A Giant Brotherhood of Toil – Knights of Labor
Storm the fort, ye Knights of Labor
Battle for your cause;
Equal rights for every neighbor
Down with tyrant laws.
Toiling millions now are waking
see them marching on.
All the tyrants now are shaking,
Ere their power is gone.
A Philadelphia tailor named Uriah Stephens dreamed of a great brotherhood that would unite skilled and unskilled workers, so they could receive their fair share of the nation’s wealth. His hope was that The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor would be “A Giant Brotherhood of Toil” and raise workers out of wage slavery, without strikes or boycotts.
When Stephens resigned in 1879, Terrence V. Powderly (1849-1924) replaced him as “Grand Master Workman.” Powderly was a social reformer, in favor of abolishing the wage system for cooperatively owned shops. He did not believe that strikes proved a successful means of achieving aims and thought workers and employers should set up Boards of Arbitration instead.
The motto of The Order of the Knights of Labor, as Powderly renamed this society, was “An injury to one is the concern of all.” Membership was open to all “men and women of every craft, creed, and color.” Under Powderly’s leadership and until 1893, the Knights of Labor was the largest, most significant labor organization in the country. The Knights’ greatest victory came in 1885 when shopmen at Jay Gould’s Southwestern Railroads went on strike and got management to negotiate their grievances.
In the 1890s many Knights resigned to join the newly organized American Federation of Labor (AF of L). The Knights of Labor represented the forerunner of the trade unionism of the 1930s, when such industrial unions would be established by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO).
Source: Mofford, Juliet Haines. Talkin’ Union: The American Labor Movement. Carlisle, MA: Discovery Enterprises, 1997. Print (p. 14, Knights of Labor)
Storm the fort, ye Knights of Labor
Battle for your cause;
Equal rights for every neighbor
Down with tyrant laws.
Toiling millions now are waking
see them marching on.
All the tyrants now are shaking,
Ere their power is gone.
A Philadelphia tailor named Uriah Stephens dreamed of a great brotherhood that would unite skilled and unskilled workers, so they could receive their fair share of the nation’s wealth. His hope was that The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor would be “A Giant Brotherhood of Toil” and raise workers out of wage slavery, without strikes or boycotts.
When Stephens resigned in 1879, Terrence V. Powderly (1849-1924) replaced him as “Grand Master Workman.” Powderly was a social reformer, in favor of abolishing the wage system for cooperatively owned shops. He did not believe that strikes proved a successful means of achieving aims and thought workers and employers should set up Boards of Arbitration instead.
The motto of The Order of the Knights of Labor, as Powderly renamed this society, was “An injury to one is the concern of all.” Membership was open to all “men and women of every craft, creed, and color.” Under Powderly’s leadership and until 1893, the Knights of Labor was the largest, most significant labor organization in the country. The Knights’ greatest victory came in 1885 when shopmen at Jay Gould’s Southwestern Railroads went on strike and got management to negotiate their grievances.
In the 1890s many Knights resigned to join the newly organized American Federation of Labor (AF of L). The Knights of Labor represented the forerunner of the trade unionism of the 1930s, when such industrial unions would be established by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO).
Source: Mofford, Juliet Haines. Talkin’ Union: The American Labor Movement. Carlisle, MA: Discovery Enterprises, 1997. Print (p. 14, Knights of Labor)