led workers in general. The conflict
between the trade unions and the Knights of Labor turned on the question
of the unskilled workers.

The conflict was held in abeyance during the early eighties. The trade
unions were by far the strongest organizations in the field and scented
no particular danger when here or there the Knights formed an assembly
either contiguous to the sphere of a trade union or even at times
encroaching upon it.

With the Great Upheaval, which began in 1884, and the inrushing of
hundreds of thousands of semi-skilled and unskilled workers into the
Order, a new situation was created. The leaders of the Knights realized
that mere numbers were not sufficient to defeat the employers and that
control over the skilled, and consequently the more strategic
occupations, was required before the unskilled and semi-skilled could
expect to march to victory. Hence, parallel to the tremendous growth of
the Knights in 1886, there was a constantly growing effort to absorb the
existing trade unions for the purpose of making them subservient to the
interests of the less skilled elements. It was mainly that which
produced the bitter conflict between the Knights and the trade unions
during 1886 and 1887. Neither the jealousy aroused by the success of the
unions nor the opposite aims of labor solidarity and trade separatism
gives an adequate explanation of this conflict. The one, of course,
aggravated the situation by introducing a feeling of personal
bitterness, and the other furnished an appealing argument to each side.
But the struggle was one between groups within the working class, in
which the small but more skilled group fought for independence of the
larger but weaker group of the unskilled and semi-skilled. The skilled
men stood for the right to use their advantage of skill and efficient
organization in order to wrest the maximum amount of concessions for
themselves. The Knights of Labor endeavored to annex the skilled men in
order that the advantage from their exceptional fighting strength might
lift up the unskilled and semi-skilled. From the point of view of a
struggle between principles, this was indeed a clash between the
principle of solidarity of labor and that of trade separatism, but, in
reality, each of the principles reflected only the special interest of a
certain portion of the working class. Just as the trade unions, when
they fought for trade autonomy, really refused to consider the unskilled
me