The Knights of Labor

   
                               The Knights of Labor was one of the biggest and most important labor organizations in the United States. A very important leaver was Terence V. Powderly, who was Irish politician and was head of the Knights of Labor in the late 1880s. The purpose of the Knights of Labor was in order to unite skilled and unskilled workers in order to fight for rights, and economic, and social reforms. One of the beliefs of Terence V. Powderly was that he did not want Chinese immigrants to come into the country because they took away the jobs from the Native Americans. He became acquainted with the ideology of the Greenbacks because they believed that the producers were the workers. The Knights of Labor were mainly known for doing strikes, however, Terence disliked strikes because he believed that strikes would drive the workers away and would result in simply in workers organizing and not actually making a change.

                          In 1869, the Knights of Labor adopted the Declaration of Principles, which delineated every change they wanted in the law in order for workers to have more rights.   In 1885, the union achieved the first successful national union in the United States with great influence and a large membership. One of the problems with the Knights of Labor, was that they were too disorganized to try to against the corporations that they were trying to get rights from. The reason as to why they were not able to do anything was because the leader, Terence V. Powderly, forbade them to use strike against the corporations which was one of the greatest tools they every had. In two occasions, Terence ended two major strikes for trying to get an eight hour day, in which they could have won against the Texas and Pacific Railroad and against Chicago Meatpacking House Industry. Terence was afraid of loosing the support of the Catholic Church because he did not want them to think they were trying to cause a "social revolution", which was when they started to loose a lot of their influence.

                    In the year 1886, there was a major riot, the Haymarket Massacre, in which there was a bombing against Haymarket Square. The bombing was blamed on workers and two of them were from the Knights of Labors. This riot first began as a peaceful rally in order to support that workers get eights hours a day, but a few civilians threw bombs at the police and then the massacre started. This bombs cause a lot of the memberships to be returned because of the rumors that linked the Knights of Labor with the massacre. This caused the end of the Knights of Labor because they wanted to cause a change but with the refusal of the leader they were not making any changes.