three years, it had mounted to over 700,000; and at the climax of
its career the society boasted over 1,000,000 workmen in the
United States and Canada who had vowed fealty to its knighthood.
It is not to be imagined that every member of this vast horde so
suddenly brought together understood the obligations of the
workman's chivalry. The selfish and the lawless rushed in with
the prudent and sincere. But a resolution of the executive board
to stop the initiation of new members came too late. The
undesirable and radical element in many communities gained
control of local assemblies, and the conservatism and
intelligence of the national leaders became merely a shield for
the rowdy and the ignorant who brought the entire order into
popular disfavor.

The crisis came in 1886. In the early months of this turbulent
year there were nearly five hundred labor disputes, most of them
involving an advance in wages. An epidemic of strikes then spread
over the country, many of them actually conducted by the Knights
of Labor and all of them associated in the public mind with that
order. One of the most important of these occurred on the
Southwestern Railroad. In the preceding year, the Knights had
increased their lodges in St. Louis from five to thirty, and
these were under the domination of a coarse and ruthless district
leader. When in February, 1886, a mechanic, working in the shops
of the Texas and Pacific Railroad at Marshall, Texas, was
discharged for cause and the road refused to reinstate him, a
strike ensued which spread over the entire six thousand miles of
the Gould system; and St. Louis became the center of the tumult.
After nearly two months of violence, the outbreak ended in the
complete collapse of the strikers. This result was doubly