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| Terrance V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman of the Knights of Labor. |
Terrance V. Powderly may have been
the man with the tiniest spectacle
lenses and most impressive moustache
in American history. He also became almost by accident the leader
of this country’s first great
national labor union.
That’s
because the Noble and Holy Order of the
Knights of Labor was founded in 1869 as a fraternal benevolent society
and a lodge with the secret rituals and handshakes popularized by Masonry. It was organized in Philadelphia by Uriah Smith
Stephens, and James L. Wright
and five other members of a local Taylor’s
Union. It was not meant to itself become a labor union, but to provide social connections, moral uplift, general advocacy for reforms like an 8 hour day, and provide protection
and benefits for injured members and surviving spouses and families.
From
the beginning the fledgling organization was unique in the breadth of those welcomed to
belong—all workers regardless of
craft or skill, men and women, all ethnic and religious groups,
and all races, except, as we will see later, Asians. In a throwback
to the days of guilds even master craftsmen and owners of small shops, farms, and manufacturing businesses could join if they still worked by the side of their employees. This later group never represented more than a
tiny fraction of the organization’s membership
but deference to their sensibilities restrained action in its
earlier years.
Two
events contributed to the Knights beginning to take on the functions of a union. First
was the collapse in 1873 of an earlier attempt to form a national
labor body, the National Labor Union. Left behind were a hodge-podge of local unions, a few central labor councils in major cities,
and a handful of craft unions struggling to establish national federations. Without a national body to look toward for
cooperation, and most importantly, solidarity
during labor actions, many of these
organizations elected to become
Knights Assemblies. Others maintained their seperate identity but encouraged
or allowed their individual members to join the Knights.
By
default, although the Knights officially
discouraged strikes, Knights
Assemblies and members were soon engaged in the full range of job actions.
Secondly
was the ongoing near open warfare
between coal mine operators and
their largely Catholic and immigrant work forces in Pennsylvania. Conditions
were harsh, wages low, hours long,
and there were regular mine disasters. The infancy of the company town turned miners
into virtual serfs. Strikes, boycotts,
and rebellions became common, all met with ruthless suppression. Workers found that the ritual secrecy of the
Knights, like that of the Irish
fraternal organization the Loyal
Order of Hibernians were the perfect
cover to organize in secret. By the mid 1870’s membership in the anthracite fields was exploding.
And
that’s where Powderly first encountered
the Knights.
Powderly
was the 11th of 12 children of an Irish immigrant
family born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania in the heart of the coal fields on January
22, 1849. He was something of a sickly child losing the hearing in one ear to scarlet fever and nearly dying from the
German measles. His relative frailty probably spared him the fate of going to the
mines at age 7 or 8 as a breaker boy. Instead he was allowed to continue a rough sort of schooling until the ripe old age of 13 when he went to work for the
Delaware and Hudson Railroad and the
next year was promoted to car inspector due to his intelligence.
He
was mature for his age and keenly interested in the world around him. In his later memoirs he was able to recall in
detail the Presidential Election of
1856 which elevated Pennsylvanian James
Buchannan to the Executive Mansion. He recalled his mother’s anguish over not
being able to cast a vote and then and there became a lifelong supporter of women’s
suffrage.
In
the meantime he apprenticed as a machinist
in the railroad shops and was working in the locomotive shops in Scranton
by 1869. He joined the Machinist and Blacksmiths Union in
1871, and he was elected president of a local
in 1872. From then on his life centered
more and more on his dedication to the labor movement. In 1873 he was fired for union activity and blackballed
on the railroads.
Powderly
drifted from job to job, but always kept up his connections to his union. And although he never personally worked in
the mines, he was keenly aware of the struggles in the major industry in his
home region.
He
signed a membership card in the Knights as early as 1874 but became active in
his local Assembly in 1876. He rose
quickly, elected to the key position of Recording
Secretary, which put him in communication
with Assemblies all across the country.
Powderly
was elected General Worthy Foreman
of the Order at St. Louis in January
1879. Powderly became General Master
Workman soon afterward.
Powderly
had other interests. He married in 1872 and began to raise a family and was active in local politics. The
same year He was elected Mayor of Scranton and was re-elected for two
more two year terms which coincided with his rise in the Knights. He was asked to run for Lieutenant Governor by the Greenback
Labor Party in 1882, but declined
the nomination.
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| Powderly made headlines for his vocal advocacy of inclusion of Black workers, most other minorities, women, and unskilled laborers in the Knights. |
When
Powderly assumed office the Knights reported a national membership of
10,000. Probably two or three times that
number were in sympathy or in locals and assemblies not properly reporting to Headquarters, a common problem for the loosely organized Order with few employees.
But
due to a combination of an explosion of
national labor unrest and his own growing
reputation, Powderly saw the Order grow to 700,000 then to 1 million
members, including 10,000 women and 50,000 African
Americans in 1886.
The
Great American Railroad Strike of 1877 was
responsible for a lot of that
growth. Although largely spontaneous and unorganized, the bloody riots exploded from the Baltimore and Ohio shops in Maryland and soon engulfed much of the
nation with particularly hard fighting
between strikers and authorities in the Knight’s cradle in Pennsylvania. The Order was blamed by authorities for the strikes, and credited for them by workers across the country although the
organization was not initially involved.
In
fact Powderly was appalled by the
violence and at first called on Knights members to remember their no-strike pledges and return to work. In fact in the west
in places like St. Louis and New Orleans, where local Assemblies had
time to organize responses before the violence struck, they were able to conduct disciplined actions with little
of the mayhem and property damage in
the east.
There
remained a stumbling block to growth.
Although a large majority of members were, like Powderly, Catholics, the Church objected to the trapping
of freemasonry and a secret society. The Archbishop
of Quebec had specifically forbidden membership. American
prelates seemed ready to follow suit.
Powderly worked closely with Archbishop
James Gibbons of Baltimore who
convinced the Pope not only not to condemn the Knights, but to broadly offer support for the right of
unionization. In return, Powderly led the Knights in dropping the Noble and Holy Order from their name and jettisoning secrecy and masonic style
ritual in 1882.
Now,
for better or worse, the Knights were a virtual
union in everything but name.
Membership shot up faster
than effective organization could accommodate them all. “In 1885 we had
about 80,000 members in good standing,” Powderly wrote in his autobiography, “
in one year that number jumped up to 700,000 of which at least four hundred
thousand came in from curiosity and
caused more damage than good.”
One
spur to growth was a successful strike in 1885 against the Wabash Railroad, part of the southwestern
system controlled by railroad baron Jay
Gould. Despite his opposition to
strikes, Powderly helped negotiate a
favorable settlement, including a non-discrimination
clause protecting Knights members from retribution. It was the first significant national victory of any labor strike and sent the
prestige of the organization and its
leader through the roof.
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| Pro-Knights cartoons and publications were at pains to paint Powderly and the Knights not as radicals, but as reasonable and fair reformers. |
Powderly
was no radical. He took a dim view of socialism and an even greater aversion to the anarchism that was taking root in parts of the labor movement. He favored what might be called benign or cooperative republicanism (small “r”) with an emphasis
on inclusion and fairness. He advocated
reforms like the eight hour day and elimination
of child labor was well as wages
that allowed working people to live with “simple dignity.” His vision was egalitarian and inclusive
of women and most minorities.
In
general the Knights followed these precepts.
But they were not perfect.
Although Blacks were allowed to join, Powderly looked the other way when segregated
Assemblies were established in the South.
In
the West, he went along with the virulent
anti-Asian bias that erupted after the large
scale introduction of coolie labor
in railroad construction. It was the almost universal opinion of White
workers on the West Coast that Chinese labor drove down wages. The
Assemblies in Seattle urged the expulsion of all 10,000 Chinese in the
city. In Rock Spring, Wyoming local Knights organized a pogrom style riot in September of 1885 in which 28 Chinese miners
were killed, 15 were injured, and 75 homes and business were burned.
Powderly
condemned the violence but supported
Oriental Exclusion immigration legislation. He was not the only labor leader or radical
to do so. Even the California affiliate of the International
Working People’s Association—the so called anarchist First International—endorsed exclusion. Immigration
issues became a major personal
interest of Powderly and, as we will see, propelled a second career.
Two
events in 1886 proved disastrously pivotal to the Knights.
First
a second round of strikes against Gould’s Southwest System broke out early that
year and spread even farther to more components of the system. Violence broke out in several cities and soon
there were the familiar pitched battles with
authorities and company thugs.
Powderly desperately tried to reign
in control of the strike while trying to negotiate a settlement. This time Gould and his forces were
adamant. By March the strike petered out with no gains and local Assemblies in disarray.
Then
in Chicago on May 1 strikes in
support of one of Powderly’s favorite
causes, the eight hour day engulfed the city. These were in response to a nationwide call
by the Knight’s rival craft union
competitor which would soon become known as the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Locally they were organized by member unions
of the Central Labor Union and
promoted by anarchists. The eight hour
strike coincided with several ongoing
strikes in the city, including a major
confrontation at the McCormick
Reaper Works.
On
May 2 police opened fire at picketers
around the McCormick Works gate killing several. The McCormick strikers included members of
several craft unions and of the Knights, but was generally under the leadership
of the craft unions.
Local
anarchists, most of them German,
organized a protest at the Haymarket on
May 4. A bomb was thrown by an unknown
assailant as police moved in to
attack the end of the peaceful rally. The ensuing
melee left several of workers and five cops dead. The anarchists, some of whom were not in attendance or even involved in
the meeting, were rounded up and arrested. Eight were charged. One committed
suicide, seven were convicted
and four hung.
Despite
the fact that the Knights were only involved
peripherally in the McCormick strike and the May 1 eight hour strike and
not at all in the anarchist protest, the press laid the whole Haymarket affair largely the feet of Powderly and
the Knights.
Nationwide
suppression
followed. Worse over the next five years
the Knights lost several badly organized
but widely publicized strikes, shaking the confidence of workers. The AFL began to emerge as a more effective alternative, although it
excluded most unskilled workers and
minorities. Membership evaporated.
In
addition the Knights were wracked with
internal dissent and Powderly found his leadership increasingly under attack. By 1890 the Knights had
shrunk to numbers similar to those when Powderly first took the reins.
Powderly
was defeated for re-election as Master Workman in 1893. The organization’s decline only accelerated and by 1900 was essentially irrelevant except for a handful of local pockets of support.
Powderly
studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1894. He established a successful practice in Scranton and also dabbled in business.
Eventually he would even become part
owner of a coal mining operation and other, largely unsuccessful industrial businesses.
He
was making a name for himself as an expert
in immigration. He had come to the
conclusion that not only was Asian immigration harmful to working people, but
that the un-restricted flood of
immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe would destroy the standard of living of American workers.
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| Powderly in his second career as an immigration bureaucrat in Republican administrations for more than 20 years. Shown in his Washington office, Powderly kept the tiny spectacles and impressive mustache and acquired a toupee. |
Trying
to court labor votes away from their
traditional loyalty to Democrats or
the emerging Populists, President William McKinley appointed to
Powderly to an important post, U.S. Commissioner General of Immigration in 1897. He enjoyed the continued support of Theodore Roosevelt who in 1902 made him
Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration from 1907 to
1921. In these positions he crafted the proposals that would result in the
great curtailment of unrestricted
immigration in the Immigration Act
of 1924 which included an almost total ban on Asian immigration and a
strict national quota system for
Europe.
After
his first wife died in 1901, Powderly married his long time secretary at the Knights.
Together they lived comfortably in Washington. After a brief
retirement Powderly died on June 24, 1924.
His wife survived him until 1940.
Seventeen
years after his death, Powderly’s manuscript
autobiography was discovered and published giving us one of the most detailed accounts of the formative years of the American labor movement.
