CHAPTER 4
REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887
With the return of business prosperity in 1879, the labor movement revived. The first symptom of the upward trend was a rapid multiplication of city federations of organized trades, variously known as trade councils, amalgamated trade and labor unions, trades assemblies, and the like. Practically all of these came into existence after 1879, since hardly any of the "trades' assemblies" of the sixties had survived the depression.
As was said above, the national trade unions existed during the sixties and seventies in only about thirty trades. Eighteen of these had either retained a nucleus during the seventies or were first formed during that decade. The following is a list of the national unions in existence in 1880 with the year of formation: Typographical (1850), Hat Finishers (1854), Iron Molders (1859), Locomotive Engineers (1863), Cigar Makers (1864), Bricklayers and Masons (1865), Silk and Fur Hat Finishers (1866), Railway Conductors (1868), Coopers (1870), German-American Typographia (1873), Locomotive Firemen (1873), Horseshoers (1874), Furniture Workers (1873), Iron and Steel Workers (1876), Granite Cutters (1877), Lake Seamen (1878), Cotton Mill Spinners (1878), New England Boot and Shoe Lasters (1879).
In 1880 the Western greenbottle blowers' national union was established; in 1881 the national unions of boiler makers and carpenters; in 1882, plasterers and metal workers; in 1883, tailors, lithographers, wood carvers, railroad brakemen, and silk workers.
An illustration of the rapid growth in trade union membership during this period is given in the following figures: the bricklayers' union had 303 in 1880; 1558 in 1881; 6848 in 1882; 9193 in 1883. The typographical union had 5968 members in 1879; 6520 in 1880; 7931 in 1881; 10,439 in 1882; 12,273 in 1883. The total trade union membership in the country, counting the three railway organizations and those organized only locally, amounted to between 200,000 and 225,000 in 1883 and probably was not below 300,000 in the beginning of 1885.
A distinguishing characteristic of the trade unions of this time was the predominance in them of the foreign element. The Illinois Bureau of Labor describes the ethnical composition of the trade unions of that State during 1886, and states that 21 percent were American, 33 percent German, 19 percent Irish, 10 percent British other than Irish, 12 percent Scandinavian, and the Poles, Bohemians, and Italians formed about 5 percent. The strong predominance of the foreign element in American trade unions should not appear unusual, since, owing to the breakdown of the apprenticeship system, the United States had been drawing its supply of skilled labor from abroad.
The Order of the Knights of Labor, despite its "First Principles" based on the cooperative ideal, was soon forced to make concessions to a large element of its membership which was pressing for strikes. With the advent of prosperity, the Order expanded, although the Knights of Labor played but a subordinate part in the labor movement of the early eighties. The membership was 20,151 in 1879; 28,136 in 1880; 19,422 in 1881; 42,517 in 1882; 51,914 in 1883; showing a steady and rapid growth, with the exception of the year 1881. But these figures are decidedly deceptive as a means of measuring the strength of the Order, for the membership fluctuated widely; so that in the year 1883, when it reached 50,000 no less than one-half of this number passed in and out of the organization during the year. The enormous fluctuation, while reducing the economic strength of the Order, brought large masses of people under its influence and prepared the ground for the upheaval in the middle of the eighties. It also brought the Order to the attention of the public press. The labor press gave the Order great publicity, but the Knights did not rely on gratuitous newspaper publicity. They set to work a host of lecturers, who held public meetings throughout the country adding recruits and advertising the Order.
The most important Knights of Labor strike of this period was the telegraphers' strike in 1883. The telegraphers had a national organization in 1870, which soon collapsed. In 1882 they again organized on a national basis and affiliated with the Order as District Assembly 45.[18] The strike was declared on June 19, 1883, against all commercial telegraph companies in the country, among which the Western Union, with about 4000 operators, was by far the largest. The demands were one day's rest in seven, an eight-hour day shift and a seven-hour night shift, and a general increase of 15 percent in wages. The public and a large portion of the press gave their sympathy to the strikers, not so much on account of the oppressed condition of the telegraphers as of the general hatred that prevailed against Jay Gould, who then controlled the Western Union Company. This strike was the first in the eighties to call the attention of the general American public to the existence of a labor question, and received considerable attention at the hands of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. By the end of July, over a month after the beginning of the strike, the men who escaped the blacklist went back to work on the old terms.
From 1879 till 1882 the labor movement was typical of a period of rising prices. It was practically restricted to skilled workmen, who organized to wrest from employers still better conditions than those which prosperity would have given under individual bargaining. The movement was essentially opportunistic and displayed no particular class feeling and no revolutionary tendencies. The solidarity of labor was not denied by the trade unions, but they did not try to reduce the idea to practice: each trade coped more or less successfully with its own employers. Even the Knights of Labor, the organization par excellence of the solidarity of labor, was at this time, in so far as practical efforts went, merely a faint echo of the trade unions.
But the situation radically changed during the depression of 1884-1885. The unskilled and the semi-skilled, affected as they were by wage reductions and unemployment even in a larger measure than the skilled, were drawn into the movement. Labor organizations assumed the nature of a real class movement. The idea of the solidarity of labor ceased to be merely verbal and took on life! General strikes, sympathetic strikes, nationwide boycotts and nation-wide political movements became the order of the day. The effects of an unusually large immigration joined hands with the depression. The eighties were the banner decade of the entire century for immigration. The aggregate number of immigrants arriving was 5,246,613—two and a half millions larger than during the seventies and one million and a half larger than during the nineties. The eighties witnessed the highest tide of immigration from Great Britain and the North of Europe and the beginning of the tide of South and East European immigration.
However, the depression of 1883-1885 had one redeeming feature by which it was distinguished from other depressions. With falling prices, diminishing margins of profit, and decreasing wages, the amount of employment was not materially diminished. Times continued hard during 1885, a slight improvement showing itself only during the last months of the year. The years 1886 and 1887 were a period of gradual recovery, and normal conditions may be said to have returned about the middle of 1887. Except in New England, the old wages, which had been reduced during the bad years, were won again by the spring of 1887.
The year 1884 was one of decisive failure in strikes. They were practically all directed against reductions in wages and for the right of organization. The most conspicuous strikes were those of the Fall River spinners, the Troy stove mounters, the Cincinnati cigar makers and the Hocking Valley coal miners.
The failure of strikes brought into use the other weapon of labor—the boycott. But not until the latter part of 1884, when the failure of the strike as a weapon became apparent, did the boycott assume the nature of an epidemic. The boycott movement was a truly national one, affecting the South and the Far West as well as the East and Middle West. The number of boycotts during 1885 was nearly seven times as large as during 1884. Nearly all of the boycotts either originated with, or were taken up by, the Knights of Labor.
The strike again came into prominence in the latter half of 1885. This coincided with the beginning of an upward trend in general business conditions. The strikes of 1885, even more than those of the preceding year, were spontaneous outbreaks of unorganized masses.
The frequent railway strikes were a characteristic feature of the labor movement in 1885. Most notable was the Gould railway strike in March, 1885. On February 26, a cut of 10 percent was ordered in the wages of the shopmen of the Wabash road. A similar reduction had been made in October, 1884, on the Missouri, Kansas & Texas. Strikes occurred on the two roads, one on February 27 and the other March 9, and the strikers were joined by the men on the third Gould road, the Missouri Pacific, at all points where the two lines touched, making altogether over 4500 men on strike. The train service personnel, that is, the locomotive engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors, supported the strikers and to this fact more than to any other was due their speedy victory. The wages were restored and the strikers reemployed. But six months later this was followed by a second strike. The road, now in the hands of a receiver, reduced the force of shopmen at Moberly, Missouri, to the lowest possible limit, which virtually meant a lockout of the members of the Knights of Labor in direct violation of the conditions of settlement of the preceding strike. The General Executive Board of the Knights, after a futile attempt to have a conference with the receiver, declared a boycott on Wabash rolling stock. This order, had it been carried out, would have affected over 20,000 miles of railway and would have equalled the dimensions of the great railway strike of 1877. But Jay Gould would not risk a general strike on his lines at this time. According to an appointment made between him and the executive board of the Knights of Labor, a conference was held between that board and the managers of the Missouri Pacific and the Wabash railroads, at which he threw his influence in favor of making concessions to the men. He assured the Knights that in all troubles he wanted the men to come directly to him, that he believed in labor organizations and in the arbitration of all difficulties and that he "would always endeavor to do what was right." The Knights demanded the discharge of all new men hired in the Wabash shops since the beginning of the lockout, the reinstatement of all discharged men, the leaders being given priority, and an assurance that no discrimination against the members of the Order would be made in the future. A settlement was finally made at another conference, and the receiver of the Wabash road agreed, under pressure by Jay Gould, to issue an order conceding the demands of the Knights of Labor.
The significance of the second Wabash strike in the history of railway strikes was that the railway brotherhoods (engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors), in contrast with their conduct during the first Wabash strike, now refused to lend any aid to the striking shopmen, although many of the members were also Knights of Labor.
But far more important was the effect of the strike upon the general labor movement. Here a labor organization for the first time dealt on an equal footing with probably the most powerful capitalist in the country. It forced Jay Gould to recognize it as a power equal to himself, a fact which he conceded when he declared his readiness to arbitrate all labor difficulties that might arise. The oppressed laboring masses finally discovered a powerful champion. All the pent-up feeling of bitterness and resentment which had accumulated during the two years of depression, in consequence of the repeated cuts in wages and the intensified domination by employers, now found vent in a rush to organize under the banner of the powerful Knights of Labor. To the natural tendency on the part of the oppressed to exaggerate the power of a mysterious emancipator whom they suddenly found coming to their aid, there was added the influence of sensational reports in the public press. The newspapers especially took delight in exaggerating the powers and strength of the Order.
In 1885 the New York Sun detailed one of its reporters to "get up a story of the strength and purposes of the Knights of Labor." This story was copied by newspapers and magazines throughout the country and aided considerably in bringing the Knights of Labor into prominence. The following extract illustrates the exaggerated notion of the power of the Knights of Labor.
"Five men in this country control the chief interests of five hundred thousand workingmen, and can at any moment take the means of livelihood from two and a half millions of souls. These men compose the executive board of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor of America. The ability of the president and cabinet to turn out all the men in the civil service, and to shift from one post to another the duties of the men in the army and navy, is a petty authority compared with that of these five Knights. The authority of the late Cardinal was, and that of the bishops of the Methodist Church is, narrow and prescribed, so far as material affairs are concerned, in comparison with that of these five rulers.
"They can stay the nimble touch of almost every telegraph operator; can shut up most of the mills and factories, and can disable the railroads. They can issue an edict against any manufactured goods so as to make their subjects cease buying them, and the tradesmen stop selling them.
"They can array labor against capital, putting labor on the offensive or the defensive, for quiet and stubborn self-protection, or for angry, organized assault, as they will."
Before long the Order was able to benefit by this publicity in quarters where the tale of its great power could only attract unqualified attention, namely, in Congress. The Knights of Labor led in the agitation for prohibiting the immigration of alien contract laborers. The problem of contract immigrant labor rapidly came to the front in 1884, when such labor began frequently to be used to defeat strikes.
Twenty persons appeared to testify before the committee in favor of the bill, of whom all but two or three belonged to the Knights of Labor. The anti-contract labor law which was passed by Congress on February 2, 1885, therefore, was due almost entirely to the efforts of the Knights of Labor. The trade unions gave little active support, for to the skilled workingmen the importation of contract Italian and Hungarian laborers was a matter of small importance. On the other hand, to the Knights of Labor with their vast contingent of unskilled it was a strong menace. Although the law could not be enforced and had to be amended in 1887 in order to render it effective, its passage nevertheless attests the political influence already exercised by the Order in 1885.
The outcome of the Gould strike of 1885 and the dramatic exaggeration of the prowess of the Order by press and even by pulpit were largely responsible for the psychological setting that called forth and surrounded the great upheaval of 1886. This upheaval meant more than the mere quickening of the pace of the movement begun in preceding years and decades. It signalled the appearance on the scene of a new class which had not hitherto found a place in the labor movement, namely the unskilled. All the peculiar characteristics of the dramatic events in 1886 and 1887, the highly feverish pace at which organizations grew, the nation-wide wave of strikes, particularly sympathetic strikes, the wide use of the boycott, the obliteration, apparently complete, of all lines that divided the laboring class, whether geographic or trade, the violence and turbulence which accompanied the movement—all of these were the signs of a great movement by the class of the unskilled, which had finally risen in rebellion. This movement, rising as an elemental protest against oppression and degradation, could be but feebly restrained by any considerations of expediency and prudence; nor, of course, could it be restrained by any lessons from experience. But, if the origin and powerful sweep of this movement were largely spontaneous and elemental, the issues which it took up were supplied by the existing organizations, namely the trade unions and the Knights of Labor. These served also as the dykes between which the rapid streams were gathered and, if at times it seemed that they must burst under the pressure, still they gave form and direction to the movement and partly succeeded in introducing order where chaos had reigned. The issue which first brought unity in this great mass movement was a nation-wide strike for the eight-hour day declared for May 1, 1886.
The initiative in this strike was taken not by the Order but by the trade unionists and on the eve of the strike the general officers of the Knights adopted an attitude of hostility. But if the slogan failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the national leaders of the Knights, it nevertheless found ready response in the ranks of labor. The great class of the unskilled and unorganized, which had come to look upon the Knights of Labor as the all-powerful liberator of the laboring masses from oppression, now eagerly seized upon this demand as the issue upon which the first battle with capital should be fought.
The agitation assumed large proportions in March. The main argument for the shorter day was work for the unemployed. With the exception of the cigar makers, it was left wholly in the hands of local organizations. The Knights of Labor as an organization figured far less prominently than the trade unions, and among the latter the building trades and the German-speaking furniture workers and cigar makers stood in the front of the movement. Early in the strike the workingmen's cause was gravely injured by a bomb explosion on Haymarket Square in Chicago, attributed to anarchists, which killed and wounded a score of policemen.
The bomb explosion on Haymarket Square connected two movements which had heretofore marched separately, despite a certain mutual affinity. For what many of the Knights of Labor were practising during the upheaval in a less drastic manner and without stopping to look for a theoretical justification, the contemporary Chicago "anarchists,"[19] the largest branch of the "Black International," had elevated into a well rounded-out system of thought. Both syndicalism and the Knights of Labor upheaval were related chapters in the revolutionary movement of the eighties. Whether in its conscious or unconscious form, this syndicalism was characterized by an extreme combativeness, by the ease with which minor disputes grew into widespread strikes involving many trades and large territories, by a reluctance, if not an out and out refusal, to enter into agreements with employers however temporary, and lastly by a ready resort to violence. In 1886 the membership of the Black International probably was about 5000 or 6000 and of this number about 1000 were English speaking.
The circumstances of the bomb explosion were the following. A strikers' meeting was held near the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago, late on the third of May. About this time strike-breakers employed in these works began to leave for home and were attacked by strikers. The police arrived in large numbers and upon being received with stones, fired and killed four and wounded many. The same evening the International issued a call in which appeared the word "Revenge" with the appeal: "Workingmen, arm yourselves and appear in full force." A protest mass meeting met the next day on Haymarket Square and was addressed by Internationalists. The police were present in numbers and, as they formed in line and advanced on the crowd, some unknown hand hurled a bomb into their midst killing and wounding many.
It is unnecessary to describe here the period of police terror in Chicago, the hysterical attitude of the press, or the state of panic that came over the inhabitants of the city. Nor is it necessary to deal in detail with the trial and sentence of the accused. Suffice it to say that the Haymarket bomb showed to the labor movement what it might expect from the public and the government if it combined violence with a revolutionary purpose.
Although the bomb outrage was attributed to the anarchists and not generally to the strikers for the eight-hour day, it did materially reduce the sympathy of the public as well as intimidate many strikers. Nevertheless, Bradstreet's estimated that no fewer than 340,000 men took part in the movement; 190,000 actually struck, only 42,000 of this number with success, and 150,000 secured shorter hours without a strike. Thus the total number of those who secured with or without strikes the eight-hour day was something less than 200,000. But even those who for the present succeeded, whether with or without striking, soon lost the concession, and Bradstreet's estimated in January, 1887, that, so far as the payment of former wages for a shorter day's work is concerned, the grand total of those retaining the concession did not exceed, if it equalled, 15,000.
American labor movements have never experienced such a rush to organize as the one in the latter part of 1885 and during 1886. During 1886 the combined membership of labor organizations was exceptionally large and for the first time came near the million mark. The Knights of Labor had a membership of 700,000 and the trade unions at least 250,000, the former composed largely of unskilled and the latter of skilled. The Knights of Labor gained in a remarkably short time—in a few months—over 600,000 new members and grew from 1610 local assemblies with 104,066 members in good standing in July 1885, to 5892 assemblies with 702,924 members in July 1886. The greatest portion of this growth occurred after January 1, 1886. In the state of New York there were in July 1886, about 110,000 members (60,809 in District Assembly 49 of New York City alone); in Pennsylvania, 95,000 (51,557 in District Assembly 1, Philadelphia, alone); in Massachusetts, 90,000 (81,191 in District Assembly 30 of Boston); and in Illinois, 32,000.
In the state of Illinois, for which detailed information for that year is available, there were 204 local assemblies with 34,974 members, of which 65 percent were found in Cook County (Chicago) alone. One hundred and forty-nine assemblies were mixed, that is comprised members of different trades including unskilled and only 55 were trade assemblies. Reckoned according to country of birth the membership was 45 percent American, 16 percent German, 13 percent Irish, 10 percent British, 5 percent Scandinavian, and the remaining 2 percent scattered. The trade unions also gained many members but in a considerably lesser proportion.
The high water mark was reached in the autumn of 1886. But in the early months of 1887 a reaction became visible. By July 1, the membership of the Order had diminished to 510,351. While a share of this retrogression may have been due to the natural reaction of large masses of people who had been suddenly set in motion without experience, a more immediate cause came from the employers. Profiting by past lessons, they organized strong associations. The main object of these employers' associations was the defeat of the Knights. They were organized sectionally and nationally. In small localities, where the power of the Knights was especially great, all employers regardless of industry joined in a single association. But in large manufacturing centers, where the rich corporation prevailed, they included the employers of only one industry. To attain their end these associations made liberal use of the lockout, the blacklist, and armed guards and detectives. Often they treated agreements entered into with the Order as contracts signed under duress. The situation in the latter part of 1886 and in 1887 had been clearly foreshadowed in the treatment accorded the Knights of Labor on the Gould railways in the Southwest in the early part of 1886.
As already mentioned, at the settlement of the strike on the Gould system in March 1885, the employes were assured that the road would institute no discriminations against the Knights of Labor. However, it is apparent that a series of petty discriminations was indulged in by minor officials, which kept the men in a state of unrest. It culminated in the discharge of a foreman, a member of the Knights, from the car shop at Marshall, Texas, on the Texas & Pacific Road, which had shortly before passed into the hands of a receiver. A strike broke out over the entire road on March 1, 1886. It is necessary, however, to note that the Knights of Labor themselves were meditating aggressive action two months before the strike. District Assembly 101, the organization embracing the employes on the Southwest system, held a convention on January 10, and authorized the officers to call a strike at any time they might find opportune to enforce the two following demands: first, the formal "recognition" of the Order; and second, a daily wage of $1.50 for the unskilled. The latter demand is peculiarly characteristic of the Knights of Labor and of the feeling of labor solidarity that prevailed in the movement. But evidently the organization preferred to make the issue turn on discrimination against members. Another peculiarity which marked off this strike as the beginning of a new era was the facility with which it led to a sympathetic strike on the Missouri Pacific and all leased and operated lines. This strike broke out simultaneously over the entire system on March 6. It affected more than 5000 miles of railway situated in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Nebraska. The strikers did not content themselves with mere picketing, but actually took possession of the railroad property and by a systematic "killing" of engines, that is removing some indispensable part, effectively stopped all the freight traffic. The number of men actively on strike was in the neighborhood of 9000, including practically all of the shopmen, yardmen, and section gangs. The engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors took no active part and had to be forced to leave their posts under threats from the strikers.
The leader, one Martin Irons, accurately represented the feelings of the strikers. Personally honest and probably well-meaning, his attitude was overbearing and tyrannical. With him as with those who followed him, a strike was not a more or less drastic means of forcing a better labor contract, but necessarily assumed the aspect of a crusade against capital. Hence all compromise and any policy of give and take were excluded.
Negotiations were conducted by Jay Gould and Powderly to submit the dispute to arbitration, but they failed and, after two months of sporadic violence, the strike spent itself and came to an end. It left, however, a profound impression upon the public mind, second only to the impression made by the great railway strike of 1877; and a Congressional committee was appointed to investigate the whole matter.
The disputes during the second half of 1886 ended, for the most part, disastrously to labor. The number of men involved in six months, was estimated at 97,300. Of these, about 75,300 were in nine great lockouts, of whom 54,000 suffered defeat at the hands of associated employers. The most important lockouts were against 15,000 laundry workers at Troy, New York, in June; against 20,000 Chicago packing house workers; and against 20,000 knitters at Cohoes, New York, both in October.
The lockout of the Chicago butcher workmen attracted the most attention. These men had obtained the eight-hour day without a strike during May. A short time thereafter, upon the initiative of Armour & Company, the employers formed a packers' association and, in the beginning of October, notified the men of a return to the ten-hour day on October 11. They justified this action on the ground that they could not compete with Cincinnati and Kansas City, which operated on the ten-hour system. On October 8, the men, who were organized in District Assemblies 27 and 54, suspended work, and the memorable lockout began. The packers' association rejected all offers of compromise and on October 18 the men were ordered to work on the ten-hour basis. But the dispute in October, which was marked by a complete lack of ill-feeling on the part of the men and was one of the most peaceable labor disputes of the year, was in reality a mere prelude to a second disturbance which broke out in the plant of Swift & Company on November 2 and became general throughout the stockyards on November 6. The men demanded a return to the eight-hour day, but the packers' association, which was now joined by Swift & Company, who formerly had kept aloof, not only refused to give up the ten-hour day, but declared that they would employ no Knights of Labor in the future. The Knights retaliated by declaring a boycott on the meat of Armour & Company. The behavior of the men was now no longer peaceable as before, and the employers took extra precautions by prevailing upon the governor to send two regiments of militia in addition to the several hundred Pinkerton detectives employed by the association. To all appearances, the men were slowly gaining over the employers, for on November 10 the packers' association rescinded its decision not to employ Knights, when suddenly on November 15, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, a telegram arrived from Grand Master Workman Powderly ordering the men back to work. Powderly had refused to consider the reports from the members of the General Executive Board who were on the ground, but, as was charged by them, was guided instead by the advice of a priest who had appealed to him to call off the strike and thus put an end to the suffering of the men and their families.
New York witnessed an even more characteristic Knights of Labor strike and on a larger scale. This strike began as two insignificant separate strikes, one by coal-handlers at the Jersey ports supplying New York with coal and the other by longshoremen on the New York water front; both starting on January 1, 1887. Eighty-five coal-handlers employed by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, members of the Knights of Labor, struck against a reduction of 2½ cents an hour in the wages of the "top-men" and were joined by the trimmers who had grievances of their own. Soon the strike spread to the other roads and the number of striking coal-handlers reached 3000. The longshoremen's strike was begun by 200 men, employed by the Old Dominion Steamship Company, against a reduction in wages and the hiring of cheap men by the week. The strikers were not organized, but the Ocean Association, a part of the Knights of Labor, took up their cause and was assisted by the longshoremen's union. Both strikes soon widened out through a series of sympathetic strikes of related trades and finally became united into one. The Ocean Association declared a boycott on the freight of the Old Dominion Company and this was strictly obeyed by all of the longshoremen's unions. The International Boatmen's Union refused to allow their boats to be used for "scab coal" or to permit their members to steer the companies' boats. The longshoremen joined the boatmen in refusing to handle coal, and the shovelers followed. Then the grain handlers on both floating and stationary elevators refused to load ships with grain on which there was scab coal, and the bag-sewers stood with them. The longshoremen now resolved to go out and refused to work on ships which received scab coal, and finally they decided to stop work altogether on all kinds of craft in the harbor until the trouble should be settled. The strike spirit spread to a large number of freight handlers working for railroads along the river front, so that in the last week of January the number of strikers in New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, reached approximately 28,000; 13,000 longshoremen, 1000 boatmen, 6000 grain handlers, 7500 coal-handlers, and 400 bag-sewers.
On February 11, August Corbin, president and receiver of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, fearing a strike by the miners working in the coal mines operated by that road, settled the strike by restoring to the eighty-five coal-handlers, the original strikers, their former rate of wages. The Knights of Labor felt impelled to accept such a trivial settlement for two reasons. The coal-handlers' strike, which drove up the price of coal to the consumer, was very unpopular, and the strike itself had begun to weaken when the brewers and stationary engineers, who for some obscure reason had been ordered to strike in sympathy, refused to come out. The situation was left unchanged, as far as the coal-handlers employed by the other companies, the longshoremen, and the many thousands of men who went out on sympathetic strike were concerned. The men began to return to work by the thousands and the entire strike collapsed.
The determined attack and stubborn resistance of the employers' associations after the strikes of May 1886, coupled with the obvious incompetence displayed by the leaders, caused the turn of the tide in the labor movement in the first half of 1887. This, however, manifested itself during 1887 exclusively in the large cities, where the movement had borne in the purest form the character of an uprising by the class of the unskilled and where the hardest battles were fought with the employers. District Assembly 49, New York, fell from its membership of 60,809 in June 1886, to 32,826 in July 1887. During the same interval, District Assembly 1, Philadelphia, decreased from 51,557 to 11,294, and District Assembly 30, Boston, from 81,197 to 31,644. In Chicago there were about 40,000 Knights immediately before the packers' strike in October 1886, and only about 17,000 on July 1, 1887. The falling off of the largest district assemblies in 10 large cities practically equalled the total loss of the Order, which amounted approximately to 191,000. At the same time the membership of the smallest district assemblies, which were for the most part located in small cities, remained stationary and, outside of the national and district trade assemblies which were formed by separation from mixed district assemblies, thirty-seven new district assemblies were formed, also mostly in rural localities. In addition, state assemblies were added in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, with an average membership of about 2000 each.
It thus becomes clear that by the middle of 1887, the Great Upheaval of the unskilled and semi-skilled portions of the working class had already subsided beneath the strength of the combined employers and the unwieldiness of their own organization. After 1887 the Knights of Labor lost its hold upon the large cities with their wage-conscious and largely foreign population, and became an organization predominantly of country people, of mechanics, small merchants, and farmers,—a class of people which was more or less purely American and decidedly middle class in its philosophy.
The industrial upheaval in the middle of the eighties had, like the great strike of 1877, a political reverberation. Although the latter was heard throughout the entire country, it centered in the city of New York, where the situation was complicated by court interference in the labor struggle.
A local assembly of the Knights of Labor had declared a boycott against one George Theiss, a proprietor of a music and beer garden. The latter at first submitted and paid a fine of $1000 to the labor organization, but later brought action in court against the officers charging them with intimidation and extortion.
The judge, George C. Barrett, in his charge to the jury, conceded that striking, picketing, and boycotting as such were not prohibited by law, if not accompanied by force, threats, or intimidation. But in the case under consideration the action of the pickets in advising passers-by not to patronize the establishment and in distributing boycott circulars constituted intimidation. Also, since the $1000 fine was obtained by fear induced by a threat to continue the unlawful injury to Theiss inflicted by the "boycott," the case was one of extortion covered by the penal code. It made no difference whether the money was appropriated by the defendants for personal use or whether it was turned over to their organization. The jury, which reflected the current public opinion against boycotts, found all of the five defendants guilty of extortion, and Judge Barrett sentenced them to prison for terms ranging from one year and six months to three years and eight months.
The Theiss case, coming as it did at a time of general restlessness of labor and closely after the defeat of the eight-hour movement, greatly hastened the growth of the sentiment for an independent labor party. The New York Central Labor Union, the most famous and most influential organization of its kind in the country at the time, with a membership estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000, placed itself at the head of the movement in which both socialists and non-socialists joined. Henry George, the originator of the single tax movement, was nominated by the labor party for Mayor of New York and was allowed to draw up his own platform, which he made of course a simon-pure single tax platform. The labor demands were compressed into one plank. They were as follows: The reform of court procedure so that "the practice of drawing grand jurors from one class should cease, and the requirements of a property qualification for trial jurors should be abolished"; the stopping of the "officious intermeddling of the police with peaceful assemblages"; the enforcement of the laws for safety and the sanitary inspection of buildings; the abolition of contract labor on public work; and equal pay for equal work without distinction of sex on such work.
The George campaign was more in the nature of a religious revival than of a political election campaign. It was also a culminating point in the great labor upheaval. The enthusiasm of the laboring people reached its highest pitch. They felt that, baffled and defeated as they were in their economic struggle, they were now nearing victory in the struggle for the control of government. Mass meetings were numerous and large. Most of them were held in the open air, usually on the street corners. From the system by which one speaker followed another, speaking at several meeting places in a night, the labor campaign got its nickname of the "tailboard campaign." The common people, women and men, gathered in hundreds and often thousands around trucks from which the shifting speakers addressed the crowd. The speakers were volunteers, including representatives of the liberal professions, lawyers, physicians, teachers, ministers, and labor leaders. At such mass meetings George did most of his campaigning, making several speeches a night, once as many as eleven. The single tax and the prevailing political corruption were favorite topics. Against George and his adherents were pitted the powerful press of the city of New York, all the political power of the old parties, and all the influence of the business class. George's opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, an anti-Tammany Democrat whom Tammany had picked for its candidate in this emergency, and Theodore Roosevelt, then as yet known only as a courageous young politician.
The vote cast was 90,000 for Hewitt, 68,000 for George, and 60,000 for Roosevelt. There is possible ground for the belief that George was counted out of thousands of votes. The nature of the George vote can be sufficiently gathered from an analysis of the pledges to vote for him. An apparently trustworthy investigation was made by a representative of the New York Sun. He drew the conclusion that the vast majority were not simply wage earners, but also naturalized immigrants, mainly Irish, Germans, and Bohemians, the native element being in the minority. While the Irish were divided between George and Hewitt, the majority of the German element had gone over to Henry George. The outcome was hailed as a victory by George and his supporters and this view was also taken by the general press.
In spite of this propitious beginning the political labor movement soon suffered the fate of all reform political movements. The strength of the new party was frittered away in doctrinaire factional strife between the single taxers and the socialists. The trade union element became discouraged and lost interest. So that at the next State election, in which George ran for Secretary of State, presumably because that office came nearest to meeting the requirement for a single taxer seeking a practical scope of action, the vote in the city fell to 37,000 and in the whole State amounted only to 72,000. This ended the political labor movement in New York.
Outside of New York the political labor movement was not associated either with the single tax or any other "ism." As in New York it was a spontaneous expression of dissatisfaction brought on by failure in strikes. The movement scored a victory in Milwaukee, where it elected a mayor, and in Chicago where it polled 25,000 out of a total of 92,000. But, as in New York, it fell to pieces without leaving a permanent trace.
[18] See the next chapter for the scheme of organization followed by the Order.