Obviously, judging from constitutional powers alone, the
Federation was but a weak sort of a government. Yet the weakness was not
the forced weakness of a government which was willing to start with
limited powers hoping to increase its authority as it learned to stand
more firmly on its own feet; it was a self-imposed weakness suggested by
the lessons of labor history.
By contrast the Order of the Knights of Labor, as seen already, was
governed by an all-powerful General Assembly and General Executive
Board. At a first glance a highly centralized form of government would
appear a promise of assured strength and a guarantee of coherence
amongst the several parts of the organization. Perhaps, if America's
wage earners were cemented together by as strong a class consciousness
as the laboring classes of Europe, such might have been the case.
But America's labor movement lacked the unintended aid which the sister
movements in Europe derived from a caste system of society and political
oppression. Where the class lines were not tightly drawn, the
centrifugal forces in the labor movement were bound to assert
themselves.
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