NOTES AND NOTIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 7301, 27 August 1887, Page 6 (Supplement)

NOTES AND NOTIONS.

[By a New Zeamndkr Aurqad.]

The Knights of Labor Their origin, objects, methods, and men—The attitude of the Order towards trade unions —lts exclusion of the ''four fleecing classes of society : lawyers, bankers, brokers, andliquordealers"—ltsattitude towards growth of the order—" Cranks turn the world." Some twenty years ago the people of Philadelphia were surprise and startled at seeing certain mysterious figures chalked on the streets, side-walks, and fence-boards of the oity. About the same time would appear oertain printed notices with no heading exoept five asterisks [*****] Here is one of the cabalistic chalk-marks : 8 I+B 8000 To the initiated this read: '' Local Assembly, No. 8,000, meets August Ist, at 8 p.m." This was how the Knights of Labor, twenty years ago, conveyed information to each other. They were a small insignificant body, just struggling into existence. Like the early Christians in the Catacombs, they had to hide their methods and plans from public scrutiny. They adopted such secret signs as those above to veil their meetings and shroud themselves in mystery. But to-day all that is passed. They have come forth before the public, and America is face to face with an organisation of men and women without parallel in numbers, organisations, and objects in the history of the world. I propose to supply your readers with some notes regarding the history, methods, and men of the Knights of Labor in America. My information is derived partly from personal inquiry, and partly from newspapers, magazines, and official documents of the Order. The ORIGIN OF THE KNIGHTS O*' LABOR dates from November, 1869, or at any rate the first local assembly met at Philadelphia in that year. The founder was Uriah S. Stephens. Stephens was a tailor of a philosophic turn of mind, who, dissatisfied with the trades unions, resolved- to found an institution on a broader basis, and one that would be more serviceable to the workmen. He associated with him a fellowworkman—James Wright. This latter had the faculty of organisation, and in November, 1869, the first permanent local assembly of the Knights of Labor met in Philadelphia. Stephens was elected master workman, and a committee of seven appointed. Their meetings and methods were for long kept a profound secret. They were called together by such cabalistic signs as those just mentioned, and an air of mystery pervaded the Order and all its doings. For ten years Stephens remained at the head of the organisation, and during that time it advanced secretly and surely in numbers and in influence. Stephens died in 1879, and was succeeded by

TERENCE V. I'OWDERLY,

With Powderly a new era begins. The Order soon grew strong enough to face the public, and under the leadership of Powderly the Knights of Labor took the open field to fight the workman's battles. Mr Powderly, like Mr Parnell, is an " uncrowned king." He is the leader of an army numbering almost, if not quite, a million, and the ranks of which are being constantly increased by new recruits. As he said not long since in Boston: "lam no monarch, yet, as the head of an organisation that is laboring to bring this country back to her original moorings, I do represent more than any monarch on God's earth." This " uncrowned king " is not unworthy of his position. He is a man, judging from his speeches, of keen intellectual perception and of intense moral sympathy. He is of Irish extraction, was born at Carbondale (Pa.), and was a machinist by trade. He is by no means an extremist, and his high character and strong will have hitherto enabled him to steer the organisation clear of the rocks and shoals that lie along its course.

THE OBJECTS OF THE KNIGHTS OK LABOR are, generally, to secure to the workmen a more equitable return for his labor, and, by shortening the hours of labor, to obtain more time for social and intellectual recreations, and more share in the gains and honors of advancing civilisation. Here are the specific measures that are urged to be adopted to reach these ends, and which may have interest for your readers : 1. To bring within the folds of organisation every department of productive industry, nuking knowledge a standpoint for action, and industrial, moral worth—not weolth—the true standard of individual and national greatness, 2. To secure to the toilers a proper share of the wealth which they create; more of the leisure that rightfully belongs to them; more society advantages; more of the benefits, privileges, and emoluments of the world—in a word, all those rights and privile;cs necessary to make them capable of enjoying, appreciating, and defcmVng the blessings of good government.

3. To arrive at the true condition of the producing masses in their educational, rnoial, and financial conditions, by demanding from the wirious Governments the establishing of Bureaus of Labor Statistic?. 4 The establishment of co-operative institution?, productive and distributive, 5. The reserving of the public lands—the heritage of the people—for the actual settler; not another acre for railroads or speculators. 6. The enactment of laws giving mechanic! and laborers a first lien on their work for their full wages. 7. The abolishment of the contract system on national, state, and municipal wotk. 8. The enactment of laws to compel chartered corporations to pay their employed weekly in full for labor performed during the preceding week, in the lawful money of the country.

9. The substitution of arbitration for strikes whenever and wherever the employers and emplojes are willing to meet on tquitable grounds. 10. The prohibition of employm nt of children in workshops, mines, and factories before attaining their fourteenth year. 11. To abolish the system of letting out by contracts the labor of convicts in our prisons and reformatory institutions. 12. To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work. 13. The reduction of the hours of labor to eight, so that the laborers may have more time for social enjoyment and intellectual improvement, and be enabled to reap the advantages conferred by the labor-saving machinery which their brains havo created.

14. To prevail upon Governments to establish a purely national circulating medium, issued directly to the people, without the intervention of any system of banking corporations, which money shall be a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private. These are the general and specific objects of the Knights of Labor. Now as to

THE MKTHODS of obtaining these. The membership is open to both sexes. Any man or woman of good moral character is eligible for membership. Nor is membership confined to one trade or profession. It is open to all, with four significant exceptions, and as a matter of fact it has in its ranks not only laborers with hands but with brains, as journalists, clergymen, and others. It is noteworthy, however, that it proscribes lawyers, brokers, bankers, and liquor - dealers. These the Knights of Labor call the "four fleecing classes of modern society," and as such its organisation will have nothing to do with them. Its

ATTITUDE TOWAROS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC is remarkable and noteworthy. No one known to be addicted to drink is eligible for membership. It prohibits the meeting of any local assembly in saloons. When the Knights met last year in Cleveland, their headquarters were at the only temperance hotel in the city. A very striking incident in their meetings was the reception accorded to a delegate of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Pour out of the five members of the Executive are total abstainers. Mr Powderly himself is what some people would almost call a fanatical total abstainer. Thus, speaking at Boston in June last, he said: " Had I ten million tongues, and a throat for each tongue, I would say to every man, woman, and child here to-night' Throw strong drink aside as you would an ounce of liquid Hell. It sears the conscience ; it. destroys everything it touches.' ... I have seen it in eveiy city this side the Mississippi, and I know that the most damning curse to the laborer is that which gurgles from the neck of the bottle. I had rather be at the head of an organisation of 100,000 honest, earnest temperance men than at the head of an organisation of 12,000,000 drinkers, whether moderate or any other kind." The rapturous applause which greeted sentiments like this from the head of the Knights of

Labor, as well as the flattering reception given to the delegate of the W.C.T.U, at Cleveland, are the best evidences of the prescienoe and permanency of the organisation. They are prophetio of a better daydawn for the laborer. The unit of the organisation is the local assembly ; above this is the district assembly, to which the former elects delegates. Above this again is the general assembly, whioh meets annually, ana elects a counoil of five, whose doings are entirely seoret, and whose authority is, praotioally, absolute. The local assembly is self* governing. It has power to order a strike or a boycott, but only within its own district. It cannot oall upon the district or general assembly for funds till the case has been investigated by tnem, and these have the power to forbid the strike, or boycott, or offer arbitration as may seem best. The power to order a national combination rests wholly with the executive of five; and hitherto their efforts have been always confined to securing arbitration and peace between capital and labor. Without an understanding of the functions of those assemblies the Order may get undeserved blame ; as, e.g., a strike, or a boycott, or an act of violence done by some member or some local assembly is frequently charged against the organisation as a whole, which is as unjust as to charge the crime of a single individual against the society of which he is a member. The attitude of the organisation towards STRIKES AND BOYCOTTS is very noteworthy. Mr Powderly, in one of his ''secret circulars," thus sets it forth: " It has always been, and is now, my policy to advocite conciliation and arbitration in the settlement of disputes between employer and employe. ... I say to the world that the Knights of Labor do not approve of or encourage strikes. There will be no more boycotts. The name will never more be used in our Order. The very ends that can be reached through the medium of the boycott can be obtained by the standing of two men face to face and talking a matter out and explaining their differences. The four great aims of the Order are to organise, to agitate, to educate, and to arbitrate." These are wise words, and contain sensible advice. There was a period in the history of the Order when it ran the danger of becoming a mere striking machine; but under the powerful influence of Mr Powderly saner sentiments have supervened, and, if it adheres to these principles, a reign of power and permanence lies before it. The strikes of the Knights have not been uniformly successful, but they have been successful in an unexpected way. They have helped to spread the Order. They have reacted very much upon it as the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews and Christians worked together for the diffusion of religion. When the strikes failed, the Knights were driven away elsewhere, many of them to distant parts of the States. But they carried their principles with them. They became active propagandists in their new spheres, and thus multiplied the numbers of their organisation. The funds to carry on the movement are derived from the membership fee. This varies in different districts. The initiation fee does not often rise above a doliar, and the dues range from about 6d to 2s per month. In addition to this there is the national or federal tax —about one shilling annually—levied by the General Assembly on all the members, which would give an income of about L 46.000. Part of the money is expended in giving relief when strikes are ordered. Part of it also goes to the paying of delegates in spreading the Order, and part of it to the paying of the executive officers. Tnis last is not on too liberal a scale. Mr Powderly himself only receives a little over L3OO a-year; the secretary L 260, and the other members mechanic's wages, and then only when they are doing the business of the Association.

As a further means of spreading the principles of the Order, resort is made, and with much effect, to skilfully got-np leaflets, with telling queries upon them. These are printed in such a way as to catch the eye at a glance. Here are one or two of them : Did you ever see a White Slavk ? The time is coming when men will not suffer wromj conditions to exist simply because their ancestors suffered worse. The law condemns the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common ; But lets the greater felon loose, Who steals the common from the goose. It is difficult to determine the relation of the Order to RELIGION. A large portion of the members are avowed members of the Church. But if a distinction be made between the Church and Christianity, this statement would need to be corrected into "a large majority." It is undoubtedly true that the members who think on the subject at all do make such a distinction, and, while many may not be found inside any church, it is only a minority who are out of sympathy with any religion. This minority consists for the most part of the more radical element, who are either Socialists or Anarchists. These are chiefly of German extraction, and, coming from a country in which religion was to them chiefly a thing of aristocrats and bayonets, they naturally regard the Church as hostile to their interests, and so denounce it bitterly. It is an easier matter to discover the relation of the Church to the organisation. The Roman Catholic Church, to which the larger part of professedly church members belongs, is quietly sympathetic. The Pope was recently urged to denounce the Order; but Rome is always wary and wise, and His Holiness was not led into such a grievous blunder. In regard to the Protestant churches, if tbey are true to their principles they must sympathise with the aims and objects of the Knights. Many of them have spoken in this spirit; but there are not a few that have been silent, and continue silent, and it is possible that the mistake which was made when the slavery question was agitated may be again repeated by the free churches of America. They may wait till it is too late for the Pulpit to be a power of control in the reforms desired. Then, as Professor Phelps, of Andover, says, "it will seem to speak in selfpreservation. The current will have risen to the level of their lips, and will have rolled in round the clergy, and they will speak because they must. But their speaking then will be the sputtering of a drowning man." For there is not the least question that this current of labor reform called into being by this organisation is by far the most powerful the world has ever yet seen. George Howells, in his ' History of the Conflicts of Capital and Labor,' thought the idea of federation of trades unions was little short of a phantom and a dream. But the dream is a living reality. It is embodied in concrete form in the Knights of Labor. Nay, this organisation is far greater than ever the trades unions could have grown to. Trades unions belong to the aristocracy of work. They only enrol the skilled workmen. But the Knights of Labor embrace not only both sexes, but all sorts and conditions of workmen. They admit into their ranks unskilled laborers who never before could be organised. Thus the basis of the Knights is the broadest conceivable. As Dr Tuckerman said—and said well—at the Cleveland Convention last year: " Our principle is the democratic one. Lift up the bottom of society and you lift up everything else with with it." The organisation formed on this broad and comprehensive platform already numbers more than anything of a like kind that has ever yet appeared in the world. It is spreading with unexampled rapidity in America. Emissarieshave been despatched to Britain to form branches there, and no doubt before long you may expect others to visit your colonies also. It has probably not so wide ramifications yet as the International Working Men's Association. But its principles are of a solider nature, and its leaders more trustworthy men. It is, however, not without its serious dangers. As a thoughtful writer in the New York * Christian Union' says : "It is easy to see that an organisation of half-a-million of men, mainly of one class, bound together chiefly by their own interests, under absolute allegiance to their elected leaders, may become a very dangerous power. So long as there is peace, and the Order is guided by wise and moderate counsels, so long it will promote peace, and lessen rather than increase the conflicts between capital and labor. But if revolution should arise, and passion dominate reason, men of moderation would be swept out of their place by revolutionary leaders, and

the army organised for peace might easily become a tremendous power for war." Anyhow, for good or for evil, the Knights, are here, and they have come to stay. No one oan calculate exactly what is to be the future of the movement. Folks of the old-fashioned sort may consider their demands extreme and their aims Utppian. "However, that's what we thinkj" said one of the Knights talking about their political platform to a newspaper reporter at the Cleveland Convention. "That's what we think, but then they call us cranks." A labor editor standing by rejoined, quiok as a flash, " Cranks turn the world."