the period of nationalization. By 1866, "from thirty to forty national and international trade unions and amalgamated societies were in evidence, some of them numbering tens of thousands of men."

The score of years between 1866 and 1886, beginning with the formation of the National Labor Union, contemporaneous with the meteoric rise of the Knights of Labor, and ending with the reorganization and rejuvenation of the American Federation of Labor, was above all else a period of amalgamation. There was a modified revival of the spirit that had marked the second quarter of the century. In 1866 the labor organizations of the country united in the formation of the National Labor Union This organization made an auspicious start, but soon passed from the consideration of arbitration, hours of labor, strikes and other labor problems, to the endorsement of wild schemes of irredeemable paper money, became involved in politics, and then perished. In 1868 it is said to have had an aggregate membership of 640,000. "Its convention at Cincinnati in 1869 showed a marked decline, and an insignificant meeting at St. Louis in 1870 barely called attention to its death." The task of the National Labor Union was taken up by that wonderful organization, The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor.

We shall not linger over the absorbing story of the rise of the Knights of Labor from a little local union of seven garment cutters in 1869 to a vast amalgamation of more than 600,000 members in 1886, the year of its greatest power and influence. The real significance of the history

of the Knights of Labor lies in the aims, the policies and the structure of that organization. In government it was more highly centralized, perhaps, than any general labor organization that has ever existed for any considerable length of time. Its general executive board, to illustrate by a brief statement, could suspend any local officer or member, revoke any charter, and by a unanimous vote, terminate any strike, general or local. In structure it was a polyglot. It began as a trade union, but soon introduced mixed assemblies in which members of any trade were received; incorporated in its ranks employers, professional men, in fact any person over sixteen years of age not a lawyer, banker, professional gambler or liquor dealer; and amalgamated these potentially discordant elements into district assemblies and finally into a national organization from which local autonomy of any sort was prac tically eliminated. Lastly, the official policy of the Knights of Labor was to discourage strikes and boycotts and place the main reliance upon political action, coöperation and education. Back of its structure, government and policies was the inspiring theory that mechanical inventions are making the skilled trades increasingly dependent upon the lower grades of unskilled labor, and that the laboring classes must be elevated en masse or not at all. "That is the most perfect government," the official motto asserts, "in which an injury to one is the concern of all."

The period from 1886 to the present time marks a decided, though possibly a temporary, victory for the trade

union as opposed to the labor union, for federation as opposed to amalgamation. The Knights of Labor declined, at first slowly and then with headlong rapidity. First they became involved in extensive strikes and costly coöperative schemes, the failure of which damaged the prestige and drained the treasury of the order. Then their peculiar organization brought them into an inevitable conflict with the strict trade unions, whose cause was taken up and vigorously championed by the Federation of Labor. And as the Knights declined, their political entanglements became more marked. In 1896 free silver was endorsed; in 1898 expansion was condemned; and in 1899 William McKinley was officially recognized as the "bitter enemy of labor."" In 1900 a quarrel arose mong the officers of the organization, which had to be en to the courts for settlement, and to-day the Order is ittle more than a name.

Its decline was contemporaneous with, and in a large measure due to, the growth of the American Federation of Labor. The latter was organized in 1881 as the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States of America and Canada, and included 95 organizations having a combined membership of 262,000. From 1881 to 1886 the Federation declined rather than progressed, but in the latter year it reorganized under the present title, and undertook a vigorous defence of tradeunionism as opposed to the centralizing tendencies of the

1 No judgment concerning the justice of these measures is meant to be conveyed. Wise or unwise, the simple fact is that they played an important part in bringing about the downfall of the Order,

Knights of Labor. After 1886, the Federation grew steadily, with some loss in membership during the industrial depression that began in 1893, and after prosperity returned increased by giant strides until at the end of 1903 it had a combined membership of nearly 1,800,000.

In organization and policy the Federation has been the very antithesis of the Knights of Labor. In structure it is a confederation, dealing with unions or local federations whenever possible, carefully refraining from the slightest infraction of the autonomy of its constituent unions, and confining itself to those objects which all labor organizations have in common, namely: the maintenance of a labor press, the passage of favorable labor legislation, the amicable settlement of disputes between unions, the more extended use of the union label and the "unfair list and most important of all, the complete organizat along trade lines of the entire body of wage-earners. On the other hand, the Federation has consistently refrained from partisan politics, and while endorsing voluntary conciliation and collective bargaining, has just as consistently defended the right and expediency of a measured use of the strike. In short it gives free play to an enlightened self-interest in the individual trades, while supplying a ready instrument for the accomplishment of those aims which can safely be prosecuted in common.

This attenuated outline of the development of the American labor organization, while emphasizing what is probably the most important problem of labor organization, needs to be supplemented by the reader from other

Since the Civil War a powerful labor press has been established; the railroad brotherhoods and a few other unions have created efficient labor lobbies and infinitely improved the auxiliary feature of union insurance; the strike has been placed on a business footing, the boycott systematized, and an extensive system of collective bargaining created, until, at the present time, probably an immense majority of the general changes in the terms of employment are peaceably accomplished by collective bargaining; in very recent years, the rapid formation and confederation of hostile employers' associations has led to an anti-labor movement whose reaction upon the labor organization will not improbably furnish the keynote of the labor movement during the first quarter of the tweneth century. Some idea of the extent and rapidity of

development can be gathered from the following table, which shows with approximate correctness the growth of the aggregate membership of labor organizations in the American Federation of Labor, the State of New York, and several foreign countries. At the beginning of 1904 the total membership of American labor organizations was probably not far from 2,350,000; about 1,750,000 in the Federation of Labor (dues were paid on 1,745,270 in September, 1903), and 600,000 in the railroad brotherhoods and other organizations not affiliated with the Federation.

3. Historical Lessons: The history of the labor organization proves a few points conclusively, such as the intimate dependence of the prosperity of labor organiza