But the trade unions, who had formerly declared that their purpose was
"to protect the skilled trades of America from being reduced to
beggary," evinced no desire to be pressed into the service of lifting up
the unskilled and voted down with practical unanimity the proposal.
Thereupon the Order declared open war by commanding all its members who
were also members of the cigar makers' union to withdraw from the latter
on the penalty of expulsion.

Later events proved that the assumption of the aggressive was the
beginning of the undoing of the Order. It was, moreover, an event of
first significance in the labor movement since it forced the trade
unions to draw closer together and led to the founding in the same year,
1886, of the American Federation of Labor.

Another highly important effect of this conflict was the ascendency in
the trade union movement of Samuel Gompers as the foremost leader.
Gompers had first achieved prominence in 1881 at the time of the
organization of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. But
not until the situation created by the conflict with the Knights of
Labor did he get his first real opportunity, both to demonstrate his
inborn capacity for leadership and to train and develop that capacity by
overcoming what was perhaps the most serious problem that ever
confronted American organized labor.

The new Federation avoided its predecessor's mistake of emphasizing
labor legislation above all. Its prime purpose was economic. The
legislative interests of labor were for the most part given into the
care of subordinate state federations of labor. Consequently, the
several state federations, not the American Federation of Labor,