But the trade unions, who had formerly declared that their purpose was “to protect the skilled trades of America from being reduced to beggary,” evinced no desire to be pressed into the service of lifting up the unskilled and voted down with practical unanimity the proposal.  Thereupon the Order declared open war by commanding all its members who were also members of the cigar makers’ union to withdraw from the latter on the penalty of expulsion.

Later events proved that the assumption of the aggressive was the beginning of the undoing of the Order.  It was, moreover, an event of first significance in the labor movement since it forced the trade unions to draw closer together and led to the founding in the same year, 1886, of the American Federation of Labor.

Another highly important effect of this conflict was the ascendency in the trade union movement of Samuel Gompers as the foremost leader.  Gompers had first achieved prominence in 1881 at the time of the organization of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions.  But not until the situation created by the conflict with the Knights of Labor did he get his first real opportunity, both to demonstrate his inborn capacity for leadership and to train and develop that capacity by overcoming what was perhaps the most serious problem that ever confronted American organized labor.

The new Federation avoided its predecessor’s mistake of emphasizing labor legislation above all.  Its prime purpose was economic.  The legislative interests of labor were for the most part given into the care of subordinate state federations of labor.  Consequently, the several state federations, not the American Federation of Labor, correspond in America to the British Trades Union Congress.  But in the conventions of the American Federation of Labor the state federations are represented only nominally.  The Federation is primarily a federation of national and international (including Canada and Mexico) trade unions.

Each national and international union in the new Federation was acknowledged a sovereignty unto itself, with full powers of discipline over its members and with the power of free action toward the employers without any interference from the Federation; in other words, its full autonomy was confirmed.  Like the British Empire, the Federation of Labor was cemented together by ties which were to a much greater extent spiritual than they were material.  Nevertheless, the Federation’s authority was far from being a shadowy one.  If it could not order about the officers of the constituent unions, it could so mobilize the general labor sentiment in the country on behalf of any of its constituent bodies that its good will would be sought even by the most powerful ones.  The Federation guaranteed to each union a certain jurisdiction, generally coextensive with a craft, and protected it against encroachments by adjoining unions and more especially by rival unions.