Terence V. Powderly

Terence V. Powderly (born January 22, 1849, Carbondale, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died June 24, 1924, Washington, D.C.) was an American labour leader and politician who led the Knights of Labor (KOL) from 1879 to 1893.

Powderly, the son of Irish immigrants to the United States, became a railroad worker at the age of 13 in Pennsylvania. At 17 he became a machinist’s apprentice, and he worked at that trade until age 28. He joined the Machinists’ and Blacksmiths’ Union in 1871 and rose steadily within the organization. In 1874 he joined the secret order of the Knights of Labor, in which he also advanced rapidly. In 1879 he was chosen grand master workman (after 1883, general master workman), the union’s highest post. In addition to his union activities, Powderly was also elected mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, three times as a Greenback-Labor candidate, serving from 1878 to 1884.

Like his predecessor as the head of the Knights, Uriah Stephens, Powderly saw the union as a vehicle for leading American workers out of the bondage of wage labour. He presided over the Knights in the period of their greatest numerical strength—the mid-1880s—but never understood that the KOL’s appeal came as much from the weakness of competing trade unions as it did from the distinctiveness of the KOL’s approach, which emphasized secrecy while repudiating involvement in strikes. In the spring of 1886, the Knights claimed a membership of 700,000. Within a year, however, counterattacks by businessmen such as Jay Gould and public blame for the Haymarket Riot had tarnished the KOL’s image. Membership steadily declined. Powderly became absorbed in internal disputes and finally resigned in 1893.

In the remaining years of his career, he practiced law, tried his hand at business, and served in several government posts. His first book, Thirty Years of Labor, was published in 1889; his autobiography, The Path I Trod, was published posthumously in 1940.