the West from running independent labour candidates, as it did not prevent the locals in mill towns in Massachusetts and the miners in Kansas, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio from embarking upon distributive and productive co-operation. Co-operation increased its following tremendously in 1883, as depression was setting in and strikes were proving to be failures. Most of these ventures were either merchandise stores or coal shafts, very little capital being required in opening a shaft.72 Likwise, a strong demand for independent political action arose with the depression, which resulted in a multiplication of the local political attempts.

But while the opposition clamouring for a return to "first principles" was thus successfully put down within the Order, the same cry was heard from a different quarter. The growth of the Knights of Labor, which set out to bring together into one organisation all "productive labor," naturally looked disconcerting to the national trade unions. As yet the trade unions were not greatly menaced by the expansion of the Order.73 It is true, the Order was organising cigar makers, printers, moulders, etc., but these generally were elements which the trade unions were either not desirous to get, such as semiskilled workmen and machine operators, or isolated mechanics in small localities whom they were unable to reach. Besides, hardly any of the trade unions could as yet claim considerable shop control, so that rivalry for employment, which lies at the basis of acute rivalry between organisations, had not as yet arisen. This probably accounts for the conciliatory and indirect methods of the trade unions. The policy pursued was to praise the Order for the good educational work it was doing among the working people which was "the original object of the Order," and to caution it that stepping out of its legitimate bounds might prove fatal and impair its efficiency in its educational work. The following quotation from the National Labor Tribune, at this time the exponent of the national trade unions, gives their attitude very clearly: 74

72 Philadelphia Journal of United Labor, November, 1882, p. 337.

73 A recorded instance of actual confict during this period was the refusal in 1880 by the Iron Molders' International Union to recognise Knights of Labor cards

issued to moulders. Most likely the latter were machine moulders whom the union was not eager to admit. General Assembly, Proceedings, 1880, p. 198.

74 Pittsburgh National Labor Tribune, July 7, 1883.

"It is well known that the Knights of Labor was not instituted with the view to action in the matter of regulating wages. The objects included education, the bettering of the material condition of the members by means of such schemes as co-operation, etc., and the elevation of labor by legislation through political action, but not taken, however, in a partisan way. The plan of the organisation did not include the management of strikes or aught else pertaining to wages and terms of labor, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the machinery has not proven equal to those occasions, when the Knights went outside of their original objects. It would be a blessing to all concerned if the Knights of Labor shall resolve to return to first principles and devote undivided attention thereto lest all the labor be lost by being spread over too large an area. "The coalescence of the respective trades by the organisation of the assemblies of each into its own union, and the representation of these bodies in a congress of the trades, would be an organisation in an effectively handleable condition - one that could take cognisance with the best results of wages and terms of labor."

Yet the feeling of animosity between the two great branches of the labour movement remained in abeyance until the labour upheaval of the middle of the decade.

If, now, we summarise our account of the confused and almost unnoticed struggles of labour organisations in the latter part of the seventies and the first part of the eighties, we shall find a real inheritance bequeathed to the succeeding years, the years of the Great Upheaval.

First of all, the bequest was intellectual rather than material. It consisted more of ideas than of organisations. The Order of the Knights of Labor, the Federation of Organised Trades and Labor Unions, and even the thirty or so national trade unions in existence in 1884, were in reality mere frameworks for future building. The intellectual accumulation during the period was, however, of exceedingly great importance. It was a period of theoretical differentiation and classification in respect to both general philosophies and practical methods.

As to philosophies, the half wage-conscious and half middleclass philosophy of the trade unionism of the sixties was entirely absent from the new trade union movement which started towards the end of the seventies. Yet that philosophy was preserved simon-pure in the Order of the Knights of Labor, which

can be looked upon as the direct heir and successor to the unionism of Sylvis, Trevellick, and Cameron. The aspiring mechanic of the trade unions of the sixties had transmitted his faith in voluntary co-operation, social reform, and politics to the humbler and machine-menaced member of the Knights of Labor. But the new trade unionism got, in place of the lost philosophy, the wage-consciousness of Marx and the International, purged of its socialist ingredients.

Socialism had also undergone an evolution. Starting out with the trade union philosophy of the International of 1864, it successfully endured a brief but painful period of attempted inoculation with the "isms" of native American reformers of the intellectual class, only to be overcome later by the "politicsfirst" philosophy of Lassalleanism. Out of the strife and turmoil of factional struggle, the small group of Americanised Internationalists in the East withdrew to build up a potent trade union movement upon the basis of a wage-conscious but nonsocialistic philosophy. Another group of Internationalists, much larger but also much more foreign-minded, with its centre in Chicago, remained true to socialism throughout all of its political vicissitudes, to begin, however, at the end of the decade a rapid evolution towards "syndicalism," or anarchistic trade unionism.

As to methods. The trade unions of the sixties had made their appeal exclusively to the skilled man, and they succeeded in time of prosperity. Their disintegration during the years of depression in the seventies reduced the skilled man to practically the same position as that of the unskilled, so that henceforth the appeal to organise was extended to him also. Although the wage-conscious and semi-socialistic appeal of the International Labor Union to the unskilled ended in failure, the Knights of Labor succeeded in accomplishing in the eighties what McDonnell and Sorge had failed to do in the seventies. But the new trade unions, like those of the sixties, restricted their appeal to the skilled mechanics. The experience of the seventies taught them to eschew politics, but in the Knights of Labor every political movement started by workmen or farmers was sure to find a warm response.

The working out of these theoretical and tactical lessons of 1876-1883, during the stirring events of 1884-1887, will bring us to the clear-cut divisions of what may be called the modern labour movement of the end of the century.

CHAPTER IX

THE GREAT UPHEAVAL, 1884-1886

New Economic Conditions. The difference between the labour movements in the early and the middle eighties, 357. The unskilled, 357. Extension of the railways into the outlying districts, 358. Resultant intensification of competition among mechanics, 358. Industrial expansion, 358. Growth of cities, 359. Extension of the market and the supremacy of the wholesale jobber, 359. Impossibility of trade agreements, 359. Pools, 360. Immigration, 360. The exhaustion of the public domain, 360. Peculiarities of the depression, 1883-1885, 361. Reduction in wages, 361. Effect of the depression on the other economic classes, 362. The antimonopoly slogan, 362.

Strikes and Boycotts, 1884-1885. Fall River spinners' strike, 362. Troy stove mounters' strike, 363. The Cincinnati cigar makers' strike, 363. Hocking Valley coal miners' strike, 363. The vogue of the boycott, 364. Extremes in boycotting, 365. Boycott statistics, 1884-1885, 365. Resumption of the strike movement, 366. The Saginaw Valley, Michigan, strike, 366. Quarrymen's strike in Illinois, 367. Other strikes, 367. Shopmen's strikes on the Union Pacific in 1884, and the Knights of Labor, 367. Joseph R. Buchanan, 367. The Gould railway strike in 1885, 368. Gould's surrender, 369. Its enormous moral effect, 370. The general press and the Order, 370. Keen public interest in the Order, 370. The New York Sun story," 371. Effect on Congress, 372. The contract immigrant labour evil, 372. Situation in the glass-blowing industry, 372. The Knights and the anti-contract labour law, 373. "The Knights of Labor - the liberator of the oppressed," 373. Beginning of the upheaval, 373. Unrestrained class hatred, 374. Labour's refusal to arbitrate disputes, 374. Readiness to commit violence, 374.

The Eight-Hour Issue and the Strike. Growth of trade unions, 375. New trade unions formed, 1884-1885, 375. Convention of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, in 1884, 376. The eight-hour issue, 376. Invitation to the Knights to co-operate, 377. Referendum vote by the affiliated organisations, 377. Advantage to the trade unions from the eighthour issue, 378. Lukewarmness of the national leaders of the Knights, 378. Powderly's attitude, 378. Enthusiasm of the rank and file, 379. Pecuniary interest of the Order's organisers in furthering the eight-hour agitation, 380. Marvellous increase in the membership of the Knights, 381. Membership statistics for various States, 381. Racial composition, 382. Composition by trades, 382. The pace of organisation in Illinois by months, 382. The Southwest railway strike, 383. Its cause, 383. Its unusual violence, 383. Its failure, 384. The eight-hour strike, 384. Degree of its immediate success, 384. Its ultimate failure, 385. Unequal prestige of the Knights and the trade unions as a result of the strike, 385.

The Chicago Catastrophe. Effect of the Haymarket bomb on the eight