Portrait of an American Labor Leader: William L. Hutcheson.

Philip Taft; Maxwell C. Raddock

doi:10.2307/2519781

Terence Vincent Powderly—An Appraisal

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700051895 ◽

1941 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 83-87

Author(s):

Harry J. Carman

Keyword(s):

Labor Movement ◽

Full Length ◽

Short Article ◽

Knights Of Labor ◽

Labor Leader ◽

American Labor Movement ◽

American Labor

T. V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor from 1879 to 1893, has been portrayed in many different ways—as idealist, reformer, humanitarian, windbag, renegade, crook, imposter, agitator, introvert, self-seeker, charlatan, cheap politician, turncoat, rabble rouser, and drippy sentimentalist. Some claim that he was a great labor leader; others just as vigorously maintain that he was utterly lacking in the qualities of leadership—that he was, in reality, an insignificant nobody swept along by the changing currents of the American labor movement. It is not the purpose of this short article to paint a full-length portrait of Powderly but rather, on the basis of newly discovered data, to indicate briefly which, if any, of the above characterizations fit the man.

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Global Master Workman

10.3828/liverpool/9781800859609.003.0006 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 129-150

Author(s):

Steven Parfitt

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Civil War ◽

Labor Force ◽

Labor Movement ◽

The United States ◽

Labor Leader ◽

Irish Immigrants ◽

National Border ◽

American Labor Movement ◽

American Labor

This chapter analyzes the story of a transnational figure who hardly ever crossed a national border in his career as labor leader. Terence Powderly (1849-1924) was born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, in 1849, to Irish immigrants. He entered the labor force as a switchman for the Delaware and Hudson railroad at the age of 13, as the Civil War raged across the United States, and became a machinists’ apprentice at the age of 17. He was marked out very early as a rising star in the American labor movement, rising quickly in the Machinist and Blacksmith’s Union after joining it in 1871. In 1874, a year after the Panic of ’73 brought economic depression to the United States and forced Powderly west to find work, he joined a relatively new, secret union that he would be associated with for the rest of his life: The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor.

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