so little trace is left in the world of organized labor today of that short-lived body, the knights of labor, that it might be thought worthy of but slight notice in any general review.
but women have peculiar reason to remember the knights, and to be grateful to them, for they were the first large national organization to which women were admitted on terms of equality with men, and in the work of the organization itself, they played an active and a notable part.
from the year 1869 till 1878 the knights of labor existed as a secret order, having for its aim the improvement of living conditions. its philosophy and its policy were well expressed in the motto, taken from the maxims of solon, the greek lawgiver: "that is the most perfect government in which an injury to one is the concern of all."
the career of the knights of labor, however, as an active force in the community, began with the national convention of 1878, from which time it made efforts to cover the wage-earning and farming classes, which had to constitute three-fourths of the membership. the organization was formed distinctly upon the industrial and not upon the craft plan. that is, instead of a local branch being confined to members of one trade, the plan was to include representatives of different trades and callings. that the fundamental interests of the wage-earner and the farmer were identical, was not so much stated as taken for granted. in defining eligibility for membership there were certain significant exceptions made; the following, being considered as pursuing distinctly antisocial occupations, were pointedly excluded: dealers in intoxicants, lawyers, bankers, stock-brokers and professional gamblers.
women were first formally admitted to the order in september, 1881. it is said that mrs. terence v. powderly, wife of the then grand master workman, was the first to join. it is not known that any figures exist showing the number of women who at any one time belonged to the knights of labor, but dr. andrews estimates the number, about the year 1886, when the order was most influential, at about 50,000. among this 50,000 were a great variety of trades, but shoe-workers must have predominated, and many of these had received their training in trade unionism among the daughters of st. crispin.
the knights evidently took the view that the woman's industrial problem must to a certain extent be handled apart from that of the men, and more important still, that it must be handled as a whole. this broad treatment of the subject was shown when at the convention of 1885 it was voted, on the motion of miss mary hannafin, a saleswoman of philadelphia, that a committee to collect statistics on women's work be appointed. this committee consisted of miss hannafin and miss mary stirling, also of philadelphia, and mrs. lizzie h. shute, of haverhill, massachusetts, who were the only women delegates to the convention.
at the next convention, held in 1886 in richmond, virginia, there were sixteen women delegates, out of a total of six hundred. mr. terence v. powderly, grand master workman, appointed the sixteen women as a committee to receive and consider the report of this previously appointed special committee of three. the result of their deliberations was sufficiently remarkable. they set an example to their sex in taking the free and independent stand they did. for they announced that they had "formed a permanent organization, the object of which will be to investigate the abuses to which our sex is subjected by unscrupulous employers, to agitate the principle which our order teaches of equal pay for equal work and abolition of child labor." they also recommended that the expenses of this new woman's department and the expenses of a woman investigator should be borne by the order. the report was adopted and the memorable woman's department of the knights of labor was created. memorable for the purpose and the plan that underlay its foundation, it was also memorable for the character and achievements of the brilliant, able and devoted woman who was chosen as general investigator.
mrs. leonora barry was a young widow with three children. she had tried to earn a living for them in a hosiery mill at amsterdam, new york. for herself her endeavor to work as a mill hand was singularly unfortunate, for during her first week she earned but sixty-five cents. but if she did not during that week master any of the processes concerned in the making of machine-made stockings, she learned a good deal more than this, a good deal more than she set out to learn. she learned of the insults young girls were obliged to submit to on pain of losing their jobs, and a righteous wrath grew within her at the knowledge. during this hard time also she heard first of the knights of labor, and having heard of them, she promptly joined. as she was classified at the 1886 convention as a "machine hand," it is probable that she had by this time taken up her original trade.
for four years mrs. barry did fine work. she combined in a remarkable degree qualities rarely found in the same individual. she followed in no one's tracks, but planned out her own methods, and carried out a campaign in which she fulfilled the duties of investigator, organizer and public lecturer. this at a time when the means of traveling were far more primitive than they are today; and not in one state alone, for she covered almost all the eastern half of the country. we know that she went as far west as leadville, colorado, because of the touching little story that is told of her visit there. in that town she had founded the martha washington assembly of the knights of labor, and when she left she was given a small parcel with the request that she would not open it until she reached home. but, as she tells it herself,
my woman's curiosity got the better of me, and i opened the package, and found therein a purse which had been carried for fifteen years by brother horgan, who was with us last year, and inside of that a little souvenir in the shape of five twenty-dollar gold pieces. you say that i was the instrument through whose means the martha washington assembly was organized. this is partially true, but it is also true that the good and true knights of leadville are as much the founder as i am.
she possessed a social vision, and saw the problems of the wrongs of women in relation to the general industrial question, so that in her organizing work she was many-sided. the disputes that she was forever settling, the apathy that she was forever encountering, she dealt with in the tolerant spirit of one to whom these were but incidents in the growth of the labor movement. in dealing with the "little ones" in that movement we hear of her as only patient and helpful and offering words of encouragement, however small the visible results of her efforts might be.
but towards those set in high places she could be intensely scornful, as for instance when she is found appealing to the order itself, asking that "more consideration be given, and more thorough educational measures be adopted on behalf of the working-women of our land, the majority of whom are entirely ignorant of the economic and industrial question, which is to them of vital importance, and they must ever remain so while the selfishness of their brothers in toil is carried to such an extent as i find it to be among those who have sworn to demand equal pay for equal work. thus far in the history of our order that part of our platform has been but a mockery of the principle intended."
mrs. barry started out to make regular investigations of different trades in which women were employed, in order that she might accurately inform herself and others as to what actual conditions were. but here she received her first serious check. she had no legal authority to enter any establishment where the proprietor objected, and even in other cases, where permission had been given, she discovered afterwards to her dismay that her visits had led to the dismissal of those who had in all innocence given her information, as in the case quoted of sister annie conboy, a worker in a mill, in auburn, new york. but little was gained by shutting out such a bright and observant woman. mrs. barry's practical knowledge of factory conditions was already wide and her relations with workers of the poorest and most oppressed class so intimate that little that she wanted to know seems to have escaped her, and she was often the channel through which information was furnished to the then newly established state bureaus of labor.
baffled, however, in the further carrying out of her plans for a thorough, and for that day, nation-wide investigation, she turned her attention mainly to education and organizing, establishing new local unions, helping those already in existence, and trying everywhere to strengthen the spirit of the workers in striving to procure for themselves improved standards.
in her second year of work mrs. barry had the assistance of a most able headquarters secretary, mary o'reilly, a cotton mill hand from providence, rhode island. during eleven months there were no fewer than three hundred and thirty-seven applications for the presence of the organizer. out of these mrs. barry filled two hundred and thirteen, traveling to nearly a hundred cities and towns, and delivering one hundred public addresses. she was in great demand as a speaker before women's organizations outside the labor movement, for it was just about that time that women more fortunately placed were beginning to be generally aroused to a shamefaced sense of their responsibility for the hard lot of their poorer sisters. thus she spoke before the aristocratic century club of philadelphia, and attended the session of the international women's congress held in washington, d.c., in march and april, 1887.
the wages of but two dollars and fifty cents or three dollars for a week of eighty-four hours; the intolerable sufferings of the women and child wage-earners recorded in her reports make heart-rending reading today, especially when we realize how great in amount and how continuous has been the suffering in all the intervening years. so much publicity, however, and the undaunted spirit and unbroken determination of a certain number of the workers have assuredly had their effect, and some improvements there have been.
speeding up is, in all probability, worse today than ever. it is difficult to compare wages without making a close investigation in different localities and in many trades, and testing, by a comparison with the cost of living, the real and not merely the money value of wages, but there is a general agreement among authorities that wages on the whole have not kept pace with the workers' necessary expenditures. but in one respect the worker today is much better off. at the time we are speaking of, the facts of the wrong conditions, the low wages, the long hours, and the many irritating tyrannies the workers had to bear, only rarely reached the public ear. let us thank god for our muck-rakers. their stories and their pictures are all the while making people realize that there is such a thing as a common responsibility for the wrongs of individuals.
here is a managerial economy for you. the girls in a corset factory in newark, new jersey, if not inside when the whistle stopped blowing (at seven o'clock apparently) were locked out till half-past seven, and then they were docked two hours for waste power.
in a linen mill in paterson, new jersey, we are told how in one branch the women stood on a stone floor with water from a revolving cylinder flying constantly against the breast. they had in the coldest weather to go home with underclothing dripping because they were allowed neither space nor a few moments of time in which to change their clothing.
mrs. barry's work, educating, organizing, and latterly pushing forward protective legislation continued up till her marriage with o.r. lake, a union printer, in 1890, when she finally withdrew from active participation in the labor movement.
mrs. barry could never have been afforded the opportunity even to set out on her mission, had it not been for the support and co?peration of other women delegates. the leaders in the knights of labor were ahead of their time in so freely inviting women to take part in their deliberations. it was at the seventh convention, in 1883, that the first woman delegate appeared. she was miss mary stirling, a shoe-worker from philadelphia. miss kate dowling, of rochester, new york, had also been elected, but did not attend. next year saw two women, miss mary hannafin, saleswoman, also from philadelphia, and miss louisa m. eaton, of lynn, probably a shoe-worker. during the preceding year miss hannafin had taken an active part in protecting the girls discharged in a lock-out in a philadelphia shoe factory, not only against the employer, but even against the weakness of some of the men of her own assembly who were practically taking the side of the strike-breakers, by organizing them into a rival assembly. the question came up in the convention for settlement, and the delegates voted for miss hannafin in the stand she had taken.
it was upon her initiative, likewise, at the convention in the following year, that the committee was formed to collect statistics of women's work, and in the year after (1886), it was again miss hannafin, the indefatigable, backed by the splendid force of sixteen women delegates, who succeeded in having mrs. barry appointed general investigator.
one of the most active and devoted women in the knights of labor was mrs. george rodgers, then and still of chicago. for a good many years she had been in a quiet way educating and organizing among the girls in her own neighborhood, and had organized a working-women's union there. for seven years she attended the state assembly of the knights of labor, and was judge of the district court of the organization. but it is by her attendance as one of the sixteen women at the 1886 national convention, which was held in richmond, virginia, that she is best remembered. she registered as "housekeeper" and a housekeeper she must indeed have been, with all her outside interests a busy housemother. there accompanied her to the gathering her baby of two weeks old, the youngest of her twelve children. to this youthful trade unionist, a little girl, the convention voted the highest numbered badge (800), and also presented her with a valuable watch and chain, for use in future years.
one cannot help suspecting that such an unusual representation of women must have been the reward of some special effort, for it was never repeated. subsequent conventions saw but two or three seated to plead women's cause. at the 1890 convention, the occasion on which mrs. barry sent in her letter of resignation, there was but one woman delegate. she was the remarkable alzina p. stevens, originally a mill hand, but at this time a journalist of toledo, ohio. the men offered the now vacant post of general investigator to her, but she declined. however, between this period and her too early death, mrs. stevens was yet to do notable work for the labor movement.
during the years that the knights of labor were active, the women members were not only to be found in the mixed assemblies, but between 1881 and 1886 there are recorded the chartering of no fewer than one hundred and ninety local assemblies composed entirely of women. even distant centers like memphis, little rock and san francisco were drawn upon, as well as the manufacturing towns in ontario, canada. besides those formed of workers in separate trades, such as shoe-workers, mill operatives, and garment-workers, there were locals, like the federal labor unions of today, in which those engaged in various occupations would unite together. some of the women's locals existed for a good many years, but a large proportion are recorded as having lapsed or suspended after one or two years. apart from the usual difficulties in holding women's organizations together, there is no doubt that many locals, both of men and of women, were organized far too hastily, without the members having the least understanding of the first principles of trade unionism, or indeed of any side of the industrial question.
the organizers attempted far too much, and neglected the slow, solid work of preparation, and the no less important follow-up work; this had much to do with the early decline of the entire organization. the women's end of the movement suffered first and most quickly. from 1890 on, the women's membership became smaller and smaller, until practical interest by women and for women in the body wholly died out.
but the genuine workers had sown seed of which another movement was to reap the results. the year 1886 was the year of the first meeting of the american federation of labor as we know it. with its gradual development, the growth of the modern trade-union movement among women is inextricably bound up.
