The Collapse of the Knights of Labor

April 21st, 2007

While attending an anti-monopoly convention in 1874 William Fennimore invited Terence Powderly to his room for what Powderly assumed would be a social evening. Upon arriving Fennimore locked the door and asked Powderly to kneel. Instead of the prayer Powderly expected, Fennimore asked him a series of questions about capital and labor. Fennimore then asked Powderly to join the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor (KOL), to which Powderly agreed. He took an oath and agreed never to write or speak the name of the Order in public. [1] Three years later Powderly rose through the ranks of the Knights and became its head. Aiming to expand its membership, he successfully persuaded fellow Knights to convert the Order into a public organization while simplifying and reducing its ritualistic and fraternal aspects. After the KOL won a major railroad strike against Jay Gould in 1885-86 the Order's membership grew enormously. The union began an almost equally rapid collapse in the second half of 1886, after the Haymarket Affair. The most important reason for the collapse of the Knights of Labor was the intense, in many cases violent, opposition it faced from employers and the state.

Several scholarly studies of the KOL published over the last twenty-five years support this contention. Leon Fink's Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics examines the impact of the Knights of Labor on the American political system, in the process showing the effectiveness of employer opposition to KOL ventures into electoral politics. Kim Voss's The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century argues repression of the KOL by employers and the State was the key turning point in US labor history, pushing American labor unions in a more conservative direction than their European counterparts. Robert E. Weir's Beyond Labor's Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor analyzes the culture of the Knights of Labor. His work sheds light on cultural aspects of employer opposition to the Knights and the processes involved in its collapse.

Leon Fink sees the first of these books, his Workingmen's Democracy (1983), as a contribution to a larger objective of bringing together two common versions of late nineteenth-century U.S. history, the Gilded Age, that usually do not cross paths. The first starts with the Compromise of 1877 and concludes with the election of William McKinley in 1896. The second begins with the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and discusses industrial unrest in the late nineteenth century. Fink aims to merge these two histories together to help answer what he sees as an “obvious unanswered question – what impact did an industrial revolution of unprecedented magnitude have on the world's most democratic nation?” [2] Workingmen's Democracy contributes to that goal by studying the impact of the Knights of Labor – the largest labor union in the Gilded Age – on American politics.

Fink focuses on the KOL's interaction with local politics, principally through its support of candidates in local elections and political reactions against the KOL. Fink argues participation in local elections by the labor movement bent and, in some cases, temporarily broke the American party system. In many communities independent labor parties backed by KOL locals successfully defeated the Republican and Democratic parties. The result was the roughly simultaneous dissolution of traditional party structures in multiple local communities across the country during the mid-1880s.

Employers reacted to KOL electoral victories with a high degree of hostility and proceeded to organize against pro-labor governments. The Democratic and Republican parties dissolved into united “Citizens” parties aiming to unify all anti-labor electoral forces while employers founded “Law and Order Leagues” to organize anti-union campaigns. Pro-business politicians ultimately succeeded in retaking power due to the general decline of organized labor in the post-Haymarket years, the use of undemocratic tactics like gerrymandering, and a reduction in working class support for the labor parties. Working class support for labor tickets declined because, once in office, labor parties pursued very similar policies as the previous parties and did not meet the expectations most of their constituents had for a labor government.

As the labor threat receded traditional party structures reemerged but with a stronger grip on the working class. Workers in many communities that had previously elected labor tickets were later reluctant to support the left-wing Populist Party in the 1890s due to their disillusionment and experience of defeat in the mid-1880s. Even in the many communities where independent labor tickets did not come to power the strength of the Knights caused the party machines to focus more on persuading workers to stay with their party, ultimately strengthening the grip of the two parties on the working class. In many communities a political realignment took place as the parties altered their core constituencies. The strength of labor tickets also caused business reformers and sections of the middle class to become more suspicious of democracy and popular power, encouraging many local governments to shift power away from elected officials towards unelected bodies such as zoning commissions, planning boards, and the courts, and to move towards city manager and commission forms of local government less susceptible to popular control.

Fink relies primarily on a series of case studies to support his argument, examining these conflicts between the Knights and their opponents in many different communities. A potential disadvantage of his approach is that the cases he selects may not be typical or may only be representative of a minority of cases. Fink minimizes this problem by using a diversity of cases. He includes cases where Knights-backed third parties came to power, where the KOL effectively took over a local branch of one of the major parties, and where labor tickets of any sort were unable to win elections. Different cases also include communities with different racial/ethnic compositions (sometimes dramatically different compositions) and communities where different industries dominated. Geographically, Fink includes examples from the North, South and Midwest but neglects the West Coast. Therefore, Fink's studies are probably representative of national trends, with the possible exception of the West Coast.

Although not speaking to exactly the same questions, Kim Voss's The Making of American Exceptionalism (1993) complements Fink's work. Voss's monograph is a work of historical sociology that uses a mixture of case studies, quantitative data, and trans-Atlantic comparisons. She seeks to explain why the American labor movement became weaker and more conservative than its counterparts in Western Europe. She comes to the conclusion that a higher degree of repression in the United States against labor unions was the most important reason. Her argument fits well with Fink's work. Although he does not seek to answer questions relating to American exceptionalism his work clearly shows the strength of employer opposition to the Knights and the undemocratic means they used to defeat the KOL’s political initiatives, which supports Voss's thesis.

Voss sees the repression of the Knights of Labor as the key point where organized labor in the United States and organized labor in Europe began moving in different directions. Since all three movements were broadly similar until the decline of the Knights, Voss claims “invariant features of American society,” such as “the pervasiveness of liberalism and individualism, or the bountiful nature of American capitalism,” cannot explain why workers in the United States did not develop radical labor movements of the same size and strength as Europe. [3] Voss traces the evolution of American labor unions up to the 1880s and compares them with English and French labor unions. She claims all three movements were highly exclusionary in their early years; only allowing skilled workers into their unions and generally taking an antagonistic attitude towards unskilled workers.

In the late 19th century organized labor in all three countries began transforming themselves into more inclusive movements, incorporating unskilled workers into their ranks. Labor activists also constructed new radical anti-capitalist ideologies to go along with their new inclusive unionism. In England this came in the form of parliamentary-oriented Socialism, in France as Revolutionary Syndicalism and in the United States as the KOL’s anti-capitalist pro-cooperative ideology, which Voss calls “Working-Class Republicanism.” The growth of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s was the American version of this transformation, preceding the French and English transformation by several years. The repression of the Knights of Labor following the Haymarket Affair cut short this transformation in the United States, causing conservative exclusionary unionism, in the form of the American Federation of Labor, to remain the dominant force in the American labor movement decades after it was eclipsed in France and England.

Voss argues that the English and French labor movements suffered lower degrees of repression than the American labor movement. England began building inclusive unions during the early 1890s. Like the Knights, they experienced rapid growth and an anti-labor reaction that reversed much of their gains. Unlike the Knights many of the unions involved were able to survive and, when a new wave of labor strife erupted in the twentieth century, grew to become the dominant part of the labor movement. In the United States a similar wave of early twentieth century labor strife did not result in the same dominance of inclusive unionism because neither the Knights nor any other inclusive union were large enough to take advantage of it and because they had to compete with the already established AFL. Voss claims most British employers did not have the same kind of power and resources as their American counterparts and did not aim to destroy all labor unions the way American employers did.

In France Voss argues employers were as hostile towards unions as they were in the United States but the state was not. The French state feared labor unrest could result in another revolutionary crisis and so took a more conciliatory stance towards unions. It began mediating between unions and employers decades before the American government. The higher degree of repression faced by unions in the United States caused labor to travel down the exceptionalist path, resulting in the destruction of the radical inclusive Knights of Labor and the rise of the conservative exclusionary American Federation of Labor.

Perhaps Voss's strongest evidence is her quantitative data showing a clear correlation between the presence of employers' associations and the rate of failure of KOL local assemblies after the Haymarket Affair. For the period 1880 to 1886 there was a strong negative correlation between the failure of KOL local assemblies and the presence of employers' associations. Although this data could theoretically be interpreted as implying the presence of employers' associations reduced the rate at which KOL locals failed the opposite interpretation is more likely: employers' associations were more likely to be formed in communities where Knights locals did not fail, as a reaction against the KOL.

For the period 1887 to 1895 the trend reversed. KOL locals were more likely to fail in locations where an employers' association was present. The coefficient for employers' associations is .52, which indicates this factor has a stronger correlation with the rate of KOL local assembly failure than any other statistically significant factor because its coefficient is higher than all other significant factors. It is statistically significant at the .05 level, indicating there is a less than 5% chance this pattern is the result of chance. This correlation is exactly what we would expect to find if the decline of the KOL were due to employer opposition. It therefore provides substantial support for the theory that repression was the key factor resulting in the decline of the Knights. [4]

Interestingly, Voss's data also supports some of Leon Fink's claims. Electoral victory by a KOL-backed ticket has a coefficient of .70 but this correlation was not statistically significant – it is probably the result of random chance. Electoral victory or defeat appears to have had no impact on the decline of the Knights - and if it did have an impact it was a strongly negative one. If it were statistically significant a .70 coefficient would be a larger correlation than any other factor - indicating that the Knights actually declined faster in locations where they won elections than in locations where they lost. This supports Fink's argument that employers were able to neutralize attempts by the Knights to use the political arena to their advantage. Electoralism is generally not an effective strategy for the labor movement. [5]

Voss's regression analysis also refutes Selig Perlman's argument that the Knights declined due to conflict between skilled and unskilled workers. Perlman argued that skilled workers left the Knights in response to unskilled workers joining the union in large numbers, causing it to collapse. His argument implies the failure of KOL craft locals should correlate with the formation of less skilled KOL workers organizations, but Voss's analysis shows there was no correlation. The rate at which KOL locals failed also did not correlate with the presence of trade union locals or with ethnic diversity. Thus, the decline of the Knights was not due to a failure of solidarity or divisions within the working class; the Knights were successful at overcoming these obstacles but were unable to overcome opposition by employers and the state. [6]

A major weakness with Voss's regression analysis is that it is limited to New Jersey, and thus may not fully reflect national trends. It is an extended quantitative case study supporting other qualitative case studies she uses. She selected New Jersey due to the availability of appropriate data in the state. Her work therefore shares a similar potential weakness as Fink – these examples may not be representative of national trends. However, it is unlikely that the entire state of New Jersey and all the varied case studies Fink examines would support the argument that the collapse of the Knights was due primarily to employer and government opposition if their opposition was not a major factor. At minimum, it undermines alternative theories advocated by Selig Perlman and others.

Although not seeking “to explain in full the reasons for the KOL's collapse,” Robert Weir's Beyond Labor's Veil sheds light on the cultural aspects of the KOL's rise and fall. [7] Weir argues that the fraternalism, rituals, secrecy, and emphasis on brotherhood that characterized the Order's early phase served to build solidarity between members and keep the organization together despite employer opposition. Fraternalism, while inhibiting growth, also built community. The Knights grew as a result of abandoning fraternalism and related practices, yet the abandonment of fraternalism also weakened member solidarity. The organization became more reliant on delivering material gains to maintain membership rather than relying on the solidarity generated by fraternalism. The KOL's successful strike against Jay Gould resulted in a massive increase in membership but also stimulated a major reaction against the Knights by employers who overestimated the union's strength. The Knights were unable to withstand this reaction and was thus left without a tangible reason to convince members to stay in the Order. The switch away from fraternalism made the KOL dependent on material gains, not community bonds generated by fraternalism, to retain members but employer opposition prevented the Knights from “delivering the goods,” thus neutralizing the main reason for members to stay with the organization. [8] Abandoning secrecy and fraternalism had the effect of allowing the Knights to grow at a rapid pace yet also made them more vulnerable to employer opposition, resulting in rapid growth and decline.

Weir also examines conflict between the Knights and employers in the realm of popular culture. Through an analysis of song, poetry, and fiction Weir argues the KOL's culture and the dominant capitalist/commercial culture influenced each other, coming into conflict but also borrowing from each other. In the KOL's publications and cultural productions elements of Victorian culture could be found. For example, the Knights' portrayal of women was often contradictory: in some cases women were seen as “fellow workers” yet in others they promoted Victorian concepts of female domesticity. [9] Commercial culture, though often hostile towards the Knights, sometimes incorporated themes more favorable towards the Knights. For example, some works of fiction had pro-worker themes or had members of the KOL as heroes. [10]

These contradictory elements in both cultures came from a similar source. Commercial publishers sought to sell their product and the Knights were popular enough that publishers found it necessary to allow occasional works with pro-KOL or pro-worker themes. The Knights were also attempting to “sell” a product, both literally by selling their newspapers (and other publications) and also metaphorically by attempting to recruit new members. Allowing elements of Victorian culture to seep into elements of their culture made it easier for the Knights to gain mass support, since a substantial portion of the public adhered to or were influenced by that culture. This conflict between the Knights’ culture and commercial culture is an example of bourgeois opposition serving to harm the Knights and promote more conservative influences in the labor movement by causing them to adopt elements of bourgeois culture, although it was not nearly as important as more explicit organized opposition by the bourgeoisie.

It is in this cultural analysis that Weir is at his weakest. Some of his claims are overstated or poorly supported. For example, Weir argues that several songs used by the Knights were also used, in modified form, by later labor movements, including as the Wobblies. His argument focuses on similarities between KOL's songs and later songs. For example, the Knights sung a song called “Storm the Fort” which was very similar to the Wobblies' “Hold the Fort.” [11] The weakness in his argument is that these similarities don't necessarily demonstrate any direct borrowing from KOL culture. It is quite possible that similar songs and themes were used in many different forms by multiple other groups between their use by the Knights and their use by the Wobblies and that the Wobblies were influenced by those groups, not the Knights. Despite such flaws there is a sufficient amount of evidence to support the core of his argument, especially the parts most directly pertaining to the decline of the Knights.

As can be seen not only in Weir's work but also in Voss's and Fink's works the defeat and decline of the Knights of Labor was due to employer opposition in cultural, economic, and political spheres. They were not defeated due to a conflict between skilled and unskilled workers or to ethnic conflicts within the working class or to “American individualism.” They were crushed by violent undemocratic means and by employers' superior resources. The KOL's destruction had a dramatic impact on the evolution of the American labor movement, putting it on a more conservative path than its European counterparts. The conservativeness of American labor unions is not the result of a lack of class struggle in the United States but was caused by class struggle; a struggle in which employers emerged stronger than elsewhere. The impact is still felt today through the relative conservativeness of the AFL-CIO and even the Change to Win Coalition.

Endnotes

1 Robert E. Weir, Beyond Labor's Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), p. 1.

2 Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. xi.

3 Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 235.

4 Voss, p. 196-197.

5 Voss, p. 196-197.

6 Voss, p. 191-194.

7 Weir, p. 16.

8 Weir, p. 64.

9 Weir, p. 195-230.

10 Ibid.

11 Weir, 103-143.