The Knights of Labor

The Knights of Labor was the first labor organization to achieve mass scale in the United States. Founded in secret in 1869, it grew explosively in the 1880s to perhaps 700,000 members and pioneered a sweeping vision: one big union open to nearly all workers, skilled and unskilled, Black and white, men and women alike.

The Knights pursued broad reform rather than narrow bargaining. They called for the eight-hour day, an end to child labor, and cooperative ownership, framing the labor question as a moral crusade to dignify all who worked. Their inclusiveness was radical for the era.

Their fall was as swift as their rise. The organization was wrongly associated with the violence of the Haymarket Affair of 1886, and a series of failed strikes drained its strength. Membership collapsed within a few years.

As the Knights faded, the narrower, craft-based American Federation of Labor rose to take their place — trading the Knights' universal ambition for the practical bargaining power of skilled trades. But the Knights had shown, for the first time, that American workers could organize on a national scale.