In England and Scotland alone, the 1400 stores and two
Wholesale Cooperative Societies controlled in 1914 about 420 million
dollars of retail distributive trade and employed nearly 50,000
operatives in processes of production in their own workshops and
factories.
CHAPTER 3
THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF
LABOR
With the practical disintegration of the organized labor movement in the
seventies, two nuclei held together and showed promise of future growth.
One was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor" and the other a small
trade union movement grouped around the International Cigar Makers'
Union.
The "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," while it first became
important in the labor movement after 1873, was founded in 1869 by Uriah
Smith Stephens, a tailor who had been educated for the ministry, as a
secret organization. Secrecy was adopted as a protection against
persecutions by employers.
The principles of the Order were set forth by Stephens in the secret
ritual. "Open and public association having failed after a struggle of
centuries to protect or advance the interest of labor, we have lawfully
constituted this Assembly," and "in using this power of organized effort
and cooperation, we but imitate the example of capital heretofore set in
numberless instances;" for, "in all the multifarious branches of trade,
capital has its combinations, and, whether intended or not, it crushes
the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity into the dust.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110