ps and
factories.

CHAPTER 3

THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF
LABOR

With the practical disintegration of the organized labor movement in the
seventies, two nuclei held together and showed promise of future growth.
One was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor" and the other a small
trade union movement grouped around the International Cigar Makers'
Union.

The "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," while it first became
important in the labor movement after 1873, was founded in 1869 by Uriah
Smith Stephens, a tailor who had been educated for the ministry, as a
secret organization. Secrecy was adopted as a protection against
persecutions by employers.

The principles of the Order were set forth by Stephens in the secret
ritual. "Open and public association having failed after a struggle of
centuries to protect or advance the interest of labor, we have lawfully
constituted this Assembly," and "in using this power of organized effort
and cooperation, we but imitate the example of capital heretofore set in
numberless instances;" for, "in all the multifarious branches of trade,
capital has its combinations, and, whether intended or not, it crushes
the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity into the dust."
However, "we mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism
to necessary capital." The remedy consists first in work of education:
"We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the
only creator of values or capital) and the justice of its receiving a
full, just share of the values or capital it has created." The next
remedy was legislation: "We shall, with all our strength, support laws
made to harmonize the interests of labor and capital, for labor alone
gives life and value to capital, and also those laws which tend to
lighten the exhaustiveness of toil." Next in order were mutual benefits.
"We shall use every lawful and honorable means to procure and retain
employ for one another, coupled with a just and fair remuneration, and,
should accident or misfortune befall one of our number, render such aid
as lies within our power to give, without inquiring his country or his
creed."

For nine years the Order remained a secret organization and showed but a
slow growth. In 1878 it was forced to abolish secrecy. The public mind
was rendered uneasy by the revolutionary uprising of workingmen of Paris
who set up the famous "Commu