Document 17-2: Terence Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor (1889)

Industrial Brotherhood Counters Excesses of Capitalist Power

TERENCE POWDERLY, Thirty Years of Labor (1889)

The Knights of Labor emerged in the 1880s as a major labor organization. Knights were dedicated to the idea of uniting the “producing” classes in cooperative efforts to advance workers’ interests and counter the power of capitalists, whose outsized wealth they saw as a threat to America’s republican traditions. Terence Powderly was the national leader of the Knights of Labor, who tried to unite skilled and unskilled workers and opened membership to women and African Americans. The group’s inclusive vision, expressed here in its platform, was quickly eclipsed by craft-based unionism promoted by the American Federation of Labor.

The recent alarming development and aggression of aggregated wealth, which, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses, render it imperative, if we desire to enjoy the blessings of the government bequeathed to us by the founders of the republic, that a check should be placed upon its power and unjust accumulation, and a system adopted which will secure to the laborer the fruits of his toil; and as this much desired object can only be accomplished by the thorough unification of labor, and the united efforts of those who obey the divine injunction, that “in the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread,” we have formed the INDUSTRIAL BROTHERHOOD, with a view of securing the organization and direction, by co-operative effort of the power of the industrial classes, and we submit to the people of the United States the objects sought to be accomplished by our organization, calling upon all who believe in securing “the greatest good to the greatest number,” to aid and assist us:

  1. To bring within the folds of organization every department of productive industry, making knowledge a standpoint for action, and industrial, moral, and social worth — not wealth — the true standard of individual and national greatness.
  2. To secure to the toilers a proper share of the wealth that they create; more of the leisure that rightfully belongs to them; more societary advantages; more of the benefits, privileges and emoluments of the world; in a word, all those rights and privileges necessary to make them capable of enjoying, appreciating, defending and perpetuating the blessings of republican institutions.
  3. To arrive at the true condition of the producing masses in their educational, moral, and financial condition, we demand from the several States and from the national government the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics.
  4. The establishment of co-operative institutions, productive and distributive.
  5. The reserving of the public lands, the heritage of the people, for the actual settler — not another acre for railroads or speculators.
  6. The abrogation of all laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labor, the removal of unjust technicalities, delays, and discriminations in the administration of justice, and the adoption of measures providing for the health and safety of those engaged in mining, manufacturing or building pursuits.
  7. The enactment of a law to compel chartered corporations to pay their employes at least once in every month in full for labor performed during the preceding month in the lawful money of the country.
  8. The enactment of a law giving mechanics and other laborers a first lien on their work.
  9. The abolishment of the contract system on national, state, and municipal work.
  10. To inaugurate a system of public markets, to facilitate the exchange of the productions of farmers and mechanics, tending to do away with middlemen and speculators.
  11. To inaugurate systems of cheap transportation to facilitate the exchange of commodities.
  12. The substitution of arbitration for strikes, whenever and wherever employers and employees are willing to meet on equitable grounds.
  13. The prohibition of the importation of all servile races, the discontinuance of all subsidies granted to national vessels bringing them to our shores, and the abrogation of the Burlingame treaty.1
  14. To advance the standard of American mechanics by the enactment and enforcement of equitable apprentice laws.
  15. To abolish the system of contracting the labor of convicts in our prisons and reformatory institutions.
  16. To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work.
  17. The reduction of the hours of labor to eight per day, so that laborers may have more time for social enjoyment and intellectual improvement, and be enabled to reap the advantages conferred by labor-saving machinery, which their brains have created.
  18. To prevail upon the government to establish a just standard of distribution between capital and labor by providing a purely national circulating medium based upon the faith and resources of the nation, issued directly to the people, without the intervention of any system of banking corporations, which money shall be a legal tender in the payment of all debts, public or private, and interchangeable at the option of the holder for government bonds, bearing a rate of interest not to exceed three and sixty-five hundredths per cent., subject to future legislation of Congress.

T. V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859 to 1889 (Columbus, OH: Excelsior Publishing House, 1889), 116–120.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

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