Organizations now multiplied and grew rapidly. The National Labor Union was formed in 1866 and by 1868 had 640,000 members. It now boldly entered politics, largely to support Greenbackism. The result was decline, death and dissolution, though the American Labor party arose out of its ruins and put forth a candidate for President in 1872. The Knights of Saint Crispin was organized among the shoe makers in 1867 as a secret society and became an influential order, but it played with politics and died soon after 1873. For 10 years national organizations floundered in the mire of secrecy and politics.
But national unions of particular workers were now found to he insufficient. Unions of skilled workers, based on the wage-fund theory, gradually gave place to industrial unions, which arose from a class consciousness and included all skilled and unskilled workers in a particular industry, though the process has never been completed. It was found that strikes conducted by such unions were more effective. The next extension was the sympathetic strike, a good example of which is found in the trouble of 1894. The most radical extension of this move ment appears in the Industrial Workers of the World (q.v.).
The Knights of Labor (q.v.), which was organized at Philadelphia in 1869 as a secret order of garment workers, was gradually trans formed into an order for all workers. Its pro gram of reform was extensive, demanding the refetendurn, bureaus of labor, the reservation of land for actual occupiers, prohibition of child labor, income and inheritance taxes, postal sav ings banks, government ownership of railways, the 8-hour day and arbitration of labor diffi culties. The membership grew somewhat slowly until it reached 100,000 in 1885. This was a period of great unrest and the membership sud denly leaped to 600,000. It relied more upon co-operation than upon strikes to realize its in dustrial aims. But these men had come in, not to discuss patiently, adopt calmly and execute bravebr plans for the amelioration of all work ers. They wanted concrete results for the mem bership at once and turned to strikes and pol itics. The result was a rapid decline.
The Knights was a highly centralized order and had many disputes with local orders. The American Federation of Labor (q.v.) was
founded in 1881 on the trade union basis and the federal idea of government. The former was a retrograde idea, but it, combined with the fed eral idea in government, was more in harmony with the aspirations and ideals of the members and the order continued to grow. The in creasing number of Socialists sought to control it, but failed, and many withdrew (since 1900) to join more socialistic orders, such as the Trade and Labor Alliance and The American Labor Union, in forming the Industrial Work ers of the World. In spite of this the strength of the Federation has hardly been impaired. Its largest affiliated order, the Mine Workers' Union, is of the industrial type.
The large number of women entering indus try since the Civil War has led to the forma tion of many unions of women workers. The National Women's Trade Union League was organized in 1903. Its platform is: Organiza tion of all workers into trade unions, equal pay for equal work, an 8-hour day, a minimum wage scale and full citizenship for women. This order and its local units are really auxiliaries of the Federation. In recent years the school teachers have been entering the Federation, and in 1916 the actors came over. The membership to-day is over 2,000,000.
The pen has developed into a powerful ad junct of the unions. There are many papers devoted entirely to the cause of labor, the most influential of which is the American F edera tionist. In addition many newspapers have col umns or pages devoted to labor news.
The fundamental aims of the unions have al ready been stated in giving their platforms. Better wages and a shorter working day have been in the foreground. As already indicated, several unions favored co-operation and op posed strikes. A good many experiments were made in co-operation and a few of the later ones have succeeded. But neither co-operation nor profit-sharing, which was introduced by the. operators, has displaced the wage system, and for the improvement of wages the strike or threat to strike is still common. From 1881 to 1905 there were 36,757 strikes involving 8,703,824 workers. Fully 35 per cent of these strikes called directly for an increase of wages and 10 per cent were to oppose a reduction, while nearly 5 per cent called for a reduction in hours.