Name: _________________________ Date: ________________
KNIGHTS OF LABOR The Knights of Labor began as
a secret society of tailors in Philadelphia in 1869. The
organization grew slowly during the hard years of the 1870s, but
worker militancy rose toward the end of the decade, especially
after the great railroad strike of 1877, and the Knights'
membership rose with it. Grand Master Workman Terence V.
Powderly took office in 1879, and under his leadership the
Knights flourished; by 1886 the group had 700,000 members.
Powderly dispensed with the earlier rules of secrecy and
committed the organization to seeking the eight-hour day,
abolition of child labor, equal pay for equal work, and political
reforms including the graduated income tax.
Unlike most trade unions of the day, the Knights' unions
were vertically organized—each included all workers in a
given industry, regardless of trade. The Knights were also
unusual in accepting workers of all skill levels and both
sexes; blacks were included after 1883 (though in
segregated locals). On the other hand, the Knights strongly
supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the
Contract Labor Law of 1885; like many labor leaders at the
time, Powderly believed these laws were needed to protect
the American work force against competition from
underpaid laborers imported by unscrupulous employers.
Powderly believed in boycotts and arbitration, but he
opposed strikes. He had only marginal control over the
union membership, however, and a successful strike by the
Knights against Jay Gould's southwestern railroad system
in 1884 brought a flood of new members. By the beginning
of 1886, there were 700,000 Knights of Labor. But when the
workers struck the Gould system again in the spring of
1886, they were badly beaten. Meanwhile, other members
of the Knights participated—again, over Powderly's
objections—in the general strike that began in Chicago on
May 1, 1886. When a bomb explosion at a workers' rally in
Haymarket Square May 4 triggered a national wave of
arrests and repression, labor activism of every kind suffered
a setback, and the Knights were particularly—though
unfairly—singled out for blame. By 1890, the membership
had fallen to 100,000. Although Powderly's somewhat
erratic leadership and the continuing factionalism within the
union undoubtedly contributed to the Knights' demise, the
widespread repression of labor unions in the late 1880s
was also an important factor.
HAYMARKET AFFAIR The Haymarket affair began
when a bomb exploded among a squad of policemen at a workers'
rally in Haymarket Square, Chicago, on May 4, 1886. Since May
1, a loosely organized national strike for the eight-hour day had
been gaining momentum in Chicago. On May 3 strikers had come
to the support of an already-existing strike at the McCormick
Harvesting Machine Company; police had fired on the crowd and
four people had been killed. The Haymarket rally, organized by a
small anarchist group, was one of many called to protest the
killings. Only thirteen hundred people attended, and most left
when it began to rain. About three hundred remained when 180
police arrived and demanded that they disperse. Suddenly a bomb
exploded among the policemen, killing one and wounding many
more, including seven who died later. The police responded with
wild gunfire, killing seven or eight people in the crowd and
injuring about a hundred, half of them fellow officers.
The Haymarket bombing triggered a national wave of fear;
public officials, civic leaders, the press, and some union
leaders joined in equating foreign birth with anarchism and
terror. In Chicago hundreds of socialists, anarchists, and
Period: ______
other radicals were rounded up. Eight anarchists (all but
one of them German immigrants) were indicted for
conspiracy, though none was charged with throwing the
bomb. After a conspicuously biased trial, seven were
condemned to hang; the eighth was given a long prison
sentence. The convictions were upheld in September 1887,
and the executions set for November 11. On November 10
one of the condemned men, Louis Lingg, hanged himself; a
few hours later, Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted
two of the men's sentences to life imprisonment. The
remaining four, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph
Fischer, and George Engel, were executed on schedule.
On June 26, 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned
the three survivors, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, and
Oscar Neebe. This action, though applauded by many, was
also widely criticized and probably contributed to Altgeld's
defeat for reelection. The nativistic fear of immigrants and
radicals aroused by Haymarket lingered for years,
preparing the ground for further red scares in the future.
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR The
American Federation of Labor (AFL) was organized as an
association of trade unions in 1886, growing out of an earlier
Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions founded in
1881. The AFL's president, Samuel Gompers (who served nearly
every year until 1924), was convinced that unions open to
workers of all types of skills within a given industry—called
industrial unions—were too diffuse and undisciplined to
withstand the repressive tactics that both government and
management had used to break American unions in the past. The
answer, he believed, was craft unions, each limited to the skilled
workers in a single trade. According to Gompers's "pure and
simple unionism," labor should not waste its energies fighting
capitalism; its sole task was to hammer out the best arrangement
it could under the existing system, using strikes, boycotts, and
negotiations to win better work conditions, higher wages, and
union recognition.
Applying this philosophy to politics, the AFL refused to ally
itself with the Socialist party or with independent labor
parties. Instead, Gompers argued that labor should "reward
its friends and punish its enemies" in both major parties.
After 1908, the organization's tie to the Democratic party
grew increasingly strong, but the AFL continued to
concentrate on political protection for unions, rather than
seeking social change through legislative action.
By 1904, the AFL claimed 1.7 million members. Although the
union represented only the more privileged members of the
country's work force, it gained increasing influence as the
recognized voice of American labor. Its membership
declined between 1904 and 1914 in the face of a concerted
open-shop drive by management but rose again during
World War I, when unions were given considerable
government protection. By 1920 the AFL had nearly 4 million
members. After the war, however, business resumed its
union-busting activities, and the AFL lost ground throughout
the 1920s.
By the time the New Deal opened the door again to
organized labor, the AFL—now led by William Green
(president, 1924-1952)—was facing increasing dissension
within its ranks. Craft unions had proved ineffective as a
way of organizing the huge industries, such as auto, rubber,
and steel, that now dominated the economy. Many in the
AFL believed that only industrial unions fit the modern
Name: _________________________ Date: ________________
pattern of production. In 1935 John L. Lewis led the
dissenting unions in forming a new Committee for Industrial
Organization within the AFL. This group, which became the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), grew so
powerful that the AFL expelled the ten CIO unions in 1937.
The AFL and CIO continued as separate organizations during
World War II but were reunited in 1955.
The AFL—CIO was now the nation's dominant labor
organization, but this achievement was already being
undermined by changes in the American economy and
work force—most notably, the growing loss of jobs in the
manufacturing sector where unions had been strongest. In
1945 nearly one-third of American workers belonged to a
union; by 1990 the proportion had fallen to less than onefifth.
GOMPERS, SAMUEL(1850-1924), cofounder and
first president, American Federation of Labor. Born into a Jewish
working-class family in London, Gompers migrated with his
family to New York City in 1863. Taught both the cigar trade and
union principles by his father, Gompers thrived in the heady
atmosphere that surrounded New York's labor movement during
the 1870s. Advocates of Marxist and utopian socialism,
anarchism, communalism, and a host of other reform programs
jostled for support. Influenced by British trade union principles
and by the Marxist emphasis on the primacy of economic
organization of workers, Gompers favored the creation of strong,
centralized trade union institutions that would foster the growth
and direct the activity of local unions. In conjunction with Adolph
Strasser and others, Gompers restructured the Cigar Makers
International Union along such lines.
Although never an avowed Marxist himself, Gompers's
approach to organizing workers owed much to two ideas
advanced by Marxists. He agreed with them that it was only
through the trade union that awareness of a broad class
interest among workers could emerge. And it followed from
this that Gompers and such early American Marxist labor
leaders as Friedrick Sorge and J. P. McDonnell looked
upon political activity with suspicion. The state had proved
hostile to workers in both Europe and America; any gains
won through political reform, they argued, could be
enforced only by the concentrated power of organized
workers in the factories and shops across the nation. In an
era when craft workers still controlled important aspects of
production, Gompers and his associates insisted upon craft
organization as the foundation for the Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor Unions (1881) and its
successor organization, the American Federation of Labor
(AFL; 1886).
The AFL grew over its first two decades until in 1904 it
accounted for some 10 percent of all nonagricultural
wageworkers. But the emphasis on skilled craft workers
created a de facto exclusion of the less skilled at a time
when these workers were becoming an increasingly
Period: ______
important sector of the work force. This resulted in an
organization of workers deeply divided along racial, gender,
and ethnic lines. The weak position of the president of the
AFL (its constitution ensured the autonomy of the constituent
unions) largely precluded Gompers from broadening
organizing efforts.
As government regulation of industrial relations grew, the
AFL felt compelled to seek political alliances and in 1912
actively supported the successful Democratic candidate for
president, Woodrow Wilson. During Wilson's two terms,
Gompers helped shepherd through Congress the Clayton
Anti-Trust Act and the Seamen's Act. With the advent of
World War I, the Wilson administration pressured business
to negotiate with union leaders in order to guarantee
production, and the union's membership grew impressively.
During the postwar years, however, neither governmental
nor business connections (developed largely through
Gompers's leadership position in the National Civic
Federation) defended labor during the steel strike of 1919,
the machinists' strike of 1922, or the nationwide anti-union
campaign known as the "American Plan."
At Gompers's death the AFL's weakened membership and
narrow organizational structure underscored both the
fragility of labor's position in American society and the
necessity of expanding organizing efforts. In the following
decade the AFL and recently formed industrial unions would
address those problems anew.
CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL
ORGANIZATIONS The Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) was founded in response to the failure of the
American Federation of Labor (AFL) to organize unskilled
workers in mass production industries. At the 1934 AFL
convention, a move to organize these workers lost when only 30
percent of the members voted for the measure. After failing again
in 1935, John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, Sidney
Hillman, leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, David
Dubinsky of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union,
and representatives of the Textile Workers and the Typographers
unions formed the Committee for Industrial Organization. It was
expelled from the AFL in 1936 and became the CIO in 1938.
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, section 7A,
which gave workers the right to organize and bargain
collectively, provided an impetus to unionization in the
1930s. The CIO's major organizing tactic was the sit-down
strike, which was quite successful: CIO membership
reached 2,654,000 by 1940.
John L. Lewis was the first president of the CIO. Responding
to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and the
election of a Republican president in 1952, the AFL and the
CIO merged in 1955.