of craft
lines and upon an absolute unity of all classes of labor under one
guiding head. The subdivision was territorial instead of occupational
and the government centralized.

The constitution of the Knights of Labor was drawn in 1878 when the
Order laid aside the veil of secrecy to which it had clung since its
foundation in 1869. The lowest unit of organization was the local
assembly of ten or more, at least three-fourths of whom had to be wage
earners at any trade. Above the local assembly was the "district
assembly" and above it the "General Assembly." The district assembly had
absolute power over its local assemblies and the General Assembly was
given "full and final jurisdiction" as "the highest tribunal" of the
Order.[24] Between sessions of the General Assembly the power was vested
in a General Executive Board, presided over by a Grand Master Workman.

The Order of the Knights of Labor in practice carried out the idea which
is now advocated so fervently by revolutionary unionists, namely the
"One Big Union," since it avowedly aimed to bring into one organization
"all productive labor." This idea in organization was aided by the
weakness of the trade unions during the long depression of the
seventies, which led many to hope for better things from a general
pooling of labor strength. But its main appeal rested on a view that
machine technique tends to do away with all distinctions of trades by
reducing all workers to the level of unskilled machine tenders. To its
protagonists therefore the "one big union" stood for an adjustment to
the new technique.

First to face the problem of adjustment to the machine technique of the
factory system were the shoemakers. They organized in 1867 the Order of
the Knights of St. Crispin, mainly for the purpose of suppressing the
competitive menace of "green hands," that is unskilled workers put to
work on shoe machines. At its height in 1872, the Crispins numbered
about 50,000, perhaps the largest union in the whole world at that time.
The coopers began to be menaced by machinery about the middle of the
sixties, and about the same time the machinists and blacksmiths, too,
saw their trade broken up by the introduction of the principle of
standardized parts and quantity production in the making of machinery.
From these trades came the national leaders of the Knights of Labor and
the strongest advocates of the new principle in labor organization and
of the interests of the unskil