concerned, in comparison with that of these five
rulers.

"They can stay the nimble touch of almost every telegraph operator; can
shut up most of the mills and factories, and can disable the railroads.
They can issue an edict against any manufactured goods so as to make
their subjects cease buying them, and the tradesmen stop selling them.

"They can array labor against capital, putting labor on the offensive or
the defensive, for quiet and stubborn self-protection, or for angry,
organized assault, as they will."

Before long the Order was able to benefit by this publicity in quarters
where the tale of its great power could only attract unqualified
attention, namely, in Congress. The Knights of Labor led in the
agitation for prohibiting the immigration of alien contract laborers.
The problem of contract immigrant labor rapidly came to the front in
1884, when such labor began frequently to be used to defeat strikes.

Twenty persons appeared to testify before the committee in favor of the
bill, of whom all but two or three belonged to the Knights of Labor. The
anti-contract labor law which was passed by Congress on February 2,
1885, therefore, was due almost entirely to the efforts of the Knights
of Labor. The trade unions gave little active support, for to the
skilled workingmen the importation of contract Italian and Hungarian
laborers was a matter of small importance. On the other hand, to the
Knights of Labor with their vast contingent of unskilled it was a strong
menace. Although the law could not be enforced and had to be amended in
1887 in order to render it effective, its passage nevertheless attests
the political influence already exercised by the Order in 1885.

The outcome of the Gould strike of 1885 and the dramatic exaggeration of
the prowess of the Order by press and even by pulpit were largely
responsible for the psychological setting that called forth and
surrounded the great upheaval of 1886. This upheaval meant more than the
mere quickening of the pace of the movement begun in preceding years and
decades. It signalled the appearance on the scene of a new class which
had not hitherto found a place in the labor movement, namely the
unskilled. All the peculiar characteristics of the dramatic events in
1886 and 1887, the highly feverish pace at which organizations grew, the
nation-wide wave of strikes, particularly sympathetic strikes, the wide
use of the boycott, the obliteration, apparently complete,