"The Cruel Striker War" - NIU Digital Projects

efore, Lincoln had denounced the reshaping of national life by the expansion of slavery.
Local efforts to organize the Union Labor Party are reported in the RR, June 23, July 14,
25, 28, October 21, 1888. See also Alfred W. Newcombe's "Alson Jenness Streeter—An
Agrarian Liberal," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 34, 1946). Streeter had
been a friend and pallbearer of Chauncey Colton, who had first brought the railroad to
Galesburg. See "Mr. Colton," in Litvin's Voices, 247. Also Knox Directory, 153. The
strike of 1888 proved "a critical turning point" in the thinking of Eugene V. Debs about
the labor movement, leading him toward the idea of "One Big Union" in the industry and,
ultimately to leadership of the American Railway Union and finally to socialism. Nick
Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana: Unversity of Illinois Press,
1982), 79, also 74-82. The CB&Q payroll records note that 276 employees in Galesburg,
Burlington and Creston received discharges and "Time Given" for joining Debs' ARU.
Stromquist's A Generation of Boomers, 94. On Labor Day, 1900, Galesburg unionists
joined others in the region at Canton, Illinois to hear Debs, then the Socialist presidential
candidate. Perry, History of Knox County, 1779.
46. Although concerned with several case studies, Fink also compiled what he
acknowledges to be an incomplete list of generally unstudied "Knights of Labor Political
Tickets, by State or Territory, 1885-88," Workingmen's Democracy, 28-29. A quick
comparison with Garlick's Guide shows that the order is not known to have even existed
in some places where such labor campaigns took place. Neither the Guide nor a modern
state map reveals Milburn in Connecticut, Fayette City and Kendalia in West Virginia,
Berlin Mills in New Hampshire, or Kanawha Falls in Virginia, where Fink's sources
mention labor parties. The Guide gives no known assemblies as a basis for political
activities listed by Fink at Salem, Marion County, Illinois; DePere, Brown County,
Wisconsin; and, Mountain Cove, Fayette County, West Virginia. (Likely, two of these
locations refer to the Falls of the Kanawha in West Virginia and nearby "Mountain Cave,"
the site of an antebellum spiritualist settlement still active in national reform circles as late
as the 1870s.) A further comparison reveals that the Knights never seemed to reach into
Boone and DuPage counties, Illinois, where labor tickets took the field at
Belvidere and Batavia, while Knights organized at Las Animas in Colorado, Marion in
Indiana, and St. Paul, Minnesota, only in 1890 and 1891, after the insurgent labor parties
are noted. (Guide, 63, 75 and 28, 98, 268). Not until after 1886 are Knights known to have
had assemblies at such sites of third party activities as: Prestonville, Kentucky; Willow
Springs, Missouri; Washington, New Jersey; and, Statesville and Burlington, North
Carolina. Added to this category might be the aforementioned Berlin Mills and Fayette
City if they refer to Berlin Falls in Coos county, New Hampshire and Fayette Station in
Fayette county, West Virginia. Conversely, the order had collapsed by 1886 at Somerset,
Massachusetts, Ashtabula, Ohio, and Ottawa, Kansas, which are listed as supporting labor
insurgencies. In short, many of the "labor parties" ascribed to the Knights had no
demonstrable connection to the Knights and were probably more based on local
Greenback persistence than any clear "labor" base.
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