Transnational Borrowings: Scottish Sons of Labour and American Knights of Labor, 1887–1890

2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-156
Author(s):  
Steven Parfitt
Keyword(s):  
Knights Of Labor

The Knights of labor and the Southern Black worker

Labor History ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Kann
Keyword(s):  
Black Worker ◽  
Knights Of Labor

Terence Vincent Powderly—An Appraisal

1941 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-87
Author(s):  
Harry J. Carman
Keyword(s):  
Labor Movement ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Knights Of Labor ◽  
Labor Leader ◽  
American Labor Movement ◽  
American Labor

T. V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor from 1879 to 1893, has been portrayed in many different ways—as idealist, reformer, humanitarian, windbag, renegade, crook, imposter, agitator, introvert, self-seeker, charlatan, cheap politician, turncoat, rabble rouser, and drippy sentimentalist. Some claim that he was a great labor leader; others just as vigorously maintain that he was utterly lacking in the qualities of leadership—that he was, in reality, an insignificant nobody swept along by the changing currents of the American labor movement. It is not the purpose of this short article to paint a full-length portrait of Powderly but rather, on the basis of newly discovered data, to indicate briefly which, if any, of the above characterizations fit the man.

Blaming Martin Irons: Leadership and Popular Protest in the 1886 Southwest Strike

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-81
Author(s):  
Theresa A. Case
Keyword(s):  
Personal History ◽  
Knights Of Labor ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Social Anxieties

The story of the Great Southwest strike, a textbook example of the upheavals of 1886, has long been told as an epic battle between railway millionaire Jay Gould, national Knights of Labor head Terence Powderly, and Martin Irons, with many historians and contemporaries casting strike leader Irons as the epitome of impatient, romantic, and even deluded labor activism. District Assembly 101's call to walk out on Gould's southwestern system of roads was, arguably, strategically ill-advised. It vastly overestimated the Knights' power in the wake of two victories against Gould in 1885 and certainly ignored the district's lack of funds, lax support among skilled trainmen, and the terms of an historic agreement between the national Knights and Gould. A closer look at Irons's life and leadership, however, reveals a more complicated explanation of the strike and takes into fuller account the experiences and perceptions of striking railroaders. This essay holds that events on the ground, combined with the heady context of the Great Upheaval, influenced Irons and his supporters' decisions to strike, to expand the effort, and to defend it with violence. The ensuing attacks on Irons stemmed partly from his unstable personal history but largely from the broader social anxieties that the conflict had exposed.

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