The Knights of Labor.—­While the National Labor Union was experimenting, there grew up in the industrial world a more radical organization known as the “Noble Order of the Knights of Labor.”  It was founded in Philadelphia in 1869, first as a secret society with rituals, signs, and pass words; “so that no spy of the boss can find his way into the lodge room to betray his fellows,” as the Knights put it.  In form the new organization was simple.  It sought to bring all laborers, skilled and unskilled, men and women, white and colored, into a mighty body of local and national unions without distinction of trade or craft.  By 1885, ten years after the national organization was established, it boasted a membership of over 700,000.  In philosophy, the Knights of Labor were socialistic, for they advocated public ownership of the railways and other utilities and the formation of cooeperative societies to own and manage stores and factories.

As the Knights were radical in spirit and their strikes, numerous and prolonged, were often accompanied by violence, the organization alarmed employers and the general public, raising up against itself a vigorous opposition.  Weaknesses within, as well as foes from without, started the Knights on the path to dissolution.  They waged more strikes than they could carry on successfully; their cooeperative experiments failed as those of other labor groups before them had failed; and the rank and file could not be kept in line.  The majority of the members wanted immediate gains in wages or the reduction of hours; when their hopes were not realized they drifted away from the order.  The troubles were increased by the appearance of the American Federation of Labor, a still mightier organization composed mainly of skilled workers who held strategic positions in industry.  When they failed to secure the effective support of the Federation in their efforts to organize the unskilled, the employers closed in upon them; then the Knights declined rapidly in power.  By 1890 they were a negligible factor and in a short time they passed into the limbo of dead experiments.

=The Policies of the American Federation.=—­Unlike the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor sought, first of all, to be very practical in its objects and methods.  It avoided all kinds of socialistic theories and attended strictly to the business of organizing unions for the purpose of increasing wages, shortening hours, and improving working conditions for its members.  It did not try to include everybody in one big union but brought together the employees of each particular craft whose interests were clearly the same.  To prepare for strikes and periods of unemployment, it raised large funds by imposing heavy dues and created a benefit system to hold men loyally to the union.  In order to permit action on a national scale, it gave the superior officers extensive powers over local unions.