Terence V. Powderly
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Terence V. Powderly (1849 - 1924) was born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, the son of Irish immigrants. He was a union activist and Fenian supporter.
He worked at a young age of 13 on the railroad, and continued on to work for blacksmiths and join organizations and later lead them.
He is best known as the leader of the Knights of Labor union, a trade union organization that tried to unite all kinds of workers from all industries into a single force for reform and workers' rights.
In the aftermath of the bloody strikes of the summer of 1877 Powderly organized Scranton workers to achieve political power, and was himself elected mayor of Scranton (from the Greenback-Labor Party)in 1878. He abolished the original secrecy of the Union and stressed working inside the system to change working conditions. Like most labor union men of the time he advocated an 8 hour day and the abolition of child labor.
Through Powderly's leadership, the Knights of Labor became one of the first truly national labor unions. He accepted unskilled workers, women, as well as African Americans into his organization later on in the 1800s.
For all of his acceptance, Powderly, like most working-class Americans of the times, actively opposed allowingChinese workers claiming they took jobs away from "Real Americans". Samuel Gompers felt the same way.
He even urged West Coast branches of the Knights of Labor to campaign for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Powderly disliked strikes because the Knights of Labor admitted "producers," and since employers were "producers," strikes done by the Union would cause internal fights between the laborers and the employers involved in the Knights of Labor.
He also worked with the noted American bishop, James Gibbons, to persuade the pope to remove sanctions against Roman Catholics who joined unions. Soon the number of members in the Knights of Labor would rise to 70,000, and eventually 700,000.
However the Knights of Labor were too diverse of a group to deal with the centralized industries that they were striking against. After the Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago during 1886, in which Powderly refused to support Knights accused of inciting a bombing (see The McNamara Brothers), rampant factionalism broke out among the group which would never recover, and the Knights ceased to exist by 1900.
Powderly eventually resigned because of these internal fights amongst the labor group.
He became a lawyer, which would branch onto serving the US as a commissioner general of immigration, and then the chief information officer for the US Bureau of Immigration.
His service as Commissioner General of Immigration lasted from 1897 to 1902. It was in 1907 that he became the Chief Information Officer of the US Bureau of Immigration. He kept his position until 1921.Template:US-politician-stub