skilled workingmen the importation of contract Italian and Hungarian
laborers was a matter of small importance. On the other hand, to the
Knights of Labor with their vast contingent of unskilled it was a strong
menace. Although the law could not be enforced and had to be amended in
1887 in order to render it effective, its passage nevertheless attests
the political influence already exercised by the Order in 1885.

The outcome of the Gould strike of 1885 and the dramatic exaggeration of
the prowess of the Order by press and even by pulpit were largely
responsible for the psychological setting that called forth and
surrounded the great upheaval of 1886. This upheaval meant more than the
mere quickening of the pace of the movement begun in preceding years and
decades. It signalled the appearance on the scene of a new class which
had not hitherto found a place in the labor movement, namely the
unskilled. All the peculiar characteristics of the dramatic events in
1886 and 1887, the highly feverish pace at which organizations grew, the
nation-wide wave of strikes, particularly sympathetic strikes, the wide
use of the boycott, the obliteration, apparently complete, of all lines
that divided the laboring class, whether geographic or trade, the
violence and turbulence which accompanied the movement--all of these
were the signs of a great movement by the class of the unskilled, which
had finally risen in rebellion. This movement, rising as an elemental
protest against oppression and degradation, could be but feebly
restrained by any considerations of expediency and prudence; nor, of
course, could it be restrained by any lessons from experience. But, if
the origin and powerful sweep of this movement were largely spontaneous
and elemental, the issues which it took up were supplied by the existing
organizations, namely the trade unions and the Knights of Labor. These
served also as the dykes between which the rapid streams were gathered
and, if at times it seemed that they must burst under the pressure,