The Knights of Labor was founded as a secret society of tailors in Philadelphia in 1869. It grew in size and importance during the early stages of the American labor movement in the mid to late 1800s and played a key role in the great railway strike. from 1877.
Uriah Stevens, founder of the Knights of Labor
Uriah S. Stephens, a descendant of New Jersey’s early Quaker settlers, founded the Knights of Labor on Thanksgiving Day 1869 in Philadelphia. When Stephens’ family lost everything during the economic panic and depression of the late 1830s, he became a contract worker, forced to work without pay in exchange for training as an apprentice mechanic.
Stephens’ experiences as a worker led him to believe that massive changes in society were needed. It was not enough for a group of workers in a company to strike for higher wages, he believed. Instead, all employees had to be brought together in one organization, which could then fight for the interests of all.
When the local Garment Cutters Union was dissolved after failing to secure better wages from local garment companies, Stephens took his chance. He called a meeting at his home and six garment cutters showed up. Stephens explained to them his vision of an organization, “The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor”, whose members would be held in secrecy and would follow rituals comparable to Masonry.
Knights of Labor expands under Terrence Powderly
In the decade that followed, however, the Knights spread across the country, attracting a range of workers in different industries, from blacksmiths and boilermakers to masons and carpet weavers. The only professions they excluded were bankers, lawyers, gamblers, and saloon keepers.
In 1879 Stephens resigned and Terrence V. Powderly, a stagehand of Irish Catholic descent from Carbondale, Pa., Was elected to take his place. Under Powderly’s leadership, in 1881, the Knights declared that women would be accepted as members and would have the same rights in the organization as men. At the time, this was a radical position.
Joseph Buchanan leads strikes against railway companies
At the height of the Knights’ influence in the mid-1880s, the organization claimed 700,000 members. At the height of their power, the Knights have achieved major success. In 1884, when the Union Pacific Railroad cut workers’ wages by 10 percent, the Knights quickly staged a strike. Led by organizer Joseph Buchanan, the Knights closed all railroad stores from Omaha Nebraska to Ogden, Utah, as well as all branch lines.
As Matthew Hild recounts in Greenbackers, Knights of Labor and Populists, it took only four days for the railway bosses to reverse the pay cut. When the railroad attempted the same move three months later, the Knights launched another strike and forced the company to concede defeat in just five days and restore workers’ wages. Soon after, the Knights led even larger strikes in 1984-85 against the Wabash Railroad and the Southwestern Rail System controlled by financier Jay Gould.
But it wasn’t just better wages that the Knights campaigned for. The organization championed sweeping social and economic reform, including an eight-hour work day, health and safety laws to protect workers, and a system that would protect them if they were injured on the job – a first version of the workers’ compensation insurance. .
End child labor and lobby for a progressive income tax
The Knights also called for an end to child labor and convicts, equal pay for women, and laws requiring employers to participate in arbitration to resolve disputes with workers. They also advocated the nationalization of railways and telephone networks, and a progressive federal income tax (similar to that finally established in 1913).
More radically still, the Knights supported co-op workshops — a precursor to today’s employee-owned businesses — as well as co-op stores.
The Knights also opened up their organization to black workers, and blacks eventually formed the majority of Knights in the South, according to Charles Postel’s book. Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866-1896.
Attacks on Chinese workers
But not all of the positions taken by the organization were progressive. The Knights viewed immigrants as competition that employers would use to reduce their wages. They supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885, which prohibited companies from bringing unskilled workers to the United States to work under contract.
Even after the laws were passed, the Knights were not satisfied. In the Pacific Northwest, they attacked Chinese workers and even set fire to barracks where Chinese coal miners lived.
In 1886, the Knights suffered some serious setbacks which began their decline. In March, the Knights launched a second strike against the southwestern rail system in Gould, Texas, led by former machinist named Martin Irons. The Great Southwestern Strike, as it became known, quickly spread to other states and led to violent clashes between strikers and police. This time, however, Gould held his ground, and after public opinion began to turn against the Knights, they were forced to abandon the strike in May.
In the end, the strikers got nothing they wanted, and many were also blacklisted by Gould’s Railroad, according to Postel. “Throughout Gould’s railroad empire, the Knights of Labor were effectively destroyed as an organization,” he wrote.
Haymarket Square Riot
Around this time, the Knights also received another heavy blow when a union protest in Haymarket Square in Chicago, whose organizers included members of the Knights of Labor, turned into a riot that claimed the lives of seven police officers. and four workers. Police responded with crackdowns on labor groups in Chicago and elsewhere in the country. While the Knights were not responsible for the violence, they were blamed and membership numbers began to drop.
Although the Knights continued to exist as an organization for decades thereafter, their number and influence declined, as workers began to defect to organizations such as the American Federation of Labor. The last resistance of the once powerful Knights was finally dissolved in 1949. Nonetheless, many of the reforms advocated by the Knights, such as laws restricting child labor and the eight-hour work day, were finally carried out.
