There were at the time two factions among the
cigar makers, one upholding the International Cigar Makers' Union with
Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers as leaders, the other calling itself
the Progressive Union, which was more socialistic in nature and composed
of more recent immigrants and less skilled workers. District Assembly 49
of the Knights of Labor took a hand in the struggle to support the
Progressive Union and by skillful management brought the situation to
the point where the latter had to allow itself to be absorbed into the
Knights of Labor.
The events in the cigar making trade in New York brought to a climax the
sporadic struggles that had been going on between the Order and the
trade unions. The trade unions demanded that the Knights of Labor
respect their "jurisdiction" and proposed a "treaty of peace" with such
drastic terms that had they been accepted the trade unions would have
been left in the sole possession of the field. The Order was at first
more conciliatory. It would not of course cease to take part in
industrial disputes and industrial matters, but it proposed a _modus
vivendi_ on a basis of an interchange of "working cards" and common
action against employers.
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