The Knights of Labor: The nation’s first real labor movement

The Workman was part of the tremendous labor upsurge of the 1880s, and my great-grandfather, like many others, was inspired by the great vision of solidarity promoted by the largest labor organization of late nineteenth-century America, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor (KOL).

The Knights in St. Paul
In December, 1886, George Jones traveled to St. Paul where he visited fellow labor editor James Burns. Burns was a member of Local Assembly 2235 of the Knights of Labor, made up of printers. LA 2235 was one of the seven pioneer local unions which met on November 12, 1882, and organized the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Burns was elected Secretary of the Assembly in September 1883.

"While in St. Paul last week," Jones reported to his Chippewa Falls readers, "we called upon Mr. James H. Burns, editor of the Labor Echo. Mr. Burns is a bright, active young man and every true Knight of Labor should feel an interest in supporting the Echo."

An early street scene from St. Paul. Photo from the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society

The St. Paul Labor Echo was a Knights of Labor newspaper, published weekly until the end of the 1880s. The last editor was Ed Harroun, the 20-something president of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly depicted in a previous article. (Union Advocate, Jan 27, 1997). The Trades and Labor Assembly did not publish its own newspaper until the formation of the Union Advocate by another printer, Cornelius Guiney, in 1897. "Con" Guiney, like Burns, was a delegate to the first meeting of the Assembly, but Guiney had represented a different printers organization, Typographical Local 30. The International Typographical Union, founded before the Civil War, did not affiliate with the KOL, but participated in the formation of the American Federation of Labor in 1886.

Founded in 1869
The Knights of Labor was founded in 1869 in Philadelphia by a group of garment workers and for the next 10 years remained small and secretive, with less than 10,000 members nationally. Modeled in part after Masonic organizations, it had complicated rituals and secret signs like other fraternal groups.

Many years later, a retired railroad machinist who had joined the KOL in 1882 at the Northern Pacific shops in Brainerd recalled to an interviewer from the Minnesota Historical Society that "we had to take an oath not to divulge any secrets of the organization…The employer was very much opposed to employees being members of the Knights of Labor." Members used secret signs to communicate with other members. "Another sign, when you wanted to make it known that you were a Knight, included wiping the right side of your forehead with your hand. If the stranger you greeted was a member too, he wiped the other side of his forehead with his left hand."

It is easy to make this sound silly, but, as Ferguson, who later worked at the Northern Pacific\’s Como Shops in St. Paul said, the employers were opposed to workers joining labor organizations and did not hesitate to fire and blacklist unionists. "When we were most active and had our largest membership the employers used to plant Pinkerton detectives to find out our activities…Men were being discharged every week," Ferguson said. Each new member of the Knights was told at his initiation that "…public associations having failed, after a struggle of centuries, to protect or advance the interests of labor, we have lawfully constituted this Assembly. Hid from public view, covered by an impenetrable veil of secrecy…to shield ourselves and you from persecution and wrong…by endeavoring to secure the just reward of our toil…We mean to uphold the dignity of labor, to affirm the nobility of all who live in accordance with God, \’in the sweat of they brow shalt thou eat bread.’"

The United States went through a deep economic downturn from 1873-1878. After the depression lifted, industrialization took off with tremendous energy — coal, steel, oil, railroads, meatpacking and others. The new workers who were drawn into the industrial labor force for the first time looked for an organization that could represent their interests. They poured into the Knights of Labor by the hundreds of thousands. By 1886 there were over 1 million workers who called themselves Knights, in a workforce of some 17 million, where there had never been a nationwide labor organization before. The KOL was transformed from a small and cautious underground organization into the largest and most visible labor organization in the history of this country up to that point, in many ways not equaled until the formation of the CIO in the mid 1930s.

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Largest labor organization
It was no longer necessary, or possible, to maintain secrecy as immense numbers of workers poured into the organization and burst into public activity, both political and economic. "The organized workingmen of Eau Claire, Wis., will run an independent labor ticket for municipal officers at the spring (1887) election," the Workman reported. "Their grit is to be commended."

The activities of the Knights became a subject of avid interest for the daily papers. "The growth of the labor organizations of St. Paul is phenomenal," reported the St. Paul Globe in its June 14, 1885, edition. "Every branch which has a society is taking in new members at a great rate. At a late meeting of the KOL, numbers of members were compelled to sit upon the floor, so full was the room."

The previous month the Globe had reported that "in St. Paul, the order is growing at a tremendous rate. At each of the last two meetings of Assembly No. 1998 twenty or thirty candidates have been initiated and at the meeting this week it is expected that not less than fifty will join. There is also talk of forming new assemblies. One is talked of on East Seventh Street, one in West St. Paul and one near the (Jackson Street) Manitoba (railroad) shops."

An 1890 St. Paul City Directory lists 13 KOL local assemblies. Local No. 1998 met every Wednesday evening at 8 pm at the Knights\’ United Labor Hall at 70 East Seventh Street. The Knights had a second St. Paul headquarters at the corner of Park and Sycamore Streets, where Local Assembly No. 4031 met every Thursday evening. A photo taken in the 1940s shows the hall, suffering from neglect after 60 years, but in its day it was the showplace of LA 4031, led by Master Workman Michael O\’Toole, a carpenter at the Jackson Street shops and Secretary Patrick Coleman, an oiler at the Pioneer Press building. A resident of the neighborhood told me in 1990 that the building had been known as the "Red Flats." Whether that referred to paint or politics, he couldn\’t say.

J.P.  McGaughey

The \’Master Workman\’
The outstanding leader produced by the KOL in Minnesota was J.P. McGaughey, a railroad switchman who lost his arm while working on the Minnesota Eastern Railroad in the winter of 1879. "Jack" McGaughey, born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, had worked on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and participated in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers\’ strike in 1873 before coming to Minnesota in 1880.

McGaughey was elected "Master Workman" (chief officer) of District Assembly No. 79 of the Knights, and was widely recognized as the KOL\’s best public speaker. "In the circles of organized labor in… Minnesota, no man is more widely known than J.P. McGaughey, and, it may be added, no one is more highly respected," a local paper reported. District Assembly No. 79, which included Minnesota, "took the place of the present State Federation of Labor," an old-timer recalled in 1914. The State Federation was not organized until 1890. Its founders included many former KOL leaders.

The Hastings Journal called Jack McGaughey "the true representative of the laboring classes, the one-armed ex-soldier, the scholar and poet." McGaughey\’s two-hour speech at the Dakota County Courthouse "was often interrupted by applause" and "electrified" the audience, the Journal said. "From the feeling and temperament of those present at the meeting, we do not hesitate to say that a local Assembly of the Knights of Labor will be organized in this city at an early day, notwithstanding the herculean efforts of some of our so-called business men to prevent it,” the paper said. "Who knows but that we have an Assembly of those terrible Knights already organized in our midst? Who can say?"

When McGaughey walked onto the platform of a political convention in St. Paul accompanied by fellow Knight James Burns and 27 other labor representatives, "the applause was long and furious," the Minneapolis Evening Journal reported. "When it died down, somebody cried \’Another!\’ and the thundering cheering broke out anew. It was such an ovation that shows more clearly than anything else could the position the labor problem has taken among the great problems of the day," the paper said.

Another leading figure in the St. Paul Knights was James H. Guyett (apparently no relation to the former P-9 president). Guyett belonged to a KOL boot and shoe workers local, and served on the Knights\’ state executive board. In January 1887, Guyett was elected to a term as president of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly.

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The decline
By 1900, the Knights of Labor had largely disappeared as a factor in American labor, replaced primarily by the American Federation of Labor. While all the reasons for this cannot be adequately discussed here, one of the Knights\’ weaknesses as a labor organization, ironically, was its all-inclusiveness. Anyone who was not a lawyer or a saloon-keeper could belong to the KOL. The Pioneer Press reported that Rochester was represented at a statewide meeting in September, 1886, by Dr. William Mayo. As famed Cleveland labor editor Max Hayes said, the organization "became the happy hunting ground for designing politicians and business promoters…In fact, trade (union) affairs relating to wages, hours, etc. became very largely secondary matters, and …politicians and hustlers who were members of the Democratic and Republican parties lined up on opposite sides of the chamber and battled each other for endorsements …to such an extent that unions uninterested in political spoils withdrew their delegates."

Here in St. Paul, as elsewhere, craft-based KOL assemblies gradually pulled out and joined the AFL. When the KOL State Executive Board met in Minneapolis on May 12, 1887, Knights of Labor Local Assembly No. 6880, St. Paul Painters, requested permission to withdraw from District Assembly No. 79 to join the National Trade District of Painters and Decorators.

Fred Ferguson remembered that "the Knights of Labor was based on industrial unionism…In 1886-1887 they began forming unions of skilled men under the Knights of Labor. The carpenters had a local but they were still under the jurisdiction of the KOL…Here in St. Paul in 1887-88 the Machinists\’ local was organized and held under the Knights of Labor. Our leaders were divided as to whether we should make it a trade union or get into politics. In 1889 the Knights of Labor (machinists local) gave up their charter…and went into the International Association of Machinists, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. We had 300 machinists at that time. Men began to drop out by two\’s and three\’s and go into the AF of L. Finally we gave up our charter in 1890. There were not enough men left to hold it together."

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An injury to one . . .
Today, the story of the Knights of Labor is so little known that it has been forgotten that many crucial ideas — industrial unionism, solidarity and inclusiveness — even the idea of the union label as a guide for pro-labor consumers — were introduced into American labor by the KOL. It was the Knights who gave American labor the slogan "An injury to one is the concern of all." The KOL, founded shortly after the Civil War, was profoundly influenced by the great liberating impact of that struggle, and affirmatively sought to bring African-Americans and women into active participation, at a time when "respectable" society discouraged it. The St. Paul Globe reported that the youngest "delegate" to the 1886 Richmond, Virginia, national convention of the KOL, where the Knights boycotted hotels that would not accept black delegates, was the two-week-old daughter of Elizabeth Rogers, the "Master Workman" of the Chicago District Assembly. "This delegate, whose mother got up from her bed to travel over a thousand miles two weeks after (her child was born), only claimed the floor once during the entire convention," the paper said, "and then, baby-like, insisted on being heard."

Although the KOL ultimately disappeared, we should remember it as a great anticipation. In many ways, its best and most compelling ideas are yet to be fully realized. In the first book to be written on the KOL in 60 years, author Robert Weir says, "If the Order failed — a claim of which I am dubious — it is because it tried to do so much. The Knights of Labor peaked at a time when America was on the cusp of becoming a rationalized, corporatized entity and the triumph of mass consumer culture was nearly complete. As the transformations matured, the Knights faded. The Order was riddled with conflict and contradictions, yet managed to attract masses of workers and frighten most capitalists. In the end the KOL was crushed by organized capital, not by outmoded ideas or contradictions."

For the first time, the Knights introduced to the American people the inspiring vision of the power of a united labor movement that included all working people, skilled, unskilled, black, white, male and female.

One of those inspired was Mark Twain, a life-long member of the International Typographical Union. In a speech on March 22, 1886, entitled "Knights of Labor –The New Dynasty," Twain said, "When all the bricklayers, and all the machinists, and all the miners, and blacksmiths, and printers, and hod-carriers, and stevedores, and housepainters, and brakemen, and engineers..and factory hands, and all the shopgirls, and all the sewing machine women, and all the telegraph operators, in a word, all the myriads of toilers in whom is slumbering the reality of that thing which you call Power, …when these rise, call the vast spectacle by any deluding name that will please your ear, but the fact remains that a Nation has risen."

Dave Riehle is a part-time historian and full-time railroad conductor. He is also local chairman for United Transportation Union Local 650 in St. Paul.