“Five men in this country control the chief interests of five hundred thousand workingmen, and can at any moment take the means of livelihood from two and a half millions of souls.  These men compose the executive board of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor of America.  The ability of the president and cabinet to turn out all the men in the civil service, and to shift from one post to another the duties of the men in the army and navy, is a petty authority compared with that of these five Knights.  The authority of the late Cardinal was, and that of the bishops of the Methodist Church is, narrow and prescribed, so far as material affairs are concerned, in comparison with that of these five rulers.

“They can stay the nimble touch of almost every telegraph operator; can shut up most of the mills and factories, and can disable the railroads.  They can issue an edict against any manufactured goods so as to make their subjects cease buying them, and the tradesmen stop selling them.

“They can array labor against capital, putting labor on the offensive or the defensive, for quiet and stubborn self-protection, or for angry, organized assault, as they will.”

Before long the Order was able to benefit by this publicity in quarters where the tale of its great power could only attract unqualified attention, namely, in Congress.  The Knights of Labor led in the agitation for prohibiting the immigration of alien contract laborers.  The problem of contract immigrant labor rapidly came to the front in 1884, when such labor began frequently to be used to defeat strikes.

Twenty persons appeared to testify before the committee in favor of the bill, of whom all but two or three belonged to the Knights of Labor.  The anti-contract labor law which was passed by Congress on February 2, 1885, therefore, was due almost entirely to the efforts of the Knights of Labor.  The trade unions gave little active support, for to the skilled workingmen the importation of contract Italian and Hungarian laborers was a matter of small importance.  On the other hand, to the Knights of Labor with their vast contingent of unskilled it was a strong menace.  Although the law could not be enforced and had to be amended in 1887 in order to render it effective, its passage nevertheless attests the political influence already exercised by the Order in 1885.

The outcome of the Gould strike of 1885 and the dramatic exaggeration of the prowess of the Order by press and even by pulpit were largely responsible for the psychological setting that called forth and surrounded the great upheaval of 1886.  This upheaval meant more than the mere quickening of the pace of the movement begun in preceding years and decades.  It signalled the appearance on the scene of a new class which had not hitherto found a place in the labor movement, namely the unskilled.  All the peculiar characteristics of the dramatic events in 1886 and 1887, the highly