The disputes during the second half of 1886 ended, for the most part, disastrously to labor.  The number of men involved in six months, was estimated at 97,300.  Of these, about 75,300 were in nine great lockouts, of whom 54,000 suffered defeat at the hands of associated employers.  The most important lockouts were against 15,000 laundry workers at Troy, New York, in June; against 20,000 Chicago packing house workers; and against 20,000 knitters at Cohoes, New York, both in October.

The lockout of the Chicago butcher workmen attracted the most attention.  These men had obtained the eight-hour day without a strike during May.  A short time thereafter, upon the initiative of Armour & Company, the employers formed a packers’ association and, in the beginning of October, notified the men of a return to the ten-hour day on October 11.  They justified this action on the ground that they could not compete with Cincinnati and Kansas City, which operated on the ten-hour system.  On October 8, the men, who were organized in District Assemblies 27 and 54, suspended work, and the memorable lockout began.  The packers’ association rejected all offers of compromise and on October 18 the men were ordered to work on the ten-hour basis.  But the dispute in October, which was marked by a complete lack of ill-feeling on the part of the men and was one of the most peaceable labor disputes of the year, was in reality a mere prelude to a second disturbance which broke out in the plant of Swift & Company on November 2 and became general throughout the stockyards on November 6.  The men demanded a return to the eight-hour day, but the packers’ association, which was now joined by Swift & Company, who formerly had kept aloof, not only refused to give up the ten-hour day, but declared that they would employ no Knights of Labor in the future.  The Knights retaliated by declaring a boycott on the meat of Armour & Company.  The behavior of the men was now no longer peaceable as before, and the employers took extra precautions by prevailing upon the governor to send two regiments of militia in addition to the several hundred Pinkerton detectives employed by the association.  To all appearances, the men were slowly gaining over the employers, for on November 10 the packers’ association rescinded its decision not to employ Knights, when suddenly on November 15, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, a telegram arrived from Grand Master Workman Powderly ordering the men back to work.  Powderly had refused to consider the reports from the members of the General Executive Board who were on the ground, but, as was charged by them, was guided instead by the advice of a priest who had appealed to him to call off the strike and thus put an end to the suffering of the men and their families.