We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of
labor (the only creator of values or capital) and the justice of
its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it has
created. We shall, with all our strength, support laws made to
harmonize the interests of labor and capital, for labor alone
gives life and value to capital, and also those laws which tend
to lighten the exhaustiveness of toil. To pause in his toil, to
devote himself to his own interests, to gather a knowledge of the
world's commerce, to unite, combine and cooperate in the great
army of peace and industry, to nourish and cherish, build and
develop the temple he lives in is the highest and noblest duty of
man to himself, to his fellow men and to his Creator.

The phenomenal growth and collapse of the Knights of Labor is one
of the outstanding events in American economic history. The
membership in 1869 consisted of eleven tailors. This small
beginning grew into the famous Assembly No. 1. Soon the ship
carpenters wanted to join, and Assembly No. 2 was organized. The
shawl-weavers formed another assembly, the carpet-weavers
another, and so on, until over twenty assemblies, covering almost
every trade, had been organized in Philadelphia alone. By 1875
there were eighty assemblies in the city and its vicinity. As the
number of lodges multiplied, it became necessary to establish a
common agency or authority, and a Committee on the Good of the
Order was constituted to represent all the local units, but this
committee was soon superseded by a delegate body known as the
District Assembly. As the movement spread from city to city and
from State to State, a General Assembly was created in 1878 to
hold annual conventions and to be the supreme authority of the
order. In 1883 the membership of the order was 591,000; within