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Nor were these ideas and principles betrayed by Stephens's successor, Terence V. Powderly, who became Grand Master in 1879 and served during the years when the order attained its greatest power. Powderly, also, was a conservative idealist. His career may be regarded as a good example of the rise of many an American labor leader. He had been a poor boy.
Brooks Powderly of New York, who, at the age of thirty-five, was recognized as America's leading authority on slum life. Dr. Powderly's numerous books and magazine articles on the subject speak for themselves.
Powderly grimly comments: "Fancy the future of the American laborer, whose name is forgotten, and whose only means of identification rests with a brass check, which may be substituted for another while he sleeps." If this is not white slavery, what is it? These Old World tides have also close relation to the health of our cities.
The enthusiasm ran so high in Lynn, Massachusetts, that it was found necessary to raise the shares of the Knights of Labor Cooperative Shoe Company to $100 in order to prevent a large influx of "unsuitable members." In 1885 Powderly complained that "many of our members grow impatient and unreasonable because every avenue of the Order does not lead to cooperation."
Whatever the actual feelings of the membership as a whole, the leaders neglected no opportunity to promote cooperation. T.V. Powderly, the head of the Order since 1878, in his reports to the annual General Assembly or convention, consistently urged that practical steps be taken toward cooperation.
To all appearances, the men were slowly gaining over the employers, for on November 10 the packers' association rescinded its decision not to employ Knights, when suddenly on November 15, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, a telegram arrived from Grand Master Workman Powderly ordering the men back to work.
Seward published a volume on the "Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams," 1849. His "Essays, Speeches, and Extracts from his Diplomatic Correspondence," etc., edited by George E. Baker, with a memoir, embrace five volumes. By TERENCE VINCENT POWDERLY
These idealistic "First Principles" found an ardent champion in Terence V. Powderly, a machinist by trade and twice mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on a labor ticket, who succeeded Stephens in 1878 to the headship of the Order. Powderly bore unmistakably the stamp of this sort of idealism throughout all the time when he was the foremost labor leader in the country.
Powderly had refused to consider the reports from the members of the General Executive Board who were on the ground, but, as was charged by them, was guided instead by the advice of a priest who had appealed to him to call off the strike and thus put an end to the suffering of the men and their families. New York witnessed an even more characteristic Knights of Labor strike and on a larger scale.
Even when circumstances which were largely beyond his control made Powderly a strike leader on a huge scale, his heart lay elsewhere in circumventing the wage system by opening to the worker an escape into self-employment through cooperation.
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