ment of a national union, because, as stated in the preamble to the constitution of the national federation, "neither district nor State unions can regulate the markets to which their coal is shipped." 85 In 1886, however, they had not one but two unions claiming national jurisdiction. In most mining districts both organisations were represented, yet, in spite of their intense rivalry, the two co-operated in a sufficient measure to become joint parties to an interstate trade agreement with the mine operators in a conference at Columbus, Ohio, January, 1886. This conference was attended by óperators from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and perhaps, also from West Virginia.86 Representatives of the miners were present from all these States, and also from Maryland. As a result of the deliberations of this conference an interstate agreement was drawn up between the miners and the operators, covering the wages which were to prevail throughout the central competitive field from May 1, 1886, to April 30, 1887. The scale established would seem to have been dictated by the wish to give the markets of the central competitive field to the Ohio operators.87 That Ohio was favoured in the scale estab lished by this first interstate conference can be explained by the fact that more than half of the operators present came from Ohio, and that the chief strength of the miners' union, also, lay in that State. To prevent friction over the interpretation of the interstate agreement, a board of arbitration and conciliation was established.88 This board consisted of 5 miners and 5 operators chosen at large, and 1 miner and 1 operator from each of the States of this field. Such a board of arbitration and conciliation was provided for in all of the interstate agreements of the period of the eighties. During the entire period of the existence of this board, its secretary was Chris Evans, who served, also, in the same capacity for the miners' union. This system of interstate trade agreement, in spite of the cutthroat competition raging between operators, was maintained for Pennsylvania and Ohio practically until 1890, Illinois having been lost in 1887, and Indiana, in 1888. It formed 85 U. S. Bureau of Labor, Eleventh Special Report on Regulation and Restriction of Output," 386. 86 Roy, History of the Coal Miners, 256. 87 This conclusion is based upon the scale of mining rates for the year printed in the report on the "Regulation and Restriction of Output," 387. 88 American Federationist, 1894, p. 115. August, the real predecessor of the system established in 1898 and in vogue at the present time. The apparent superiority of the trade union form of organisation over the mixed organisation, as revealed by events in 1886 and 1887, strengthened the tendency on the part of the more skilled and better organised trades in the Knights of Labor to separate themselves from the mixed district assemblies and to create national trade assemblies. Just as the struggle between the Knights of Labor and the trade unions on the outside had been fundamentally a struggle between the unskilled and the skilled portions of the wage-earning class, so the aspiration toward the national trade assembly within the Order represented the effort of the more or less skilled men for emancipation from the dominance of the unskilled. ups and downs of the struggle bear out this conclusion. The Prior to 1884 several national trade assemblies existed under the guise either of a local assembly, such as Local Assembly 300, which, as we have seen, was a national organisation of windowglass workers admitted in 1880, or of a trade district, as for instance, District Assembly 45, the national union of telegraphers which became affiliated in 1883. During 1884, shortly before the rush of the unskilled into the Order, the ideas of the skilled men were gradually receiving recognition. In accordance with this the General Assembly of 1884 specifically authorised the formation of national trade assemblies. During the next year, however, with the predominance acquired by the unskilled, the policy changed. Powderly in his address at the General Assembly in 1885, said: "I do not favour the establishment of any more National Trade Districts; they are a step backward in the direction of the old form of trade union. . . . We should discourage them in the future." 89 So it continued until the defeat of the mixed district assemblies or, in other words, of the unskilled class, in the struggle with the employers. With the withdrawal of a very large portion of this class, as shown by the membership figures for 1887, the demand for the national trade assembly revived, and there soon began a veritable rush to organise by trades. The stampede was strongest in the city of New York where the incompe 89 General Assembly, Proceedings, 1885, p. 25. tence of the mixed District Assembly 49 had become patent. At the General Assembly in 1887, 22 national trade and district assemblies were represented with a total membership of over 52,000 (out of 511,000), of which number 21,230 were coal miners organised in National Trade Assembly 135 and over 17,000 were distributed among the various organisations in New York and Brooklyn.90 The report of the New Jersey Bureau of Labor for 1887 enumerates the following trades in the Knights of Labor organised as national trade assemblies: axe and edge tool makers, bookbinders, cigar makers, file makers, garment cutters, hatters, iron and steel workers, leather workers, lithographers, machinery constructors, miners, painters, paper hangers, plumbers, gas and steam-fitters, potters, seamen, silk workers, surface railroad men, steam railroad employés, glass blowers, shoemakers, stationary engineers and firemen, textile workers, and printers.91 All these national and district trade assemblies had been organised under the rules adopted in 1884, which merely provided that the General Executive Board "may" grant the permission, and furthermore that each local assembly must obtain from the district assembly to which it belongs the permission to join a national trade assembly. At the General Assembly in 1887 at Minneapolis, the rules were amended in the sense that it was made obligatory upon the General Executive Board to grant such a permission, and the consent of the district assembly was not only no longer required, but it was even made compulsory upon all local trade assemblies to withdraw from the mixed district and to enter the national trade assembly as soon as one was established in a particular trade. The national trade assembly was also given full authority in the matter of initiation fee, strikes, apprenticeship regulations, etc., limited only by the provisions of the general constitution of the Order. 92 Thus the claims of the skilled men finally achieved full recognition from the Knights of Labor, and P. J. McGuire was not far from right when he asserted in October, 1887, that "the Knights of Labor are now taking lessons from the Trade 90 General Assembly, Proceedings, 1887, pp. 1847-1850. 91 New Jersey Bureau of Labor, Re. port, 1887, p. 9. 92 General Assembly, Proceedings, 1887, p. 1800, Unions, and are forming themselves on National Trade District lines, which are simply the skeletons of trade unions without either their flesh or blood." 93 He would not have been wrong had he predicted that the national trade assemblies would soon break away from the Order. 93 Carpenter, October, 1887, p. 4. CHAPTER XI THE FAILURE OF CO-OPERATION, 1884-1887 Attitude towards co-operation of the several component elements of the Knights of Labor, 430. The inheritance from the sixties, 430. Powderly's attitude, 431. Co-operation in the early eighties, 431. Centralised cooperation, 432. Change to decentralised co-operation, 432. Statistics and nature of the co-operative enterprises, 433. Sectional distribution, 434. Co-operation among the coopers in Minneapolis, 434. The General Cooperative Board, 435. John Samuel, 435. Difficulties of the Board, 436. Participation by the Order, 436. The failure of the movement, 437. Its causes, 437. The lesson for the future, 438. ALTHOUGH strikes and boycotts undoubtedly were the chief recruiting activities of the Knights, the deliberately planned policy of the Order, as a whole, was directed chiefly to co-operation. Occupying, as it did the foreground in the official programme of the Order, co-operation had also the additional merit of being well suited to the period of industrial depression when strikes were failing. The new and unskilled membership, though interested only in industrial warfare against employers, had no desire to quarrel with the official philosophy of the organisation to which it looked for economic salvation. The active champions of co-operation, however, came from the older membership. Among these, first in importance were the machine-menaced mechanics, notably the machinists and shoemakers, whose national trade organisations of the sixties and seventies had disappeared. They furnished the national leaders, such as Powderly, formerly a member of the machinists' and blacksmiths' national union, and Beaumont and Litchman, former members of the order of the Knights of St. Crispin. They also supplied the official philosophy of the Order. In their control they formed in every way the connecting link between the movement in the eighties and that of the trade unions of the sixties. The trade unionist of the sixties had been by nature a small employer rather than a wage-earner. He had not only aspired to become an employer in the future, but, in |