Workers’ desire to organize is nearly as old as the country itself and has played an important role in the nation’s history. Throughout America’s development, disagreements over wages and workers’ rights raised the question of the legality of collective bargaining. In 1806 Philadelphia shoemakers attempted to set their own wages and were found guilty of conspiracy in Commonwealth v. Pullis; it was not until 1842, in Commonwealth v. Hunt, that a court ruled in support of the legality of unions, provided they used legal means to further legal ends. Even after Hunt, unions had little impact on the condition and livelihood of their memberships.

This was the situation for the Garment Cutters Association of Philadelphia in the1860s. Formed in 1862, the organization dissolved in 1869. Out of the Garment Cutters’ failure, however, was born the first national industrial union in the United States when nine tailors from Philadelphia set out to create their own union—the Nobel and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. When the organization began, it resembled a secretive fraternal order with elaborate rituals more than it did a modern labor union, but it was soon transformed under Terence V. Powderly, the mayor of Scranton, who assumed leadership of the organization in 1879.

Under Powderly, the union grew from a collection of small local assemblies into the most prominent national union of the latter part of the 19th century, with over 700,000 members at its height. Powderly shortened the name to the Knights of Labor, reduced the organization’s secrecy and restrictions, and admitted members from both skilled and unskilled professions as well as women, immigrants, and African Americans from all industries. Under Powderly’s leadership, coal miners, printers, tailors, farmers, and individuals from dozens of occupations all united to better the social and economic conditions of the working class. Powderly and national leaders focused on arbitration, education, boycotts, and legislation as means for change.

Many local assemblies, however, resorted to strikes. In 1886, the Haymarket Riot in Chicago, which began as a peaceful demonstration, turned deadly after an unknown assailant threw a bomb into the crowd. Bad publicity and blame for the event, which led to internal strife over the use of strikes, as well as poor organization led to the decline the Knights of Labor, which unraveled by the 1890s. Although the Knights of Labor did not persist into the 20th century, their impact and agenda directly impacted modern society.