The most important Knights of Labor strike of this period was the
telegraphers' strike in 1883. The telegraphers had a national
organization in 1870, which soon collapsed. In 1882 they again organized
on a national basis and affiliated with the Order as District Assembly
45.[18] The strike was declared on June 19, 1883, against all commercial
telegraph companies in the country, among which the Western Union, with
about 4000 operators, was by far the largest. The demands were one day's
rest in seven, an eight-hour day shift and a seven-hour night shift, and
a general increase of 15 percent in wages. The public and a large
portion of the press gave their sympathy to the strikers, not so much on
account of the oppressed condition of the telegraphers as of the general
hatred that prevailed against Jay Gould, who then controlled the
Western Union Company. This strike was the first in the eighties to call
the attention of the general American public to the existence of a labor
question, and received considerable attention at the hands of the Senate
Committee on Education and Labor. By the end of July, over a month after
the beginning of the strike, the men who escaped the blacklist went back
to work on the old terms.
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