The Knights of Labor

Introduction

It took American Labor longer than industrialists to effectively coordinate on a nationwide basis. By the 1820s, home wares employees in the Northeast had coordinated the first unions to dispute the expanded use of unskilled and semi-skilled employees in the output process. But these were localized organizations. It was not until 1834 that the first nationwide association of salary earners, the National Trades' Union, was formed. By 1836, the association asserted 300,000 constituents, but it quickly lost membership during the financial panic of 1837 (Licht, 117-123). In 1852, printers' local persons in 12 towns coordinated the National Typographic Union, which battled for a widespread salary scale and limits on the use of apprentices. It was one of five nationwide unions formed in the 1850s. Another 21 nationwide unions were coordinated in the 1860s. By the early 1870s, about 300,000 employees were association, producing up about nine per hundred of the industrial Labor force. But throughout the economic despondency from 1873 to 1878, members in Labor associations dropped to just 50,000 (Licht, 117-123).

The Knights of Labor, American Labor association, begun by Philadelphia tailors in 1869, directed by Uriah S. Stephens. It became a body of nationwide scope and significance in 1878 and increased more quickly after 1881, when its previous secrecy was abandoned. Organized on an developed cornerstone, with women, very dark employees (after 1883), and employers met, omitting only bankers, solicitors, gamblers, and stockholders, The Knights of Labor aided diverse assemblies in hits and boycotts, triumphant significant hits on the Union Pacific in 1884 and on the Wabash RR in 1885. But malfunction in the Missouri Pacific hit in 1886 and the Haymarket Square riot (for which it was, whereas not to blame, accused by the press) initiated a decrease of prestige and reinforced factional arguments between the home wares unionists and the supports of all-inclusive unionism. With the motto "an wound to one is the anxiety of all," The Knights of Labor tried through informative entails to farther its aims—an 8-hour day, abolition of progeny and convict Labor, identical yield for identical work, elimination of personal banks, cooperation—which, like its procedures, were highly idealistic. The association comes to its apex in 1886, when under Terence V. Powderly its members come to a total of 702,000. Among the determinants of its downfall were factional arguments, too much centralization with a producing autocracy from peak to base, misconduct, drainage of economic assets through failed hits, and the emergence of the American Federation of Labor. By 1890 its members had fallen to 100,000, and in 1900 it was virtually extinct (Licht, 117-123).

Discussion

During the 1870s and 1880s, American employees started to pattern national Labor unions in alignment to competently discuss with large-scale corporations. The Knights of Labor was one of the most significant early Labor associations in the United States. It liked to coordinate employees into "one large-scale brotherhood" other than into distinct unions made up of employees who had a widespread ability or who worked in a specific industry (Grob, ...