Terence V. Powderly

Six men charged with murder in connection with the Molly Maguires are hanged in the prison at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, on June 21, 1877, and ...

...four are hanged at Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe in 1953), Carbon County.

A scaffold had been erected in the Carbon County prison.

State militia with fixed bayonets surround the prisons and the scaffolds.

Miners arrive with their wives and children from the surrounding areas, walking through the night to honor the accused.

The families are silent.

Thomas Munley's aged father had walked more than ten miles (sixteen kilometers) from Gilberton to assure his son that he believed in his innocence.

Munley's wife had arrived a few minutes after they closed the gate, and they refused to open it even for close relatives to say their final good-byes.

She screams at the gate with grief, throwing herself against it until she collapses, but she is not allowed to pass.

Alexander Campbell, John "Yellow Jack" Donahue, Michael J. Doyle and Edward J. Kelly, are hanged for the murders of mine bosses John P. Jones and Morgan Powell.

Ten more of the condemned men, Thomas P. Fisher, John "Black Jack" Kehoe, Patrick Hester, Peter McHugh, Patrick Tully, Peter McManus, Dennis Donnelly, Martin Bergan, James McDonnell and Charles Sharpe, will be hanged at Mauch Chunk, Pottsville, Bloomsburg and Sunbury over the next two years.

Peter McManus is the last Molly Maguire to be tried and convicted for murder at the Northumberland County Courthouse in 1878.

When organized labor helps to elect Terence V. Powderly mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania two years after the Molly Maguire trials, the opposition will vilify his team as the "Molly Maguire Ticket".

The Knights of Labor score their greatest victory is in the Union Pacific Railroad strike in 1884.

Union Pacific had been entangled in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, exposed in 1872, that involved bribing congressmen and stock speculations.

Its early troubles had led to bankruptcy during the 1870s, the result of which was reorganization of the Union Pacific Railroad as the Union Pacific Railway on January 24, 1880, with its dominant stockholder being Jay Gould.

The Knights primary demand is for an eight hour day; they also call for legislation to end child and convict labor, as well as a graduated income tax.

They are eager supporters of cooperatives.

In 1869, seven members of the Philadelphia tailors' union, headed by Uriah Smith Stephens and James L. Wright, had established a secret union under the name the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor.

The collapse of the National Labor Union in 1873 had left a vacuum for workers looking for organization.

The Knights had become better organized with a national vision when they replaced Stephens with Terence V. Powderly.

The body had become popular with Pennsylvania coal miners during the economic depression of the mid-1870s, and has grown rapidly.

As membership expanded, the Knights had begun to function more as a labor union and less like a fraternal organization.

Local assemblies have begun not only to emphasize cooperative enterprises, but to initiate strikes to win concessions from employers.

Powderly opposes strikes as a "relic of barbarism," but the size and the diversity of the Knights affords local assemblies a great deal of autonomy.

The Knights of Labor attract many Catholics, who are a large part of the membership, perhaps a majority.

Powderly is a Catholic.

However, the Knights' use of secrecy, similar to the Masons, during its early years concerned many bishops.

The Knights use secrecy to help prevent employers from firing members.

In 1882, to mollify the concerns of Catholic members and the bishops who want to avoid any resemblance to freemasonry, the Knights end their membership rituals and remove the words "Noble Order" from their name.

Though initially averse to strikes as a method to advance their goals, the Knights have aided various strikes and boycotts.

The Knights of Labor had strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Contract Labor Law of 1885, as had many other labor groups, although the Knights do accept most others, including skilled and unskilled women of any profession.

The Wabash Railroad strike in 1885 had also been a significant success for the Knights, as Terence Powderly had finally supported what had become a successful strike on Jay Gould's Wabash Line.

Gould had met with Powderly and agreed to call off his campaign against the Knights of Labor, which had caused the turmoil originally.

These positive developments have given momentum and a surge of members, so by 1886, the Knights have over seven hundred thousand members.

Membership declines with the problems of an autocratic structure, mismanagement, and unsuccessful strikes.

Disputes between the skilled trade unionists (also known as craft unionists) and the industrial unionists weaken the organization.

The top leadership does not believe that strikes are an effective way to up the status of the working people, and fails to develop the infrastructure that is necessary to organize and coordinate the hundreds of strikes, walkouts, and job actions spontaneously erupting among the membership.

The Knights fail in the highly visible Missouri Pacific strike in 1886.

At the time of the strike, Gould owns all the elevated rail lines in New York City, the Western Union telegraph service and the Union Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Missouri Kansas & Texas (M-K-T) railroads.

In total, Gould owns almost twelve percent of all railroad track in the U. S. The strike begins when a member of the Knights of Labor in Marshall, Texas is fired for attending a union meeting on company time.

The local chapter of the Knights calls a strike.

Soon, more than two hundred thousand workers are on strike in Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Texas.

Although the dismissal of the leadman in Texas had sparked the initial strike, wages, hours and unsafe working conditions motivate most of the strikers.

From the start there are problems.

The Brotherhood of Engineers refuses to honor the strike, and its members keep working.

Meanwhile, Gould immediately hires strikebreakers to work the railroad, allegedly declaring, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."

Pinkerton detectives are employed to protect railroad property.

On March 19, 1886, Powderly meets in Kansas City, Missouri with other leaders of the Knights, the governors of Kansas and Missouri, and railroad officials to try to bring an end to the strike.

The meeting continues for two days, but the parties are unable to reach an agreement.

After several incidents of 'union violence' occur, Gould requests military assistance from the governors of the affected states.

The governor of Missouri mobilizes the state militia; the governor of Texas mobilizes both the state militia and the Texas Rangers.

The governor of Kansas refuses after local officials report no incidents of violence, despite claims by railway executives that mobs had seized control of trains and rail yards were burning.

The exercise of state police power on behalf of the railways leads union members to retaliate.

Switching houses are burned, mechanic shops wrecked and trains uncoupled.

Shots are fired at a moving train in Missouri.

A favorite tactic of the rail workers is to let steam locomotives go cold, forcing the railroad to spend up to six hours slowly reheating the engines for use.

As the violence spreads, public opinion turns against the workers.

The physical attacks by the Pinkerton agents scare thousands of workers into returning to work.

The strike peters out during the summer of 1886.

By September, the strike is over.

The Great Southwest Railroad Strike, the Haymarket riot, and the collapse of the 1887 Sugar Strikes in Louisiana have demoralized the Knights of Labor and energized management.

The failure of the Great Southwest Railroad Strike represents the first major defeat sustained by the Knights of Labor.

When the strike did not draw the support of the engineers and other industrial workers, the Knights' vision of an industrial union had withered as well.

Internal conflict has broken out between various factions within the Knights, paralyzing the union.