perhaps not to be taken literally, contained more than modicum of truth.

(3) From 1892 to 1900 the Order of the Knights of Labor was in a moribund state. Torn by internal dissensions following the defeat of Powderly as grand master workman, and further weakened by the vigorous attacks of its rival, the American Federation of Labor, the Order, despite its frequent boasts of greater strength and increased success, was rapidly declining in membership and in power. Its proceedings had become a mass of criminations and recriminations, its journals the forum for the propagation and discussion of political and social panaceas. Although boycotting notices were published during this period, they were not so extensive as in the period before and were sporadic rather than continuous in appearance. But what the boycott against the customary foes lacked in vigor was amply compensated for by the imposition of boycotts on the proucts of new adversaries, the members of the trade unions now affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.

Early in its history the relation of the Knights of Labor to existing trade organizations had been one of tolerance, perhaps induced by the belief that the trade organization was as likely to be useful to them as they were to be useful to it. Unless, therefore, the trade unions were antagonistic to the Order, it was inclined to be friendly. In conformity with this spirit, the Knights had adopted in 1885, in connection with other rules designed to regulate the use of the boycott, the principle that when the boycott of a trade organization was endorsed by the district assembly, all the local assemblies within the jurisdiction of the assembly must also endorse it and take proper measures to have their members "strictly adhere" to it.

This peaceful state of affairs was not to endure long. Probably during the whole history of the Knights of Labor, and certainly as early as 1884,25 there were occasional disputes between trade organizations and the Knights. In the 25 Proceedings, 1884, p. 642.

main these disputes arose from the circumstance of the competition between two labor organizations for the control of workingmen and their positions. Thus, the Knights of Labor, which contained in its organization local assemblies of iron molders, boycotted in 1888 the Fuller, Warren Stove Company; at the same time the journal of the Iron Molders' Union contained an article designating that company as a friend of organized labor.26 The inevitable result of such a situation was the appearance of signs of hostility in both organizations; in the Iron Molders because the boycott harmed an employer who from their standpoint was fair, and in the Knights because the Iron Molders, by proclaiming the fairness of the boycotted stove manufacturer, succeeded in destroying the effectiveness of their boycott.

An analogous situation arose when either the trade union or the Knights of Labor would adopt a label, which would be for a time the only label of organized labor to be used on that commodity. In the meanwhile another organization would spring up, adopt a label, and place it on the same commodity, and in consequence the labels would become competitors and their sponsors antagonists. Out of such a situation arose the dispute between the Knights of Labor and the Cigar Makers' Union. In February, 1884, the general executive board of the Knights had adopted a label which was almost immediately used by certain assemblies of cigar makers; and "early in 1886 the Cigar Makers' International Union protested to the Knights of Labor that assemblies of cigar makers had given white labels' to manufacturers in whose shops union cigar makers were on a strike."27 In that same year the Cigar Makers' International Union sent men and circulars through the Order, requesting the members "to boycott all goods except those bearing the International blue label," and charging that the grand master workman and the rest of the general executive board had "cooperated in the organization of scabs

26 Journal of United Labor, April 21, 1888, p. 2614.

27 E. R. Spedden, "The Trade Union Label," in Johns Hopkins University Studies, ser. xxviii, no. 2, pp. 17, 19.

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into the Order." The dispute culminated in an edict by the general assembly of the Knights in 1886 requiring all cigar makers who were members of the Knights of Labor to withdraw from the Cigar Makers' Union.29 After that the Cigar Makers, now secretly and now openly, boycotted cigars bearing the label of the Knights of Labor, and the latter retaliated by boycotting goods which bore the blue label of the Cigar Makers.

The experience of the Knights of Labor with the Cigar Makers' Union, with the exception of the complications due to the use of two labels, was repeated after 1890 with even greater disaster to the Order. In most cases the trade unions of Garment Workers and Brewery Workmen, aided and encouraged by the American Federation of Labor, led the fight against the Knights. For example, when a clothing firm in 1896 replaced cutters belonging to the Knights of Labor with members of the Garment Workers' Union, the Knights of Labor imposed a boycott on the product of the firm. Again, in the following year the Brewery Workmen's Union boycotted a Rochester brewery because that company employed members of the Knights of Labor; the Knights responded by boycotting those breweries which employed members of the Brewery Workmen's Union."1 With a view to a peaceful adjustment of the disputes between these organizations a harmony conference, composed of representatives from the Knights of Labor and the trade organizations, was held in 1894. The conference, however, recommended the withdrawal of the Knights in practically all industries where trade unions were organized. The representatives of the Knights of Labor opposed the report, and the conference came to naught. These boycotts and counter-boycotts continued to be imposed until about 1900,

82

28 Proceedings of the Tenth Regular Session of the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor, 1886, p. 137.

29 Spedden, p. 19.

BO Journal of the Knights of Labor, April 9, 1896, p. 2.

31 Ibid., April 29, 1897, p. I.

82 American Federationist, July, 1894, p. 108.

when the internal warfare ceased with the total collapse of the Knights of Labor movement.

The series of railroad strikes or boycotts carried on by the Knights of Labor and by the railway brotherhoods represented important episodes in the history of the boycott between 1885 and 1895. One of the earliest of these was the strike on the Union Pacific in 1885, when the Knights of Labor refused to assist in moving any of the rollingstock of the Wabash System. Similar boycotts on rollingstock were imposed from time to time. In 1894 this form of boycott reached its climax in the famous strike of the American Railway Union. This union was an organization of the employees of all branches of the railway service which, under the leadership of Debs, had succeeded the Supreme Council of the United Order of Railway Employes, a loose federation of railway unions, disbanded in June, 1892." When, in the summer of 1894, certain employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike, the "American Railway Union determined to support the strikers, and for this purpose ordered its members to refuse to work upon any train to which a Pullman car was attached. As nearly all the railroads centering at Chicago were under contract with the Pullman Company to draw its sleeping cars and parlor cars, a conflict immediately resulted between the railroads and their employees, and a strike of vast proportions among train hands followed."" With the loss of this boycott and the imprisonment of Debs and other officers of the union by the United States authorities, the union soon disintegrated, and the railroad boycott

33 W. Kirk, "National Labor Federations in the United States," in Johns Hopkins University Studies, ser. xxiv, nos. 9-10, p. 124. 84 W. H. Dunbar, "Government by Injunction," in Economic Studies of the American Economic Association, vol. iii, no. 1, p. 14. The Knights of Labor supported the boycott of the American Railway Union by notifying the travelling public that those who patronized Pullman coaches would be boycotted by the Order (Journal of the Knights of Labor, July 5, 1894, p. 1). For a more detailed description of the Pullman boycott, see Laidler, p. 100.

never again attained a conspicuous position in the history of the boycotts of American labor organizations.

From 1881 to 1890 the American Federation of Labor played an unimportant role as a boycotting agency, and was, indeed, overshadowed in all respects by the activities of the Knights of Labor. After 1890, in conjunction with several of the larger national unions, it assumed charge of the campaign against the Knights that brought about the defeat of that organization. The boycotting life of the American Federation of Labor can be conveniently dated from the practical disappearance about 1895 of the Knights of Labor as a factor in the American labor movement. It is, of course, true that the American Federation of Labor boycotted before 1895 and that the Knights of Labor continued to live and to boycott for a few years after 1895. That year, however, marks approximately the turning-point in the fortunes of the two organizations; by the middle of the decade the supremacy of the American Federation of Labor was definitely asserted, and it was left free to proceed against new foes.

The history of the boycott under the American Federation of Labor is in reality a history of the boycott as employed by its constituent national unions. The importance of the American Federation of Labor as a boycotting agency has often been overestimated because of the failure to observe that the actual waging of the boycotts, with the exception of the advertisement in the American Federationist, rests with the unions themselves. Nor does the American Federation of Labor, beyond some slight control over the central labor unions and its ability to restrict the publication of names on its "We Don't Patronize" list, possess much power in regulating the placing of boycotts by the national unions.

Even as early as the eighties, before the American Federation of Labor was in existence, such unions as the Brewery Workmen and the Typographical Union carried on suc