In the post-Civil War era, continued expansion of the rail net. work, development of the coal and steel industries, and the tremendous growth of the farm-related meat-packing industry meant that Illinois was a semi-agricultural, semi-industrial state unlike any other in the nation.

The uniqueness was sharpened by the tremendous growth of Chicago and lesser urban centers in the midst of the prairie. Steel worker and corn farmer worked within sight of one another, and in some towns only the railroad tracks separated the residences of coal miners with heavy foreign accents from farmers who traced their ancestry to colonial Virginia.

In this mix the Knights of Labor had a natural appeal to workers seeking organization. Sired by Uriah Stephens, the K of L was born among the Philadelphia garment cutters in 1869. Secret and ritualistic at first, the Knights emphasized one idea that seemed reasonable to the heterogeneous work force in Illinois.

The Knights' goal was solidarity, cooperation of the various callings and crafts, inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness as expressed in their motto "An injury to one is the concern of all." Here was a chance, it seemed, for the Chicago iron worker, the Peoria cooper, -the Belleville miner, and the Cairo merchant and farmer to unite for economic improvement. In fact only liquor dealers, lawyers, doctors (later admitted), bankers, professional gamblers, and stockholders were barred from membership which could be skilled or unskilled, male or female, white or black.

The basic unit in the order was the local assembly which might be either trade assembly consisting of workers in a single craft, or mixed assembly made up of several trades and callings, and might even include employers. Five local assemblies could form a district assembly, the jurisdiction of which remained ill-defined. District Assembly 13 was organized Aug. 1, 1877, at Springfield with local assemblies from Springfield, Hollis, Kingston Mines, Limestone, and Peoria. The next year a General Assembly was created which provided a superficial national direction.

From 1879 to 1893, during the entire active career of the Knights, its nominal leader was Terence V. Powderly. A sensitive and vain introvert in the van of rough, boisterous followers, Powderly stood out like "Queen Victoria at a Democratic convention." But he was an excellent speaker whose moralistic banalities and tireless pen somehow preserved his leadership. Anti-strike and touting land reform, temperance, and the cooperative movement, he personified the fluid form, function, and philosophy of the Knights.

Growth of the Knights was steady in the late 1870s and early 1880s. On Aug. 19, 1877, Local Assembly 400 organized in Chicago, and its sojourners spread the influence of the order. District Assembly 24 appeared in the city in 1879. In the southern part of the state miners joined in increasing numbers; in 1877 H. W. Smith organized 30 assemblies among them. And many small towns with no industry to speak of embraced local assemblies. These represented not wageearners solely but the last frontier of semi-itinerant craftsmen and small shopkeepers, who had no interest in the mass movements of the newly mobilized regiments of the wage-earning East. Local Assembly .2361 in Washington County, for example, was organized in 1882, and reported 60 members representing 20 separate occupations. By 1886 some 306 local assemblies of the Knight claimed a membership of 52,400.

Dualism drained organized power among the coal miners. Daniel McLaughlin, president of the loosely coordinated state miners organization, in September, 1885, helped launch the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers at Indianapolis. Some 8000 union miners sent delegates to the convention of the Illinois Miners in Springfield in February, 1886, where the state was formed into districts, the union incorporated under state law, and officers elected.

Almost simultaneously, on May 20, 1886, Mine and Mine Laborers National District Assembly No. 135, Knights of Labor, was organized at St. Louis to coordinate the efforts of the local assemblies. In Illinois, south of East St. Louis, most organized miners affiliated with the Knights, while those in the northern section joined the National Federation.

With increasing membership and an appealing statewide program, organized labor seemed to be coming of age in 1886. But internal struggles between the trade unions and the Knights already had weakened the crusade, and external pressures released by the anarchists and the Haymarket bomb brought it limping to a halt.

The Knights of Labor began to decline in influence. Workers came to consider Terence Powderly as much too utopian, and he was blamed by many for bungling what might have been a successful strike among the packinghouse workers in Chicago in 1886. Trade unions affiliated with the AFL seemed to be performing basic functions in a better fashion, and workers rallied to them.