Such, in brief, were the general business conditions of the country and the issues which engaged the energies of labor reformers during the period following the Civil War.Meanwhile great changes were made in labor organizations.Many of the old unions were reorganized, and numerous local amalgamations took place.Most of the organizations now took the form of secret societies whose initiations were marked with ***** formalism and whose routines were directed by a group of officers with royal titles and fortified by signs, passwords, and ritual.Some of these orders decorated the faithful with high-sounding degrees.
The societies adopted fantastic names such as "The Supreme Mechanical Order of the Sun," "The Knights of St.Crispin," and "The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," of which more presently.
Meanwhile, too, there was a growing desire to unify the workers of the country by some sort of national organization.The outcome was a notable Labor Congress held at Baltimore in August, 1866, which included all kinds of labor organizations and was attended by seventy-seven delegates from thirteen States.In the light of subsequent events its resolutions now seem conservative and constructive.This Congress believed that "all reforms in the labor movement can only be effected by an intelligent, systematic effort of the industrial classes...through the trades organizations." Of strikes it declared that "they have been injudicious and ill-advised, the result of impulse rather than principle,...and we would therefore discountenance them except as a dernier ressort, and when all means for an amicable and honorable adjustment has been abandoned." It issued a cautious and carefully phrased Address to the Workmen throughout the Country, urging them to organize and assuring them that "the first thing to be accomplished before we can hope for any great results is the thorough organization of all the departments of labor."The National Labor Union which resulted from this convention held seven Annual Congresses, and its proceedings show a statesmanlike conservatism and avoid extreme radicalism.This organization, which at its high tide represented a membership of 640,000, in its brief existence was influential in three important matters:
first, it pointed the way to national amalgamation and was thus a forerunner of more lasting efforts in this direction; secondly, it had a powerful influence in the eight-hour movement; and, thirdly, it was largely instrumental in establishing labor bureaus and in gathering statistics for the scientific study of labor questions.But the National Labor Union unfortunately went into politics; and politics proved its undoing.Upon affiliating with the Labor Reform party it dwindled rapidly, and after 1871it disappeared entirely.
One of the typical organizations of the time was the Order of the Knights of St.Crispin, so named after the patron saint of the shoemakers, and accessible only to members of that craft.It was first conceived in 1864 by Newell Daniels, a shoemaker in Milford, Massachusetts, but no organization was effected until 1867, when the founder had moved to Milwaukee.The ritual and constitution he had prepared was accepted then by a group of seven shoemakers, and in four years this insignificant mustard seed had grown into a great tree.The story is told by Frank K.
Foster,* who says, speaking of the order in 1868: "It made and unmade politicians; it established a monthly journal; it started cooperative stores; it fought, often successfully, against threatened reductions of wages...; it became the undoubted foremost trade organization of the world." But within five years the order was rent by factionalism and in 1878 was acknowledged to be dead.It perished from various causes--partly because it failed to assimilate or imbue with its doctrines the thousands of workmen who subscribed to its rules and ritual, partly because of the jealousy and treachery which is the fruitage of sudden prosperity, partly because of failure to fulfill the fervent hopes of thousands who joined it as a prelude to the industrial millennium; but especially it failed to endure because it was founded on an economic principle which could not be imposed upon society.The rule which embraced this principle reads as follows:
"No member of this Order shall teach, or aid in teaching, any fact or facts of boot or shoe******, unless the lodge shall give permission by a three-fourths vote...provided that this article shall not be so construed as to prevent a father from teaching his own son.Provided also, that this article shall not be so construed as to hinder any member of this organization from learning any or all parts of the trade." The medieval craft guild could not so easily be revived in these days of rapid changes, when a new stitching machine replaced in a day a hundred workmen.
And so the Knights of St.Crispin fell a victim to their own greed.
* "The Labor Movement, the Problem of Today," edited by George E.
McNeill, Chapter VIII.
The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, another of those societies of workingmen, was organized in November, 1869, by Uriah S.Stephens, a Philadelphia garment cutter, with the assistance of six fellow craftsmen.It has been said of Stephens that he was "a man of great force of character, a skilled mechanic, with the love of books which enabled him to pursue his studies during his apprenticeship, and feeling withal a strong affection for secret organizations, having been for many years connected with the Masonic Order." He was to have been educated for the ministry but, owing to financial reverses in his family, was obliged instead to learn a trade.Later he taught school for a few years, traveled extensively in the West Indies, South America, and California, and became an accomplished public speaker and a diligent observer of social conditions.
