FOOTNOTES: 

[20] See Chapter 1.

[21] In the thirties the term “union” was reserved for the city federations of trades.  What is now designated as a trade union was called trade society.  In the sixties the “Union” became the “trades’ assembly.”

[22] See below, 152-154.

[23] See below, 285-290, for a discussion why American labor looks away from legislation.

[24] The Constitution read as follows:  “It alone possesses the power and authority to make, amend, or repeal the fundamental and general laws and regulations of the Order; to finally decide all controversies arising in the Order; to issue all charters....  It can also tax the members of the Order for its maintenance.”

[25] See above, 98-100.

[26] The “local assemblies” generally followed in practice trade lines, but the district assemblies were “mixed.”

[27] See above, 100-101.

CHAPTER 6

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897

The Great Upheaval of 1886 had, as we saw, suddenly swelled the membership of trade unions; consequently, during several years following, notwithstanding the prosperity in industry, further growth was bound to proceed at a slower rate.

The statistics of strikes during the later eighties, like the figures of membership, show that after the strenuous years from 1885 to 1887 the labor movement had entered a more or less quiet stage.  Most prominent among the strikes was the one of 60,000 iron and steel workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the West, which was carried to a successful conclusion against a strong combination of employers.  The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers stood at the zenith of its power about this time and was able in 1889, by the mere threat of a strike, to dictate terms to the Carnegie Steel Company.  The most noted and last great strike of a railway brotherhood was the one of the locomotive engineers on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company.  The strike was begun jointly on February 27, 1888, by the brotherhoods of locomotive engineers and locomotive firemen.  The main demands were made by the engineers, who asked for the abandonment of the system of classification and for a new wage scale.  Two months previously, the Knights of Labor had declared a miners’ strike against the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, employing 80,000 anthracite miners, and the strike had been accompanied by a sympathetic strike of engineers and firemen belonging to the Order.  The members of the brotherhoods had filled their places and, in retaliation, the former Reading engineers and firemen now took the places of the Burlington strikers, so that on March 15 the company claimed to have a full contingent of employes.  The brotherhoods ordered a boycott upon the Burlington cars, which was partly enforced, but they were finally compelled to submit.  The strike was not officially called off until January 3, 1889.  Notwithstanding the defeat of the strikers, the damage to the railway was enormous, and neither the railways of the country nor the brotherhoods since that date have permitted a serious strike of their members to occur.