men of a return to the ten-hour day on October 11.
They justified this action on the ground that they could not compete
with Cincinnati and Kansas City, which operated on the ten-hour system.
On October 8, the men, who were organized in District Assemblies 27 and
54, suspended work, and the memorable lockout began. The packers'
association rejected all offers of compromise and on October 18 the men
were ordered to work on the ten-hour basis. But the dispute in October,
which was marked by a complete lack of ill-feeling on the part of the
men and was one of the most peaceable labor disputes of the year, was in
reality a mere prelude to a second disturbance which broke out in the
plant of Swift & Company on November 2 and became general throughout the
stockyards on November 6. The men demanded a return to the eight-hour
day, but the packers' association, which was now joined by Swift &
Company, who formerly had kept aloof, not only refused to give up the
ten-hour day, but declared that they would employ no Knights of Labor in
the future. The Knights retaliated by declaring a boycott on the meat of
Armour & Company. The behavior of the men was now no longer peaceable as
before, and the employers took extra precautions by prevailing upon the
governor to send two regiments of militia in addition to the several
hundred Pinkerton detectives employed by the association. To all
appearances, the men were slowly gaining over the employers, for on
November 10 the packers' association rescinded its decision not to
employ Knights, when suddenly on November 15, like a thunderbolt out of
a clear sky, a telegram arrived from Grand Master Workman Powderly
ordering the men back to work. Powderly had refused to consider the
reports from the members of the General Executive Board who were on the
ground, but, as was charged by them, was guided instead by the advice of
a priest who had appealed to him to call off the strike and thus put an
end to the suffering of the men and their families.

New York witnessed an even more characteristic Knights of Labor strike
and on a larger scale. This strike began as two insignificant separate
strikes, one by coal-handlers at the Jersey ports supplying New York
with coal and the other by longshoremen on the New York water front;
both starting on January 1, 1887. Eighty-five coal-handlers employed by
the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, members of the Knights of
Labor, struck against a reduction of