Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/506

502 The variety of political reform movements, their weakness and lack of harmony are indicative of the bankruptcy of the reform movements of the type then prevailing. Truth, "A Journal for the Poor," and a radical paper, declared:

Buchanan speaks of the lack of harmony in the ranks of the labor and reform forces of this period. In 1888, as editor of the Chicago Enquirer, he pled for a union among the following movements: "The Union Labor Party, United Labor Party, Progressive Labor Party, American Reform Party, the Grange, the Farmer's Alliance, the Tax Reformers, Anti-Monopolists, Homesteaders, and all other political and politico-economic organizations of bread-winners."

Nevertheless, labor organizations were gaining in strength. The Knights of Labor reached its high water mark in 1886; and the American Federation of Labor increased from less than 50,000 in 1881 to over 200,000 in 1889. In an address sent by the heads of several trade unions to the convention of the Knights of Labor in 1886, it was confidently assorted that "within the past year the national and international trades unions have grown with giant strides." The following statistics of growth during the preceding year were offered:

Labor was sloughing off its reformism and returning to the "pure and simple" type of trade unionism. Its was evidently becoming more difficult to lead the wage earners into the camp of the reformers.

During the period under consideration, employers' associations hostile to organized labor were by no means unknown. In July, 1872, "The Employers' Central Executive Committee" of New York City sent out a questionnaire containing eleven questions. The committee desired "to avail itself of the wisdom and experience of Thinkers and