Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/78

66 follower would challenge. To him there is no "necessary capital" except that which society itself owns.

But like the I. W. W., Stephens looked toward the complete extirpation of the wage system. To this end, decades of educational effort were to be made through the organs created by this new order. As in the I. W. W., hostility was shown to "intellectuals." Physicians, politicians, and lawyers were excluded:—the lawyers because they were so largely a parasitic class like liquor-dealers, who were also excluded.

After 1872, beginning with plumbers and painters, a steady increase of carpenters, masons, machinists, steel makers, weavers, fell into line. State after state joined with an ever larger variety of craft unions, until at Richmond in 1886, nearly nine thousand trade unions had gathered under the banners of the Knights of Labor. But with each mounting step, troubles followed. Every added thousand brought its increment of conflict. A local union, or even all the unions in a given trade, had interests in common. The "local" understood those interests and could define and act upon them far more intelligently than any distant official body.

It thrilled like a trumpet note to hear that "the heart of labor beats with a common throb," that "its interests are one with the all-embracing brotherhood of toil"; but when a plague of petty strikes broke out in 1880–1, the responsible officials were frightened. Mr. Powderly was then "General Master Workman." He sent out a pathetic protest, precisely as the French