ld together and showed promise of future growth. One was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor

ter 1873, was founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens, a tailor who had been educated for the minis

es the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity into the dust." However, "we mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital." The remedy consists first in work of education: "We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the only creator of values or capital) and the justice of its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it has created." The next remedy was legislation: "We shall, with all our strength, support laws ma

by the destructive great railway strikes in this country in 1877 and, lastly, by a wave of criminal disorders in the anthracite coal mining region in Eastern Pennsylvania,[13] and became only too prone to attribute revolutionary and criminal intents to any labor or

"unjust accumulation." The battle cry in this fight must be "moral worth not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness." As the "action" of the toilers ought to be guided by "knowledge," it is necessary to know "the true condition of the producing masses"; therefore, the Order demands "from the various governments the establishment of bureaus of labor statist

ort of idealism throughout all the time when he was the foremost labor leader in the country. Unlike Samuel Gompers, who came to supplant him about 1890, he was foreign to that spirit of combative unionism which accepts the wage system but concentrates on a struggle to wrest

in that it proposed to start with an organization of consumers-the large and ever-growing membership of the Order. But it departed radically from the English prototype in that instead of setting out to save money for the consumer, it primarily aimed to create a market for the productive establishments which were to follow. Consumers' cooperation was to be but a stepping stone to producers' self-employment. Eventually when the Order had grown to include nearly all useful members of society-so the plan contemplated-it wo

rtunist and "pragmatic." The training school for this opportunistic trade unionism was the socialist movement during the sixties and seventies, particularly the American branch of the International Workingmen's Association, the "First Internationale," which was founded by Karl Marx in London in 1864. The conception of economic labor organization which was advanced by the Internationale in a soci

ng the views of Giuseppe Mazzini, the leader of the "New Italy" and the "New Europe," which was submitted to them at the same time and advocated elaborate plans of cooperation. Marx emphasized the class solidarity of labor against Mazzini's harmony of capital and labor. He did this by reciting what British labor had done through the Rochdale system of cooperation without the help of capitalists and what the British Parliament had done in enacting the ten-hour law of 1847 against the protest of capitalis

rade unions. These must precede the political seizure of the government by labor. Then, when the workingmen's party should achieve co

he harmony of capital and labor, which lay at the basis of Schultze's scheme for cooperation, he struck at the same time a blow against all forms of non-political organization of wage earners. Perhaps the fact that he was ignorant of the British trade unions accounts for his insufficient appreciation of trade unioni

sm prior to and underlying political organization, while the latter considered a political victory as the basis of socialism. These antagonist

, but tried to establish itself through affiliation with the National Labor Union. The inducement held out to the latter was of a practical nature, the international regulation of immigration. During the second phase the Int

er organizers and leaders of the American Federation of Labor: for example, Adolph Strasser, the German cigar maker, whose organization became the new model in trade unionism, and P.

ationale as a world organization, but enormously increased the stakes of the factional fights within the handful of American Internationalists. The organization of the workers into trade unions, the Internationale's first principle, was forgotten in the heat of intemperate struggles for empty honors and powerless offices. On top of that, with the panic of 1873 and the ensuing prolonged depression, the political drift asserted itself in socialism as it had in the labor movement in general and the movement, erstwhile devoted primarily to organization of t

n unionism. His early contact in the union of his trade with men like Strasser, upon whom the ideas of Marx and the International Workingmen's Association had left an indelible stamp, and his thorough study of Marx gave him that grounding both in idealism and class consciousness which has produced many strong leaders of American unions and saved them from defection to other interests. Aggressive and uncompromising in a perpetual fight for the stronges

nvolved, first, complete authority over the local unions in the hands of the international officers; second, an increase in the membership dues for the purpose of building up a large fund; and, third, the adoption of a far-reaching benefit system in order to assure stability to the organization. This was accomplished at the convention held in August, 1879. This convention simultaneously adopted the British ide

"native" American trade unionism of their time, which still hankered for the haven of producers' cooperation. The philosophy which these new leaders developed might be termed a philosophy of pure wage-consciousness. It signified a labor movement reduced to an opportunistic basis, accepting the existence of capitalism and having for its object the enlarging of the b

phy is to be found in Strasser's testimony before t

ing to improve h

sent; I look first to cigars, to the interests

asking you in regard

from day to day. We are fighting only for immediate

thing better to eat and to wea

er and to live better, and bec

e lest it should be thought that you are a mere the

we are opposed to theorists, and I have to represe

of socialism, in opposition to the political socialism of Lassalle, which ignored the trade union and would start with a political party outright. Shorn of its socialistic futurit

nciples that the entire abolition of the present system of society can alone emancipate the workers, but under no consideration should they resort to politics; "our organization should be a school to educate its members for the new condition of society, when the workers will regulate their own affairs without any interference by the few. Since the emancipation of the productive classes must come by their own efforts, it is unwise to meddle in present politics.... All

American labor movement was to be with the "practical men of the tr

TNO

fight against the employers was carried on by a secret organization known as the Molly Maguires, which u

acturing, or building pursuits"; the enactment of a weekly pay law, a mechanics' lien law, and a law prohibiting child labor under fourteen years of age; the abolition of the contract system on national, state, and municipal work, and of the system of leasing out convicts; equal pay for equal work for both sexes; reduction of hours of labor to eight per day; "the substitution of arbitrat

r the idealistic strivings and gropings of labor for a better social order. He even advised some of his pupils at the

German thinker and practical

xecuted after the Haymarket Square bomb