seed had grown into a great tree. The story is told by Frank K.
Foster,* who says, speaking of the order in 1868: "It made and
unmade politicians; it established a monthly journal; it started
cooperative stores; it fought, often successfully, against
threatened reductions of wages...; it became the undoubted
foremost trade organization of the world." But within five years
the order was rent by factionalism and in 1878 was acknowledged
to be dead. It perished from various causes--partly because it
failed to assimilate or imbue with its doctrines the thousands of
workmen who subscribed to its rules and ritual, partly because of
the jealousy and treachery which is the fruitage of sudden
prosperity, partly because of failure to fulfill the fervent
hopes of thousands who joined it as a prelude to the industrial
millennium; but especially it failed to endure because it was
founded on an economic principle which could not be imposed upon
society. The rule which embraced this principle reads as follows:
"No member of this Order shall teach, or aid in teaching, any
fact or facts of boot or shoemaking, unless the lodge shall give
permission by a three-fourths vote...provided that this
article shall not be so construed as to prevent a father from
teaching his own son. Provided also, that this article shall not
be so construed as to hinder any member of this organization from
learning any or all parts of the trade." The medieval craft guild
could not so easily be revived in these days of rapid changes,
when a new stitching machine replaced in a day a hundred workmen.
And so the Knights of St. Crispin fell a victim to their own
greed.

* "The Labor Movement, the Problem of Today," edited by George E.
McNeill, Chapter VIII.