However, the depression of 1883-1885 had one redeeming feature by which it was distinguished from other depressions.  With falling prices, diminishing margins of profit, and decreasing wages, the amount of employment was not materially diminished.  Times continued hard during 1885, a slight improvement showing itself only during the last months of the year.  The years 1886 and 1887 were a period of gradual recovery, and normal conditions may be said to have returned about the middle of 1887.  Except in New England, the old wages, which had been reduced during the bad years, were won again by the spring of 1887.

The year 1884 was one of decisive failure in strikes.  They were practically all directed against reductions in wages and for the right of organization.  The most conspicuous strikes were those of the Fall River spinners, the Troy stove mounters, the Cincinnati cigar makers and the Hocking Valley coal miners.

The failure of strikes brought into use the other weapon of labor—­the boycott.  But not until the latter part of 1884, when the failure of the strike as a weapon became apparent, did the boycott assume the nature of an epidemic.  The boycott movement was a truly national one, affecting the South and the Far West as well as the East and Middle West.  The number of boycotts during 1885 was nearly seven times as large as during 1884.  Nearly all of the boycotts either originated with, or were taken up by, the Knights of Labor.

The strike again came into prominence in the latter half of 1885.  This coincided with the beginning of an upward trend in general business conditions.  The strikes of 1885, even more than those of the preceding year, were spontaneous outbreaks of unorganized masses.

The frequent railway strikes were a characteristic feature of the labor movement in 1885.  Most notable was the Gould railway strike in March, 1885.  On February 26, a cut of 10 percent was ordered in the wages of the shopmen of the Wabash road.  A similar reduction had been made in October, 1884, on the Missouri, Kansas & Texas.  Strikes occurred on the two roads, one on February 27 and the other March 9, and the strikers were joined by the men on the third Gould road, the Missouri Pacific, at all points where the two lines touched, making altogether over 4500 men on strike.  The train service personnel, that is, the locomotive engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors, supported the strikers and to this fact more than to any other was due their speedy victory.  The wages were restored and the strikers reemployed.  But six months later this was followed by a second strike.  The road, now in the hands of a receiver, reduced the force of shopmen at Moberly, Missouri, to the lowest possible limit, which virtually meant a lockout of the members of the Knights of Labor in direct violation of the conditions of settlement of the preceding strike.  The General Executive Board of the Knights, after a futile attempt to have a conference