gives an adequate explanation of this conflict. The one, of course,
aggravated the situation by introducing a feeling of personal
bitterness, and the other furnished an appealing argument to each side.
But the struggle was one between groups within the working class, in
which the small but more skilled group fought for independence of the
larger but weaker group of the unskilled and semi-skilled. The skilled
men stood for the right to use their advantage of skill and efficient
organization in order to wrest the maximum amount of concessions for
themselves. The Knights of Labor endeavored to annex the skilled men in
order that the advantage from their exceptional fighting strength might
lift up the unskilled and semi-skilled. From the point of view of a
struggle between principles, this was indeed a clash between the
principle of solidarity of labor and that of trade separatism, but, in
reality, each of the principles reflected only the special interest of a
certain portion of the working class. Just as the trade unions, when
they fought for trade autonomy, really refused to consider the unskilled
men, so the Knights of Labor overlooked the fact that their scheme would
retard the progress of the skilled trades.

The Knights were in nearly every case the aggressors, and it is
significant that among the local organizations of the Knights inimical
to trade unions, District Assembly 49, of New York, should prove the
most relentless. It was this assembly which conducted the longshoremen's
and coal miners' strike in New York in 1887 and which, as we saw,[25]
did not hesitate to tie up the industries of the entire city for the
sake of securing the demands of several hundred unskilled workingmen.
Though District Assembly 49, New York, came into conflict with not a few
of the trade unions in that city, its battle royal was fought with the
cigar makers' unions. There were at the time two factions among the
cigar makers, one upholding the International Cigar Makers' Union with