r
or later to induce those craftsmen who were in the Order to seek a
similar autonomy. From the very beginning the more skilled and better
organized trades in the Knights sought to separate from the mixed
"district assemblies" and to create within the framework of the Order
"national trade assemblies."[26] However, the national officers, who
looked upon such a move as a betrayal of the great principle of the
solidarity of all labor, were able to stem the tide excepting in the
case of the window glass blowers, who were granted their autonomy in
1880.

The obvious superiority of the trade union form of organization over the
mixed organization, as revealed by events in 1886 and 1887, strengthened
the separatist tendency. Just as the struggle between the Knights of
Labor and the trade unions on the outside had been fundamentally a
struggle between the unskilled and the skilled portions of the
wage-earning class, so the aspiration toward the national trade assembly
within the Order represented the effort of the more or less skilled men
for emancipation from the dominance of the unskilled. But the Order
successfully fought off such attempts until after the defeat of the
mixed district assemblies, or in other words of the unskilled class, in
the struggle with the employers. With the withdrawal of a very large
portion of this class, as shown in 1887,[27] the demand for the national
trade assembly revived and there soon began a veritable rush to organize
by trades. The stampede was strongest in the city of New York where the
incompetence of the mixed District Assembly 49 had become patent. At the
General Assembly in 1887 at Minneapolis all obstacles were removed from
forming national trade assemblies, but this came too late to stem the
exodus of the skilled element from the order into the American
Federation of Labor.

The victory of craft autonomy over the "one big union" was decisive and
complete.

The strike activities of the Knights were confessedly a deviation from
"First Principles." Yet the First Principles with their emphasis on
producers' cooperation were far from forgotten even when the enthusiasm
for strikes was at its highest. Whatever the actual feelings of the
membership as a whole, the leaders neglected no opportunity to promote
cooperation. T.V. Powderly, the head of the Order since 1878, in his
reports to the annual General Assembly or convention, consistently urged
that practical steps be taken toward coope