ant single
factor in the history of American labor, for without it the entire
country might have been overrun by Mongolian labor and the labor
movement might have become a conflict of races instead of one of
classes.[10]

The seventies witnessed another of those recurring attempts of
consumers' cooperation already noticed in the forties and sixties. This
time the movement was organized by the "Sovereigns of Industry," a
secret order, founded at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1874 by one
William H. Earle. The spirit of the Order was entirely peaceful and
unobtrusive as expressed in the first paragraph of the Declaration of
Purposes which reads as follows:

"The Order of the Sovereigns of Industry is an association of the
industrial or laboring classes, without regard to race, sex, color,
nationality, or occupation; not founded for the purpose of waging any
war of aggression upon any other class, or for fostering any antagonism
of labor against capital, or of arraying the poor against the rich; but
for mutual assistance in self-improvement and self-protection."

The scheme of organization called for a local council including members
from the town or district, a state council, comprising representatives
from the local councils and a National Council in which the States were
represented. The president of the National Council was the founder of
the Order, William H. Earle.

Success accompanied the efforts of the promoters of the Sovereigns of
Industry for a few years. The total membership in 1875-1876 was 40,000,
of whom seventy-five percent were in New England and forty-three percent
in Massachusetts. Though the Order extended into other States and even
reached the territories, its chief strength always remained in New
England and the Middle States. During the last period of its existence a
national organ was published at Washington, but the Order does not
appear to have gained a foothold in any of the more Southern sections of
the country.

In 1875, 101 local councils reported as having some method of supplying
members with goods, 46 of whom operated stores. The largest store
belonged to the council at Springfield, Massachusetts, which in 1875
built the "Sovereign Block" at a cost of $35,500. In his address at the
fourth annual session in Washington, President Earle stated that the
store in Springfield led all the others with sales amounting to $119,000
for the preceding year. About one-half of the councils failed to r