The situation was left unchanged, as far
as the coal-handlers employed by the other companies, the longshoremen,
and the many thousands of men who went out on sympathetic strike were
concerned. The men began to return to work by the thousands and the
entire strike collapsed.
The determined attack and stubborn resistance of the employers'
associations after the strikes of May 1886, coupled with the obvious
incompetence displayed by the leaders, caused the turn of the tide in
the labor movement in the first half of 1887. This, however, manifested
itself during 1887 exclusively in the large cities, where the movement
had borne in the purest form the character of an uprising by the class
of the unskilled and where the hardest battles were fought with the
employers. District Assembly 49, New York, fell from its membership of
60,809 in June 1886, to 32,826 in July 1887. During the same interval,
District Assembly 1, Philadelphia, decreased from 51,557 to 11,294, and
District Assembly 30, Boston, from 81,197 to 31,644. In Chicago there
were about 40,000 Knights immediately before the packers' strike in
October 1886, and only about 17,000 on July 1, 1887.
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