the founding father of Knighthood would denounce the Order in such a dramatic way was far more serious. Powderly pleaded for patience, asking that Stephens “not take so important a step before the next session of the G.A.”29 Stephens was in no mood for patience. He had already contacted William Horan, a kindred spirit in Brooklyn, in an effort to determine “the best plan to pursue” to counteract the “drifting” of the Order under Powderly’s leadership.30 Stephens knew exactly where to look for allies, for it was in New York and Brooklyn that fundamentalism exercised its greatest influence. Compared with Rochester and Chicago, where McPadden had worked his magic, Knighthood was virtually nonexistent in New York City and Brooklyn. As of January 1882, there were only twelve functioning locals, no district body, and a pathetic total membership of 363.31 But the two cities boasted a bevy of labor leaders. From old-line Stephens devotees such as William Horan and George Blair, to Marxian socialists Theodore Cuno and George K. Lloyd, from trade union theoreticians Adolph Strasser, Samuel Gompers, and P. J. McGuire, to the Socialist Labor party’s Philip Van Patten (who came to New York in the spring as an organizer for that party), no other urban area could match this stellar cast. For the Knights in this bunch, with the exception of Van Patten, common cause was found not in the spirit of expectancy which accompanied organizational growth, but in attacking the changes in the AK approved at Detroit. Powderly had little conception of the strength or nature of Knighthood in New York. Many locals failed to provide quarterly reports, and few members bothered to correspond with him. He naturally sought to cultivate a powerful ally who could keep him informed of events, and since the summer of 1880, he had been grooming Harry Taylor, a former GEB member, for this assignment. Within days of returning from Detroit, however, Taylor applied for a withdrawal card and resurfaced later as a leader of the fundamentalist crusade.32 Thus, the GMW faced the daunting task of combating a subterranean opposition movement without a trusted and well-informed guide. Contradictory information began arriving in Scranton from a variety of sources, each one detailing subterfuge and calling for action on the part of the grand officers, and Powderly had a difficult time just identifying his friends and his enemies. One leading Brooklyn Knight who appeared to be trustworthy was Theodore Cuno, the newly elected Grand Statistician who had represented LA 1562 (mixed) at Detroit.33 Although wary because Cuno had voted with the ritualists as Detroit, Powderly regarded him as a valuable booster, for that was exactly how he presented himself. As early as October, Cuno warned Powderly about “some cranks” in the city who were stirring up discontent over changes in the rituals. The “principal kicker” was the MW of his own local, William Horan, who represented “Stephens’ old school” and believed that “ ‘no man in the world ’ has a right to change the ‘fundamental work ’ of the order.” Cuno considered such talk foolishness, declaring that “whosoever refuses to recognize the doings of the G.A. is a rebel and not entitled to stay with us.”34

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With Cuno apparently keeping an eye on things in Brooklyn, James Connolly, the MW of New York City’s LA 1629 (carpet workers), kept him abreast of fundamentalism in New York City, especially the antics of George K. Lloyd, the RS of LA 1654 (tinsmiths), who had recently visited Connolly’s local to denounce Powderly’s rule as “Bossism.” Powderly thereupon opened a dialogue with Lloyd, but Lloyd’s belligerent insistence that the changes made at Detroit were “unconstitutional” did not bode well for a speedy resolution of the budding insurgency.35 Faced with mounting discontent, Powderly knew where to place the blame. Uriah Stephens, motivated by a religious attachment to the original AK, was mounting a challenge to his leadership by fomenting talk of schism among key players on the East Coast. GS Layton, emerging as the aggressive guard dog of the administration, suggested that Stephens was behaving “like a spoilt child” who felt badly about alterations in his “pet work.” Powderly agreed.36 As if reminding himself of the countless hours he had spent in the sanctuary of his own LA 222 reciting formulas constructed by Stephens and James L. Wright, the GMW exploded at the thought that a rebellion could arise from attachment to such “tomfoolery.” Parodying the language of the AK, he fumed: Bah. The old man in his dotage. We’ll get him a slice of the catacombs, one of the pyramids of Egypt, one of the Cyclops famous in mythology, the bones of Yephna Penoneah. Stir them all together with one of the oars that propelled Cleopatra’s barge, toast over a slow fire to slower music, and when done, erect them on the ruins of the tower of Babel, while Jim Wright introduces to the new assembly a spiritualistic medium. . . . But the real question is “Shall labor have all its rights?” That and not the tomfoolery of the past is what we must consider.37

In early January 1882, fundamentalists conducted a feeble assault on the GEB by sending official letters of protest from their locals. George Blair and Francis Barrow (LA 1563, silversmiths, New York City), William Horan and Theodore Cuno (LA 1562, mixed, Brooklyn), and George K. Lloyd (LA 1654, tinsmiths, New York City) were among those complaining. And for the first time, Powderly and Layton realized that fundamentalists such as Horan had joined forces with radicals such as Cuno, who was supposedly leading the administration effort to squelch dissent. “We believe that the attempt to change the fundimental [sic] work of the order is a crime against struggling humanity” and an “outrage upon our sacred rights,” bellowed George Blair and Francis Barrow. They had always deemed the Order democratic, but “we find we were mistaken as thirty four (34) men has [sic] undertaken to legislate for forty thousand (40,000) with-out ever consulting them.” Although there might appear to be surface merit in the latter argument, such protests sparked outbursts of laughter from GEB members who knew well that the GA was the highest authority, that the constitution did not provide for referendums, and that protesting to the GEB was futile because that

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body did not possess authority to tamper with laws adopted by the GA. How could those so knowledgeable about the “fundamental work” be so ignorant of the constitution? Moreover, with the exception of Powderly, all board members hailed from Pittsburgh. With seventy-two LAs and 4,429 members in DA 3 alone, Pittsburghers were fully satisfied with the modified rituals and could only scoff at the audacity and wrongheadedness of their weak New York brothers.38 The meaningless fringe movement that was fundamentalism was given a shot in the arm when Uriah Stephens died, becoming a martyr for the cause. On February 13, at the age of sixty, the founder of the Order suffered heart failure on his way to work at the garment shop he co-owned. He was buried three days later, surrounded by his brothers in the Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and Philadelphia Knights. Conspicuously absent were Powderly and Layton. No snub was intended, unless the snub was delivered by DA 1, which failed to notify Powderly before the funeral had taken place.39 Even as he was laid to rest, the canonization of Saint Uriah had begun. A sublime, spiritual force who graced this world with his presence to point the way toward salvation; a visionary who grasped the human condition at a profound level and gave birth to a movement capable of advancing it; or in more modern parlance, a disciple of “Christian brotherhood” who magically combined solidarity, ritual, and secrecy to produce a “powerful source of organizational stability and member loyalty”40—all these images were created in the aftermath of his death by fellow founders, New York fundamentalists and their new radical allies, and grand officers embarrassed by missing the funeral. From Powderly’s perspective in 1882, Stephens was perhaps undeserving of such reverence. True, he had erected an organization that survived the depression, no mean feat. But despite his gospel of solidarity, he had proselytized almost exclusively among the most privileged workers—highly skilled, white, Protestant, male. It was only when mining communities in Pennsylvania, desperately searching for an organization after the collapse of the WBA, found the Order useful, that it was rescued from insignificance and its doors opened to impressive numbers of Irish Catholics, both skilled and unskilled, and a smattering of African-Americans and women. Never enamored by or even fully aware of the ornate rituals, and positively choked by the oath, the mining communities placed their own leader at the helm, and he had fought tooth and nail to modify the organization to accommodate the needs of the majority of its members. Throughout the fight, Powderly had treated Stephens with the utmost respect, even placing him on the GEB when a vacancy occurred. When at last Powderly succeeded through legitimate means, Stephens immediately set about crippling his own creation by planning a schism. If anything, Powderly was being kind when he suggested the “old man” was “in his dotage.” Nevertheless, Powderly never uttered an unkind word about the man in public, and when the great man’s followers failed to invite him to the funeral, he rushed to make amends for his absence. When one disciple asked Powderly whether Stephens’s daughter could visit the sanctuary of LA 1, even though such a step

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was taboo under the sacrosanct AK, Powderly not only agreed but offered to initiate her personally. He and the other grand officers then lent their names to a long winded eulogy that dominated the April issue of the JUL: “He lived in the upper atmosphere, and labored that all might be elevated to his exalted position.” He even created a fund to erect a monument in Stephens’s honor.41 The only Knight to make a greater show of respect for Stephens was the Marxist George K. Lloyd. Transparently attempting to maintain the link between the Philadelphia founders and the New York fundamentalist-radical coalition that Stephens had initiated, Lloyd composed a poem for the JUL and submitted, in the same issue, a resolution of respect from his LA 1654.42 A handful of other locals submitted similar resolutions, but outside Philadelphia and New York the passing of Stephens did not occasion morbid thoughts about the Order’s future. Members even failed to donate sufficient funds to build the monument. But in those great urban centers, the kickers skillfully co-opted the memory of the founder and used it as a weapon against Powderly and his policies. Two months after Stephens’s death, Theodore Cuno detonated two propaganda “bombs” that escalated this bothersome quarrel into an organizational crisis of the highest magnitude. In April 1882, he granted an interview to the New York Herald. The self-proclaimed champion of secrecy and ritual liberally quoted from the AK as he rambled on about the aims of the Order, greatly exaggerating its size and strength. Then, with malicious intent and verbal dexterity, he sought to blacken Powderly’s name. Cuno seized upon Powderly’s August 1880 JUL essay in which he had mused that successful strikes against concentrated capital required “implements of war.” But whereas Powderly had stated emphatically that he would vote “against” such measures, Cuno left out that single word. Powderly’s name now appeared before the reading public of New York as the man who uttered “if I must strike I want to strike with something that will hurt . . . and, I for one, shall vote a rifle and Gatling gun.” Cuno never denied responsibility, and Powderly later contacted the Herald offices to make certain it was not a misprint.43 Such an egregious assault upon the GMW was enough to charge Cuno with “conduct unbecoming a Knight,” but Powderly’s reputation was the least of the damage. Several mainstream newspapers picked up the story and, in just the kind of publicity the expanding Order was hoping to avoid, blasted the Knights as an extremist organization. Worse still, the article attracted the attention of Congress through the stupidity of would-be supporters. Peter Cooper, the aging New York greenbacker whom Powderly had supported in 1876, wrote up a petition that was read in the House by Ira Haseltine of Missouri, who represented the currency wing of the NGLP. In their unfathomable ignorance, Cooper and Haseltine applauded the Knights’ decision to purchase Gatling guns. By so doing, members could “maintain their ‘inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”44 Staggered, Powderly turned to the scene of Cuno’s other April explosion.

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Signing as the Grand Statistician (he did not give his name), and acting without the authority of the GEB, Cuno issued a boycott against the Glen Cove Manufacturing Company, a Long Island firm that produced cornstarch, to several newspapers in the city. Cuno then asked Layton to publish the call in the JUL and promised to submit “sworn testimony” to back up his allegations. Layton complied, and thus the boycott received official sanction. Cuno’s offense, which did not become apparent for several months, was that he had ordered a boycott without any proof whatsoever to back up the allegations in his boycott call. By July, he admitted as much, telling Powderly that he based his action on the premise that “all capital was robbery” and that the company was “attacked merely to show that we could do it.” Although his rhetoric may sound inspirational to some, his action allowed Duryea to make a mockery of the Order by offering a reward to anyone who could substantiate the false charges, which of course was played up in the press.45 Had Cuno been operating as a lone saboteur, his local could have ousted him without fanfare, but Cuno was only the front man for a nest of radical hornets that operated as Brooklyn’s mixed LA 1562. Prior to the 1881 GA, the small local was comprised of mostly “Greenback-Socialists,” who heartily approved of their GMW and believed his letters to The Trades were “first class and right to the mark.”46 By April 1882, this innocuous, Powderly-loving LA had undergone a metamorphosis. With just forty-eight members, it remained quite small and its cast of characters almost unchanged. The only notable addition was P. J. McGuire, the guiding spirit of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and a New York native who had just returned from St. Louis to edit his union’s journal. His Marxist perspective, his contempt for the Defense Fund, and his desire for a benefit system and central strike fund—all of which he had demonstrated when in St. Louis—were transplanted to Brooklyn intact. He found in the emerging fundamentalist-radical connection an opportunity to damage the administration, and in Cuno he found a willing lieutenant. Philip Van Patten knew McGuire well from the Socialist Labor party, and he investigated the Cuno crisis in the summer of 1882. According to Van Patten, P. J. McGuire, whose “blood was at a temperature of 150 degrees in the shade,” had been the one to encourage Cuno to “fight it out, and fight every one who opposed the desperate course.”47 In an effort to get at the heart of the trouble, Powderly visited Brooklyn in June. Rather than answers, he found a host of enemies from both Philadelphia and New York emboldened by Cuno’s antics. MW William Horan oozed with hatred of the revised AK; Charles Mooney from Philadelphia was denouncing Powderly as a “damned rascal” who had sold out to the Democrats; cofounder James L. Wright had recently visited and pledged to move with “might and main” to make it hot for Powderly at the next GA; and “every man I met had a complaint to make.”48 The GEB discussed the Duryea situation on June 26 and delegated H. H. Bengough of DA 3 to conduct an official investigation. By this time, Powderly, Layton, and Rockwood had come to regard “CooCooNo” as a socialist “crank”

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whose only goal was the disruption of the Order, and after Powderly talked with him in Brooklyn, his impression was reinforced.49 The evidence against Cuno was incontrovertible. He had used his official capacity as statistician to take action against Duryea without the approval of the GEB and had admitted that the action was based on ideology rather than evidence. McPadden “did not hesitate one moment” before voting to suspend Cuno as statistician. Special investigator Bengough had no qualms either, encouraging Powderly to “get rid of all such cattle.”50 Although Powderly took some consolation in the removal of the “great malicious man”51 as statistician, his New York troubles had only begun. Even at this early stage, however, the Cuno debacle illuminated important tendencies in Powderly’s attitudes toward socialism. A lapsed member of the Socialist Labor party, the GMW thought he understood what socialism was. He had seen eye to eye with Van Patten and other Socialist Labor party members on the NGLP, trade unionism, and numerous other issues. He still did. Van Patten supported him throughout the Cuno affair. Outside of New York, few labor activists realized that socialism encompassed a vast array of often contradictory ideas and strategies. Powderly was no hayseed imbued with “small-town moralism,” as some historians suggest. He was well read, well traveled, and an experienced organizer who advanced what the vast majority of American workers believed to be the vanguard of labor thought. And as the Knights grew, the stridency of his language did as well. Even in the midst of the Cuno affair, he offered the following instructions to organizers: “Keep organizing until capital cannot lay its finger on a man who wears the shield of Knighthood. Capital will never give us what we are not able to take.”52 These were words that might well have come from the lips of any radical firebrand. Van Patten was not the only socialist to hold Powderly in high regard in the spring of 1882. Detroit’s leading radical, Joseph Labadie, found the GMW’s essays in the JUL enlightening, as had LA 1562 members before P. J. McGuire arrived on the scene. “You’re a brick,” Labadie beamed at the very time of the Cuno investigation. “Your letters in the last Journal have the ring of a good mind and a true heart. I wish we had more like you, boy.” Labadie also fully endorsed Powderly’s decision to decline the NGLP nomination for state office at that time, and he steadfastly supported the GMW until after the Haymarket affair of May 1886. Both Tom Barry and Robert Creed, two outspoken Cleveland socialists, also expressed their “unbounded confidence” in Powderly’s leadership even after he gave them a stern rebuke for their unfounded charges of corruption in the GS office.53 When it came to New York and its ideological squabbling between Lassalleans, Marxists, and anarchists, Powderly, like most homegrown socialists, was completely out of his depths. After catching an ear full of Cuno’s Marxian rhetoric, he could only conclude that “the man is insane in his antipathy to capital.”54 Unlike Cuno and his LA 1562 brothers, he had never studied Marx or Lassalle. He was conversant with the ideas of Ira Steward, William Sylvis,

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and Henry George, whereas P. J. McGuire reached maturity in the city where the ideas of European radicals first gained a foothold in America. Powderly’s animosity toward the Brooklyn radicals, however, did not stem from their espousal of one variety of socialism over another. As the head of the most fractured and contradictory labor movement that ever existed, he was necessarily the most tolerant of labor leaders. The national Order was a motley assortment of contending personalities and projects, each one representing a particular community’s conception of leadership and truth, and the only way keep them under the same roof was to abide by rules. Minority factions, which scoffed at the rules, no matter how righteous or well read their adherents were, undermined efforts of sincere Knights to create meaningful solidarity at the national level. In his zeal to uplift the masses, Cuno had arrogantly jeopardized an institution that thousands of working people believed offered their class a chance to unite on its own terms. Success for the Knights would not result when a rebellious minority imposed ideological consistency, but rather when the ideologically inconsistent members proved able to work together and search for common ground. When discussing the “socialist matter” with a New York Clan na Gael leader, Powderly concluded that “after all it is only a matter of men.” Cuno had lied, committed libel, and violated his obligations as a member and an officer. He was shunned not because his ideology placed him beyond the pale, but because he lacked manhood. “We can not afford,” Powderly wrote of Cuno on the day he sent the charges to the GEB, “to spoil the future of the Order by allowing such men as he is to represent it.” P. J. McGuire, as far as the Knights were concerned, came up short on this yardstick as well. When Cuno issued the Duryea boycott, McGuire asked Van Patten to visit the Glen Cove factory to determine the veracity of the charges. When Van Patten returned “convinced of the falsity of the charges,” McGuire discredited the investigation by declaring that Van Patten was “bought up” by Duryea, and through his slanders destroyed Van Patten’s reputation.55 Of all the problems attendant upon the removal of secrecy, even the Cuno affair could not match the intensity of debate regarding politics. In the midst of the Brooklyn troubles, Powderly dramatically abandoned third-party action by refusing to run for state office on the NGLP ticket. Because he would never again seriously contemplate independent political action, the decision was crucial to the future of the Order. Powderly, of course, was not fully conscious of the ultimate impact of the step he took. However, other leading Knights recognized the implications even if he did not, and for the first time since attaining power, Powderly faced hostility from many quarters which, for a moment, threatened to coalesce and oust him from power at the 1882 GA. Even as Powderly was reelected for a third term as mayor in January 1882, the NGLP manifestation in Scranton was laid to rest. After nominating Powderly, the local workers’ party officially merged with the Democrats for the campaign. Although Powderly stressed that his victory was the result of a fusion

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ticket, the city’s labor party boasted just nineteen members. The state NGLP was also in its death throes. Fewer than 20,000 Pennsylvanians had voted for the NGLP in 1881, and prospects for greater success in 1882 were minimal. Moreover, the state party was dominated by agrarian elements, with farmers and currency reformers in control of the platform, and it could no longer claim to be the voice of workingmen.56 Such was the situation when NGLP strategists prepared for their state convention in Harrisburg, set for May 18. State party chairman Frank Heath, rather than contemplate merger with the Democrats, saw hopeful prospects for rebirth. Industrial discontent in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and the soft coal districts, he believed, could be translated into votes. Above all, his hopes were buoyed by the Knight fever sweeping the state, and he thus sought to forge a highly visible link with the Order. Long before the Harrisburg convention, Heath and the other leaders had selected Tom Armstrong as their gubernatorial candidate. As a popular Pittsburgh Knight, he would carry a lot of weight in that critical district. As the editor of the National Labor Tribune, he provided an absolute essential—statewide publicity—which the party in its present state of weakness lacked. But Armstrong alone was not enough. As the principal success story of the Pennsylvania NGLP at the municipal level, Powderly’s support was needed. His true importance, however, lay in his office as GMW; his name on the ticket would encourage Quaker state workingmen to vote NGLP. At first Heath tried to buy him for a song, offering him the nomination for secretary of Internal Affairs. Powderly declined.57 Undaunted, Heath tried again. In even firmer language, Powderly refused again: “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for any office.” Without Powderly’s consent, Heath sent out fliers for the state party convention advertising him as the principal speaker. He was billed not in his capacity as mayor, but as Grand Master Workman. Heath then begged Powderly to come to Harrisburg for a private chat with himself, Armstrong, and other party leaders. Armstrong, too, urged Powderly’s attendance. Down came Powderly’s stamp: “no answer required.”58 Despite the clarity of Powderly’s position, the convention he had refused to attend placed him on the ticket—not for Internal Affairs—but for Tom Armstrong’s running mate as lieutenant governor. Even as the shocked GMW read about his nomination in the papers the following morning, Knights were writing him letters of congratulation. Heath, in six foolscap pages, encouraged the GMW to overcome his reluctance and join the bandwagon. Armstrong’s entreaty was a mere four pages, but it had the advantage of being more pathetic. Powderly’s refusal to serve as his running mate would be the death blow to his already minuscule chances of avoiding humiliation at the polls. “The die is cast,” he whimpered. “You must not leave me.”59 Powderly refused to take the bait. Among his reasons for declining the nomination were personal ambition—the remote possibility of a Democratic nod for

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Congress; expediency—a recognition that the NGLP was incapable of securing even a respectable showing at the polls; and principle—an unwillingness to allow the Order he represented to be dragooned into a political contest against his will and that of the GA. Heath and Armstrong wanted Powderly, of course, as a means to identify rising Knighthood with fading greenbackism. As we have seen, delegates to the 1880 GA had voted against such an identification, even though the majority were party supporters. Although all Knights were free to run for office, the situation was far more complicated for the GMW. As the personification of the Order, his public actions could never be divorced from his role as Grand Master. “They stick me on not as T.V. Powderly but as G.M.W.,” he complained to Richard Griffiths.60 Extracting himself from this predicament was difficult. The Pennsylvania press was watching closely. After making the name of the Order public, Cuno’s Herald article, and Haseltine’s speech in Congress, curiosity was natural. Once the press picked up the story, Powderly dared not decline until he heard the opinion of other Knights, and their encouragement to accept the nomination made him even more nervous. Significantly, Powderly asked for Dan McLaughlin’s input, recognizing this coal mine leader, former GEB member, and mayor of Braidwood, Illinois, as a kindred. McLaughlin fully comprehended Powderly’s dilemma. Not only were many greenbackers opposed to labor, but it would be “impossible to . . . seperate [sic] T.V. Powderly as a citizen . . . from T. V. Powderly, M.W.” The benefits that would accrue to labor should the ticket be elected, however, outweighed all other considerations. “I would say hold on to both office and nomination and let the fight go on.”61 McLaughlin’s advice revealed the essence of Powderly’s fix. The NGLP may have been dying, but for many Knights, it still embodied the promise of thirdparty action. If only the Order threw itself into the fray without reservation, some believed, a miraculous victory might be achieved that would rekindle the dream of the late 1870s. On the other hand, numerous others, including many Knights in northern anthracite, were equally convinced that too much attention to politics had damaged the Order. Whatever he decided, one portion of the membership was certain to find fault. “In the name of God . . . get me out of this infernal dilemma,” he cursed, as much to himself as to Richard Griffiths.62 In June, he posted a curt letter of declination to the party’s state committee, provided a more detailed explanation for that month’s JUL, and gave an extensive interview to the Philadelphia Press. In the JUL, he tried to disarm his opponents in a dramatic and self-sacrificing way. “I am holding my last office, I will never again be a candidate.” Although he stood a “good chance” of receiving the Democratic endorsement for Congress, “I must refuse.” He would continue to concentrate on his duties as GMW, where he could do more to sway public opinion in labor’s favor than he could as a candidate.63 In many ways, the declination was a masterstroke of statesmanship. Because any political decision would create dissent in the Order, he sagely declared that he was no longer a politician. Although he would continue to support Knights

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who ran for office, as GMW he stood above the sordidness of party politics. The moral high ground was costly, however. To counter charges that he had sold out to the Democrats, he had to jettison his dreams of Congress, a step that pained him deeply. That he was forced into this decision by the sleazy efforts of the party he had served so energeticaly made that decision all the more hurtful. To Heath, who had the temerity to charge the GMW with lack of commitment to labor, he thundered with justified indignation that were it not for the efforts of men such as himself the NGLP never would have gained a foothold in the labor movement.64 Despite the savvy declination, Tom Armstrong was about the make the situation worse. Bent on revenge for what he perceived as a stab in the back, Armstrong threatened to blast him in the National Labor Tribune as a man unwilling to fight for the political interests of working people, and the assault would not be called off until Powderly’s future as GMW was ruined. Nor did it help matters that the new MW of Pittsburgh’s DA 3, Alexander Rankin, was Armstrong’s disciple and a powerful force in the city that served as the Order’s headquarters. Rankin was soon sowing the seeds of discontent among Pittsburgh Knights, and the membership was deeply divided over the affair. Although the ever faithful Layton promised to call in favors among his allies to “carry on a straw fight” against Armstrong and Rankin, and Litchman wailed about Pittsburgh being “a sink of iniquity,” this was exactly the kind of infighting and particularism that the GMW had hoped to avoid.65 With trouble brewing in Pittsburgh, Powderly tested the reaction in Philadelphia. He wrote to Fred McFeely, a political activist in DA 1 and former M&BIU brother, asking for a private consultation. Silence from the city of the founders did not boost his spirits. Indeed, he soon learned firsthand that DA 1’s Charles Mooney was exploiting the declination in an effort to cement the ties between Philadelphia and New York kickers. Indeed, Mooney was touring New York area locals to spread the news that Powderly was a “damned rascal” who refused the nomination because he had “gone over body and breeches to the Democrats,” a charge that became a mainstay of LA 1562’s anti-Powderly campaign.66 With the leaders of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York apparently lining up against him, the GMW began to dread the upcoming September GA. His declination, it seemed, had not only created new enemies and provided ammunition to old ones, but it had also succeeded in bringing them together. The 1880 GA had established a clearly defined strike procedure designed to curb unauthorized walkouts and more ably assist authorized ones. First, the LA would attempt to arbitrate, then the DA, then a committee from that DA and the two nearest ones, and, finally, the GEB would look at the case and impose an assessment on the entire membership. The Rochester carriage makers (LA 1709) followed the procedure in early 1882, and the GEB dutifully issued a circular assessing each member fifteen cents. The problem in this case, and in dozens of others that followed it, was the inability of the grand officers to enforce the assessment. One month after its issuance, only $2,073 had been

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collected, forcing the GEB to issue another assessment of five cents per member, which also failed to cover the costs of the strike. Not surprisingly, when Rochester’s DA 44 was asked to pay an assessment for a Maryland strike several months later, they refused, claiming poverty. During the same Maryland strike, both DA 3 (Pittsburgh) and DA 9 (Allegheny county miners) aped DA 44 by issuing circulars to their own members instructing them to ignore the assessment. “Charity begins at home,” wrote John Flannery of DA 9 in his circular.67 Despite the weakness of this system, the grand officers nevertheless played an important role during strikes by providing financial and moral assistance, as well as arbitration services, to authorized walkouts. As swamped with work as the small band of officers were, strike assistance often took a back seat to the endless grind of routine bureaucratic tasks. When several crucial struggles were being fought at the same time, as was usually the case, one or more was bound to suffer from lack of attention. But given the limitations of his authority and the extraordinary demands upon his time, Powderly performed these tasks nobly. His fulminations against strikes at GAs and in the JUL notwithstanding, no other Knight in 1882, not Theodore Cuno, P. J. McGuire, or anyone else with a sophisticated understanding of the nature of class conflict, could have provided more effective assistance during the major struggle of that year, the Cumberland coal strike. The Cumberland coal strike was by far the largest and most important strike conducted by the Order up to that time. When operators in this Maryland region found themselves closed out of markets by cheaper coal from the Clearfield region of central Pennsylvania, they tried to recapture them by imposing outrageous terms on the miners, including a fifteen cent per ton wage reduction and iron-clad oaths. After sending a committee to talk to operators in Baltimore, DA 25, comprising the Cumberland region, struck on March 15. Layton immediately published a notice in the JUL offering moral support to the 3,800 miners in their battle against “capitalistic highwaymen who have thrown their bodies and money-chests across the path of progress and reform.”68 The Cumberland miners faced all but insurmountable odds. DA 25 was weakly organized. It had not followed the GA’s arbitration procedure and thus did not qualify for an assessment, and operators exhibited an especially bitter resolve. Equally problematic was the fact that soft coal diggers from across the country were scrutinizing the actions of the Order in this major contest. Unless the GEB could demonstrate a capacity to fight, Dan McLaughlin warned Powderly, great “harm to our ranks in many places” would result. The most vexing problem was the utter lack of organization in the Clearfield region. Although represented by DA 40, Knighthood in that area was virtually impotent. Unless the Clearfield miners were somehow able to build up their district and curtail production by striking in solidarity, the Cumberland men faced the prospect of a long and disastrous engagement.69 The depth of the problem was revealed soon after the start of the strike, when Cornelius Cotter, the RS of Clearfield’s DA 40, explained that only 260 of the

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5,000 miners in his district were Knights. He was not even aware that his district supplied coal to the same markets as Cumberland. “Are we Blacklegging our Brothers of DA 25? If so what are we to do?” Powderly’s answer has been torn from the letterbooks, but his meaning is obvious from Cotter’s reply. After thanking the GMW for his “excellent advice,” Cotter took the “pleasure to inform” him that the Clearfield miners had “agreed to make a demand for fifteen cents per ton for mining.” At the April GEB meeting, Powderly and the rest of the board, after listening to DA 25’s Robert Price, ordered Myles McPadden to Clearfield to organize the miners and “curtail the output of their mines,” which everyone understood to mean a strike. The GEB also dispatched Layton to Maryland in an effort to arbitrate, and if unsuccessful, to issue a circular appeal for the support of the strikers.70 Layton failed, and the appeal for DA 25 was issued. Immediately, DA 25 miners protested vigorously, claiming that the GEB had promised them an assessment, which was mandatory, rather than the voluntary appeal. “Oh! but they are mad,” Layton informed Powderly. But the GEB had agreed only to an appeal, and because DA 25 had not complied with the strike procedure, the GEB was under no obligation to grant even that. Already the membership at large was expected to contribute to the five-cent assessment for the Rochester carriage workers, plus numerous appeals for striking members, including the ax makers of Cleveland (LA 451) and Lock Haven, Pennsylvania (LA 1681). Requests for appeals arrived at headquarters almost on a daily basis. “How in the name of God can we sustain them all?” cried Powderly.71 The anxiety of Robert Price and his DA 25 comrades was understandable. Failure to abide by proper procedure meant little compared with the magnitude of the struggle. Having shut down the mines, they now faced their greatest test. Cumberland operators were importing large numbers of immigrants, with little knowledge of the strike situation or coal mining, and bringing them to the mines at George’s Creek under the protection of the state militia. Despite the significance of the strike, the appeal had netted just $2,299 for the month of May.72 Meanwhile, McPadden encountered nothing but frustration in Clearfield. He quickly discovered why it was in Clearfield that “one of Labor’s noblest sons, John Siney, was driven to a premature grave.” Over half the miners had previously been blacklisted and were extremely reluctant to join any labor society; local businessmen were hostile; he had been denounced in the local press; and a local priest repeatedly branded him a “loafer, fraud, and everything but a man.” Yet he never faltered in his assignment, realizing that the Cumberland miners would fail unless the Clearfield men were able to cut production. And if the Clearfield men voted to strike, McPadden wanted Powderly to issue a ten-cent assessment to sustain them. “If some means is not devised to help these men it will be a lasting disgrace on our Order.”73 Despite the fact that DA 40 was still weakly organized, on July 1, the Clearfield miners voted to strike in solidarity with their Cumberland brothers, and DA 25 and DA 40 formed a joint board to coordinate activities. The question

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of strike support became at once more crucial and more complex. Throwing technicalities to the wind, Powderly and the GEB on July 5 followed McPadden’s advice and issued an assessment of ten cents per member per week “until notice is sent to you that this battle is ended.” Recognizing that this step was not in keeping with official strike procedure, Powderly and the board argued that the assessment was made necessary because “all appeals for assistance have failed.”74 In his autobiography, Powderly claimed that he never ordered a strike as GMW.75 While true, he certainly played a major role in bringing one about in Clearfield by sending McPadden there to “curtail the output” of the mines. Now this stickler for legality consciously violated the strike rules of the Order by endorsing an assessment for the unauthorized strike in DA 25. Although his actions should dispel his image as an antistrike ideologue, they also revealed the weakness of his authority as GMW. Almost immediately, DAs 3 (Pittsburgh), 9 (Allegheny County, Pennsylvania miners), and 44 (Rochester), beset with strike troubles of their own, refused to pay the assessment, and in their wake many other subordinate bodies refused to pay. By no means opposed to strike action themselves, the leaders of these districts nevertheless denounced the assessment as illegal in circulars distributed to their LAs.76 The actions of DAs 3 and 9 were in part attempts to retaliate against Powderly for supposedly stabbing Tom Armstrong in the back, but at the same time, these districts reflected the jealousy with which DAs guarded against the assumption of power by grand officers. The failure of the assessment, combined with the recalcitrance of the operators, ultimately proved fatal. To make matters worse, McPadden was arrested twice in July under Pennsylvania’s stringent conspiracy laws. On the day of his first arrest, McPadden wrote Powderly. Although personally prepared to “push things to their logical conclusion,” he realized that the negative publicity and expense (his bail was set at $1,000) might be injurious to the Order and therefore requested Powderly’s advice. “Go on and organize,” urged the GMW. “Keep up your courage for as far as lays in my power will I stand by you.” Encouraged by Powderly’s support, which he “prized more than aught else,” McPadden pressed on.77 Lack of funds led to the collapse of the Clearfield strike by the end of July, and McPadden, arrested a second time, expressed a desire to quit the Knights. Convinced he could have succeeded with as little as $5,000, he now seethed with contempt for the district leaders who made this small sum impossible to collect. “By the eternal, I will not be under one cent’s worth of compliments to such men and such an organization,” he swore. Powderly persuaded him to fight the charges, promising the full backing of Order to defray his legal costs. As for the district leaders, he asked “Mac” not to hold the Order accountable for their “lack of spirit.” “God made them. Not the K. of L.” The disgusted organizer headed back to Pittsburgh for the GEB session that suspended Theodore Cuno. He then took charge of yet another miners’ strike, one conducted by DA

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9, no less. The Clearfield strike was officially called off at the end of July, although the Cumberland miners battled on in their now hopeless cause until September.78 The standard portraits of Powderly the antistrike zealot are not consistent with his actions during the 1882 coal strike or his close relationship with Myles McPadden. In 1882, these two men, each in their own way, aggressively challenged corporate interests and state law, and even circumvented the laws of the Order in the process. In this instance, both men were not only prepared to strike, but they fully appreciated the strike as a means to organize the unorganized, and once they had entered the fray, they fought until no chance of victory remained. They also regarded the strike as a weapon of last resort, weighed the potential benefits against the potential damage, and made certain that organization was as tight as possible before calling the men out. Powderly clearly differentiated these confrontations, which were calculated gambles that might build the Order, from the countless local confrontations, whatever their significance to the people involved in them, that were started in haste, antagonized capital, and provided minimal benefit to the Order. When dealing with strikes on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to pontificating on the subject before the GA, Powderly approached strikes much as would any trade union leader bereft of authority and adequate finances. For the Order as a whole, the failure of the Cumberland strike was disastrous. Not only were DAs 25 and 40 decimated, but coal diggers from across the country were given another object lesson in the weakness of the Knights as a fighting organization. Even the determination of the grand officers was insufficient to overcome the particularism and jurisdictional jealousies encapsulated in DA 9’s dictum that “charity begins at home.” Moreover, Powderly’s assessment, rather than stimulating cohesion among militant Knights, provided yet more ammunition for his critics in Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburgh. As he approached the September New York 1882 GA, Powderly, despite all his troubles, could take heart in the tremendous expansion of the Order. Five hundred thirteen new LAs had been organized in the past year, eighty-six had been reorganized, and only thirty had lapsed. Membership had more than doubled, from 19,422 to 42,517. The Order had planted locals in every state in the nation and even a few in Canada. With 83 delegates preparing to attend, the New York GA looked to be the grandest celebration of Knighthood in the history of the organization.79 The GMW had played a major role in the expansion of the Order, and most leading Knights were satisfied with Powderly’s performance. The radicals in Cuno’s Brooklyn local (LA 1562) did their best to manufacture discontent. They stood behind the suspended statistician and conducted a vicious anti-Powderly propaganda campaign designed to carry the insurgency beyond the confines of New York and Philadelphia to the Order at large. On August 12, the leaders of LA 1562, dubbing themselves the “committee of safety,” sent a circular, which came to be known as the “white circular,” to

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assemblies around the country. “The present G.M.W. is unfit to represent us,” it read. He “refused dispensation to the Order in N.Y. to use the old A.K.,” he “sought the Greenback nomination for Lieut. Gov. for Pa., then discarded it for a consideration from Democrats and Republicans”; and he “espouses the cause of capital against labor whenever he has an opportunity.” The proof for this last contention was the Duryea boycott, during which Powderly and “his tool” Layton “whitewashed” the crimes of the company. “The coward” Powderly suspended Cuno only after “learning of the death of his wife,” and yet “for her death Powderly is responsible.” LA 1562 also published a slightly less inflammatory tract on August 15, known as the “yellow circular,” signed by MW Michael Heaphy and RS John Caville.80 On the eve of the GA, Powderly’s father, the eighty-two-year-old immigrant from County Meath, Ireland, suffered a heart attack. The GMW rushed to Carbondale and, along with the extended family, they helplessly watched him die. Mourning the loss of his father even as he banged the gavel to open the session on September 5, Powderly received more bad news at the end of the second day, when he read his wife’s telegram informing him of the death of her brother Ed Dever. One of the most popular men in Carbondale and Powderly’s favorite among his much beloved in-laws, Ed Dever was also the owner of a tea and coffee shop in which Powderly had invested his life’s savings. Powderly vacated the GMW’s chair to Litchman, returned to Carbondale for the funeral, and did not return to New York until the last day’s session.81 With the cat away, the mice began to play. Copies of both the “yellow” and “white” circulars were found all over the convention site. For delegates who knew little about the Cuno affair, the circulars made for impressive reading. Layton later noted that during the first two days, there had been “considerable wavering among the delegates” as to the propriety of the GEB’s action regarding Cuno. Alexander Rankin also attracted attention in the early going by spreading rumors that Powderly was sabotaging Tom Armstrong’s gubernatorial bid. As soon as Powderly left for Carbondale, Robert Schilling, his old Industrial Brotherhood associate, contacted him about these rumors. Even as he mourned the loss of his father and brother-in-law, he quickly had to write a letter denying the lies, which he posted to Litchman in New York.82 The greatest threat to Powderly’s administration came from an attempted link between Rankin’s Pittsburgh forces and the New York radicals. Sensing an opportunity to oust Powderly, Rankin made “a little visit . . . to Cuno and Gang.” As Layton later informed Powderly, the New Yorkers appealed to Rankin’s “over ambitious mind,” and suggested to him the “close proximity of your chair to the seat of his pantaloons.” A deal was struck to support each other during elections and votes on secrecy, but after the correspondence concerning the Duryea boycott was read, the deal went sour. Once delegates understood the full extent of Cuno’s actions, any possibility of Powderly’s ouster was quashed. Indeed, when Litchman read Powderly’s letter denying the rumors of his op-

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position to Armstrong in secret session, it was greeted by “a most hearty round of applause.”83 From that point on the Powderly forces experienced little opposition. Delegates emphatically (fifty-eight to seven) voted to sustain the GEB in its suspension of Cuno “for exceeding the duties and privileges of his office.” Delegates then elected a committee of three, called the Special Investigating Committee, to investigate the charges of LA 1562 in the yellow and white circulars, to determine beyond doubt who exposed the AK in the New York Herald, and to make a final decision as to culpability in the Duryea matter.84 The total triumph of the Powderly forces could be seen in the elections. Both Powderly and Layton were elected without opposition. Griffiths was elected to the newly revived post of grand treasurer by humiliating James L. Wright fortythree to eleven. Prior to the GEB elections, delegates voted that no grand officer could serve on the board, demonstrating a desire to maintain the original purpose of the GEB as a watchdog agency. Five seats were thus available, but no one remotely connected with any insurgent group was elected. John McClelland of the telegraphers’ DA 45 became secretary of the new board, and David Healy, former editor of the Rochester Advocate and Mail, became its chairman. Robert Price of DA 25 (Maryland miners) and James Campbell of LA 300 (window glass workers), both with previous GEB experience, and Henry Traphagen, a shoemaker from Cincinnati’s new DA 48, rounded out the GEB.85 Powderly returned on the final day of the GA to find that his supporters had matters well in hand. The dark clouds that had been gathering in the months prior to this session had vanished. With his opposition in Pittsburgh, New York, and Philadelphia thoroughly subdued, GMW Powderly stoically refused a salary increase from $400 to $800 per year and banged the gavel to conclude the gathering.86 He could now anticipate a year of sustained growth without tumult. But then again, this was the Knights of Labor. Powderly’s refusal of a salary increase at the 1882 GA, consistent with the noble traditions of early labor leadership, typified his perceived need to appear scrupulous and idealistic when dealing with members of the Order. To seek personal gain, whether financial or political, would undermine the members’ unrealistic expectation that their GMW was the perfect Knight: selflessly devoted to the cause, temperate in habit, well informed, public spirited, and selfreliant. Although calculating Knights who played their games at the national level such as Cuno and Rankin may have been disgusted by such pretensions, they, too, lived up to similar expectations in their own districts. More importantly, such men realized that when they battled the GMW, the first step was to tarnish Powderly’s nearly spotless reputation among the rank and file. Rankin charged political scheming; Cuno tried a shotgun approach, blasting in all directions at once. Unfortunately, historical perception of Powderly stems more from these attempted character assassinations than the praise heaped upon him by the vast majority of Knights at all levels.

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Powderly cultivated this idealistic perception of the GMW. His constant references to his own impeccable moral habits, the exaggerations of his experiences as a tramp, the quotes from Shakespeare and poetry that peppered his GA speeches, even the whining about the oppressive burdens of his office, were all, like his dramatic rejection of a higher salary, ways in which he could appear before the rank and file as the shining example of committed, articulate, and experienced Knighthood. He wanted members to follow his lead, to read and think rather than squander money and time in saloons, to devote their energies to building a consensus in the LA halls and a reserve in local treasuries rather than show up irregularly to cause disruption and encourage ill-advised confrontations. At the same time, Powderly did not want members to idolize him. They needed to think and act for themselves. “I tell you Bob the workingmen must quit this hero worshipping,” he complained to Robert Schilling after Milwaukee Knights reacted in horror when a newspaper misquoted him. Powderly was less concerned by the misquote than the tendency of Knights to hang on his every word, as if he alone possessed the answers. “Because I am G.M.W. it does not follow that I am any better or wiser than any other member.” When the first “Powderly Assembly” was formed on May 28, 1882, at Omaha, Nebraska (LA 1946, mixed), he told his Omaha admirers that searching for heroes was no way to redress grievances: “I am living yet and before I die I may do something to merit the ill will of the Order.” Nor was he thrilled when an old Scranton workmate, P. J. O’Donnell, moved to Ottumwa, Iowa, and found that local Knights treated him as a celebrity because of his friendship with Powderly, even trying to initiate him immediately in violation of the rules. Rather than attend to business, Ottumwa Knights never tired of hearing personal stories about the great GMW, and O’Donnell was amazed to find that they “seem to know you as well as my self.”87 Such idolizing only increased as the Order expanded. By 1885, it was not uncommon for devoted members to name their children after him. Even a cooperative town in Alabama bore the name Powderly. But one could see this trend emerging in 1882, when the small organization first went public. In that year Adam Bax, a laborer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, requested information on starting an assembly. Upon receipt of Powderly’s unremarkable reply, Bax responded with an outpouring of enthusiasm that revealed the close connection between reverence for Powderly and the promise of the organization. The GMW’s missive “put me in a flutter,” and he would cherish it “as a sacred souvenir” to remind him that “it is still possible for men to believe in fellowship and harmony.”88 Such unrealistic expectations of Powderly the man impinged on his personal life. He spent his life under the microscope, but he remained an intensely private man. Although he often admitted that efficiency demanded that the offices of the GMW and the GS be placed under the same roof, he would never leave Scranton, in part because it was relatively isolated. Streams of reporters, tramp-

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ing workingmen looking for assistance, petition-bearing activists, LA and DA and strike committees, and the simply curious—all found it a bit more difficult to beat a path to his door. Although the Poconos would not provide a sufficient barrier during the Great Upheaval of 1885–1887, in 1882–1883 he still had enough privacy, but rarely enough time, to cultivate his small garden, examine his rock collection, read his history books, meet the boys at Walsh’s Barber Shop, and take care of his private affairs beyond the watchful gaze of the membership. His desire for privacy and his image as the selfless Knight collided dramatically after the New York GA. He found himself in a financial hole that bedeviled him for almost a year and made him regret having declined the salary increase. In May 1882, Powderly had become the silent partner of a new shop in Scranton—E. T. Dever and Company—owned and operated by his brother-in-law Ed Dever and his wife Maggie. The shop sold tea and coffee, not just to local customers, but to general stores and restaurants throughout the Scranton area. Such capitalist aspirations were not inconsistent with Knighthood. In Philadelphia alone, Uriah Stephens had been co-owner of a tailor shop, and Fred Turner purchased a grocery store in 1882. Although start-up costs were high, the shop showed signs of promise in its early days. Powderly thought very highly of Ed, and Maggie was “becoming quite a business woman.” He had already invested all his “spare capital” in the enterprise and planned to work in the store himself upon retirement.89 His enthusiasm vanished when Ed Dever died on September 6, leaving Powderly personally liable for the start-up costs that had yet to be paid. Without the time to take charge of the business himself, he soon was deluged with bills from wholesalers. To make matters worse, neither he nor Maggie Dever ever found Ed’s extensive list of those who had made purchases on credit. Even though he was faced for a time with the real possibility of bankruptcy, Powderly was extremely reluctant to inform Knight headquarters of his predicament. Such an admission would destroy his image as a self-reliant man of affairs. But he desperately needed money. His small salary had never been paid regularly, and he had accumulated unpaid expenses, some dating back to the 1881 GA. He began to bombard Layton with requests that his salary and expenses be paid promptly, but he offered no explanation. “Let us begin the New Year square,” he asked the GS less than a week after Ed Dever’s funeral. By his reckoning, the Order owed him $738 in back salary and expenses.90 Because neither Layton nor Powderly had ever kept accurate accounts of the GMW’s expenses, and because Layton’s expenditures were scrutinized by both the GA and GEB, the GS forwarded to Scranton just $132 between September and December. Powderly wrote checks to his most pressing creditors, but the bills kept coming in.91 He therefore had no choice but to secure a short-term loan of $550 from Scranton’s National Bank and explain his situation while in Pittsburgh in December, confiding in Layton and Rockwood. When he returned home he found that his horse and buggy, worth $350, had been stolen. “I am

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becoming quite a philosopher,” he mused, “and will be satisfied if they don’t steal the store itself.”92 Powderly tried without success to sell the store. He also began to keep an accurate accounting of his salary and expenses. As of April 1883, the Order owed him $407. Layton sent him $100 on April 8 but nothing more until June, despite the fact that the Order had over $2,000 in the bank and Powderly was set to embark on an organizing tour of the Midwest. “I need the money,” he huffed, “and it would at this time be worth more to me than six hundred in a month from now.” To appease his creditors, Powderly placed price tags on some of his possessions and opened the doors of his rented house to the citizens of Scranton. “Just think Gil of my selling three hundred dollars worth of my dearest friends—my books—for one hundred dollars in order to pay a bill,” he wrote Rockwood. He had not slept in three nights, but he intended to “pay every dollar we owe, honest and square if I live.”93 His personal crisis resolved itself when Henry Bould purchased the store and assumed the outstanding debts in July, but even that happy occasion was marred by one of Layton’s increasingly conspicuous acts of incompetence. Having failed for nearly a year to help the GMW out of his difficulties, he now printed, without authorization, the sad story of his book sale in the JUL. After battling to work himself out from under his debts without tarnishing the image of the GMW, he now became the object of pity at the very time help was no longer required. Ellen and Patrick Ford of the Irish World offered their aid, and so did numerous Knights, but Griffiths understood that although some might feel pity, others would use his plight to castigate him as a grasper or a failure unworthy of high office. “While every good and faithful member of the Order will feel sorry for you,” Griffiths explained, “still there will be some who will put such a construction on it that will be diametrically contrary to even the thoughts of him who penned it.”94 In addition to throwing light on some of the personal pressures Powderly faced in 1882–1883, the foregoing underscores the continuing salience of personality factors in the national Order. Whether a man could be trusted to keep a confidence, whether he would besmirch the character of a brother for some hidden purpose, whether he openly used the Order to seek pecuniary gain or other form of advancement—these and numerous other questions of loyalty and sincerity were of monumental importance for those who made and implemented policy. Those who failed as men were shunned, and ideology was secondary to manliness. Even when New York’s DA 49 revealed the full depths of its radicalism, Powderly stood ready to accept its leaders as brothers until they proved they were not worthy of brotherhood. Powderly spent much of the year 1883 attempting to resolve an ever increasing number of squabbles between districts, locals, and the grand officers. Chronic infighting, factionalism, intrigue, and disregard for authority were hallmarks of the Order from its very birth, and these problems grew along with the membership rolls. Given the ease with which locals and districts could be es-

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tablished, the ethnic and occupational diversity of its membership, and the wide array of opinion concerning the movement’s goals, the Order provided fertile soil for the sprouting of internal disputes. And given the constitutional ambiguity regarding the relative power of LAs, DAs, and the GA, the Knights’ contradictory legal framework all but ensured that these sprouts could not be weeded out quickly and efficiently. In Rochester, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, and San Francisco, plus numerous other areas where Knighthood had established itself, feuding destroyed harmony and jeopardized future growth. Brothers attacked each other in the local sanctuaries, locals battled districts that attempted to curb their autonomy, and districts were inclined to disregard the grand officers on matters of importance. Although Powderly spent much of his time reviewing case after case and rendering decisions based on his intimate knowledge of the constitution, truculent members routinely challenged his authority. Few knew the laws, but many LA and DA leaders were convinced that their fiefdoms were immune from the “external” interference of the GMW. “Now do you say . . . that we have no other choice but to blindly obey [your] mandates?” asked the MW of San Francisco’s DA 53 after Powderly rendered a simple decision denying the admission of a lawyer. “[Forty-seven] years old and never heard such a preposterous proposal in my life before.”95 Powderly’s poor record in settling internal disputes testified not to the weakness of the man or the unpopularity of his views but rather the weakness of his office. Short of assuming dictatorial powers, there was little he could do to enforce discipline and obedience. Infighting consumed so much of Powderly’s time that he tendered his resignation on January 5, 1883. “Dissensions between leading men in every D.A. is killing the Order,” he explained in a private letter to Layton. He sought a “nobler purpose” than “trying to heal up petty sores on men and creatures in the resemblance of men,” and yet “all my time is taken up in settling personal grievances between creatures who have not the manhood to extend their hands to each other and say ‘forgive me for the cause of humanity.’ ”96 GEB members unanimously voted to reject Powderly’s resignation and made ample provisions to lighten his load. The GMW was now responsible for “pure and simple requests for decisions upon points of law only.” The GEB would henceforth settle all disputes between “individuals and Locals attached to the G.A., between Local and District Assemblies, and all complaints of whatever nature against any of the officers of the Order.” Once relieved of this burden, Powderly made a final plea for all Knights to avoid needless acrimony. “There are wrongs to be righted, and we have no time to fritter away in such tomfoolery.” The incessant “croaking” had caused damage enough, and he wished the “jealous, begrudging disturbers” would take withdrawal cards because “they retard the movement more than the capitalist does.”97 Like so many plans adopted by the national officers, the GEB’s restructuring of responsibilities meant little in practice. Nearly all rivalries hinged on the proper interpretation of law, and hence Powderly’s intervention was necessary.

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Moreover, Powderly found that the GEB itself failed to discipline recalcitrant subordinate bodies in a disinterested manner. GEB members were ambitious men who represented powerful districts in their own right, and they were not afraid to run roughshod over GA laws and GMW decisions if they conflicted with their own interests. As we shall see, the GEB’s readiness to whitewash the crimes of New York’s DA 49 significantly contributed to the problem of factionalism. So time-consuming were factional disputes that Powderly refused to testify before the Senate Committee on Labor and Capital in 1883. He desperately wanted to attend, but he feared embarrassing himself and the entire Order if asked questions he could not answer. “You may suppose that I am thoroughly posted on affairs of the day and that I am a reading man,” he confessed to Ralph Beaumont, the grand worthy foreman. “And yet the Order cannot produce a more ignorant man.” He was “fast becoming mentally dwarfed” because he had no time to read newspapers or books. “I am posted on nothing except the petty grievances in the Order.”98 A thorough discussion of debilitating factionalism in 1883 alone would fill a separate volume. In Chicago, bickering between the “old guard” of DA 24 and militants representing the industrial neighborhoods on the South Side forced Powderly to play Job and divide the Order in that city by granting the latter their own district—DA 57.99 In Pittsburgh, Layton and McPadden led a frontal assault on Rankin’s outrageously dictatorial control of DA 3, which had led to staggering membership losses. McPadden became so disgusted with the grand officers’ inability to uphold the law that he quit the Order for two years.100 In Rochester, striking shoemakers (LA 1478) defied the findings of an arbitration board, even though its own district (DA 44) had comprised half the board. When Powderly visited Rochester and sided with the district, the local defied him as well.101 In San Francisco’s DA 53, the illegal admission of an anarchist lawyer, Burnette Haskell, and the audacity of his supporters when violating Powderly’s instructions, led to wholesale desertions among members and officers alike.102 But the most significant outbreak of factionalism in 1883 involved DA 49 of New York City. New York’s DA 49, chartered in July 1882, illustrated how aggressive radicalism often led to ruinous factionalism and therefore helps to account for Powderly’s disdain for extremism in the years that followed. In October, the Special Investigating Committee, elected at the 1882 GA, completed its report. As to the scurrilous “yellow” and “white” circulars, the three-man committee, after reexamining all witnesses, decided that Cuno’s LA 1562, “with the intent to injure and degrade” the GMW, had published the circulars, “well knowing that the statements and charges . . . were false.” As to the Duryea boycott, the committee found that LA 1562 had published “false and damaging charges” against the company “without authority or proper evidence.” In light of these findings, the committee asked that the charter of LA 1562 be revoked and that Cuno, Michael Heaphy, and John Caville be “expelled and forever debarred.” But the

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committee went further. William Horan, P. J. McGuire, and William Cowen, all of LA 1562, had instructed their brothers not to answer questions put to them by the special committee, and in numerous other ways had treated the committee “with contempt.” For these crimes, these three men were also to be “expelled.”103 The GA had specified that this report was to be “final” and “binding.” At long last, Powderly had clear-cut authority to move against one highly disruptive element and impose the authority of law. In the end, the six dissidents were acquitted, and LA 1562 retained its charter. Why? First, DA 49 offered sanctuary to the Brooklyn local. Flagrantly defying the committee’s verdicts, the new district elected William Horan RS and allowed other expelled members to participate in its proceedings. Thus, the conflict had escalated dramatically, and if Powderly hoped to carry out the law, he would now have to move against an entire district. Second, and far more importantly, the newly independent GEB, flexing its muscles for the first time, refused to endorse the findings of the committee or take action against DA 49 for its willful disregard of authority. Why would a new district offer sanctuary to expelled members? Although Powderly was unaware of it at this time, the guiding force behind DA 49 was Victor Drury. Born in France in 1825, Drury had played a role in the 1848 Paris uprising and embraced Marxism before emigrating to New York in 1867. By the early 1880s, he had adopted an eclectic brand of anarchism that owed as much to Charles Fourier as Michail Bakunin. Even though he remained in the background as a mere dues-paying member of mixed LA 2234, Drury steeped himself in the rituals of the Order, embraced its secrecy as a means to shield his activities, and through his charisma and intelligence made disciples out of several leading Knights in both New York and Brooklyn. In October 1882, at the Mulberry Street shop of ex-GEB member Harry Taylor, Drury and Horan met with other New York Knights—James Quinn, T. B. McGuire, John E. Myers, Hugh Carey, and John Morrison—and formed the “Home Club,” which would serve as a secretive, oath-bound cabal that controlled DA 49 until at least 1887. Even at this first meeting, members declared that the grand officers were corrupt and must be downed, and that the cause of LA 1562 must be supported to bring about a showdown with the current leadership.104 Although the extent of Home Club influence outside New York has been a matter of gross exaggeration, it is true that Drury and his comrades were intent on maintaining control of DA 49 by any means, spreading their influence to other cities, and wresting control of the national office. It is also true that Drury was prepared to associate himself with those, such as Horan, who did not accept his peculiar brand of anarchism, for the original Home Club members, plus hangers-on such as Cuno, embodied a wide ideological array, from Marxism to Lassalleanism to those who were simply enamored by secrecy and ritual for its own sake.105 And it is perhaps a measure of Drury’s intelligence that he recognized the impotence of the grand officers when faced with a recalcitrant district, since Home Club leaders showed no hesitation in associating themselves with Horan, Cuno, and other members of LA 1562.

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After visiting DA 49 in November, Powderly contemplated following Layton’s advice to “[t]ake the charter of 49 and be done with the whole business.” But the GEB intervened, and in February 1883 the board not only declared its intent to investigate DA 49 but to review yet again the case of LA 1562.106 Opponents of the Home Club were enraged that the GEB would set aside the decision of the GA committee, but Powderly was quite willing to allow the board to investigate. He got along well with leading board members John McClelland and David Healy, and he fully expected them to suspend the district because its crimes were so blatant. If the board took charge, he reasoned, the matter could be resolved before the next GA, and the grand officers would “demonstrate that we are not afraid of the light.”107 After five months of stalling, the GEB finally held hearings in July and issued its report on August 8. To the surprise and disgust of many, the GEB concluded that the Special Investigating Committee’s interviews were conducted “in an irregular manner,” and thus its recommendations were declared “null and void.” LA 1562, DA 49, and all six men who had been expelled were exonerated, and the original crimes of Cuno were swept under the carpet. Although deploring the “differences” and “complications” that resulted from the entire affair, the board claimed to be “anxious” to give the Order in New York “an opportunity to grow.”108 How are we to explain this whitewash? Layton and others believed that leading members of the board were conspiring to assume control of the national Order.109 But the board’s actions can be explained without reference to conspiracy. DA 49 was saved because the board was attempting to establish its authority relative to the grand officers, and its pursuit of power depended on the active cooperation of New York Knights. Friction between executive boards and officers was a common feature of many trade unions during the 1880s as labor organizations erected national structures.110 In the case of the Knights, this struggle for supremacy was played out during a nationwide telegraphers’ strike conducted in the summer of 1883. Indeed, the telegraphers’ strike was intended to transform the Knights from an organization headed by Powderly that talked about the need to combat monopoly into one run by the GEB that battled it with all the resources at its command. John McClelland was both secretary of the GEB and a leader of DA 45 (telegraphers). Without notifying Powderly, he and other DA 45 leaders ordered a strike on July 19, and the GEB immediately issued an appeal. Although the strike was national in scope, the key battle was fought against New York–based Western Union, controlled by that personification of monopoly, Jay Gould. DA 49’s assistance was thus critical, and the wayward district ably assisted McClelland and the telegraphers by raising funds and maintaining morale. It organized a baseball game between the telegraphers of Philadelphia and New York, for instance, which raised $1,200, and it pressed independent unions to lend their financial support. It was in the midst of these essential activities, on

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August 8, that McClelland penned the circular negating the findings of the Special Investigating Committee. Despite the assistance of DA 49, the obstinate refusal of Gould to negotiate led to an early break in the ranks of the strikers. On August 17, DA 45 officially ended the strike and ordered the operators back to work.111 The conduct of the telegraphers’ strike makes sense only if one recognizes the GEB’s quest for power. Why did board members fail to involve the GMW from the outset? Layton correctly identified the reason. The board and the telegraphers wanted to go it alone because they were “over confident of a brilliant, short, decisive victory, and no thanks to any body” except themselves and DA 49.112 Had they won, board members could march triumphantly down the aisles of the 1883 GA as the men who tackled Jay Gould and demonstrated the true potential of Knighthood. Why did McClelland delay making a decision on the fate of DA 49 for so long? Having decided in February to reopen the case, why did he wait until August to lift the expulsions? It should appear peculiar to even the most disinterested reader that, as soon as DA 49 members threw themselves wholeheartedly into the strike, McClelland and other board members somehow found time they previously did not have to conduct hearings which led to the dismissal of all charges. Despite the failure of the strike, the GEB had emerged as yet another force capable of blocking Powderly’s efforts to unite the disparate elements of Knighthood through democratically determined law. Apparently, even those as reckless as LA 1562 and DA 49 could not be weeded out. It seemed that no matter how Powderly tried to impose discipline, how careful he was to follow proper procedure, some faction was prepared to defy authority in pursuit of its own interests. The 1883 Cincinnati GA opened on Tuesday, September 4, at Red Man’s Hall on Sixth Street. There were 111 delegates in attendance, representing 773 LAs, thirty-nine DAs, and 51,914 members. Thus, overall growth was moderate compared with the previous year. Whereas approximately 22,500 new Knights had been initiated in the year prior to the 1882 New York GA, 9,397 were enrolled in the year following that GA.113 The slowing of growth was to be expected. Expansion in 1882 reflected the end of secrecy, when the Order attracted publicity for the first time. In 1883, the Order was not such a novelty. The greater difficulty was turnover. The lapsing of 221 LAs was a bad omen, and Powderly made note of it in his opening address: “They go almost as fast as they come; this is and has been the curse of labor societies for centuries.” Like the leaders of past labor societies, Powderly had difficulty pinpointing the cause. He blamed rampant factionalism that disheartened the rank and file, lost strikes, and newspaper stories that grossly exaggerated the membership, raising expectations and leading to quick disillusionment. Neither the GMW nor anyone else in 1883 considered adopting a compulsory sick and death benefit program, which several national trade unions were then implementing to maintain mem-

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bership loyalty. Indeed, the GEB even recommended abolishing the struggling voluntary benefit program to concentrate all energies “to secure and apply benefits to the living.”114 The keynote of the GA, as it had been for the entire year, was factionalism. Resolutions from the floor revealed that divisions were growing faster than the membership. Several, such as DA 17 (St. Louis) and DA 28 (Iowa), pressed for a compulsory cooperation scheme. Others, such as DA 25 (Maryland miners) and DA 41 (Baltimore), urged the creation of State Assemblies to promote political agendas, and still others, including DA 44 (Rochester) and DA 50 (Detroit), called for a powerful strike fund.115 The most divisive issue of all involved the question of whether the Order should support mixed or trade districts, with some resolutely “opposed to the formation of Trade Districts,” and others bent on re-creating the Order along the lines of a trade union federation.116 The GMW lacked the power to unify the contending voices. He could not convince an advocate of cooperation that the Order should establish a compulsory fund for strikes but not cooperatives; he could not persuade advocates of trade organization that mixed districts represented the true spirit of the Order; and he could not sway delegates enamored by rituals and secrecy that such things inhibited organizational growth. His role was to make certain that each faction received an opportunity to present its case in open forum, that all debates and voting adhered to parliamentary procedure and majority rule, and to convince the minority on any issue that the Order still represented the best vehicle for the advancement of its program. Even this limited role was complicated by his desire to win reelection. Unable to satisfy everyone, Powderly, ever the politician, maintained his leadership by throwing his support to the most powerful factions. Dominant factions had to be identified even before the GA opened, because Powderly’s address on the first day of the GA represented his only opportunity to present his views. Given that any bold initiative would be certain to alienate numerous delegates, it is not surprising that Powderly’s address at Cincinnati (and other GAs) was laden with platitudes and inoffensive advice on temperance and the need for education, as well as an uninspired call for land reform. His address also proved a good barometer for majority sentiment in the Order. Realizing that most delegates were not in favor of State Assemblies or compulsory cooperation, his opening address failed to touch on these matters. Sensing strong sentiment in favor of a central strike fund, Powderly threw his weight behind such a move: “If we are to support strikes . . . let us adopt some means of providing for those who are engaged in the battle.” And understanding that the advocates of mixed districts still held sway, he suggested that trade districts had a tendency to “discuss nothing but such matters as pertain to their trade.”117 As usual, Powderly’s forecast proved accurate. State Assemblies were reported on favorably, but no concrete action was taken other than the appointment of a committee to discuss the possible benefits and pitfalls. Delegates voted to

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keep the Cooperative Fund voluntary. They also moved to establish a new Assistance Fund. Each local was to forward the equivalent of five cents per member each month to its DA; the DA would deposit the money in a bank until demanded by the chairman and secretary of the GEB. Locals that failed to follow this law were subject to suspension, and “[n]o strike shall be declared or entered into by any Local or District Assembly without the sanction of the General Executive Board.” Regarding trade versus mixed districts, delegates decided that the GEB could charter trade districts “only when satisfied that the trade could not be effectively organized otherwise.”118 Divisions were also reflected in the election of officers at Cincinnati. The GWF, Ralph Beaumont, made a bid for Powderly’s job. Beaumont was the leading advocate of cooperation in the Order and Powderly had angered cooperators by throwing his weight behind the compulsory strike fund. Undoubtedly Home Clubbers voted for him out of hostility toward Powderly, but the incumbent’s growing fame and identification with the majority on every major issue allowed him to trounce his opponent seventy-seven to twenty-seven.119 The fact that twenty-seven delegates had voted against Powderly did not bode well for his favorites, and the GMW was deeply disappointed in the outcome of the GS election. Layton was nominated but refused to run, resulting in a twoman contest between Gilbert Rockwood and Fred Turner. Rockwood was Powderly’s choice, but he had no power base of his own and had served as assistant to two unpopular GSs (Litchman and Layton). His election promised a continuation of inefficiency: habitual delays in sending commissions and charters and other supplies, the annual failure to publish the Proceedings until the spring of the following year, and chronic staffing problems. Turner, on the other hand, represented the largest district in the Order (Philadelphia’s DA 1), had demonstrated his administrative abilities as secretary of that successful district since 1878, was closely connected to the venerated founding fathers of the Order, and exemplified the mixed district leader struggling to maintain control over his locals in the face of trade sentiment. Despite all of Turner’s advantages, he nosed out Powderly’s candidate by a mere two votes, fifty-three to fifty-one.120 Powderly certainly had no animosity toward Turner, and despite the universal cry of historians, Turner was never a member of the Home Club. No one ever suggested that he was a member until 1886, when wild accusations concerning the Club were oozing thick and fast from the mainstream press, but historians have been quick to cite these articles to tar Turner with that brush. The historical record proves otherwise. At the 1881 Detroit GA, Turner had voted with Powderly and the majority to abandon secrecy, even though this meant voting in direct opposition to secrecy lovers from New York and Philadelphia. At the 1882 GA, Turner again sided with Powderly and the majority, and against James L. Wright and DA 49’s James Quinn, on the key vote to sustain the GEB in its suspension of Theodore Cuno as grand statistician. Powderly, a savvy judge of men and motives, never once believed Turner was his enemy. As we shall see,

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Turner and Powderly quickly established a close and mutually supportive friendship, each man worked hard to reelect the other at succeeding GAs, and on every issue of significance, Turner and Powderly were in total agreement.121 Although not a Club member, Turner no doubt received the votes of DA 49’s five delegates. The GS-elect had learned his Knighthood directly from the founders. From the day of his initiation in 1873, he was intimately associated with both Uriah Stephens and James L. Wright, and he echoed their love of rituals and ceremonies. He also knew Victor Drury, because the guiding spirit of the Home Club consciously identified himself with the founders through his mastery of the early history of the Order. As his GA votes reveal, Turner exhibited independence of thought and felt no compunction about voting against Wright or Drury’s minions, even when it came to fundamental issues such as secrecy. If Drury and the Home Club expected Turner to serve their interests while GS, they would be sorely disappointed. Indeed, the only victories for the Home Club at Cincinnati were meaningless ones. William Horan’s unsuccessful attempt at the 1882 GA to strike the word “Grand” from all titles and replace it with the word “General” because the former was not “in harmony with our Democratic form of organization,” was adopted in 1883, and Harry Taylor, an original Club member, was elevated to the insignificant post of chief clerk in the GS office.122 Both John McClelland and James Campbell reclaimed their seats on the GEB. John Murray, a miner from Shawnee, Ohio, also grabbed a seat by appealing to the miners among the delegates. His revitalized DA 7 boasted 1,272 members and thirty LAs. Frank K. Foster, the Boston printer, benefited from the recent gains of his district as well. His DA 30 claimed twenty-two LAs and 1,295 members. As a leader of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, Foster also represented trade district sentiment in the Order. The last GEB slot was taken by Tom Barry, the Cleveland socialist who had recently organized several locals in Saginaw, Michigan.123 The actions taken at Cincinnati were a fitting end to a turbulent year. After the unmitigated disaster of the Defense Fund, the Order was about to try its luck on a new Assistance Fund. Advocates of cooperation left the GA thoroughly disgusted; their program was deemed unworthy of the same consideration as that of strike-minded members. Those favoring political action were likewise disheartened because State Assemblies had been put on the back burner, and the great divide between mixed and trade district boosters had not been overcome. The Cincinnati GA also discouraged Powderly. The Home Club had been exonerated, Rockwood had been dismissed, and a power-hungry McClelland remained the dominant force on the GEB. The very thought of the GS office in Philadelphia, run by an intimate of the founders and assisted by a known Home Club member, filled him with foreboding about the coming year. “The only thing to be done now,” he sighed, “is to put up with the inevitable and put no obstacle in the way of the successful running of the Order, for you well know that it will be uphill work for me at least.”124

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NOTES 1. TVP to John Cullinan, May 25, 1882, PP. 2. Layton to TVP, September 21, 1883, PP. 3. Biographical sketch in JUL, April 1883, written by Layton himself. 4. Based on dozens of letters between McPadden and TVP in late 1881 and 1882, PP. 5. JUL, March 15, April 15, May, and June 1882. 6. Rockwood to TVP, March 30; Hammer to TVP, May 7, 1882, PP. 7. Jonathan Garlock, “A Structural Analysis of the Knights of Labor: A Prolegomenon to the History of the Producing Classes,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1974, pp. 41–61. 8. Charles Mooney to TVP, May 12; Charles Wooden to TVP, May 18, 1882. For Powderly’s endorsement, see TVP to Richard Griffiths, May 26, 1882, PP. 9. John Page to TVP, January 11 and 19; TVP to Layton, January 23, 1882, PP. 10. Frank Barrow to TVP, April 16 and June 11; TVP to Barrow, April 17, 1882, PP. 11. Layton to TVP, no date, received September 23, 1881; McPadden to TVP, February 1, 1882; John Campbell to TVP, February 27 and March 12, 1882; TVP to John Campbell, March 1 and March 15, 1882; John Bullman to TVP, June 12, 1882; TVP to John Bullman, June 21, 1882, PP; JUL, July 1882; Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, p. 387. 12. McPadden to TVP, December 19, 1881 and January 6, 1882, PP; JUL, January 15, 1882. 13. TVP and Layton “To the Order Wherever Found,” February 18, 1882, PP. 14. Layton to TVP, March 14; Charles Robinson to TVP, April 25, 1882, PP. 15. Charles Robinson to TVP, May 14, 1882, PP. 16. See, among others, Layton to TVP, May 15 and 20, June 23; TVP to Layton, May 17 and 22; McPadden to TVP, May 7; Charles Robinson to TVP, May 14; TVP to Robinson, May 17; TVP to Henry Elinger, June 22, 1882, PP; on membership, see Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, p. 387. 17. Charles Robinson to TVP, April 25, 1882, PP. 18. TVP to William McElroy, May 13, 1882, PP. 19. TVP to Richard Trevellick, June 1, 1882, PP. 20. TVP to Layton, June 17; TVP to William Walls, April 19, 1882, PP. 21. John Power to TVP, April 4; TVP to Power, April 16; William Walls to TVP, April 19; John Hutson to TVP, April 10; TVP to Hutson, April 16; Rockwood to TVP, April 19, 1882, PP. 22. TVP to Thomas Granahan, April 19; A. T. Rice to TVP, April 24 and May 1; TVP to Rice, April 26, May 3, and May 12, 1882, PP. 23. TVP to Rockwood, April 27; see also TVP to Michael Moran, April 27, 1882, PP. 24. Wheeling Register, May 9, 1882; Pittsburgh Intelligencer, May 9, 1882; Wheeling News-Letter, May 14, 1882. 25. Ibid. 26. TVP to Cousin Emma, May 16, 1882, PP; “Decisions of the Grand Master Work-

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man,” in Proceedings, 1880 Pittsburgh GA, p. 257; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989), p. 160. 27. George Steel to TVP, May 8; TVP to Steel, May 11, 1882, PP. 28. Proceedings, 1881 Detroit GA, p. 327. 29. Stephens to TVP, October 22; TVP to Stephens, October 25, 1881, PP; for LA 1’s membership total, see Proceedings, 1881 Detroit GA, p. 334. 30. Stephens to William Horan, October 22, 1881, PP. 31. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 388–391. 32. Harry Taylor to TVP, September 14 and October 14; TVP to Taylor, October 13 and 19, 1881, PP. 33. Born and raised in Prussia, Cuno earned a college diploma in mechanical drawing and worked at some of the best-known locomotive shops in Europe before emigrating to the United States around 1870 to begin work at Grant’s Locomotive Works at Paterson, New Jersey. When he lost this job during the panic of 1873, Cuno, who was proficient in five languages, began writing for German newspapers. By 1881, he had landed a position on the Staats-Zeitung, a paper published in New York, for which he received $1,200 a year. Cuno was a committed socialist with ties to left wing groups in both Germany and America. See various letters from Cuno to TVP, especially those dated November 5, 1881 and April 29, 1882, PP. 34. Theodore Cuno to TVP, no date, but stamped received October 25; see also Cuno to TVP, November 1; TVP to Cuno, October 25, 1881, PP. 35. James Connolly to TVP, November 14; George K. Lloyd to TVP, November 15, 22, and 27; TVP to Lloyd, November 24, 1881, PP. 36. Layton to TVP, October 28; TVP to Layton, November 18, 1881, PP. 37. TVP to Richard Griffiths, November 24, 1881, PP. 38. George Blair and Francis Barrow, “Protest to the Executive Board of the General Assembly,” received January 9; Gilbert Rockwood to TVP, January 7; Robert Layton to TVP, January 9; TVP to Rockwood, January 16, 1882, PP. DA 3 membership figures taken from Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 378–379. 39. George E. McNeill, The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-Day (Boston, 1887), p. 613; Rockwood to TVP, February 16, 1882, PP. 40. Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1993), p. 74. 41. Charles Mooney to TVP, March 19; TVP to Mooney, March 21, 1882, PP; JUL, April 15 and May 1882. Mary Stephens was eventually given a job at Knights’ headquarters when it was transferred to Philadelphia after the 1883 GA. 42. JUL, March 15, 1882. 43. New York Herald, April 23, 1882; JUL, December 1882; Theodore Cuno to TVP, June 28; TVP to Cuno, June 30, 1882, PP. 44. JUL, December, 1882; “Speech of Hon. Ira S. Haseltine of Missouri, in the House of Representatives, Saturday, May 13, 1882,” copy in PP; TVP to Layton, May 12, 1882, PP. 45. JUL, December 1882; TVP to Theodore Cuno, July 3; TVP to George Blair, July 12; TVP to Layton, July 13, 1882, PP. 46. Matthew Maguire to TVP, August 31, October 6, November 21, 1880; January 19 and May 1, 1881; TVP to Maguire, October 8, 1880 and February 1, 1881; Cuno to TVP, February 23, 1881, PP.

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47. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, p. 390; Van Patten’s report is contained in the JUL, January 1883. 48. JUL, December 1882; TVP to Layton, June 21, 1882, PP. 49. JUL, December 1882; Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 331–332; TVP to H. H. Bengough, July 5; TVP to Rockwood, July 6; TVP to Brother Drew, July 6; TVP to George Blair, July 12; Rockwood to TVP, July 3; Layton to TVP, July 10, 1882, PP. 50. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, p. 332; McPadden to TVP, July 31; H. H. Bengough to TVP, August 8; Rockwood to TVP, July 21, 1882, PP. 51. TVP to Layton, July 26, 1882, PP. 52. Robert Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club: The Knights of Labor Joust among Themselves,” Labor History 34 (Winter 1993): 87; TVP to Dominic Hammer, May 11, 1882, PP. 53. Joseph Labadie to TVP, May 14 and July 2; TVP to Labadie, May 17; TVP to Layton, May 22; T. B. Barry to TVP, July 19; Robert Creed to TVP, July 19, 1882, PP. 54. TVP to George Blair, July 12, 1882, PP. 55. TVP to John Joyce, May 12; TVP to Adolph Madera, July 25; Madera to TVP, August 3; TVP to Layton, July 13, 1882, PP; JUL, January 1883. Van Patten received $15 for two day’s work and had agreed to undertake the assignment only after consulting John Swinton, New York’s leading labor journalist. 56. On Powderly’s reelection in 1882, see Samuel Walker, “Terence V. Powderly, ‘Labor Mayor’: Workingmen’s Politics in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1870–1884,” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1973, pp. 250–253; on the state NGLP at this time, see Edward James, “American Labor and Political Action, 1865–1896,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954, p. 175, note 36. 57. Frank S. Heath to TVP, April 10; TVP to Heath, April 16, 1882, PP. 58. Heath to TVP, April 22, May 4, May 11, May 12; TVP to Heath, April 28, May 11, 1882; Thomas Armstrong to TVP, May 15, 1882, PP. 59. Heath to TVP, May 20; Armstrong to TVP, May 22, 1882. See also the dozens of letters of congratulations, beginning with James Cain to TVP, May 19, 1882, PP. 60. TVP to Richard Griffiths, May 23, 1882; TVP to Layton, May 26, 1882; Philadelphia Times, May 23, 1882. See also TVP to Layton, May 19 and 22, 1882; TVP to Litchman, May 23, 1882; TVP to Dan McLaughlin, May 24, 1882, PP. 61. Dan McLaughlin to TVP, May 27; see also Layton to TVP, May 25, 1882, PP. 62. TVP to Richard Griffiths, May 23, 1882, PP. 63. TVP to Thomas Foster, Charles Duprey and George Grundy, June 2, 1882, PP; Philadelphia Press, June 11, 1882; JUL, June 1882. 64. Frank Heath to TVP, May 27 and June 5; TVP to Heath, June 2, 1882, PP. 65. J. H. Burtt to TVP, June 4 and June 9; Rockwood to TVP, June 14; Layton to TVP, June 16; Litchman to TVP, June 5, 1882, PP. 66. TVP to Fred McFeely, June 6; TVP to Layton, June 21, 1882, PP. 67. TVP and Layton “to the Order wherever found,” February 18, 1882; JUL, March 15 and April 15, 1882; McPadden to TVP, July 21, 1882; A. C. Rankin to “Officers and Brothers,” July 8, 1882; John Flannery “To the Members of D.A. 9,” July 13, 1882, PP. 68. P. A. Crowe and M. F. Flannigan, “To Officers and Members of Local Assemblies Wherever Found,” Frostburg, Maryland, June 9, 1883; Layton to TVP, May 13, 1882, PP; JUL, April 15, 1882. For an excellent overview of this strike that, unfortunately, thoroughly misconstrues Powderly’s efforts, see Katherine Harvey, “The Knights of Labor in the Maryland Coal Fields, 1878–1882,” Labor History 10 (1969): 555–583.

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69. Layton to TVP, May 13; TVP to Layton, May 17; Dan McLaughlin to TVP, May 22; Cornelius Cotter to TVP, March 20, 1882, PP. 70. Cornelius Cotter to TVP, March 20 and April 3; Rockwood to TVP, April 19; Layton to TVP, April 17, 1882, PP; JUL, April 15, 1882. 71. Layton to TVP, May 13; TVP to Layton, May 17; Cotter to TVP, May 20; TVP to Cotter, May 25, 1882, PP; JUL, June 1882. 72. JUL, June and July 1882. 73. Cotter to TVP, May 25; McPadden to TVP, June 24 and July 20, 1882, PP. 74. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 331–332. 75. Harry Carman, Henry David, and Paul Guthrie, eds., The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York, 1940), p. 105. 76. A. C. Rankin to “Officers and Brothers,” July 8, 1882; John Flannery “To the Members of D.A. 9,” July 13, 1882; for DA 44, see McPadden to TVP, July 21, 1882; J. M. Ross to TVP, April 5, 1883; A. C. Rankin to “Officers and Brothers,” March 17, 1883, PP. The response was so hostile that Layton felt compelled to defend it in the July issue of the JUL. 77. McPadden to TVP, July 14 and July 20; TVP to McPadden, July 17, 1882. Powderly anonymously contributed $20 out of his own pocket for McPadden’s legal defense. TVP to Layton, August 1, 1882, PP. 78. McPadden to TVP, July 17, 21, and 31, 1882; TVP to McPadden, July 25, 1882; Rockwood to TVP, July 21, 1882; Thomas Clark to TVP, July 29, 1882; P. A. Crowe and M. F. Flannigan “To Officers and Members of Local Assemblies Wherever Found,” Frostburg, Maryland, June 9, 1883, PP. 79. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 294–295, 374–375. 80. Committee of Safety to “Dear Brother,” August 12, 1882; Michael Heaphy and John Caville, “Shall Our Grand Officers Be Autocrats,” August 15, 1882, PP; for more on the “yellow” and “white” circulars, see Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, p. 342 and JUL, December 1882 and January 1883. 81. TVP to Layton, August 23; McPadden to TVP, August 29, telegram; Layton and Rockwood to TVP, August 30; Hannah Powderly to TVP, September 6, telegram; Litchman to TVP, September 20; TVP to Litchman, September 24; TVP to Thomas Powderly, October 14, 1882, PP. Joseph Labadie sent his condolences as soon as he heard the news. Labadie to TVP, September 18, 1882, PP. 82. JUL, January 1883; Layton to TVP, September 30; Robert Schilling to TVP, September 7; TVP “To whom it may concern,” September 7, 1882, PP. 83. Layton to TVP, September 30; Litchman to TVP, September 20, 1882, PP. 84. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 312, 314, 327–329, 342. Delegates elected Luke Malone, a carpenter from Rochester; Anthony Jaquette, a tailor from Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania; and Francis Coe, a shoemaker from Buffalo to the Special Investigating Committee, Ibid., p. 344. 85. Ibid., pp. 335–340, 369–370. 86. Ibid., pp. 368–369. 87. TVP to Robert Schilling, November 12; Thomas Conway to TVP, May 27; H. P. Horan, et al. to TVP, July 2; TVP to Layton, June 23; TVP to John Coggeshall, July 1; P. J. O’Donnell to TVP, February 17, 1882, PP. 88. Adam Bax to TVP, September 22 and October 3; TVP to Bax, September 28, 1882, PP. 89. TVP to Cousin Emma, May 16, 1882, PP.

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90. James Olwell to TVP, October 16; TVP to Olwell, October 12; TVP to Layton, September 15, 1882, PP. 91. TVP to Layton, December 14; TVP to James Olwell, November 14; Fitzpatrick and Cae to TVP, December 8; Russell Guild and Co. to TVP, December 8; Matthews Underhill and Co. to TVP, December 19; William C. Hendrickson and Co. to TVP, December 27, 1882, PP. 92. Rockwood to TVP, December 14; TVP to Rockwood, December 14, 1882, PP. 93. TVP to Litchman, April 6; “G.M.W. in Acct. with G.A.,” ca. April; TVP to Layton, June 7; TVP to Rockwood, July 7, 1883, PP. 94. JUL, July 1883; TVP to William Hendrickson and Co., July 30; Ellen Ford to TVP, August 4; Griffiths to TVP, July 30, 1883, PP. 95. Calvin Ewing to TVP, June 19, 1883, PP. 96. TVP to David Healy, January 5; TVP to Layton, January 22, 1883, PP. 97. McClelland to TVP, January 23, 1883, PP; JUL, February and March, 1883. 98. TVP to Ralph Beaumont, January 26, 1883, PP. 99. See Thomas Randall to TVP, September 28, October 16, and December 8; Griffiths to TVP, October 8 and 15; TVP to Griffiths, December 26; William Halley to TVP, October 25, November 22, TVP to Halley, November 13; TVP to Layton, December 19, 1882, PP; JUL, April 1883. 100. See McPadden to TVP, January 27, February 3, and August 3; Layton to TVP, April 11; Rockwood to TVP, May 9 and 23; Rankin to TVP, May 10 and June 6; TVP to Rankin, June 7; GEB “to the D.M.W. and Local Assemblies of D.A. 3,” July 1, 1883, PP. 101. TVP to David Healy, December 13, 1882, January 4 and 16, 1883; Healy to John Kelly, December 22, 1882; John Kelly to TVP, January 3, 10, and 18, 1883; various clippings from the Rochester Advocate and Mail in PP. 102. See especially John Payne, “to the M. W. Officers and Members of D.A. 53,” October 15, 1882; Payne to TVP, October 17, 1882; Peter Bell to TVP, August 30, 1883; J. N. Kussell to TVP, December 4, 1882; TVP to Kussell, December 18, 1882; G. H. McCallum to TVP, April 23 and May 6, 1883; TVP to McCallum, May 3, 1883; TVP to Calvin Ewing, July 9, 1883; Ewing to TVP, July 16, September 17, November 28, December 24, 1883; C. Moore to TVP, March 7, 1884; TVP to C. Moore, March 17, 1884, PP. 103. The report of the Special Investigating Committee is quoted in full in the JUL, December 1882. 104. Information on Drury is taken from Robert Weir, “ ‘Here’s to the Men Who Lose!’: The Hidden Career of Victor Drury,” Labor History 36 (Fall 1995): 530–556. On the first meeting of the Home Club, see New York World June 2, 1886. 105. Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club,” pp. 96–97; Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (New York, 1955), vol. 2, pp. 78–80; Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895 (New York, 1929), p. 111. 106. Layton to TVP, December 22, 1882; TVP to Layton, January 2 and February 12, 1883; John Jackson to TVP, February 5, 1883; James Ferguson to TVP, February 11, 1883; Van Pattern to TVP, February 12, 1883, PP. 107. John Sarsfield to TVP, March 7; Layton to TVP, March 7; TVP to Layton, February 28, 1883, PP. 108. Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, p. 451; Layton to TVP, May 11, June 18, and

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June 28; TVP to Rockwood, June 27, 1883; Executive Board of G.A. to R.D. Layton, August 8, 1883, PP. 109. Layton to TVP, March 20 and April 12; John Sarsfield to TVP, April 2; TVP to Layton, March 22, 1883, PP. 110. See the excellent discussion in Warren Van Tine, The Making of the Labor Bureaucrat: Union Leadership in the United States, 1870–1920 (Amherst, 1973), pp. 133–137. 111. John Campbell and Thomas Hughes to “The Officers and Members of D.A. 45,” December 27, 1882 and May 20, 1883; Vidkunn Ulriksson, The Telegraphers: Their Craft and Their Unions (Washington, D.C., 1953), pp 32–48; Edwin Gabler, The American Telegrapher: A Social History, 1860–1900 (New Brunswick, 1988); Ware, The Labor Movement, pp. 129–130; Judith Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing, and Change: The Knights of Labor in Philadelphia,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1985, pp. 123–124; TVP to Layton, August 5, 1883, PP. 112. TVP to Layton, August 5 and August 6; Layton to TVP, August 9, 1883, PP. 113. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 294–295, 374–375, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 418, 528. 114. Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 400–402, 459. 115. Ibid., pp. 437, 438, 440, 442, 464. 116. Ibid., pp. 432, 437, 439, 443, 445, 463, 467, 509. 117. Ibid., pp. 405, 410. 118. Ibid., 476, 499, 500, 502, 508, 509–510, 511–513, 516–517, 517–518. 119. Ibid., p. 478. 120. Ibid., pp. 479–480. 121. See Proceedings, 1881 Detroit GA, pp. 302, 305–306; 1882 New York GA, pp. 312, 314, 327–329, 342. For claims that Turner was a Home Club member, see Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club,” p. 97; Foner, vol. 2, p. 79; Ware, p. 290. 122. Proceedings, 1882 New York GA, pp. 319, 351; 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 441, 459, 494; TVP to Rockwood, September 19, 1883, PP. 123. Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 481–485. 124. TVP to H. H. Bengough, September 14, 1883, PP.

Chapter 4

A Multiplicity of Goals: September 1883– September 1885 “That which is of the utmost importance to one part of the Order is of secondary or no consequence to other places where the Order is equally as strong. How then can we legislate for all?” Powderly asked delegates at the September 1885 Hamilton, Ontario GA. “By allowing to each section of the country the fullest liberty, consistent with our laws, to regulate its own affairs.”1 In these few simple words, Powderly spoke volumes. He summarized his own immensely popular leadership strategy, which placed a premium on community control and local initiative, and he revealed why working people from every walk of life and every part of the country found the Order so inviting. At the same time, he exposed one reason why the Order was hamstrung by continuous internecine strife, why it failed to devise and implement coherent national policies on any matter of importance, and why it was eventually destroyed by single-minded and highly disciplined employers’ associations. Powderly’s decentralized and democratic approach won the adherence of a wide array of activists and paved the way for sustained organizational growth in these years. So, too, did his extensive speaking tours, during which the charismatic GMW preached the gospel of proletarian self-help across the South and other areas that had thus far shown little interest in Knighthood. Powderly also played a leading role in the Order’s two most significant strike victories in these years—those of the glass workers and the Wabash Railroad workers—the second of which inaugurated a veritable stampede into the organization. In part because of his efforts, membership more than doubled in the two years before

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the Wabash victory, climbing from 51,914 in July 1883 to 111,395 in July 1885,2 and making the Order the nation’s largest labor society even before the spectacular advances of the Great Upheaval. Although inherently attractive, decentralized democracy was an approach fraught with innumerable problems. Many members grew discouraged and many assemblies lapsed (339 in these two years) in part because the weak national leadership—a corollary of community control—was unable to address their concerns. How could Powderly demand that solvent assemblies, for instance, hand over their money to faraway assemblies that had neglected to make adequate provisions before striking? How could a weak GMW squelch disruptive elements that gained power in defiance of democratic procedure and hid behind the shield of district autonomy? Even the practice of democracy created dilemmas. How could he placate advocates of cooperation after the GA determined that strikes were to be supported by a compulsory tax and cooperatives only through voluntary contributions? How could he appease those who sought the Order’s endorsement of a third party when the majority opposed this course? How could he convince the majority of Southern Knights—white men prepared to leave the Order rather than initiate African-Americans—that solidarity demanded racial equality? That Powderly was unable to resolve these and other dilemmas is hardly surprising, but his attempts to do so highlighted the myriad and virtually insoluable obstacles to effective solidarity in all-inclusive organization dedicated to a multiplicity of goals. With the exception of Richard Griffiths, who was reelected general treasurer, all of Powderly’s close associates had been dismissed at Cincinnati. Rockwood, whom Powderly considered “one of the most valuable men that ever did service” in the Order, left Pittsburgh for Washington, D.C., landed a job as typesetter at the Government Printing Office, and remained active in the cause. He planned to make another bid for GS in 1884, but Fred Turner proved so efficient and loyal that even Rockwood admitted that Turner should remain in the office.3 After losing reelection as secretary of the Insurance Association amid more allegations of financial impropriety, Litchman licked his wounds, reentered the scene with vigor, climbed to a position of power in Boston’s DA 30, and by 1886 reclaimed the position of GS.4 True to form, Layton left havoc in his wake. He swore vengeance on every man who supposedly had wronged him during his two years as GS. The long list included John McClelland, James Campbell, Fred Turner, Tom Armstrong, Alexander Rankin, Harry Taylor and everyone else connected with the Home Club, and numerous others. “I will have a little pic nic all to myself with all these fellows,” he seethed. “It’s always my turn next.” Before departing for Sewickley, Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, where he found work as an insurance agent, Layton attempted to sabotage the new GS. According to Rockwood, before Turner arrived in Pittsburgh to oversee the move of equipment, supplies, and records to Philadelphia, Layton “asked the clerks as a personal favor, not to give any information or assistance to Turner, and announced his determination

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to leave matters in as bad a shape as possible.” Powderly was disgusted by Layton’s “policy of obstruction.” Even if successful in “throwing everything into confusion,” it would merely hurt the Order as a whole.5 None of Layton’s antics impeded Turner to any great extent. The portly, redheaded, thirty-seven-year-old, English-born GS went about setting up his office with the cool deliberation and efficiency that would mark his three years in that post. Notoriously gruff by nature, Turner also possessed an abundance of wit, but unlike Layton he was not given to petty quarrels and could turn on the charm when necessary. He convinced three of the clerks in Layton’s office to make the move to Philadelphia, and within three weeks of his election, he had rented a house at 202 Spruce Street for $42.50 a month that served as Knights’ headquarters until December 1885. The clerks worked on the bottom floor, Turner and Taylor kept their offices on the second, and Taylor rented the top floor as his living quarters.6 Although initial contact between Powderly and Turner was restrained, the two men knew each other well and each quickly extended the hand of friendship. Powderly even endeavored to find common ground with the chief clerk, Home Clubber Harry Taylor. “I had tea with Taylor,” he informed Rockwood after visiting the new headquarters in late October. “What do you think of that?”7 Of great significance in forging a solid professional partnership was Turner’s success in publishing the Proceedings by early November, a full four months faster than any previous effort. “Who can crow now?” the exuberant GS exclaimed. A grateful Powderly could now fulfill his own responsibilities as lawgiver by citing all GA legislation. The relentless strain of dodging legal questions that had been his lot for the past four years was at an end. Turner also produced an attractive new JUL, which both Powderly and Rockwood admired, and he published both the Proceedings and JUL at less expense than Layton. Powderly understood that, for the first time, the affairs of the GS office were being handled in a truly professional way that would lighten his load and redound to the benefit of the entire Order. For his part, Turner had rid himself of the anxiety that he could perform this work better than his predecessors, which significantly strengthened his chances of reelection.8 By November, “Dear Sir and Brother” became “Terry” and “Fred,” and the coarse jokes and complaints about workloads—the hallmarks of bonding between leading Knights—peppered their correspondence. By early 1884, the two men and their wives were fast friends. Turner asked Powderly to join him in a money-making venture to sell pictures of the late Uriah Stephens, and Powderly entrusted Turner with authority to change passwords at his pleasure. When Turner and General Statistician Francis Egan locked horns over their respective responsibilities, a dispute that threatened to result in an open rupture between the two men, Powderly at once intervened on Turner’s behalf. And after Turner and his wife spent New Years’ Day celebrating with the Powderlys, “my dear Fred” and “my dear Terry” had cemented a personal friendship and professional alliance that would guide the Order for years.9

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Powderly and Turner, however, did not control the Order in the year following the Cincinnati GA. The GEB did. After establishing their authority by blocking Powderly’s attempt to suspend DA 49, McClelland and James Campbell retained control of the board at Cincinnati and significantly expanded its powers. The GEB, not Powderly or Turner, administered the new Assistance Fund, controlled all monies in the coffers, handled most cases of jurisdictional friction between subordinate bodies, and even gobbled up the authority of the Cooperative Board. Powderly knew well that he was now the servant of a powerful board. “I will be expected to toe the mark promptly,” he explained to Layton. For the first time since assuming office, he found himself a functionary rather than a policy maker. The one clear role left to him was that of supreme judge with power to interpret to the constitution. “I am, as far as the duty that I perform is concerned,” Powderly confessed, “a judge to decide cases nothing more.”10 Even in this area, GEB members stood ready to overturn or ignore GMW decisions when they conflicted with their own priorities. Powderly was naturally ambivalent about the GEB’s new authority. On one hand, he regretted the slipping away of his personal power. He often questioned decisions made by GEB members in his private missives, suggesting that his years as GMW gave him an insight into the rank and file that GEB members lacked, and that their inexperience promised ruin.11 On the other hand, he understood the benefits derived from an activist board. Having spent the greater part of 1883 attending to jurisdictional squabbles, he was only too happy to refer many such matters to the GEB, which saved him endless hours, headaches, and hostility from disappointed members. After McClelland resolved a thorny dispute between DA 49 and the car drivers of LA 2878, for instance, Powderly penned him a quick note: “Bless you my son for attending to L.A. 2878.” Indeed, McClelland became so deeply involved in DA 49’s endless jurisdictional battles that he earned for himself the enmity of both the Home Club and its growing number of opponents in New York. Powderly also shielded himself from the anger of those opposed to the new Assistance Fund: “The power to levy an assessment is vested in the Ex. Bd. and the G.M.W. has no voice. I don’t think he has even the right of protest.”12 As we shall see, when charges were brought against the president of the Cooperative Board, a very popular man, Powderly happily handed this hot potato to the board. Above all, Powderly recognized that the continued growth of the Order meant that two-man rule was no longer a possibility. There were simply too many tasks for Powderly and Turner to handle on their own. Even before Cincinnati, he realized that “a stalwart, level headed Executive Board” was essential, “for the next corps of G.A. officers will have their hands full and running over.” How true this prediction was. In the year following the Cincinnati GA, membership grew 37 percent, from 51,914 to 71,326. The number of functioning DAs increased by ten (39 to 49), and the number of functioning LAs increased by 489 (773 to 1,262). More members and more subordinate bodies meant more strikes and lockouts, more complaints, more paperwork, and more jurisdictional

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tension. The new Assistance Fund, which stipulated that no strike be called without GEB sanction, added mightily to the workload. So, too, did the decision to purchase the Cannelburg mine, which was owned and operated by the national Order. Thus, although Powderly successfully maneuvered to recover his lost power at the 1884 Philadelphia GA, he nevertheless requested a GEB that would “remain in constant session.”13 Also at the 1884 GA, Powderly declared that his relations with McClelland’s board had “been of the most agreeable character.” A strange pronouncement perhaps, given that two key members of the board (McClelland and Campbell) had contemplated toppling him at the Cincinnati GA, and that the new chairman, Frank K. Foster, was also an officer of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions. Powderly respected both Tom Barry, the Cleveland socialist who spent much of the year in Michigan, and John Murray, the Shawnee, Ohio, miner who was appointed superintendent of the Cannelburg mine, but the newly established power of the GEB was largely wielded by McClelland. As the only board member able to devote his entire time to the Order’s affairs (he received a salary of $1,200), he alone understood the complexities of each case, and other members relied on him for information and opinions. Board members later explained their predicament: “Located at great distances apart, and following, as a rule, some trade or calling, they have not been able to meet often enough, nor have they been able to give the brain force and study necessary to fit them for the work required of them.”14 Thus, although the board was composed of five very different men with often conflicting views, in most cases they bowed to the will of McClelland. Even though the friction between them in 1883 prevented McClelland and Powderly from establishing a close friendship, they soon came to see eye to eye on most issues, in particular strike action and, ironically, the Home Club. Although McClelland rejected Powderly’s plea to leave Hoboken and move to Philadelphia, where he could work out of Turner’s office and keep clear of New York imbroglios, the GEB secretary did come to respect Powderly as a person and a leader. He often invited the GMW to stay with him and his wife at their New Jersey home, and even when his increasing number of opponents combined to down him at the 1884 GA, McClelland, by then a reporter for the Associated Press, continued to seek Powderly’s advice on labor matters.15 With the GEB in command of policy implementation and an efficient GS taking control of administrative functions, Powderly spent much of the year reinventing the office of GMW. He expanded his duties as touring orator and organizer, pitching Knighthood to unorganized areas and rekindling faith where the Order was fading. He also became more active as propagandist, writing newspaper and journal articles for mainstream publications in an effort to win over public opinion. Equally important, he encouraged members to take an active interest in congressional legislation, laying the groundwork for the Order’s lobbying efforts in the years that followed. He also focused on his own career. He made an unsuccessful bid for a fourth term as Scranton’s mayor, and he

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spent much of the summer of 1884 in a quest to become the first chief of the new federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Order’s first concerted effort as a national lobby flowed directly from its greatest strike success of 1883–1884. In late summer 1883, the window glass workers (LA 300) embarked on a five-month war against wage reductions, an unusual war in the sense that both sides were extremely well organized. LA 300 not only represented the vast majority of the 2,000 or so skilled workers in the Pittsburgh-based industry, but it effectively limited production and maintained firm control over the apprenticeship program. Powderly argued that LA 300 “approached nearer to perfection than any other association of workingmen in America.” When the Window Glass Manufacturers’ Association sought to outflank LA 300 by establishing nonunion factories in New Jersey and Ohio, LA 300 led a successful strike in late 1882 that standardized wages and set the stage for effective national collective bargaining.16 During that strike, manufacturers had introduced a new tactic—the importation of Belgian glass workers bound to long-term contracts at pay far less than the standardized rate. LA 300 organized some of the Belgians, but manufacturers countered by securing injunctions that denied the union the right to talk to the recent arrivals. In consultation with a constitutional attorney, glass workers drew up a bill prohibiting the importation of contract labor. At Cincinnati, James Campbell had urged the GA not only to endorse the bill, but to circulate a petition to the Order at large on its behalf. Delegates were in a receptive mood. The evil of contract labor was standard practice in numerous industries, including coke making, soft coal mining, and railroad construction, and it had received a great deal of attention from Henry Blair’s 1883 Senate hearings. Armed with the support of the entire Order, LA 300 then induced Thomas Ferrell, a New Jersey Knight and member of Congress, to introduce its bill in the House. Martin Foran, a pro-Knight Congressman from Cleveland, introduced a similar measure that eventually took precedence.17 Even before these bills were discussed in the House, the Manufacturers’ Association launched a ferocious assault against LA 300 by deciding to slash wages beginning September 1, 1883, when furnaces were slated to reopen after the usual summer shutdown. As expected, LA 300 rejected the cuts and embarked on another confrontation. The question of whether this was a strike or a lockout may seem moot, but the laws governing the new Assistance Fund stated that no monies would be expended on strikes before January 1884, whereas lockouts “solely on account of being Knights” before that date were automatically supported whenever they involved assemblies over six months old. James Campbell convinced fellow board members to define the struggle as a lockout and issue a twenty-five cent per member assessment.18 “What a crying shame, to take money on so false an issue,” bellowed ex-GS Layton. “Why every K. of L. and every body else . . . knows that the trouble of 300 is not a Lockout, but simply a Strike!” Most Knights agreed. Several hundred assemblies simply ignored the assessment, believing the GEB had violated

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both the letter and spirit of the new law. Many had seen their own appeals for GEB assistance rejected in the past because their struggles had been deemed unlawful. DA 28 (Iowa) even sent out a circular to its constituent locals urging them not to contribute. Full compliance with the assessment would have yielded well over $12,500, but opposition was so widespread that as late as November 19 only $2,500 had been collected.19 Powderly himself was angry. He privately objected to the board’s action because its refusal to uphold the law created such a groundswell of protest that it promised to kill the effectiveness of the Assistance Fund even before it had a fair trial. At the same time, he condemned those who refused to aid brothers engaged in a just war against capital. “L.A. 300 is now engaged in the battle and it would look like cowardice to desert them now,” he scolded the MW of DA 28. “I am for strengthening their [the glass workers’] hands by every available means.” True to his word, he immediately responded to every request from LA 300. He granted it a special dispensation to organize workers as young as sixteen (membership was reserved for those at least eighteen); he granted another dispensation allowing it to ignore rules calling for the automatic rejection of those receiving at least three blackballs during votes on their candidacy; and he overrode, at the request of Campbell, one of LA 300’s bylaws preventing members from forming cooperatives.20 Powderly also offered sage advice to the strikers. Although painfully aware of widespread opposition, he counseled strikers to ignore “false rumors and newspaper talk” claiming that the Knights were divided over the strike, realizing that if they understood the truth they might grow disheartened. He pleaded with them to “remain at home, keep off the streets, and avoid gathering in knots on street corners” so that company spies would be kept in the dark, and he asked them to “watch with a jealous eye every man who frequents saloons and have him sign the pledge until the strike ends.”21 LA 300’s wage committee met with manufacturers’ representatives on November 15 and again on December 18 without result. The strike was costing LA 300 $5,500 a week, and manufacturers were supplying their markets with imported European glass. But the strikers maintained their resolve, and their leaders believed that if they could hold out until the end of January, when the supply of European glass would be exhausted, victory was certain. The crucial question was funding. Both Powderly and Turner used the JUL to plead with members to abide by the assessment, and Powderly visited Patrick Ford at the New York offices of the Irish World and convinced him to publish an appeal. Due in part to his efforts, the total contribution of the Knights amounted to $8,217, sufficient to sustain the glass workers long enough to secure victory. By the end of January, Powderly received the good news from Turner: “L A 300. One top difficulty settled.”22 Powderly had played his part in this victory as propagandist, fund-raiser, and judge. Immediately afterward, he added his efforts as lobbyist for the Foran bill to outlaw imported contract labor. Armed with 35,000 signatures from Knights

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who had signed the petition sanctioned by the Cincinnati GA, he headed to Washington. Along with Turner, the five members of the GEB, and six members of LA 300, Powderly testified on February 1, 1884, before the House Committee on Labor. Not only did the Knights succeed in convincing the committee to report favorably on the bill, but Powderly was so impressed with the respect the Order received at the hands of Congress that he quickly turned his attention to the great potential of the Order as a lobbying group.23 A wide variety of motives, some personal and some of nobler origin, propelled Powderly toward congressional lobbying in early 1884. Foremost among his private concerns was his own political future. The Scranton Democratic convention was slated for January 29, just one week after his thirty-fifth birthday. In return for Democratic boss Frank Beamish’s support in 1882, Powderly had promised to step aside after his third term as mayor. But when the time came he tried to wiggle out of his pledge. “If it is the wish of the people that I should receive the nomination, I will accept it,” he told local journalists, and he maneuvered behind the scenes to secure endorsements, but it was all in vain. “The machine juggernaut with Beamish on top, was run over Powderly in the most ruthless manner,” concluded the scribe covering the Democratic convention, and on April 7, the ex-mayor notified Turner that “I am just plain Terry.”24 Terry still harbored dreams of Congress, however, and lobbying provided a means to establish alliances with leading pro-labor Democrats, including Foran, Pittsburgh Congressman and House Labor Committee Chair James H. Hopkins, and New Hampshire Senator Henry Blair, who might assist him in any future political campaign.25 More important, Powderly pursued lobbying as a means to placate an ardent minority faction—those who hoped to throw the full weight of the Order behind a new farmer-labor party. Although the Order’s romance with the decadent NGLP had given rise to disillusionment and dissension in 1882, not all Knights were prepared to forgo close alliances with third-party efforts. Litchman, Rockwood, Henry Coffeen (a Danville, Illinois, teacher elected GWF in 1883), Richard Trevellick, Joseph Buchanan, and Robert Schilling were among the more familiar Knights who called for an official endorsement of Ben Butler’s 1884 presidential campaign. After serving one term as Greenback-Democrat governor of Massachusetts, Butler received the nomination of the Anti-Monopoly party, set up in Chicago on July 4, 1883. Although several leading Knights served as party officers, by and large the choice of Butler represented “a bid for labor support by a predominantly agrarian party,” and labor issues were conspicuously absent from its platform.26 Majorities at the 1883 and 1884 GAs refused to provide Butler’s campaign official Knight backing, but, predictably, his supporters pressured Powderly to do just that. When Powderly refused, several Anti-Monopoly papers simply published stories of his support for Butler anyway. Turner was also hounded by Butler enthusiasts; he consistently declined to utter a word in their presence, realizing that his message would be twisted. “Probably I look foolish but I’m

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not such a damnphool [sic] as I look,” the GS barked. Although Powderly had also kept silent, he had to pacify angry Knights who were trying to work within the established parties to elect tried and true labor men. Powderly’s supposed endorsement of Anti-Monopoly’s “longhaired reformers” and “farmer cranks,” they complained, was undermining their efforts. Powderly privately vowed to vote for Butler, but he knew well that he would lose badly, and he was not about to override the will of the GA on so divisive an issue.27 By June, dissent was rife enough for Powderly to issue a secret circular. “Our Order,” he began, “is composed of men of all shades of political faith; no matter how much we desire to make all members think alike, it cannot be done. That we have Republicans, Greenbackers, Anti-Monopolists and Democrats as members must be admitted.” Only adherence to democratically agreed upon laws could keep them under the same roof. “The laws of our Order set forth the manner in which political action may be taken, and any other method is in violation of the law.” While demanding that third-party advocates uphold the will of the majority, he privately encouraged them think about lobbying as an alternative to yet another doomed effort at the polls. “What I want is ‘Results’ and at present am busy doing what I can with the present Congress,” he wrote, “and I cannot join the hundred and one new moves started every day.”28 Whether he appeased any ardent third-party champions, the pasting that Butler received at the polls (he received just 175,000 votes nationwide) contrasted sharply with the Order’s promise as a pressure group. On March 14, Powderly kicked off this effort with a circular requesting all Knights to write postcards on behalf of pending labor legislation on Capitol Hill, including the contract labor bill, a proposal for a federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a revision of the federal eight-hour law. “If the people, the toiling, hard working people, would take as much interest in looking after the congressman as they do in looking after the candidate, there would be more work done for humanity and less for the devil than there is being done in Washington.”29 Powderly then applied pressure on George Edmunds, the president of the Senate, when the contract labor bill passed in the House only to be ignored for months in the upper chamber. Within a month, the bill became law. At the same time, he pushed hard for the Bureau of Labor Statisics, keeping in close contact with Foran and Hopkins, and running for the commissionership himself when the bureau was created in June 1884. Other than DA 49, virtually every local and district endorsed him, and he received widespread support from leading Democrats across the nation, but he was eventually denied the post, which fell to Carroll D. Wright. “The place was worth striving for, as in your hands it could have been made greatly useful,” consoled Henry George. Undaunted, Powderly pleaded with delegates at the 1885 GA to establish Knight lobbies at all state capitals and at Washington, D.C. By then the first shock waves of the upheaval precluded a permanent presence for the Order at Capitol Hill, as we shall see, but Powderly’s limited successes convinced by him that lobbying was far less divisive and often more effective than electioneering. “Better to shoot

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with accurate aim at one bird and bring it down,” he counseled one Knight, “than fire at random at a whole flock and miss them all.”30 By 1883–1884, Knights had grown ambivalent about the fourth plank of their preamble: “[t]he establishment of cooperative institutions, productive and distributive.” After dominating both the 1880 and 1881 GAs, enthusiasm for practical cooperation began to recede thereafter. All 126 delegates at the 1884 GA rose as a body when Powderly asked those who favored cooperation to stand up, demonstrating a continuing appreciation of cooperation as an ideal alternative to capitalist relations. But as early as 1882, when delegates voted to abolish the compulsory Cooperation Fund and replace it with a voluntary one, the majority showed little inclination to devote the bulk of the Order’s precious resources to cooperative experiments. At Cincinnati, delegates established a compulsory fund to assist workers beset by strikes and lockouts, but they left the Cooperative Fund dependent on voluntary contributions.31 A significant and vocal minority remained committed to practical cooperation, however, and the question of how to placate this minority highlighted a central problem facing any movement dedicated to a multiplicity of goals: How could the Order maintain the loyalty of minority factions whose programs were deemed unworthy by the majority? The 1883 GA had not completely abandoned practical cooperation. A resolution allowing districts to use Cooperative Fund monies for other purposes was rejected, signifying a general desire to keep the small fund intact and earmarked for its original purpose. Delegates then vested the Cooperative Board with authority to call in and invest all monies contributed to this fund, agreed to pay the expenses of board members when they investigated sites of cooperative enterprise, and elected Henry Sharpe, arguably the nation’s foremost champion of centralized cooperation, to the presidency of this board.32 Those who had pressed for a compulsory Cooperative Fund were nevertheless outraged. “The trades assemblies of the east demanded an Assistance Fund,” protested one Iowa Knight. “They got it and the cooperative fund was left optional. . . . What an absurdity in our order which was established avowedly to check strikes and further cooperation.” “How absurd,” echoed Samuel Leavitt, a New Jersey Knight and well-known newspaper correspondent, “that an Order that is founded on the idea of revolutionizing the world by cooperation should have money to spend for any and every object but its foundation principle.” George Holcombe, a Trenton printer and outgoing president of the Cooperative Board, complained that had the money spent on failed strikes been used to establish cooperatives, “this wealth which we have wasted would still be in our possession, the institutions serving as a landmark to show others the right direction.”33 Powderly was hardly the man to appease such Knights; he knew almost nothing about cooperation. Although he often spoke glowingly of the promise of cooperation in abstract terms, he had no understanding of the various strategies the proponents of cooperation were discussing, and he even confessed his ig-

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norance as to which assemblies were engaged in cooperative pursuits. Whatever minimal knowledge he possessed was gleaned from Rockwood, a keen advocate of centralized cooperative schemes, Ralph Beaumont, and Samuel Leavitt. Beaumont, who exhibited the cooperative spirit that had suffused the Knights of St. Crispin, had undertaken a lecture tour on that subject in late 1882–early 1883. And now in late 1883, Leavitt embarked on a four-month lecture tour of his own under Knight auspices. As early as 1882, whenever members wrote the GMW in regard to cooperation, he directed their attention to Leavitt and Beaumont, both of whom “can discuss the question ably.”34 If Powderly could do little to placate disgruntled cooperationists, Henry Sharpe could. The new Cooperative Board president quickly emerged as a vocal publicist for cooperation in the Order, although in the end he also proved one of its chief liabilities. His New York–based Grand Cooperative Brotherhood, founded in 1880, boasted the allegiance of Richard J. Hinton, the socialist reporter, and published its own journal, “The Industrial Co-operator.”35 The Brotherhood had put its ideas into action in 1880 when it established the York Society of Integral Co-Operators on a thousand-acre cattle ranch in Eglington, Missouri, but the Eglington experiment was far from prosperous. Sharpe and his wife Mary spent as much time in New York as they did in Missouri. In late 1883, there were fewer than one hundred members, who had recently joined the Knights as LA 2776. By then, Sharpe confessed that both the Brotherhood and the ranch were “struggling for life.”36 Thus, for Sharpe election to the Cooperative Board was fortuitous. He was now in a better position to tap into the uncollected Cooperative Fund and spread his message to a large and sympathetic audience. He immediately set about these goals with manic energy. Two days after the close of the GA, he began bombarding Powderly with pamphlets, proposals for legislation, and, above all, requests to invest the estimated $2,300 in the Cooperative Fund in his Eglington ranch. He depicted a veritable bovine utopia that would quickly yield returns of 30 to 60 percent. Sharpe also induced Turner to grant him ample space in the JUL to broadcast his ideas to the membership at large.37 Powderly was by no means averse to Sharpe or his investment proposal, but he quickly lost interest in the latter after hearing the opinions of other leading Knights. “It won’t do to let Sharpe turn the Cooperative Fund into his Missouri Menagerie,” Samuel Leavitt warned. Both Turner and Layton agreed, and Sharpe’s request was denied.38 Undaunted, Sharpe arranged for a “Cooperative Congress” to be held in New York, pressed the GEB to finance a cooperative coal mine to be run by locked out Indiana Knights, publicized his ideas for congressional legislation, and embarked on an extended tour of Midwestern assemblies to promote local experiments.39 His energy and commitment seemed limitless, and his prominent place promised to encourage cooperative enthusiasts to remain loyal to the Order. In December 1883, however, Sharpe’s fortunes took a turn for the worse when New York papers began publishing lurid accounts of his marital difficulties.

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According to his wife Mary, a Knight herself who ran a successful business in New York, Henry was obsessed with fame and money, and was both verbally and physically abusive. When, after a fight, Mary threatened to sell her business and deny him funds, Henry abandoned her and took with him their baby daughter. He denied the charge, and for a time “Who stole the baby?” became a focus of gossip in New York and among members of the Order.40 At the same time, Missouri papers began reciting tales of infighting at his moribund Eglington ranch. By January 1884, the few remaining LA 2776 members had charged him with a whole host of crimes, including “[b]rutal and systematic ill-treatment of brothers and sisters,” refusing clothing and food to colonists, and removing cattle from the ranch to his own private property.41 After a wave of hostile press coverage in the wake of the Cincinnati GA claiming that the Order had been taken over by communists, the Knights could ill afford a scandal of this magnitude. All leading Knights shared Powderly’s anxiety: “We cannot afford to have any man lecturing through this country who is at any moment likely to bring odium on the Order.”42 Long before the GEB met in April 1884 to hear the case of LA 2776 against Sharpe, however, Powderly and others recognized that “personal spite lies at the bottom of the whole business.”43 The Home Club leaders of DA 49 had allied themselves with disgruntled members of the Missouri local and put forth spurious charges to rid themselves of a personal enemy. Sharpe, Powderly learned, was one of innumerable men and organizations to face the full brunt of DA 49’s vicious determination to monopolize the labor movement in New York. In October 1883, Sharpe had sought to transfer from LA 2776 to LA 2022 in New York because he planned to spend several months in that city and because his wife was already a member of that local. LA 2022 was a small mixed local under the jurisdiction of DA 49. Sharpe was unanimously accepted, but DA 49 blocked his admission by suspending the entire LA, although McClelland later intervened and forced DA 49 to lift its suspension. DA 49’s involvement in the Missouri case became clear once the GEB opened its hearings. The MW of LA 2776 “put his case in the hands of D.A. 49,” which named Home Clubber William Horan as prosecuting counsel. After a lengthy and expensive trial held in both New York and Missouri, the board declared that “not a single charge in the indictment had been sustained, and a verdict was rendered accordingly reinstating Bro. Sharpe in his position as Chairman of the Co-operative Board.”44 The Home Club’s hatred of Sharpe was certainly not based in animosity toward cooperation. Victor Drury was in fact fascinated by this movement. He corresponded regularly with the Cooperative Board, according to its secretary, and expressed his “sympathy for the cause . . . and an earnest desire to be kept informed of its progress in the Order.” In the spring of 1885, the Home Club launched its first successful cooperative, the Co-operative Hat Store, and by 1886, it had initiated what would prove the only successful centralized plan of cooperation at the district level, Solidarity Co-operation.45 Indeed, considering

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the Club’s attraction to cooperation, the friction with Sharpe most likely reflected a struggle to assume the undisputed leadership of that movement in New York. Even though the Club had failed to down Sharpe on this occasion, its personal attacks dramatically impacted the Order’s cooperation policy. As an officer facing trial, Sharpe was automatically suspended from his duties between January and July 1884, when the GEB exonerated him. In the meantime, the wellpublicized accusations brought the Cooperative Board into disrepute, and they were circulating just when many Knight cooperationists, now in possession of the 1883 GA Proceedings, were registering their disgust with an organization that had created a compulsory Assistance Fund and left the Cooperative Fund voluntary. Needing quick and positive action to assuage angry cooperationists, the GEB lunged at the first available opportunity—the Cannelburg mine. In 1880, miners employed by the Buckeye Coal Company of Cannelburg, Indiana, formed LA 1436, and in the fall of 1882, they were locked out when they refused to sign an iron-clad oath renouncing their membership. Most of the miners left to seek work elsewhere, but a few hardy souls remained. Their leader was W. D. Van Horn, the RS of LA 1436 and future president of District 11 (Indiana) of the United Mine Workers. Although suffering severe privation, Van Horn declared, “[W]e determined not to be defeated.” He and seven others obtained a lease for nearly 200 acres of rich coal land adjoining the Buckeye property. There were two thick and easily accessible soft coal veins under this land, and one vein of cannel coal, “the finest quality anywhere in this country.” Cannel coal, rich with volatile matter, was unsuitable for domestic purposes but highly valued by gas companies. In March 1883, Van Horn and his cohorts began sinking a shaft toward the nearest soft coal vein, and by May, they were extracting coal.46 The miners faced several difficulties which necessitated the support of the national Order. First, the leases had $1,200 due by April 1884, when they would revert to their previous owner, a lawyer in Washington, Indiana. Second, because the roads were virtually impassable in winter, production had nearly ceased by the time the GEB took an interest. And third, any viable mining operation required the construction of a half mile “switch” to connect the mine to the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. Coupled with a general lack of knowledge about the special requirements of cannel coal mining, these difficulties made the venture a risky proposition from the outset. But the GEB, in its eagerness to score a quick success along cooperative lines, was ready to share Van Horn’s enthusiasm.47 In November 1883, it sent Sharpe and board member Tom Barry, neither of whom knew anything about mining, to survey the property. Impressed, they urged the board to call in the Cooperative Fund and invest it at once. Powderly and Turner were skeptical, but they were unprepared to challenge the GEB.48 The question of how the mine would be funded and who would control it became intertwined with the attacks against Sharpe. By the time Sharpe issued his January 1 circular calling in the Cooperative Fund, with Powderly’s reluctant approval, rumors about his marriage and Missouri troubles abounded. Thus, it

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did not surprise Powderly when, six weeks later, only $297 had been collected. Some other means to finance the mine had to be found. Powderly at first suggested a voluntary appeal, but McClelland hit upon a better idea. He would lay out the facts and request each LA for a temporary loan to be repaid as soon as possible. Because the president of the Cooperative Board was now under suspension, the mine would be managed by the GEB and not the Cooperative Board. This, McClelland argued, was a blessing in disguise. “When it becomes known that Bro. Sharpe has been suspended,” the GEB secretary opined, “I fancy Locals will have no more hesitation in advancing money for cooperative purposes.”49 Having agreed on a plan of action, Powderly and the GEB launched the project with as much fanfare as they could muster. On March 3, they sent out a lengthy circular emblazoned with the words “Strike! At a Vital Point.” Although neither McClelland nor Powderly had any practical cooperative experience, both hailed Cannelburg as a turning point in labor relations. “An opportunity now presents itself to us whereby the Knights of Labor can strike one of the most powerful and effective blows ever attempted by a labor organization,” McClelland cried. Not to be outdone, Powderly declared that “[i]t will be the biggest card for the Order we ever played.” The Indiana miners were heroes. After they were locked out, rather than “sucking their thumbs in idleness,” they took it upon themselves to “flank the enemy by going into competition with him.” Loan the GEB money, he urged, and make a success of “the first sensible move that has been put into practical operation.”50 Fear that members would, as they had so often in the past, resist sending funds to their national officers were quickly allayed when LA 300, on the heels of its great strike success, advanced a $2,000 loan to the GEB. “Glory to God on high,” wrote a much relieved Powderly. “L.A. 300 is a trump.” The window glass workers were motivated in part by gratitude for the Order’s assistance during their strike, Powderly’s ongoing lobbying efforts, and the enthusiasm of their own James Campbell who served on the GEB. Moreover, LA 300 had assisted in the establishment of several cooperative window glass factories in Pittsburgh and New Jersey and had an abiding interest in producers’ cooperation.51 McClelland later claimed that the board considered two approaches: It could either hand the money over to the Cannelburg miners to use as they saw fit, or the GEB could “step in and assume control” of the money and the mine. The first course was never seriously contemplated. The GEB, not LA 1436, was responsible for paying back the loans of LA 300 and other contributing locals, and it immediately determined to manage the mine itself in an effort to safeguard its interests. The GEB’s general lack of confidence in workers’ ability to manage their own affairs was revealed in its report to the 1884 GA. “Men reared under the conditions of wage service cannot jump at once to the much higher level of co-operation,” the board declared. When the “pressure” of wage work was suddenly lifted, the workingman “becomes listless, apathetic, incapable of exertion.”

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Any successful cooperative, therefore, required executive officers with authority to reward exertion through wage incentives and discipline those shirking their duties or causing dissension.52 In other words, the heroes of Cannelburg, who had fought the Buckeye Coal Company for over a year, were not capable of running their own mine. For his part, Powderly never questioned this crucial decision. Armed with $2,300, McClelland and GEB associate John Murray set off for Cannelburg in late March. They returned in early April with “all leases, notes and outstanding debts attended to.” McClelland and Murray were now the owners of the mine. “If the order at large behaves itself,” McClelland jested, “we will turn it over them.” Murray was installed as superintendent, Van Horn and the miners were happy, and preparations were being made to build the switch to connect the mine to the railroad. By the end of the month, the GEB was incorporated as the Union Mining Company of Cannelburg.53 On May 28, the GEB introduced its scheme to repay the loans and accumulate $10,000 in working capital. Shares were made available to all Knights at $5 each. McClelland guaranteed 5 percent annual interest and a percentage of any profits. Members were slow to respond, but by the time the GA met in September, Knights had invested enough money to pay for the purchase of a steam pump and hoisting engine, and the miners were busily digging the shaft to what they considered their pot of gold—the vein of cannel coal.54 The Cannelburg mine was the GEB’s experiment from the very beginning. Neither Powderly nor Turner had much input before the 1884 GA. Although concerned by the haste with which board members rushed into the project, both men soon embraced the scheme, accepted GEB control, and offered their services as propagandists. Yet, as we shall see, Powderly and Turner held the fate of the Cannelburg cooperative in their hands once the 1884 GA made the GMW and GS the chairperson and secretary of the GEB. Only at that stage did they find out for themselves the financial and administrative problems that McClelland and his cronies had swept under the carpet in their determination to prove the efficacy of cooperation. Neither the attempted expulsion nor GEB control of the Cannelburg mine discouraged the indefatigable president of the Cooperative Board. Immediately upon his exoneration, Henry Sharpe concocted a remarkably bold scheme to convert the entire Order to cooperation—the Cooperative Guild. He unveiled his plan in the June 10, 1884 issue of the JUL, and it quickly became the focus of an intense debate that raged until the September GA. The proposed Guild would serve as a virtually independent voluntary organization within the Order. Its members would establish their own assemblies, elect their own board, and push for legislation at the state and national level. The Guild would then launch both consumers’ and producers’ cooperatives throughout the country whose goods and services would be available only to members. To establish itself on a solid footing, however, the Guild required a compulsory GA tax.55 Sharpe’s persistent cry of “co-operation of the Order, by the Order, and for

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the Order” and his plans for a truly centralized and bureaucratic apparatus stood in stark contrast to previous requests to support individual and localized cooperatives. By promising to mobilize the energies of all who believed cooperation was the ultimate purpose of the Order, and by offering what seemed a tenable plan of action, Sharpe quickly won some powerful converts. Richard J. Hinton publicly threw his weight behind the Guild, as did ex-assistant GS Rockwood, GEB members Tom Barry and John Murray, GWF Ralph Beaumont, exGEB member David Healy, future DA 30 (Boston) MW John Howes, DA 17 (St. Louis) RS and future chair of the Cooperative Board John Samuel, and the well-known Washington, D.C., Knight and novelist T. Fulton Gantt.56 Neither Powderly nor Turner expressed any interest in the Guild before the 1884 GA. Neither man, as we shall see, had much sympathy for a plan that promised to focus the entire attention of the Order on just one plank of its preamble, and they were dubious of an independent organization operating within the Knights, a situation that promised friction and divided loyalties. To their credit, they remained silent despite their opposition and allowed members to debate the issue without interference. Turner, who became increasingly annoyed with Sharpe’s demands on his time, gave him wide latitude to present his ideas in the journal, and Powderly remained mute in part because he was campaigning for appointment to the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief at this time. Even with the support of numerous leading Knights, Sharpe’s Cooperative Guild went down to defeat at the 1884 Philadelphia GA. Delegates were not opposed to cooperation per se, but they continued to resist a compulsory tax to support it.57 The vocal minority, stymied yet again and now effectively organized by Sharpe, refused to accept defeat. Blaming the GA vote on Home Club propaganda, Guild supporters vowed, as Sharpe put it, to “go on with our guild and build it up within the order as a force opposed to the anarchists.” For Sharpe and others, the issue was no longer simply cooperation but whether the Order “is to be run in the interests of the anarchists or not.” Rockwood and Tom Barry agreed, the former arguing that all opposition to the Guild stemmed from “the hatred of Sharpe by D.A. 49.”58 Of course, it was not that simple. True, the Home Club publicized Sharpe’s continuing marital difficulties to help block his bid for reelection as president of the Cooperative Board at Philadelphia, but GA opposition to compulsory taxes for cooperation merely reflected the trend established in 1882 and 1883. Moreover, by pushing this defeated program after the GA, Guild leaders caused havoc in numerous assemblies. In a score of locals, the Guild became the sole object of discussion, and Guild taxes were being collected even though the Assistance Fund was ignored. Turner at once asked Guild officers if it was their “intention or that of the ‘Guild’ to push it at the expense of the Knights of Labor,” and Powderly had received enough complaints to convince him of the Guild’s threat. “I am as sure as the head is on me that if each Assembly resolved itself to the Guild tomorrow,” he wrote, “this day week would see three fourths of the Order ruined.” “If co-operation were the only thing we had to look to, it

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would be fitting and proper to do this,” he continued, but men and women joined the Order for different reasons, and any attempt to channel all members into one scheme, especially one vetoed by the GA, “must necessarily fail.”59 The brewing schism among leading Knights over the Guild was averted, ironically, when DA 49 expelled Sharpe in the summer of 1885. Because Sharpe was no longer an officer of the Order, he was not entitled to GEB trial and was therefore vulnerable to Home Club attack. Powderly tried to save Sharpe by enrolling him as a member of his own LA 222 in Scranton, but the transfer was illegal and the court of DA 49 bounced Sharpe on a variety of charges put forth by his estranged wife. Guild supporters made wild accusations against Powderly and Turner for their supposed conspiracy with the anarchists in effecting Sharpe’s ouster, and they vowed to continue fighting for the Guild both within and outside the Order.60 However, once the reputation of their leader was tarnished and their program denied the organizational resources of the Order, the Cooperative Guild quickly faded from the scene. The fate of the Cooperative Guild highlighted the extreme difficulty of satisfying all elements in a heterogeneous organization such as the Knights, just as the history of the Cannelburg mine revealed the danger of quick fixes to placate disgruntled minority factions. At Philadelphia, Powderly had successfully maneuvered to abolish the independent GEB and replace it with one headed by himself and Turner. Both men crowed over their victory, but they were now saddled with management of the Cannelburg mine, the costs of which had continued to multiply and now far exceeded the return on shares sold. Rather than write off this experiment, delegates, as a sop to Guild enthusiasts, had approved an assessment of twenty cents per member to raise the funds required to put the mine on a solid footing.61 It was now up to Powderly and Turner to make a success of a venture they had opposed from the outset. Almost immediately after issuing the assessment, Powderly was inundated with requests for exoneration. Many assemblies claimed poverty, but others questioned how support for a mine in Indiana would benefit local initiatives. Baltimore’s DA 41 even sent a circular to all locals across the country encouraging them to protest.62 As Powderly attempted to appease his correspondents, Turner headed to Cannelburg, where he reckoned with various problems that would have to be solved before the mine could begin production. Turner, a gold beater who knew nothing about mining, oversaw the purchase of expensive equipment, bought thirty acres of land on which the railroad switch was to be built, negotiated with the hostile Buckeye Coal Company which sought in numerous ways to obstruct his efforts, and hired a management team headed by William Lewis. Each step was fraught with hidden complications and expenses, and the ice cool Turner was already losing his composure when he witnessed Lewis falling down a mine shaft. “The doctors say there is 3 chances in 100 of his getting over it,” a frantic Turner informed Powderly. Lewis eventually recovered and the work proceeded, but these and other disasters worried Powderly. “Last night I dreamt I was on my way to Cannelburg,” he wrote

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in April 1885. In his dream the train ran off the track, causing the slumbering GMW to hurtle from his bed and crash to the floor. “I don’t mind the fright nor the bruises but I hate like the mischief to think that I am getting so nervous.”63 There was plenty to be nervous about. Mounting costs forced Powderly and Turner to issue a threatening circular in June to all locals that had failed to pay their assessment, and the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, perhaps at the urging of the Buckeye Coal Company, did not build the necessary side track until early September 1885, after gas companies had already purchased their annual supplies of cannel coal. By that time, the Order had spent a total of $15,932, including $5,877 from the General Fund; 228 locals had defiantly refused to pay the assessment; and the Order would have to cough up at least another $4,000 for an engine to bring the coal from the mine to the railroad. Delegates at the 1885 Hamilton GA, once apprised of the nightmarish scenario, voted to sell the mine as quickly as possible.64 Needless to say, the painful experiences of Cannelburg and the Guild convinced Powderly and other leading Knights to be wary of all future cooperative ventures requiring national assistance, and the fourth plank of the Order’s preamble would have to be attained by local initiatives or not at all. If third-party politics and cooperation illustrated the the difficulty of maintaining the loyalty of sympathetic minority factions, then the activities of certain radical groups showcased the Order’s inability to discipline hostile minority factions that refused to abide by laws, subverted democratic practice, and jeopardized future growth. Powderly’s growing antipathy toward certain anarchists and radical socialists in these years was not a knee-jerk reflex from an arch conservative but rather the product of numerous inconclusive battles with those who pursued their ideological agendas at the expense of harmony within the movement and the possibility of public support. Nor did Powderly tar all radicals with the same brush. He maintained alliances with several self-proclaimed revolutionaries and sought to enlist them in a crusade against their obnoxious brethren. A perfect example of the ability of a handful of extremists to cause havoc was the case of Burnette Haskell, a young San Francisco lawyer who in July 1881 had established the Pacific Coast Division of the decadent International Workingmen’s Association (IWA). Known as the “Red International,” Haskell’s IWA branch represented his own revolutionary creed, which he propagated through his journal, Truth. Like so many would-be Gilded Age revolutionaries, Haskell tried to devise a distinctly American radical ideology that took European ideas—Marxism and communistic-anarchism—and merged them with natural rights, the single tax, the labor theory of value, and other things American workers already believed in or were prepared to accept. Yet, unlike other radicals, Haskell found little of value in Knighthood. In an 1883 letter to Joseph Labadie and August Spies, he explained that Knights, like workingmen in gen-

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eral, were “densely ignorant, cowardly and selfish,” and that the Order “was perfectly useless save and except as a recruiting ground.”65 Haskell joined the Knights under highly dubious circumstances. In late 1882, after the “densely ignorant” of LA 1390 blackballed him on the very first ballot, he and his small band of followers conducted a vicious campaign of defiance, disrupting both local and district (DA 53) meetings, smearing their opponents as “ ‘midnight sneaks,’ ‘political pimps,’ [and] ‘black-hearted scoundrels,’ ” and violating virtually every rule governing the initiation of candidates. Powderly attempted to uphold the law through the post, but Haskell’s comrades scoffed at his rulings. By the spring of 1883, Haskell had his membership card, and the disgusted MW of LA 1390 resigned, cursing that if “the law of the Order” could be trodden on with such impunity “we might as well put up the Shutters.” For the next twelve months, as Haskell assumed control of the entire district, San Francisco Knighthood was consumed by acrimony. Several locals disbanded, numerous leaders were suspended, expelled, or left in disgust, and overall membership plummeted. Fred Turner was not the only one to bemoan “the result” of Haskell’s antics: “D.A. 53 nearly ruined.”66 Still not content, the Red International widened its focus. According to three former Haskell lieutenants, the various branches of his organization had pledged “to control the order of the K. of L.” throughout the country by any means.67 Foremost among these means was propaganda, including the distribution of its manifesto, Socialism: Evolution or Revolution, an 1883 tract written by charter members A. J. Starkweather and Robert Wilson. Whatever its merits as radical literature, the tract caused alarm among leading Knights by its call to assist the “blind ignorant producers” through acts of violence, and its characterization of the JUL as a socialist organ.68 By the end of 1884, Powderly had to placate a bevy of angry Knights. “If the American people think the Journal endorses the unfurlding [sic] of the scarlet flag the sooner it is stopped the better it will be for the K. of L.,” cried James Campbell of LA 300, who had seen his share of violence during the 1877 strikes. In DA 65 (Albany), resolutions were adopted censuring the Red International; DA 46 (Buffalo) also complained; and Toronto’s leading Knight, D. J. O’Donoghue, objected “most emphatically” to the radicals’ call for “lawless murder” and did not “relish being a member of any organization where my presence is liable to lead to a misconception of my honest views.” “That’s that blasted ‘Haskell’ cheek cropping up,” griped Fred Turner, the JUL’s editor. “If what is printed in the Journal is Socialism then indeed we are all Socialists, but not the red handed ones that ‘Haskell’ would have the people to know, for those that preach blood & c. are the ones that keep farthest away when the time he speaks about arrives.”69 Powderly agreed. “I can be socialistic within all bounds of reason,” he insisted, “but this physical force, no government, no property business I cannot countenance.” However, he lacked the authority to discipline Haskell, who was

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shielded by district autonomy, and he had no wish to alienate other anarchists and radical socialists who supported the administration and proved their value to the Order. This group included Tom Barry, who was elected to the GEB in 1883 and again in 1885; Detroit’s Joseph Labadie; and, significantly, Denver’s Joseph Buchanan, who had established the Rocky Mountain Division of the Red International and worked closely with Haskell in the 1880s. Even though Buchanan had himself printed articles on the use of dynamite in his Denver Labor Enquirer, Powderly understood that his Western “tall talk” belied the devoted Knight who, unlike Haskell, sought to build rather than ruin the Order. “I have great confidence in him and will be guided largely by his judgment in western matters,” Powderly wrote of Buchanan after his election to the GEB in 1884.70 With Haskell causing trouble on the West Coast, Victor Drury and his anarchist comrades in DA 49 continued their ruinous shenanigans on the East Coast. As his reward for blocking Powderly’s effort to suspend DA 49 in 1883, GEB secretary McClelland spent much of the next year attempting to resolve the endless difficulties this district created. Drury’s desire to control all aspects of the labor movement in New York not only led to the attacks on Henry Sharpe, but gave rise to ugly warfare between DA 49 and New York Knights trying to build up trade districts or independent unions. The car drivers (DA 75), printers (DA 64), carpet weavers (LA 2985), and numerous others continuously complained of DA 49 interference and obstruction, forcing McClelland to spend an inordinate amount of his time unraveling complicated messes. Yet whenever he ruled against DA 49, its leaders invariably ignored his orders. “I like some of the men in DA 49 but I most abdominably hate their methods,” McClelland fumed. “Nothing but the fear of their charter being revoked will persuade them to recognize the Executive authority.”71 Like Haskell, Drury sought to extend his influence outside the confines of his jurisdiction. As he and his minions embarked on speaking tours and issued scurrilous circulars throughout the country calling for Powderly’s ouster, the alarmed GMW turned to Fred Turner for advice. Although historians have claimed that Turner himself was a Home Club member, as early as mid-1884 leading Knights recognized that Turner was no dupe of Drury. McClelland was certain that “Fred is not a party to their machinations.” Powderly, a savvy judge of character, considered Turner completely safe and was determined to see him reelected. “Turner must be returned, for not alone is he a good fellow but he has proven himself to be a first class secretary,” the GMW opined. Even Rockwood recognized that Turner was a loyal administration booster and deserved to remain as GS.72 Turner in fact used his knowledge of Club affairs and members to help reelect Powderly both in 1884 and 1885. In the buildup to the 1884 GA, for example, Powderly learned that Club lieutenant T. B. McGuire had been actively encouraging his overthrow while organizing in the Pittsburgh area, and McClelland warned him to “brush up on your mummery” because the plan was to humiliate Powderly by demonstrating his ignorance of the rituals. As the GMW scrambled

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to learn the intricacies of the Order’s ritualism, never his strong suit, it was Turner who helped him secure various objects used in ceremonies, explaining their function and significance, knowledge he had acquired in part from Drury himself. The GS assured Powderly that DA 49 had “no candidate in the field able to take the place” of the GMW, and he even informed T. B. McGuire that “you [Powderly] were the right man in the right place.” Turner had no fear of Powderly’s reelection in 1884, but because he had not served the Club well as GS, Turner feared that DA 49 would oppose him: “I presume 49 will be down on me.” Even here, Turner understood that DA 49 was not powerful enough to oust him on its own and that he would be downed only if other large DAs turned against him. If defeated, Turner could at least take heart that he had been no one’s fool: “[I]f my head rolls in the basket I have the consolation of having performed my duty without fear or favor.”73 In 1885, Turner again used his Club connections to keep the GMW informed of developments. In the summer, Powderly heard that Drury was lecturing in the West, attempting to sway those who were to attend the Hamilton GA. In his disgust, Powderly tendered his resignation to determine the loyalty of his supporters. Turner did not disappoint him. He assured Powderly that Drury was in New Jersey and would not even attend the upcoming GA. “I emphatically insist upon you serving the balance of the term and have the strongest faith that you will be our next G.M.W.,” Turner declared. “I shall do all in my power to have it so.” As in 1884, Turner’s information proved right on the mark, and the two men were reelected without incident.74 Although he lacked the authority to root out radical troublemakers such as Haskell and Drury, he at least helped to limit their influence by making others aware of their mischievous activities. His unwillingness to impose dictatorial methods to expel these men, his tolerance of radical ideas that stopped short of violence, and his desire to distinguish between constructive and destructive radicals earned him the support of the former. The anarchist Labadie, for instance, heartily endorsed Powderly: “I am thoroughly satisfied that you are the right man for G.M.W.” Buchanan was the first GEB member to reject Powderly’s resignation in 1885, and the two men became friends as well as allies.75 If Powderly was finding it impossible to maintain harmony and establish priorities among workers once they joined the Order, his speaking tours revealed his continuing ability to attract large numbers of increasingly diverse workers to the banner in the first place. “When my present term as mayor expires April 1st [1884], I will try to pay a few visits here and there.” Powderly was rarely given to understatement, but in fact he devoted a significant proportion of his time in 1884 and 1885 to his least favorite roles—orator and organizer. He loathed not only leaving his wife but traveling itself. “Sitting up nights. Inhaling smoke of bad cigars. Refusing the drinks. Being talked to death. But you know it all,” he complained to Turner, who certainly knew enough to commiserate. “Some people consider it fine fun traveling,” the GS suggested. “That is those that have never traveled. But my God what a rack on a person’s mind and body

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especially in our position when we know bushels of correspondence await us on our return.”76 Although hundreds of assemblies enouraged him to visit, scores of others complained that he neglected their correspondence when he absented himself from office. Thus, his nagging fear that accusations of dereliction of duty would outweight the good he could do for the Order while on the road was not irrational. He sometimes brought a sackful of letters along on his journeys, and the nearly illegible entries in his letterbooks testified to his attempts to reply while traveling by train during the night. He frequently explained his absences in the JUL, and he apologized for tardy replies through circulars, but he remained painfully aware of the absurdity of his situation. After running himself ragged trying to satisfy all those who wished to hear and meet their GMW, he invariably returned home exhausted and ill, with his desk “literally covered with all kinds of letters,” only to face charges of “ ‘neglecting business’ as the grumblers put it every time I am not at home to answer their letters by ‘return mail.’ ”77 In spite of his worries and complaints, he logged countless miles. In December 1883, for instance, he spoke in and around Pittsburgh and Montreal; in January and February 1884, he visited locals in Detoit, Chicago, and southern Ohio; in early March, he traveled across New York state; and from March 20 to May 14, he spent but six days in Scranton as he visited Ontario, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, northern Ohio, St. Louis, and Tennessee. He counseled his hosts to avoid fanfare: “Don’t bring any brass bands or drum corps with you.” And although he offered them a variety of subjects for his public lectures, he invariably delivered the same speech: “I don’t care which one you select. My lecture will be the same in the end.”78 The public speech and his oratorical skills never failed to impress. “For two hours we sat in serene felicity,” gushed a Kansas City scribe. “It was one of those soul-elevating, Pentacostal efforts that men are only privileged to hear once or twice in a lifetime.” Private talks at assembly meetings, which dealt with specific issues of local concern, gave him insight into rank-and-file priorities. Even with members crowding the sanctuaries to get a close look at their famous leader, he proved a good listener. His travels convinced him that despite continued growth, the work left undone was monumental. The Order itself remained “an unwieldy body,” due in part to the fact that “a great many Assemblies are in total ignorance of the aims and objects.” Many members preferred worshiping him or deferring to local leaders, “not even dreaming that there was a necessity for any exertion on their part.” This was to be expected, given that the greatest obstacle to future expansion was the sense of fatalism permeating the working class. “There are men and whole communities . . . who have from early youth been taught to believe that everything that happens to them, whether good or bad, was ordained of heaven, and that no effort on their part could, or should, change the course of events into a different channel.”79 Challenging such fatalism required a knowledge of local affairs and an ability to identify issues on which members from dissimilar backgrounds could work

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together and effect tangible victories. Nowhere did Powderly utilize this approach with more success than during his January–February 1885 tour of the South. As early as October 1883, Powderly had noted the potential for organizing work in that region. At the 1884 GA, Turner quoted from the letters he had received from Florida, Alabama, and North Carolina, arguing that “if a good live organizer was placed in that locality we would soon have those States well organized.” Ignoring Turner’s call for a paid organizer, parsimonious delegates assigned the task of organizing the South to Powderly. The GMW was also returned as GEB chair at this GA and was instructed to spend sixteen weeks in the field, four in each section of the country. Although afraid that delegates “bit off for me more than I can chaw,” he at once prepared to head South for the winter.80 The rapidly expanding Southern working class had thus far shown little interest in the Knights. Alabama coal miners had joined in the late 1870s, creating DA 29, but by 1881, operator resistance had crushed both the district and the enthusiasm of diggers. The telegraphers’ national district, DA 45, had created numerous locals across the South in 1882–1883, but the Western Union strike loss in August 1883 decimated the district and its locals. By the end of 1884, there were clusters of locals representing mostly the building trades in Atlanta, Birmingham, the Raleigh-Durham area, Richmond, and several other places, many of which had been established by a handful of transplanted Yankee organizers. But there were no functioning districts, only a few black locals, and excluding the border states only two Southerners (William Mullen of Richmond and John Ray of Raleigh) were among the 126 delegates at the Philadelphia GA.81 Several daunting obstacles impeded sustained growth. The South lacked the North’s trade union traditions, powerful agrarian movements such as the Agricultural Wheel employed a similar antimonopoly language and competed for workers’ loyalties in the political arena, New South industrialists sought to attract Northern investment by guaranteeing a docile and unorganized labor force, and, above all, the enduring legacy of rampant racism all but precluded effective solidarity between white workers and their numerous and often unskilled black counterparts. Success for the Knights necessitated accomplishing what the Civil War and Reconstruction had failed to do—overcoming the barrier of race.82 The salience of racial concerns among Southern Knights was articulated by Charles Miller, a Richmond organizer who wrote Powderly upon hearing of his upcoming visit. At the last meeting of Miller’s all-white LA 3380, the subject of organizing African-Americans was discussed. Although Miller wanted to help “the colored man” improve his own lot, “advance the interest of labor” in general, and enable him to “assist us in time of trouble,” he was at a loss when confronting the majority of white Knights who were convinced that the admittance of African-Americans “will break up our white Assemblys.” His brothers reflected the region’s “strong objection on the part of whites to mix with the colored race,” a prejudice that “may lessen as time rolls on” but could not be

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overcome “all at once.” In the meantime, white Knights adamantly maintained that the enrollment of African-Americans was certain to “give us trouble and cause many [whites] to leave our Order.” Miller of course wanted the wise GMW to resolve the South’s profound racial divisions “by next mail,” but Powderly knew well that his oft-repeated demand that Knights must organize irrespective of race was insufficient to overcome Southern realities.83 Powderly had dealt with similar concerns from Southern Knights since 1879, and he advocated the expedient first proposed by Uriah Stephens—the establishment of separate locals for black and white members. Unlike Stephens, who recognized African-Americans as economic but not social equals, Powderly, perhaps influenced by his mother, “a pronounced abolitionist,” longed for the day when this expedient would prove unnecessary. “There should be no antipathy toward the colored men for after their labor is performed there is no difference between it and that done by a white laborer” was his constant refrain from the time of his first election. When in 1880 a white miners’ local in Jefferson County, Alabama, blocked the admission of five black miners, Powderly thundered that whites could not afford to refuse anyone’s “assistance in the struggle against grasping capital. . . . In Heaven’s name let not our foolish prejudice keep us apart when our enemies are so closely allied against us.” And when a Nashville Knight enquired in 1883 about the propriety of initiating African-Americans, Powderly had “nothing to say on organizing the colored race only ‘organize them as fast as you can.’ ”84 Powderly’s Southern tour involved all the routine crises he had come to expect whenever he traveled. Suffering from a variety of ailments incurred during a December trip to Canada, he endeavored to secure railroad timetables, maps, and commitments to specific dates from local officers, “but out of twelve that I wrote to but one sent me a time card.” Although often wildly enthusiastic, Southern locals also showed the same disregard for his expenses as Northern ones, which would leave Powderly stranded in out of the way places while Turner forwarded funds. He nevertheless planned to squeeze in twenty-four places in thirty-six days to “prevent that everlasting cry, ‘none of our chief men have ever visited us.’ ” In addition to Richmond, Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, and other cities, he would visit such crossroads as Meridian, Mississippi, Warrior, Alabama, and Greenwood, Kentucky, described by its MW as nothing but “a few log cabins & a few framed shantys.” Along the way he was expected to conduct investigations for the Insurance Department and speak before the legislatures of Arkansas and Tennessee.85 With Hannah and their dog Don both feeling “the blues” because Terry had gone away, and with assemblies as far away as Missouri asking him to extend his tour to include them, Powderly arrived at Richmond on January 26.86 When William Mullen and a few other white activists met him at the station, Powderly, as was his habit, asked about local priorities. He was told that a recently distributed circular protesting the proposed use of out-of-state workers and materials in the construction of a new city hall had been signed by 600 but had

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produced no effect on local politicians. When Powderly spoke that evening at Old Market Hall, where 1,500 people packed together to listen, he broached the issue with fervor. According to the city’s leading daily, Powderly demanded that construction “be done under your own eyes and by your own people, so that it may be well done. (Tremendous applause.)” “See the men who have it in charge . . . let them know that you shall demand that the public interests be considered in this matter. (Thunders of applause.)” By reinvigorating interest in this local issue, Powderly began educating his audience on the power of collective action to win concrete results. He then explained that, by extension, the Order could achieve similar victories on a national scale on major issues such as the eight-hour day.87 Powderly’s real mission in Richmond and throughout the South, however, was forcing working people to come to grips with the race issue without provoking wholesale desertions by white Knights. He had failed to answer organizer Miller’s earlier query because he wanted to hear from others during a closed meeting in Miller’s local. He then told these men face to face that “politicians have kept the white and black men of the South apart, while crushing both. Our aim shall be to educate both and elevate them by bringing them together.” For the present, African-Americans were to organized into their own “separate assemblies, working under the same laws and enjoying the same benefits as their brethren.” To his racially mixed audience at Old Market Hall, he emphasized united labor action. Although he “did not expect the black men to be received into the homes of the white men,” he did insist that “the two races stand side by side to the end that wages shall not drop.”88 Without alienating the mainstream press, Powderly’s words helped to touch off an explosion of organizational activity in Richmond. Even before leaving Old Market Hall, he organized twenty-four tobacco workers as the city’s first black local. Another black local was formed soon after. During his brief stay in the city, white membership swelled from 200 to 1,000, including the city’s first all-female local (cigarette makers). “Your visit done us much good,” a grateful Mullen notified Powderly in March. By late spring, the Richmond area boasted two fluorishing districts: DA 84, headed by Mullen, and DA 92, the Order’s first black district, headed by Joseph Brown Johnson.89 Powderly was hardly the sole cause of this growth, nor had he magically bridged the racial divide or solved any existing labor problems, but his charismatic power had induced Richmond workers, black and white, male and female, to begin the perilous quest to find common ground among themselves and flex their collective muscles for the first time. DA 84 paid tribute to Powderly at the 1885 Hamilton GA when they presented him with a hand-crafted gavel made from wood taken from the church in which Patrick Henry had delivered his famous “give me liberty” speech. Although Mullen lost his bid for a GEB post at this GA, he revealed the depths of his admiration when he named his baby boy, born in November 1885, Terence Powderly Mullen. He asked the GMW to remember the boy in his prayers, “that he may be properly raised, and taught

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to respect and labor for the cause you and I are now trying to defend and better.”90 Although gratefully acknowledging the respect of white Richmond Knights, Powderly sent a message to the entire Order when he invited DA 92 MW Johnson, the lone black delegate at the GA, to join him on the platform during his opening address. Grabbing his hand, he pledged to him “the services of the order for his race to fulfill for them their complete enfranchisement in common with those whose faces were white.” A symbolic gesture to be sure, as was Powderly’s decision to place Johnson on the pivotal Committee on the State of the Order, but one well calculated to bring other African-Americans into the fold.91 Powderly’s approach in other Southern towns and cities was similar, and the enthusiastic reception he received wherever he went contributed mightily both to Southern interest in the Order and his growing reputation as the most eloquent and captivating spokesperson for the labor movement.92 After visiting seventeen towns and cities, quinsy and exhaustion forced him to cut his trip short and return home, where he was “not disappointed in the number of letters” requiring immediate attention. Continuing illness and the volume of work forced him to request, for the first time, part-time secretarial help at his Scranton home. The rest of the GEB eventually approved, and by June 1885, Powderly had hired Emma Fickenscher, his wife’s cousin and a Scranton native.93 Powderly then took to the road again, this time to the Midwest, where he packed the auditoriums and assembly halls in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio.94 Solidarity demanded gender as well as racial inclusivity, and Powderly’s lectures and rulings helped to make the Knights more attractive to women workers than any organization that came before it or the trade unions and Socialist Party of America that came after. Under his guidance, the 1880 GA legalized the admittance of women, who were free either to join male-dominated assemblies or create separate all-female locals. Knighthood sought “the improvement of the condition of all, regardless of condition or sex,” Powderly continuously impressed on the membership, and he often boasted that the female assemblies “are the best in the organization.” In part because of his efforts, approximately 10 percent of all Knights nationwide were female during the peak year of 1886, and for several years, the Order maintained a Committee on Women’s Work with a full-time investigator, Leonora Barry, who traveled the country gathering statistics and encouraging female enrollment. “To secure for both sexes equal rights” was not officially added to the Order’s Preamble until 1890 (on Powderly’s insistence), but from the time of his first election, Powderly was in the vanguard of those pressing for industrial rights for women.95 Powderly’s abiding concern with recruiting female members stemmed in large part from his Land League activities in the late 1870s and early 1880s. His wife Hannah was a charter member of the “Ladies Land League” branch in Scranton, and Powderly quickly recognized that the emergence of similar women’s

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branches elsewhere held the key to the movement’s success: “If the women take an interest in a movement the men must follow.”96 Nor was this empty rhetoric, for the Land League’s immense growth in 1881, as well as its principal fundraising activities, owed as much to women as it did to men. Powderly’s principal contact at the Irish World office at this time, for instance, was not Patrick Ford but Ford’s sister Ellen. An eloquent, compassionate, indefatigable warrior for justice in both Ireland and America, Ellen Ford symbolized the way in which many women in the Land League movement often challenged traditional gender roles through their actions while upholding them in their language. At the same time that she threw herself into the “unwomanly” tasks of organizing, speech making, and editing, she invariably portrayed herself as conventional and domestic. After a political diatribe in which she cursed that “the day is not too far distant when the Land League war must be fought in the Land of the So-Called Free,” for instance, she hastened to add that as a woman it was “contrary to my nature to speak of politics.” Ellen Ford and Powderly developed an intense bond based on mutual respect and shared confidences, and he deemed her a shrewd and scrupulous promoter who could always be counted on to find speakers capable of filling Scranton’s large Academy of Music to capacity.97 Like Ellen Ford, Powderly and other progressive Knights, male as well as female, pressed for an enlargement of women’s public roles even while upholding Victorian notions of women’s domestic obligations in their rhetoric. Thus, in the same breath that he might publicly offer a traditional homespun such as “[t]he only labor for her is that by that sacred spot, the fireside,” he offered hearty congratulations to Mary Stirling when she was elected the first female MW, invariably described the Order as “embracing all branches of labor, male and female,” and made a big fuss after receiving his first missive from a female RS.98 And at times he fully appreciated the absurdity of applying middle-class notions of women’s roles to working women. “The capitalist contends that it is wrong to bring innocent, pure, delicate women in among wicked, sinful, rough men in Assemblies of the Knights of Labor” because it would “degrade her virtue,” he thundered in 1884, but capitalists “do not say it is wrong for her to stand for ten and fifteen hours a day among ‘wicked, sinful, rough men’ in factories to be sworn at by a brutal overseer. If the Assembly is not a fit place for women, it is not a fit place for men.”99 Certainly not all Knights shared these sentiments, and Powderly confronted many situations in which all-male assemblies blackballed female candidates as a matter of course. Powderly might rail that “[t]he members who voted against these women violated their pledge of honor. They should not vote against a person on account of sex.” He was even prepared to offer advice on how to ferret out a handful of misogynists who reflexively blackballed female candidates against the will of the majority. But he could not force an assembly to integrate against its will, and in such cases he suggested the same expedient— separate assemblies—which allowed for the initiation of African-Americans.100 He also found that many women preferred to form their own assemblies and,

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perhaps not surprisingly for women engaged in formal collective action for the first time, that many newly established all-female assemblies petitioned him for the right to elect a man as their MW. “We think that if we had a man for M. W. we could get along better, in fact we know we could,” pleaded the RS of a female LA in Wheeling.101 Similar to his approach to racial concerns, Powderly sought to elevate members on gender issues without alienating them. Although he regarded himself as a staunch “ ‘woman’s rights’ man,” and although he shared the rostrum with both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony on several occasions, he was not about to force his views on equal pay and woman suffrage down the throats of male and female members unwilling to listen. He believed that women had the right to full participation in the Order, and he demonstrated a far greater sensitivity to gender issues than the vast majority of his contemporaries, but he also recognized that “we must take men as we find them.”102 The only hope of eradicating barriers to working-class solidarity such as sexism and racism was thorough organization, education, and the shared experiences of the sanctuary. The Knights had thousands of devoted men and women who worked tirelessly to build up the organization, but very few sustained the level of commitment Powderly had put forth for six straight years, and fewer still possessed his remarkable skills as orator, organizer, and publicist. His personal magnetism, encouragement of local initiatives, insistence on racial and gender tolerance, readiness to ally himself with both radicals and conservatives, desire to placate all factions and uphold majority rule, concern for public opinion, and sheer determination—all helped to ensure that the Order would serve as the organizational vehicle of the working class once the Great Upheaval began to manifest itself. When the first stirrings of that upheaval surfaced in 1885, the national Order was powerless to support critical strikes. The compulsory Assistance Fund established at Cincinnati, which was held by districts until demanded by the GEB, proved a disaster from the outset. From the time the GEB ordered districts to support locked-out glass workers in Pittsburgh, dockers in Brockville, Ontario, and molders in Albany, New York, it faced an unending fusillade of appeals for exoneration. Many districts had failed to collect funds, others had expended them on local crises, and others simply ignored the board’s circulars. “Large numbers of Assemblies throughout the Order have failed to comply with the assistance fund law,” McClelland and the GEB moaned at the 1884 GA. Rather than abolish the fund, delegates, by a vote of seventy-six to ten, agreed to sweeping changes that gave “[e]ach District Assembly . . . exclusive control of the assistance fund collected from Locals within its jurisdiction.” If a district required the support of other assemblies during a major strike or lockout, the GEB was given authority to levy assessments, but all districts would automatically be exonerated from such assessments if their Assistance Fund contained less than $100.103 Although the 1884 law reflected the will of the majority and appeared to be

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a plausible, decentralized strike policy, in practice it proved equally useless. Those districts that imposed tight controls on the right to strike and dutifully collected the assistance fund, rather than being rewarded for their efforts, found themselves repeatedly asked to finance the struggles of the numerous districts that had failed to impose such controls or build up their war chests. The former complained vociferously about continuous GEB demands to assist the latter, the latter complained with equal vigor because the GEB often had to deny their requests for aid, and by the end of the year, few districts possessed the $100 minimum necessary to allow the GEB to issue assessments. “The Assistance Fund cannot be of any service to the Order under the law by which it is governed,” Powderly told delegates at the 1885 GA. “The only ones who collect it are those who will never call for it. . . . The ones who will not attend to the collection of it are the first to call for it.”104 Democratic rule, geographic parochialism, and the absence of bureaucratic controls, not Powderly’s supposed ideological disdain for work stoppages, precluded a viable strike policy. In the summer of 1884, for instance, Powderly visited striking miners in Ohio’s Hocking Valley and the coke region of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and he tried to secure GEB assistance even though these struggles could not strictly be defined as lockouts. “The affair at Connellsville was a strike, not a lock out [sic],” he admitted, “yet it was a case in which the men certainly had no alternative but strike.” Despite his sincere desire to help, both he and McClelland faced resistance from countless Knights, such as those in Aurora, Illinois, who refused to respond to ceaseless “distress calls” from headquarters. In his private missives, Powderly often blasted Knights who “stick their fingers in their ass” when called upon to assist their brothers and sisters, and he sometimes contemplated the need to revoke the charters of those assemblies failing to uphold Assistance Fund laws, but he fully recognized that members were poor and inexperienced: “You cannot get blood from a stone.”105 Despite justifiable concerns regarding strike policy, Powderly both reflected and encouraged rising strike sentiment in 1885 by an aggressive confrontation with his hometown’s leading industrialist. In 1880, William Scranton first toyed with the idea of starting a steel mill to compete directly with the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company; in 1883, his Scranton Steel Company produced its first steel rail. By May 1885, intense competition between the two firms induced Scranton to demand that his workers sign ironclad agreements. Although few were Knights, this obnoxious order generated widespread resistance in the Scranton mills. Powderly deftly tapped into this resistance by meeting with the mill workers in the woods at night and chartering two local assemblies (LAs 3824 and 3989). “We have at last made an inroad on W. W. Scranton’s forces and the prospects are that there will be an effort made to break them up,” he wrote Turner, “but I don’t think he will succeed this time.” As Scranton began stockpiling arms and ammunition, skilled workers struck, and Powderly sent a rousing circular to labor papers across the country about the struggle of the steel men to maintain their “liberties as citizens of a free country.” Within a week,

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Scranton, concerned about production losses, rescinded his demand for ironclads.106 Powderly’s quick and painless victory in Scranton, which revealed how prompt mobilization of previously unorganized workers could catch powerful employers by surprise, mirrored the Order’s greatest strike successes in these years. In no other industry did bold displays of militancy and solidarity shock both capital and the nation at large than railroading. Although long, drawn-out engagements with fully prepared employers, as in the Hocking Valley coal strike, invariably led to defeat, the spontaneous rising of railroad workers in the West caught Jay Gould, the most notorious “robber baron” of his day, with his pants down. Indeed, more than any other factor, the Knights’ ability to wrest victory from the almighty “Wizard of Wall Street” in 1885 accounted for the spectacular upsurge in membership in 1886. Gould controlled a string of railroads in the West comprising more than 10,000 miles of track. In addition to the Wabash, he ruled the impressive Southwest System, which included the Missouri Pacific, Texas Pacific, and several lesser lines. Although a small percentage of the skilled shopmen on these roads had already joined the Knights, Gould showed nothing but disdain for the Order, having defeated it easily during the telegraphers’ strike of 1883. But when he imposed a series of wage cuts on all his Western lines in February 1885, he provoked a spontaneous shopmen’s strike that began in Moberly, Missouri, and quickly spread to all his roads. Union Pacific employees, recent initiates to the Order themselves after a successful 1884 strike, offered financial assistance; Joseph Buchanan of Denver quickly organized dozens of assemblies; the press and public applauded this peaceful effort to resist substandard wages; and, most important, the railroad brotherhoods, representing the engineers, firemen, and brakemen, rallied to the cause and effectively blocked all movement of freight cars.107 On March 16, one week after the strike became general, a stunned Gould rescinded the wage cuts. In late April, Wabash Manager A. A. Talmadge signed an agreement with his workers promising that there would be no discrimination against strikers. Without any financial assistance from headquarters, Gould employees had bested their boss. Encouraged by Powderly and Union Pacific workers, they now set about building solid organizations. DA 93, representing Wabash workers, was chartered in June, and DA 101, with jurisdiction over those on the Southwest System, was erected in September. The prestige of the Order skyrocketed. By early May, one excited organizer claimed that “about all of the Rail Road men on the Gould system are members of the Knights of Labor,” and he invited Powderly to Sedalia, Missouri, for a celebratory picnic.108 Celebrations quickly turned to panic as Gould’s management team on the Wabash promptly violated its agreement and began discharging strike leaders and Knights, eventually dismissing 1,600 men in all. In mid-June, the Wabash closed its shops in Moberly, Missouri, which DA 93 officers considered a lockout against the Order. Like virtually all Knights in trouble, DA 93 immediately

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turned to Powderly for strike funds, arbitration services, morale-boosting lectures, and a quick fix to their dilemma. As would tens of thousands of neophyte Knights over the next two years, the Wabash men wired their GMW: “Come at once. Important business.”109 Powderly had a lot on his plate when the Wabash trouble erupted. Having just returned from a New England organizing trip, he was about to embark on another one in the Great Lakes region. In the two-week interim, he had equally urgent telegrams requesting his presence to assist locked-out Knights in Amsterdam, New York, and Bridgeton, New Jersey; Cannelburg miners demanded that he come to Indiana; he was preparing the GEB’s first official boycott (to assist locked-out Knights at the Dueber Watch Case company in Kentucky); the Order’s growth had led to renewed friction with the Catholic Church that required his attention; John Swinton was about to reveal the Home Club’s plan to capture the Order at the upcoming GA; open warfare between the Knights and Granite Cutters necessitated quick action to prevent a rupture with trade unions; Pennsylvania Democrats were about to nominate him for state treasurer against his will; and his supposed complicity in Henry Sharpe’s expulsion was generating potentially serious opposition to his administration. Fred Turner, equally overwhelmed, was the first to express what it was like to be a general officer during the upheaval, expected in a dozen places each week, and faced with so many emergencies he did not where to begin. “I have never been worked up so,” he scrawled. The multiplying crises “have completely unstrung my nerves.”110 Unable to offer his abitration skills for several weeks, Powderly and the board were also forced to deny DA 93’s request for strike funds. Not a single district at this time possessed the $100 minimum in its Assistance Fund to permit the legal issuance of an assessment, and DA 93 had to join the line behind fifty other impoverished locals and districts requesting nonexistent funds. “District Assemblies are not able to assist you from that fund,” the board apologized, “as they are below the limit, caused through local troubles that have been widespread the past year.” Moreover, DA 93 was not legally entitled to an assessment even if funds miraculously appeared, because the majority of its locals had not been in existence the required six months. Although DA 93 leaders were “perfectly astounded” by the board’s decision, Powderly and his cohorts could not obtain water from a bone dry well, nor could they simply dismiss strike rules agreed upon by an overwhelming GA majority.111 By late July, repeated requests from DA 93 forced Powderly to break his engagements in Minnesota and travel to Springfield, Illinois, where he endeavored to meet with Wabash Manager A. A. Talmadge who, of course, disdainfully refused to see him. At the same time, Knight leaders on the Wabash met with their counterparts on the Southwest System at Parsons, Kansas, and used this snub of their GMW to declare the necessity for a second strike against all the Gould lines. “Not satisfied with denying us every right as American citizens . . . it [Wabash management] has reached the apex of meanness by refusing our

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General Master Workman, T. V. Powderly, that courtesy due any gentleman and under any circumstance.”112 The prospects for another successful strike were not bright. Gould had been roused, U.S. marshals had already begun arresting Knights on spurious charges, Talmadge had unequivocally declared his refusal to employ Knights, and, most ominously, Peter Arthur ordered the members of his Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers to withdraw from the Order and offer it no assistance in its current or future difficulties. At this critical juncture, Powderly collapsed. Acute gastroenteritis forced his return to Scranton, and from his sickbed, he lectured Arthur on labor solidarity and arranged a GEB meeting for August 14 at St. Louis. Without their boss, GEB members traveled West and tried without success to arrange interviews with Talmadge of the Wabash and H. M. Hoxie of the Missouri Pacific. Strike-ready Knights from the Gould roads urged them to call a second walkout, but board members, with Powderly’s approval, pursued an even more aggressive course.113 On August 18, the GEB declared a strike of all Wabash workers and ordered all Knights on both the Southwest System and Union Pacific to cease repairing or handling “in any manner Wabash rolling stock until further orders.” If this boycott “is antagonized by the companies through any of its officials,” the board would at once “call out all Knights of Labor” on these roads. So sweeping was this strike threat that, if carried out, it “would have affected over 20,000 miles of railway and would have equalled the dimensions of the great railway strike of 1877.”114 Powderly certainly had no desire to initiate such a war, but the very fact that he used this remarkably aggressive strategem to force Gould to rethink his Wabash policies gives the lie to those who depict him as timid and vacillating. More important, the gambit worked. Gould at once agreed to meet Powderly and the board in New York on August 26. As Powderly and Gould talked, the nation’s toilers listened. “What a contrast!” exclaimed the Richmond Labor Herald. “Brother Powderly, as noble, liberal-hearted, fine looking a man as this country can boast of, standing face to face with that little insignificant-looking specimen . . . whose gold is his god.” As a result of this conference and subsequent ones in St. Louis with Talmadge, the Order and the Wabash agreed to an historic contract stating “[t]hat all employees locked out June 16, 1885, or came out in their support since that date, would be reinstated as fast as possible” and “[t]hat no official should discriminate against the Knights of Labor, or question the right of the employee to belong to our Order.”115 In a limited sense, the agreement solved nothing. Neither Gould nor the GEB were prepared for an epic confrontation, and both therefore accepted a truce based on status quo antebellum. Flagrant discrimination against Knights on the Wabash continued, and Gould began making preparations for a major strike that would crush his new foe once and for all. Within seven months, he engineered such a contest on his Southwest System. Powderly, meanwhile, continued to ricochet from one crisis to the next, and DAs 93 and 101, like so many sister

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districts, utterly failed to make provisions for a resumption of hostilities. When the latter ordered a general strike on the Southwest System in March 1886, it was $800 in debt.116 In a far more important sense, the apparent surrender of Jay Gould, the personification of the heartless and unconquerable capitalist, was a profound psychological catalyst for American workers across the nation. “No such victory has ever before been secured in this or any other country,” hailed the St. Louis Chronicle. The Knights at once took on an aura of invincibility, membership was regarded as the key to securing a better life, and years of pent-up bitterness found an organizational release. Exaggerated reports in newspapers inspired thousands not already rushing to jump on the bandwagon, and the JUL cataloged the staggering increase in new local assemblies: 129 in September, 172 in October, 156 in November, and 260 in December. By the summer of 1886, nearly three-quarters of a million men and women proudly boasted of their membership. “Never in all history,” John Swinton exclaimed, “has there been such a spectacle as the march of the Order of the Knights of Labor at the present time.”117 Powderly himself was proclaimed a demigod and credited with virtually unlimited powers. “Bro. Powderly is the greatest labor advocate now living,” cried the labor paper of Richmond. “Every Knight in Maine with one voice declare their unbounded confidence in Brother Powderly,” hailed the labor organ in that state. According to the Toledo labor weekly, his “keen perceptions, logical deductions,” and “wise course” were responsible for the “recent phenomenal growth of the Knights.” The New York Sun claimed that he and his GEB comrades were even more powerful than the president and his Cabinet: “They can stay the nimble touch of almost every telegraph operator; can shut up most of the mills and factories, and can disable the railroads. . . . They can array labor against capital, putting labor on the offensive or the defensive, for quiet and stubborn self-protection, or for angry, organized assault, as they will.”118 Although he recognized the foolishness of such commentary, Powderly did take justifiable pride in the Order’s expansion. “In 1878 the Order was unknown and belonged to a few,” he told enthusiastic delegates at the 1885 Hamilton GA. “To-day it is known and respected everywhere” and stood as “the most powerful association of workingmen in the world.” But even as he was reelected by acclamation, he watched delegates bicker among themselves and fail yet again to devise coherent policies regarding strike support, cooperation, relations with trade unions, and all other essentials. Decentralized democracy had stimulated tremendous growth, but it had yet to foster solidarity or unity of purpose, and Powderly could only speculate what the Order might accomplish “could I control and direct the wisdom of our members and hold them steady.” Above all, he feared that too many new recruits believed the hype about the Order’s invincibility and “would act as the setter when starting game for the first time— break and go too far; and get the buck shot in his own hide.”119 The events of the Great Upheaval would confirm his worst fears.

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NOTES 1. Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 16. 2. Ibid., 1883 Cincinnati GA, p. 528; 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 41. 3. TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859–1889 (Philadelphia, 1889), p. 635; Rockwood to TVP, September 17, 22, and 25; October 18, 21, and 27; November 4; December 9, 1883, and January 25, 1884; TVP to Rockwood, September 19 and 24, October 22, November 2, December 16, 1883, and January 29, 1884; TVP to Fred Turner, July 20, 1884, PP. Rockwood was a Civil War veteran who had been struck on the head during hand-to-hand combat; by 1889, Powderly learned that he had gone insane, which his wife believed was directly connected to this incident. TVP to Robert Porter, August 24, 1889, PP. 4. Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 468, 486–487; TVP to Rockwood, October 22; Griffiths to TVP, October 15; TVP to Layton, November 2; Layton to TVP, November 5, 1883, PP. Both Powderly and Layton were convinced that all charges of financial irregularities were specious. 5. Layton to TVP, September 14, 21, 26, October 6, 1883; Bengough to TVP, September 14, 1883; James Campbell to TVP, January 26, 1884; Rockwood to TVP, September 17, 1883 and January 25, 1884; Powderly to Rockwood, September 19, 1883, PP. 6. Turner to TVP, September 23; Rockwood to TVP, October 21; TVP to Rockwood, November 2; TVP to Layton, November 2, 1883, PP. 7. TVP to Turner, no date (ca. September 21), October 19, and November 5; Turner to TVP, September 23 and October 18; “Expenses of G.M.W. for October 1883”; TVP to Rockwood, November 2, 1883, PP. Powderly and Taylor became well acquainted and developed a measure of affection for each other, even though the latter remained a loyal Home Club lieutenant and therefore Powderly’s opponent. “You understand me,” Powderly confided to Taylor, “but the other members of 49 do not, and I fear never will.” Taylor to “Dear Terry,” December 1; TVP to “Dear Harry,” December 4, 1885, PP. 8. Rockwood to TVP, November 8; Turner to TVP, November 5, 6, 8, and 22; TVP to Turner, November 5 and 7, 1883, PP. 9. Turner to TVP, November 8 and December 26, 1883, January 8, 21, 24, February 21, 1884; TVP to Turner, December 6, 1883, January 4 and 22, February 21, 1884; Francis Egan to TVP, December 19, 1883, January 2, 1884; TVP to Egan, February 21, 1884; TVP to McClelland, December 26, 1883, January 2, 1884; McClelland to TVP, January 4, 1884, PP. 10. TVP to Layton, October 3; TVP to Henry Sharpe, December 9, 1883, PP. The power shift was also reflected in the decision to make the GEB secretary a full-time post with an appropriate salary; both that officer and the GS were the highest paid Knights at $1,200 a year. Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 418, 514–515. 11. See, for example, TVP to Turner, November 10; TVP to Layton, November 2, 1883, PP. 12. TVP to John Goddard, November 1, 1883; TVP to McClelland, March 21, 1884; TVP to C. S. Byrkit, October 23, 1883, PP. 13. TVP to Layton, August 6, 1883, PP; Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 418, 528; 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 578, 583, 796. 14. Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 578, 717.

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15. TVP to McClelland, October 12, 1883; McClelland to TVP, October 9, 1883, July 24, 1884, and July 7, 1885, PP. 16. Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895. (New York, 1929), pp. 195–196; TVP, Thirty Years, p. 442; GEB “to the Order wherever found,” October 8, 1883, PP. 17. Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 432, 477–478, 500, 504; John R. Commons, et al., History of Labour in the United States (New York, 1918), vol. 2, p. 372; Edward James, “American Labor and Political Action, 1865–1896,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954, pp. 215–217. 18. GEB “to the Order wherever found,” October 8; Isaac Cline, James Campbell, and F. M. Gessner to “Dear Sir and Brother,” November 19, 1883, PP. 19. Layton to TVP, October 11 and 28; C. S. Byrkit to TVP, October 19; Sandford Kirkpatrick to TVP, October 28; Isaac Cline, James Campbell, and F. M. Gessner to “Dear Sir and Brother,” November 19, 1883, PP; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 656–670. 20. TVP to Sandford Kirkpatrick, November 5; F. M. Gessner to TVP, September 10; TVP to Gessner, September 13; James Campbell to TVP, September 13 and October 21; TVP to Campbell, September 23 and October 23, 1883, PP. 21. TVP to James Campbell, October 23, 1883, PP. 22. Isaac Cline, James Campbell, and F. M. Gessner to “Dear Sir and Brother,” November 19, 1883; F. M. Gessner and A. G. Denny, “Financial Statement of receipt from assessments and all sources,” December 15, 1883; “Report of the Wage Committee of L.A. 300,” December 18, 1883; Gessner to TVP, December 7, 1883; TVP to Gessner, December 10, 1883; Frank Foster to TVP, December 26, 1883; TVP to Campbell, December 26, 1883; TVP to Turner, January 10, 1884; A. E. Ford to TVP, March 4, 1884; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 620, 671; Turner to TVP, January 30, 1884, PP. 23. John McClelland, “to workingmen wherever found,” November 10, 1883; Turner to TVP, January 27 and 31, 1884; McClelland to TVP, January 30, 1884; James Campbell to TVP, April 4, 1888; TVP to J. W. Adams, February 7, 1884; PP; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 622–623. 24. Scranton Sunday News, December 23, 1883; Scranton Republican, January 30, 1884; TVP to Turner, April 7, 1884. On his maneuvering to keep the post, see TVP to John Devanny, January 23; TVP to Patrick Corcoran, January 24; TVP to Peter Creter and John O’Rourke, January 25; TVP to “the citizens of 3rd ward,” January 26, 1884, PP. On TVP’s outstanding legacy as Scranton’s mayor, which included reducing the city’s debt while dramatically expanding public services, maintaining labor peace and encouraging capital investment, and failed efforts to establish cooperative factories and rewrite tax laws to incorporate Henry George’s distinction between speculative and improved property, see Vincent Falzone, Terence V. Powderly: Middle Class Reformer (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978), chapter 3; J. P. Gallagher, “Scranton: Industry and Politics, 1835–1885,” Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1964, pp. 294–314. Years later, Powderly remained confident of his value to the city: “I made a good mayor, I’m sure of it.” Harry J. Carman, Henry David, and Paul N. Guthrie, eds., The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York, 1940), p. 91. 25. On his continuing desire for a congressional seat, see TVP to R. J. Davison, February 22; McClelland to TVP, April 9, 1884, PP.

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26. Edward James, “American Labor and Political Action, 1865–1896,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954, pp. 221–237. 27. Turner to TVP, January 24, 1884. On Anti-Monopoly editors who misquoted TVP, see TVP to Walter Shupe, July 24; TVP to C. C. Post, August 5, 1884. On complaints from Knights, see William Croasdale to TVP, October 5, 1883; Dan Frazier Tomson to TVP, January 12, 1884; George Blair to TVP, February 27 and March 5, 1884. On TVP’s support for Butler, see TVP to Turner, June 25; TVP to Richard Edwards, June 27, 1884, PP. 28. TVP “to the members of the Order wherever found,” June; TVP to Blair, March 1, 1884, PP. Turner commended his boss’s stance. “You are right Terry. You have a level head (not because it is bald) but because it contains common sense. . . . Tell Coffeen we cannot afford to enter into politics with three men and a boy. 1885 would see a skeleton organization.” Turner to TVP, June 24, 1884, PP. 29. TVP, “to the Order wherever found,” March 14, 1884, PP. Powderly later claimed that “over six thousand postal cards and letters went through the Congressional post office at Washington in one day in response to my call.” Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, P. 15. 30. On contract labor, see TVP to George Edmunds, January 14, 1885; Griffiths to TVP, March 23, 1885. On the BLS, see, among scores of others, James Hopkins to TVP, March 31, 1884; Martin Foran to TVP, March 13, 1884; TVP to Turner, June 16, 1884; Tom Barry to TVP, June 26, 1884; Henry George to TVP, August 3, 1885, PP; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 312–316. On Knight lobbies, see Proceedings, 1885 GA, p. 16; TVP to J. M. Jones, December 28, 1885, PP. 31. Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, p. 755; 1882 New York GA, p. 354; 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 490–491, 509–513. 32. Ibid., 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 437, 486, 509, 511, 513. 33. John Coggeshell to Richard Trevellick, January 23, 1884; Leavitt to TVP, February 5, 1884, PP; Proceedings, 1883 Cincinnati GA, pp. 490–491. 34. TVP to Felix Adler, January 20, 1884; Beaumont to TVP, November 22, 1882; circular, Ralph Beaumont to “Brothers,” November 23, 1882; TVP to Leavitt, February 23, 1880; Leavitt to TVP, December 20, 1883; TVP to John Sanderson, November 15, 1882, PP. 35. Sharpe to TVP, November 8, 1883; JUL, October 1883; Steve Leikin, “The Practical Utopians: Cooperation and the American Labor Movement, 1860–1890,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1992, pp. 171–172. 36. Sharpe to TVP, September 13 and November 8, 1883, PP; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 647–649. 37. Sharpe to TVP, September 13 and 24, October 19 and 25; Turner to TVP, November 13, 1883, PP. 38. Leavitt to TVP, December 20; Turner to TVP, November 13; Layton to TVP, November 5; TVP to McClelland and Sharpe, November 11, 1883, PP; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, p. 618. 39. Sharpe to TVP, November 12 and December 11, 1883, January 10, 1884; H. A. Coffeen to TVP, January 28, 1884, PP. 40. New York Herald, December 12, 1883; Mary Sharpe to TVP, October 27, 1884 and March 10, 1885; Henry Sharpe to TVP, January 10, 1884 and June 26, 1885, PP. 41. Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 644–645; Richard Griffiths to TVP, February 14; Sharpe to TVP, February 25, 1884, PP.

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42. TVP to McClelland, February 7, 1884. See also Turner’s comments on the back of Charles Odendahl to Turner, February 24; Griffiths to TVP, February 14; McClelland to TVP, January 25 and February 8, 1884, PP. 43. TVP to Sharpe, March 3; McClelland to TVP, March 6, 1884, PP. 44. See Turner’s comments on the back of Charles Odendahl to Turner, February 24, 1884. On the battle between DA 49 and LA 2022, see John Caville to TVP, October 9, 1883; TVP to Caville, October 15, 1883; Sharpe to TVP, September 15, 1884; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 617–618, 654, 681–682. On the trial, see E.C.C. Rejaunier to TVP, April 14, 1884; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 645–646. 45. Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 93. On the hat store, see Joseph Tammany, Will Crofut, William Fagan, and John Caville “To the Order Wherever Found,” March 5, 1885. On Solidarity Co-operation, see Horner, pp. 216–218; Edward Bemis, “Cooperation in the Middle States,” in Herbert B. Adams, ed., History of Cooperation in the United States (Baltimore, 1888), vol. 6, pp. 162–165. 46. Van Horn to TVP, February 23, 1884, PP; Horner, “Producers’ Co-operatives,” p. 195; Amos G. Warner, “Three Phases of Cooperation in the West,” in Adams, ed., History of Cooperation, vol. 6, p. 411. 47. Van Horn to TVP, February 23, 1884, PP; Ware, The Labor Movement, pp. 329– 331. 48. McClelland to TVP, February 19, 1884; Sharpe to Turner, November 7, 1883; Turner to TVP, November 9, 1883; TVP to Turner, November 10, 1883 (two letters), PP; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 679–680. 49. McClelland to TVP, February 19 and March 5, 1884; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 679–680. 50. GEB, “To the Order,” March 3, 1884, PP. 51. McClelland to TVP, March 19; TVP to McClelland, March 21, 1884, PP. On the window glass cooperatives, see Horner, “Producers’ Co-operatives,” pp. 114–119. 52. Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 628, 649–650. 53. McClelland to TVP, April 9, 1884; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 633– 634. 54. GEB, “to the Order wherever found,” May 28, 1884; JUL, July 10, 1884; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, p. 639. 55. The best summaries of the Guild plan can be found in the JUL, June 10, 1884 and Proceedings, 1884 GA, pp. 599–610. See also Sharpe’s articles in the JUL, June 25, 1884 and August 25, 1884. For an insightful discussion by an historian, see Leikin, “The Practical Utopians,” pp. 175 ff. 56. On the support of Samuel and Hinton, see JUL, July 25, 1884; for a full list of Guild supporters, see Sharpe to TVP, October 1, 1884, and H. M. Foltz to TVP, June 24, 1885, PP. 57. Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, p. 755. 58. Sharpe to TVP, September 10 and November 19, 1884; Sharpe to Turner, February 27, 1885; Rockwood to TVP, March 15, 1885; Tom Barry to TVP, June 15 and 23, 1885, PP. 59. Turner to the president of the Cooperative Guild, January 3; TVP to Rockwood, March 19, 1885. See also Turner to TVP, January 9; TVP to Sharpe, January 13; Sharpe to Turner, February 27, 1885, PP. 60. On TVP’s effort to save Sharpe, see Sharpe to TVP, September 15 and 20; TVP to Sharpe, September 18 and 24, 1884; TVP to “the Judge of LA 2022,” April 9; TVP

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to John Caville, June 9, 1885. On Sharpe’s expulsion, see Mary Sharpe to TVP, March 10 and April 3; TVP to Mary Sharpe, March 13; Tom Barry to TVP, June 15; TVP to Barry, June 18; Sharpe to TVP, June 9 and 19, 1885. On accusations against TVP and Turner after the expulsion, see Turner to TVP, June 23; TVP to Turner, June 24 and 26, August 11; H. M. Foltz to TVP, June 24; Rockwood, et al., “To the Officers and Members of the Co-operative Guild,” June 24; Sharpe to TVP, June 25, 26, and 27, July 1 and 8, 1885, PP. 61. Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 625–642; TVP and Turner “to the Order wherever found,” October 15, 1884, PP. 62. See, among numerous others, Thomas Kelly and Frederick Marrilow to TVP, October 25; John Donovan to TVP, October 31; William Sally to TVP, November 10; M. T. LaHatte to TVP, November 11; Ira Aylsworth (the RS of DA 41) to TVP, November 27, 1884, PP. 63. Turner to TVP, November 21, 1885; TVP to Turner, April 24, 1885, PP. See also Turner’s reports to TVP, November 1, 5, 6, 21, 1884, February 4, 6, 16, March 6, 1885, PP. 64. TVP and Turner, “to the Order wherever found,” June 1; Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, pp. 36–38, 92, 145–147. 65. Haskell to Joseph Labadie and August Spies, September 1, 1883, quoted in Chester Destler, American Radicalism, 1865–1901 (New York, 1946), pp. 83–100. On Haskell, see David, History of Haymarket, pp. 147–148; Buchanan, Story of a Labor Agitator, pp. 264–273; Commons, et al., History of Labour, vol. 2, pp. 298–299; Destler, American Radicalism, pp. 79–80. 66. The quotes are from G. H. McCallum (DA 53 RS) to TVP, May 6, 1883; Peter Bell (MW of LA 1390) to TVP, August 30, 1883; Turner to TVP, January 3, 1885, PP. For the full story, see the dozens of letters in the PP between October 1882 and March 1884 from, among others, John Payne, Peter Bell, J. N. Kussell, G. H. McCallum, Calvin Ewing, Charles Moore, and Joseph Lottritz. Ironically, Haskell and his followers saw themselves as allies of the anarchist leaders of the Home Club in these fights, but by 1886, as we shall see, it served their purposes to rant about the evils of the Club. 67. Thomas Hagerty, Robert Wilson, and Charles Burgman to TVP, August 18, 1886, PP. 68. A good discussion of this tract can be found in Gene Marlatt, “Joseph R. Buchanan: Spokesman for Labor during the Populist and Progressive Eras,” Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1975, chapter 5. Coauthor Robert Wilson was one of the men who later warned Powderly about the designs of the Red International. 69. Campbell to TVP, December 1, 1884; John Bulman to TVP, December 5, 1884; George Hess to TVP, December 22, 1884; O’Donoghue to TVP, December 8, 1884; Turner to TVP, January 3 and 9, 1885, PP. 70. TVP to J. M. Bannon, November 19; TVP to Henry Keyes, October 1, 1884, PP. On Buchanan and dynamite, see Marlatt, “Joseph R. Buchanan,” pp. 166–168; Joseph Buchanan, The Story of a Labor Agitator (New York, 1903), pp. 67–68. 71. McClelland to TVP, July 7, 1884, PP. DA 49’s jurisdictional fights can be traced through countless letters in the PP. For a taste of the trouble, see, Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 617–618, 653–654. 72. McClelland to TVP, July 7; TVP to Homer McGaw, August 15; TVP to Turner, July 20, 1884, PP. 73. M. C. Keefe to TVP, July 28, August 4 and 12; McClelland to TVP, July 7;

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Turner to TVP, August 15, 1884; see also Turner to TVP, July 12, 18, and 22, 1884, PP. 74. Litchman to TVP, July 6; TVP “To the Members of the Executive Board of the K. of L.,” July 7; TVP to Turner, July 7; Turner to TVP, July 8, 1885, PP. 75. Labadie to TVP, August 27 and September 17, 1884; Buchanan to TVP, July 14, 1885, PP. 76. TVP to E. Stevens, February 29; TVP to Turner, April 7; Turner to TVP, April 6, 1884, PP. 77. JUL, September 25; TVP to “Dear Sir and Brother,” May 14; TVP to John Caldwell, February 28, 1884, PP. 78. Tour dates are gleaned from numerous letters; TVP to “Dear Sir and Brother,” May 14, 1884; TVP to Griffiths, December 5, 1883; TVP to J. S. Ryan, March 17, 1884, PP. 79. Kansas City Daily Sun & Globe, November 16, 1885; Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, pp. 7–8. 80. TVP to Rockwood, October 22, 1883; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 580, 735; TVP to Turner, October 27, 1884, PP. 81. Melton McLaurin, The Knights of Labor in the South (Westport, Conn., 1978), pp. 43–46; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 790–792, 821–834; Scranton Truth, January 15, 1885. 82. Kenneth Kann, “The Knights of Labor and the Southern Black Worker,” Labor History 18 (1977): 49–70; Frederick Meyers, “The Knights of Labor in the South,” Southern Economic Journal 6 (April 1940): 479–487; Sidney Kessler, “The Organization of Negroes in the Knights of Labor,” Journal of Negro History 37 (July 1952): 228–276. On the Agricultural Wheel, see Dan Frazier Tomson to TVP, September 26, 1884, PP. 83. Charles Miller to TVP, December 20, 1884, PP. For surveys of Powderly’s commitment to racial equality, see Kessler, “Negroes in the Knights,” pp. 248–250; Sister W. Marie Turnbach, “The Attitudes of Terence Vincent Powderly toward Minority Groups, 1879–1893,” M.A. thesis, Catholic University of America, 1956; and TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859–1889 (Philadelphia, 1889), pp. 651–662. Powderly’s appeal for toleration did not include the Chinese. As with most Knights, he exhibited a virulent and irrational antipathy toward Chinese immigrants. See Nicholas Somma, “The Knights of Labor and Chinese Immigration,” M.A. thesis, Catholic University of America, 1952. 84. Stephens to M. F. Moran, February 2, 1979; TVP, Path I Trod, p. 11; TVP to Brother Hughes, March 15, 1880; William Wright to TVP, September 11, 1880; TVP to Wright, September 19, 1880; S. T. Nielsen to TVP, October 1, 1883; TVP to Nielsen, October 9, 1883, PP. When quarry owners in Joliet, Illinois, threatened to break a Knight strike by importing black scabs from the South, Powderly urged the district organizer to meet the African-Americans at the station “and head them off by having them organized.” P. G. Somers to TVP, April 12; TVP to Somers, April 16, 1882, PP. 85. TVP to Turner, January 8; TVP to “Dear Sir and Brother,” January 6; John Kammerer to TVP, January 8; Homer McGaw to TVP, January 16, 1885, PP. On his speeches before the state legislatures, see JUL, March 25, Pittsburgh Labor Herald, April 4, and Nashville Daily American, February 1, 1885. 86. Hannah Powderly to TVP, January 28 (two letters), February 1 and 11; Thomas Avery to TVP, February 13; George Gordon to TVP, February 14; Turner to TVP, February 14, 1885, PP.

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87. TVP, Diary, January 26; Richmond Dispatch, January 27, 1885. See the excellent discussion of Powderly’s visit to Richmond in Peter Rachleff, Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890 (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 118–120. 88. Scranton Truth, February 6; Richmond Dispatch, January 27, 1885. 89. Mullen to TVP, March 7, 1885, PP; Rachleff, Black Labor, pp. 119–123. 90. Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, pp. 28–30; Mullen to TVP, November 26, 1885, PP. 91. John Swinton’s Paper, October 25, 1885, quoted in Rachleff, Black Labor, p. 138; Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 27. 92. See the accounts in the Atlanta Constitution, January 30; Nashville Daily American, February 1; Knoxville Daily Chronicle, February 7, New Orleans Daily Picayune, February 19, New Orleans Daily City Item, February 19, 1885, and the praise from Southern Knights in John Ray to TVP, March 15 and 24; Dan Frazier Tomson to TVP, March 24, 1885, PP. See also TVP’s own accounts in Scranton Truth, February 6, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 25, 26, 28, March 3, 4, 7, 9, 17, 1885. 93. TVP to “My Dear Friends,” March 4; TVP to Turner, March 5, 6, and 11; Turner to TVP, March 7; TVP to John Coggeshell, June 11; Fickenscher to Charles Simmerman, June 18, 1885, PP. G. W. Fickenscher, a Bavarian immigrant who settled in Scranton around 1850, married Hannah’s aunt. Emma was their only child. When Emma was still quite young, her mother ran off to California and soon after her father headed to Nebraska to try his hand at farming. Emma remained in Scranton and was raised by the Devers. After 1876, she became a fixture in Powderly’s closely knit kin group, which included both his family and that of his wife. See TVP, Diary, August 9 and September 20, 1876, October 23, 1879; TVP to Christopher Grattan, October 18, 1880; and especially TVP to Charles Fickenscher, September 9, 1890, PP. In 1919, eighteen years after Hannah’s death, Powderly and Fickenscher married. 94. TVP to Turner, June 13; TVP to Tom Barry, June 18; J. P. McGaughey to TVP, June 30; J. F. Cronin to TVP, July 12; JUL, August 10, Aurora Evening Post, July 16; Chicago Evening Mail, July 18; Minneapolis Daily Globe, July 20 and 24; Scranton Evening Times, July 31; Toledo News, August 2, 1885. 95. TVP to Elizabeth Bryant, February 8, 1883, PP; 1890 Denver GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 14. 96. Joseph Powderly to TVP, September 1, 1881; Annie Judge to TVP, October 18, 1881; Ellen Ford to TVP, August 27, 1881; TVP to Maggie O’Hara, May 16, 1882, PP. 97. Ellen Ford to TVP, August 27, September 24, and October 3, 1881; TVP to Ellen Ford, September 28 and October 5, 1881, PP. 98. The fireside quote is from Wheeling Register, May 9, 1882. Stirling, MW of Philadelphia shoemakers’ LA 1684, was the first woman to attend a GA (1883). At the 1885 GA, Powderly not only appointed her to the committee on women’s work but also named her general venerable sage, an honorary post. See Turner to TVP, February 7, 1884; TVP to Stirling, February 7, 1884; Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 167. For “embracing all branches,” see TVP to John Ross, March 28, 1882. Maggie O’Hara was the RS of of LA 1744, an all-female LA of cigarette factory workers in Rochester. See O’Hara to TVP, April 24; TVP to Maggie O’Hara, May 16, 1882, PP. 99. TVP to William Sally, November 30, 1884, PP. For an insightful discussion of female Knights and the challenge they posed to traditional notions of women’s sphere, see Susan Levine, Labor’s True Woman: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor

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Reform in the Gilded Age (Philadelphia, 1984). See also Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989), pp. 161–163. 100. John Schuttinger to TVP, September 14, 1883; TVP to Schuttinger, September 23, 1883; Harrison Mills to TVP, October 13, 1884; TVP to Mills, October 27, 1884 (quoted); on the subterfuge to identify three misogynists in Seymour, Indiana, see David Peacock to TVP, May 24, 1884; TVP to Peacock, May 28, 1884, PP. 101. A. B. Cannon to TVP, January 14, 1886. See also John Wall to TVP, July 14, 1884; TVP to Wall, August 2, 1884; TVP “to whom it may concern,” August 13, 1884, PP. 102. TVP to Elizabeth Bryant, February 8, 1883; TVP to Joseph Buchanan, August 13, 1886, PP. On his experiences with Stanton and Anthony, see TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 388–389. 103. Frank Foster and John McClelland, “to the Officers of D.A.s,” July 5, 1884, PP; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 652–653, 716, 756–758. 104. Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 24. Turner agreed. See ibid., p. 38. 105. J. H. Shank to TVP, July 22; TVP to Shank, July 30; TVP to Turner, February 21, 1884. On the Hocking Valley, see TVP to M. G. Thomas, February 7; James Donnell to TVP, July 1; TVP to Donnell, July 5, 1884. On Connellsville, see William Noble to TVP, June 15 and 24; TVP to Noble, June 20; TVP to McClelland, June 20; McClelland to TVP, June 24, 1884, PP. 106. Gallagher, “Scranton: Industry and Politics,” pp. 197–201; TVP to Joseph Buchanan, May 8; TVP to Turner, May 8; TVP, untitled circular, May 27, 1885, PP. Denver Labor Enquirer, May 28; Baltimore Labor Free Press, June 6; The Champion [St. Louis], June 6; Bay City [Michigan] Labor and Vindicator, June 1, 1885. 107. Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (New York, 1955), vol. 2, pp. 50–52; Commons, et al., History of Labour, vol. 2, pp. 367–368; Buchanan, Story, pp. 70–78, 141–142; New York Times, March 9 and 14, 1885. 108. Henry Thomas to TVP, May 6, 1885. Buchanan, Story, pp. 142–145; New York Times, March 16, 1885. “Agreement entered into by the Management of the Wabash . . . and Its Employes,” April 25; Charles Berry to TVP, May 19; Jerry Shaw to TVP, March 27; Buchanan to TVP, April 4 and 26; TVP to Buchanan, May 8 and June 18; Thomas Neasham, “A Plea for Federation,” June 5; J. N. Corbin to TVP, June 16; TVP to Corbin, June 24, 1885, PP. 109. J. T. Brown to TVP, June 21 and 22; William Yugers to TVP, June 11; Walter Jones to TVP, June 17; George Shedd to TVP, June 22, 1885, PP. 110. Turner to TVP, June 27, 1885, PP. For references to the troubles listed, see the letters and telegrams in the PP between May and July 1885. 111. TVP to Turner, June 21; TVP to George Shedd, June 25; J. F. Reynolds to Turner, June 23 and 30, July 2; Turner to Reynolds, July 3 and 27, 1885, PP. 112. J. T. Brown to TVP, June 30; Walter Jones to TVP, July 19; John Mummert to TVP, July 20; J. F. Reynolds to J. P. McGaughey, July 21; DA 93, “An Address to the Order of the Knights of Labor Everywhere,” August 1, 1885, PP. 113. TVP to Richard Griffiths, July 27; Griffiths to TVP, August 5 and 7; Fickenscher to Turner, August 5; TVP to Turner, August 11; TVP to Peter Arthur, August 17; Arthur to TVP, August 18, 1885, PP. For a jaundiced view of what took place at the GEB session, see Buchanan, Story, pp. 142–145, but for proof that Buchanan applauded the GEB’s actions throughout the Wabash trouble, see Denver Labor Enquirer, September 12, 1885.

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114. GEB, “to all whom it may concern,” August 18, 1885, PP; Commons, et al., History of Labour, vol. 2, p. 369. 115. Richmond Labor Herald, September 5, 1885; Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 91; A. L. Hopkins to TVP, August 28; TVP to Hopkins, August 28; TVP to Turner, August 28 and 29; Turner to TVP, August 29; TVP to Jay Gould, August 29; Gould to TVP, August 31, 1885, PP. St. Louis Evening Chronicle, September 4; New York Times, September 5 and 8; John Swinton’s Paper, September 13, 1885. See Powderly’s own account of his meetings with Talmadge in Scranton Truth, September 14, 1885. 116. On Wabash troubles after the September 3 agreement, see Jerry Shaw to TVP, September 10; Turner “to the Order wherever found,” September 18; Turner to TVP, September 19; TVP to Turner, September 19; TVP to Hayes, September 19; TVP and Turner, “Secret Circular,” September 22; C. M. Berry to TVP, September 23, 1885. On DA 101’s financial indebtedness in March 1886, see Hayes to TVP, April 26, 1886, PP. 117. St. Louis Chronicle, quoted in Ware, p. 144; Swinton quoted in Foner, vol. 2, p. 54; for LA figures see JUL and Howard Gitelman, “Attempts to Unify the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900,” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1960, p. 317. 118. Richmond Labor Herald, October 10, 1885; Toledo News, September 13; Lewiston [Maine] Labor Advocate, September 10; New York Sun, quoted in TVP, Thirty Years, p. 494. 119. Proceedings, 1885 Hamilton GA, pp. 6–7; TVP to Joseph Labadie, October 21; TVP to Samuel Leavitt, October 29, 1885, PP.

Chapter 5

The Great Upheaval: September 1885– September 1888 The Great Upheaval was one of the most powerful expressions of working-class resistance in American history, “one of those brief rare moments when people believed almost anything was possible.”1 Hundreds of thousands of working people from every conceivable background, many of them unskilled or semiskilled without previous labor movement experience, flocked to the Order’s banner with the expectation that they could alter existing social relations. They embraced its movement culture and, because of its decentralized structure, defined their own vision of Knighthood at the local level. Feelings of liberation gripped countless communities, and in many places, workers showed an amazing ability to overcome, at least momentarily, the barriers of skill, race, gender, ethnicity, and neighborhood loyalties that had kept them divided. In 1886 alone, there were three times as many strikes and strikers as there had been in any year between 1881 and 1884, and many engagements displayed the new tactics of practical solidarity—the sympathy strike and boycott.2 The upheaval made the Order the most significant labor movement of the nineteenth century, but it also destroyed it by stimulating an aggressive employer counteroffensive. Just as quickly as they had joined, the new recruits departed because they seldom translated their militancy into lasting victories. As strike defeats multiplied, the fragmenting impulses at the community level reasserted themselves, and the Order succumbed to ruinous internal factionalism. Although the upheaval represented the critical moment of class struggle in America, by 1887 it was clear that employers rather than workers had “won the class strug-

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gle.” The Order never recovered and, as a result, the American labor movement was diverted down an exceptionalist path.3 Although historians often blame Powderly for the Order’s poor performance in these years,4 many of these criticisms are without merit and obscure other factors that help account for the Order’s demise. As the architect of this decentralized and democratic house of labor, Powderly was the first to recognize that this structure was too fragile to withstand the relentless counteroffensive that effectively killed it within three years. The large and restive membership provided potential power only, and the impressive level of militancy was no substitute for unity of purpose, discipline within the ranks, the ability to identify and focus resources on key struggles, a measure of public support, and effective mechanisms to combat disruptive internal threats. Powderly endeavored to address these issues and impose more centralized control without destroying local autonomy, but local and district leaders at both 1886 GAs dismissed his proposals. As a result, by 1888 well-organized, highly disciplined, and soundly financed employer associations, often with the assistance of the state, had crushed a decentralized, undisciplined, impoverished, and fractured movement still struggling to define its goals and strategies through democratic means. One of the most peculiar and pervasive images of Powderly during the upheaval is that of the intrusive dilettante who imposed his will on flourishing locals and districts to the detriment of the cause. Once his final term as mayor of Scranton expired in February 1884, he found himself with plenty of time on his hands which, according to one scholar, led to his divisive and “constant interventions into local union affairs.” The increased “interference” of Powderly and the executive board, another has argued, was the most important and “disastrous” change in the Order in these years.5 In truth, Powderly and other board members had neither the time nor the desire to force themselves on self-sufficient locals and districts. From the outset of the upheaval, they were buried under an avalanche of desperate pleas for intervention from locals and districts incapable of handling their own affairs or resolving crises that arose within their jurisdictions. Rather than an arrogant and ill-informed intruder, Powderly was the harried fire marshal of the Knights, constantly asked to manage conflagrations that local leaders could not control. Beginning in November 1885, the upsurge of membership and strike activity imposed such a furious work routine and created such anxiety that both Powderly and Turner repeatedly questioned their sanity. “Instead of managing affairs,” Powderly’s part-time secretary observed at the end of that first tumultuous month, “the affairs are managing.” In addition to national emergencies and endless requests from subordinates for national support during localized crises, the two men had to keep on top of mundane administrative responsibilities, which increased spectacularly in both volume and intensity. There were numerous other critical tasks, such as mapping out the Order’s political strategy on the legislative and electoral fronts, maintaining positive public relations so that the Order’s growth did not unduly antagonize the press and public, coping with internal

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dissension that multiplied as quickly as the membership, negotiating with national trade unions that were also experiencing rebirth and often felt threatened by the potential power of the Knights, and revamping a strike and boycott policy ill-suited to a large and restive neophyte membership. All this and more had to be accomplished by Powderly, Turner, and an office staff “smaller than that of a medium-sized twentieth-century local union.”6 In November 1885 alone, Powderly found himself grappling with four largescale emergencies. First, friction between white and Chinese coal diggers at a Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, mine operated by the Union Pacific Railroad culminated in a September rampage by whites that left twenty-eight Chinese dead and scores injured. The GMW quickly had to assemble the facts, arrange an interview with Union Pacific President Charles Francis Adams in Boston, and squelch the western Knights’ desire to boycott all mines and railroads employing Chinese labor.7 Second, he was up to his eyes arranging the sale of the financially troubled Cannelburg coal mine, which required two trips to that state in November alone and was proving to be, in Powderly’s words, “our White Elephant.”8 Third, he was compelled to open negotiations concerning continuing discrimination against Knights on Jay Gould’s railroads in the West which, despite the successful settlement of the summer, would soon erupt in the greatest strike ever conducted by the Order.9 Fourth, he had to unravel vicious jurisdictional disputes between DA 49 and both the carpet weavers and Cigar Makers’ International Union, which took on national dimensions because the weavers had issued highly inflammatory circulars to locals across the country charging DA 49 with all manner of crimes.10 At the same time, Knights in numerous localities urgently demanded his presence when they were unable to solve crises on their own turf. Among scores of other pleas he received in late 1885, the leader of striking miners in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, begged him to come to Pittsburgh and convince the diggers that they should accept the operators’ offer, which was just one-half cent per ton less than the strike demand, rather than risk a battle to the finish.11 Railroad workers in St. Thomas, Ontario, contemplating strike action against the Michigan Central, demanded that Powderly visit the scene before a vote was taken.12 Ironton, Ohio, nail makers, who had been on strike since June 1884, again pleaded for Powderly to visit because “starvation is now stareing [sic] some of our members and familys in the face and winter is upon us.”13 Locked out cigarmakers in Cortland and Homer, New York, were “getting very anxious” for Powderly to visit, hoping that his mere presence might induce “the unfair manufacturers to see the light so that they might repent of what they had done.”14 In Cincinnati, local Knights were dogged by such ugly jurisdictional battles and leadership strife that they repeatedly cried for Powderly’s intervention.15 Knighthood in Troy, New York, was consumed by acrimony between its two districts; one charged the other with, among other things, organizing known scabs, and all parties urged Powderly to visit.16 Even routine administrative tasks became overwhelming and took on an air

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of crisis. Because Powderly and Turner spent much of their time either on the road or in continuous GEB session, they had less time to sort through the sackfuls of mail they received on a daily basis. Many letters, for instance, simply called for organizers’ commissions. Because commissions expired as a rule just after the GA (this year on November 1), new ones had to be obtained. Excited organizers and district officials claimed that Turner was acting too slowly, and they at once questioned both his skills and his integrity. “Not a single word for two months. What can be the matter?” asked a leading Arkansas Knight. “What in the name of God have I done to merit such treatment?” shrieked the RS of Iowa’s DA 28. “The delay is the fault of the Gen. Secretary,” a Massachusetts Knight lectured Powderly.17 Unwilling to wait, many organizers used their expired commissions, and friction erupted when Turner denied their requests for charters. The district organizer in Toronto nearly quit the Order after receiving a curt letter to this effect. Turner’s letter “was very different in tone to what you would have written,” a distraught D. J. O’Donoghue informed Powderly. Richard Trevellick and Richmond’s William Mullen joined the chorus of those questioning Turner, and Detroit’s Joseph Labadie articulated the feeling of many when he fumed about Turner’s apparent unwillingness to respond to his missives. “If he has not enough clerks why don’t he employ more? That is what I pay my per capita tax for.” And in the fever pitch of enthusiasm that characterized much of Powderly’s correspondence for the next two years, Labadie made a veiled threat: “[I]f it has come so that we can get no word from general officers I feel disposed to ask the reason in a more public manner.”18 The excitement of men like O’Donoghue and Labadie was to be expected. As early as November 1885, they could sense the drama unfolding in their respective cities. But because they viewed developments from a community perspective, they demonstrated little awareness that hundreds of communities were making similar demands at the same time, that national emergencies necessarily took precedence over administrative chores, or that the irregularly paid two cents per month per capita tax was insufficient to finance a bureaucracy capable of coping with the dramatic influx of new members. Turner had not been derelict; he and Powderly had been overwhelmed. By the end of November, Powderly predictably fell ill and was forced to bed under care of his physician. “I am not physically capable of performing the ever increasing duties,” he moaned. By the end of an even more hectic December, Powderly, fearing for his mental health, tendered his resignation as GMW. The multiplying crises “haunt me increasingly until some times I fear that reason will give way.”19 Fred Turner, undeniably thick skinned and tough, was also cracking under the strain. His wife and son had sailed to England on November 4, leaving him with few personal distractions until their return in late December. Overwork (he received over one thousand letters a week) and abuse, however, left him anxious. Nor could he always depend on his small corps of clerks. When he returned to his office in late November, for instance, he found that the

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four clerks responsible for publishing the JUL had shirked their duties, and he had no choice but to fire them. In late December, the Order’s growth necessitated establishing a new headquarters, and Turner had to arrange the movement of all furniture and supplies from the rented house at 202 Spruce Street to one at 500 Locust Street. Even then, unthinking members were quick to charge him with squandering tax money on opulent surroundings. One week before Powderly tried to resign, Turner complained of nervousness resulting from strain and “the unmerciful lashings I am getting from all quarters.” “My mind is so upset that I find it impossible to sleep,” he confessed to Powderly, feebly joking that “Mrs. Turner arrived home Tuesday last and even that did not produce sleep.”20 Aside from their health, one of the most troubling aspects of growth was the inexperience of new recruits, many of whom had never been active in a labor society. They plagued Powderly with ridiculously simple questions and ludicrous requests. When it came to strikes and boycotts, members rarely looked to Powderly before trouble occurred, but when trivial problems cropped up he was invariably the first to be contacted. After several items were stolen from the sanctuary in Bolivar, New York, for instance, the RS immediately wrote to ask, “[W]hat course should we take?” When Jonathan Hinshaw of Jackson, Michigan, called RS Ellen Hunt “the biggest liar in town,” she contacted Powderly and demanded a GEB investigation. From Providence came the urgent query: “Is the hand raising in the entering sign of the D.A. horizontally or perpendicularly?”21 Ignorance was so pervasive that Powderly had to issue a circular informing the membership that John Swinton, New York’s famous labor reporter, was not the GMW nor even a Knight and thus letters on constitutional matters should not be addressed to him. “I am drove to distraction with senseless questions,” Powderly grumbled.22 As a proponent of self-directed democratic action at the community level, he was deeply distressed by the apparent unwillingness of new recruits to find their own solutions to petty problems, to read the constitution, and to follow proper procedure. Nor was Powderly the only major player to express concern about the rawness of new recruits. Experienced organizers and district leaders, although enthusiastic about membership increases, were also disturbed by the petty bickering and the apparent inability of new assemblies to manage their own affairs. “The growth is amence but the ignorance is pittyable [sic],” lamented the great vagabond Richard Trevellick, who did so much to spur organizing among railroad workers in the West. “Organization progresses here at any extraordinary rate,” chirped Toronto’s leading Knight, D. J. O’Donoghue. “I wish to Providence I could say our education was increasing in a like ratio, but I am debarred that privilege.” “I recognize new danger in the flocking into our Order of men who have hitherto given little or no thought to the Labor problem,” wrote John O’Keefe, MW of Providence’s DA 99.23 By February 1886, so many locals and districts required assistance that the GEB was forced to sit continuously for six weeks, first at the Astor House in New York and then at Bingham House in Philadelphia. A sense of Powderly’s

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predicament can be gleaned by examining the appeals sent to him on just the first two days of this session. The vast majority of supplicants not only required national financing of their emergencies, but they also desired, and often demanded, that Powderly return with them to gain firsthand knowledge of the facts. Each case was heart-wrenching, each pivotal to the assemblies involved, but Powderly scarcely had time to listen to all the complaints let alone intervene and finance each one. In those two days alone, Powderly reckoned with poorly managed strikes, critical lockouts affecting as many as 3,000 workers, complex boycotts, friction with trade unions, and crippling jurisdictional strife involving Troy stove mounters; workers on the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad; female shoe operatives in Lynn, Massachusetts; textile operatives in Lewiston, Maine; cigarmakers and wagon makers in Homer, New York; farm implement factory workers in Toronto; knitters in Amsterdam, New York; St. Louis typographical workers; New York City’s railroad employees; Danville, Pennsylvania, steel workers; Little Rock railroad workers; wire makers in Des Moines; coal miners in Earlington, Kentucky; machinery workers in Springfield, Ohio; and glove makers at Gloversville, New York.24 From Montreal came the disturbing news that the Catholic Church was about to condemn the Order officially, and from Chicago came urgent appeals for board intervention in two conflicts, one in which enthusiastic strikers had committed murder, and the other an ominoussounding lockout at McCormick Harvester Works.25 Dan Frazier Tomson, leader of the Arkansas Knights, had spoken to the board on the second day of the session. He had come to complain about ruinous internal disputes that had erupted when rapidly expanding districts of railroad workers claimed jurisdiction over workers already enrolled in mixed districts, but he came away disappointed because the GEB had neither the time nor the resources to address his problem. The workload of the officers, the variety of seemingly insoluble problems they faced, the suffering that resulted from strike action undertaken in haste, and the sense that employers were gearing up for class war—all placed his own problems in perspective and gave him insight into the workings of the national office. He learned a valuable lesson, “the principal of which is that we must . . . depend upon ourselves except it be in very great extremes.”26 Unlike Tomson, most Knights were oblivious to the lack of national resources and the demands on national officers, even though Powderly often reminded them in the JUL. After four straight weeks spent listening to innumerable appeals, the board, on March 3, issued a remarkable circular calling for a suspension of all organizing activity for forty days. Although the administration could just about keep up with requests for new charters, which were now rolling in at the rate of fifty per day, board members feared for the organization’s future because new assemblies, “not being properly instructed, are engaging in strikes and boycotts, in many cases as soon as they are organized.” Such a state of affairs not only led to avoidable lockouts and blacklistings, but was already instilling hatred of

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the Order from employers and the public at large. “This rapid growth is not, cannot be, healthy,” the board declared, and it called on organizers to devote themselves to providing proper instruction to assemblies already chartered.27 Although the March 3 circular is invariably depicted as an example of Powderly’s ideological opposition to the admittance of strikers,28 the decision to halt further organizing was a sound bureaucratic move applauded by leading Knights at the district level who were themselves incapacitated by administrative responsibilities. Indeed, the idea to cease organizing came not from Powderly but George McNeill of Boston’s DA 30, who was so busy instructing new members and coordinating support for avoidable lockouts against shoe workers and textile operatives that he did not have time to begin his duties as the Order’s legislative representative in Washington, D.C. After successfully completing a strike of street car workers, the three leading Toronto Knights were “delighted at that order . . . and regret the time is not longer even.” The principal organizer for Iowa’s DA 28 applauded Powderly’s move, as did the national organizer for the harness, saddle, and collar makers. Detroit’s Joseph Labadie, as aggressive as anyone within the Order, likewise considered the decision “wise.” The present climate required the education of those already in the Order, Labadie wrote, and not further expansion.29 Because this was the GEB’s first direct order to organizers hitherto beholden only to their locals and districts, a great number of organizers, predictably and immediately, requested dispensations because conditions in their locales were supposedly unique. “The condition of things on the Pacific coast is different from things in the East,” lectured the MW of San Francisco’s DA 53 in a typical request. By March 15, nearly 200 organizers had made similar appeals. Even in their requests many organizers displayed an ignorance of policy and proper procedure, highlighting the problems created by allowing organizers with only the dimmest understanding of Knighthood to establish new locals. When he learned that many organizers were still working despite the ban, Powderly sighed that “if the men who teach will not obey their superior officers, then it cannot be expected that those whom they teach will do so.” Many organizers continued to work and merely held back their charter applications until the moratorium had ended. This helps account for the staggering number of LAs (690) created in the last two weeks of April 1886.30 The GEB session dragged on for two weeks after the March 3 circular. Powderly so sorely missed his wife that he questioned whether his secretary neglected to relay her missives. “You said Hannah was going to write,” he whimpered. By mid-March the tempers of the bedraggled board members were wearing thin. No one dared criticize Turner; he was so “over crowded with work” that he was “nearly wild.” Powderly repeatedly complained of throat and respiratory difficulties, which were exacerbated by Barry and Bailey’s chain smoking, and a minor feud developed until both men finally agreed to forgo their habit in the presence of their boss. The only thing that kept Powderly going was the thought of returning to Scranton, where he could be with his wife and

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oversee the construction of a new house on a lot he had purchased the previous year.31 The marathon session ended only when members were forced to split up so they could concentrate on two new and especially pressing emergencies. On March 10, Knights employed by Jay Gould’s Southwest System struck in violation of the agreement signed by Gould and Powderly in September 1885. And on March 14, Adolph Strasser of the CMIU, who had been rounding up allies for weeks, declared a trade unionist war against the Knights. Despite hundreds of other critical problems, GEB members Barry, Bailey, and Hayes spent ten days in New York taking testimony relating to the various charges made by Strasser, while Powderly, without even the chance to stop off in Scranton, headed to Kansas City to take charge of the railroad strike. He left instructions with his secretary not to divulge his whereabouts, but on his arrival were dozens of telegrams, including urgent requests to visit Detroit, Syracuse, New Haven, and St. Louis, where Knights apparently could not manage affairs without the GMW.32 The question of whether Powderly’s intervention was an unwarranted and unhealthy imposition on subordinate bodies or the response to desperate pleas by them is central to any appreciation of the possibilities of the upheaval. The former suggests that the spirit of resistance, tempered only by the self-imposed discipline of the local Knight assembly, had the potential to establish lasting solidarity and effectively combat corporate capital. The latter implies that the spirit of resistance, although the source of the Order’s strength, was by itself insufficient for either purpose. Without adequate controls, militancy too often lapsed into squabbles within and between subordinate bodies or led to doomed confrontations with better prepared and equally militant corporations. Powderly’s “betrayal” of the Southwest strikers is now standard fare for labor history texts,33 but events show that this strike, despite being the most important thus far conducted by the Order, was all but lost even before Powderly arrived in Kansas City. Jay Gould, the “Wizard of Wall Street,” easily outwitted Powderly, Martin Irons, the GEB, a congressional investigating committee, and the nation’s press as he reassumed unilateral control over labor relations in his extensive railroad operations in the West. For his part, Powderly did his best to sustain the men morally and financially until he realized the extent of Gould’s subterfuge and until blood was spilled and the troops were called in, but by then the Order had suffered a public relations setback from which it never recovered. The Gould-controlled Southwest System was an impressive amalgam of railroads (including the Missouri Pacific, Texas Pacific, Hannibal and St. Joseph, and several lesser lines) comprising more than 4,000 miles of track (primarily in Texas, Missouri, and Kansas) and employing some 27,000 workers, more than half of whom were unskilled. The 1885 agreement between Powderly and Gould, although symbolically significant for the entire labor movement, in no way entailed recognition of the Order as bargaining agent. But it did raise hopes that Gould could be forced to concede fair wages to everyone working for the

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system. According to the only detailed account of this struggle, however, Gould had merely accepted this “Fabian failure” in 1885 “that he might triumph the more completely” in 1886. “He had no intention of dividing control of his Empire with anyone . . . least of all, a group of laborers.”34 He set about precipitating a conflict to rid himself of the nuisance of a feisty work force which, in the fevered climate of the upheaval, proved all too easy. Gould and H. M. Hoxie, the manager of his railroad operations, had been goading workers to strike since the settlement of the previous year. Discrimination against Knights continued, compensation for overtime was not paid, only skilled workers saw their wages restored to prestrike levels, and semiskilled bridgemen, sectionmen, and yardmen were continually harassed by arbitrary dismissals and outrageous managerial decisions. Knights’ grievance committees were repeatedly denied access to management, who refused to acknowledge them as employee representatives.35 It was painfully clear to Martin Irons, a fifty-three-year-old Scotsman who headed DA 101, that Gould was trying to provoke a strike. “The strike of ’86 was planned and precipitated by the railroad corporations,” explained E. T. Behrens, Irons’s closest friend, “and Martin Irons . . . tried to dissuade the men from falling into the trap set by their masters.”36 Yet Irons himself was a victim of the bizarre chain of events that gave Gould the battle he wanted. On February 18, the Texas Pacific discharged Charles Hall, the MW of a Marshall, Texas, local, ostensibly for attending a meeting of DA 101 without permission. Rather than take up a collection to sustain their brother, Irons demanded Hall’s reinstatement.37 After weeks of frustration, Irons called a strike on March 6 for workers on the Texas Pacific only. At the same time, he conducted a vote among all locals attached to DA 101 to decide whether the strike should extend across the entire Southwest system. A majority of locals voted against such action, but between March 6 and March 10, Irons was held at gunpoint at a St. Louis hotel and released only when he ordered all employees of the Southwest System to lay down their tools. Whether the gunman was one of Gould’s many labor spies or a militant member of DA 101’s executive board (or both) remains unclear, but this was certainly an inauspicious start to such a critical battle.38 By the time Powderly arrived at Kansas City for a March 18 meeting of the five principal districts (DAs 17, 78, 82, 93, 101, and 107) in the region, the weakness of the strikers’ position was obvious. First, DA 101 had neglected to notify Powderly before the strike call, and he first learned about it in the papers. This was standard practice in the Order, but in this instance, it undermined the possibility of negotiation because Powderly had agreed in 1885 to arbitrate all differences with Gould. Hoxie thus refused to meet with Powderly as a representative of the Knights, and Gould scored valuable public relations points by claiming that Knights were untrustworthy. Second, Gould had successfully divided the workforce in the months before the strike by offering preferential treatment to the skilled engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors, and now

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these men, so vital to victory in 1885, refused to join the Knights’ struggle and remained at work. For those such as Denver’s Joseph Buchanan who understood the realities of Gilded Age railroad strikes, this failure meant certain disaster.39 Third, the strikers could anticipate public hostility. Already fearful of the Order’s massive growth, many editorialists began questioning its ultimate motives. Nor did Gilded Age audiences possess an appreciation of union recognition, the stated goal of the strike. “They strike simply because they are ordered to strike, and without knowing why,” observed the New York Times in a typical editorial. Even those papers with an appreciation of Gould’s character blamed “Czar Powderly” and his “tyrannical decrees” for the disturbance, accusing him of initiating this “game of fighting the devil with fire.” “The papers are giving us H— and we must show that we are able to handle this matter,” a frantic John Hayes informed Powderly.40 Fourth, DA 101 was $800 in debt and had launched the strike with no financial provisions whatsoever.41 It was completely dependent on the good graces of the GEB, which was already hard pressed to support scores of other walkouts and lockouts. Fifth, Gould and his managers had begun importing thousands of strikebreakers, infiltrating locals with spies, and had already succeeded in reopening the railroad shops at Marshall, Texas, where the strike had begun.42 Sixth, management had posted notice that all strikers were no longer employed and were therefore forbidden to enter company property, and within days, state and federal judges enforced this policy with an unprecedented number of injunctions. Management had already hired thousands of “special” police and “extraordinary” deputies to enforce the injunctions.43 Added to these nearly insurmountable obstacles, Powderly discovered on his arrival that Irons himself had become a liability. After initially opposing the strike, he had become so emotionally involved that he lost perspective. At the Kansas City meeting, Irons’s declared that the strike should be regarded as a death struggle for control of the railroads. The present strike was nothing less than an attempt by “organized or pooled Capital to bust up . . . all Labor organizations in this country.” He begged the leaders of DA 82, representing workers on the Union Pacific, to join their brothers on the Southwest System, and he pleaded with Powderly to call out all railroad workers across the nation. Thomas Neasham, the MW of DA 82, who had built up the most powerful and stable railroad district in the Order, refused to be dragooned into this unwinnable struggle, adding that Irons had made a grave mistake by striking without first notifying Powderly. And Powderly, filled with dark foreboding of a replay of 1877, counseled moderate language. Despite these rebukes, within a week Irons had told the Associated Press that “the strike will probably extend throughout the United States, and include all Knights of Labor regardless of occupation.”44 Little wonder that the press and public began to turn against the Knights. Despite these desperate circumstances, Powderly proved yet again his value as strike supporter. He penned a stirring appeal that netted $86,901, the largest sum for any appeal up to that time. He issued numerous statements to the press on behalf of the strikers, although he did feel compelled to counteract the public

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hysteria that followed in the wake of Irons’s call for a general strike.45 In the midst of scores of other emergencies, he stationed three GEB members at St. Louis during most of the strike, and he also sent T. B. McGuire (DA 49, New York), Hugh Cavanaugh (DA 48, Cincinnati), and Charles Litchman (DA 30, Boston) to assist. Powderly met with the governors of the affected states, investigated the laws of receivership to find avenues of legal redress (the Texas Pacific was under receivership), and spent countless hours with William McDowell, the former president of the Sea Beach Railroad and a willing ally in this contest, to prepare himself for a public showdown with Jay Gould. He also pressed Andrew Curtin, a friendly House representative, to establish a congressional investigation into the causes of the strike, during which he pressed for public ownership of the railroads.46 Such commitment of the Order’s resources was made despite a clear appreciation that the strike was hopeless. “It is one of the worst managed affairs I ever saw,” he informed Turner upon his return from Kansas City. “They will be defeated.” Equally clearly, he understood that the men, while acting on real and numerous grievances, had been duped by Gould into calling the strike. “It is my firm belief that the railway companies . . . precipitated the fight themselves.”47 On his way home, while changing trains at Bloomington, Illinois, he fell against a rail and fractured two ribs. Although hurt, afflicted with painful boils on the back of his neck and another attack of quinsy, he could not rest. His living room was piled high with sacks of mail, Knights in numerous communities were begging for his presence, reporters and delegations of workingmen were banging of his door, and the nation was waiting for his confrontation with the Wizard of Wall Street.48 On Friday evening, March 26, the GEB gathered at New York’s Astor House, which buzzed with excitement as reporters and onlookers crowded into the lobby. All that night and through the following morning, the five men dispatched, as quickly as possible, the hundreds of requests for their assistance from subordinate bodies. At eleven o’clock, they sent a note to Gould requesting arbitration. If Gould agreed, “we will at once issue an order for the men to return to work.” Gould was not in his offices, and as the GEB waited, they were besieged by “hundreds of members of the Order” who urged, as one amazed reporter noted, “action in one or another of the thousand and one directions in which the Order makes its influence felt.” At five o’clock that evening, Gould responded by messenger that arbitration was not an option because Powderly had violated the terms of their prior agreement. After a further exchange of notes, Gould at last expressed his willingness to meet Powderly and McDowell the following day.49 At eleven o’clock the following morning, Powderly and McDowell called at Gould’s house, where Gould and A. L. Hopkins, the vice president of the Missouri Pacific, met them in the parlor. After several hours of discussion, Gould, to the astonishment of Powderly and McDowell, agreed to arbitrate all “differences between the employees and the company, past or future,” and rehire all

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strikers save those who destroyed company property during the strike. To show his good faith, Gould showed Powderly the telegram stating these terms and gave a copy of it to the press before wiring it to Hoxie. In return for this promise of arbitration, Powderly, with the GEB’s consent, ordered the men of the Southwest back to work.50 Powderly, of course, had been fooled. Heedless of his public declaration, Gould sent a second wire to Hoxie contravening the order to arbitrate. As soon as they discerned Gould’s duplicity, Powderly and board members rescinded the back to work order. Such chaotic instructions confused both the Southwest men and the nation’s reporters. Powderly was enraged by the extent of Gould’s trickery, but the Wizard no doubt found his deceptions amusing. When later pressed by McDowell to seek another meeting with Gould, Powderly declined: “I will submit to no more subterfuge.” As for the strikers themselves, Powderly confided to Neasham: “God pity them for they are in the hands of a relentless enemy.”51 Overworked and overwrought, seriously ill and still injured, Powderly left New York for Scranton, where under care of his physician he was unable to stir for a week.52 His weakness symbolized that of the strike effort. Even with Hayes, Barry, Bailey, Litchman, and T. B. McGuire in St. Louis, the strike predictably lapsed into violence. On April 3, a shoot-out between strikers and deputies at Fort Worth left one deputy dead and numerous injured on both sides. Six days later, nine died during an even more vicious encounter at East St. Louis, a death toll that might have been higher had not Hayes and his cohorts intervened to pacify shotgun-wielding mobs who wanted to “burn the . . . depot down and kill anyone in there.” “It was the most trying position I was ever in,” Hayes wrote, still shaking from the experience. With the coming of violence, Powderly began receiving increasingly ugly hate mail. “Why don’t you order a strike on all the passenger trains you dirty Irish Catholic ass?” wrote an “American” in a typical expression of the public’s growing anger.53 Newspapers, even those previously sympathetic, turned against the Knights and likened them to the Molly Maguires.54 With troops poring into the strike centers, hundreds of strikers being arrested on the flimsiest of charges, and the destruction of company property encouraging even greater repression, none but the most sanguine could fail to see that every chance of success had evaporated. In an effort to salvage something positive, Powderly attempted to use the Order’s lobbying clout to force a sympathetic congressional hearing. He visited President Cleveland, urging him to appoint Andrew Curtin head of the investigation. Although Cleveland agreed, the Knights were no longer in a position to expect much sympathy. As a result of the strike, much of the public had turned against the Order, its image of invincibility had now evaporated, and Irons’s foolish talk of a nationwide general strike had destroyed the notion that the Order reflected only the moderate preaching of men such as Powderly. Ralph Beaumont, who replaced McNeill as the Order’s legislative representative, bemoaned the Knights’ loss of influence on Capitol Hill.55

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Litchman and T. B. McGuire accompanied the Curtin Committee during part of its 2,000-mile trip of the strike scene between April 20 and May 14. McGuire found it “impossible . . . to do justice to the Order” because he had to “hunt up all my own witnesses,” whereas the company had arranged for dozens of workers to declare that the Knights had struck without real grievances and were responsible for all acts of violence. Powderly took the stand during the more formal hearings at Washington, and although he helped to revive his personal reputation by again emphasizing his commitment to peace and arbitration, he did little to affect the findings, which amounted to little more than a “chronological statement of external events and a collection of generalities.”56 Before completing their investigation, the Curtin Committee had publicly requested the GEB to call off the strike. Hayes and Powderly were only too happy to do so, and the order to return to work was given on May 4. This act, coupled with Powderly’s refusal to call a nationwide general strike, constituted his “betrayal” of the Southwest men. Yet the official ending of the strike without demands merely reflected the sad state of affairs. By the end of April, few strikers even bothered to attend picket duty, and the Southwest System was operating at nearly full strength with the assistance of scabs and skilled men who had never joined the struggle.57 The continuing negative press, the impending war with trade unionists, the crush of duties requiring the recall of GEB members, and the spate of new emergencies resulting from the May Day strikes—all prevented Powderly from forestalling the inevitable. To what extent was Powderly responsible for this unmitigated defeat? Would a more aggressive, class-conscious GMW have been able to translate the passions of the workers into victory over the Gould railroad empire? The unfortunate truth is that the strike was doomed regardless of who comprised the Order’s national leadership. Gould, not Powderly or Martin Irons, was in control of events. “While we had justice on our side,” concluded T. B. McGuire, “the other side had the money and the courts.” He may well have added strategy, solidarity, and public support, for the Knights possessed none of these essentials. Maneuvered into calling the strike prematurely, undercutting Powderly’s bargaining position by violating an existing agreement, unable to win the support of the skilled workers, unprepared for large numbers of scabs or companysponsored violence, and unwilling to assuage growing public fears by resisting the urge to talk of Armageddon—the leaders of DA 101 exhibited the same failure to understand the “rules of the game” as did an inordinate number of the Order’s strike leaders in 1886. Certainly Powderly had been outclassed by Gould during their late April talks, but he was forced to grasp at straws because he had nothing with which to bargain. Even Powderly’s most venomous historical critic concluded that although he “was bitterly attacked for the failure . . . it is hard to see what he could have done that would have pleased any one.”58 Powderly was not an antistrike zealot. He approached strikes in much the same way as other labor leaders of the Gilded Age and Progressive era, including John Mitchell, field general of the titanic 1902 hard coal strike. Although both

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men learned from bitter experience to be wary of conflicts in which the union lacked adequate finances, clearly defined goals, and the possibility of public support, both recognized that strikes constituted an essential weapon of last resort and could be an effective means of organizing the unorganized.59 “Legitimate strikes,” Powderly declared during the height of the excitement, “cannot be opposed by any fair minded man or body of men if entered upon as a last resort and in accordance with our laws.”60 Certainly the tidal wave of strikes and boycotts in 1886–1887 frightened him, and with good reason. Some were well planned and led, received widespread community support, and had a realistic chance of achieving their specified objectives. In the fever pitch of the upheaval, however, a far greater number reflected passion rather than reason. Especially among the unskilled who flocked to the banner of Knighthood, strikes represented an outlet for pent-up frustrations. Many began in a festive atmosphere without preparations or coherent goals; sometimes they succeeded but more often they failed. In many cases, such strikes did not even reflect solidarity: Powderly dealt with dozens of cases in which Knights struck against their own brothers and sisters or in which one district actively undermined the efforts of another. Worse still, although few sought prior GEB sanction and many refused to contribute to GEB strike appeals, the vast majority of all strikers depended on GEB financial and moral assistance, creating an administrative morass of mind boggling proportions that precluded effective leadership of the most important struggles. Although some have claimed that Powderly opposed virtually all appeals for assistance during strikes and lockouts,61 the facts prove otherwise. In the summer of 1886 alone, he issued appeals for Rhode Island Knights when manufacturers systematically began to discharge them; Pittsburgh street car employees who had won a strike but found that companies refused to honor the agreement and insisted on a return to a twelve-hour workday; Allegheny county miners who were unjustly convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to prison; lime workers in Rockland, Maine, discharged solely for membership in the Order; locked-out Knights at the Homer, New York, Wagon Works who had drafted plans for a cooperative venture; the 3,000 tanners and curriers of Salem and Peabody, Massachusetts, who were refused work until they signed ironclads; the 3,000 textile workers at Augusta, Georgia, battling an intransigent Southern Manufacturers’ Association; the widows employed as operatives in the carpet mills of Wesson, Mississippi, who were locked out because they had joined the Knights; and dozens more equally deserving cases. In early September, he issued a general appeal for especially hard-pressed Knights in eight states (Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania).62 It was not Powderly’s ideology that precluded the possibility of adequate financial aid. The moribund Assistance Fund was “practically useless” to national officers, as Turner explained. Controlled by districts, it was often left uncollected, spent during local strikes and lockouts, or “used for every purpose

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except the one intended.” Compulsory assessments were equally ineffective. Hundreds of assemblies as late as October 1886 were still begging for exoneration from the last one issued in December 1885 for Wabash workers. The voluntary appeal was thus the only means at Powderly’s disposal to offer financial support. In the early days of the upheaval, the appeal could be effective, raising $86,000 for the Southwest strike as we have just seen, but its effectiveness decreased in proportion to the number issued. The three-quarters of a million Knights contributed the pathetic total of $14,000 to the September 1886 general appeal on behalf of all their locked-out brothers and sisters across the nation.63 The Knights, like the labor movement generally in both America and Europe at this time, were, in the words of Eric Hobsbawm, learning “the rules of the game.” Like every skill, “industrial solidarity must be learned.”64 Untutored members had yet to learn how to pick their fights and martial their resources. They had yet to recognize the need at times to subordinate local concerns for the greater benefit of the movement as a whole. Working people caught up in the excitement could not be expected to adhere to rules they did not yet understand, but equally true is that Powderly could not sustain all struggles, transform inevitable defeats into victories, or turn water into wine. Certain trade unions in the 1880s created structures that demonstrated a deeper understanding of the nature of industrial conflict, even if they did lack the same commitment to solidarity. The Knights failed to emulate them, not because Powderly abhorred strikes or trade unions, but because he was unable to channel the passions of workers through mere words. He paid a heavy price for this failure, for he was forced to watch helplessly as his beloved Order fell victim to a savage employer counteroffensive. Between late March and late May 1886, when a “special session” of the GA was called to order, Powderly, in the brief snippets of time he carved out for himself, pondered how he could begin the process of establishing some semblance of centralized control without unduly undermining democracy or running roughshod over local autonomy. He contemplated, among other things, more stringent control over the selection and activities of organizers, redefining strike and boycott policies so as to inhibit those with little chance of success and better support those worthy of national backing, embarking on a public relations crusade to assuage the growing anxiety of the press and public, creating an “auxiliary board” to assist the GEB, and establishing a clear chain of command between national, state, district, and local bodies.65 These were steps that many of the successful trade union heads were also taking, but for a man so respectful of local initiatives, acknowledging the need for national direction was a fundamental turning point. The impetus toward such a change in thought was not a knee-jerk fear of militancy, but rather a recognition that uncontrolled strike activity was provoking an employer crackdown of unprecedented proportions that would easily destroy the Order and kill the dream of solidarity. Scholars now recognize that

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such a chain of events is precisely what took place, and Powderly, with evidence arriving almost on a daily basis, foresaw the coming crackdown as early as March 1886. “So many strikes have taken place in the name of the order, so many accursed boycotts have been inaugurated for every trifling thing that I do not at all wonder at capital becoming alarmed,” he told strike-ready carpet weavers in Winthrop, Maine.66 The outlines of this powerful counteroffensive could be discerned even before the atrocity at Haymarket Square unleashed America’s first Red Scare. John O’Keefe, the MW of Providence’s DA 99, was representative of the Order’s many impressive local leaders to step to the fore during the upheaval. Young, intelligent, and eager to effect a thorough organization of the city’s workforce, he had recently concluded a small but successful strike among textile operatives. When he appealed to Powderly’s “ripe experience for assistance in learning my duties,” the harried GMW agreed. In early February, he spoke privately with O’Keefe before giving a public talk which, as usual, helped to trigger a flood of new recruits. Within a week, O’Keefe was frantically pleading for Powderly to return. The explosive growth of a restive membership, coupled with the excitement surrounding Powderly’s visit, “seems to have stirred up afresh the devil in the old fossils of Rhode Island.” Employers were responding “in a score of different ways” and were “trying our patience very severely.” Within a month, according to a Providence daily, the “aggressive acts” of the Knights had given rise to a powerful association of textile manufacturers, representing more than $75 million in capital and resolved, as one member put it, to “fight fire with fire.”67 Not all manufacturers of course responded so quickly or so effectively to the perceived threat of the Knights. The rousing of workers intimidated some localized employers, while others experimented with limited collective bargaining agreements.68 The specific response often depended on a variety of industrial factors over which the Knights had no control, but from Powderly’s perspective, the membership could help to secure a generally less hostile climate. He understood that the very enthusiasm with which workers joined the Order gave it its potential power, but unless members were prepared to assess rationally the forces arrayed against them, this same enthusiasm would bring down upon all labor what Jack London later referred to as the “iron heel” of capitalist repression. “There is great need of cool heads and wise counsel throughout the order now,” he wrote. “We are passing through an ordeal of fire.”69 Wise counsel did not imply a desire to squelch the fighting spirit of members. Even when convinced that “capital is forming a solid body against us,” he continuously urged members to “[l]et it go into history that the men of 1886 struck as grand a blow for liberty as the men of 1776. . . . The power of wealth is passing away and it must now be determined whether man shall rule or whether illegitimate wealth shall rule.” Nor did he wish that all strikes then in progress be terminated. “I do not mean just or legal strikes,” he stressed, “but these petty affairs in course of formation.”70

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Wise counsel did imply tightening controls over strikes and boycotts that were either illegal or had little chance of success. He saw hundreds of this variety. In late March, to cite but one example, more than 1,000 knitters seeking higher wages in Cohoes, New York, struck without attempting arbitration, over the protests of both their district MW and the GEB, and despite the recent creation of the National Knit Goods Manufacturers Association, described by one former leading Knight as “thoroughly hostile and aggressive and . . . too powerful for the K. of L.” Within a week, the hard-pressed strikers were pleading for GEB intervention and financing, forcing Powderly to send Tom Barry to Cohoes in an effort to arbitrate. Barry’s arbitration efforts succeeded temporarily, but his services had been lost for over a week and district leaders could only “hope” that the strikers would “cultivate and practice ‘patience.’ ” Patience was a rare commodity during the upheaval, however, and six months later, the knitters made further wage demands that resulted in a brutally effective five-month lockout.71 Wise counsel also implied forcing locals and districts to recognize that at times their parochial concerns would have to sacrificed for the good of the entire movement. When factory workers at Frankfort, New York, resolved to strike because one of their brothers was forced to tend two machines, they requested both financial assistance and a GEB investigation. From the workers’ point of view, the threatened strike meant the essence of Knighthood—standing up to their employers as equals, demanding a voice in the management of their lives as workers. From a national perspective, it was far less significant. “The Executive Board has at the present time over six hundred complaints of a more serious nature than those which you describe,” Powderly explained. Rather than drain the Order’s resources in this contest, he suggested that the assembly help find a new job for the man in question and send a healthy contribution to the Southwest strikers. And when Knights in Milton, Pennsylvania, asked Powderly to publicize their boycott of a woman who ran a workingmen’s boardinghouse, he was not amused. Indiscriminate boycotting was generating intense public hostility, he warned with remarkable clarity of foresight, and soon “those who are now boycotting will be boycotted unmercifully when we are powerless to prevent it.”72 Many of Powderly’s concerns were articulated in his March 13 “secret circular,” which has invariably been cited as the wailing of a crank opposing Knight participation in the eight-hour strikes planned by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions.73 But the circular represented far more than an attempt to curb action on May Day. It was the longest circular issued until that time, covering a full three pages of foolscap, and it oozed with both fear and anticipation: fear that the nation’s employers would destroy the Order; anticipation that the burgeoning Knights stood on the threshold of becoming the moral vehicle to revolutionize America. If members tempered their passion with common sense, “the next five years will witness the complete emancipation of mankind from the curse of monopoly.” Or again: “We have built up a moral

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force that will command a hearing for us before any tribunal in the country.” Yet this force was not unified, not yet perfected or focused. And from Powderly’s vantage point, the process of dissipation had already set in. Internal dissension and endless jurisdictional fights at the local and district level that drove members away, ill-planned and ill-advised strikes that often led to hardship and the breakup of assemblies, love affairs with political shysters that Powderly knew from experience could only lead to disillusionment—these and other hidden dangers lay in wait for those guided only by emotion. What should be done? He first called upon the organizers to take their part. A few words of instruction at the establishment of a local were simply not enough. Next, he asked each local and district “to appoint a competent committee on instruction to teach our members what the Order was intended for.” True to form, he refused to indicate exactly what these committees would teach. “Let them learn all they can,” was his only advice, although he did implore members to regard the Order as “a business institution” and make adequate preparations for any battle they chose to fight. It was in this context that Powderly addressed the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions’ (FOTLU) May Day strike call. “The executive officers . . . have never fixed upon the first of May for a strike of any kind,” he informed them, “and they will not do so until . . . word goes forth from the General Assembly.” If the May 1 deadline had not been approved by the GA or GEB, no local “must strike for the eight-hour system on May 1st, under the impression that they are obeying orders from headquarters.”74 At this time, Powderly was not being bombarded with questions concerning the eight-hour movement, and he regarded those few he did receive in the same light as those asking how many black balls were required to reject a candidate, or those suggesting John Swinton was GMW. Such unfathomable ignorance as to the Order’s policies precluded hope for any monumental undertaking in the near future. As if to underscore his concern about discipline, Knights in numerous localities leaked the “secret” circular to the press. Although Powderly was outraged, the publication of the circular proved an accidental public relations triumph. No other utterance from the GMW generated as much mail, and for a brief moment, it turned public opinion decidedly in favor of the Knights. Ministers, politicians, trade unionists, the press, and workingmen and-women from all across America hailed Powderly as a reluctant warrior fighting irresponsible capital by moral means.75 Above all, the circular let the general public understand, for the first time, at least a part of what Powderly was trying to accomplish. Judging from the flood of letters, the public not only understood but wanted to be a part of it. Leading Knights themselves applauded the circular. “The time has arrived when the friends of Labor must use every effort to . . . keep its members from over reaching themselves,” observed John Devlin of Michigan’s State Assembly. “One of the most important features of our order is obedience, without which we are a rope of sand,” echoed H. G. Trader, the RS of Washington, D.C.’s

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DA 66. “Our older assemblies are with you in letter and in spirit and the younger ones are fast coming into line,” offered George McNeill of Boston’s DA 30. Even William Halley, the former DA 24 (Chicago) MW whose support for numerous failed strikes in the city’s industrial South Side had led to his overthrow, deemed Powderly’s cautions “right” and vowed to stand by him. Richard Trevellick wrote from Vicksburg: “Keep Hot Heads under the Tow and the grand old ship of Knighthood will weather the storm.” Even the anarchist Joseph Labadie expressed his support, tersely summarizing his view of the upheaval: “The movement is boom. Hope it will not be all boom.”76 Although the circular provided the Order with plenty of positive publicity and brought Powderly to the pinnacle of his popularity nationwide, and although 4,000 assemblies, often by unanimous vote, endorsed its sentiments, the circular failed in its objective to deter internal bickering, promote observance of the Order’s laws, and encourage greater caution when embarking on strikes and boycotts. It seemed that although members were prepared to laud their GMW, shower him with respect and embrace his words, they were unwilling to act on his advice when it challenged their feelings of expectancy. The historian Leon Fink noted the members’ tendency to “both enshrine and ignore their own national officers.”77 Powderly was well aware of this, but he needed to do more than observe trends: He needed to protect the movement from an overzealous membership apparently rushing toward a class war they could not win. With the May Day strikes and the Haymarket explosion on May 4, many believed that such a war had begun. The vast majority of Knights joined Powderly in condemning the bombing, which appeared to be a case of anarchist extremism unconnected to the Order, and the incident did nothing to deter either the continuing influx of members or the readiness of Knights to strike.78 But the nation’s employers and mainstream press at once grew substantially more hostile. More employer associations were created, lockouts were on the rise, and old conspiracy laws were revised. In the more conservative dailies, Powderly’s denial of responsibility for Haymarket made him a “liar,” “coward,” and “hypocritical fraud,” because he and his followers were obviously the “instigators, movers and expectant beneficiaries of all this communistic devilment.”79 Haymarket forced Powderly into an even more untenable situation. Already trying to channel the unprecedented working-class discontent, he now had to adopt the role of publicist in an effort to combat an ominous public mood and assuage increasingly aggressive employers. In essence he stood between labor and capital, frantically hoping to prevent the latter from crushing the former. In May, he issued another “secret” circular, which he now knew would be leaked to the press, that denounced violence and indiscriminate boycotting, and he tried to allay public fears by declaring that his “army of peace” preached that “the man of capital is not necessarily the enemy of the laborer.”80 Later that month, he addressed a letter to the nation’s editors, asking that because the “press has condemned the boycott as practiced by the workingmen,” how did it regard lockouts and blacklisting, which were simply boycotts “as practiced by the em-

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ployer”? Both attempts received wide and often positive publicity, even leading a few to question an employer’s right to “hire whom he pleases and to discharge whom he pleases.” But most editors drew a clear distinction between Powderly’s “intelligent” and “level-headed” preachments and the “coercive and overbearing acts” of many Knights, who engaged in “unreasonable, unwarrantable strikes,” sought to “injure the business of employers,” and even “allowed the red flag of the murderous Anarchist to be displayed in labor processions.” Thus many bemoaned Powderly’s inability to control his own forces.81 In addition to these fevered efforts to shape the groundswell from below and stave off attack from above, Powderly also reckoned with numerous related developments and complications. Quebec’s Archbishop Elzear Taschereau caused considerable alarm throughout Canada by condemning the Order and pressing Rome to take forceful action against American prelates who had spoken in favor of it. Fearful Catholic Knights pleaded with Powderly to gain an audience with Pope Leo XIII to discuss the matter. Although he adamantly refused, he was forced to find allies among the clergy to forestall a replay of the decimation that had occurred in the early years of his tenure.82 The Order’s lobbying efforts were in disarray, in part because George McNeill, whom the GEB had named legislative representative, was too busy to attend to his duties and had fallen out of favor with the two DAs in Washington, and in part because failure during the Southwest strike had undermined the Order’s clout on Capitol Hill. Powderly alone kept up the legislative attack until Ralph Beaumont took over as legislative representative in early June.83 An inordinate amount of Powderly’s time in the spring of 1886 was spent grappling with the thorny issue of trade unionism both within and outside the Order. The stress and overwork often left him, as he put it, “face to face with death or the lunatic asylum.” A constant stream of reporters, strike committees, manufacturers, unemployed Knights, promoters hoping to cash in on his fame, politicians seeking endorsements, reformers of all stripes, and the simply curious hammered on his door from early morning until late at night. He left instructions at headquarters that anyone believing he was at home should be told “Powderly is not in Scranton, in fact he never was in Scranton, and the report that he was is a base canard and reflects no credit on the man who set the story in circulation.” When George McNeill asked to see him in Scranton “on matters of importance,” he confessed that he was “simply tortured to death with the thousand things that crowd in on me and if you can get along as well without seeing me in heaven’s name do so.”84 Teetering on the brink of collapse, he set out to solve the conundrum of trade unionism. Powderly had adjudicated scores of disputes involving trade union issues between his first election as GMW and the onset of the upheaval. Within the Order, the trade union issue was simply one of several unavoidable structural dilemmas facing any decentralized labor body dedicated to a multiplicity of goals. Powderly encouraged the chartering of trade assemblies at the district and even national levels to promote collective bargaining, but he was painfully aware that

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this form of organization often violated the jurisdictional boundaries of the mixed (or territorial) district, which had been the most potent locus of power in the Order since 1878. The creation of trade districts usually entailed detaching trade locals from mixed districts, which rankled the leaders of these powerful bodies and created endless headaches for Powderly and the GEB as they attempted to placate both factions. This jurisdictional dilemma was by no means insurmountable, but it was beyond the ability of districts to resolve on their own, and it required constant attention from national officers and a large measure of goodwill from subordinates. During the upheaval, both the number and complexity of jurisdictional problems increased dramatically. The urge to unite all Southwest employees under the banner of DA 101, to cite but one instance, gave rise to complaints of raiding from mixed districts. In an even more typical scenario, the RS of Atlanta’s DA 105 (mixed) objected strenuously when the carpenters of that city sought a trade district charter and declared their right to organize all members of that craft. Many carpenters were already enrolled in locals attached to the mixed district, he complained, and if the carpenters’ application were approved, DA 105 would end up “loosing a large quantity of our best material.”85 Illustrative of the manner in which trade union issues were played out and the inability to resolve these problems at the district level was the case of Troy, New York. In November 1885, Powderly had been asked to adjudicate a twoweek strike by the painters (LA 2369) and carpenters (LA 2640) of Troy’s DA 68, who refused to work alongside the hardwood finishers (LA 2717) of West Troy’s DA 104 because of some past slight. Powderly endeavored to squelch this absurd strike by Knights against Knights through the post,86 but he was forced to visit the city two weeks later because of a new and even more serious trade union dispute among local Knights that was beyond their capacity to resolve amicably. LA 3275, attached to DA 68, comprised the city’s stove mounters and pattern workers, many of whom were also members of the local molders’ union and veterans of the disastrous 1883–1884 strike in that trade. During the course of that strike, MW Joseph Mansion informed Powderly, about 200 local stove mounters “turned scabs and about 200 more outsiders went scabbing our jobs.” Nevertheless, LA 3275 was increasing in strength and was once again poised to “get control of the foundries in Troy the coming year.” This prospect naturally made the scabs anxious and led them to look for a way to join the Knights to protect themselves. The scabs were “afraid to send their propositions to our L.A., they just cross the river into D.A. 104 (West Troy) and get initiated and then laugh at us.” Mansion and his comrades had repeatedly asked DA 104 and its LAs not to initiate these men, but to no avail. “They turn wind and initiate them all the same.” Powderly at once imposed his authority on DA 104’s MW, ordering him not to initiate any of the men who “betrayed” LA 3275 “in her hour of need,” but no sooner had Powderly returned to Scranton than he received yet another plea to come back to Troy. The painters and carpenters were on the

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warpath against fellow Knights again, and there was intense friction between a newly organized LA of musicians and an established but largely defunct trade union, the Musical Protective Union of Troy.87 The extent and variety of trade union conflict among Knights in Troy was by no means unusual, nor was their readiness to force Powderly’s involvement. But in Troy and most other cities, nearly all parties were prepared to submit their disputes to the GEB and abide by whatever decisions were reached. Undermanned and run ragged, the GEB was often unable to give each situation the attention it merited and many disputes raged uncontrolled for some time, but most cases were ironed out without too much residual acrimony. The case of Troy also reveals that Powderly could not afford to deal in absolutes and abstractions; for him the trade union question was composed of countless difficulties, each with its own unique dimensions and personalities. As long as subordinates were prepared to accept the verdicts of national officers, and as long as mixed district leaders were willing to compromise their jurisdictional rights for the sake of organizational growth, there was no reason to believe that the internal trade union dilemma would lead inevitably toward rupture. Unfortunately for the stability of the Order, New York’s Home Club– controlled DA 49 exhibited neither of these qualities. Home Club leaders were ruthless in their determination to maintain their district’s charter rights to organize all workers, regardless of occupation, within a twenty-mile radius of its headquarters in the Bowery. They mercilessly attacked, by fair means and foul, all Knights and trade unionists who ignored this charter. As the car drivers, printers, hat makers, cigar makers, and numerous others strove to erect their own trade districts or independent unions in the city, each group encountered the Home Club’s wrath. Moreover, although the Club gobbled up the GEB’s precious time in an effort to stymie the formation of trade districts and unions, its leaders often refused to accept decisions that went against them. The ferocity with which DA 49 defended its turf, and its unwillingness to abide by GEB decisions, helped to spark internecine strife throughout the entire Order and promote hostilities between the Order and the national trade unions. One of the articles of faith in Knights’ scholarship states that the Home Club, after years of “spreading the light,” won converts on the GEB, captured control of the national administration at the June 1886 Cleveland special session of the GA, and was thus effectively in charge of the Order until it succumbed to internal dissension in 1888. Powderly, according to this often repeated story, served either as captive or collaborator to the nefarious and all-powerful Club.88 In truth, the notion of Home Club control was pure myth. The Club never succeeded in gaining control at the Cleveland GA or at any other time, and many of those outside New York portrayed as Home Club enemies of Powderly were in fact his most stalwart supporters. The charge of Club control was in fact a red herring first put forth by DA 49’s ever growing number of trade unionist enemies in New York who were determined to remove this obstacle to effective organizing once and for all.

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John Morrison, New York Marxist, former Club member, and truculent trade unionist, was the principal architect of the myth of Club control. After DA 49 sabotaged his campaign to organize the carpet weavers of that city and suspended his local (LA 2985) for violation of strike procedures, Morrison and the weavers sent a highly inflammatory circular to locals across the country: “Is this what D.A. 49 is for—to defend the bosses’ rights? If so, we want no more of 49.” When the GEB attempted a compromise in December 1885 temporarily upholding the suspension of LA 2985, the enraged Morrison dramatically stepped up his propaganda. In a scurrilous pamphlet, which has served as the basis for all accusations of Club control ever since, he declared that GEB members Turner, Hayes, and Barry were in cahoots with the Club. At the same time, Morrison galvanized trade district opposition to DA 49 in New York by initiating the move that led to the calling of the special session of the GA at Cleveland.89 Morrison’s spurious claim that GEB members were in league with an anarchistic cabal and that Powderly was its prisoner was tailor-made propaganda for antiadministration malcontents outside New York. By the spring of 1886, such detractors included Harry Skeffington, leader of the Philadelphia shoemakers (DA 70), who helped his friend Morrison distribute the infamous pamphlet; and Frank K. Foster, former GEB chairman and leading light in both DA 30 (Boston) and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, who, with his Boston associate George McNeill, was preparing to run against Powderly and Turner in 1886. These and other kickers used the myth of Club control in an attempt to weaken DA 49, unseat Powderly, and restructure the Order exclusively along trade lines. “The main object of the combination,” Joseph Mansion of Troy’s DA 68 warned Powderly, “is to cut off your head” at the next elections.90 “Down with the Home Club” also served as the war whoop of the CMIU in its complex and ugly war against the rival Progressive Cigar Makers, which was under the wing of the Club. Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers, like their friend Morrison, recognized the effectiveness of anti–Home Club propaganda. When the GEB failed to side completely with CMIU leaders against the Progressives, they repeatedly blasted the GEB for its supposed Home Club sympathies in language virtually identical to that of Morrison. The “dynamiters, anarchists, and office-seekers” who comprised the Home Club, Strasser screeched in his public addresses, were in control of the Knights’ administration.91 CMIU chieftains also schemed with other trade unionists, most notably P. J. McGuire of the Carpenters, whose hatred of Powderly showed no signs of abating. Not surprisingly, Strasser and P. J. McGuire were the prime movers behind a May 18 Philadelphia conference of independent trade unionists. Although the inevitable friction between the Order and the unions over the admission of scabs and jurisdictional boundaries had led to the Philadelphia meeting, the vast majority of union heads were conciliatory at this time. Many were Knights themselves, and there was little ideological disagreement between the two

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movements. The Iron and Steel Workers and International Typographical Union were even contemplating joining the Order en masse. Once Strasser and P. J. McGuire convinced a majority of the twenty-two delegates that “a certain element of the Knights of Labor” (DA 49 and the GEB) were acting with “the avowed purpose” of destroying trade unions, these same men agreed to a remarkably aggressive “treaty” to present to the GEB at Cleveland that, if accepted, would have subordinated the Order to the independent unions.92 The endless repetition of these Home Club slanders earned Morrison and CMIU leaders Powderly’s undying hatred. Along with other GEB members, he rightly questioned the integrity of men willing to spread such damaging lies when the Order faced dozens of emergencies. Amoral and seemingly devoid of the fraternal spirit that served as the only tie binding Knights together, such men were, in Powderly’s estimation, even worse than the Home Club itself. He loathed the unscrupulous Morrison. After taking part in DA 49’s attempt to “down” him as GMW in 1883, Morrison now, as an enemy of DA 49, sought to expose New York’s “dirty linen” in a vicious effort to “cast discredit on [Powderly].” And he was prepared to follow Hayes’s advice to “leave nothing undone to down this dam cuss Morrison.”93 As for CMIU leaders, “Strasser and Gompers be damned.” Although he once publicly called Gompers an habitual drunkard, he refused to be provoked into an ongoing and desperate war of lies. “He who quarrels with dogs must fight with a dog’s jaw. I ain’t built that way.” To Turner, he mocked the audacity of these men by suggesting that Strasser be elected GMW and that another like-minded unionist be chosen GST, but his trade union troubles had only begun.94 “What day are you going to Cleveland?” Powderly asked Turner ten days prior to the May 25 opening of the special session. “The thoughts of it gives me a sore nose.”95 Little wonder. Continued membership growth sustained the administrative nightmares for the minuscule national bureaucracy; the ugly public reaction and formation of employers’ associations in the wake of Haymarket were now becoming truly alarming; although ill-planned strikes continued unabated they were already being outnumbered by lockouts; the nation’s press had become obsessed with the Order, with editorialists providing sweeping assessments based on little more than personal prejudice; thanks to acrimony in New York, trade unionists were about to present the GA with an outrageous list of demands; and rumors were spreading that a mysterious and anarchistic Home Club controlled the GEB. In a determined effort to come to grips with all of these crises, establish some semblance of organizational stability, and translate the still-burning passions of working people into lasting achievements, Powderly sought to shield himself from the tortures of constant distractions and set down on paper those policies he would fight for at Cleveland. In his circular call for the GA, he made clear that greater centralization of authority was essential. “The laws in relation to strikes do not . . . give the General Executive Board power to interfere in such matters until after a strike has been inaugurated,” he explained. Increased powers

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were also required to control organizers, boycotts, and the growing “difficulties with trade societies.” “Up to the present time our Order has traveled forward on the go as you please plan,” he informed one ally in Detroit, but “now the exact relations of L.A. to D.A. and both [LA and DA] to the G.A. must be defined.” He came up with extensive lists of proposed constitutional changes that, if put into effect, would have given the Knights a strike policy and administrative structure much more in line with the burgeoning trade unions while still affording locals and districts a great deal of autonomy in the direction of their affairs.96 The district leaders who dominated the GA, although recognizing the enormity of the problems, vetoed such drastic curtailing of their authority. They did agree to legislation requiring a two-thirds majority before any assembly declared a strike, and they resolved that no strike could receive the financial assistance of other districts unless at least one GEB member had investigated. Given the rigid determination of subordinate bodies to maintain their power, this was perhaps the most stringent legislation Powderly could have expected. Such laws did little to resolve administrative overloads because they continued to encourage assemblies to seek GEB involvement, and because assemblies often struck before contemplating the necessity of financial aid, the new strike laws did little to stymie ill-advised walkouts. Delegates did grant the GEB exclusive rights to order and call off boycotts that extended beyond the confines of a single district, but in practice this meant little because no enforcement provisions were adopted.97 Blocked in his efforts to establish a viable strike policy, Powderly was forced to read aloud the trade union “treaty.” Rather than vote on the obnoxious document, delegates put forth a substitute plan calling for the exchange of working cards, the adoption of “some plan” to protect both the Order and unions from scabs and other undesirables, and a series of joint conferences to work out grievances and agree on coordinated action. Although such vague suggestions would have necessitated a large measure of effort and goodwill, this was a reasonable proposal, one that revealed a more conciliatory spirit among the Knights than the unionists who insisted on the treaty.98 The great buzz at Cleveland involved neither strike laws nor trade unionists but the Home Club. For both delegates and reporters, interest in this topic was insatiable. Although the Morrison pamphlet and CMIU charges gave rise to excited press commentary in the early going, Home Club hysteria did not truly develop until the elections for the new auxiliary executive board, which was created at the request of Powderly to assist the GEB. Elections were hotly contested, but in the end James Quinn (DA 49), William Mullen (DA 84, Richmond), Hugh Cavanaugh (DA 48, Cincinnati), David Gibson (DA 61, Hamilton), Joseph Buchanan (DA 89, Denver), and Ira Aylsworth (DA 41, Baltimore) were chosen.99 In the wake of the elections, the press ran riot. The Order was now “in the hands of an unscrupulous gang known as the ‘Home Club,’ ” they trumpeted.

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Four of the six auxiliary board members—Quinn, Mullen, Cavanaugh, and Gibson—were Club members, and together with the Clubbers already on the GEB, they constituted a majority of the decision makers. Journalists agreed there had been a conspiracy, and it is essentially the story presented by historians ever since. Under the provocative heading “Anarchy among Knights,” the Chicago Tribune wailed that the Order had “passed into the hands of the Socialists” who would now impose upon the Order “the methods of Anarchists.” As for Powderly, “he consents to remain as the mere tool of the very men who defied and defeated him.”100 The mainstream press, confronting the complexity of the Knights for the first time, obsessed with the recent bloodshed at Chicago and Milwaukee, and eager for juicy headlines, simply regurgitated the slanders fed to them by Morrison, who was present at Cleveland but not a delegate, and his cohorts. Voting records at Cleveland reveal no evidence of unanimity among those accused, and knowledgeable labor reporters either dismissed the stories outright or expressed disbelief. In fact, other than James Quinn, who was Drury’s lieutenant and a prime mover in the Club, no member of either the auxiliary board or GEB was in cahoots with the Club in June 1886. Actual Club members manifested an unrelenting hostility toward Powderly. They hated him for streamlining the rituals at the 1881 Detroit GA, for his moderate views, and especially for his attempt to suspend DA 49 in 1883. At no time did these men mask their hatred, and try as he might, Powderly could never mitigate it. Remarkably, those who supposedly plotted with Drury and Quinn to capture the Order at Cleveland were united only by their fealty to Powderly. Indeed, readers may recall that in November 1885, just as the Club was ostensibly planning its coup, William Mullen had named his baby boy Terence Powderly Mullen!101 The Cleveland GA had been an unmitigated disaster. Powderly had come prepared to impose some measure of bureaucratic control over enthusiastic assemblies, iron out difficulties with trade unionists, and generate some badly needed positive publicity. Instead, he found recalcitrant districts determined to maintain local control over strike action, a veritable and unnecessary war with trade unions, and public hysteria regarding anarchistic control of the Order. Worse still, over the following months the continuing slanders of the anti–Home Club insurgents did much to undermine rank-and-file confidence in their leaders, frighten employers and politicians, and considerably weaken the Knights as an organization. Although Powderly tried to put the best spin possible on the disasters that had occurred and ease fears about the Home Club, for all intents and purposes the unfortunate events at Cleveland precluded any possibility that the Knights could translate the opportunities inherent in the upheaval into organizational stability, a unified labor movement, and the collective advancement of American workers. By no means was the upheaval at an end. Workers continued to enroll and the strike wave showed no signs of abating. But it quickly became evident that the employer counteroffensive Powderly had tried so desperately to avert was

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in full swing by the summer of 1886. “The other side has launched out on the Lockout crusade,” he growled in late July, and he was not exaggerating. Writing in September, John Swinton noted that “since May last many corporations and Employers’ Associations have been resorting to all sorts of unusual expedients to break up the labor organizations.” Many of these associations were created “with the express purpose of defeating the Order,” observed one historian. Although a few associations sought peace with Knights through collective bargaining, the “common object” of the vast majority, according to another scholar, was to “eradicate” Knighthood in their industries.102 Using lockouts, blacklists, iron clad oaths, the revival of conspiracy laws, Pinkerton detectives, and numerous other tactics, employers, whether organized in associations or standing alone, had taken the initiative, and their attacks against the Order found little opposition in the now resolutely hostile mainstream press. In the second half of 1886, the nine largest lockouts alone involved over 75,000 workers, many of them Knights. Scores of other employer-initiated confrontations raged at the same time, most of them calamitous for workers. Within weeks of making excited claims about the potential of Knighthood, the Order in Troy was devastated by a disastrous lockout in May involving 15,000 laundry workers. The knitters of Amsterdam and Cohoes, who previously had been so confident of the Order’s strength as to challenge the well-financed National Knit Goods Manufacturers Association, found themselves in October embroiled in a ruinous lockout involving 20,000 workers. John Hayes had taken charge of the Troy lockout, and he was criticized for capitulating within five weeks. But the meager resources of the Order were no match for organized and battle-ready employers. When the more aggressive Tom Barry assumed command of the Amsterdam-Cohoes debacle, he managed to prevent most of the knitters from surrendering for nearly five months before admitting total defeat.103 In the year after Haymarket, Powderly ran himself ragged trying to assist the tens of thousands of Knights in desperate straits. He offered tactical advice to members through the post, coordinated the activities of both GEB and auxiliary board members who were constantly on the move from one trouble spot to another, challenged the aggressive tactics of employers generally through the press and specifically through his correspondence, and mobilized the Order’s meager financial resources to provide direct relief to as many as possible. The paltry returns on the ever growing number of appeals, however, meant that most locked-out Knights received little or no sustenance from headquarters. Unable to sustain those locked out, prevent strikes that could not be sustained, or control organizers who continued to make absurd promises of financial assistance to new assemblies, Powderly found himself in a hopeless situation. With the assistance of GEB and auxiliary board members, he sorted through the endless appeals and had to make difficult choices. Which assemblies were truly deserving? Those locked out solely for membership in the Order were perhaps more worthy of support than those who had struck, but given the variety of means by which employers goaded their organized workers, a clear distinction

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could not always be made. Although assemblies violating constitutional procedure (by striking without consent of their district, before they had been established a year, or without attempting arbitration) usually found their requests denied, the significance of the struggle might take precedence over constitutional concerns. For instance, when workers in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, struck over the objections of their district MW because of the discharge of just one Knight, the GEB determined that the strike was critical to the fate of the Order in the region and granted $4,000.104 Even when Powderly and the GEB granted money or issued an appeal, the trivial amounts they could offer did little more than create resentment. A case in point was the strike and lockout in the Augusta textile mills. With restive operatives in Georgia and South Carolina engaging in uncoordinated walkouts for wage advances, William Mullen of the auxiliary board attempted to take control by ordering all strikers back to work in an effort to focus the attack on the large Augusta mills, which served as the unofficial headquarters of the recently formed Southern Manufacturers’ Association. Assisted by Augusta’s LA 5030 MW J. Simmons Meynardie, Mullen authorized a strike for a 10 percent increase. Mill owners countered by imposing a lockout, and Meynardie at once requested GEB assistance: Unless the board was prepared to sustain the 3,000 operatives locked out (only 650 were Knights), “then with bitter wail may we chant the requiem” of the Order in the South.105 Powderly immediately dispatched Turner, who failed in his attempt to arbitrate and found owners implacable in their determination to destroy the Knights. In early September, Powderly issued a circular appeal and sent $2,000 directly from the national treasury. But the trifling returns from the appeal precluded more aid for this single struggle. Turner made a special plea for assistance during the Richmond GA, which eventually generated $41,000, but it was still too little too late.106 The owners, meanwhile, evicted strikers from company-owned housing and began reopening the mills with nonunion labor. With workers already breaking ranks, the GEB sent another representative in October, but he could do little more than sign an agreement signifying the abject defeat of the strike and the death knell for the Order among southern textile operatives.107 In an all-too-familiar scenario, strike leaders, feeling the wrath of an embittered rank and file, blamed national officers. Meynardie blasted Powderly at the Richmond GA, the local RS accused the GEB of failing to hand over all the funds collected, and even Mullen, a devoted admirer of Powderly, accused the national office of an anti-Southern bias. Equally familiar was the historical assessment; the authority on the Knights in the South has argued that the national office supplied so little assistance “probably because Powderly, in his opposition to strikes, believed the struggle was doomed and wished it to end quickly.”108 In this darkening atmosphere of disillusionment and recrimination, Powderly reckoned with the great packinghouse strike in Chicago. The 25,000 who labored in the “jungle” had won the eight-hour day in May without resort to strike action. Other than the carpenters, they were the only body of workers in the

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city whose eight-hour victory had not been reversed by the autumn. Chicago packers, anxious to fulfill their contracts, had granted the shorter workday, but they were equally anxious to return to ten hours at the first opportunity. On October 8, while the Richmond GA was in session, Armour and other large packers notified their employees that the ten-hour day would resume on October 11, giving as their reason the competition they faced from Kansas City and other packing towns where ten hours were the rule. Without sanction from DA 57, 15,000 workers struck.109 Because this strike was initiated during the GA, delegates rather than the GEB were called on to devise a course of action, and Powderly understood that he would be held accountable for fulfilling their instructions. Delegates voted to send the GEB’s Tom Barry, and when deciding what powers he would have, all 658 unanimously agreed that he “be clothed only with such power as will allow him to effect such a settlement . . . as will restore harmony.” Because the strike was not sanctioned by the district and was therefore illegal, and because no one—not even DA 57 delegates—had a clue how many strikers were Knights, all delegates agreed that if Barry were unable to settle the strike, “the Order must not be held responsible” and “shall not be in any way involved or called upon for financial assistance.”110 Barry headed for Chicago on the evening of October 9. Three days later, he began sending Powderly telegrams, detailing what by now had become almost routine news. “Neither side will yield.” “The town is in a state of siege.” “The people here were fighting a losing fight. The packers set a trap for them and they fell into it.” Eight hundred Pinkertons were in the city, and several bloody skirmishes had already taken place. When the GA concluded and Powderly returned to Philadelphia headquarters, he met Barry, who told him that he had been unable to effect a settlement and had ordered the men back to work. The GMW believed the affair was over, as per instructions of the GA.111 Barry neglected to tell his boss that he made arrangements with local leaders for a resumption of the strike in early November. His outrageous subterfuge was based on an apparent understanding with two firms that expressed a desire to “break loose” from the meatpackers’ association and make terms with the Knights. Thus by November 6, the strike began anew, this time with 25,000 workers. The two firms, of course, immediately reneged on their promise, the governor mobilized two regiments of the national guard equipped with Gatling guns, Pinkertons engaged in random acts of violence, and scabs by the trainload came rushing to Chicago. Barry returned to the strike scene and wired Powderly: “Packers declare they will not employ Knights of Labor. Want men to sign ironclad.” Local leaders began peppering the GMW for assistance: “[Y]ou must issue an assessment for us at once. . . . This is the Order’s fight and must be won.”112 The situation was almost commonplace: an illegal strike that pitted the confidence and militancy of large numbers of newly organized workers against a ruthless and powerful employers’ association assisted by Pinkertons and the state

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militia; an impoverished GEB struggling to finance similarly large lockouts (knitters at Amsterdam and Cohoes and shoemakers at Lynn) as well as dozens of smaller ones; and an acknowledgment from a board member that employers had engineered the confrontation to destroy the Order in their plants. Powderly also had to take into account his instructions from the GA and the fact that Barry had withheld his plans for a renewal of the strike, but he made no decisions on his own. In addition to Hayes and Turner, he talked to the four-member Committee on Constitution, then meeting in Philadelphia. Bailey, then in New York, echoed the sentiments of everyone else in his telegram: “Our Board should enforce their former order, ordering all K. of L. to return to work. . . . T. B. Mc[Guire] agrees with my views in ordering strike off.” After a brief moment of soul searching, Powderly then ordered the strikers back to work. “If the men refuse, take their charters. We must have obedience and discipline.”113 The most detailed and sophisticated study of Chicago Knighthood notes that the packers had “the resources to defeat the Knights,” that workers exhibited “an eagerness for striking born of immaturity,” and that even if a settlement could have been wrested from the jaws of almost certain defeat, competition from other packing towns operating under the ten-hour day “would only have staved off defeat temporarily.” Nevertheless, the author concludes that Powderly “blundered by calling off the strike” because strikers “deserved the opportunity to carry on . . . and learn what lessons they could even from a major defeat.”114 This appraisal encapsulates the more reasonable historical assessments of Powderly and, as we shall see, reflected the attitude of a growing number of more militant Knights. In this view, it was far better for Powderly to give unqualified support to expressions of militancy even when chances of victory were negligible, because all attempts to stifle militancy engendered rank-and-file disillusionment with an organization they regarded as the embodiment of their hopes for a better life. Powderly was not a believer in the virtues of unwinnable mass strikes. To promise several hundred thousand dollars in strike support he knew would not be forthcoming, to back an illegal strike with no hope of lasting success when he could not sustain sanctioned battles already in progress, to violate directly the unanimous will of the GA—these were unthinkable to a leader whose reputation for fair play and living up to the law had kept him at the head of the Order for seven years. At a more fundamental level, he disagreed with those who ascribed to the “blood of the martyr, seed of the church” approach to strikes. Hunger, bloodshed, martial law, increased state repression, and the ruination of the movement—all of which had taken place in the wake of another lost cause, the Southwest strike, which he had supported—were the realities facing zealous Knights bent on overcoming more powerful opponents without adequate preparation. “The church that depends for its existence on a supply of martyrs’ gore,” he wrote years later, “is in a bad business and ought to quit it.”115 In one sense, his decision mattered little. Chicago Knighthood succumbed to

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the same process of dissension and decline that followed the numerous failed strikes and lockouts he did support. A number of enraged local Knights castigated Powderly for his “unwarrantable interference” in local matters and for his refusal to act “in the interest of the men”; resolutions were introduced (but did not pass) in both Chicago DAs (24 and 57) condemning Powderly’s role; and membership in the packinghouse locals began to plummet. Significantly, although experienced trade unionists among Chicago Knights “nearly all favored obedience” to the return to work order, DA 24 MW Elizabeth Rodgers noted that the mass of unskilled laborers believed Powderly had been bribed by the packers.116 In an effort to break this cycle of poverty, defeat, and recrimination, Powderly pleaded at the October Richmond GA for the creation of powerful State Assemblies with control over the activities of districts and locals within their borders. He was again rebuffed by assemblies unwilling to sacrifice their autonomy. Delegates did accede to his request for authority to issue an assessment to assist an estimated 50,000 Knights engaged in lockouts, and in November, he imposed a twenty-five cent per member levy toward that end. “The combination of capitalists everywhere throughout the country” began in May, he told the membership. “The object of that combination is now made apparent,” and there were but two choices, “unconditional surrender or manly defence. Which shall it be?”117 Monies were to be forwarded by December 20, but weeks before that deadline, the inevitable appeals for exoneration came rolling in. Some locals were beset with high unemployment, others claimed poverty due to local labor strife or political campaigns, and still others simply refused to comply. In Chicago, outraged locals declared “the money was theirs and they could do as they pleased with it.” Although the assessment ultimately netted $105,174, it was far from sufficient to cope with demands, and it had given rise to even higher levels of ruinous internal dissent.118 After the Richmond GA, Knighthood fell victim to an increasingly vicious and coordinated employer siege, which did not lift until the Order was an ineffectual vestige of its former self in the industrial cities. Gripped by Red Scare hysteria, the press and public urged employers and the state to drive a stake through the heart of movement. It survived, as we shall see, largely because Powderly helped to shift the Order’s focus from urban to rural America where he tapped into rising Populist sentiment, but among both skilled and unskilled urban workers, it was largely a spent force by late 1888. “The papers of the country have been filled continually with assaults upon the Order, upon the General Officers, and everything possible done to disintegrate and destroy the Order,” GS Litchman cried in late 1887 after his first year back in that post.119 Although he assured his listeners that the worst of the counteroffensive was at an end, he could have delivered much the same message one year later. The pattern of employer attack from late 1886 to early 1888 can be viewed through the lens of a single city. In Philadelphia, the birthplace and headquarters of the Order, the eighteen months following the Richmond GA witnessed five

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major confrontations that broke the movement’s back. “The Knights did not collapse,” concluded the student of Knighthood in that place, “they were destroyed.” The battles involved disparate groups of workers—textile operatives, garment cutters, brewers, shoemakers, and railroaders—but all five exhibited three similar features. In each case, employers had either created or strengthened their associations preparatory to engaging with the Knights. They invariably exploited a relatively minor dispute “to provoke an industry-wide confrontation,” and, most important, “they persisted until the Knights clearly lost their effectiveness in the industry.” As result of these unmitigated defeats and the general disillusionment they created, DA 1 membership dropped from 51,918 in 1886 to 14,188 just one year later.120 The experience of Philadelphia was mirrored elsewhere. Knight membership decreased by two-thirds in the two years following its zenith. In the year following July 1886, when the Order claimed 729,677 brothers and sisters nationwide, DA 30 (Boston) membership fell from 81,677 to 36,101, DA 41 (Baltimore) from 18,505 to 8,100, DA 49 (New York) from 60,809 to 36,729, and DA 99 (Providence) from 11,512 to 2,235. By November 1887, the Order could boast but 350,000 members nationwide; one year later probably fewer than 200,000 called themselves Knights, and by 1890, the less than 100,000 Knights were primarily situated in rural communities.121 The “lockout crusade” that began after Haymarket did not cease until its objective of crushing the Order had been accomplished. In addition to those directly victimized, others suffered through endless district and national assessments and rising per capita taxes. Heavy financial expectations from an organization that had proven its inability to cope with employers fueled disillusionment. Many assemblies sought exoneration, but probably a greater number simply chose not to pay assessments or even their per capita taxes. The resulting financial crisis at headquarters, which was desperately searching for some means to support tens of thousands, forced Powderly to issue an edict in September 1887 informing locals that failure to pay per capita taxes quarterly (which had risen to six cents per month) would result in suspension.122 Even more devastating were the psychological effects of defeat. The bulk of those who joined in 1886 were motivated by enthusiasm inspired by the Order’s strike victories in 1885 and early 1886. When it became all too obvious that similar victories would no longer be secured, feelings of expectancy and invincibility vanished, and workers realized the painful truth that membership in the Order was not a risk-free cure-all for their woes. Leading Knights ably assisted the employers’ campaign through ruinous internal dissent, and Powderly of course has been held accountable for much of the damage.123 Factionalism had been a major feature of Knighthood since the 1881 Detroit GA, but during the crisis atmosphere of the counteroffensive, it escalated exponentially. By 1887, infighting had become truly labyrinthine as an incredibly diverse assortment of individuals and factions divided into proand antiadministration camps. Most cliques employed dirty tricks and none had

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a monopoly on truth, and although Powderly had the political savvy and sufficient support to engineer pyrrhic victories in virtually every contest, the damage inflicted by the factional wars sealed the Order’s fate. By the Richmond GA, a variety of critics challenged Powderly’s leadership. Strasser, Gompers, and P. J. McGuire led the aggressive trade unionists outside the Order who insisted on strict craft autonomy. John Morrison, Frank Foster, Harry Skeffington, and others represented outspoken trade unionism within the Order. These groups had joined forces at Cleveland to smear Powderly through anti–Home Club propaganda, and both continued their campaign of lies throughout the summer. By the fall, an even greater array of opponents could be found. In the West, some blamed Powderly for the failure of the Southwest strike, and throughout the Order some condemned him for refusing to back the May Day strikes for eight hours. Among Powderly’s newfound detractors, none played a more pivotal role than radicals such as Joseph Buchanan of Denver, Burnette Haskell of San Francisco, Joseph Labadie of Detroit, and Tom Barry of the GEB. With the exception of Haskell, whose opposition to Powderly dated from his illegal admission in 1883, these and other militant Knights had been staunch supporters of the GMW until the Cleveland session, but they had grown increasingly disillusioned with his handling of affairs ever since. They accused him of squandering opportunities the upheaval provided, of not doing enough to sustain strikers and victims of lockouts, and of showing more concern for press opinion than the rights of working people. Fear of weakening the Order through criticism had thus far tempered their dissent, but during and after Richmond, they endeavored to solidify the opposition and oust Powderly and his GEB allies. Buchanan and Labadie both edited well-known labor papers, providing them with an effective medium to attack the administration. In their campaign, they adopted the issues of Morrison and Gompers (Home Club control and craft autonomy) and added a new one—the fate of the Haymarket defendants. Throughout all the complex episodes of intrigue, three ironic features stand in bold relief. First, although Powderly will always be remembered for his ceaseless red-baiting after 1886, the reactionary character of his attacks has obscured the fact that his principal opponents were self-styled anarchists and radical socialists who happily resorted to obstruction and slander in their quest to gain control. Powderly had endured so many bitter experiences with the radical fringe since his first election in 1879 that his shift from toleration to truculence was all but inevitable. The machinations of Theodore Cuno, P. J. McGuire, Burnette Haskell, A. J. Starkweather, and Victor Drury and his DA 49 henchmen—all had caused considerable disruption and had undermined democratic practice before 1886. And those who spearheaded the antiadministration drive beginning in that year—Buchanan, Haskell, Labadie, and Barry—were all self-professed anarchists and radical socialists who employed similar tactics. Such was Powderly’s experience that he and many others within the movement came to appreciate fully Uriah Stephens’s warning that “[y]ou must not allow the Socialists

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to get control of your assembly. They are simply disturbers . . . having driven all decent men away, they are supremely happy in the delusion that they have spread their ideas still farther.”124 Second, the anarchist Victor Drury had made DA 49 so odious, not only to Powderly but to many Knights on the East Coast, that hatred of his Club became a focal point for the radical opposition in 1886. Opportunistically exploiting the myth of Club control of the GEB, the anarchists and radical socialists who challenged Powderly after Richmond sought to forge links with trade unionists embittered by the tactics of the anarchist element in DA 49. In the incendiary war of words that erupted, Powderly found himself in the crossfire. Little wonder that he grew somewhat paranoid about the disruptive potential of red and black flag wavers. Third, no issue proved more divisive after 1886 than the fate of the Haymarket anarchists in Chicago, who were convicted that August after a sham trial. In the minds of Powderly and many Knights, these men had talked foolishly of dynamite and bloodshed, and whether they were guilty of the bombing, they had helped to cultivate a national hysteria—America’s first Red Scare—which not only made a fair trial for themselves impossible but was turned against the Order with such vengeance that its very survival was jeopardized. In the supreme irony, the effort to commit the Order to the clemency campaign united the radicals of DA 49 and their equally radical opponents. Even when acting in concert, they failed to convince a majority of delegates, despite the fact that the latter accused the former of controlling the Order. The factional wars also shined the spotlight once again on Powderly’s political mastery. For one invariably depicted as weak, he was able to defeat all his challengers for another seven years with relative ease. He triumphed even though he lacked many of the bureaucratic controls routinely exercised by his more successful trade union counterparts—the appointment of organizers and their use as administration boosters, control of a sizable strike fund, and the ability to manipulate conventions—which made them increasingly impervious to internal dissent.125 When power struggles took place, he was vulnerable, protected in large measure only by the prestige of his office, the popularity of his policies, and the abundant political skills he possessed. His gift for oratory remained legendary, and his ability to remember names and faces approached the bizarre. As one amazed Knight at the Cleveland session noted, Powderly knew the name, assembly, and occupation of each delegate and “never made a mistake,” even though he had met many of them only once before. He always kept close tabs on his enemies, selected his confidants carefully, and never made his quarrels public. “Mark it Brother,” he cautioned one potential enemy, “I know of every move made against me every where.”126 Prior to Richmond, the “move” made against the incumbent was a weak one. By July 1886, Powderly and Turner were well aware that Boston’s George McNeill and Frank Foster were stumping for their jobs and that Morrison, Skeffington, and the other insurgents active at Cleveland were supporting them.127

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When John Howes resigned as MW of DA 30 in late June, Foster and McNeill faced their first challenge en route to power. If they proved unable to capture control of their own district, their chances of victory at Richmond would be negligible. They thus brought their New York and Philadelphia allies to Massachusetts for the campaign. Despite their best efforts, ex-GS Litchman was elected MW and even secured a resolution instructing DA 30’s delegates to Richmond “to vote first, last and all the time for T. V. Powderly for G.M.W.” McNeill was so disgusted he resigned as DA 30 Financial Secretary soon after.128 In the weeks before Richmond, the insurgents failed to attract sufficient support to challenge Powderly directly, but they did enlist auxiliary board member Joseph Buchanan, the “Riproarer of the Rockies” and MW of Denver’s DA 89, who was popular enough in the West to vie for the GS slot. As the leader of the Rocky Mountain section of Burnette Haskell’s “Red International,” an offshoot of the largely defunct IWA, Buchanan deemed himself a revolutionary socialist. In his paper, the Denver Labor Enquirer, he had written childish articles on the manufacture and use of dynamite and nitroglycerine, and he often urged continuous militant struggle. Powderly understood that Buchanan was far more cautious than his fiery rhetoric made him sound, however, and the two men were friends and allies through August 1886. Although William Mullen’s observation that Buchanan regarded “Brother Powderly with a love akin to that entertained by an affectionate son for his father” may have overstated the case, Buchanan assured “dear Terry” that he was “on record in my D.A. as being a strong ‘Powderly man’—much stronger now than before the special session.”129 Buchanan’s outspoken radicalism caused serious problems for his ambitions, however, not in Scranton but in his hometown, where he locked horns with Thomas Neasham, MW of mighty DA 82 (Union Pacific employees). With 5,246 members, it was the largest district west of Kansas City and represented, in contrast to other unstable railroad districts, a “durable, practical, and successful industrial union.” Buchanan’s revolutionary language, Neasham believed, did not aid a single worker and needlessly antagonized employers, including the managers of the Union Pacific. His callous disregard of public opinion would sound the death knell for DA 82 and Knighthood in the West. “Public opinion makes empires and it destroys the same, it creates governments and hurls them into oblivion,” Neasham observed.130 When friction between the two Denver Knights became vicious and public, Neasham threatened to leave the Order and, possibly, take his district with him. Powderly responded quickly; he pleaded with Neasham to remain and encouraged others to use their influence. But he refused to involve himself in the personal dispute, even when Buchanan repeatedly demanded that he publicly denounce “the combative persistency of the [Neasham] gang.” “How do you expect of me to carry the order forward when such important men as yourself and Neasham cannot hitch?” an exasperated Powderly asked Buchanan.131 Powderly explained his views in a private note. Because Buchanan’s IWA

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connections had caused the bad blood, he suggested that Buchanan “tone down” his rhetoric and focus his energies on the Order: I will be plain with you. I cannot see what a member of the K. of L. wants with another society, except it be his trade union. . . . These International Workingmen Societies are in my estimation aiming at the same thing that we are only they may be a little more radical. . . . In this country with the mixture of races that we have you cannot make any society tie its members to a strict line of brotherhood. We must take men as we find them. . . . So long as we have little faith in the K. of L. and keep working through other societies we are but scattering the fire. . . . You are pretty radical, too outspoken and give out the impression that you would do a darn sight worse things than you really would do. This alarms your friends, Neasham among the number. Tone down a little, feel strong of course but don’t blurt it out so frankly and make up with Neasham and work together.132

This sound albeit paternalistic advice on the need for toleration within the movement and judicious language in the midst of a crippling Red Scare was the last communication between the two friends before Richmond, where Buchanan presented himself as the voice of the antiadministration camp. The “riproarer” showed his hand early. Even while Powderly’s missive was in the mail, he printed the first of his many editorials blasting Home Club control of the Order and urging both craft autonomy and negotiations with the “treaty” faction. Gompers was now certain that Buchanan was “heartily in sympathy with our cause.” John Morrison appealed to him for assistance in securing delegate status, and rumors abounded that Buchanan would run for national office and that “P. J. McGuire and others . . . are doing all they can for him.”133 Buchanan’s sudden transformation from booster to kicker thus stemmed from Powderly’s refusal to intervene publicly in Denver’s internal squabbles and empty promises from the insurgents that they could elect him GS. His partnership with Haskell also may have played a role, because the “Red International” was still determined “to control the order of the K. of L.” by any means.134 Even with the addition of Buchanan, the insurgents were far too weak to control the majority at Richmond. Although popular among Western delegates, Buchanan was soundly drubbed for the GS post by administration candidate Charles Litchman. He then accepted nomination for the GEB, but lost out to Hayes, Barry, Bailey, Ira Aylsworth, Albert Carlton, and even T. B. McGuire of DA 49.135 In spite of this thrashing, three controversial actions taken at Richmond revived the sagging insurgency. The first critical issue was the report of the Home Club Investigating Committee, which had been established at Cleveland to investigate Morrison’s spurious charges. After lengthy hearings held that summer, the seven-member HCIC found that although the Club existed, it did not constitute a “secret conspiracy” because its opposition to Powderly was well known. The HCIC then attacked Morrison in no uncertain terms: “We believe him

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[Morrison] to have been actuated by personal spite growing out of difficulties he had with the officers and members of D.A. 49.”136 Although the report accurately reflected the facts and was adopted by a majority, it did little to silence those prepared to brandish the myth of Club control as a weapon to attack the administration. The next divisive action was the adoption of a resolution requiring all Knights employed in the cigar trade “who are also members of the International Union” either to “withdraw from said Union or leave the Order.” Although introduced by DA 49, passage of this law reflected not Home Club control but rather a general belief that the principal threat within the labor movement to the Order’s stability came from Strasser and Gompers. These men had “to their eternal shame” stabbed the Order in the back during the Southwest strike by publicly denouncing the Order as a scab organization; they had deliberately raised the specter of anarchist control of the GEB after Haymarket, thus associating the two in the public mind; and they had instigated a war between the Order and trade unions through the insulting “treaty.” They had done all this, Powderly and others believed, out of dedication to the very craft particularism that the majority of Knights held in contempt. Delegates acted out of an arrogant and misguided belief in the Order’s strength, and they acted over Powderly’s objections. Powderly shared the anger of delegates, indeed he even encouraged it, but he knew well that this action played into the hands of CMIU leaders, who were quick to proclaim that “[t]he Knights of Labor have exposed themselves in their true colors—as enemies of the trade unions.” Powderly issued dispensations countermanding the GA ruling in numerous districts, the resolution was generally ignored outside of New York, and in February 1887, Powderly took the unprecedented step of demanding that the GEB set aside the will of the GA and retract this order.137 The GA’s attack on the CMIU was a colossal blunder in many respects. It undermined Powderly’s efforts to cultivate friendly relations with moderate trade unions in an attempt to isolate what he regarded as the extremists who insisted on the “treaty.” Throughout the summer, he had been hard at work adjusting grievances and encouraging unions to join the Order as a body. Several smaller unions did join, and larger ones were seriously contemplating this step, but news from Richmond crippled this policy.138 It also angered many trade unionists within the Order, some of whom were quick to believe that it would serve as a precedent for further attacks.139 And it enabled the radicals, who were previously unconcerned with the issue of craft autonomy, to join hands with unionists and thus broaden the antiadministration insurgency. In Detroit, for instance, Labadie and his disciples “took up the cause of craft rights not so much out of a deepseated concern with craft grievances but as a weapon” against Powderly. In Denver, Buchanan, who had often locked horns with trade unionists in the past, now claimed that he was “bitterly opposed” by Powderly solely because “I am a Trades Unionist.”140 Little mention was made of Haymarket, the third divisive issue at Richmond,

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until the last day of the GA. In the wake of the bombing, virtually all Knights had echoed Powderly’s angry denunciation of the Chicago anarchists. Labadie stood alone among prominent Knights in expressing support from the outset. “If it is necessary to use dynamite to protect the rights of free meeting, free press and free speech,” he wrote in his paper, “then the sooner we learn its manufacture and use and power the better it will be for the toilers of the world.” Such views were anathema to almost all other Knights.141 By the conclusion of the trial in August, however, it became clear not that the men were wholly innocent, but that the trial had been unfair. With growing numbers of progressives across the country supporting clemency for the condemned, the Order’s stance came under the spotlight. The GA faced a quandary. Once it became known that one of the accused, Albert Parsons, was a Knight, the nation’s press demanded that the Order “denounce those whose aim is to break down and destroy all laws.” Within the Knights, opinion was both shrill and divided. Powderly of course remained extreme in his antipathy toward anything that smacked of anarchism. His eagerness to shield the Order from public hysteria by dissociating Haymarket and Knighthood was not without logic, but it outraged those who were equally eager to throw the resources of the Order behind the clemency campaign. In the end, delegates agreed to a watered-down compromise appeal for mercy that included a denunciation of those who “teach or practice violent infractions of the law.”142 Powderly had not controlled the Richmond GA. Delegates had rejected his views on the CMIU expulsion, and they had once again dismissed his plans for powerful State Assemblies. But like the Home Club in 1883, the insurgents realized that toppling the administration required smearing Powderly’s reputation. By holding him responsible for every action taken by the majority, the insurgents now had sufficient ammunition for a two-year campaign against him. Buchanan, for instance, wrote his own report of the GA for general distribution in which he concluded that “the ‘Home Club’ with its subsidized supporters [Powderly] was in the control at Richmond.” By November, his newspaper editorials accused Powderly of running the Order in the interests of the Catholic Church, of autocratic leadership that would do “credit to the czar of Russia,” and of succumbing to the “fawning flattery” of Gould and other capitalists.143 Although the GMW attempted to placate his erstwhile friend by explaining that he was duty bound to uphold “the will of the majority,” such overtures only emboldened the “riproarer.” Buchanan’s tirades earned him growing numbers of opponents in his own DA 89, as well as the continued enmity of DA 82. Buchanan had become a “drawback,” complained one Denver shoemaker. Many devoted members had “become disgusted and quit.” In January 1887, he moved to Chicago, where he sought to bring others into the anti-Powderly camp.144 His move did not ease tensions in Denver, for he had placed Burnette Haskell in charge of his newspaper and dwindling IWA branch. Once in control of Buchanan’s operations, Haskell exhibited the same proclivity for intrigue and disruption that he had shown in San Francisco. He con-

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ducted a relentless and slanderous assault on the GMW through editorials accusing him of all manner of crimes, including “selling out” to the Catholic Church and capitalists, squandering the Order’s resources, and dictatorial control. Referring to Powderly as “His Highness,” Haskell offered such pearls as “the K. of L. must take warning now or the next General Master Workman will be Gould himself,” and “Powderly told Cardinal (James) Gibbons that if the K. of L. did not suit the Pope that it should be changed so it would suit.” As had happened in San Francisco, members responded to these endless diatribes by quitting. Within five months of Haskell’s arrival, no less than seven Denver locals lapsed and others begged to be detached from DA 89, but of course Haskell blamed Powderly for such precipitous decline.145 When such incendiary falsehoods began circulating throughout the entire Order, Powderly deemed it best to face his accusers. He traveled to Denver at the invitation of DA 82, and his public speech on May 9, 1887, attracted over 4,000 people, including the mayor and governor. Haskell and Buchanan’s followers in DA 89 did not attend the speech, but they did join Powderly for a closed meeting on May 10 in the sanctuary of Neasham’s LA 3218. The GMW knew well what to expect. Haskell had already written and circulated fifty questions designed to expose Powderly as the ogre he had made him out to be. Many referred to old matters, such as his handling of the Duryea boycott, but most dealt with more recent concerns: Why did he call off the stockyards strike when the Knights “had the strike won?” Why was he so “unsympathetic” during the Southwest strike? Why did he hide the crimes of the Home Club? Was not his order to expel CMIU members unconstitutional?146 Even though he regarded the questions as “impertinent” and “prompted by malice,” Powderly patiently answered each one in turn. The strength of his performance depended on the attitudes of his listeners. The eleven members of DA 82’s executive board unanimously agreed that he had offered more than satisfactory explanations and that he had engaged in no personal attacks against either Haskell or Buchanan. Haskell, they declared, was “completely routed.” Haskell himself published what he claimed were Powderly’s answers, which of course made the GMW look ridiculous; his circular was signed by eleven members of DA 89, including four from Haskell’s own LA 2327 and representing but four locals altogether. Which side was telling the truth? One DA 89 local refused to recognize Haskell’s report, and two others unanimously resolved after reading it that it was “a lying, garbled statement” written by “unprincipled and desperate men.” Moreover, two leading members of Haskell’s local who had strenuously supported the charges of both Buchanan and Haskell since November 1886, John B. Lennon and G. O. Shove, not only refused to sign Haskell’s account but attached their names to the DA 82 statement.147 Buchanan failed to show for the Denver battle, but he received Haskell’s version of events in the post. Haskell provoked his friend by claiming that Powderly had accused him of consorting with “negro wenches” at Richmond and other such nonsense. Enraged, Buchanan publicly denounced Powderly as

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“the blackest liar I have ever known” and promised, if elected to the 1887 Minneapolis GA, to be a “perpetual ‘cramming machine’ ” against the administration.148 Both Buchanan and Haskell continued their attacks throughout the summer, Knighthood in Denver continued to disintegrate, and the insurgents had succeeded in spreading their propaganda to every local in the country. The Denver debacle was little more than a sideshow, however, for Buchanan’s real efforts were being made in Chicago. Powderly’s calling off of the packinghouse strike had profound ramifications in the Windy City. It discredited the GMW and the leaders of both DA 24 and DA 57 in the eyes of many members, and it boosted the fortunes of a new radical leadership headed by George Schilling and Charles Seib. Buchanan tapped into this mood through his new Chicago Labor Enquirer, the city’s only English-language socialist paper, in which he hailed the election of both Schilling and Seib as DA 24 delegates to the upcoming Minneapolis GA. Probably on Haskell’s instructions, Buchanan also sought to merge the “Red International” with the “Black International” (International Working People’s Association) of which Albert Parsons was a member.149 Buchanan’s antics worried Powderly, and he was even more frightened by the realization that both Tom Barry and William Bailey of the GEB had joined the insurgency. Barry was an outspoken radical who, like Buchanan, had maintained friendly relations with Powderly until the spring of 1886. By the time of the Southwest strike, however, his penchant for loose talk and militant language had earned him the nickname “Gab.” Powderly, Turner, Hayes, and Litchman regarded him with suspicion, and Powderly was convinced by the summer that Barry was “a member of the International society.”150 Barry’s duplicity during the Chicago stockyards strike did nothing to allay these fears. His recognition that virtually the entire administration opposed him and could demonstrate that he had violated the unanimous will of the GA by ordering the strike back on left him little choice but to join the insurgents. One Chicago Knight was amazed to find this GEB member attempting to place sole blame for the strike on Powderly’s shoulders and working “hand in glove with the anarchists.” From that point on, Barry spoke out against the administration at every opportunity, mouthed the anti-Catholic rhetoric so prevalent in the opposition’s propaganda, made clandestine trips to New York to discuss strategy with John Morrison, and kept in close contact with Buchanan and Joseph Labadie.151 Bailey’s decision to join the insurgency puzzled Powderly. The GMW cared deeply for this rough-hewn Ohio miner, believing that his commitment was such that he “would die for the K. of L.” He supported him even though Bailey’s zealous desire to promote the Order led to constant friction with mine union stalwarts such as John McBride, Chris Evans, and Dan McLaughlin. Bailey made no secret of the fact that “[i]f I had my way I would not touch any man that’s a trades unionist first and a Knight of Labor second.”152 Powderly, who repeatedly sought to temper such antiunionist attitudes, could never comprehend why Bailey would join an insurgency that sought a closer alliance with the very trade unionists he opposed. He could only assume that Barry and others had

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“pour[ed] their poisons into Bill’s ear.” “I cannot understand for the life of me why he is so cold toward me of late,” Powderly confessed in June 1887. “If it was Barry I wouldn’t mind.” But when Bailey began reciting anti-Catholic rant and digging around headquarters for evidence that might revive the old charge of Litchman’s financial chicanery, his motivation mattered less than the threat he represented.153 By the summer of 1887, rumors abounded that Buchanan’s “perpetual ‘cramming machine’ ” would dislodge the administration at the upcoming Minneapolis GA. In addition to such fixtures as Morrison, McNeill, and Foster, the new recruits included Labadie, Barry, Bailey, and the Chicago radicals.154 Although it remained a minority movement, it represented a far more powerful combination than Powderly had ever faced before, and for a moment he toyed with the notion that he should “resign and let this element run the Order for awhile.” It was a fleeting thought. Unwilling to allow a minority wrest control by willful misrepresentation of his leadership, he prepared for an epic battle. “Take off the muzzles and let slip the dogs of WAR!” he exclaimed to Litchman. “Buchanan, Barry, Morrison in WAR paint. McNeill in the background stirring up the red fire.”155 Once the battle was joined at the 1887 Minneapolis GA, Powderly’s victory proved remarkably easy. Without prompting, thirteen Denver area locals had sent an official protest against Buchanan’s election as a delegate. They claimed that the DA 89 delegate elections were illegal because, among numerous other reasons, Buchanan had taken a transfer card when he moved to Chicago and was therefore no longer a member of his DA 89 local, he and Haskell had altered the records of this local in an effort to prove he was still a member, Haskell had voted even though he was not entitled to a seat in DA 89, Buchanan’s former local had been suspended for failure to pay its per capita tax, and Buchanan’s chief supporter, C. W. Eye, had participated in the DA 89 session even though his local had withdrawn from the district in protest over the influence of the “Red Internationalists.”156 Whatever the merits of the charges, one thing was certain—the conduct of the two “revolutionaries” had so offended Denver Knights that those who had not quit in disgust had begun to fight back. After the Credentials Committee recommended that Buchanan be rejected as a delegate, the insurgents had their first opportunity to show their strength. When documents relating to the case were being read before the entire GA, Frank Foster moved that Buchanan pay the indebtedness of his local and be admitted. Foster failed to mention the other charges, and his motion was defeated. Buchanan was therefore denied a seat, and when Tom Barry moved that Buchanan be allowed ten minutes to make a departing speech, Powderly, in a display of sarcastic magnanimity, gave Buchanan as much time as he desired. Four days later, Neasham went for the jugular. Arguing that because the “doings” of Buchanan and Haskell “plainly show” that they ran DA 89 “not for the good and welfare of this Order but for the benefit and in interest of other organizations,” he resolved that both men be expelled for violations of their pledge of honor.

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Although the Committee on Appeals and Grievances rejected this request because expulsions were matters under the jurisdiction of LA courts, the insurgency had been dealt a crippling blow at the outset.157 The opposition was now without its only truly popular national figure, and it had exposed itself as a hostile minority faction without any questionable tactics on Powderly’s part. Despite holding frequent meetings to discuss strategy, the weakened insurgency could not muster a majority on any issue that would hurt the administration. Although Powderly had warned these men that he would rule out of order any resolution committing the Order to further action on behalf of the condemned Haymarket anarchists, and that “it would do harm to the condemned men to have it go out that this body had refused to pass such a resolution,” the insurgents nevertheless made such an effort. Powderly ruled it out of order, and delegates provided Powderly with an emphatic vote of confidence (121 to 53). The insurgents then denounced Powderly’s “heartless cruelty” in calling off the stockyards strike, but again delegates sustained their chief (117 to 49). Significantly, William Bailey, who had cast his vote as GEB member to end this strike, now voted with the insurgents in condemning that very decision. On Saturday, October 15, Tom Barry tried a more direct approach, and for several hours he blasted Powderly, his colleagues on the GEB, and GS Litchman.158 At this point, Powderly may well have kept his dogs of war muzzled. His opposition had tried every conceivable ploy without much effect. However, on the Monday following Barry’s attack, he and his supporters hatched a plan of their own. Determined to rid the GEB of insurgents and humiliate his opposition, he concocted a clumsy scheme to oust Barry and Bailey. The next elections were not scheduled until 1888, but Powderly, GWF Richard Griffiths, GS Litchman, GT Turner, and GEB members Hayes, Carlton, T. B. McGuire, and Aylsworth all submitted their resignations in an effort to force elections a year early. Although delegates refused to sanction such action, a majority heartily endorsed “the actions during the year of said officers who resigned,” and they offered Powderly a special vote of support for his official acts since Richmond.159 Barry and Bailey had been spared, but the “perpetual ‘cramming machine’ ” had proven inadequate for any task save obstruction. “Having driven all decent men away, they are supremely happy in the delusion that they have spread their ideas still farther.” Uriah Stephens’s verdict on radical malcontents aptly applied to the insurgents. After leaving Minneapolis, thirty-five delegates gathered in Chicago and created the Provisional Committee, which was to serve as the embryo of a rival to the Order. Several delegates left as soon as they realized the true intent of the meeting. The leaders offered no proposals on how the new organization would operate, and their manifesto was simply a twenty-point litany of accusations against the administration, including financial malfeasance, mishandling of strikes, conspiring with the Home Club to control the Order, and declaring war against trade unions—all of which had been put forth at Minneapolis without effect. Charles Seib served as secretary of the Provisionals, and his circular urged locals not to pay dues and assessments

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to the “most hypocritical, the most autocratic and tyrannical clique that has ever controlled any labor organization.” Buchanan served as MW, and he showered abuse on Powderly and his “crooked pals” in his paper; in Detroit, Labadie publicly “declared open warfare” on the administration; and Barry embarked on a national lecture tour to drum up recruits.160 The Provisional Committee survived but six months before succumbing to its own internal dissent. Adherents could agree on nothing except their hatred of Powderly, whom they chose to blame for all of the Order’s ills. When it came to establishing an alternative program at their April meeting in New York, they quarreled and immediately disintegrated. As Powderly put it, the Provisional Committee “died for want of provisions.” By the summer of 1888, former Provisionals could be found scabbing during the Burlington railroad strike, a bizarre epitaph for those who criticized Powderly’s strike policy. In the six months of its existence, the Provisional Committee caused havoc. By unearthing old Powderly opponents such as E. A. Stevens and James L. Wright, the kickers spread their message to the assemblies and evaporated whatever lingering confidence the rank and file had in their leadership. Even Buchanan later admitted that the sole effect of the dissident group was “to hasten withdrawals from the Order.”161 Already reeling from the concerted attack of employers, the membership departed in droves when their sanctuaries became venues for little more than factional strife. Those who could not control were content to ruin. Powderly must share the blame for the unraveling of the Order, for he did not suffer these slanders in silence. Those who challenged him were invariably dismissed as anarchists or communists, and he devoted an ever increasing portion of his time to refuting charges, justifying his actions, and surrounding himself with allies willing to fight the insurgents. More importantly, the Provisionals’ campaign had caused such disruption that Powderly, in an effort to protect himself and the organization he led, adopted autocratic measures to expel his enemies and thereby crippled the very democracy he was trying to safeguard. No leader could have afforded to ignore the very real threat of the Provisionals. After Seib had sent circulars to all locals urging that per capita taxes be sent to him rather than headquarters, Powderly embarked on a letter-writing campaign, offering his version of events and asking loyalists to combat the Provisionals at the district level. “All true members must attend their meetings, watch everything that transpires, head off every scheme, checkmate every move of those who use the Order either for selfish ends or in the interests of other organizations,” he instructed one Chicago Knight. “I do not charge all of those who attended the meeting in Chicago with being Anarchists,” he informed a Harrisburg supporter, but its leaders were, and the Provisionals were created “only because Anarchy could not rule our Order.” Boosters took up the challenge, and in many districts across the nation, as one historian put it, “a veritable war within the Knights of Labor ensued.”162 Powderly then conspired to remove Barry, who had proven a dangerous ob-

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structionist ever since the stockyards strike. No leader could afford to tolerate a board member touring the nation to encourage nonpayment of taxes and enrollment in a rival organization. “Bailey and Barry have made the board room a living hell for us for nearly a year,” he explained to Richard Griffiths in February 1888. By that time, board sessions were disrupted frequently by shouting matches and threats of physical violence, and Powderly had come to regard Barry as “a species of madman upon whom it is useless to waste speech.” Bailey even deserted his friend, and during a particularly raucous gathering in August, Barry simultaneously resigned his GEB seat and was suspended. “I shall now go it alone,” Barry declared as he headed off on a speaking tour to lay the foundation for yet another rival organization he was hatching, the Brotherhood of United Labor. His venomous attacks, including a speech at New York’s Cooper Union, led Powderly and the board to take the unprecedented and unconstitutional step of expelling Barry without trial. At the 1888 Indianapolis GA, Powderly defended the expulsion “as the only course . . . possible to take under the circumstances,” and delegates sustained this act by a vote of 122 to 24.163 Although Powderly had ousted his rival, his demonstrated ability to control GA majorities and the continuing decline of the Order only encouraged opponents to bore from without. The Brotherhood of United Labor, or the “Barry movement” as Powderly called it, was officially launched in late 1888 and captured some support in Michigan and Ontario.164 When inner turmoil loosened Victor Drury’s grip on DA 49, he joined hands with some of the surviving Philadelphia fathers (only one of whom was in any way active at this time) in January 1889 and created the Founders’ Movement, which sought a return to complete secrecy.165 Powderly kept tabs on these splinter groups through a small network of spies, known as “The Governors,” which he organized in early 1889.166 He used the Order’s lecturers to enlist his agents. For instance, when Leonora Barry was heading south on behalf of the Women’s Department she ran, Powderly asked her to identify “some good, true Knights of Labor” willing to act as potential recruits for the rival organizations. Victor St. Cloud, the RS of DA 139 (Savannah, Georgia), stepped forward, kept in contact with both the Founders and the United Brotherhood, and relayed his information to Powderly. In an unconstitutional use of funds that Powderly would have found unthinkable before 1888, Powderly even supplied St. Cloud with $100 to establish a bogus local in the Founders.167 Both movements quickly collapsed, he was glad to learn, but his newfound readiness to engage in such reprehensible clandestine shenanigans signified the death of Knighthood as a democratic movement. In his fight against unprincipled opponents, Powderly proved willing to jettison his own principles. And the Order, having already lost its claim as the popular voice of working people as a result of the employer counteroffensive, now merely struggled to survive threats posed by former members by any means possible. Unless Powderly could

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identify new programs of action and tap into new bases of support, the Order was certain to fester and die from the wounds it received during the battles of the Great Upheaval. NOTES 1. Richard Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900 (Urbana, 1989), p. 211. 2. On the upheaval, see Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, chapter 5; Steven Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work Leisure and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York, 1985), pp. 270–292; Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1993), chapters 3 and 8; Susan Levine, Labor’s True Woman: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age (Philadelphia, 1984), chapters 5 and 6; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989), chapter 5; Neville Kirk, Labour and Society in Britain and the USA, (London, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 115–118. For assessments of strike action, see Richard Schneirov, “The Knights of Labor in the Chicago Labor Movement and in Municipal Politics, 1877– 1887,” Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, 1984, pp. 404–407; David Montgomery, “Strikes in Nineteenth-Century America,” Social Science History 4 (Winter 1980): 97–99. 3. Voss, Making, pp. 231–232. 4. Here are just a few of the more trenchant condemnations of Powderly’s behavior during the upheaval. 1) “Powderly’s half-hearted attitude towards the issue of the eight-hour day, his betrayal of the Southwest strikers, and his hostile attitudes to the anarchists arrested and hanged after the Haymarket incident . . . fueled disillusionment and divisions.” Kirk, Labour and Society, vol. 2, p. 124. 2) “The discontent frightened Terence Powderly, the somewhat bumbling head of the Knights of Labor.” Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Boston, 1972), p. 25. 3) For the splintering and disintegration that began in 1886, “Powderly must take much of the blame for the damage—for his ham-fisted rule during the strikes and for deliberately antagonizing the craft unionists.” Laurie, Artisans into Workers, p. 170. 4) “Certainly, Terence Powderly was a vacillating, often ineffectual leader, who was more timid and less militant than many of his members.” Voss, Making, p. 239. 5) His “insistence . . . that the interests of employers and employees were fundamentally harmonious . . . led the great majority of members to abandon the Knights . . . and many of the skilled workers among them joined trade unions that accepted class conflict as a fact of life.” Martin Shefter, “Trade Unions and Political Machines: The Organization and Disorganization of the American Working Class in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg, eds., Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1986), p. 255. Note the similarity between Shefter’s observation and that of Selig Perlman: Powderly was “foreign to the spirit of wage consciousness.” John R. Commons, et al., History of Labour in the United States (New York, 1918), vol. 2, p. 347.

5. Laurie, Artisans into Workers, p. 167; Judith Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing, and Change: The Knights of Labor in Philadelphia, 1869–1890,” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1985, pp. 283–284.

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6. Emma Fickensher to TVP, November 24, 1885, PP; Richard Oestreicher, “Terence V. Powderly, the Knights of Labor, and Artisinal Republicanism,” in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, eds., Labor Leaders in America (Urbana, 1987), pp. 49–50. 7. See the numerous letters between Powderly and Charles Francis Adams Jr., Thomas Neasham, A. A. Carlton, John Mushet, J. N. Corbin, P. J. O’Brien, and E. P. Alexander from late October through December 1885. Powderly eventually met with Adams in December. 8. F. McQuaid to TVP, October 27; Turner to TVP, October 29 and 31, November 2; TVP to Turner, Oct 30; TVP to F. W. Price, November 2; TVP to Patrick Golden, November 4; William Bailey to TVP, December 29, 1885, PP. 9. TVP to Jay Gould, October 10; Gould to TVP, October 11; Hayes to TVP, October 24; TVP to Hayes, October 26; TVP to Richard Trevellick, October 26; Richard Griffiths to TVP, October 28 and November 7; John Mummert to TVP, October 26; TVP to Mummert, October 30; Turner to TVP, October 29; TVP to Turner, October 30 and 31; E. A. Schreiber to TVP, December 1; C. M. Berry to TVP, December 7, 1885, PP. 10. For details, see Craig Phelan, “The Warp of Fancy: The Knights of Labor and the Home Club Takeover Myth,” Labor History 40 (Summer 1999): 283–299. 11. Joseph Evans to TVP, November 30, 1885, PP; Pittsburgh Dispatch, December 14, 1885. 12. Edward Irving to TVP, December 1; TVP to Irving, December 4, 1885, PP. 13. W. B. Gibson to TVP, December 8; TVP to Gibson, December 22, 1885, PP. 14. Ray Bliss to TVP, December 22 and 26; TVP to Bliss, December 26 and 28; Alex Patterson to TVP, December 29; TVP to W. N. Brockway, December 29; TVP to Turner, December 29; TVP to Messrs. Gage, Hitchcock, and Gage, December 30, 1885, PP. Powderly visited Homer and Cortland on New Year’s Day. Elmira Morning Telegram, January 10, 1886. 15. After a full week in the Queen City, Tom Barry and William Bailey found affairs in a “worse muddle than [DA] 49,” which was notorious for internal rows requiring GEB intervention. Even then, Hugh Cavanaugh, MW of DA 48, requested an audience with Powderly in Scranton on New Year’s eve to sort out difficulties that had arisen in the few days since Barry’s departure. Barry to TVP, December 30; Cavanaugh to TVP, December 26, 1885, PP. 16. Friction in Troy is discussed below. 17. Dan Frazier Tomson to TVP, December 12; Edwin Perry to TVP, December 16; Esley Hallenbeck to TVP, December 14, 1885, PP. 18. O’Donoghue to TVP, November 25; Trevellick to TVP, December 5; Mullen to TVP, November 26; Labadie to TVP, November 28, 1885, PP. 19. TVP to William Mullen, November 30; TVP to Turner, December 31, 1885, PP. Once again, board members unanimously rejected his resignation. 20. Turner to TVP, October 29, November 2, December 18 and 24; TVP to Joseph Labadie, November 30, 1885, PP. 21. C. E. Lyttle to TVP, December 2; TVP to Lyttle, December 4, 1885; Ellen Hunt to TVP, January 1, 1886; John O’Keefe to TVP, November 8, 1885, PP. 22. Turner “To the Order wherever found,” December 31, 1885. Ralph Beaumont considered this circular “very timely.” Beaumont to TVP, February 1, 1886; TVP to Turner, December 28, 1885, PP.

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23. Trevellick to TVP, January 18, 1886; O’Donoghue to TVP, December 9, 1885; John O’Keefe to TVP, November 8, 1885, PP. 24. For Troy, see M. H. Davies to Peter Catanooch, February 8; on the AT&SF, see Alden Huling to TVP, February 8; on Lynn, see Nellie Hardison and Maggie Phillips to TVP, February 8, Peter McGeough to TVP, March 5 and TVP to McGeough, March 9; on Lewiston, see H. E. Yeaton to TVP, February 8 and O. C. Phillips to TVP, February 8; on Homer, see Henry Mente to TVP, February 8; on Toronto, see D. J. O’Donoghue to TVP, February 8; on Amsterdam, see P. H. Cummins to TVP, February 10; on St. Louis, see Martin Witter to TVP, February 8; for New York railroad workers, see Officers and Members of L.A. 3240 to TVP, February 9; on Danville, see on Louis Eberly to TVP, February 9; on Little Rock, see Dan Frazier Tomson to TVP, February 14; on Des Moines, see John Sally to TVP, February 13, March 1 and March 8, and TVP to Sally, March 8; on Earlington, see William Smith to TVP, February 25 and TVP to Smith, March 22; on Springfield, see J. T. McDonald to TVP, March 3; on Gloversville, see P. H. Cummins to TVP, March 1, 1886, PP. 25. George Clarke to TVP, February 8; Joseph O’Kelly to TVP, January 9 and 22, February 12; Chicago Evening Mail, January 18; Richard Griffiths to TVP, January 8 and 27, February 22; Maxwell Brothers to TVP, January 30; “A working man” to TVP, March 11, 1886, PP. 26. Tomson to TVP, February 14, 1886, PP. 27. Circular, “Office of the General Executive Board,” March 3, 1886, PP. 28. See, for example, Gerald Grob, Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement (Chicago, 1961), p. 66. 29. McNeill to TVP, February 27; D. J. O’Donoghue to TVP, March 13; James Sovereign to TVP, March 15; Henry Griffiths to TVP, March 20; Labadie to TVP, March 25, 1886, PP. 30. H. C. Kinne to TVP, March 15; see the scores of letters from organizers requesting dispensations in March and April 1886; TVP to Turner, March 15, 1886; Howard Gitelman, “Attempts to Unify the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900,” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1960, p. 324. 31. TVP to W. T. Wright, March 4; TVP to Emma Fickenscher, March 8, 1886, PP. 32. Pingree and Smith to TVP, March 19; James O’Grady to TVP, March 18; E. R. Ottarson to TVP, March 17; Martin Witter to TVP, March 18, 1886, PP. 33. Kirk, Labour and Society, vol. 2, p. 124; Laurie, Artisans, p. 171. 34. Ruth Allen, The Great Southwest Strike (Austin, 1942), pp. 26–27, 47. 35. Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics and Inspection, The Official History of the Great Strike on the Southwestern Railway System, 1887, pp 89–95; Harry Frumerman, “The Strikes of 1885–86,” Marxist Quarterly (October–December 1937), pp. 398–399. 36. Quoted in Allen, Great Southwest Strike, p. 48. 37. Hayes to TVP, April 26, 1886, PP. 38. Allen, pp. 56–62. The details of this event first came to light in Harry J. Carman, Henry David, and Paul N. Guthrie, eds., The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York, 1940), pp. 121–122. For supporting evidence, see TVP to Irons, March 25, 1886, PP; Sedalia (Missouri) Gazette, August 18, 1889. 39. “You cannot defeat a railway company if the trains continue to run,” Buchanan had told DA 93 a year earlier. Attempts to stop the trains, he continued, would inevitably lead to friction with police, sheriffs, and U.S. marshalls. If such forces were defeated, the state militia would be called out, and even if strikers were prepared to “clean out the

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militia,” federal troops would be sent to crush what had escalated into an “armed rebellion.” Buchanan, The Story of a Labor Agitator (New York, 1903), p. 227. 40. New York Times, March 7; The Rock Islander (Illinois), March 24; Chicago Times, March 26; Hayes to TVP, March 25, 1886, PP. 41. Hayes to TVP, April 26, 1886, PP. 42. TVP to Martin Irons, March 25; George Walmsly to TVP, March 16, 1886, PP. 43. Allen, p. 71. 44. Martin Irons to TVP, March 24; TVP to Irons, March 25; Thomas Neasham to TVP, March 29; TVP to Neasham, April 8, 1886, PP. Proceedings, October 1886 Richmond GA, p. 83. On the stability of DA 82, see Shelton Stromquist, A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Urbana, 1987), pp. 66–69. John Barrett to TVP, March 26, 1886, PP. Barrett was copublisher of the Scranton Truth and relayed the Associated Press dispatch to Powderly. 45. TVP to Turner, April 12; TVP “to the Order wherever found,” April 15, 1886: “[S]end every dollar you can spare to the G.S.T.” Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 51, 63. New York Times, March 27, 1886. 46. See, among others, Hayes to TVP, March 25 and April 8; Hayes to Emma Fickenscher, April 1; TVP to Allan Thurman, March 10; William McDowell to TVP, April 14; TVP to Andrew Curtin, March 24 and April 8, 1886, PP. See also New York World, March 28, and St. Louis Republican, June 4, 1886. 47. TVP to Turner, March 25, 1886, PP; Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, p. 39. 48. TVP to Curtin, March 24; TVP to Turner, March 25, 1886, PP. 49. New York World, March 28, 1886. William McDowell to TVP, April 14, 1886: This lengthy letter is McDowell’s sworn statement of what transpired. 50. McDowell to TVP, April 14; TVP to Gould, April 11, 1886, PP. 51. TVP to McDowell, April 10; TVP to Neasham, April 8, 1886, PP. 52. Fickenscher to James Redpath, April 1; TVP to Charles Yeaton, April 6, 1886, PP. See also Buchanan’s observation of Powderly’s haggard appearance in Denver Labor Enquirer, June 5, 1886. 53. New York Times, April 4 and 10, New York Tribune, April 10, 1886; Hayes to TVP, April 10, “American” to TVP, April 11, 1886, PP. 54. New York Times, April 8, 1886; Robert Weir, “Beyond the Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor,” Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1990, p. 290. 55. Beaumont to TVP, June 11, 1886, PP. 56. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, p 173; Allen, p. 120. For positive assessments of Powderly’s testimony, see Philadelphia Press, April 21 and 22, New York World, April 21, Baltimore Sun, April 21, and New York Star, April 24, 1886. “The Knights of Labor have done nothing which has made them so strong before the country as their selection of such a moderate and well-balanced man as Mr. Powderly for their head.” Philadelphia Press, April 22, 1886. 57. Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (New York, 1955), vol. 2, p. 86. 58. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, p. 173; Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895 (New York, 1929), p. 149. 59. Compare Powderly’s attitudes in his The Path I Trod, pp. 104–105, with Mitchell’s in his Organized Labor: Its Problems, Purposes and Ideals (Philadelphia, 1903). 60. TVP to Tom O’Reilly, October 25, 1886, PP. 61. Oestreicher, “Artisinal Republicanism,” p. 53.

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62. In addition to TVP’s correspondence, see the litany of troubles and appeals granted by the GEB in its report, Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 94–138; GEB, “Appeal for Aid,” September 10, 1886. 63. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 45–46; TVP, “to all subordinate Assemblies of the Order,” November 19, 1886, PP. 64. Eric Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1964), p. 144. 65. There are two 2-page sheets in the PP entitled “Recommendations,” no date (May 1886), which detail these and other proposals. 66. Voss, Making, p. 237; Leon Fink, “The New Labor History and the Powers of Historical Pessimism: Consensus, Hegemony, and the Case of the Knights of Labor,” Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 115–136. TVP to W. E. Berry, March 25, 1886, PP. 67. O’Keefe to TVP, November 8, 1885, January 25 and February 15, 1886; TVP to O’Keefe, January 27, 1886, PP; Providence Morning Star, March 5, 1886. 68. Clarence Bonnett, Employers’ Associations in the United States (New York, 1956), chapter 3; Voss, Making, p. 133; Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing, and Change,” pp. 232–233. 69. TVP to Joseph Fanning, March 25, 1886, PP. 70. TVP to Hayes, April 27; TVP “to the Order wherever found,” April 15; TVP to Thomas Kehoe, March 25; TVP to John Bone, April 6, 1886, PP. 71. Daniel Smith to TVP, March 22; TVP to Smith, March 23; TVP to M. J. Keough, March 23; Keough to TVP, March 25; Cohoes Evening Dispatch, March 26; Cohoes Daily News, March 26; Joseph Delahanty to TVP, April 8, 1886, PP. The lockout is discussed below. 72. Adam Miller to TVP, April 13; TVP to Miller, April 19; TVP to J. L. Vandergrift, April 18, 1886, PP. 73. See, for example, Samuel Yellen, American Labor Struggles, 1877–1934 (New York, 1936, repr. 1988), p. 43: “Later this circular, when the rank and file learned of it, was to cost the Noble Order thousands of members, if not its existence.” 74. TVP “to the Order wherever found,” March 13, 1886, PP. 75. See the scores of supportive letters in the PP from late March to mid-April 1886. “It is useless to deny that there has been a strong prejudice existing against your worthy order,” wrote the mayor of Schenectady, H. S. De Forest, on March 29, “but your famous letter acted like a ‘Bomb Shell’ . . . and has exploded all the arguments against the association.” A. C. Roberston, a well known Pittsburgh trade unionist and politician, noted on March 28 that the circular was “one of the ablest documents that has ever been issued” and that Powderly had “shown himself a very Solomon in his counsel to the Knights.” 76. Devlin to TVP, March 23; Trader to TVP, April 1; McNeill to TVP, March 26; Halley to TVP, March 27; Trevellick to TVP, March 29; Labadie to TVP, March 18, 1886, PP. 77. Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983), p. 224. 78. For extensive coverage of Powderly’s public reaction, see New York Herald, May 6, 1886. On Haymarket’s impact on membership, see Henry David, The History of the Haymarket Affair (New York, 1936). 79. Dallas Morning News, May 10, 1886. 80. TVP “to the Order wherever found,” May 3, 1886, PP. Numerous other Knights

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and trade union leaders supported Powderly’s stance on the growing ineffectiveness of boycotts. See William Mullen in Richmond Labor Herald, May 22; George Blair and George K. Lloyd in New York Herald, May 11, 1886. For press reaction to the secret circular, see Pittsburgh Leader, May 11; New York Sun, May 11; Philadelphia Press, May 11, 1886. 81. TVP “to the Editor of the New York Times,” May 15, PP; Camden Democrat, May 22; Philadelphia Sunday News, May 16; Philadelphia Times, May 17, 1886. See also New York Times, May 16; Scranton Truth, May 17; Philadelphia Public Ledger, May 17; Chicago Times, May 18: Chicago Morning News, May 18; St. Louis Republican, May 18; Baltimore Sun, May 19, 1886. John Swinton supported Powderly’s propaganda efforts, congratulating him for approaching the “capitalist organs” with the “most temperate language.” John Swinton’s Paper, May 23, 1886. 82. Henry Browne, The Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor (Washington, D.C., 1949), chapter 5; TVP to D. J. O’Donoghue, March 23, 1886, PP. 83. Lee Crandall to TVP, February 13; McNeill to TVP, February 27; Henry Mente to TVP, March 4; John J. O’Neill to TVP, April 8; TVP to O’Neill, April 9, 1886, PP; Edward James, “American Labor and Political Action, 1865–1896,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954, pp. 278–279; Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 139–140. 84. TVP to John Howes, April 28; TVP to Turner, April 26; Turner to TVP, April 28; TVP to George McNeill, April 29, 1886, PP. 85. Dan Frazier Tomson to TVP, January 15; TVP to Tomson, January 20; E. L. LaFontaine to TVP, January 13, 1886, PP. 86. Joseph Mansion to TVP, November 1; F. W. Price to TVP, November 1, 2, 4, and 14; George Whitlock to TVP, November 1; TVP to Price, November 2; TVP to Whitlock, November 2; TVP to Turner, November 3, 1885, PP. 87. Mansion to TVP, November 29 and December 7; TVP to Mansion, December 1; TVP to H. C. Burton, December 1; TVP to F. W. Price, December 1, 1885, PP. For an account of the 1883–1884 strike, see Daniel J. Walkowitz, Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton-Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855–1884 (Urbana, 1978), pp. 237–243. 88. Robert Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club: The Knights of Labor Joust among Themselves,” Labor History 34, No. 1 (Winter 1993): 86; Ware, Labor Movement, p. 103; Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, p. 78; Grob, Workers and Utopia, p. 113. 89. On Morrison’s pamphlet, see New York World, June 2, 1886. On the calling of the special GA session, see Charles O’Brien and Peter McCarroll (of LA 2985) “To the Officers and Members of DA 64,” February 13; Frank Baxter to TVP, February 24; and F. F. Donovan and Frank Baxter (of DA 64) to “Dear Sir and Brother,” February 15, 1886, PP. Morrison and LA 2985 first appealed to DA 64 (New York printers) and asked them to issue a circular calling for a special session. The New York area trade districts, all of which had clashed with DA 49 at one time or another, were only too happy to comply. For a more detailed discussion, see Phelan, “Warp of Fancy.” 90. Mansion to TVP, April 16; see also TVP to Litchman, April 17; TVP to Turner, April 29; TVP to Hayes, April 30, 1886, PP. 91. Quoted in Gregory Kealey and Bryan Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900 (New York, 1982), pp. 159–160. See also CMIU, “Appeal to the Organized Labor of the Country,” February 25, 1886, PP; Proceedings, 1886 Cleveland GA, pp. 28–32; 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 88, 90.

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92. P. J. McGuire to “all whom it may concern,” April 26, 1886; Martin Witter to TVP, May 6, 1886; Josiah Dyer to TVP, May 5, 1886, PP; The Boycotter, May 22, 1886. On the treaty, see Gitelman, “Attempts to Unify,” pp. 372–375. 93. TVP to Hugh Cavanaugh, March 3; Hayes to TVP, August 14, 1886, PP. 94. TVP to Tom O’Reilly, December 15; TVP to Turner, May 1, 1886, PP. 95. TVP to Turner, May 15, 1886, PP. 96. TVP “to the Order wherever found,” April 26; TVP to Henry Schulte, May 3; TVP to J. F. McDonald, May 5; “Recommendations,” no date (May 1886), PP. 97. Proceedings, 1886 Cleveland GA, pp. 20–21, 44–45, 47–48, 49–50; Scranton Truth, May 22 and 25; Philadelphia Times, May 28; New York World, May 25 and 31, June 1 and 2; Richmond Labor Herald, June 12, 1886. 98. Proceedings, 1886 Cleveland GA, pp. 12–13, 52–54, 67; Gitelman, “Attempts to Unify,” pp. 373–378. 99. Proceedings, 1886 Cleveland GA, pp. 57–65. 100. Chicago Tribune, June 7; Cleveland Leader and Herald, June 3, 1886. See also Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 4; Philadelphia Press, June 4; Philadelphia Times, June 4; New York World, June 5, 1886. 101. Mullen to TVP, November 26, 1885, PP. For a discussion of voting behavior, labor press reaction, and the profiles of those accused of Home Club membership, see Phelan, “Warp of Fancy.” 102. TVP to William McDowell, July 22, 1886, PP; John Swinton’s Paper, September 5, 1886; Voss, Making, p. 133; Commons, History of Labour, vol. 2, p. 414. 103. Commons, History of Labour, vol. 2, p. 418; Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, p. 283; 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1305–1311; F. F. Donovan to TVP, November 12, 1886; Gilbert Thorn to TVP, December 13, 1886; P. H. Cummins to TVP, December 25, 1886; Alice McCormick to TVP, March 24 and 28, 1887; TVP to McCormick, March 20, 1887, PP. 104. Daniel Murphy to TVP, August 20; TVP to Murphy, August 21; TVP to John Howes, August 21, September 25, 1886, PP. 105. Meynardie to TVP, August 10; Mullen to TVP, August 14, 1886, PP. Melton McLaurin, The Knights of Labor in the South (Westport, Conn., 1978), pp. 68–71. 106. GEB, “Appeal for Aid,” September 10, 1886; Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 46, 102–103; 1887 Minneapolis GA, p. 1566; TVP to William Mullen, January 26, 1887, PP. 107. McLaurin, The Knights of Labor in the South, pp. 71–73. 108. Meynardie to TVP, December 12, 1886; TVP to Meynardie, December 23, 1886; M. M. Connor to TVP, January 27 and February 24, 1887; TVP to Connor, February 19, 1887; Mullen to TVP, January 22 and 29, February 18, 1887; TVP to Mullen, January 18 and 26, 1887, PP; McLauren, The Knights of Labor in the South, p. 72. 109. Richard Schneirov, “The Knights of Labor in the Chicago Labor Movement,” pp. 508–509; TVP, The Path I Trod, pp. 144–145. 110. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 174–175. 111. Barry to TVP, October 12, 13, 14, 15, and 19, 1886, PP; Proceedings, 1887 GA, p. 1480. 112. Barry to TVP, November 2, 7, 8, 9; William Degnan to TVP, November 9, 1886, PP; Schneirov, “The Knights of Labor in the Chicago Labor Movement,” p. 510; TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 150–152.

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113. William Bailey to TVP, November 9, 1886, PP; TVP to Barry, November 10; TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 152–153; Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1482–1484. 114. Schneirov, p. 512. Compare this reasonable assessment with the irrational verdicts of Oestreicher, “Artisinal Republicanism,” p. 53 and Laurie, Artisans into Workers, p. 173: Stockyard workers were “on the verge of preventing an extension of their workday when . . . they were unexpectedly ordered back to their jobs by a very nervous Powderly.” The only contemporaries to express the view that strikers were poised for victory were the embarrassed Barry and the local leaders who conspired with him to renew the strike, and even they made this claim only after the strike had been called off. Sylvester Gaunt, MW of the Cattle Butchers’ Assembly (LA 7802) had nothing but disgust for Barry’s “damnable plot” to renew the fight, which was doomed because Barry had been duped by the two packers, and he was equally convinced that Barry was an unsavory character who stood ready to “shift the responsibility [for defeat] on to some one else.” Another local leader (LA 8845) also wrote to complain about Barry’s strike order, which he deemed “uncalled for” because Barry could promise no financial aid and because the “packers’ determination to stand for ten hours” meant “a bad show for victory.” Gaunt to TVP, November 25; P. T. Caldwell to TVP, December 7, 1886, PP. 115. TVP, Path I Trod, p. 115. 116. Michael Cahill to TVP, November 15, 1886; Schneirov, pp. 514–515; Elizabeth Rodgers to TVP, November 24, 1886, PP. 117. TVP to Hugh McGarvey, October 31; TVP “to all subordinate Assemblies of the Order,” November 19, 1886, PP. 118. Litchman to TVP, December 9; Elizabeth Rodgers to TVP, December 28, 1886, PP; Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1551, see also pp. 1280–1415 for a long list of locals requesting exoneration. 119. Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, p. 1547. 120. Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing and Change,” pp. 232–233, 264; Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, p. 326; 1887 Minneapolis GA, p. 1847. 121. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 48, 326; 1887 Minneapolis GA, p. 1847; 1888 Indianapolis GA, General Secretary’s Report, p. 5; Litchman to TVP, November 12, 1887; James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 386–387. 122. TVP, “to the members of the Order wherever found,” September 19, 1887, PP. 123. See, among others, Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, pp. 162–166; Kirk, Labour and Society, vol. 2, p. 124; Laurie, Artisans, p. 170; and especially the extended discussion in Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, pp. 187–211. 124. Quoted in TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859–1889 (Philadelphia, 1889), pp. 534– 535. 125. On the mechanisms of power wielded by trade union presidents, see Warren Van Tine, The Making of the Labor Bureaucrat: Union Leadership in the United States, 1870– 1920 (Amherst, 1973), chapter 5. 126. Pittsburgh Dispatch, May 27, 1886; TVP to J. T. McKechnie, July 5, 1886, PP. 127. Turner to TVP, June 18; Litchman to TVP, June 9; and TVP to Turner, June 16, 1886, PP. L. P. Custer to TVP, July 16, 1886, indicates the widespread knowledge that McNeill was gunning for the GMW post. 128. Litchman “to the Members of the Order in D.A. 30,” June 23; Litchman to TVP, July 13, July 27, and August 2; Boston Knight, August 7; TVP to Litchman, July 29; Hayes to TVP, August 2, 3, 6, and 9, 1886, PP. 129. Richmond Labor Herald, June 12; Buchanan to TVP, August 7, 1886, PP.

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130. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, p. 326; Stromquist, Generation of Boomers, pp. 66–67; Neasham to TVP, June 24 and July 4, 1886, PP. 131. TVP to Neasham, June 17; TVP to Richard Griffiths, June 17; TVP to J. N. Corbin, June 17; Buchanan to TVP, July 14, July 31, and August 7; TVP to Buchanan, August 13, 1886, PP. 132. TVP to Buchanan, August 13, 1886, PP. 133. Denver Labor Enquirer, August 14, 1886; Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York, 1925), vol. 1, pp. 258–259; “Report of Joseph Buchanan, delegate to the 10th General Assembly,” no date (October 1886); Neasham to TVP, July 4 and 9, 1886, PP. The Morrison credentials fight was a cause ce´le`bre of the insurgents. 134. Thomas Hagerty, Robert Wilson, and Charles Burgman to TVP, August 18, 1886, PP. 135. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 242–252; New York Times, October 9, 12, 14, 17, 1886. At Richmond the position of GST was divided. Frederick Turner was elected general treasurer, a post he held until 1888. The GEB was expanded to seven members, including the GMW. 136. Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 155–156. 137. GEB “to the Order everywhere,” July 2, 1886; Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, pp. 200, 282; Cigar Makers’ Journal, November 1886, quoted in Ware, p. 278; TVP “to the General Executive Board,” February 12, 1887, PP. See also TVP to John O’Keefe, January 3; TVP to J. F. Cronin, February 10; TVP to John Dempsey, April 1; and TVP to John Devlin, September 14, 1887, PP. Even the Powderly-loathing Gerald Grob begrudgingly admitted that the GMW opposed the CMIU resolution at Richmond, granted numerous dispensations, and succeeded in having it repealed. Workers and Utopia, p. 121. Contrast this with the perverse view of more recent scholars, typified by David Brundage, who argued that Powderly, “acting out of a deep conviction that trade unionism was a retrogressive force,” engineered passage of the expulsion resolution at Richmond and thus manufactured “a national conflict between trade unions and the order.” The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver’s Organized Workers, 1878– 1905 (Urbana, 1994), p. 88. 138. Powderly’s efforts in this direction began at Cleveland, when he invited the powerful Amalgamated Association (AA) of Iron and Steel Workers to join as a body. He spoke at the AA’s convention following that GA, but the union decided not to join after a referendum on the matter. Powderly also sought to incorporate the International Typographical Union, the American Flint Glass Workers, and numerous other unions, promising each “the right to govern your own business and retain your identity,” as well as “the sympathy and support of every branch of labor that goes to make up the great order of the Knights of Labor.” Proceedings, 1886 Cleveland GA, pp. 38–39; New York World, June 5, 1886. See also, among numerous other letters and articles, Pittsburgh Daily Post, June 5; Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, June 5; Philadelphia Press, July 18; John Swinton’s Paper, August 1; Homer McGaw to TVP, June 9; TVP to A. M. Dewey, June 10; A. G. Denny to TVP, June 12; TVP to C. A. Richardson, July 27; TVP to William Wiehe, July 30; Wiehe to TVP, August 6, 1886, PP. 139. See, for example, TVP to J. Edward Hall, December 26; Hall to TVP, December 30 (two letters); Hayes to TVP, December 31, 1886, PP. Hall was the leader of New York’s machinery constructors and had applied for a National Trade Assembly charter. He was in touch with several trade leaders in Philadelphia and Troy who were aghast at

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the expulsion order, and he now demanded his NTA charter as proof that newspaper reports of GEB hostility toward trade unions and trade districts were unfounded. 140. Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, p. 198; “Report of Joseph Buchanan,” PP. 141. Labadie quoted in Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, p. 200. On the opinion of other Knights, see, for example, Knights of Labor (Chicago), May 8, 1886; Turner’s reaction in Philadelphia Press, May 8, 1886 and Turner to TVP, May 10, 1886, PP. 142. New York Times, September 10, 1886. See TVP’s speech to a Wilkes-Barre audience in Chicago Times, August 25, 1886, for which he received a rebuke from the jailed Albert Parsons. TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, pp. 543–547; Proceedings, 1886 Richmond GA, p. 288. 143. “Report of Joseph Buchanan”; Buchanan, Story of a Labor Agitator, p. 322; Denver Labor Enquirer, November 27, 1886, January 1, 1887. Significantly, at the conclusion of the Southwest strike, Buchanan had praised Powderly’s actions and had denounced Martin Irons as “nothing above mediocrity.” Scranton Truth, May 25, 1886. 144. TVP to Buchanan, December 22, 1886; James Osborn to TVP, December 29, 1886; Richard Griffiths to TVP, January 18 and 22, February 4, 1887, PP; Gene Marlatt, “Joseph R. Buchanan: Spokesman for Labor during the Populist and Progressive Eras,” Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1975, chapter 7. 145. See Denver Labor Enquirer between February and June 1887, especially February 12, 19, 26, and April 23; Executive Board of DA 82, “Concerning the Visit of G.M.W. Powderly to Denver,” July 30, 1887, PP. 146. On Powderly’s visit, see Marlatt, “Joseph R. Buchanan,” p. 263. For Haskell’s questions, see Haskell to TVP, May 9; Executive Board of DA 82, “Concerning the Visit of G.M.W. Powderly to Denver,” July 30, 1887, PP. 147. Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, p. 1511; “Statement of the Officers of District Assembly No. 82, Regarding the Visit of the G.M.W.,” August 15, 1887; C. W. Eye “to all Local Assemblies under the jurisdiction of D.A. 89,” July 14, 1887, PP. 148. “Statement of Joseph Buchanan,” May 26, contained in C. W. Eye “to all Local Assemblies under the jurisdiction of D.A. 89,” July 14, 1887. See also Buchanan to TVP, June 21; TVP to Buchanan, July 9, 1887, PP; JUL, May 21 and June 23, 1887. 149. Schneirov, “The Knights of Labor in the Chicago Labor Movement,” pp. 514– 515, 518; Chicago Labor Enquirer, August 13, 1887; Richard Griffiths to TVP, August 11, 1887, PP; Knights of Labor (Chicago), April 30, 1887; Chester Destler, American Radicalism, 1865–1901: Essays and Documents (New London, 1946), pp. 100–103. 150. Turner to TVP, March 25; TVP to Hayes, April 30 and August 16, 1886, PP. 151. Richard Powers to TVP, November 21, 1886, PP. On Barry’s relationship with Labadie’s and Labadie’s opposition to Powderly, see Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, pp. 202–203; on Barry’s relationship with Buchanan, see Griffiths to TVP, August 11, 1887; and with John Morrison, see TVP to Hayes, July 29, 1887. On Barry’s anti-Catholicism, see TVP to Leonora Barry, January 3; TVP to Father O’Leary, January 11; TVP to William Hughes, January 12; TVP to D. J. O’Donoghue, January 17, 1887. 152. TVP to Hayes, April 9, 1887; John McBride to TVP, June 30, 1886; Dan McLaughlin to TVP, July 7, 1886; Timothy O’Malley to TVP, July 25, 1886; Lewis Jones to “the officers and members of L.A. 1506,” August 2, 1886; Bailey to TVP, August 1, 1886, PP.

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153. TVP to Hayes, June 19; TVP to Turner, July 20; TVP to Litchman, July 20 and 29; Bailey to Thomas McQuaid, October 29, 1887, PP. 154. Morrison by this time had been expelled, and because his DA 126 refused to recognize this its charter was revoked, but Morrison maintained a large following in New York. 155. TVP to John Devlin, July 30; TVP to Litchman, July 30, 1887, PP. 156. Charles Merritt to TVP, May 22; TVP to Merritt, May 30, 1887, PP; Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1629, 1632–1634. 157. Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1629, 1632–1637, 1699, 1773, and 1815; Buchanan, Story of a Labor Agitator, pp. 364–368; TVP, Thirty Years of Labor, p. 647. 158. Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1723–1725, 1774–1776, 1785. 159. Ibid., pp. 1787–1792; 1798. 160. Chicago Labor Enquirer, October 29 and December 10, 1887, June 2, 1888; New York Times, October 24, 1887. Labadie quoted in Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, p. 206. 161. TVP to Richard Griffiths, February 17, 1888, PP. Buchanan, Story of a Labor Agitator, p. 371. On scab action during the Burlington strike, see ibid., pp. 306–308; Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982), p. 77. 162. TVP to Herbert Eicke, November 9; TVP to W. H. Lewis, November 23, 1887, PP. See also the dozens of similar letters written at this time. Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, p. 205. 163. TVP to Griffiths, February 17; TVP to Richard Trevellick, March 23; TVP to Gilbert Rockwood, August 27; TVP to Barry, September 7, 1888, PP; Barry quoted in Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, p. 336; New York Times, October 7 and 11, 1888; Proceedings, 1888 Indianapolis GA, pp. 35–37; JUL, October 18, 1888. 164. TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 578–579; Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, pp. 164–165; Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, p. 337. 165. See Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing, and Change,” pp. 289–291; TVP, Thirty Years, pp. 576–578; Ware, The Labor Movement, p. 115. The chief victory of the Founders was the recruitment of Fred Turner. Turner had always been fascinated by secrecy and ritual, but he had been a steadfast Powderly supporter from 1883 through 1888, and his decision to join Drury was shaped by frustrated personal ambition. When delegates at Indianapolis once again combined the posts of GS and GT as a cost-saving measure, Powderly threw his support to John Hayes for GST, leaving Turner out in the cold. Turner ran against the administration candidate and blasted Powderly on the floor of the GA for reneging on a promise to back him. Hayes defeated Turner 86 to 56. Proceedings, 1888 Indianapolis GA, pp. 72–74; JUL, January 31, March 7, 1889. 166. See TVP to E. L. Jordan, January 13 and 25, April 17, 1889, PP. 167. See, among others, TVP to Leonora Barry, February 7; TVP to St. Cloud, February 27, March 26, April 20, and September 3; St. Cloud to TVP, February 24, March 19, April 7 and 16, July 16, August 26, September 8, October 1 and 18; TVP to Hayes, September 16 and December 17, 1889, PP.

Chapter 6

Failure of a Dream: September 1888–June 1924 “No sadder chapter in the history of the world’s labor movement has been written than that which records the decadence of this once great and powerful organization,” mourned the Boston Labor Leader in December 1895. Even after the fury of the late 1880s employer counteroffensive abated somewhat, the Order continued its inexorable descent toward oblivion. In early 1886, the Order seemed destined to become the vehicle of the entire working class and seemed poised to engineer, as Powderly put it, “the complete emancipation of mankind from the curse of monopoly.” Less than a decade later, it could boast but 20,000 widely scattered and half-hearted adherents, a leadership incapacitated by cannibalistic power struggles, and a legacy of failure that precluded any hope for revival.1 There were no heroic national leaders during these years of decline. Those such as Tom Barry and Victor Drury had inflicted a great deal of damage before departing to set up their short-lived rival organizations. Those such as Samuel Gompers and P. J. McGuire, having wounded the Order through vicious slanders while it was at its peak, showed no hesitation in plunging their daggers still deeper as they sought to capture members for their fledgling AFL. And those who were most vocal in pledging their continuing fealty to both Powderly and Knighthood, most notably John Hayes, proved the most reprehensible of all; their sleazy and duplicitous activities helped to nail shut the Order’s coffin. Decline and continuing internal dissent brought out the worst in Powderly, too. The erstwhile champion of decentralized democracy and toleration played

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both the autocrat and the fool. The havoc wreaked by the Provisional Committee and other splinter groups, and especially the roles adopted by GEB members Tom Barry and William Bailey, fueled a near paranoid suspicion about threats from within. He demanded and secured the right to name his own executive board at the 1888 Indianapolis GA, and he surrounded himself with sycophants ready to proclaim that his program was the only viable means to revive the organization. Those who criticized his policies soon found themselves outside the dwindling inner circle of power. Those who remained proved even more damaging, and in 1893 they successfully conspired to cut off his head. Yet corruption, intrigue, and even palace coups were of secondary importance in the unraveling of Knighthood. They were the symptoms and not the cause of decline. The Order was destroyed from without rather than within; even in those places where employers’ associations did not defeat it, they helped to discredit it by revealing its weakness as a fighting organization. If the Knights hoped to stop the bleeding and revive their appeal, fundamental changes were required. Powderly clearly recognized this fact, and he frantically endeavored to restructure the Order to accommodate rising trade union enthusiasm. This course, as we shall see, pleased no one. It merely exacerbated tensions with independent unions and angered Knights committed to politics and reform. Desperate to secure some basis of support, Powderly tapped into burgeoning Populist sentiment and courted the nation’s disaffected farmers. But his heart was never in it, and the effort itself merely underscored the death of the Knights as a workingclass organization. All labor organizations suffer setbacks. All face concerted resistance. Some are able to weather the storms and rebuild their forces; others collapse and disappear. The question of why the Knights fell into this second camp has long been a bone of contention. Older scholars fixated on either the Order’s presumed ideological or leadership weaknesses at the national level. Some pointed to an unbridgeable gulf between the interests of the skilled and unskilled and claimed that the former were quick to leave once the latter joined in large numbers during the upheaval.2 Others described an equally wide ideological chasm between an inept and backward-looking leadership (Powderly) and the bulk of the wageearning rank and file.3 Beginning in the late 1970s, all such sweeping analyses were undermined as more recent scholars recognized that the Order was not “a single, national organization” but rather “a varied, decentralized association . . . composed of thousands of local assemblies, each pursuing, with relative autonomy, local goals and strategies.”4 Many of the older generalizations, they found, did not ring true at the community level. Community scholars are by no means in agreement on why the Order collapsed, and not one has suggested that decentralization was itself problematic and placed the Order at a tremendous disadvantage when confronting powerful opposition. There is a growing recognition that employer hostility played a far greater role than internal weaknesses in killing the Knights. Aroused and organized employers engaged the Knights in a “knock-down, drag-out fight” and

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proved so brutally successful that the Knights were unable to recover. Not content merely to beat back the worker offensive of the mid-1880s, American employers had the resources and the will to finish the job by eliminating the Knights in the years that followed.5 Thus, the efforts of Powderly and others to rebuild the shattered Order must be viewed in the context of the continuing aggression of powerful and well-organized employers. Total collapse may not have been inevitable, but the odds were certainly stacked against them. Several other factors precluded a reversal of the Order’s fortunes. First, the counteroffensive was only one manifestation of broader economic trends that forced the labor movement as a whole into headlong retreat during the 1890s. Since the birth of the Industrial Congress in 1874, labor activists had warned of the threats posed by the “alarming development and aggression of aggravated wealth,” and experiences during the late 1880s and 1890s confirmed their worst fears. The rise of giant corporations in some industries, the formation of trusts and cartels in numerous others, the growing ruthlessness and sophistication of antiunion tactics, the rising prominence of a hostile judiciary, the increasingly antilabor attitudes of the mainstream press, and the readiness of the state to protect corporate interests—all of which were amply demonstrated in such momentous clashes as the 1892 Homestead strike and the 1894 Pullman strike— were part of the emerging industrial relations’ landscape on which the Order sought to rebuild. “There is no objection to the labor organization if it would only organize and do nothing more,” Powderly sighed in the aftermath of the Homestead struggle, “but if it attempts to win an advance in wages and strikes then its members are communists, anarchists and loafers. If on the other hand, they do not strike but take political action then the same bedeviled press howls them down for meddling in politics.”6 In the early 1880s, Powderly had helped to overcome the deep divisions within the working class by building a fragile consensus around what David Montgomery described as the Knights’ “crusade” to “impose economic order” on a fiercely competitive capitalism. Not only had that crusade failed, but the wrenching transition from competitive to monopoly capitalism meant that new strategies had to be adopted, a new consensus identified. “What had been appropriate in the 1870s and early 1880s was now seen to be inadequate,” two recent scholars have observed, and “the whole process of forging a collective response had to begin anew.” The establishment of any new consensus was further complicated by rising immigration from eastern and southern Europe, which posed a serious threat to labor solidarity even under the best of circumstances.7 Second, the loose alliance that characterized labor’s vanguard in early 1886 was shattered. Faced by defeats and changing economic conditions, the nation’s labor leaders “were propelled in a number of different directions” as they searched for “more precise strategies for labor in the age of monopoly capital.”8 The creation of the Provisional Committee, the United Brotherhood, the Founders’ Movement, and the AFL were part of a larger pattern of Balkanization in

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the labor movement. Beleaguered leaders began to scatter in a dozen different directions, including craft unionism, ethnic politics, religious and fraternal associations, secrecy and ritualism, revolutionary syndicalism, and Deleonite socialism. The strategies pursued did not always represent clear-cut ideological distinctions between various labor leaders; throughout the 1890s, most factions in the labor movement continued to exhibit a remarkable commonality of outlook.9 But if the Order ever hoped to regain its prominence, it somehow would have to reestablish its appeal to a labor leadership increasingly divided over strategic and organizational questions. Third, the working-class confidence, vision, and conviction of early 1886 that had given the Knights their enormous potential had yielded to cynicism, disillusionment, apathy, division, and fear in the postupheaval years. With the “arrest of the Knights’ forward momentum,” Leon Fink has suggested, workers exhibited an “uncertainty of purpose” and “division and contradiction ultimately replaced unity and confident initiative from below.” Once the excitement of the upheaval had waned, Richard Oestreicher has argued, “class loyalties once again had to compete with other loyalties,” and old ethnic, religious, and craft divisions reappeared with a vengeance.10 No labor leader could easily revitalize the failed dream of radical social change through classwide solidarity when increasing numbers of workers responded only to ethnic or craft-specific appeals. Fourth, and perhaps most important, workers’ perception of the Knights had been transformed in the wake of the upheaval. Whereas in early 1886 the Order was hailed as the invincible voice of labor, by the end of the decade it was a discredited bastion of decay and intrigue. Frank Foster of Boston articulated the shift in sentiment. Having proclaimed the Knights “the grandest and noblest” labor association in 1886, by 1889, Foster believed that “the order of the Knights of Labor has outlived its usefulness.” Members were departing in droves, and those who remained squabbled ceaselessly over how best to rebuild. After a series of strike losses and lockouts, hard campaigning by the Provisionals, and the emergence of the Founders’ Movement, Philadelphia Knighthood was both insignificant and hopelessly fractured. Cincinnati Knights had displayed remarkable solidarity after the state militia had been called out during the city’s May Day strikes, but they succumbed to ruinous ideological and strategic feuding as soon as the excitement abated. The Order in Richmond foundered on the shoals of electoral politics and the intensive focus on race issues during the GA in that city. Detroit Knighthood disintegrated along ethnic and occupational lines following the Order’s failure to support the clemency campaign for the Haymarket anarchists. Leading New Jersey Knights had appealed to small employers during battles against large ones, a tactic that gave rise to debilitating internal schisms.11 Alabama coal miners bickered and began abandoning the Order when it forsook the economic struggle and became too closely identified with party politics. Local strike losses, national defeats in the Southwest and packinghouse encounters, and hopeless jurisdictional wrangles spelled internal friction and eventual doom for Kansas City Knighthood. Denver Knights clashed heads and soon

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withdrew over the Richmond GA’s CMIU expulsion order and Haskell’s machinations. Even the Home Club succumbed to internal dissent and lost its grip on New York’s DA 49, and Indiana Knighthood was “so far torn and divided on politics that it will never again come together.”12 In virtually every place where the Order had flowered in 1886, the movement was now pitifully weak and divided. The extent of decay in the various communities, the astounding variety of its manifestations, the finger-pointing and feuding among labor’s leaders, and the trend toward an increasingly hostile environment—all precluded any quick fixes from the Order’s headquarters. Powderly was profoundly aware that the resurrection of Knighthood was at the very best an uphill task, and in his darker moments, he confessed that it seemed utterly futile. “I do not expect a revival,” he muttered privately in late 1888, “for I fear that the Order is gone too far and is demoralized beyond hope of reconstruction. Everything tends toward a loss of confidence and I expect the worst.” In the summer of 1889, he lamented that a spiral of decline had set in with the waning of the upheaval, a dynamic of defeat and decay that he was powerless to counteract. Since late 1888 “I realized that, for some time to come at least, the Order would continue to go down,” he informed his old chum Richard Griffiths, who had withdrawn from the field due to ill health and old age. “My expectations were realized.”13 Certainly no utterance or action from Powderly seemed likely to restore even a modicum of harmony or enthusiasm, because in some circles he was held accountable for many of the Order’s woes. Joseph Labadie was not the only one who remained convinced that Powderly had dealt Knighthood its “crushing blow” by somehow preventing delegates at Minneapolis from supporting clemency for the Haymarket anarchists14; many others wrongly believed that he was personally responsible for the expulsion of the cigar makers at the Richmond GA; and still others blamed him alone for the disastrous defeats against Jay Gould and other powerful opponents. A sizable minority of those who remained, therefore, regarded their GMW as part of the problem. A far greater number, however, saw Powderly as vital to any possible solution. Even in the wake of the Minneapolis GA and the Provisionals’ campaign, countless Knights still regarded him as a hero who alone possessed the magic required to regain momentum. He received hundreds of requests echoing that of Philadelphia longshoremen who, faced by factionalism and rapidly declining membership, could agree on only one thing: “If we could only get your presence here” the organization “might come to life again . . . and a good many will come back to the Fold.” Many solid trade unionists within the Knights, such as James Campbell of the glassworkers’ LA 300 and J. N. Corbin of Union Pacific employees’ DA 82, pledged their allegiance. “[Three hundred] will stand by you and the Order,” Campbell vowed, “I want you to stand to the helm and guide the Ship along.” Numerous mixed districts on the verge of collapse, such as Pittsburgh’s DA 3, regarded Powderly’s continuing leadership as a necessary first step toward resurgence: “Our boys are ‘wid ye,’ ” the RS exclaimed.

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Equally important, many of those who opposed his policies did not hesitate to turn to him when requiring impartial adjudication. When each of the various factions in Philadelphia’s DA 1 challenged the results of their district elections, for instance, the only point of agreement was that each would abide by Powderly’s decision.15 Like everything else in the Order, the virtually unanimous praise heaped upon Powderly following the 1885 Wabash victory had dwindled and splintered, but no other Knight retained as much respect nationwide. By and large, Powderly was deserving of such respect. From the “lockout crusade” that kicked off in the summer of 1886 until his overthrow in 1893, no other Knight upheld the fading ideal of class solidarity with as much fervor, worked as diligently to resuscitate the working-class crusade against monopoly on the political and economic fronts, or offered such radical and creative solutions to the Order’s plight. In the face of overwhelming odds and constant setbacks, Powderly continuously urged working people to renew their pledge to Knighthood, unite once again, and assist him in stemming “the tide of injustice that is fast rolling over and crushing out of sight the rights of the industrial masses.”16 Powderly was but thirty-nine-years-old in 1888. Nine years at the helm had left no visible scars, and he remained the lithe and graceful bundle of energy and wit he had always been. There was no midriff paunch to suggest creeping middle-aged complacency, no display of sartorial fineries to indicate co-optation by the corporate or political elite, and no significant alteration in his work routine or social habits to signify that his head had been turned by fame. Since the end of 1885, reporters from across the nation had hung on his every word, tempting money-making opportunities had been placed on his table, and the promise of high political office had been advanced by Democratic stalwarts on a regular basis. But he continued to shun the reporters and, with ever growing annoyance, squelch all rumors of his political aspirations by declaring that his loyalties lay with the Order. If anything, his years in the national spotlight reinforced his appreciation of his cozy private life in Scranton. To the city’s residents, the ex-mayor was a familiar sight. Attired as always in his Prince Albert coat, he could be seen trudging to the post office with his sacks of mail, popping his head into Walsh’s Barber Shop for a quick chat with his Hyde Park neighbors, waiting at the station for a train to visit friends and family at Carbondale, and attending mass at his local parish church. Those of more intimate acquaintance found his home life had altered little. He and Hannah remained as close as ever, and when time permitted, he continued to indulge in his favorite pastimes of gardening, reading, and examining his rock collection. But time rarely permitted. Despite nagging pessimism, his commitment to the Order remained as strong as it had been when he first took office in 1879. “The falling off in membership will not injure the Order,” he tried to assure anxious delegates at the 1888 Indianapolis GA, “for with good management the true men and women will return again.”17 Even as the Order continued to decline, he routinely labored

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twelve or more hours per day. When opportunity presented itself, he did not hesitate to undertake arduous organizing and lecture tours, and his oratory remained as spellbinding and potent as ever. As in the old days, he often grumbled about the burdens of his office, and he made several offhand threats to resign, but the Order was not about to die due to a lack of effort on the part of the GMW. The revival of Knighthood, of course, required far more than Powderly’s continued commitment, energy, and charismatic oratory. Coming to grips with the various external and internal threats required an unprecedented display of decisive national leadership, and contrary to historical opinion, Powderly provided bold, creative, and forceful leadership throughout the years of decline. He adopted stern measures to stifle the ugly battles among the Order’s elected officers, ridding himself of enemies on the GEB and establishing unity of action at headquarters for the first time since late 1886. He initiated a truly radical restructuring of the Order in an effort to accommodate the strident demands of trade unionists prepared to join the rival AFL unless they were guaranteed trade autonomy. He launched a massive “educational” project designed to drum up new recruits and prepare the way for the Order’s resurgence in the political arena, and he forged links with reform-minded agrarian groups in an effort to find powerful allies who could provide fresh inspiration for an increasingly dispirited working class. Only when all such aggressive initiatives had failed did Powderly finally relinquish the dream embodied in the organization he led. Among the monumental problems facing the Order in the wake of the upheaval, none was more pressing than the open warfare among leading Knights. The factional wars that erupted in the fall of 1886 had virtually paralyzed the national administration, and no one could claim the moral high ground. GEB sessions had become little more than shouting matches, elected officials were busily erecting rival organizations and engaging in shocking displays of intrigue, and the ugly charges and countercharges made by the elite had divided and discouraged the rank and file. Powderly fully understood that infighting at the national level was directly linked to membership losses. “With an Executive Board whose members were not in harmony with each other, who traveled from place to place denouncing their fellow officers and condemning actions that they were not responsible for,” he explained, “it could not be wondered at that we have lost in numbers.”18 Barry and Bailey may have been the chief villains in Powderly’s estimation, but they were not the only ones to undermine confidence in the administration. Albert Carlton, a leading figure in Boston’s DA 30 who had been elected to the GEB in 1886, resigned from the board in the summer of 1888 amid allegations that he had embezzled funds from the Order through exaggerated expense account claims. Carlton thereupon took to the stump on behalf of the Republican candidate for president, Benjamin Harrison.19 Even before the GA had an opportunity to investigate Carlton’s financial chicanery, however, the Order had lost the services of GS Charles Litchman, who resigned his post in late August

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for compensation from the Republicans. Litchman toured Indiana on behalf of the party and provided a copy of the Knights’ mailing list to its national committee; in return, he received cash payments and a post in the Treasury Department the following spring.20 Powderly cared little for either Carlton or Litchman by the time of their resignations. Carlton had never been one of his confidants, and although he had supported his old pal Litchman’s bid to reclaim the GS slot at Richmond, the two men had fallen out by July 1887 because Litchman’s brash personality had rankled far too many Knights. When Litchman departed, Powderly admitted that he had “shed a tear, not for the man who has gone but for the friend of other days.”21 Powderly was deeply concerned lest the actions of Barry, Bailey, Carlton, and Litchman further discourage the membership, and he was determined to replace them with those upon whom he could depend. “Men have been placed in office with men with whom I would not for a moment associate in any private business enterprise,” he complained. “Fancy the condition the United Colonies would have found themselves in had the first ten years of the government . . . been delegated to such men as I describe.”22 Resolution of this profound leadership crisis was a necessary first step toward recovery, and Powderly made no bones about what he deemed the only method to restore harmony at the top. “The chief trouble with our Order is because of the lack of one-man rule,” he told delegates at the 1888 Indianapolis GA. He asked for the right to select a list of eight Knights from which the GA would choose four to serve with him on the GEB. “Vest in one man the power to execute the laws which the many favor and pass upon; allow no interference with that man in the performance of his duty, and you may expect results,” he assured them. Desperate to find any expedient that could stifle ruinous internal dissent, delegates bowed to the wishes of their GMW and passed the resolution by a two-thirds vote.23 After handily securing his own reelection (114 out of 143 ballots cast), Powderly was equally clear as to those Knights he supported. When nominations were opened for the newly combined post of general secretary-treasurer, Powderly, for the first time in his tenure, took the floor to make a nomination, and he called on delegates to elect John Hayes. Such a personal endorsement all but ensured Hayes’s election. Among those Powderly put forth as candidates for the GEB, delegates chose A. W. Wright of Toronto; J. J. Holland of Jacksonville, Florida; John Costello of Pittsburgh; and John Devlin of Detroit.24 Wright was soon chosen GEB secretary, and from late 1888 until 1893 the destiny of the national Order was placed in the triumvirate of Powderly, Hayes, and Wright. With one dramatic push, Powderly had taken a giant step toward crippling his opposition and reestablishing harmony on his own terms. Barry of course issued a circular blasting Powderly’s usurpation of power, and one historian has noted that at the 1888 GA the GMW became “a virtual dictator.”25 Powderly’s coup at Indianapolis was not simply a sordid maneuver to aggrandize his personal power, however. It was a necessary evil, imposed as a last resort and with

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the approval of the GA, and intended to rescue the Order from further decay. He offered a frank explanation of his actions in a circular to the Order at large, never challenged the GA’s exclusive right to control legislative activity, and never used his executive power as a springboard to impose greater authority over subordinate bodies.26 The flaw in this stratagem was not that it gave Powderly too much power, but that he unwisely used the power afforded him. His elevation of Holland and Wright was motivated in part by geographic considerations, because the Order remained relatively strong in the South and Canada and both sections could rightly complain about lack of representation on the GEB, but the men he chose to assist him in rebuilding the Order had been selected primarily on the basis of their demonstrated loyalty to the GMW during the factional wars. They were ambitious men who had survived the internecine battles in part by attaching themselves to Powderly’s coat tails; they were not necessarily good administrators or even good Knights, and over time the depth of their loyalty proved suspect as well. Powderly was guilty of exceedingly bad judgment, especially in his patronage of John Hayes, the most powerful member of his new administration, and for this crime he and the Order paid dearly. GST John Hayes was a tall, angular, sharp-faced, and thin-lipped man of few obvious talents who nevertheless possessed the unbounded confidence of the GMW. A former railroad brakeman from New Brunswick, New Jersey, Hayes had joined the Order in 1874 and first met Powderly at the June 1880 National Greenback convention in Chicago. The two men hit it off at once and worked together that autumn to thwart the election of George Ludlow, an antilabor Democrat running for the governorship of New Jersey. By the spring of 1882, Hayes had lost his right arm in a work-related accident and found employment as a telegrapher; he helped to build the national district of that craft (DA 45) but was blacklisted following the 1883 telegraphers’ strike against Gould. Hayes thereupon opened a successful grocery store in his hometown and with Powderly’s patronage climbed the Order’s hierarchy, winning his first election to the GEB at the 1884 Philadelphia GA.27 Although historians have often accused Hayes of Home Club sympathies,28 Hayes was Powderly’s prote´ge´ from the outset. From late 1884, when Powderly first invited Hayes to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Scranton, the two men enjoyed a close, mutually beneficial relationship. Devoid of charisma, oratorical talents, and a power base of his own, Hayes survived the factional wars by serving as Powderly’s eyes and ears on the GEB. He also proved a gifted negotiator who could settle all manner of disputes quickly, a Democratic party stalwart who saw eye to eye with his mentor on political issues, and a born intriguer capable of safeguarding Powderly’s interests while he was at home in Scranton. Powderly trusted Hayes so completely that he gave him sole responsibility to call off the 1886 Southwest strike, and by the end of that year, knowledgeable reporters referred to Hayes as the GMW’s “man Friday.” That Hayes was ambitious and unscrupulous was apparent to all who knew him, but that

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Powderly should turn to him in his desperate search for reliable allies in 1888 surprised no one.29 Alexander (“Alec”) W. Wright was a burly, hairy-faced, thundering orator and editor who quickly rose to prominence after joining the Order in 1883. After years spent working for mainstream publications in the industrial communities of southern Ontario, Wright threw his abundant energies into labor reform and politics. He was the guiding spirit behind DA 125 (Toronto), editor of Ontario’s official voice of Knighthood (the Canadian Labor Reformer), a tireless and effective lecturer with a wide-ranging repertoire, and a political enthusiast who in late 1886 had run unsuccessfully for Parliament on the Conservative party ticket. Although Wright had vocal opponents within the Order who accused him of opportunism and incessant scheming, no one could question his ability to stir an audience through the spoken or written word, his personal magnetism, or his loyalty to Powderly.30 Wright and Powderly were total strangers until 1888, but almost immediately after their first meeting, they established a bond that would last for years. Powderly’s informant on Canadian affairs, D. J. O’Donoghue, described Wright in late 1887 as a potential troublemaker who “never has a kind word for the General Ex. Board” and who had spearheaded the push for an independent Canadian Order of the Knights. But even O’Donoghue admitted that as an orator Wright had “no superiors and probably but few equals” and recommended him for the post of general lecturer of Canada. When DA 125 urged Wright’s appointment as well, Powderly offered the job and Wright accepted without hesitation. The two men first met at Philadelphia headquarters in August 1888, and by the time of the Indianapolis GA that November, Wright figured prominently in the GMW’s plans for reconstructing the Order.31 Three other prominent loyalists are worthy of mention. After years of devotion to the Home Club, T. B. McGuire of DA 49 split with Victor Drury and cast his lot with Powderly. His defection precluded any possibility that the Home Club would reassert its influence, and it weakened Drury’s Founders’ Movement from the outset. Although happy to welcome the defector into his camp, Powderly remained wary because McGuire had apparently changed sides only to satisfy his personal ambitions. In Tom O’Reilly, an Edinburgh-born Irish Catholic who moved to New York in 1882, Powderly found a far more sincere admirer. A former telegrapher and MW of telegraphers’ DA 45, O’Reilly had served the GMW well since 1886 as his expert on the Order’s relations with the Catholic Church, and Powderly had rewarded him with a full-time post at headquarters. Among other duties, O’Reilly was in charge of the compositors’ room at the JUL. John Devlin was another devotee who became a fixture at headquarters after 1888. Like Powderly, Devlin was a second-generation Irish Catholic with Democratic ties. Along with A. M. Dewey, who had assumed the editorship of the JUL upon Litchman’s resignation, Devlin had earned Powderly’s undying gratitude by leading the administration fight against Labadie and his comrades in Michigan throughout 1887 and 1888.32

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With loyalists such as Hayes and Wright in control of affairs, and disturbers such as Barry and Bailey finally out of the way, Powderly could breathe a bit easier. Although he understood that as a result of GEB election modifications he alone would be “responsible . . . for not only his own acts but for those of his colleagues as well,”33 he had handpicked his administration and could therefore rest assured that all paralyzing leadership crises were behind him. But no sooner had the new administration assembled at Philadelphia headquarters than new animosities arose and a new round of backbiting and power plays set in motion. Unlike the nasty public clashes over strategy and policy that took place between 1886 and 1888, the intrigues that erupted between 1889 and 1893 were largely sordid, subterranean affairs concerning charges of incompetence, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet they proved equally detrimental to the Order and, in the end, far more threatening to Powderly’s rule. In part these latter-day leadership crises were an inevitable by-product of the factional wars. Each of Powderly’s allies had been embroiled in vicious power struggles within their own districts, and several were still fighting their local opponents while on the GEB. J. J. Holland, to cite but one example, battled along several fronts: He struggled to maintain his leadership over the Jacksonville locals; he fought to preserve the dominance of the Jacksonville locals in the Florida State Assembly; and across the state he struggled to maintain an alliance of Knights and Republicans in the face of intense hostility from Democratic Knights.34 Each ally was adept at maintaining power, and each had resorted to unsavory tactics when battling their foes. As we have seen, Powderly himself had established a network of spies to keep tabs on his enemies, and he fully understood that no leading Knight could afford to be an angel and expect to survive. If he ever stumbled across an officer “who has never made enemies . . . and who is perfect in every respect,” Powderly noted with biting sarcasm in late 1889 when defending Wright against Toronto kickers, he would have to place him in a “museum as a freak.”35 Such was the legacy of the factional wars. Because all of Powderly’s allies were necessarily gifted in the art of intrigue and ruthless in protecting their interests, ugly personality clashes and power struggles were perhaps inevitable once they assembled at Philadelphia. Each sought to establish a power base, curry Powderly’s favor, and undermine the efforts of those who stood in their way. Financial instability greatly aggravated the situation. By late 1888, membership losses had forced substantial budget cuts at headquarters. GEB members received but $4 a day plus expenses, and the latter were scrutinized and not always assured. Even the financing of the JUL was somewhat uncertain, and various schemes to secure outside funding were being debated by early 1889.36 With incomes uncertain and dismissals a distinct possibility, scheming at headquarters became truly feverish. Within months of the 1888 GA, friction erupted over the editorship of the JUL, which was prized as a relatively secure power base that involved little travel. Hayes, O’Reilly, and Holland were among those anxious to oust Dewey,

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and several were already maneuvering to succeed him. After chronicling Dewey’s many deficiencies, O’Reilly bluntly informed Powderly that “the sooner you rid yourself of him the better. . . . The truth is, Terry, that no one can tell Bro. Dewey anything. He knows it all!” An unhappy Dewey resigned after finding a better paying job on a mainstream paper, but A. W. Wright, whom Powderly chose to succeed Dewey, faced even more ferocious attacks from his fellow officers. “A. W. struts around decked in borrowed glory and does absolutely nothing,” O’Reilly wailed. So began a series of reports in which O’Reilly kept Powderly informed of his growing disgust for the GEB secretary, reports that often included a detailed account of exactly how few columns Wright contributed to each issue of the journal. “I’ve had my fill of Wright around this office,” O’Reilly thundered in late 1891. “I don’t care if he never comes to Philadelphia again.”37 Even more serious were reports beginning in early 1889 that John Hayes was gobbling up more and more authority at headquarters. Hayes’s role as GST and O’Reilly’s as “chief of staff” involved an overlap of authority that was never clarified, and Hayes showed little compunction in encroaching on terrain previously controlled by O’Reilly. When Hayes assumed control over the issuance of paychecks, for instance, a feud erupted between the two men that damaged their working relationship. Even more damaging was Hayes’s personal conduct. Although a married man, Hayes and his assistant, Marion Barrett, had been involved in a clandestine affair for some months, and by early 1889, they began carrying on so brazenly during working hours that it affected the work environment. Barrett soon earned the enmity of Holland and the clerical staff by assuming a dictatorial air, showing up late for work, and refusing to attend her LA meetings, and Hayes offended his cohorts by brusquely dismissing any discussion of the topic. “If Johnnie [Hayes] hasn’t sense enough left to see what a fool this . . . [Barrett] is making of him,” O’Reilly implored Powderly, “then for your own sake and in the interest of the Order you must step in and prevent the scandal that is almost inevitable.”38 Headquarters had hardly been transformed into a cesspool of debauchery and corruption by 1889, but it was clear that the chronic leadership problems had not been resolved at Indianapolis. It was also clear that such problems would mount if the Order continued its decline. For better or worse, however, these were the men that Powderly had chosen to assist him in rebuilding Knighthood. He stood by them when attacked by dissidents in their own districts, and he refused to involve himself in their often petty quarrels at Philadelphia. But he did demand their allegiance on what he regarded as the essentials of rebirth— recruitment, trade union policy, and alliance with agrarian groups. How could the spiral of decline be halted? What program or set of programs could possibly begin reversing the dynamic of defeat and decay? Powderly set out to address these questions head-on in the spring of 1888 when he launched one of his boldest initiatives—the Educational Fund. Established even before the restructuring of the national leadership, this was Powderly’s program from

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the outset. The GMW appealed directly to the membership at large for the necessary funds to begin the process of drumming up new recruits, reinvigorating established assemblies, and, above all, curbing internecine strife by identifying core issues on which all working people could rally around. In many ways, the Educational Fund represented Powderly’s most forceful attempt to make the Knights once again the focal point of unified working-class protest. The plan was both simple and democratic. In the March 31 issue of the JUL, he asked all assemblies to vote on a series of questions: “Does your Assembly believe in entering at once upon an active educational campaign?” “Do you believe we should send out good, competent brothers to teach the principles of the Order?” “Shall the General Master Workman levy an assessment of fifteen cents per capita to defray expenses of lecturers?” He emphasized that the assessment would be purely voluntary, and thus the size of the initiative depended on the enthusiasm of the membership. If members responded as he hoped they would, an army of general lecturers would prepare the way for an escalation in the Order’s “fight against trusts and monopolies.” If the upheaval had shown that a “combination of hungry men” was no match for a “combination of dollars” on the economic front, working people would now battle their opponents in the political arena to “control the dollar, curb the power of money and kill the trusts.”39 As we shall see, Powderly had by no means abandoned the economic struggle; the Educational Fund was launched at the same time that he was revamping the trade union policies of the Order. Throughout the summer of 1888, the Educational Fund took center stage in the Order’s propaganda. Powderly had every reason to believe that he had struck a responsive chord. After just three weeks, over 3,000 assemblies had voted, nearly all in the affirmative. By that fall, Powderly boasted that “nineteentwentieths of our members” endorsed the plan. Some assemblies, of course, feared that the general lecturers would undermine the prerogatives of district organizers; others, perhaps influenced by Provisional Committee propaganda, were afraid that any money sent would be diverted from its original purpose; but the vast majority were wholly enthusiastic. Many expected the fund to reach such magnificent proportions that the Order would be able to dispatch lecturers to every town in the country. Another indication of support could be seen in the number of applications Powderly received for the general lecturer posts. By the end of May, over 400 lay on his desk.40 Impressed by the excitement he had generated, Powderly set about identifying those Knights who possessed sufficient oratorical and organizing abilities to make a difference. The choice was not easy, because many of the Order’s best speakers were unwilling to give up their jobs and take to the stump for $4 a day plus expenses on behalf of a declining organization. Even the indefatigable rambler Richard Trevellick strenuously resisted the offer before finally agreeing to give up the comforts of his retirement home in Michigan, which had been paid for by the voluntary contributions of fellow Knights. Ongoing factional feuds disqualified others who could no longer command the endorsement of

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their districts. In the end, Powderly decentralized the entire process and asked each district to elect the most qualified men and women. Virtually each general lecturer, therefore, had been chosen through democratic means. Among the dozens elected were A. G. Denny and William Walls of Pittsburgh; John O’Keefe of Providence; Morris Wheat of Colfax, Iowa; A. W. Wright of Toronto; A. T. Lepine of Montreal; Charles A. Hall of Marshall; Texas; Henry Fecker of Indiana; J. J. McCartney of Baltimore; and Ralph Beaumont of Addison, New York.41 On August 9, Powderly gathered these and other general lecturers at Philadelphia headquarters for a detailed briefing. In addition to mapping out routes so as to cover as much territory as possible in the most efficient manner, Powderly attempted to dictate the content of their lectures so that “all who go out may be one in sentiment and speech.” Hoping to avoid the pitfalls of the past, he demanded that general lecturers be well versed in the principles of Knighthood, that they avoid organizing workers on the eve of a strike, and that they refrain from any attacks on trade unions or their enemies within the Order. “Those who go out will not be permitted to air their own opinions or mine; they will talk on the Preamble of the Order; in doing so they must not make war on any other labor society, trade union or otherwise,” he assured the rank and file. “Their work will be purely educational and they must stick to their text.”42 After placing Beaumont in charge of scheduling, he unleashed what he hoped would be the vanguard of the Order’s second coming. Judging by the assemblies’ desire for general lecturers, the initiative was successful. Beaumont received over one hundred requests each week, but as had been the case since December 1880, when Litchman had called in the original Defence Fund, members proved at once keen to demand services from their general officers and extremely reluctant to pay for them. Already reeling from rising per capita taxes and countless appeals to support victims of lockouts, only one-fourth of the assemblies forwarded the fifteen-cent assessment, and the total fund never exceeded $15,720. “The fund was not large enough to send out a sufficient number of speakers to cover a twentieth part of the Order,” Powderly confessed when issuing an even less effectual five-cent assessment in January 1889. Those who had paid felt cheated if lecturers failed to arrive in their communities, and those who voted not to pay were equally outraged when Powderly could not satisfy their urgent demands for oratorical saviors. A great number of assemblies were “on the scold,” Beaumont informed Powderly. “They say that they have repeatedly written to headquarters for lecturers and if they got any reply it was simply to wait.”43 Once again, enthusiasm had yielded to acrimony and disillusionment. The Educational Fund fueled discord in other ways. Administration foes found it easy to ridicule the attempt to revitalize the Order through mere talk. “I am wont [to] do anything to prevent their ‘education.’ There is no doubt they sorely need it,” scoffed Gompers. “How long are we to be [educated] before we get graduated in this labor movement?” quipped a Detroit kicker.44 More signifi-

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cantly, the general lecturers themselves were unable to avoid ongoing factional battles in their own districts. A. W. Wright faced charges of dereliction of duty by malcontents in Toronto. Charles Hall, whose dismissal by the Texas Pacific had precipitated the Southwest strike, was victimized by the intrigue that plagued his declining DA 78. After allegations that he grossly inflated the turnout for his lectures in his press releases, Hall was expelled for supposedly failing to pay a boardinghouse bill in his hometown of Marshall.45 Although Powderly received nothing but glowing praise for some of the general lecturers, such as Dan Frazier Tomson of Arkansas, others brought odium on the Order. According to Beaumont, Morris Wheat was a shirker who insisted on making his own schedule so he could “ ‘Sojer’ a little.” A. T. Lepine, the choice of Montreal Knights, proved an embezzler who could not account for his time or expenses. “All of Quebec denounces him as vigorously now as they recommended him before,” Powderly gasped after reviewing the Lepine case. William Walls, elected by Pittsburgh’s DA 3, missed several Thanksgiving weekend speaking engagements in Indianapolis, and when O’Reilly and Hayes traveled west to investigate, they found him in the midst of a drinking binge. After a severe reprimand from the GST, Walls headed off for Port Richmond, Indiana, but he missed that engagement as well and showed up at Philadelphia headquarters a few days later in a drunken state. Although Walls avoided suspension by taking the pledge at a Catholic Church that day, his services were terminated when he returned to headquarters that evening “hopelessly drunk.” Predictably, Walls accused Hayes of unjustified persecution and promised to denounce the national leadership upon his return to Pittsburgh.46 Kealy’s and Palmer’s claim that “on the whole,” the general lecturers were “con men after a fast buck” is not born out by the evidence, but Powderly did receive enough complaints about financial impropriety and dereliction of duty to recommend a “close scrutiny” of all expense accounts.47 Like every initiative of these years, the Educational Fund served only to intensify the dynamic of defeat. It promised rebirth and unity, and it raised expectations among the faithful, but in the end it merely exposed and exacerbated the familiar problems of financing, factionalism, and fading confidence in the national leadership. By May 1889, lack of funds forced Powderly to terminate the experiment. For the remainder of the year, he tried to fulfill the most pressing requests himself, traveling widely in a vain effort to keep moribund locals and districts alive through his own oratorical skills. When the MW of DA 99 in Providence warned that the next session would be its last unless Powderly attended, the GMW sighed that “I have heard that same sentiment from a hundred different places” as he added one more venue to his lengthening itinerary. Plummeting membership rolls testified to the futility of this course, and at the Atlanta GA he wondered aloud whether the Educational Fund “did more harm than good to the Order.”48 The struggle between the Knights and the trade unions is usually depicted as an epic drama of ideological and personality conflict. The story’s rough-and-

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tumble immigrant hero, Samuel Gompers, reared on Marxist texts, launched a thoroughly pragmatic alternative to the utopian and backward-looking Knights— business unionism. His AFL was predicated on the permanence of industrial capitalism and the primacy of economic struggle at the point of production. Confidently discarding all the Order’s fuzzy reform notions, he declared that the only long-term strategy for labor was the continuous wresting of incremental improvements in the matter of wages, hours, and working conditions. So clearly did Gompers understand the “job consciousness” of skilled workers, who wanted little more than bigger paychecks, more leisure time, and increased job security, that they quickly embraced his teachings, abandoned the Order and everything it stood for, and joined trade unions reflecting their true interests. Powderly played the teetotaling, effete, and hysterical villain in this drama. Naively believing that Gilded Age workers had the will and ability to alter the whole course of industrialization, Powderly sought to attract workers to a crusade that championed unworkable long-range alternatives to industrial capitalism—cooperatives, reform politics, moralistic appeals to employers, and an idealistic call for the solidarity of all who toiled. For a brief moment, workers flocked to his banner, but when they found that he could not deliver immediate gains, they deserted both him and his reformist ideology. He failed because he was “foreign to the spirit of wage consciousness,” and his “insistence . . . that the interests of employers and employees were fundamentally harmonious” drove skilled workers to “trade unions that accepted class conflict as a fact of life.” The success of the AFL and the failure of the Knights was an inevitability, and Powderly’s attempts to sabotage the trade union movement marked him as an enemy of working people as they strove to fulfill their historical mission.49 Ideological and personality factors certainly played a role, but for Powderly and the Order, the trade union debacle was at heart a structural problem. In his path-breaking exploration of the labor movement during Reconstruction, David Montgomery divided the various working-class organizations into various categories, among them reform associations, trade unions, and labor parties. “These groups,” he concluded, “are most meaningfully differentiated, not in terms of ideology or membership—in these areas each overlapped significantly with each other—but rather in terms of structure and function.”50 The Order was the only large-scale attempt to combine all the various functions of these organizations within the folds of a single society. When the Order was small and impotent, the inherent difficulty of trying to be all things to all workers could be minimized. As the Order grew, Powderly’s insistence on local control provided a partial solution. The general excitement of the upheaval also helped to gloss over the problem, but when large numbers of Knights demanded the right to organize nationally along trade lines beginning in 1887, they exposed more clearly than ever the inevitable structural dilemmas facing any organization dedicated to a multiplicity of goals. Ideological antipathy to Powderly or Knighthood was not a powerful stimulant to trade sentiment. Most of those applying for national trade charters, such

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as J. Edward Hall of the machinists, adamantly declared their allegiance both to Powderly and the Order’s preamble: “We do hold and shall hold to the fundamental principles of the K. of L.” Machinists had no desire to “get back into the ‘Trade Union ruts’ ” and had not been in contact with AFL leaders, and they were not itching to strike more often. Like their GMW, “we do not believe in taking an undisciplined army into battle, especially when the enemy has most all the ammunition.” Others, such as John Costello of Pittsburgh who sought to organize the miners nationwide, deemed much of the rhetoric of AFL leaders pure “crankdom.” Many applicants, in true Knight fashion, sought the right to organize the unskilled as well as the skilled workers in their industries.51 Hall, Costello, and the dozens of others who made similar requests were motivated by more immediate concerns. Above all, they sought a more effective means to create national uniformity of wages, hours, and working conditions in their trades. They also hoped to promote their union labels and exercise greater influence over legislation relating to their trades. Many expressed the desire to free themselves from financially insolvent mixed districts that had squandered all their resources during the strikes and lockouts of the upheaval, and many challenged the wisdom of allowing mixed district leaders to intervene in trade affairs about which they knew little, if anything. The power to call strikes and negotiate contracts, they argued, should be taken from mixed district leaders and given to those who understood the complexities of the trade. In short, trade leaders demanded trade autonomy, but they by no means rejected the broader principles of Knighthood.52 Powderly was not hostile to national trade sentiment. Early in his tenure, he had encouraged the creation of such bodies—LA 300 (window glass workers) and DA 45 (telegraphers), and at the 1884 Philadelphia GA, he supported the constitutional change allowing any trade to form National Trade Assemblies (NTAs). It is true that at the following GA he declared his reluctance to charter such bodies because they would “devote no time to anything but trade topics,”53 but his reservation that NTAs would ignore the Order’s political and reform goals took a back seat after December 1886 when some charter applicants made veiled threats that they would leave the Order and join the new AFL if he could not protect trade autonomy. Powderly knew well that the Order would not survive an exodus of its skilled workers. “We may say that we can draw on the farmers and the laborers but we know that it is from the mechanics that the backbone of the labor movement has always sprung,” he lectured GS Litchman less than three weeks after the AFL’s birth. From that point on, he showed no hesitation in chartering dozens of NTAs. “Give to each trade the right to organize a National Trade Assembly,” he declared, with “exclusive control over the affairs of its trade, without let or hindrance.”54 With Powderly’s unequivocal support, the Order boasted twenty-two NTAs, with a combined membership of nearly 54,000 members, by the 1887 Minneapolis GA.55 The great structural problem was how to accommodate trade autonomy in an organization dominated by mixed (or territorial) districts, which served a variety

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of vital functions. By organizing all workers in a given city, the mixed district offered strike support, boycotting power, and arbitration services for all trades; the ability to channel urban protest and forge links with other progressive groups in the community; leverage in municipal and congressional elections; and, above all, a forum in which Knights from diverse occupational and ethnic backgrounds could come together and find common ground. If all trade locals were automatically reassigned to NTAs, mixed districts would soon find themselves bereft of members and resources, and the Order’s political, educational, and community-based goals would suffer. The ideal of solidarity among all who toiled would have been sacrificed on the altar of trade autonomy. The only way to resolve this structural crisis, Powderly reasoned, was to allow the members themselves to decide through democratic action at the local level. No trade local would be detached from a mixed district unless it voted to join an NTA and cleared its outstanding debts. Having joined an NTA, a trade local could vote to withdraw and reattach itself to the mixed district if dissatisfied in any way. NTA organizers were also asked to notify district leaders before visiting locals in their jurisdictions, and NTAs were encouraged, whenever possible, to recruit unorganized workers rather than merely strip established locals from mixed districts. Democracy, courtesy, and regard for organizational growth, Powderly insisted, were the only safeguards against internal acrimony.56 Democratic practice once again failed the Order, and Powderly soon found himself up to his neck in a jurisdictional quagmire. Although he had anticipated some friction between mixed districts and NTAs, he was unprepared for the viciousness of the warfare. Mixed district leaders repeatedly denounced NTAs for invading their territory, fomenting discord, and stealing their trade locals before proper votes had been taken and back taxes paid. NTA leaders accused mixed districts of obstructing their efforts, unlawfully intervening in trade affairs, and brazenly suspending trade locals as soon as they contemplated joining NTAs. Both sides demanded justice from their GMW, and NTAs often placed him under added pressure by threatening to leave the Order if he did not uphold their interests.57 The 1888 showdown between Hugh Cavanaugh, MW of Cincinnati’s mixed DA 48, and Harry Skeffington, MW of the shoeworkers’ NTA 216, graphically illustrated the structural dilemma. Ironically, Cavanaugh was a former shoemaker himself who had introduced the resolution creating NTAs at the 1884 GA, and most of the locals in his DA 48 were composed exclusively of shoe workers. As a result of the various conflicts during the upheaval, the district was severely weakened, and in December 1887, Cavanaugh had been forced to sign an unfavorable collective bargaining agreement with the city’s Shoe Manufacturers’ Association. This did little to undermine Cavanaugh’s popularity, and the following month, he was unanimously elected by cheering shoe workers. Trouble arose in late January 1888, however, when one local struck in violation of the agreement. Two days later the Shoe Manufacturers’ Association countered by locking out 2,500 of the city’s 3,100 shoe workers.58

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DA 48 was penniless, and Cavanaugh arranged a settlement that required the strikers to give up their demands. His efforts were sabotaged by Skeffington, who arrived as soon as the trouble began. “Pay no attention to commands from D.A. 48,” he told shoe workers, and he promised that if they joined NTA 216 he would sustain the strikers and battle the Shoe Manufacturers’ Association. Some locals resolved to remain faithful to the district, whereas others voted to join the NTA. The debacle at once became monumentally complex, involving numerous suspensions, election irregularities, refusals to pay per capita taxes, the theft of charters, GEB investigations, and GMW decisions. At a raucous meeting in March, amid ugly verbal exchanges between Cavanaugh, Skeffington, and their supporters, a slim majority of shoe workers voted to sustain Cavanaugh’s leadership and return to work under the terms of the settlement he had reached. Skeffington, however, refused to accept the decision, and internal dissent raged for months.59 The result? Six thousand Cincinnatians abandoned the Order in disgust between January and June 1888, a distraught Cavanaugh resigned as MW by September, and mixed district leaders throughout the Order called for Skeffington’s expulsion at the 1888 Indianapolis GA. Powderly himself detested Skeffington. He knew that Skeffington had assisted John Morrison in distributing the nefarious Home Club pamphlet in early 1886 and later that year had supported Frank Foster’s bid to replace him as GMW. He knew also that Skeffington was attempting to grab shoe worker locals in Massachusetts through similarly aggressive tactics and that he was prepared to abandon the Order for the AFL if censured in any way. Although sorely tempted to tell Skeffington to “go to the devil,” Powderly sought harmony at Indianapolis by merely rebuking him, albeit in patronizing fashion: “Go and sin no more.” Mixed district leaders were less than satisfied, and Skeffington was wholly unimpressed with Powderly’s inability to protect trade autonomy. In February 1889, Skeffington asked NTA 216 locals to return their charters to Philadelphia headquarters, and in June he launched the Boot and Shoe Workers’ International Union, affiliated with the AFL. For the next six years, Skeffington raided shoe worker locals in the Knights, and in 1895, the last of these locals abandoned the Order.60 Powderly’s call to restructure the Order along trade lines was a desperate effort to retain the allegiance of skilled workers, and he did what he could to make a success of the new departure. When dealing with miners’ NTA 135, for example, he could rightly boast that he had “never raised an obstacle in the way of its progress.” He encouraged NTA 135’s peace talks with the independent National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers, rewrote its charter by granting it jurisdiction over coke workers, offered its RS (Robert Watchorn) an office at Philadelphia headquarters, denied charters to new mixed districts in the coal regions so as not to “embarrass” it, and actively tried to discourage those locals who had joined NTA 135 and then asked to be detached from it.61 The one thing Powderly could not do was insist that mining locals join NTA 135 against their will. When NTA 135 claimed jurisdiction over a Scranton area

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local that had voted to remain with DA 16, he scolded MW William T. Lewis for “encroaching” on a local satisfied to remain with the mixed district and suggested that he begin organizing the 40,000 Scranton area mine workers who did not belong to the Knights at all. The enraged Lewis bolted the Order and joined the National Federation, and as a parting shot, he issued a circular castigating Powderly as an “enemy of trades unions.” Powderly was dumbfounded. “I am perfectly satisfied to allow every miner in the Order to go to 135, I am also satisfied to allow the coke workers to go to 135,” he explained, “but . . . it should not be expected of me to force members from one District to another against their will. I believe in leaving that matter to themselves. Is that wrong and is that autocracy on my part?” Because of their long involvement with Knighthood, the mine workers remained more loyal than most. When the various factions met at Columbus in January 1890 to create the United Mine Workers, they voted to affiliate with both the Knights and the AFL.62 In industry after industry, the result was the same. Zealous NTA leaders squared off against beleaguered mixed district heads, and both often ran roughshod over the wishes of trade locals themselves. Powderly’s desperate peacemaking efforts were of little avail, and one by one, NTAs opted to leave the Order so they could uphold trade autonomy. The shoe workers, machinists, iron workers, mule spinners, and Pennsylvania railroad workers were just a few of those departing in 1889 alone. By the end of 1890, virtually all of the NTAs formed in 1887 had severed their ties to the Order, and a majority eventually found a home in the AFL. Mixed districts reigned supreme once more, but the departure of their trade locals and the ugly rancor of the jurisdictional battles greatly intensified membership losses. By late 1890, the Order claimed fewer than 20,000 urban workers.63 Powderly’s bitterness toward truculent trade unionists knew no bounds. Their apparent willingness to disrupt and decimate the only organization that sought the advancement of all workers regardless of occupation, their apparent contempt for Knights who pursued reform and political goals at the district level, and their readiness to kill the Knights as a working-class organization by a single-minded pursuit of trade autonomy—all left him seething with selfrighteous indignation. When the potters’ NTA joined the chorus of those threatening to bolt the Order unless he attended its convention in person and guaranteed complete trade autonomy, he felt a strong urge to tell its members to “go and be hanged.” On another occasion, he privately expressed his desire to inform trade unionists that “[t]he K. of L. was intended for wise men, for brave men, for intelligent men and women and damned if we want such a cargo as you have been. Go—go and be damned to you.” As late as 1892, he was still raging about those who had allowed the Order’s commitment to solidarity and a multiplicity of goals to be “lost sight of and trampled down in a struggle for immediate gain” through trade unionism.64 Powderly’s ill-fated NTA policy did little to ease relations between the Order and the AFL, which were hostile from the outset. The GMW had sent a five-

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member committee, headed by John Howes of Massachusetts, to the AFL’s December 1886 founding convention at Columbus, Ohio. Howes and his cohorts extended an olive branch, offering mutual recognition of working cards and a case-by-case review of all outstanding grievances, but after meeting with an AFL committee, Howes described “an atmosphere of insincerity” on the part of the unionists that “could not be broken down.” Gompers argued that peace would prevail only when the Knights refrained from trade union activity altogether and committed itself exclusively to educational work through the mixed assemblies. After making this recommendation, he noted the unfriendly spirit on the part of Howes and other committee members: “The Order had reached a stage of intoxication with power that prevented clear thinking and wise action.” Powderly may well have encouraged a less than conciliatory approach. Noting that the AFL at its birth could claim but thirty-two constituent unions, most of which were weak, and just 138,000 members, he gleefully declared that the convention of AFL “gooses was a failure.”65 Once the Order began chartering NTAs on a grand scale in 1887, all hope that egos could be set aside for the sake of labor peace was dashed. The Knights “will give us no quarter and I would give them their own medicine in return,” Gompers cursed to P. J. McGuire in the spring of 1887. Although most of the new NTAs represented largely unorganized trades, Powderly showed little hesitation in chartering NTAs for trades already represented by existing unions, thus leaving himself and the Order open to the charge of dual unionism. Once it became clear that Gompers and McGuire were actively encouraging NTAs to leave the Order and affiliate with the AFL, Powderly countered by directly challenging their power bases; in late 1887, he approved charters for a cigar makers’ NTA to compete with Gompers’s CMIU and a carpenters’ NTA to subvert McGuire’s United Brotherhood. Such brazen effrontery created precious few Knights, but it did much to harden Gompers’s attitudes. The leadership on both sides routinely dismissed each other’s occasional peace overtures, conducted a belligerent propaganda campaign, and dug in for a long war of attrition. When refusing to accept an invitation to the December 1888 AFL convention, for instance, Powderly privately blasted Gompers for “manufacturing” grievances against the Knights. “Gompers assailed me because I did not throw aside the business of the Knights to sit down and talk to him about surrendering the K. of L. into his keeping,” he seethed. “He is an ass.”66 Despite continuing animosity, 1889 witnessed a sincere effort to establish peaceful relations. The continuing decline of the Order and the slow growth of the AFL instilled a fleeting spirit of toleration, and Powderly and McGuire successfully arranged for a joint conference on February 11 at Bingham House in Philadelphia. After “a long and friendly discussion,” a document was produced for general circulation. Entitled “An Address to the Working People of America,” it warned of the “constant and systematic attempts of the employing and speculative classes to prevent you from organizing” and declared that the “obstacles” between the two organizations were “trivial and should be swept

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aside.” While urging all working people to renew efforts to “strengthen and solidify their ranks,” they promised to draw up “a plan upon which all societies may become allies in defending the rights of each other.” Of all the principals on each side, Gompers alone hesitated before attaching his signature, and it took several months before Powderly and McGuire convinced him to take this step.67 Gompers again appeared ready to sabotage the promised rapprochement in August when he and McGuire met with Powderly, Hayes, and Wright at Knight headquarters. Any future cooperation between the feuding bodies, Gompers now declared, hinged on the Order’s willingness to cooperate with the AFL’s eighthour campaign that was set to commence on May Day 1890. With the disasters of 1886 still uppermost in their minds, the Knights were not about to embrace a call for a nationwide strike of all workers. Nor were many AFL affiliates, despite the Federation’s issuance of several circulars on the issue. At a second meeting on October 14, AFL leaders confessed that the great majority of their affiliates were unprepared for strike action, but Gompers insisted that Powderly support those that were. Powderly dutifully secured a resolution at the November 1889 Atlanta GA that promised the “moral support of the Order in any Federation movement for the eight hour day, in 1890.” But when Gompers stood before the AFL convention in December and demanded that the Order disband all its trade assemblies before the promised peace could be realized, Powderly refused to negotiate further with the “damn gin guzzling, potbellied, red nosed, scab faced, dirty shirted, unwashed, leather assed, empty headed, two-faced, rattle headed, itch palmed scavengers in the field of labor reform” who comprised the AFL leadership.68 The breach between the AFL and the Knights was never healed. Peace conferences were held in 1891 and again in 1894, but neither side was prepared to take the steps required to satisfy the other. Gompers periodically renewed his pledge to negotiate a peace treaty if the Order was prepared to devote itself exclusively to educational activities through mixed assemblies, and Powderly continued to scoff at the notion that the Order should reinvent itself to placate a man who had done so much to subvert it. Nor could he reconcile himself to the idea that the labor movement served no higher function than improved wages, hours, and working conditions for those fortunate enough to belong to a skilled trade. “The advice of the Federation is to go on and educate, strengthen the K. of L. and we will help you if you only let us live on in the shadows of the dark ages where we won’t receive any of the education you are giving out,” he sighed in 1892. “The Federation should have added ‘We are strong in our ignorance, in our invincible ignorance.’ ”69 With the failure of both the Educational Fund and NTA policy, the fate of the Order was all but sealed. “The ranks of the Knights in the industrial and manufacturing centers throughout New England, New Jersey, Baltimore, Wilmington, this city, Pittsburgh and the West,” observed one Philadelphian in August 1889, “have been depleted to an extent that is disheartening.” At least 220 assemblies collapsed in the year following the 1888 GA, and sixty more

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had gone for months without filing reports with the GST. During that same period, only forty assemblies had been chartered, all composed of farmers or farm workers. “By 1889,” according to Norman Ware, “the Knights of Labor had ceased to be an industrial organization.” It now depended on the allegiance of its rural assemblies for its very survival.70 Powderly had but one more trick in his bag, one last desperate initiative to offer as a miracle cure for a terminally ill organization. In 1889, he set out to recapture the allegiance of the working class by conquering the countryside. Agrarian discontent had come to the fore during the depression of the 1870s, and by the end of the 1880s, the gathering storms of farmer protest seemed likely to redefine the nation’s political climate. If common ground with agrarian reform groups such as the mighty National Farmers’ Alliance could be established, Powderly reasoned, farmers and Knight activists could make their presence felt in the political arena, middle-class sympathizers would then join the crusade, and, eventually, those workers who had lost their faith would return to the fold. In short, the Knights would survive as a working-class organization by pitching its message directly to farmers. Perhaps it was all for the best “if the smart [working] men of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and one or two other large centers were left to themselves for awhile,” the GMW explained to one Texas farmer soon after the departure of shoemakers’ NTA 216. “They believe that the world hangs on the action they take but my firm impression is that reforms must sweep in from the ‘Hayseed’ towns before the large cities will heed the warning.”71 Although not completely devoid of logic, Powderly’s strategy certainly smacked of desperation. As were his other initiatives in these years, the courtship of farmers was launched with vigor. After highlighting the suffering of farmers in his address to the November 1889 Atlanta GA, Powderly invited three Alliance leaders to the podium. Delegates happily expressed their support for the agrarian agenda by endorsing Henry George’s single tax and a full-bodied land reform resolution, establishing a committee on mortgage debtors that promised to challenge existing foreclosure laws, and appointing a Knight delegation to attend the Southern Alliance’s December convention at St. Louis. Powderly, Beaumont, and A. W. Wright represented the Order at St. Louis, and with much fanfare, they vowed to assist the Southern Alliance’s lobbying efforts. “We met the Farmers and we are theirs, or they are ours,” the GMW proclaimed.72 Although Powderly and the Order worked hard to cement the new relationship over the next several years, the endeavor was fraught with innumerable difficulties that ultimately proved fatal. First, as Powderly’s comment on the St. Louis gathering suggested, was the question of how much influence the decimated Knights could expect to wield in a vibrant and growing agrarian crusade. By 1890, the Order was so weak, according to one scholar, that it “was in no position to offer aid to anyone.” Although agrarians stood ready to defend the rights of labor in their rhetoric, their platform included few planks from the Knights’ legislative agenda. Powderly attended every major agrarian conference

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after the December 1889 gathering in St. Louis—Ocala, Florida (December 1890), Cincinnati (May 1891), St. Louis (February 1892), and Omaha (July 1892)—but his persistent cry that the farmers must “go farther” by incorporating the Order’s legislative demands largely fell on deaf ears.73 A second difficulty was the inevitable challenge to the Order’s nonpartisan policy, which led to yet another round of internal factional strife. Because most of the farmers’ grievances were clearly tied to governmental policy, many agrarian reformers quickly shifted from lobbying concerns to support for an independent party. Within the Knights, the push for a third party played into the hands of Ralph Beaumont and others who had been calling on the Order to launch a national reform party since early 1889. Powderly was aghast. He suspected that the Alliance was encouraging Beaumont and his faction to take the initiative so that a third-party movement could be started without risk to the Alliance. “The Farmers’ Alliance,” Powderly squawked in April 1890, “would like to have us start the ball rolling [for a third party] and wreck us so that there would be but one industrial organization existing.”74 Beginning in 1890, the pros and cons of independent political action became all-consuming within the Order. Powderly not only encouraged this debate but pressed the membership to resolve the issue once and for all through democratic means. In the autumn, he issued a referendum asking each Knight eligible to vote how they wanted the Order as a whole to act in the political arena. The result was disheartening. The mere issuing of the referendum sparked partisan rivalries in numerous assemblies, Powderly was assailed by women and recent immigrants for attempting to define Knight policy without their input, and the fewer than 11,000 who bothered to return their ballots offered contradictory guidance.75 Debates at the 1890 Denver GA proved equally divisive and inconclusive, but many influential Knights in the South and West were determined to override the Order’s long-standing nonpartisan policy regardless of the consequences.76 Powderly himself remained a firm believer in nonpartisanship. His commitment reflected years of experience heading a labor movement riddled with political divisions. “Our Order . . . is composed of men of all shades of political faith; no matter how much we desire to make all members think alike, it cannot be done,” he had lectured since early in his tenure. Even during the high tide of political unrest that followed on the heels of the Great Upheaval, he insisted that “[t]he Order must not be identified with any party.” Some had pressed him to endorse the Union Labor ticket, whereas others had urged him to back the United Labor party, the Prohibitionist party, the Democrats, or the Republicans. He had refused them all. “If the General Master Workman took sides anywhere,” he explained, “that fact would be used everywhere else to discourage our members who had secured the nomination of their brothers on other party tickets.”77 The fierce partisan rivalries that surfaced during the 1888 elections, when tariff reform was the question of the hour, did little to shake his faith in nonpartisanship. Republicans and Democrats had attacked each other savagely in the sanc-

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tuaries during that campaign; Powderly wailed that it had brought about “the disruption of whole Assemblies,” and Hayes estimated that it had cost the Order 55,000 members.78 Thus even while assisting the agrarians in laying the groundwork for the Populist party, the GMW saw no reason to break with established policy. He adamantly refused to serve the new party in any official capacity, and he repeatedly expressed his belief that “Knights must not be expected to engage in the third party movement except . . . as individuals.”79 Flirtation with farmers not only stimulated a new wave of factionalism among Knight stalwarts, it utterly failed in its principal objective of attracting new members. Indeed, the strategy even failed to maintain existing membership levels. The folding of locals in the South became so furious after 1889 that, according to one scholar, “[f]or all practical purposes, the southern order was dead” by late 1890. Urban workers more interested in economic than political action also found the Order wanting. A disastrous six-week strike of Knight freight handlers (DA 246) against the New York Central railroad in the summer of 1890, for instance, led to wholesale desertions of Knight assemblies on the East Coast.80 By July 1892, the decimated Order was unable to offer more than feeble assistance during the critical Homestead steel strike. Powderly blasted both the state and federal government’s role during this contest, and he urged all Knights to contribute their money and energy to defeat this war “against independence of thought and action on the part of organized labor,” but the Order was too weak to be of much assistance.81 Even as the Populist party was launched in July 1892, therefore, Powderly was “haunted” by the knowledge that Knighthood was “in the throes of dissolution” and that “no act” of the general officers “could avert the impending fate of the Order.”82 The inside history of the national Order during Powderly’s final years in office is a sordid and pathetic tale of intrigue, chicanery, and malfeasance. Once hailed as the harbinger of a new society based on the collective virtue of working people, Knighthood became a nightmarish pit of selfishness and skulduggery. Former comrades surreptitiously gathered evidence to destroy each other, female office staff suffered sexual harassment and intimidation, job slashing became a political weapon, and only the most ruthless could hope to survive. By late 1893, Powderly had dirtied his own hands long enough. When asked to head an administration dominated by those he despised and who despised him, he walked away and left the wreckage of Knighthood to his enemies. This dreary drama began with the financial troubles that plagued the national administration as early as 1888. Powderly often went months at a time without receiving a penny in either salary or expenses, and he was forced to pay for office supplies, equipment, postage stamps, telegrams, and even his secretary’s wages out of his own pocket. By the middle of 1889, he was owed a full six month’s salary and expenses. “Candidly speaking I must have some other way of making a living,” he told O’Reilly, and to make ends meet he agreed to a few product endorsements, which he found utterly distasteful, wrote articles for the popular press, and even applied to the Eastern Pennsylvania Phonograph

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Company for the position of sales representative in the Scranton area. Much of his spare time from late 1887 to mid-1889 was devoted to penning a book, Thirty Years of Labor, which he hoped would at once solve his financial difficulties and serve as a manifesto for a reunified labor movement. It did neither. Although assured by a friend that the book would “sell like hot cakes,” sales were disappointing, and Powderly blamed the Excelsior Publishing Company of Columbus, Ohio, for failing to promote it.83 Even with Powderly prepared to work without expenses or his inflated salary, which during the heady days of 1886 had been boosted to $5,000 a year, the national Order could not meet its financial obligations. The journal was a perennial money loser, the Philadelphia headquarters at 814–816 North Broad Street was expensive to maintain, and the office staff could not live on high ideals.84 As early as December 1888, Powderly was forced to travel to Pittsburgh and, on bended knee, borrow $5,000 from the ever reliable LA 300 just to pay off the most pressing debts. By early 1890, continuing membership loss, the inability to collect per capita taxes, and mounting fiscal troubles led him to cry that “something must be done or we must let the sheriff run the concern.” At the GA in Denver that November, Powderly called for belt-tightening measures, and to emphasize his point he asked that his own salary be reduced. Even this largely symbolic gesture created acrimony. For many delegates, the GMW’s salary served as a barometer of the health of the Order, and few were prepared to believe that Knighthood has sunk so low that it could not adequately compensate its leader. Dan Frazier Tomson of Arkansas spoke for the majority when he declared that $5,000 “was none too much to pay the chief officer of this organization.” After a majority voted to maintain his salary intact, Powderly had to take the floor and plead for a reconsideration. In the end, fifty-six of the eighty-one acceded to his wishes and cut his salary to $3,500, but many, such as Joseph Evans of Pittsburgh’s DA 3, stated for the record that they believed “the position to be worth $10,000.”85 At the November 1891 Toledo GA, the administration asked delegates to meet the financial emergency by approving a five cent per member assessment, raising monthly per capita taxes from six to nine cents, and abolishing the practice of paying the travel expenses of GA delegates from the General Fund. When all three proposals were rejected, the rapidly fading Order was destined for bankruptcy. As if on cue, Powderly became incapacitated by quinsy in the spring of 1892, lapsed into deep despair, and tendered his resignation: “I cannot bear the strain any longer.” Dozens of requests lay on his desk, each moaning that unless he make a personal appearance another assembly would collapse, but there were no travel funds, and he had been deprived of his voice for nearly a month after the doctor had sliced the boils on the inside of his throat.86 Upon his recovery he learned that a May Day labor parade and picnic would be held in Scranton, but DA 16 had declined to such an extent that he was not even invited. “Samuel Gompers is to orate,” he cursed. “P. J. McGuire is to be here too . . . [while] I am to occupy a place on the side-walk.” Such a heart-wrenching illustration of

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the Order’s weakness left him shaken for months. “I feel that my work don’t count any more and desire to end it and take up something new,” he informed Hayes in July.87 Perhaps he should have quit, if only to maintain his own dignity. Desperate to generate income for himself and the Order, Powderly, along with Hayes and Wright, embarked on several highly dubious projects, the most important of which was the Labor Day Annual. The brainchild of Wright, the annual was to be a compilation of biographical sketches of reformers of every description. The money was to be made from corporate advertisements, and Hayes hired an unscrupulous agent named H. G. Gray to promote the project. Powderly’s role was to write letters of introduction that Hayes would use when making personal visits to the captains of industry. “You know I have been fifteen years fighting the men we are now asking favors from,” Powderly sighed, “and it is a trifle against the grain to write some of them.” The whole scheme was sad and embarrassing. The great labor leader had been reduced to a supplicant, begging for a lifeline from the very monopolists he had boldly challenged just a few years earlier. Moreover, the scheme failed. Only one issue appeared and, according to Powderly, Gray “ate up all the profits” through his “riotous living, swell dinners and a multiplicity of marriages.”88 In addition to debt and decay, Powderly faced another challenge in 1892— the increasingly imperious activities of General Secretary-Treasurer (GST) John Hayes. Other than friendly advice, Powderly had done little to curb Hayes since first learning about his various power plays at headquarters in 1889. Nor had he acted vigorously to put an end to Hayes’s scandalous affair with Marion Barrett. For so many years Powderly had deemed Hayes “my main dependence on the Board” that he failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation until it was too late. By early 1892, Powderly admitted that whenever he criticized the GST, “John . . . regards it as personal enmity or the forerunner of a scheme to injure him.” But Powderly was too wrapped up in his own despair to contemplate ousting Hayes at the 1892 St. Louis GA. As delegates voted to sell the Order’s Philadelphia headquarters to pay off debts, Powderly abruptly resigned. He announced that he was “not a candidate, did not want the office and did not want any one to vote for him.” He thereupon left the hall while delegates chose his successor, but of course fifty of the fifty-six elected him anyway, and he reluctantly agreed to remain. Delegates reelected Hayes as well but, significantly, sixteen voted against him (nine delegates preferred John O’Keefe, a former MW of Providence’s DA 99 who was now employed at headquarters), and Hayes was stripped of his control over the affairs of the journal.89 Less than a month after the close of the GA, Powderly rued the failure to “select his [Hayes’s] successor at St. Louis,” because “he has done nothing but inwardly vow vengeance on every one of us since.” Whatever Hayes had learned during private chats in the hotel and meeting rooms at St. Louis will never be known, but the GST returned from St. Louis feeling vulnerable and unwanted. His future was no longer secure, and Powderly offered no assurances of his

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continued support. At once Hayes the petty tyrant became Hayes the monster. He dismissed his rival O’Keefe immediately, threatened all office staff that they would be fired as well if they dared to cross him, declared a veritable war against GEB members Wright and Devlin, threatened to blacken Powderly’s name by exposing his involvement in the Labor Day Annual, and did not pay the GMW one cent of his salary for an entire year following the 1892 GA. “Since Saturday last this man Hayes appears hideous to me,” a disgusted O’Reilly raged. “I doubt if [Henry Clay] Frick or [H. Walter] Webb [acting manager of the New York Central during the 1890 strike] have blacker hearts than this fellow has.” Madge Eiler, a respected senior member of the clerical staff, concluded that Hayes was “the smallest and emptiest man I have ever come in contact with.”90 Although Powderly vowed that Hayes’s “wings will be clipped” at the next board meeting, the threat of bankruptcy once again took precedence. When apprised that tax bills could not be paid, Powderly, after much procrastination and soul searching, ordered a reduction in the office staff and drastic cutbacks in the expenses paid to GEB members. He promised to advise each board member “to seek another position where they may earn sufficient to maintain them and their families independently of the Order.” Overdue taxes would be paid by liquidating all existing funds, including the $2,373 raised for the strikers at Coeur d’Alene and Homestead. With these dramatic steps Powderly shattered any glimmer of hope that the Order would revive, and he was already contemplating its epitaph: “Through all the turmoil and misunderstanding the Order has stamped its impression for good upon the records of the world and should it collapse to-night those who survive it may point to its splendid achievements in forcing to the front the cause of misunderstood and down-trodden humanity.”91 With Hayes set for the chopping block and collapse imminent, infighting at headquarters became truly ferocious in the summer of 1893. Hayes hired his brother and a few other favorites to act as personal spies despite the lack of funds, systematically dismissed all female employees at headquarters who had firsthand knowledge of his affair with Barrett (including Eiler, who accused Hayes of sexual harassment), declared that Wright was no longer a Knight since his Toronto local (LA 7814) had lapsed, purged all letter books he could get his hands on in an effort to cover up his shady personal investments, and drew up charges against Wright and Powderly for “embezzlement” in their promotion of the Labor Day Annual.92 “Keep a sharp eye on the doings of Hayes,” Powderly warned O’Reilly and others as he consolidated his forces. The GMW purged his own letterbooks to shield himself from Hayes’s accusations, pressed Wright to do the same, and even contacted a few members of his old spy ring, The Governors, to dig up whatever dirt they could find on Hayes. Although Powderly was fully prepared to fight fire with fire and cover up his own indiscretions, these vulgar shenanigans made him sick at heart. “You know it makes a decent man smell to be pissed on by a skunk,” he wrote O’Reilly, “and though he may kill the skunk the smell remains.”93

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At an ugly GEB session in September 1893, Powderly finally suspended Hayes and named GWF Hugh Cavanaugh acting GST. He then stepped down himself and named GEB member John Devlin acting GMW, suggesting that delegates to the upcoming GA at Philadelphia be allowed to sort out the ugly mess.94 This display of executive authority merely escalated the battle, however, and over the next two months both Hayes and Powderly scrambled to prepare for the showdown. As Powderly was well aware, Hayes was a formidable enemy with a keen instinct for survival. Although blocked in his attempt to publish a circular on official stationary that detailed the “crimes” of the GMW, Hayes and T. B. McGuire, his lone ally on the GEB, conducted an effective propaganda campaign in their private correspondence to those who would attend the GA. Hayes appealed to staunch Populist party activists, led by James Sovereign of Iowa, by promising to fuse the interests of the party and the Order. He also secured the support of New York radicals under the leadership of Daniel DeLeon, a rising force in the Socialist Labor Party who had gained control of the moribund DA 49 as part of his strategy to undermine Gompers and the AFL. Although the Hayes-Sovereign-DeLeon coalition was highly unstable, even Powderly recognized that Hayes had “been getting his work in nicely around the country. Some of my worst enemies are elected as Representatives.”95 For the first time in his career, Powderly’s political skills were found wanting. Rather than conduct a vigorous campaign among delegates, he spent much of his time “reading all my letter books back to 1888, when I hoisted this pimple [Hayes] on the body of the G.A.,” believing that it was sufficient to defend himself against the specific charges. His allies were equally slow to act. Wright went home to tend to his sick wife, leaving his correspondence concerning the Labor Day Annual on his desk at Philadelphia where Hayes’s spies could find it. Devlin himself took ill, and even Madge Eiler expressed her reluctance to testify at the GA. “I shall so effectually disprove every statement made by Mr. Hayes in the presence of the General Assembly,” Powderly assured her, “that when that body adjourns his venom will be powerless to poison anyone.” Only when it was too late, however, did he regret not having moved to ensure that his supporters would be at the GA in large numbers. In a bizarre exchange just prior to the session, he tried to secure a credential for his old nemesis Joseph Buchanan. Having reestablished their friendship after Buchanan moved to New Jersey and entered the political field in 1892, Powderly now mused: “How I wish you could be on the floor of the G.A. this time.”96 The seventeenth session of the GA opened at Industrial Hall in Philadelphia on November 14, 1893, with but forty-nine delegates present. Although membership figures were carefully guarded, as they had been since 1888, receipts from per capita taxes indicated that the Order could claim but 25,549 members in good standing. In his roseate opening address, Powderly downplayed the various crises and recalled the last GA gathering in the city of the founders (1884), when the Order was small and “rancor marked every stage of the proceedings.” But the Order had prospered in the wake of that session, and there

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was every reason to believe that it would do so again. There had been “more elements of discord” in 1884, he argued, because the issues that would “disturb the harmony of this meeting are not deep-rooted and happily do not pertain to the principles of the organization.” During this session, “there will be many unpleasant things said and done I am certain,” but if each delegate resolved “to do his part in truth and sincerity,” there was no reason the Order would not have “double the number of members doing its service one year hence.”97 Powderly was whistling in the dark. From the opening day, when a telegram was read from Eugene Debs of the American Railway Union expressing hope that the proceedings would “add fresh lustre” to the Order’s reputation, the GA was a grotesque display of the kind of infighting that consumes decadent organizations. Factions were sorted out by the time of the inevitable credentials fight, the Hayes-Sovereign-DeLeon coalition met as a caucus in the evenings, and the voting pattern was well established by the time Hayes presented his charges against Powderly and the GEB. Among other things, Hayes detailed the activities of The Governors, which he claimed represented an inner ring designed to thwart the will of the majority; he accused Powderly of illegally tampering with the Coeur d’Alene and Homestead monies; he charged him with misappropriating funds for personal use in promoting the Labor Day Annual; and for good measure, he added a general indictment of neglect and incompetency. For several days, the delegates pored over the evidence. In the end, they thoroughly vindicated Powderly, deciding that “no possible dishonesty can be charged” against him, and Hayes apparently was forced to confess that his charges of financial impropriety were without foundation. Delegates also held that “antagonism existing” between the two chief officers made new elections imperative, yet elections could not break the impasse: They merely revealed the factional divide. Powderly defeated Sovereign for GMW (25 to 19), Hayes nipped Charles Martin for GST (25 to 21), and Hayes’s ally M. J. Bishop bested Powderly’s friend Hugh Cavanaugh for GWF (25 to 21).98 Ironically, Hayes secured victory only when Powderly introduced his list of eight names for GEB posts, a privilege the GMW had secured five years earlier to boost his own authority. After he listed eight men closely associated with his leadership, the GA adjourned for the evening, giving Powderly a chance to reconsider a slate that was certain to rankle his opponents. The following morning he offered a new slate that included three allies plus five others, among them T. B. McGuire, who were more acceptable to the kickers. McGuire achieved a majority on the first ballot and was declared elected, but no one achieved a majority in any of the next five ballots. At this point, the Hayes forces triumphed by ramming through a resolution declaring that the GMW, GST, GWF, and McGuire “are hereby authorized to perform the duties” of the GEB. Powderly had lost and he knew it. Unwilling to serve on a board with three avowed enemies and not a single ally, he submitted his resignation at once. Although vigorous debating followed on whether to accept the resignation, and a majority

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demanding at first that it be rejected, Powderly never offered to retract it.99 In the city of the founders, amid the sordidness and decay that had choked the dying dream of solidarity, his fourteen-year stewardship had come to an end. “I shall never again accept an office in a labor organization,” a thoroughly dispirited Powderly resolved soon after the GA. He seemed relieved that the heavy burden of responsibility that he had carried for so long had at last been lifted. “God alone knows what I have had to contend with for the past fifteen years and now that it is over the poor house is preferable to a return to the torture.” Nor was there a sufficient outcry among the few remaining loyalists to prompt a reconsideration of his resolve. “How a reverse shows who a man’s friends are,” he wrote O’Reilly. With the exception of a handful of stalwarts, “I don’t think I have any friends left.” He would “never again intrude my personality before the laboring world for they [sic] evidently have tired of me.”100 Even when his friends finally did rally behind him in the spring of 1894, Powderly only halfheartedly agreed to attempt a comeback. With the assistance of A. W. Wright, Hugh Cavanaugh, Joseph Buchanan, and James Campbell of LA 300, he proposed to take the battle to the New Orleans GA in November 1894, but Hayes undermined this course when he suspended Powderly in May. “To think that the Order . . . should stand quietly and approvingly by to witness this act of assassination without even a protest is heartbreaking,” he sighed. By August he had given up. “The Order is dead,” he wrote to O’Reilly, “it has no vitality.” At New Orleans, fourteen outspoken Powderly supporters, including delegates from LA 300 and coal miners’ NTA 135, were denied seats by the new administration. In protest, these and other loyalists established a short-lived Independent Order of the Knights of Labor, but Powderly refused to spearhead the movement. Although he offered the dissidents encouragement and advice, he was more interested in securing his back salary from Hayes. Lengthy legal proceedings ensued, and in May 1896, he exacted a small measure of revenge when the Common Pleas Court of Philadelphia directed the Order to pay him $4,223.101 Having achieved their primary objective by removing Powderly, the “unholy alliance of careerist bureaucrats, western radicals, and eastern socialists” who comprised the new national leadership promised that the Order would soon be “booming with all the vigor of its youthful days.” But of course the alliance failed to heal the breach with the AFL, stymie the chronic internecine strife, or attract new members. Comparing Powderly and Hayes, Gompers held that the latter “has always been the greater antagonist to the trade unions of the two, was always bitter, vindictive and relentless.” Even Powderly’s old nemesis Frank Foster, who was now secretary of the Massachussetts State Federation of Labor, conceded that “Terry was a good deal better man than any of the gang who dumped him from the K. of L.” The AFL went through the motions of peace talks in 1894 before ignoring the dwindling Order altogether. The alliance itself collapsed soon after. When GMW Sovereign reneged on his promise to name

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Socialist Labor party member Lucien Sanial editor of the JKL, DeLeon led the socialists out of the Knights in December 1894, suggesting that the estimated 17,000 who remained “find their own way to oblivion.”102 Oblivion was just around the corner. Although in 1898 Hayes boasted that the Order’s “power and influence has been greater than for any previous year since 1890,” the 1901 Industrial Commission reported that there were at best “a few thousand” workers who were still faithful. In 1902, Hayes himself was ousted by his growing number of enemies in the national administration, and, according to those who succeeded him, “held what he called a General Assembly in his bedroom at Niagara Falls, N.Y.” Both sides entered suit against each other in the federal courts for the right to the property and the name of the Knights of Labor, and the legal wrangling continued for years. But outside of Boston and a few other places, where several locals continued to thrive until the 1930s, the Noble Order had long since disappeared in both fact and memory.103 Powderly survived for more than thirty successful if unremarkable years after stepping down as GMW. Determined to look after his own interests, he took up legal studies in December 1893. “I must do it,” he explained to Buchanan, “for I see no other opening ahead, am not in favor with those who have capital and expect no favors from those whom I have opposed for so many years.” He lectured on the Chautauqua circuit to make ends meet before successfully passing the Pennsylvania bar examination in August 1894. In the spring of 1895, he entered into a law partnership with John R. Jones, Lackawanna county’s district attorney. His lengthy client list included numerous worker organizations, such as the Throop Miners’ Beneficial and Accident Association, but the role of Scranton lawyer could not satisfy his long deferred personal ambitions.104 Politics served as the avenue to greater success. Now free to express his own political views without reservation, Powderly emerged in 1894 as a Republican, campaigning energetically for that party’s local, state, and congressional candidates. A whole series of issues and events between 1890 and 1892 had led Powderly to follow Litchman into the Republican camp. Foremost among these was hatred of the state Democrats, whom he felt had betrayed their 1890 campaign pledge to hold a state constitutional to effect ballot reform, an issue in which Powderly was deeply interested. Powderly was also sickened by New York Democratic Governor Roswell Flower, a wealthy stock market speculator who had refused to pardon a striking Knight convicted under the state’s conspiracy laws, and especially by Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Robert Pattison, who had been so quick to call out the state militia during the Homestead strike.105 Powderly would not be rewarded by the Republicans, however, until he proved his mettle during the fateful campaign of 1896. When the Populists chose to fuse with the Democrats behind presidential hopeful William Jennings Bryan and focus on the issue of the free coinage of silver, many were disgusted that the broad Omaha platform had been abandoned. The Republicans rallied behind

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William McKinley, tariff protection, and the promise of a “full dinner pail.” For Powderly, who privately regarded Bryan a “blatant demagogue,” the key issue in the campaign was the tariff. Only the strong protective tariff promised by the Republicans, he argued, could rescue the nation from depression. To mostly labor audiences from Iowa to New York’s Cooper Union, Powderly made dozens of speeches on McKinley’s behalf. In front of 1,000 Kansas City railroad workers, many of whom were veterans of the Southwest strike, “he spoke with his accustomed fire and thrilled his hearers as of old.” In Peoria, “Powderly was the man the audience had come out through the rain to hear.” Although hissed and heckled by Bryanites, Powderly spoke for the majority of workers. McKinley’s margin of victory was the largest in a quarter of a century.106 As soon as McKinley was sworn into office, Powderly applied for the post of commissioner-general of immigration, an office that labor regarded as its own because it oversaw the enforcement of the Alien Contract Labor Law and other matters of vital concern to organized labor. Although McKinley was keen to reward him, Powderly’s appointment generated a heated debate in labor’s ranks that symbolized the disunity of the movement and the contest over Powderly’s legacy as labor leader. Gompers and Hayes found common cause in assuring McKinley that Powderly was now utterly abhorrent to the nation’s toilers. The AFL executive council put forward its own candidate, M. M. Garland of the Amalgamated Association. Hayes and Sovereign ranted about his being a “tooth and toe-nail” Catholic, and the New York Central Labor Union, once the political wing of the Home Club but now under the thumb of Tammany Hall, wailed that his appointment would be “the greatest official insult ever offered by the federal government to organized labor.”107 More indicative of labor’s attitudes toward Powderly were the endorsements he received. “Instead of injuring Mr. Powderly, as they hoped, the fakirs have done him a real service by, as it were, forcing the President to learn more of his worth and genuine popularity than he otherwise would,” declared the organ of the International Typographical Union, adding that “[n]o one is better informed as to the needs of American labor.” “When the shades of some of the labor fakirs . . . will long have been forgotten,” echoed D. F. Lawlor of the Lumber Handlers of Northern New York, “the memory of ‘Powderly’ will be blessed for the good he has already done.” M. D. Ratchford and W. C. Pearse, the president and secretary of the United Mine Workers, supported Powderly. So, too, did the one-term AFL president John McBride, the Lake Seaman’s Union in Chicago, the Washington, D.C. Central Labor Union and Building Trades Council, the Bakery and Confectionery Workers, the socialist Paterson Labor Standard, the Omaha Western Laborer, and numerous other labor groups and papers. Frank Foster, who also endorsed Powderly, tersely summed up the acrimony when he noted that “it’s rather small potatoes trying to keep Terry from his plum.”108 In the end, Terry got his plum, moved to Washington with his wife and faithful secretary, Emma Fickenscher, and embarked on his new career. After

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President Theodore Roosevelt dismissed him in 1902 for political reasons, Powderly endured four anxious years before Roosevelt hired him as a special immigration inspector, sent him on a three-month tour of Europe, and upon his return named him chief of the Division of Information in the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, a post that he held from 1907 until his retirement in 1921.109 Through all these years, Powderly kept abreast of labor affairs, spoke at hundreds of union gatherings, offered his legal expertise to immigrant miners and other embattled workers, kept in touch with countless men and women prominent in the field of labor reform, and even served as commissioner of conciliation in the Department of Labor between 1921 and his death on June 24, 1924. But with the passing of the Knights, his name was soon forgotten by working people, and union officials paraded him out more as a curiosity to pass the time at union conventions than as a source of inspiration or wisdom. In 1914, he visited the railroad yards of Wilkes-Barre and struck up a conversation with a few of the men. To his astonishment, none had knowledge of the 1877 strikes, the 1883 telegraphers’ strike, or the 1886 Southwest strike. “I finally got around to my own name, and though all of them had heard the name, they had lost track of the man or what he stood for.”110 Not only had the masses forgotten him, but historians had already begun to revile him. Powderly was one of the fortunate few to have lived long enough to read the historical assessments of their life’s work. William Kirk’s National Labor Federations in the United States (1906), Robert Hoxie’s widely read study, Trade Unionism in the United States (1917), and Selig Perlman’s majesterial contribution to John R. Commons’s History of Labour in the United States (1918) were among those passing judgment on his leadership and the movement he led. Their relentless hostility confounded and enraged him, their assumption that the search for solidarity was doomed to failure saddened him, and in his last years, he struggled to set the record straight by writing an autobiography. The resulting Path I Trod, published posthumously, is a meandering, selfjustifying portrait that has done little to enhance his reputation.111 Nothing Powderly might have written about himself could have matched the eloquence of his dearest friend during his declining years, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. The “miners’ angel,” who had herself taken part in so many labor struggles, from the 1877 railroad strikes to the 1919 steel strike, looked upon Powderly as her closest confidant after 1902. Significantly, she bonded with Powderly during her peak years of radicalism, when she broke with United Mine Workers’ President John Mitchell, became an official lecturer for the Socialist Party, helped to found the Industrial Workers of the World, and embraced the cause of Mexican revolutionists in the United States. Mother Jones and Powderly worked together on numerous campaigns and developed an exceptionally affectionate connection. One scholar has suggested that her relationship with Powderly, whom she referred to as either “my dear son” or “my dear comrade,” was “the most stable in her life.” Together they appealed for justice for “Big Bill” Haywood and other Western Federation of Miners’ leaders after their arrest on

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murder charges, sought to secure the release of Mexicans held in American jails, and battled on behalf of hard-pressed West Virginia coal miners facing intransigent operators and injunction-wielding judges. The peripatetic Jones considered Powderly’s house at 502 Quincy Street in Washington her only “home.” She had her own room at the top of the stairs, which Powderly always kept in readiness, and whenever she traveled she longed to return home, where she and her friend could sit in the garden and talk about old times for days on end. Powderly encouraged her to write a book about the early labor movement, and Jones liked nothing better than to “spend a week or ten days getting notes on the old time fights.”112 Jones deemed Powderly one of labor’s original heros, a man of broad vision and character whose giant shadow had faded all too quickly, a leader whose dedication and idealism stood in stark contrast to many of the AFL’s labor bureaucrats (such as John Mitchell) who worked in plush offices and lacked confidence in working people’s ability to shape their own destiny. “I shall always see you in the shadows of the past when you worked so faithfully and patiently in labor’s cause,” she told him in 1906. “Some day the unwritten history will be given to the children yet unborn, and it is possible they will make pilgrimages to your grave and plant flowers there on.” “Though all the world may abuse you there will still be one who will defend you,” she declared a year later. “You were rocking the cradle of the movement, you made it possible for others to march on. No doubt . . . you made blunders, but I know and I feel that you did the best you knew how under the conditions with which you had to deal.”113 Following her arrest during the Colorado coal wars of 1914, Jones wrote Powderly from her jail cell: “As soon as this fight is over, I am going to Washington to write that book [her autobiography]. It will be dedicated to your labor in the early days of the struggle. I would not undertake it, if it were not that I want to show some people up and vindicate the real hero of the labor movement.” Powderly died before her autobiography was published. On June 24, 1924, at the age of seventy-five, he passed away at his home, finally succumbing to respiratory and throat ailments that had plagued him since his youth. His death attracted almost no notice from the labor or mainstream press, but Mother Jones was devastated by the passing of “the one faithful friend I had.” When her autobiography appeared a year later, she had placed Powderly’s name alongside John Siney and Richard Trevellick as labor “pioneers worthy of our memory. . . . Their monuments are the good they did.”114 NOTES 1. Boston Labor Leader, December 7, 1895, quoted in Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (New York, 1955), vol. 2, p. 168; TVP “to the Order wherever found,” March 13, 1886, PP. 2. See especially John R. Commons, et al., History of Labour in the United States

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(New York, 1918), vol. 2, and Selig Perlman, A Theory of the Labor Movement (New York, 1928). 3. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2; Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895: A Study in Democracy (New York, 1929). 4. Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1993), p. 188. 5. Ibid., pp. 237–238. The same author notes that a comparable labor movement in Britain survived because “British employers made few attempts to eliminate the new unions totally.” The late nineteenth-century French counterpart to the Knights endured largely because “French employers had fewer financial resources than American employers,” and the French state often intervened in industrial disputes in an effort to effect compromises. 6. TVP to Martin Irons, September 27, 1892, PP. 7. David Montgomery, “Labor and the Republic in Industrial America, 1860–1920,” Le Mouvement Social 3 (April–June 1980): 204; Gregory Kealey and Bryan Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900 (New York, 1982), p. 382. 8. Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, p. 383. 9. Martin Shefter, “Trade Unions and Political Machines: The Organization and Disorganization of the American Working Class in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg, eds., Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1986), pp. 252–253; see also Andrew Dawson, “The Paradox of Dynamic Technological Change and the Labor Aristocracy in the United States, 1880–1914,” Labor History 20 (1979): 345–346. 10. Leon Fink, “The New Labor History and the Powers of Historical Pessimism: Consensus, Hegemony, and the Case of the Knights of Labor,” Journal of American History, 75 (June 1988): 135; Richard Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900 (Urbana, 1986), p. 236. 11. Foster quoted in Painters’ Advocate (Hartford, Connecticut), December 1889. Judith Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing, and Change: The Knights of Labor in Philadelphia, 1869–1890,” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1985; Steven Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York, 1985); Peter Rachleff, Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890 (Philadelphia, 1984); Richard Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation; Voss, Making. 12. On Alabama, see Daniel Letwin, The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878–1921 (Chapel Hill, 1998); for Kansas City, see Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983); David Brundage, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver’s Organized Workers, 1878–1905 (Urbana, 1994); on the breakup of the Home Club, see Robert Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club: The Knights of Labor Joust among Themselves,” Labor History 34, No. 1 (Winter 1993): 84–113; on Indiana Knights, see TVP to Edwin Gould, October 15, 1888; TVP to R. F. Jacks, October 15, 1888, PP. 13. TVP to Tom O’Reilly, December 11, 1888; TVP to Richard Griffiths, July 10, 1889, PP. 14. Labadie quoted in Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, p. 210. 15. Michael Beresford to TVP, July 26; James Campbell to TVP, July 13; J. N. Corbin to TVP, August 17; I. N. Ross to TVP, July 28; Joseph Clymer and James McFeely to TVP, August 25, 1888, PP. 16. TVP “to the Order everywhere,” December 11, 1888, PP.

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17. TVP to Tom O’Reilly, December 11, 1888, PP; Indianapolis GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 7. 18. Indianapolis GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” pp. 3, 15. 19. Boston Labor Leader, September 29, 1888; TVP to J. J. Crowley, August 25, 1888; John Hayes to TVP, September 27, 1888; Proceedings, 1888 Indianapolis GA, pp. 67–68. 20. JUL, September 6, 1888; New York Tribune, August 31, 1888; Henry Smith to TVP, September 1, 1888; and the various drafts of a letter TVP intended to send to Litchman, October 25 and 26, 1888, PP; Edward James, “American Labor and Political Action, 1865–1896,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1954, pp. 424–427. 21. TVP to Hayes, September 7, 1888, Hayes Papers. See also TVP to Hayes, July 20, 1887 and March 1, 1888; TVP to Richard Griffiths, July 1, 1888 PP. 22. 1888 Indianapolis GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 7. 23. Ibid., pp. 3,6–7; Proceedings, 1888 Indianapolis GA, pp. 54–55. 24. Proceedings, 1888 Indianapolis GA, pp. 71–75. TVP had also nominated Ira Aylsworth of Baltimore, T. B. McGuire of New York, James A. Wright of Philadelphia, and Henry Traphagen of Cincinnati. 25. On Barry’s circular, see Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, p. 164; the charge of dictatorial control is made by Vincent Falzone, Terence V. Powderly: Middle Class Reformer (Washington, D.C., 1978), p. 145. 26. For the justification, see TVP “to the Order everywhere,” December 11, 1888, PP; for his continuing commitment to local control, see 1891 Toledo GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 1: “Each District and Local Assembly should be permitted to enact its own laws. In doing so there should be as little interference from the General Assembly as possible.” 27. For biographical sketches of Hayes, see JKL, November 27, 1890; Harry Carman, Henry David, and Paul Guthrie, eds., The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York, 1940), p. 347, note 12; George McNeill, The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-Day (Boston, 1887), p. 608; Gary Fink, ed., Biographical Dictionary of American Labor (Westport, Conn., 1984), pp. 284–285. On his early relationship with Powderly, see, among dozens of other letters, Hayes to TVP, July 4, 1880, May 11 and 14, 1882, July 5, 1884; TVP to Hayes, July 8, 1880, May 13 and 23, 1882, July 7, 1884. For Hayes’s first GEB election, see Hayes to TVP, August 17, 1884; Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 558, 747. 28. The most recent accusation is Robert Weir, “Powderly and the Home Club” p. 96, note 41. 29. Hayes to TVP, November 20 and 25, 1884, May 3, 1886; TVP to Hayes, May 5, 1886, PP; New York World, May 4, 1886; for the “man Friday” quote, see New York Times, October 15, 1886; for Hayes’s behind-the-scenes efforts on Powderly’s behalf, see James, “American Labor and Politics,” pp. 433–437. 30. Biographical sketches in JUL, August 16 and September 20, 1888; TVP, Path I Trod, p. 306, note 11; Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, especially pp. 177–187. 31. TVP to D. J. O’Donoghue, November 23, 1887; O’Donoghue to TVP, November 29, 1887; Wright to TVP, July 11, August 4, and December 2, 1888; TVP to Wright, July 25, 1888, PP. 32. On McGuire, see JKL, December 28, 1893; The Critic (Baltimore), February 9, 1889; Robert Weir, “Beyond The Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor,” Ph.D.

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diss., University of Massachusetts, 1990, pp. 78 and 93, note 113; Stuart Kaufman, ed., The Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 1: The Making of a Union Leader (Urbana, Ill., 1986), p. 494. On O’Reilly, see Henry Browne, The Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor (Washington, D.C., 1949), pp. 206–210, 296–300, 326; Robert Weir, Beyond Labor’s Veil, p. 145; TVP, Path I Trod, p. 347, note 13; Kaufman, ed., The Samuel Gompers Papers, vol. 1, p. 498. On Devlin, see Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, pp. 178–179, 186–187, and 216, note 24. 33. TVP to Leonora Barry, December 27, 1888, PP. 34. For a discussion of Florida troubles, see John Devlin to TVP, January 21, 1891, PP; McLaurin, The Knights of Labor in the South (Westport, Conn., 1978), pp. 158–159. 35. TVP to James Gilmour, November 7, 1889, PP. 36. TVP to Thomas Neasham, December 14, 1888; TVP to Gilbert Rockwood, December 22, 1888; John Hayes to TVP, undated (February 1889); John Devlin to TVP, March 13, 1889, PP. 37. On Dewey as editor, see, among others, Hayes to TVP, February 26 and March 1; Dewey to TVP, March 9; O’Reilly to TVP, February 7, March 3, 5, 6, 10 (quoted), and 11 (quoted); TVP to Morris Wheat, July 10; TVP to A. M. Dewey, July 10, 1889. On Wright as editor, see O’Reilly to TVP, October 3 (quoted) and November 5, 1890, November 7, 1891 (quoted), January 21, May 10, and August 9, 1892, August 25, September 4, October 18 and 24, December 11, 1893, PP. 38. O’Reilly to TVP, March 6, 10, and 11 (quoted), 1889, PP. 39. JUL, March 31 and April 21, 1888. 40. 1888 Indianapolis GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 18; JUL, May 5 and May 26, 1888. Votes were printed in each issue for several months. 41. On Trevellick’s reluctance, see TVP to John Devlin, August 24, 1888; lists of general lecturers can be found in the JUL and in TVP to “Dear Sir and Bro.,” July 31, 1888, PP. 42. TVP to “Dear Sir and Bro.,” July 31, 1888, PP; JUL, May 26, 1888. 43. JUL, December 13, 1888; TVP “to the Order wherever found,” January 22, 1889; Beaumont to TVP, March 10, 1889, PP. 44. Gompers to P. H. Donnelly, April 23, 1888, quoted in Stuart Kaufman, Samuel Gompers and the Origins of the American Federation of Labor, 1848–1896 (Westport, Conn., 1973), p. 183; [Detroit] Advance and Labor Leaf, November 24, 1888, quoted in Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, p. 213. 45. On Wright, see D. J. O’Donoghue to TVP, October 28; TVP to O’Donoghue, October 31; TVP to James Gilmour, November 7; Wright to TVP, November 3 and 7, 1889, PP: Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, pp. 261–263. On Hall, see T. H. Gallagher to TVP, March 9; Hall to TVP, August 11; TVP to Hall, August 15, 1889, PP. 46. On Tomson, see TVP to Thomas Green, June 13, 1889. On Wheat, see Beaumont to TVP, March 10, 1889. On Lepine, see TVP to Hayes, April 19 (quoted); TVP to Lepine, April 20 and May 14; Lepine to TVP, April 30; TVP “to the Order wherever found,” July 31, 1889. On Walls, see P. J. Moore to TVP, March 2; Tom O’Reilly to TVP, March 1 and 3, 1889, PP. 47. Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, p. 261; 1889 Atlanta GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 5. 48. TVP to N. Martens, May 29; TVP to I. H. Offner, June 13; E. L. Gammon to

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TVP, July 5; TVP to Gammon, July 10 (quoted) and 20; TVP to P. J. O’Connor, July 20; 1889 Atlanta GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 5. 49. Among numerous other accounts, see Selig Perlman, A Theory of the Labor Movement; John R. Commons, et al., History of Labour, vol. 2 (“foreign to the spirit of wage consciousness” is from p. 347); Gerald Grob, Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865–1900 (Evanston, Ill., 1961), especially pp. 135–136; and more recently, Martin Shefter, “Trade Unions and Political Machines,” (“fundamentally harmonious” quote is on p. 255). 50. Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York, 1967), pp. 135–196. 51. J. Edward Hall to TVP, December 29, 1886; John Costello to TVP, June 24, 1887, PP. 52. For a good summary of trade district motivation, see Goldberg, “Strikes, Organizing, and Change,” pp. 273–275. 53. Proceedings, 1884 Philadelphia GA, pp. 705–707, 776; 1885 Hamilton GA, p. 25. 54. TVP to Litchman, December 29, 1886, PP; JUL, September 10, 1887. See also TVP to Litchman, July 27, 1887, PP. 55. Grob, Workers and Utopia, p. 120; Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1847–1850. Both John Swinton and Samuel Gompers made note of the Order’s push to charter NTAs. See Swinton’s Paper, April 3, 1887; Gompers to the editor of the Craftsman, April 19, 1887. 56. JUL, September 10, 1887; Proceedings, 1887 Minneapolis GA, pp. 1534–1535. 57. The GEB reports in the GA Proceedings from 1887 through 1890 are chock full of details concerning the friction between NTAs and mixed districts. 58. James Morris, “The Cincinnati Shoemakers’ Lockout of 1888: A Case Study in the Demise of the Knights of Labor,” Labor History 13 (Fall 1972): 505–519. 59. Ibid., pp. 511–516 (Skeffington is quoted on p. 511); 1888 Indianapolis GA, “Report of the General Executive Board,” pp. 79–84; TVP to Skeffington, July 10, 1888; Skeffington to TVP, July 13, 1888; Cavanaugh to TVP, July 27, 1888, PP. 60. Morris, “Shoemakers’ Lockout,” pp. 517–519; Ware, The Labor Movement, pp. 208–209; Grob, Workers and Utopia, pp. 122–124; Proceedings, 1888 Indianapolis GA, pp. 61, 64, 66, and 79–82; TVP to Hayes, May 28, 1889 (quoted); Hayes to the Executive Board of N.T.A. 216, February 4, 1889, Hayes to TVP, February 5, 1889; Skeffington to TVP, March 4, 1889; TVP to Skeffington, March 7, 1889, PP. 61. TVP to Richard Thomson, Sept 3, 1887 (quoted); TVP to John McBride, April 4, 1887; TVP to Robert Watchorn, December 11, 1888, February 1, 1889, March 6, 1890; TVP to James White, January 4, 1889 (quoted); TVP to John B. Rae, January 14, 1889; TVP to T. T. O’Malley, February 18, 1889, PP. 62. TVP to James Killduff, November 5, 1888, PP. On the mining local in DA 16 and the fallout with William Lewis, see 1888 Indianapolis GA, “Report of the General Executive Board,” pp. 71–72; TVP to W. T. Lewis, October 6 and December 17, 1888; TVP to John Costello, October 30, 1888; TVP to Robert Watchorn, December 11, 1888, and January 15, 1889, PP; JUL, December 20, 1888. On the founding of the UMW in 1890, see Maier Fox, United We Stand: The United Mine Workers of America, 1890– 1990 (Washington, D.C., 1990), pp. 17–19, 22–29; Andrew Roy, A History of the Coal Miners of the United States (Columbus, 1905), pp. 253–254. 63. William Birdsall, “The Problem of Structure in the Knights of Labor,” Industrial

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and Labor Relations Review 6 (July 1953): 63; Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, pp. 165–166; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989), p. 174. 64. TVP to John Hayes, June 24, 1889; TVP to Ralph Beaumont, May 15, 1889, PP; 1892 St. Louis GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 8. 65. “Report of the Committee on the Conference of the Knights of Labor and the Trade Unions,” December 13, 1886, PP; Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York, 1925), vol. 1, p. 245; TVP to Ralph Beaumont, December 14, 1886, PP. 66. Gompers to McGuire, April 22, 1887, quoted in Kaufman, Gompers and the Origins of the AFL, p. 182. On the cigar makers’ NTA, see TVP to Litchman, October 31, 1887; JUL, January 7 and 26, 1888; on the carpenters’ NTA, see Proceedings, 1887 GA, p. 1360; JUL, December 17, 1887. TVP to Tom O’Reilly, December 14, 1888, PP. 67. P. J. McGuire to TVP, March 20 and May 7; TVP to McGuire, March 22, May 9, 19, and 24; TVP to Ralph Beaumont, March 18; TVP to Gompers, June 18 and 26; TVP to J. S. Reynolds, May 31, 1889, PP; Atlanta GA, “Report of the General Executive Board,” pp. 34–36. 68. 1889 Atlanta GA, “Report of the General Executive Board,” pp. 34–36; Proceedings, 1889 Atlanta GA, p. 53; AFL, Proceedings, 1889, p. 13; TVP to Tom O’Reilly, December 19, 1889, PP. 69. Grob, Workers and Utopia, p. 131; Kaufman, Gompers and the Origins of the AFL, p. 245, note 26; TVP to Devlin, January 7, 1892, PP. 70. New York Tribune, August 13, 1889; statistics on assemblies taken from Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, p. 166; Ware, The Labor Movement, p. 367. 71. TVP to S. T. Worley, December 14, 1888, PP. 72. 1889 Atlanta GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 8; Proceedings, 1889 Atlanta GA, pp. 4, 8, 33, 43, 73–76, 87–93; TVP to Charles Litchman, December 3, 1889, PP. 73. McLaurin, Knights of Labor in the South, p. 177; TVP to H. C. Dean, December 29, 1890, PP. For details on the Knights’ participation in these conferences, see John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt (Minneapolis, 1931), pp. 205–237; Robert McMath, Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance (Chapel Hill, 1975), pp. 130– 131; Ware, The Labor Movement, pp. 367–370; Falzone, Middle-Class Reformer, pp. 153–160; Grob, Workers and Utopia, pp. 90–98. 74. TVP to Hayes, April 20, 1890, Hayes Papers. On Beaumont’s push for a third party, see Beaumont to TVP, April 11; TVP to Ralph Beaumont, April 14 and 18, 1890, PP. See also James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 474–475. 75. TVP “to the Order wherever found,” no date (September 1890), PP. Those responding voted overwhelmingly to have the Order assist in the establishment of a third party (9,926 to 843) and at the same time supported the idea that the Order should simply hold “industrial conferences” that would stop short of creating a party (9,964 to 845). Few voted in favor of turning the Order into a political party (1,939 to 8,517). The GMW asked only eligible voters to participate to get an accurate idea of how many votes the Order could expect to deliver in any political contest, but many complained that “[i]f the women of the K. of L. are not have a voice in every thing that concerns this Order, even to voting itself into a political party, it is high time they quit paying their hard-earned money into its treasury.” M. L. Geffs to TVP, October 23, 1890. See also TVP to Geffs, November 8; TVP to P. A. Capelle, October 23; TVP to Ed McCaffrey, October

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29, 1890, PP. Powderly at once acknowledged his blunder and pressed successfully at the 1890 GA for a new plank in the Preamble: “To secure for both sexes equal rights.” 1890 Denver GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 14. 76. Proceedings, 1890 Denver GA, pp 63–64, 70–71. 77. TVP “to the members of the Order wherever found,” June 1884; TVP to H. O. Watrous, January 20, 1887; JUL, September 13, 1888. After Democrats spread rumors that he opposed Henry George’s 1886 bid to become mayor of New York City, Powderly did agree to speak with George at the Cooper Union on the eve of the election, and he rode with him on election day as they toured polling places. But he stressed that he had spoken “as an individual,” and he vowed “not to speak again at a political meeting while I hold the position of chief officer of the Knights of Labor.” TVP, Thirty Years, p. 293; TVP to Lewis Ross, December 20, 1886. For accounts of Powderly’s activities on behalf of George, see New York World, October 30 and November 2, 1886; New York Evening Telegram, November 3, 1886. 78. JUL, November 1, 1888; 1888 Indianapolis GA, “General-Secretary’s Report,” p. 19. For a detailed look at the Order’s activities during the 1888 election, see James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 410–466. 79. TVP to Hayes, May 9, 1891, PP. 80. McLaurin, Knights of Labor in the South, p. 178. Like the Southwest encounter, the New York Central freight handlers’ strike had been deliberately provoked by a management prepared to spend millions and dispatch an army of Pinkerton detectives in its effort to break up assemblies; it had been initiated despite the active opposition of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, an hostility that Powderly could not overcome despite fervent negotiations with its president, P. M. Arthur; and it was called off before consulting Powderly, who spent over a week along the road to “keep up the courage” of the strikers and was adamant that the strike should be “fought out to a finish, for if men yield easily, they become the slaves of their employers from that time on.” TVP to J. R. Sovereign, September 9; TVP to Paul Fisher, October 6, 1890. For Powderly’s version of this strike, see 1890 Denver GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” pp. 4–13; TVP, Path I Trod, pp. 163–174. See also the extensive array of newspaper clippings in the PP. 81. TVP to Stephen Madden, July 19, 1892, PP. TVP to Governor Robert Pattison, July 12; TVP to President Benjamin Harrison, July 12, 1892, PP; New York Tribune, July 8, 1892; JKL, November 3, 1892; Proceedings, 1892 St. Louis GA, p. 69. 82. TVP to Hayes, May 10, 1893, PP. Here Powderly was referring to “the suspicion . . . I unwillingly allowed myself to become possessed of more than a year ago.” 83. On his financial woes, see TVP to Tom O’Reilly, January 11, 1888; TVP to Thomas Neasham, December 14, 1888; TVP to Gilbert Rockwood, December 22, 1888; TVP to Richard Griffiths, July 10, 1889. On money-making efforts, see “Read What T. V. Powderly Says about Hyde Brothers’ Baking Powder,” December 14, 1888; TVP to the Eastern Pennsylvania Phonograph Company, June 18, 1889. On Thirty Years of Labor, see John C. Delaney to TVP, no date (received July 25, 1888); TVP to Rockwood, January 14, 1888; TVP to F. L. Patrick, April 17, 1889, PP. See also the signed book contract, dated May 21, 1889, in the Hayes Papers. 84. In the year following July 1890, for instance, the journal cost $19,077 to produce (not including the $12,620 owed for printing machinery), whereas returns from subscriptions amounted to just $10,669. 1891 Toledo GA, “Report of the General SecretaryTreasurer,” pp. 6–8.

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85. TVP to Hayes, January 1, 1889; TVP to Hayes, March 3, 1890, PP; Proceedings, 1890 Denver GA, pp. 36–39. 86. Proceedings, 1891 Toledo GA, pp. 26–27, 29–31; TVP to Hayes, March 3, 4, and 22, 1892, PP. 87. TVP to Hayes, May 1 and July 21, 1892, PP. 88. TVP to Hayes, April 2, 1893, Hayes Papers; TVP to John O’Keefe, September 13, 1893; TVP to J. G. Kilt, April 16, 1894, PP. For more on the Labor Day Annual, see TVP, Path I Trod, p. 306; Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, pp. 184, 201, 269–271. 89. TVP to Leonora Barry, July 25, 1888; TVP to A. W. Wright, March 11, 1892, PP; Proceedings, 1892 St. Louis GA, pp. 73–74, 77–78. 90. TVP to Hugh Cavanaugh, December 8; O’Reilly to TVP, December 2; Eiler is quoted in O’Reilly to TVP, December 7, 1892, PP. See also O’Reilly to TVP, December 5; Wright to TVP, December 5; Cavanaugh to TVP, December 5, 1892, PP. Even though Powderly’s paychecks were withheld, Hayes paid himself the entirety of his $2,000 salary. Proceedings, 1893 Philadelphia GA, p. 30. 91. TVP to Hugh Cavanaugh, December 8, 1892; Hayes to TVP, December 2, 1892, March 4 and 18, April 10, 1893; TVP to Hayes April 11 and May 10, 1893, PP; the amount in the Homestead fund is cited in 1893 Philadelphia GA, “Report of the General Secretary-Treasurer,” p. 2, and the dissolution of the various funds is discussed in Proceedings, 1893 Philadelphia GA, p. 25. 92. Hayes to the GEB, July 9; Hayes to TVP, July 10; TVP to T. B. McGuire, March 11; Wright to TVP, February 14; O’Reilly to TVP, May 15 and July 29, 1893, PP. 93. TVP to O’Reilly, June 13 (quoted), 21 and 27, August 22 (quoted), July 9, 11, 18 and 20; O’Reilly to TVP, July 20, 22, 27, and 29; TVP to Wright, June 13 and August 30; Cavanaugh to TVP, August 7; TVP to Cavanaugh, August 10; Devlin to TVP, August 24, 1893, PP. 94. Hayes to Andrew Best, September 19, 1893, Hayes Papers; TVP to Cavanaugh, September 19, 1893, PP. 95. TVP to O’Reilly, September 13 and October 11, 1893; TVP to P. C. Kelly, December 3, 1893, PP. On DeLeon’s role, see L. Glen Seretan, Daniel DeLeon: The Odyssey of an American Marxist (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 141–153. 96. TVP to Cavanaugh, October 20; TVP to Eiler, November 2; TVP to Buchanan, October 30, 1893, PP. See also TVP to O’Reilly, November 1; O’Reilly to TVP, October 13, 16, 19 and 29; Devlin to TVP, September 22; Wright to TVP, October 18, 22 and 24, 1893, PP. 97. 1893 Philadelphia GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” pp. 1, 40. Per capita tax receipts are by no means an accurate guide to membership figures because they fluctuated wildly. Nevertheless, for the year following July 1892 Hayes reported but $18,395.25 received, which at six cents per member per month yields the figure of 25,594 members. 1893 Philadelphia GA, “Report of the General Secretary-Treasurer,” pp. 2–3. T. B. McGuire estimated that there were 54,000 members at the time of the 1893 GA. See TVP to Cavanaugh, September 21, 1894, PP. 98. Proceedings, 1893 Philadelphia GA, pp. 30–41. 99. Ibid., pp. 45–61; TVP “to the General Assembly,” November 25; TVP to P. C. Kelly, December 3; TVP to J. Menning, December 23, 1893, PP. 100. TVP to P. H. Quinn, December 6; TVP to O’Reilly, December 6 and 15, 1893, PP.

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101. TVP to D. F. Lawlor, May 15; TVP to O’Reilly, August 3, 1894, PP. On Powderly’s suspension, see Hayes to TVP, May 2; TVP to Hayes, May 9, 1894. On the push for Powderly prior to the New Orleans GA, see TVP to Wright, February 7; Wright to TVP, April 3; TVP to Devlin, February 11; TVP to Cavanaugh (copies of which were sent to numerous others), May 24, 1894; Joseph Buchanan, The Story of a Labor Agitator (New York, 1903), p. 439. On the Independent Order, see TVP to Cavanaugh, February 11, 1895; TVP to O’Reilly, February 11, 1895; TVP to Buchanan, February 27, 1895; Ware, The Labor Movement, p. 116; Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, pp. 272–273. On the settlement of the salary dispute, see Philadelphia Times, May 16, 1896. 102. “Unholy alliance” is from Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, p. 271; “booming” is from Philadelphia Times, May 7, 1894; Gompers is quoted in Kaufman, Gompers and the Origins of the AFL, p. 246, note 31; Foster’s quote is from Boston Labor Leader, July 24, 1897; DeLeon is quoted in Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, p. 295. On the break between DeLeon and the Order, see Seretan, Daniel DeLeon, pp. 141–153. 103. John Parsons and John Hayes “to the membership of the Order wherever found,” December 1, 1898; Thomas Canning “to the Members of Congress,” June 25, 1906, PP; Foner, History of the Labor Movement, vol. 2, p. 168. 104. TVP to O’Reilly, December 15, 1893, and August 8, 1894; TVP to Buchanan, December 29, 1893, and May 2, 1894; TVP to Cavanaugh, August 27, 1894, PP; Scranton Republican, September 24, 1894; Scranton Times, July 23, 1897. 105. For details on Powderly’s animosity toward the Democrats and conversion to the Republicans, see James, “American Labor and Political Action,” pp. 481–484; Falzone, Middle-Class Reformer, pp. 160–163. 106. TVP to Joseph Powderly, October 20, 1900; Kansas City Star, October 11, 1896; Peoria Herald, September 30, 1896. See also Davenport [Iowa] Republican, October 1, 1896; Chicago Journal, October 5, 1896; New York Daily Tribune, September 11, 1896. 107. For Gompers’s views, see Scranton Times, June 25; on the candidacy of Garland, see [Omaha] Western Laborer, September 4; for the fulminations of Hayes and Sovereign, see JKL, April 22, and Chicago Federationist, September 11; for the New York Central Labor Union blast, see Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 19, 1897. 108. Union Printer and American Craftsman [New York], April 3 and July 17; Lawlor quoted in Albany Express, July 20; on the United Mine Workers and Lake Seamen’s support, see Scranton Times, July 23; for McBride, see Columbus [Ohio] Record, August 5; Trades Unionist [Washington, D.C.], August 12; Bakers’ Journal, August 1; Paterson Labor Standard, August 28; Western Laborer, July 24; Boston Labor Leader, July 24, 1897. 109. Powderly’s years as government official are discussed in detail in Falzone, Middle-Class Reformer, pp. 173–193. 110. TVP, Path I Trod, pp. x, 115–116. 111. For a good discussion of these and other early historical works on the Knights, see Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be, pp. 4–8. 112. Edward Steel, ed., The Correspondence of Mother Jones (Pittsburgh, 1985), p. xli; Jones to TVP, May 24, 1907, PP. See the dozens of letters in the PP between Jones and TVP beginning in 1902 and continuing through 1924 that detail their friendship and work together. Jones was also close to Emma Fickenscher, whom Powderly married in 1919, and maintained conact with her after Powderly’s death. Jones was particularly

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impressed by Powderly’s readiness to stand by her when abused in the press. “He fought my battles for years & faced all the slanders and boldly defended me. Such men are scarce.” Jones to John H. Walker, July 2, 1924, quoted in Steel, ed., Correspondence of Mother Jones, p. 313. 113. Mother Jones to TVP, May 9, 1906; Jones to TVP, May 24, 1907, PP. 114. Mother Jones to TVP, March 22, 1914, PP; Jones to John H. Walker, July 2; Mary Parton, ed., The Autobiography of Mother Jones (Chicago, 1925), p. 240. On Powderly’s death, see New York Times, June 25 and 26, 1924; Outlook, July 17, 1924, p. 376.

Conclusion Those who were reared on the classic accounts of the Knights—the works of Selig Perlman, Norman Ware, and Gerald Grob—learned long ago that Terence Powderly was a grotesque bumbler whose antiquated notions, incessant meddling in the affairs of subordinate bodies, and lack of fitness for office helped to ensure the Order’s consignment to the dustbin of history. The revolution in Knights’ scholarship that began in the 1970s has done little to rehabilitate his image. Recent findings have in fact dramatically elevated the seriousness of his “crimes.” The Order is now recognized as having possessed an eminently viable “movement culture” with enormous potential to transform the social and economic landscape. The Great Upheaval is now viewed as a critical moment of class struggle, and “American industrial relations and labor politics are exceptional because in 1886 and 1887 employers won the class struggle.”1 Thus, Powderly now appears more sinister than a mere bumbler. By failing to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the upheaval, we are told, he undercut the dream of solidarity and helped to shunt the labor movement down an exceptionalist path. He was a saboteur of an alternative America. This is a peculiar legacy indeed for a leader who, far more than any other figure, struggled to make the dream of solidarity a reality, personified the promise of Knighthood, and structured the Order to accommodate working people from almost every conceivable background. Powderly was undeniably the Gilded Age’s most charismatic and eloquent advocate of classwide solidarity. As two recent scholars have concluded, “The identification of the Knights of

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Labor with the organization of the entire working class was the Order’s unique and indisputable achievement.”2 From 1874, when he threw himself into the labor movement as Industrial Congress organizer, he championed its pledge to unite “every department of productive industry” and thereby overcome class segmentation based on craft identity and skill. As a rising star in the fading Machinists and Blacksmiths International Union, he battled against divisive craft elitism by rebuking the “aristocratic” machinist for allowing his “airs and graces” to deny fellowship to less skilled boilermakers. Upon the collapse of his local trade union, he launched a Knights’ assembly that welcomed machinists, blacksmiths, boilermakers, pattern makers, grinders, molders, laborers, and helpers as equals. And throughout his years as GMW, he preached the need for unity among all who toiled in stirring tones: The machinist goes to his home, the moulder to his, the carpenter to his; all go to the trades unions on their way; each one is so thoroughly selfish as to never look beyond the limits of his organization; none ask whether any other men had rights. We said to ourselves this is ignorance on the part of workingmen’s trade unions; it is a crime and strong steps must be taken to remove this cause. Something must be done to bring these people together, so that they may know that a blow struck at labor in one place affects those in another; that the evil is felt everywhere men live, from the rising to the setting of the sun.3

Craft identity was certainly not the only source of division within the working class, and Powderly continuously implored his contemporaries to shed their traditional attitudes toward race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and party affiliation that kept them from exercising collective power. “Brothers, Protestant and Catholic, I call upon you . . . to join hands in the amelioration of Labor,” he beseeched his Scranton comrades in early 1877 when religious intolerance jeopardized the health of Knighthood in that city, “for God knows we have enemies enough arrayed against us in the ranks of Capital without our creating new ones among ourselves.” Thirteen years later, he was preaching the same message to embattled mine workers in another part of the state. “Here we have Englishmen, Irishmen, Italians, Welshmen, Scotchmen, Germans and every other kind of mortals.” Operators hoped to keep them “separated by the accursed fiends of national prejudice and religious intolerance,” but “you are bound together” through labor, he insisted, and “should always stand together as men of one blood in the cause of industrial emancipation.”4 Not only did the Knights appeal to an astonishing variety of working people, each with their own traditions and agendas, but also to reformers and activists of every description—Irish Land Leaguers, staunch trade unionists, cooperative enthusiasts, third-party advocates, feminists, ritualists, eight-hour champions, antimonopolists, currency reformers, anarchists, Marxists, agrarians, temperance campaigners, and numerous others. How to maintain harmony within this sin-

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gularly diverse organization, how to placate each faction, how to pursue the dozens of often competing programs advanced—these were just a few of the monumental problems inherent in the practice of solidarity. Powderly understood that effective solidarity was not something that could be imposed from above. In a heterogenous society, “[Y]ou cannot make any society tie its members to a strict line of brotherhood,” he counseled. “We must take men as we find them.” As with any other skill, solidarity needed to be learned and practiced by members themselves. To this end, he embraced the principle of local autonomy, hoping that through frank discussion in the sanctuaries, participation in Knight-sponsored cultural activities, and joint action on matters of mutual economic and political interest the working people of a particular community would eventually overcome their antipathies and identify their common grievances. The budding of meaningful solidarity thus necessitated freedom of action for local assemblies to pursue whatever objectives they deemed capable of uniting the workforce within their jurisdictions. “Each District and Local Assembly should be permitted to enact its own laws,” Powderly stressed throughout his tenure. “In doing so there should be as little interference from the General Assembly as possible.”5 Out of both democratic principle and necessity born of diversity, Powderly erected the Knights upon the bedrock of local initiative and local control. He espoused what came to be known as “horizontal unionism,” a grassroots, community-based approach to union building that some labor scholars contend is far preferable to the centralized, bureaucratic structures that have dominated the movement since the 1930s.6 In the 1880s, when workers in communities across the nation rose in protest against the ruthless impositions of corporate capitalists, Powderly’s horizontal approach and rhetoric of solidarity won large numbers of adherents. Knighthood did not miraculously materialize out of thin air in 1886 as a decentralized and democratic focal point of resistance; for years, Powderly had devoted his boundless energies to the construction of a remarkable “house of labor” able to accommodate all who toiled. Yet, despite some initial victories, this grand and unprecedented experiment in solidarity all went horribly wrong during the upheaval, and Powderly has been held accountable for much of the damage ever since. Some suggest that he abruptly abandoned local control and arrogantly imposed himself on selfsufficient locals and districts, undermining their efforts to exercise effective solidarity at the community level. Others insist that his ideological opposition to strikes intensified dramatically, quickly discouraging new recruits and damaging the spirit of resistance. Some believe that he developed an abiding hostility toward radicalism of any kind, which was manifested in his refusal to speak out for the anarchists accused of the Haymarket bombing, and claim that this single act split the movement at all levels. Still others argue that he became the prisoner of arch antitrade unionists in the Home Club, which soon resulted in the defection of skilled workers and the creation of the AFL. For one or all of these

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reasons, we are told, Powderly contributed to the decimation of the Order, the sabotaging of the upheaval, and the shattering of the very classwide solidarity he had done so much to foster. Despite all that we have learned in the past quarter of a century, Powderly is still required to play this preposterous role of class traitor. Although great strides have been made to understand all other facets of the movement in their complexity, Powderly remains a caricature of the timid and fearful “misleader” of labor who lost touch with the rank and file and betrayed the workers’ interests. Implicit in many of the recent criticisms of Powderly is the belief that had he only trusted the militant spirit of workers, had he exhibited a greater appreciation of class conflict, had he maintained his commitment to horizontal unionism, had he joined hands with Samuel Gompers and the trade unionists, and had he thrown the weight of Order behind the Chicago anarchists’ clemency campaign—then somehow the outcome of the upheaval may have been different, and somehow America today might be fundamentally different. As we have seen, virtually all of the charges leveled against Powderly fail to hold up to even a cursory look at the evidence. Powderly did not deviate to any great extent from his commitment to local autonomy in 1886. Even during the upheaval, his attitude toward strikes was by no means resolutely hostile, and he worked feverishly to support tens of thousands of Knights engaged in strikes and lockouts. Until the unleashing of the employer counteroffensive, radical Knights such as Joseph Buchanan and Joseph Labadie were among his most ardent admirers, and the clemency campaign proved so divisive at the 1887 GA that the majority of delegates opted not to go beyond the Order’s year-old appeal for mercy on behalf of the condemned. The Home Club did not hold him prisoner, he actively opposed the expulsion of Cigar Makers’ International Union members at the 1886 GA, and he struggled valiantly to overcome the structural problems that the trade union impulse presented within the Order. In short, Powderly was a far more progressive, tolerant, aggressive, and competent leader than we have been led to believe. The repetition of old stories regarding Powderly’s ineptitude and betrayal despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary illustrates the impossibility of understanding the Knights through an exclusive focus on the community. Recent sympathetic studies of national institutions in the twentieth century, especially the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and national leaders, most notably Sidney Hillman and Walter Reuther,7 remind us that large labor organizations are far too complex to be understood through a single methodological lens. National leaders in any era have valid perspectives, operate under pressing bureaucratic constraints, face a variety of internal and external threats that often stayed their hands, and have to take into account national social and political realities as well as the interests of each subordinate body. The wealth of knowledge gleaned from the community study is truly remarkable, but the attempt to view the Order solely from the bottom up has perpetuated a whole host of myths and misconceptions about the leadership and the organization as a whole.

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Only from a national perspective can we truly grasp the principal irony of the Order: that the very basis of its popularity—community control—also proved its greatest weakness. Although local autonomy was an inherently attractive and functional approach to managing an organization with a startlingly diverse membership, it was ill-suited for the major battles of the upheaval, which pitted the enthusiasm of neophyte Knights, many of whom had never been active in a labor organization, against intransigent employer associations in major industries such as railroads, textiles, and meatpacking. Time and again, Powderly found himself asked to intervene in large-scale strikes that had been started in a celebratory spirit at the local or district level without adequate organization, without clearly stated strike demands, without unity or discipline in the ranks, and without the possibility of adequate financial assistance from other assemblies engaged in their own expensive wars. All too often such strikes were waged against well financed, single-minded, and merciless employer groups which were formed for the sole purpose of eradicating the Knights in their industries, associations that could rely, if necessary, on powerful political and judicial allies. Only when it proved too late did Powderly address this dilemma. The various proposals that he introduced at the two GAs in 1886, including the establishment of strong State Assemblies (with control over the strike activities of locals and districts within their jurisdictions) and the election of examining organizers (who would supervise the activities of the organizing corps within each state), indicated his desire to impose a measure of centralized authority without running roughshod over local autonomy. His inability to move in that direction sealed the Order’s fate. Powderly certainly had his faults. Among other shortcomings, he mirrored the ugly anti-Chinese prejudice of his generation; developed an hysterical hatred of extremists whom he believed unnecessarily antagonized the public by preaching propaganda by deed; whined incessantly about the burdens of his office; droned on about his favorite reform topics, especially land reform and temperance, whenever he feared tackling controversial issues at the annual gatherings; and lacked a sophisticated comprehension of collective bargaining issues such as the closed shop. His principal failing, however, was a naive faith in the rationality of collective action. In his eyes, the Order was far more than a mere labor organization. It was the genesis of a new worker-controlled society that would be free from economic exploitation, gender and racial discrimination, and political manipulation by elites. Knighthood did not provide a blueprint for the new society, but rather a forum in which all relevant issues could be studied and debated, in which tactics and strategies could be hammered out in democratic fashion at the local level. If a local assembly deemed strike action necessary, Powderly asked only that the members of that assembly made certain “[t]hat the cause was just,” “[t]hat every reasonable means had been resorted to to avert the strike,” “[t]hat the chances of winning were at least as good as the prospect of losing,” and “[t]hat the means of defraying the expenses of the strike and assisting those in need were in the treasury or in sight of it.”8

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Powderly’s confidence in such rational decision making was misplaced. By and large, unskilled and semiskilled working people in the 1870s and 1880s learned the art and science of resistance through repeated and often disastrous confrontations with their employers rather than quiet reflection, a careful weighing of the alternatives, and systematic preparations. Although the strikes of the upheaval “lacked the insurrectionary quality” of the 1877 outbursts, many strikers in the mid-1880s nevertheless “poured forth pent-up fury, roaring approval of Social Revolutionary speakers who denied that workers owed any allegiance to a society that made them all outcasts, storming the fortifications of factories whose employees had failed to strike, and defiantly boasting their triumphs.”9 The pivotal Southwest strike, as we have seen, began in a festive atmosphere against virtually insurmountable odds, with the district treasury already in the red, and with the knowledge that the railroad brotherhoods would not lend their support. The aborted packinghouse strike was a similar affair, as were hundreds of others. Although some strikers, especially in the spring of 1886, caught their employers off guard and wrested victories, a far greater number quickly found themselves in desperate straits. Only at that stage did hard-pressed strikers turn to Powderly, begging him to come to their rescue with a magic formula that could produce nonexistent funds and turn certain defeat into victory. When funds were not forthcoming or his furious bargaining efforts proved ineffective, Powderly became an easy scapegoat for local leaders and historians.10 Because he grappled with the consequences of such spontaneous eruptions on a daily basis, Powderly did clearly recognize where the upheaval was headed long before most local leaders or the rank and file. A veteran of the great railroad strikes of 1877, he had seen how quickly working-class enthusiasm in Scranton and elsewhere had led to vicious repression, martial law, public hostility toward labor, and the decimation of the labor movement. Even before the May Day strikes in 1886, Powderly had ample evidence to indicate that the upheaval was generating an even more aggressive employer counteroffensive of national proportions that was far too powerful for the decentralized Order. He feared that unless members tempered their passions with a commonsense analysis of the forces arrayed against them, a spiral of defeat and decay would be set in motion that would spell the total collapse of the movement. His worst fears were soon realized. The savage employer campaign that killed the Knights in the late 1880s was itself cruelly ironic. Powderly had believed that as soon as workers had overcome their deep-seated divisions and joined him in his crusade for empowerment, then all things would at once become possible, all opposition humbled, and industrial emancipation realized. To a degree that would not be repeated until the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of American workers did embrace his vision for a brief moment. The upheaval was a truly magnificent spectacle that would inspire future generations of activists, but rather than gaining emancipation, Powderly and the Knights succeeded in frightening, unifying, and emboldening their corporate foes. Having temporarily overcome some of the

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fragmenting impulses within the working class that had stymied the creation of an all-powerful and multifaceted labor movement, Powderly and the Knights helped to foster what is now recognized as the chief obstacle to such a movement in America—a powerful, ruthless, sophisticated, and viciously antiunion capitalist class. The Providence Manufacturers’ Association, which was organized soon after Powderly’s visit in February 1886 and spearheaded the drive that crippled the Order in Rhode Island; the new National Knit Goods Manufacturers’ Association that smashed flourishing Knighthood in Amsterdam and Cohoes, New York; the new Southern Manufacturers’ Association that defeated the Knights in the Augusta, Georgia, mills and precipitated a series of set backs across the South; and the new Packinghouse Association that was itching for a fight to the finish against Knights in the Chicago stockyards—these were representative of the organizations that survived the upheaval, wielded enormous influence in the political arena and the judiciary, and set the tone for labor relations in the decades that followed. As the strike defeats and lockouts escalated, the bubble of solidarity burst, and those who did not abandon the Order altogether engaged in endless rounds of recrimination and factional intrigue. Powderly continued to preach the gospel of solidarity until 1893, but he, like hundreds of others at the local and district level, resorted to dubious tactics to shield himself from his growing number of enemies within the declining movement, and his promise of liberation through solidarity now fell on deaf ears. Even before the depression of the 1890s, working people had largely reverted to the fragmenting impulses of ethnicity, craft identity, and geographic parochialism. That the Knights were unable to wrest victories in the major industries is hardly surprising, because the history of the movement for decades after the upheaval is littered with the wreckage of failed strikes against concentrated capital. The AFL unions survived the depression decade largely by shunning the organization of volatile unskilled workers, refusing to engage in pitched battles against superior opposition in the major industries, and establishing stricter control over their subordinate bodies’ right to strike. The pivotal strikes of 1894, including the American Railway Union–engineered Pullman boycott, were “preceded by widespread organization” and were “centrally called and directed,” and still they ended in disaster.11 Not until the 1930s was the labor movement able to crack the nut of concentrated capital and erect viable industrial unions in mass production industries, and only then with the dramatic, if temporary, New Deal shift in federal policy toward labor. Powderly was not, as was once believed, a starry-eyed, middle-class utopian groping for impractical alternatives to industrial capitalism. Nor was he, as many recent scholars imply, a pusillanimous destroyer of a world that might have been. He was a flawed but worthy hero to tens of thousands of Gilded Age workers because he articulated their collective vision, encouraged them to jettison their sense of fatalism, and promised them that they could remake the nation if they stood as one before their oppressors. His clarion call for the

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Grand Master Workman

solidarity of all who toiled, his confidence in working people’s ability to shape their own destiny, his vision of a labor movement that would be all things to all people—all mark him as the personification of progressive labor leadership. Rather than undermining an alternative America, the Grand Master Workman helped to shape our vision of it. NOTES 1. Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1993), p. 232. 2. Gregory S. Kealey and Bryan D. Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900 (New York, 1982), p. 394. 3. Harry J. Carman, Henry David, and Paul N. Guthrie, eds., The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York, 1940), p. 42; TVP, An Address Delivered in Music Hall, Providence, R.I. (Boston, 1886), p. 13. 4. TVP “to the officers and members of L.A. 222,” April 26, 1877, PP; TVP, Powderly at Priceburg (Philadelphia, 1890), p. 8. 5. TVP to Joseph Buchanan, August 13, 1886, PP; 1891 Toledo GA, “Report of the General Master Workman,” p. 1. 6. For a recent appreciation of horizontal unionism, see Staughton Lynd, ed., “We Are All Leaders”: The Alternative Unionism in the Early 1930s (Urbana, 1996). See also the fascinating discussion of this book by Robert Zieger, Roger Horowitz, Ronald Edsforth, Cecilia Bucki, and Staughton Lynd in “ ‘We Are All Leaders’: A Symposium on a Collection of Essays Dealing with Alternative Unionism in the Early 1930s,” Labor History 38 (Spring-Summer 1997): 165–201. 7. Robert Zieger, The CIO, 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill, 1995); Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (New York, 1991); Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (New York, 1995). 8. TVP, Path I Trod, p. 105. 9. David Montgomery, “Strikes in Nineteenth-Century America,” Social Science History 1 (Winter 1980): 98. 10. Daniel Nelson is one of the few recent historians prepared to blame “lack of preparation” and “inadequate resources” for the setbacks. “Historians have emphasized Powderly’s mismanagement of KOL strikes,” he argues, “but Powderly’s role is hard to distinguish from . . . other union executives. What was different was the Knights’ lax control of the strike power and meager provisions for strike relief.” Shifting Fortunes: The Rise and Decline of American Labor (Chicago, 1997), p. 64. 11. Montgomery, “Strikes in Nineteenth-Century America,” p. 99.

Selected Bibliography MANUSCRIPT SOURCES John Hayes Papers, Catholic University of America Knights of Labor Data Bank, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan Mary Harris Jones Papers, Catholic University of America Terence Vincent Powderly Papers, Catholic University of America

CONVENTION PROCEEDINGS, LABOR JOURNALS, AND NEWSPAPERS American Federation of Labor. Report of the Proceedings of the Annual Conventions, 1886–1894 Boston Labor Leader Denver Labor Enquirer Haverhill Laborer Irish World and American Industrial Liberator John Swinton’s Paper Journal of the Knights of Labor Journal of United Labor Knights of Labor (Chicago) Knights of Labor. Addresses of the General Master Workman, General SecretaryTreasurer, and General Executive Board. ———. Proceedings of the General Assemblies, 1878–1894

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Kirk, William. National Labor Federations in the United States. Baltimore, MD.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1906. Landon, Fred. “The Knights of Labor: Predecessors of the C.I.O.” Quarterly Review of Commerce (Summer–Autumn 1937): pp. 133–139. Laslett, John H. M. Labor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement, 1881–1924. New York: Basic Books, 1970. ———. “Samuel Gompers and the Rise of American Business Unionism.” In Labor Leaders in America, edited by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, 62–88. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Laurie, Bruce. Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Noonday Press, 1989. Lazerow, Jama. “The Workingman’s Hour: The 1886 Labor Uprising in Boston.” Labor History 21 (1980): pp. 200–220. Leiken, Steve. “The Practical Utopians: Cooperation and the American Labor Movement, 1860–1890.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1992. Lescohier, D. D. The Knights of St. Crispin, 1867–1874. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1910. Letwin, Daniel. The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878– 1921. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Levine, Susan. Labor’s True Woman: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. ———. “Labor’s True Woman: Domesticity and Equal Rights in the Knights of Labor.” Journal of American History 70 (1983): pp. 323–339. Licht, Walter. Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. Lynd, Staughton, ed. “We Are All Leaders”: The Alternative Unionism in the Early 1930s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Madison, Charles A. American Labor Leaders: Personalities and Forces in the Labor Movement. New York: Ungar Publishing, 1950. Mandel, Bernard. Samuel Gompers: A Biography. Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1963. Marcus, Irwin. “The Knights of Labor: Reform Aspects.” Ph.D. diss., Lehigh University, 1965. Marlatt, Gene. “Joseph R. Buchanan: Spokesman for Labor during the Populist and Progressive Eras.” Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1975. McLaurin, Melton A. The Knights of Labor in the South. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. ———. “The Racial Policies of the Knights of Labor and the Organization of Southern Black Workers.” Labor History 17 (Fall 1976): pp. 568–585. McMath, Robert. Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. Meyers, Frederick. “The Knights of Labor in the South.” Southern Economic Journal 6 (April 1940): pp. 479–487. Miller, Donald, and Richard Sharpless. The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.

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Mink, Gwendolyn. Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875–1920. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986. Montgomery, David. Beyond Equality: Labor and Radical Republicans, 1862–1872. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1967. ———. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ———. “Labor and the Republic in Industrial America, 1860–1890.” Le Mouvement Social 3 (1980): pp. 201–215. ———. “Strikes in Nineteenth-Century America.” Social Science History 4 (1980): pp. 81–104. ———. “William H. Sylvis and the Search for Working-Class Citizenship.” In Labor Leaders in America, edited by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, 3–29. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Morris, James M. “The Cincinnati Shoemakers’ Lockout of 1888: A Case Study in the Demise of the Knights of Labor.” Labor History 13 (Fall 1972): pp. 505–519. Murphy, Thomas. Jubilee History of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. 2 vols. Topeka and Indianapolis: Historical Publishing Company, 1928. Nelson, Bruce C. Beyond the Martyrs: A Social History of Chicago’s Anarchists, 1870– 1900. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988. Nelson, Daniel. Shifting Fortunes: The Rise and Decline of American Labor, from the 1820s to the Present. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997. ———. Workers and Managers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. Oestreicher, Richard. Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875–1900. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. ———. “Terence V. Powderly, the Knights of Labor, and Artisinal Republicanism.” In Labor Leaders in America, edited by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, 30–61. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Perlman, Selig. A Theory of the Labor Movement. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Phelan, Craig. “The Warp of Fancy: The Knights of Labor and the Home Club Takeover Myth.” Labor History 40 (1999): pp. 283–299. Pinkowski, Edward. John Siney: The Martyr’s Martyr. Philadelphia: Sunshine Press, 1963. Portrait and Biographical Record of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. New York: Chapman, 1897. Rachleff, Peter. Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1900. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. Ricker, Ralph. “The Greenback-Labor Movement in Pennsylvania.” Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1955. Rodechko, James. “Patrick Ford and His Search for America.” Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1967. Ross, Steven. Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Roy, Andrew. A History of the Coal Miners of the United States. Columbus, Ohio: J. L. Traeger, 1905. Salay, David, ed. Hard Coal, Hard Times: Ethnicity and Labor in the Anthracite Region. Scranton, Pa.: Anthracite Museum Press, 1984.

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Index Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, 194, 223 n.138, 259 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 3, 4, 5, 229–230, 242–243, 245–248, 257, 259, 273, 277 Anti-Monopoly party, 136–137 Armstrong, Thomas, 31, 103–105, 110– 111, 130 Arthur, Peter, 160, 267 n.80 Augusta, Georgia, textile strike (1886), 184, 198, 277 Aylsworth, Ira, 195, 206, 212 Bailey, William, 177, 178, 182, 200, 206; as insurgent, 210–211, 212, 214, 228, 233–234, 237 Barrett, Marion, 238, 253, 254 Barry, Leonora, 154, 214 Barry, Tom, 101, 122, 133, 141, 144, 148, 177, 178, 182, 187, 193, 197; and 1886 packinghouse strike, 199–200, 222 n.114; as insurgent, 203, 206, 210– 214, 227–228, 233–234, 237

Beaumont, Ralph, 34, 63, 121, 139, 144, 182, 190, 240, 250 Blair, George, 31, 34, 65, 66, 96–98 Brotherhood of United Labor, 213, 229– 230 Bryan, William Jennings, 258–259 Buchanan, Joseph, 136, 148, 149, 158, 169 n.113, 180, 195–196, 274; as insurgent, 203, 205–206, 207–211, 213, 217 n.39; reestablishes friendship with Powderly, 255, 257, 258 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48, 134, 137, 144 Butler, Benjamin, 35, 74, 136–137 Campbell, James, 80, 111, 122, 130, 132– 135, 142, 147, 231, 257 Cannelburg, Indiana, cooperative mine, 133, 139, 141–143, 145–146, 159, 173 Carlton, Albert A., 206, 212, 233–234 Cavanaugh, Hugh, 181, 195–196, 244– 245, 255, 256, 257 Caville, John, 110, 116

290 Chicago packinghouse strike (1886), 198–201, 209, 212, 222 n.114, 230, 276 Cigar Makers International Union (CMIU), 58, 60, 173, 178, 193–194, 195, 207–209, 231, 247, 274 Clan na Gael, 21, 41 n.33, 49, 88, 92–93 Cooper, Peter, 20, 99 Cooperative Guild, 143–145, 146 Corbin, J. N., 231 Costello, John, 234, 243 Cumberland, Maryland, coal strike (1882), 95, 106–109 Cuno, Theodore, 78–79, 96–97, 99–102, 106, 108, 109–111, 116–118, 121, 124 n.33, 203 Curtin, Andrew, 181, 182–183 Davis, John M., 22, 31, 34, 54 Dawson, Walter, 14, 16, 17 Debs, Eugene, 256 DeLeon, Daniel, 230, 255–256, 258 Denny, A. G., 240 Devlin, John, 188, 234, 236, 254, 255 Dewey, A. M., 236, 237–238 Dickson, James, 12–13, 39 n.8 Drury, Victor, 117, 122, 140, 148–149, 196, 203–204, 214, 225 n.165, 227, 236 Duryea boycott, 100–101, 102, 110–111, 116, 209 Eiler, Madge, 254–255 Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), 122, 133, 187– 188, 193 Fehrenbatch, John, 16–20 Ferrell, Thomas, 48, 79, 134 Fickenscher, Emma, 154, 168 n.93, 259, 269 n.112 Foran, Martin, 17, 134, 136 Ford, Ellen, 50, 114, 155 Ford, Patrick, 41 n.33, 50, 114, 135, 155 Foster, Frank K., 122, 133, 193, 203, 204– 205, 211, 230, 245, 257, 259 Founders Movement, 214, 229–230, 236

Index General Assemblies (GAs): 1878 (Reading), 31–33, 35, 51, 68; January 1879 (St. Louis), 33, 36–37, 55, 61–62; September 1879 (Chicago), 37, 55, 61–62; 1880 (Pittsburgh), 61, 67–69, 71–72, 73, 76, 154; 1881 (Detroit), 72, 76–80, 87, 89, 95, 121; 1882 (New York), 109– 111, 119, 121; 1883 (Cincinnati), 119– 122, 132, 138, 140, 156; 1884 (Philadelphia), 133, 138, 143, 144, 148–149, 151, 156–157, 235, 243, 244, 255–256; 1885 (Hamilton), 149, 153–154, 157, 161; May–June 1886 (Cleveland), 5, 185, 192, 194–196, 204; October 1886 (Richmond), 198, 199, 201, 203, 206– 208, 209, 212, 234, 274; 1887 (Minneapolis), 210–212, 231, 243; 1888 (Indianapolis), 214, 228, 232, 234, 236, 238, 245, 248, 255; 1889 (Atlanta), 248, 249; 1890 (Denver), 250, 252; 1891 (Toledo), 252; 1892 (St. Louis), 253; 1893 (Philadelphia), 255–257; 1894 (New Orleans), 257 General Executive Board (powers and composition of), 52, 79–80, 88, 111, 115–116, 118–119, 122, 132–133, 143, 145, 162 n.10, 195, 225 n.165, 233– 238, 254–255, 256–257 George, Henry, 33, 102, 137, 249, 267 n.77 Gibson, David, 195–196 Gompers, Samuel, 60, 96, 193–194, 203, 206, 207, 227, 240, 241–242, 247–248, 252, 257, 259 Gould, Jay, 118–119, 158–161, 173, 178– 179, 181–183, 208, 209 “The Governors,” 214, 254, 256 Gray, H. G., 253 Griffiths, Richard, 36–37, 60, 63, 65, 72, 73, 75–76, 104, 111, 114, 130, 212, 231; biographical sketch, 45 n.82 Hall, Charles, 179, 240–241 Hall, J. Edward, 223 n.139, 243 Hammer, Dominic, 72, 76, 89 Haseltine, Ira, 99, 104 Haskell, Burnette, 116, 146–148, 149, 166 n.66, 203, 205, 208–211, 231

Index Hayes, John, 4, 66, 178, 180, 182–183, 193–194, 197, 200, 206, 210, 212, 237, 241, 248, 251; elected general secretary-treasurer (1888), 225 n.165, 234–236; as kicker, 227, 237–238, 253– 259 Haymarket, 5, 101, 186, 189–190, 194, 197, 203–204, 207–208, 212, 230–231, 273 Healy, David, 111, 118, 144 Heath, Frank, 103–105 Hinton, Richard J., 139, 144 Holland, J. J., 234–235, 237–238 Home Club, 5, 78, 116–119, 121–122, 130, 132, 140–141, 144–145, 148–149, 159, 162 n.7, 192– 194, 195–196, 203, 206–207, 208–209, 231, 235, 236, 245, 259, 273–274 Homestead steel strike (1892), 229, 251, 254, 256, 258 Horan, William, 96–97, 100, 117, 122, 140 Howes, John, 144, 205, 247 Hoxie, H. M., 160, 179, 182 Independent Order of the Knights of Labor, 257 Industrial Congress (and Industrial Brotherhood), 17–18, 19, 21, 38, 229 International Typographical Union, 194, 223 n.138, 259 International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), 146, 205–206, 208, 210 Irons, Martin, 178–181, 183, 224 n.143 Johnson, Joseph Brown, 153–154 Jones, Mary Harris (“Mother”), 260–261, 269 n.112 Journal of United Labor, 52, 72–73, 85 n.101, 131, 147, 236, 237–238, 252, 253, 267 n.84 King, Thomas, 22, 24, 31 Knights of Labor: administrative chaos and financial instability, 50–51, 52–56, 72–74, 77, 237, 251–254; cooperation, 62–63, 68–69, 120–121, 138–146; early history, 21–22; Educational Fund,

291 233, 238–241, 248; establishment of a national administration, 30–33; factionalism, 102, 114–119, 146–149, 202– 215, 233–238, 250–251, 253–258; founding philosophy, 2; history after Powderly’s resignation in 1893, 257– 258; preamble and constitution, 17, 32, 51–52, 58–59, 154; reasons for decline, 227–231, 276–277; relations with Catholic Church, 29, 33, 35–36, 70–72, 75, 77, 159, 176, 190, 236; relations with independent trade unions, 193– 196, 207, 223 n.138, 241–242, 246– 248; in Scranton, 22–24, 25, 27–28, 33– 34, 60, 70, 93, 145, 245–246, 252; secrecy and rituals, 21–22, 25, 30–31, 35– 36, 38, 70–72, 78–80, 95–99; State Assemblies, 120, 201, 208, 275; strike policy, 58–59, 68–69, 73–74, 77, 79– 80, 90, 105–106, 120–121, 134–135, 156–157, 159, 184–185, 194–195; trade locals and districts, 61–62, 89– 90, 120–121, 190–192, 243–246 Knights of St. Crispin, 22, 33, 36, 45 n.82, 62–63, 139 Labadie, Joseph, 63, 66, 101, 146, 148, 149, 174, 177, 189; as insurgent, 203, 208, 210, 213, 231, 236, 274 Labor Day Annual, 253–256 Land League, 21, 41 n.33, 92–93, 154– 155 Layton, Robert, 78, 89, 105, 113–114, 116, 139; biographical sketch, 88; Cumberland coal strike, 106–107; Duryea boycott, 100–101; elected GS, 80, 111; and fundamentalism, 97–98; replaced as Grand Secretary at 1883 GA, 121, 130–131; telegraphers strike (1883), 119; window glass workers strike (1883–1884), 134 Leavitt, Samuel, 63, 138–139 Lepine, A. T., 240–241 Lewis, William T., 145, 246 Litchman, Charles, 33, 34, 36–37, 50, 52, 60, 63, 65, 68, 88, 105, 110, 121, 136, 205, 210, 212, 243, 258; accusations of neglect and financial impropriety, 55–

292 56, 72–73, 74–76, 211; biographical sketch, 45 n.82; 1886 Southwest strike, 181–183; replaced as GS at 1881 GA, 77–78, 80; resigns as General Secretary in 1888, 233–234, 236; returned as General Secretary in 1886, 130, 206; on secrecy, 72 Lloyd, George K., 96–97, 99 Machinists and Blacksmiths International Union (M&BIU), 14, 16–18, 19–20, 22– 23, 38, 61, 272 Mansion, Joseph, 191, 193 McBride, John, 210, 259 McClelland, John, 111, 118–119, 122, 130, 132–133, 140, 142–143, 148, 156, 157 McDowell, William, 181–182 McGuire, Peter J., 61, 96, 100, 101–102, 106, 117, 193–194, 203, 206, 227, 247– 248, 252 McGuire, Thomas B., 117, 148–149, 181– 183, 200, 206, 212, 236, 255, 256 McKinley, William, 258–259 McLaughlin, Dan, 58, 68–69, 76, 79, 104, 106, 210 McNeill, George, 177, 182, 189, 190, 193, 204–205, 211 McPadden, Myles, 80, 87, 96, 116; biographical sketch, 88–89; and Cumberland coal strike, 107– 109; as organizer, 90–91; and Theodore Cuno, 101 Mitchell, John, 183–184, 260–261 Molly Maguires, 14, 25, 29, 35, 61, 182 Morrison, John, 117, 193–196, 203, 204, 206–207, 210–211, 245 Mullen, William, 151, 152–154, 174, 195– 196, 198, 205 Murray, John, 122, 133, 143, 144 National Farmers Alliance, 249–250 National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers, 245–246 National Greenback-Labor Party (NGLP), 34–35, 64–67, 70, 95, 99, 101, 102– 105, 136, 235

Index National Labor Union, 17, 21, 27, 62 Neasham, Thomas, 180, 182, 205, 209, 211 O’Donoghue, Daniel J., 147, 174, 175, 236 O’Keefe, John, 175, 186, 253–254 O’Reilly, Tom, 236, 237–238, 251, 254, 257 Parsons, Albert, 66, 208 Powderly, Hannah Dever (wife of Terence), 14, 16, 27, 50, 92, 110, 152, 154, 168 n.93, 177, 232 Powderly, Margery (mother of Terence), 11–12, 38 n.3 Powderly, Terence Vincent: and AfricanAmericans, 93–94, 130, 151–152, 153– 154, 167 n.84; agrarians and Populists, 28, 34–35, 65–66, 136–137, 228, 233, 243, 249–251; authority and duties as GMW, 50–53, 172–173; birth and childhood, 11–12; career after resignation in 1893, 258–261; charisma and popularity, 1–2, 6, 48, 92, 93, 112, 153– 154, 161, 188, 219 n.75, 231–232, 259, 260–261, 277–278; congressional lobbying efforts, 133–134, 135–138; cooperation, 33, 62–63, 138–146; death, 261; democratic leadership and encouragement of local autonomy, 6–7, 19, 36, 56–57, 129–130, 150–151, 152– 153, 161, 172, 185, 194–195, 234–235, 243–246, 250, 273; early labor career, 16–21; efforts to resuscitate Order after counteroffensive, 227–228, 232–235, 238–241, 243–246, 249–251; election as GMW, 37–38, 50; and employer counteroffensive of 1886–1888, 3, 186– 188, 196–202, 228–229, 276–277; factionalism, 114–119, 120, 202–215, 250– 251, 253–258; fundamentalism, 97–99; gender, 154–156, 266 n.75; historical reputation, 3–6, 57, 61–62, 81 n.11, 82 n.25, 94, 111, 172, 202, 215 n.4, 273– 274, 278 n.10; Irish Catholicism, 11, 15, 16, 20–21, 23–24, 28, 70–72; ma-

Index chinist, 12–14, 16, 18–19, 24, 58; March 3 (1886) circular, 176–177; March 13 (1886) secret circular, 187– 189; mayor of Scranton, 2–3, 28–30, 33, 64–65, 133, 136, 163 n.24; oratory and organizing, 6, 91–95, 129, 133, 149–154; physical appearance and health, 11, 14, 47, 49, 93–94, 154, 160, 174, 181, 232, 252; politics, 15, 20, 27–30, 34–35, 64–65, 67, 70, 102– 105, 136–137, 250–251, 258–259, 267 n.77; resignation as GMW (1893), 256– 258; salary and investments, 52, 110, 111–114, 177–178, 251–252, 257; as Scranton Knight leader, 21–28, 33–34, 50, 60, 69–70, 93, 157–158; socialism and radicalism, 66–67, 101–102, 146– 149, 203–204, 208; strikes, 4, 13, 23, 25–27, 57–60, 105–109, 120, 134–136, 157–161, 178–187, 198–201, 251, 267 n.80, 275–276; supposed prisoner of Home Club, 192–196, 208, 273–274; temperance, 15, 120, 275; on trade unions and trade organization, 18, 60– 62, 89–90, 120, 190–192, 207, 223 nn.137, 138, 233, 241–248, 274 Powderly, Terrence (father of Terence), 11, 12, 38 n.3, 110 Price, Robert, 68, 107, 111 Provisional Committee, 212–213, 228, 229–230, 239 Quinn, James, 117, 121, 195–196 Railroad strikes: in 1877, 2–3, 24–27, 58, 260, 276; 1885 Wabash strike, 129– 130, 158–161, 232; 1886 Southwest strike, 161, 178–183, 209, 230, 235, 259, 260, 276; 1888 Burlington strike, 213; 1890 New York Central strike, 251, 267 n.80; 1894 Pullman strike, 229, 277 Rankin, Alexander, 105, 110, 111, 130 Rockwood, Gilbert, 55–56, 63, 72, 79, 89, 93, 100–101, 113–114, 121, 136, 139, 144, 148, 162 n.3 Rodgers, Elizabeth, 201

293 Schilling, George, 66, 210 Schilling, Robert, 17, 20, 32, 34, 110, 112, 136 Scranton, Joseph, 13, 15, 70 Scranton, William, 13, 26–27, 157– 158 Seib, Charles, 210, 212–213 Sharpe, Henry, 138–142, 143–145, 148, 159 Siney, John, 40 n.20, 107, 261 Skeffington, Harry, 193, 203, 204, 244– 245 Socialist Labor party, 63, 66–67, 72, 101, 255 Sovereign, James, 255–256, 257–258, 259 Spies, August, 146 Stephens, Uriah, 21–22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 48, 58, 61, 65, 94, 113, 122, 131; on African-Americans, 152; death and legacy, 53–54, 98–99; and fundamentalism, 95–97; on socialism, 67, 203–204, 212 Stevens, Edward A., 55, 63, 72, 213 Steward, Ira, 56, 101 Stirling, Mary, 155, 168 n.98 Strasser, Adolph, 96, 178, 193–194, 203, 207 Sylvis, William, 56, 59, 62, 94, 101 Talmadge, A. A., 158, 159–160 Taylor, Harry, 68, 72, 78–79, 96, 117, 122, 130–131, 162 n. 7 Telegraphers strike (1883), 118–119, 235, 260 Tomson, Dan Frazier, 176, 241, 252 Trevellick, Richard, 20, 136, 174, 175, 189, 239, 261 Turner, Fred, 22, 27, 31–32, 50, 66, 68, 70, 78, 95, 113, 132, 157, 181, 193, 198, 200, 210, 212; on Anti-Monopoly party, 136–137, 164 n.28; breaks with Powderly and joins Founders’ Movement, 225 n.165; cooperation, 139, 141, 144–146; efficiency as GS, 130– 131; elected GS in 1883, 121; on Haskell, 147; overworked, 159, 172–175;

294 supposed Home Club membership, 78, 121–122, 148–149, 193–194; on traveling, 149–150; window glass workers’ strike (1883–1884), 135–136 United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, 61, 247 United Mine Workers, 246, 259, 260 Van Horn, William D., 141, 143 Van Patten, Philip, 63, 66–67, 96, 100, 102

Index Walls, William, 240–241 Watchorn, Robert, 245 Wheat, Morris, 240–241 Window Glass Workers (LA 300), 62, 90, 111, 129, 134–136, 142, 252 Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, 22, 59, 61, 98 Wright, Alexander W., 234–236, 237– 238, 240–241, 248, 249, 253–255, 257 Wright, James L., 22, 31, 34–35, 65, 66, 68, 78, 95, 100, 111, 121–122, 213

About the Author CRAIG PHELAN is Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Wales, Swansea. His other works include Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell (1994) and William Green: Biography of a Labor Leader (1989).