Knights of Labor Papers on Microfilm, 1864-1937
Collection Number: 5503 mf a & b
Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives
Cornell University Library
DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY
Title:
Knights of Labor Papers on Microfilm, 1864-1937
Repository:
Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives
Collection Number:
5503 mf a & b
Abstract:
The Terence Vincent Powderly Papers, 1864-1937 (reels 1-94) [5503A mf] ; John William
Hayes Papers, 1880-1921 (reels 1-15) [5503b mf]
Creator:
Knights of Labor
Quanitities:
12.1 cubic feet
Language:
Collection material in English
Terence Vincent Powderly was born in Carbondale, Penn. In 1849. A machinist by trade,
Powderly became active in union organizing, eventually becoming the chief executive
officer of the Order of the Knights of Labor, a post he held from 1879 to 1893. He
was also active in politics and served three terms as mayor of Scranton, Penn. (1878-1884).
After resigning as General Master Workman of the Knights, Powderly was admitted to
the Pennsylvania bar in 1894 and re-entered political life
while practicing law. He served in several important posts in the Bureau of Immigration
(1898-1921) as well as as commissioner of conciliation with the Department of Labor,
a post he held from 1921 until his death in 1924.
Terence Vincent Powderly, the son of Terence and Madge Walsh Powderly, both Irish
immigrants, was born on January 23, 1849, in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Life among
sven brothers and four sisters was spartan, and young Powderly had little opportunity
to obtain much more than a rudimentary education. At age thirteen, Powderly took his
first job as switchman for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. He had decided on a career
as a machinist, and in August, 1866, he was apprenticed for three years to master
machinist, James Dickson. At the end of his apprenticeship in August, 1869, Powderly
found employment in the machine shops of the Pennsylvania Coal Company. He was later
employed in the machine shops of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company
in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
At the time Powderly joined the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad the Long
Strike was in progress among the anthracite coal miners in Pennsylvania. Powderly's
experiences during the Long Strike and the mine explosions at Avondale, Pennsylvania,
in September, 1869, proved to be important influences in his life. Determined to do
what he could to relieve the plight of his fellow workers, he joined the International
Union of Machinists and Blacksmiths in 1971. He later became president of his local
chapter.
In 1873, the United States experienced a severe economic depression. This depression,
coupled with Powderly's union activities, led to his dismissal. During the winter
of 1873-1874, Powderly traveled through several Midwestern states and Canada in search
of work. He finally found a job in Galion, Ohio, only to be fired because his name
appeared on a blacklist of union agitators. Powderly frequently experienced blacklisting
during the 1870s.
In 1876, while working in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Powderly was admitted to Scranton
Local Assembly No. 88 of the Order of the Knights of Labor. Soon he had organized
an assembly of the machinists and became its Master Workman. Powderly advanced rapidly
in power and influence in the Knights of Labor. In 1877, he was elected corresponding
secretary of District Assembly No. 5. He was elected Grand Worthy Foreman in January,
1879, and in September was elected to the top post of Grand (later General) Master
Workman, a post to which he was re-elected annually until he resigned in 1893.
While steadily rising in the ranks of the Knights of Labor, Powderly became involved
in Scranton politics. In 1876, he became president of the Greenback-Labor Club. From
1878-1884, he served three terms as Scranton's mayor. During his incumbency as mayor
Powderly worked to make Scranton a progressive city. He established a board of health
for the city and worked for legislation against adulterated foods, to obtain a meat
inspector, and for funds to construct a municipal sewage system. In 1880, he signed
into law a bill which made Scranton's tax structure more equitable. Powderly's three
terms as mayor also saw improvement in such areas as municipal improvements and an
open city administration.
When Powderly left the mayor's official in 1884, he was able, for the first time,
to devote all his energies to the administration of the Knights of Labor. He realized
that the Order was in the midst of a divisive internal struggle. The trade unionist
faction within the Order believed that higher wages and better working conditions
could best be achieved by the strike and boycott. Powderly and his supporters believed
that the strike should be used as a last resort, only after the Order had tried to
educate and convince management to accept its position. The abortive Southwest Strike
of 1886 caused greater division within the union and resentment against Powderly,
who had called off the strike. The rival American Federation of Labor, under Samuel
Gompers, took advantage of the Knights' internal disorders and successfully interested
dissatisfied Knights to join.
The discontent within the Order continued to grow. A group of Order leaders, including
General Secretary-Treasurer John William Hayes, formed the so-called Home Club, which
worked for Powderly's removal from office. In 1893, Hayes and others charged Powderly
with misuse of the Order's funds. During the November General Assembly meeting Powderly
was exonerated and subsequently re-elected General Master Workman. Facing a hostile
executive board, however, Powderly resigned in 1893.
As General Master Workman, Powderly's policies were based on the preservation of
the American worker's control of his job situation. He believed in the integration
of blacks into the social and economic life of the nation, as well as the Order. He
felt such participation would be in th ewhite laboring man's best interest. He also
felt that women should be paid the same as men for the same work and should have equal
opportunity for employment advancement. He fought for the eight-hour workday and the
abolition of the wage system. He supported Chinese exclusion and protective tariff
legislation.
After resigning as General Master Workman in 1893, Powderly studied law. He was admitted
to the Pennsylvania bar in 1894 and later admitted to practice before the Supreme
Courts of Pennsylvania and the United States. While practicing law, Powderly re-entered
political life. In 1894 he became a member of the Central Republican Club of Scranton.
During the presidential campaign of 1896, Powderly was asked to campaign for William
McKinley. After McKinley's inauguration in 1897, Powderly applied for appointment
as Commissioner-General of Immigration. Soon after his appointment to this post in
March, 1898, Powderly established a commission to investigate conditions at Ellis
Island. As a result of this investigation, eleven employees were dismissed. When Theodore
Roosevelt became president, Powderly's rivals attacked him and finally succeeded in
obtaining his removal from office. After an investigation he was reinstated by President
Roosevelt in 1906 as Special Immigration Inspector. Roosevelt sent him to Europe to
study the causes of European immigration to the United States. As a result of this
trip Powderly prepared a report in which he advocated that the Immigration Service,
through its agents in Europe, should select prospective immigrants while they still
resided in their home country; that agents of the serviced should be on ships carrying
immigrants; and that once here, immigrants should be more evenly distributed throughout
the nation.
In 1907, Powderly was appointed chief of the Division of Information of the Bureau
of Immigration, a post he held until 1921 when he was appointed a member of the bureau's
Board of Review. From 1921 until his death on June 24, 1924, Powderly also served
as a Commissioner of Conciliation with the Department of Labor.
John William Hayes was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 26, 1854.
Hayes remained in Philadelphia until about the age of seventeen. In 1871 he moved
west to Illinois where he worked as a farm hand. Not long after he moved to Ohio where
he was employed as a brakeman for the Dayton and Michigan Railroad. When the financial
panic of 1871 struck, Hayes lost his job and returned to his family in New Brunswick,
New Jersey. Hayes secured employments in 1872 as a brakeman with the Pennsylvania
Railroad at Trenton, New Jersey, and later at Philadelphia. On May 28, 1878, he was
involved in a serious railroad accident and lost his right arm. His next position
was with the American Union Telegraph Company, where he remained until 1883. He was
fired because of his involvement in union activities.
In August, 1874, while employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Hayes was initiated
into District Assembly 49 of the Knights of Labor. Soon after joining the Order, Uriah
S. Stephens gave Hayes an organizer's commission. In 1884, the General Assembly elected
Hayes a member of the General Executive Board, and in 1886, he was elected secretary
of the board. In November, 1888, the General Assembly elected Hayes General Secretary-Treasurer
of the Knights of Labor.
Hayes's labor philosophy amplified the Knights' motto that perfect government was
that "in which an injury to one is the concern of all." Only by implementing this
principle could the disinherited laboring masses be free. As with Powderly, Hayes
considered strikes as ineffective. He supported the principles of cooperation and
education.
The General Assembly elected Hayes General Master Workman of the Knights of Labor
in 1902. While undertaking these duties, Hayes was involved in other activities. He
was manager of the Atlantic Gas Construction Company in Philadelphia and had invented
a coal gasification device. After the First World War, Hayes urged labor organizations
to abjure any connections they might have with the "Red Menace." Hayes also had interests
in stocks and lands. He was president of the North Chesapeake Beach Land and Improvement
Company until his death in 1942.
The Knights of Labor constituted the most powerful force in American labor in the
nineteenth century. It was the first national labor organization to recruit extensively
and as a matter of policy both women and blacks, to organize throughout the country,
and to attempt to unify industrial and agrarian workers. Between 1869 and 1896 the
Order spanned the United States with fifteen thousand Local Assemblies.
The Powderly papers are composed of correspondence, financial records, diaries, printed
matter, legal files, photographs, and scrapbooks relating primarily to Terence Powderly's
work with the Knights of Labor. Other papers concern his work as commissioner-general
of immigration, the Black Diamond Anthracite Coal Company, and personal and family
matters.
The bulk of the materials on the Knights of Labor (Series A) consists of correspondence
(1864-1924), both incoming and outgoing. The most valuable portion of this correspondence
covers the period during which Powderly served as General Master Workman (1879-1893).
The letters reflect the growth of the Order and its position on such issues as education,
the eight-hour workday, the use of the strike, trade unionism and blacklisting. The
difficulties and power struggles which disrupted the Order are also evidenced. Also
included in this series are constitutions of Local and District Assemblies as well
as the General Assembly (1878-1890); business records consisting of two volumes of
minutes of Local Assembly 222 of Scranton, Penn. (1876-1880) and expense accounts
of Powderly as General Master Workman (1888-1892); proceedings, including seven proceedings
for Local Assemblies (1883-1890), ninety-one proceedings for District Assemblies (1877-1890)
and twenty proceedings for State Assemblies (1885-1894), as well as an incomplete
set of proceedings for the General Assembly (1878-1902); and printed matter, consisting
of the JOURNAL OF UNITED LABOR, vol.1 - vol.4 no.1 (1880-1883), ritual books, clippings
scrapbooks, notes for speeches and writings, and printed leaflets, brochures, and
form letters issued by the Knights (1886-1895).
Series B (Immigration) contains Powderly's correspondence (1883-1930) in his capacity
as commissioner-general of immigration, as chief of the Information Division of the
Bureau of Immigration, and as commissioner of conciliation for the Department of Labor.
Filed with the correspondence is Powderly's 1906 report on emigration to the United
States, the result of an investigation ordered by President Theodore Roosevelt. Also
included in this series are miscellaneous and legal files dealing with the deportation
of immigrants as contract laborers; warrants for deportation; court cases relating
to the Alien Contract Law; Memoranda, statistics and reports of the Immigration Bureau;
reports on Chinese and Japanese immigration; and a transcript of the Luigi Graziano
Case (1900) dealing with corruption in the Bureau of Immigration. Pamphlets on immigration
(1883-1903) include reports of the commissioner-general.
Series C contains correspondence, reports and circulars relating to the Black Diamond
Anthracite Coal Company of Schuylkill County, Penn. Powderly served as president of
the company from its founding in 1902 until 1905, when he resigned, suspecting a swindle.
Personal papers (Series D) include correspondence (1896-1937) between Powderly and
his friends and family, as well as with organizations to which he belonged. Powderly's
1896 campaign activities on behalf of William McKinley are documented here. Also included
are diaries (1869-1890), including some materials on Mother Jones, poems and speeches.
Printed matter (Series E) (1882-1898) consists of pamphlets containing Powderly's
speeches and reports on Local and District Assemblies; Miscellaneous files (Series
F) (1886-1937) include correspondence, clippings, reports, interviews and speeches,
including Powderly's reminiscences of his early days in the labor movement and correspondence
and clippings regarding the Knights of Labor's relationship with the Catholic Church;
Scrapbooks (Series G) (1873-1904) contain clippings relating to Powderly, the Knights
of Labor, and the Bureau of Immigration; Photographs (Series H) depict Powderly, his
home and family, Knights of Labor staff and officials and other labor leaders, as
well as views of the Immigration Bureau's facilities at Ellis Island.
Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference
archivist for access to these materials.
This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and
Procedures for Document Use.
INFORMATION FOR USERS
Knights of Labor Papers on Microfilm #5503 mf a & b. Kheel Center for Labor-Management
Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library.
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Names:
Hayes, John William, 1854-1942
McKinley, William, 1843-1901
Jones, Mother, 1837-1930.
McKinley, William, 1843-1901
Powderly, Terence Vincent, 1849-1924
Turcheneske, John Anthony,1943-
Atlantic Gas Construction Company
Catholic University of America. Library.
Knights of Labor--History--Sources.
Knights of Labor
Black Diamond Anthracite Coal Company
United States. Bureau of Immigration.
Subjects:
Foreign workers -- United States.
Blacklisting, Labor.
Chinese -- United States.
Labor -- Religious aspects --Christianity -- United States.
Contract labor -- United States.
Deportation -- United States.
Eight-hour movement.
Emigration and immigration law -- United States.
Japanese -- United States.
Presidents -- United States -- Election -- 1896.
Strikes and lockouts-- United States.
Labor leaders.
Gas manufacture and works. United States. Management.
Nationalization. Railroads. United States.
Trade-union dues. United States.
Trade-union expulsion. United States.
Trade-union insurance. United States.
Trade-union leadership. United States.
Trade-unions. United States. Discipline.
Trade-unions. United States. Local unions.
Trade-unions. United States. Membership.
Coal mining industry. Pennsylvania. Management.
Trade-union rituals.
United States. Emigration and immigration.
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