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 shoemaking, 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