n, so the Knights of Labor overlooked the fact that their scheme would
retard the progress of the skilled trades.

The Knights were in nearly every case the aggressors, and it is
significant that among the local organizations of the Knights inimical
to trade unions, District Assembly 49, of New York, should prove the
most relentless. It was this assembly which conducted the longshoremen's
and coal miners' strike in New York in 1887 and which, as we saw,[25]
did not hesitate to tie up the industries of the entire city for the
sake of securing the demands of several hundred unskilled workingmen.
Though District Assembly 49, New York, came into conflict with not a few
of the trade unions in that city, its battle royal was fought with the
cigar makers' unions. There were at the time two factions among the
cigar makers, one upholding the International Cigar Makers' Union with
Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers as leaders, the other calling itself
the Progressive Union, which was more socialistic in nature and composed
of more recent immigrants and less skilled workers. District Assembly 49
of the Knights of Labor took a hand in the struggle to support the
Progressive Union and by skillful management brought the situation to
the point where the latter had to allow itself to be absorbed into the
Knights of Labor.

The events in the cigar making trade in New York brought to a climax the
sporadic struggles that had been going on between the Order and the
trade unions. The trade unions demanded that the Knights of Labor
respect their "jurisdiction" and proposed a "treaty of peace" with such
drastic terms that had they been accepted the trade unions would have
been left in the sole possession of the field. The Order was at first
more conciliatory. It would not of course cease to take part in
industrial disputes and industrial matters, but it proposed a _modus
vivendi_ on a basis of an interchange of "working cards" and common
action against employers. At the same time it addressed separately to
each national trade union a gentle admonition to think of the unskilled
workers as well as of themselves. The address said: "In the use of the
wonderful inventions, your organization plays a most important part.
Naturally it embraces within its ranks a very large proportion of
laborers of a high grade of skill and intelligence. With this skill of
hand, guided by intelligent thought, comes the right to demand that
excess of compensation pai