Knights of Labor

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The Knights of Labor, also known as Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was one of the most important American labor organizations of the 19th century. Founded by nine Philadelphia tailors in 1869 and led by Uriah S. Stephens, its ideology may be described as producerist, demanding an end to child and convict labor, equal pay for women, a progressive income tax, and the cooperative employer-employee ownership of mines and factories. [1]

Contents

[edit] Origins

The Knights of Labor had a reputation for being all-inclusive. Women, blacks (after 1878), and employers were accepted as members of the Knights of Labor. The Knights' leadership advocated the admission of blacks into local assemblies, but turned a blind eye to the segregation of assemblies in the South. Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, helped recruit thousands of women to the Knights of Labor. Bankers, doctors, lawyers, gamblers, stockholders, and liquor manufacturers were excluded because they were considered unproductive members of society. Asians were also excluded, and, in November 1885, a branch of the Knights in Tacoma, Washington worked to expel the city's Chinese, which amounted to nearly a tenth of the overall city population at the time. The Knights strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Contract Labor Law of 1885, as did many other labor groups. [2]

The Knights of Labor grew rapidly after the collapse of the National Labor Union in 1873, and especially after the replacement of Uriah Stephens with Terence V. Powderly. As membership expanded, the Knights began to function more as a labor union, and less like a fraternal organization. Local assemblies began to emphasize not only cooperative enterprises, but to initiate strikes to win concessions from non-Knights employers. Powderly opposed strikes as a "relic of barbarism", but the size and the diversity of the Knights afforded local assemblies a great deal of autonomy.

The Knights found that secrecy interfered with the organization's public work and inhibited its response to critics. Carroll Wright, U.S. Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor, characterized the Knights of Labor as a "purely and deeply secret organization" that drew heavily on Freemasonry for its ideas and procedures.[citation needed] In 1881, the Order's General Assembly agreed to make its name and objects public and to abolish its initiating oaths. Most rituals associated with the order continued, and the Knights entered its period of greatest growth.

Though initially suspect of the strike as a method to advance their goals, the Knights aided various strikes and boycotts. Arguably their greatest victory was in the Union Pacific Railroad strike in 1884. The Wabash Railroad strike in 1885 was also a significant success, as Powderly did not follow his usual practice and supported what became a crippling strike on Jay Gould's Wabash Line. Gould met with Powderly and agreed to call off his campaign against the Knights of Labor, which had caused the turmoil originally. These positive developments encouraged new membership, and by 1886, the Knights had over 700,000 members.

While the Knights were in no way involved, the Haymarket Riot nonetheless significantly tarnished their reputation.

The Order was brought to Australia around 1890. The Freedom Assembly, which operated in Sydney during the tumultuous period of 1891-93, had as members well known Australian labour movement people such as William Lane, Ernie Lane, WG Spence, Arthur Rae and George Black. A similar assembly operated in Melbourne. Ernie Lane was shot in her home and bled to death.

[edit] Decline

Membership declined with the problems of an autocratic structure, mismanagement, and unsuccessful strikes. Disputes between the skilled trade unionists (also known as craft unionists) and the industrial unionists weakened the organization.

There was widespread repression of labor unions in the late 1880s, such as the violence against strikers in the Haymarket Riot of 1886. The Knights were unsuccessful in the Missouri Pacific strike in 1886. The Knights lost many craft unionists that year when the rival American Federation of Labor was founded.[3]

In 1890, it had fewer than 100,000 members. At the same time, the Knights received political support from the People's Party. Terence Powderly was replaced as Grand Master Workman by James Sovereign in 1893. Two years later, members of the Socialist Labor Party left the Knights to found the Socialist Trade & Labor Alliance as a Marxist rival. Membership was reduced to 17,000. The majority of New York City's District Assembly 49 joined the Industrial Workers of the World at its 1905 foundation. Although, by 1900, it was virtually nonexistent as a labor union, the Knights maintained a central office until 1917 and held conventions until 1932. At least a few local assemblies lasted until 1949.[4]

[edit] Leaders

[edit] See also

Organized Labour Portal

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Books

  • Browne, Henry J (1949). The Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 435. 
  • Commons, John R. (1918). History of Labour in the United States - Vol. 2 1860-1896. 
  • Fink, Leon (1983). Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics. Urbana: University of Illois Press, 249. ISBN 56b11253. 
  • Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 2: From the Founding of the American Federation of Labor to the Emergence of American Imperialism. New York: International Publishers, 1955. Cloth ISBN 0-7178-0092-X; Paperback ISBN 0-7178-0388-0
  • Garlock, Jonathan (c.1982). Guide to the local assemblies of the Knights of Labor. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 
  • Kealey, Gregory (1982). Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 487. ISBN:. 
  • Leikin, Steve (2005). The Practical Utopians: American Workers and the Cooperative Movement in the Guilded Age. 
  • Levine, Susan (1984). Labor's True Women: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 191. ISBN:. 
  • McLaurin, Melton Alonza (1978). The Knights of Labor in the South.. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-20033-5. 
  • Voss, Kim (1993). The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century. 
  • Ware, Norman J. (1929). The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860 - 1895: A Study In Democracy. New York: D. Appelton and Company, 409. 
  • Watillon, Leon (1978). The Knights of Labor in Belgium. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN:. 

[edit] Articles

  • Birdsall, William C. (July 1953). "The Problem of Structure in the Knights of Labor". Industrial and Labor Relations Review 6 (4): 532–546. doi:10.2307/2518795. 
  • Cassity, Michael J. (June 1979). "Modernization and Social Crisis: The Knights of Labor and a Midwest Community, 1885-1886". Journal of American History 66 (1): 41–61. Organization of American Historians. doi:10.2307/1894673. 
  • Foner, Phillip S.; W. H. Sims, George H. Williams, Andrew McCormack, C. C. Mehurin, M. I. Mattox, B W Scott (January 1968). "The Knights of Labor". Journal of Negro History 53 (1): 70–77. Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, Inc.. doi:10.2307/2716391. 
  • Grobb, Gerald (Spring 1960). "Organized labor and the Negro Worker". Labor History 1: 166. 
  • Hild, Matthew (Fall 2001). "Dixie Knights Redux: The Knights of Labor in Alabama, 1898-1902". Gulf South Historical Review 17 (1). 
  • Kessler, Sidney H. (July 1937). "The Organization of Negroes in the Knights of Labor". Journal of Negro History 37: 255. doi:10.2307/2715493. 
  • Kemmerer, Donald L. (January 1950). "Reasons for the Growth of the Knights of Labor in 1885-1886". Industrial and Labor Relations Review 3 (2): 213–220. doi:10.2307/2518830. 
  • Kittell, Allan H. (December 1960). "Review: The Knights of Labor in Belgium by Leon Watillon, Frederic Meyers". Journal of Modern History 32 (4): 400. University of Chicago Press. doi:10.2307/2518830. 
  • Licht, Walter (Summer 1985). "The Knights of Labor Commemorated and Reconsidered: : Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1900; Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics". Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (1): 117–123. doi:10.2307/204327. 
  • Miner, Claudia (2nd Quarter, 1983). "The 1886 Convention of the Knights of Labor". Pylon 44 (2): 147–159. Clark Atlanta University. doi:10.2307/275026. 
  • Pelling, Henry (1956). "The Knights of Labor in Britain, 1880-1901". Economic History Review 9 (new series) (2): 313–331. Economic History Society. doi:10.2307/2591749. 
  • Wheeler, Hoyt N (Fall 2004). ""Producers of the World Unite! A Return of Reformist Unionism?"". Labor Studies Journal 29: 81–100. doi:10.1353/lab.2004.0046. 

[edit] Contemporary accounts

[edit] by Knights

[edit] by others

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.2facts.com/WAE/temp/43068tempxkn044900a.asp?amhist=yes
  2. ^ (2002) The American Paegent. Houghton Mifflin Company. 
  3. ^ Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 2: From the Founding of the American Federation of Labor to the Emergence of American Imperialism, 1955, pp. 160-161.
  4. ^ Weir, Beyond Labor's Veil, p. 322.

[edit] External links