OCR Text |
Show 4 A Prophet With Honor By Frederic J. Haskin. 1 , 1 WASHINGTON, D. C. A man who spoke for equal suffrage from the same platform with Susan B. Anthony at a time when a suffragist was held no better bet-ter than an anarchist; a man who advocated advo-cated lidor unions-long before any px-Isled; px-Isled; who fathered the idea of an eight-hour eight-hour day, and who gained the reputation of being a wild-eyed radical by suggesting suggest-ing the income tax some thirty years ago that is Terrence Vincent Powderly ol the department of labor. , Although his memories go back to the Buchanan-Fremont campaign in 1S5R; although al-though he has lived and led evnry Rtep of the American labor movement since It began with the Knights of Labor back in the seventies, Mr. Powderly is still an active official of the Uni I ed States department of labor, tho creation of which he advocated po long ago .that men called him a crank. Mr. Powderly was born near Carbon -rale. Pa., on January 'I'i. 184'.. Now just turned 70, he is as hale and active as though he -e a mere 50, aud there is nothing b-:si.Jrs his whitened hair and musiaehe i,, indicate that be in more than a few yarn beyond that ago. Mr. Puwderly toils the lullowing story of his conversion to -the cause of equal suffrage: j "When T wns T years old, the Pueban-.m-Kri'inuTit campaign whi in full swing. The lancdu-L'oUL'las debater were over, I bin we reopened thfrit at home. .Mv fy,- $ Lher was an uncompromising Democrat and niy mother an inexorable abolitionist. abolition-ist. They were heart and s;ml devoted to each other, but.' that didn't prevent them from wrangling about political issues. is-sues. I listened attentively to all the arguments ar-guments and tried to balance one against another in my he-ad. Once in a whihs I would out with a question of my own. "On election day, iS,"fi, my father left home early in the morning to go to the polling place, whrch "lay a couple of miles beyond through a thick strip of woods. I knew, of course, what ho was going to do, but X was puzzled as to why my mother stayed at home. 'Why. nioLlier,' 1 said, 'aren't you going to vote?" She looked at me wonderingly. 'Certainly not, child. Women don L vote.' 'Why not?' I demanded. "She could not think of a good answer, and from that time, whether I knew it or not, 1 became an equal suffragist." The Powder iy family moved to Scran-ton, Scran-ton, where young Terrence attended the public schools until ho was At that time the civil war was brewing, ana when the outbreak carne the elder Powderly Pow-derly wont off to Tight and the support sup-port of the family fell to the bny. He found a job as switch tender iu the railroad rail-road yards near home. He afterward be-, be-, came a repairman and finally a machinist. ma-chinist. Out of hours he studied law and economics, i It was during this period that Powderly ! began to be active in the labor move-: move-: merit. The organization known as the j Knights of Labor was then at its inception in-ception and he becamo one of the chief t organizers for his district. The movement, move-ment, however, did not gain much mo-: mo-: mentum until the railroads and anthracite anthra-cite mine strike of 1S77. That was a time of general industrial depression and the railroads endeavored to retrench by cutting cutt-ing wages. The strike began in Pittsburg Pitts-burg and gradually spread thruugnout all of the coal regions of Pennsylvania. In Scran ton the strike was suppressed with undue violence by the mayur, possibly because the sinister memory ot tho Molly Maguires still hung over the city. Many innocent men and women were shot in tiie riots which occurred there. The Knights of IjfLbor took no part in the strike of 1877, but it served to give their movement considerable Impetus, and in t ti a follnwi ?if V(J:i r 'IVrri'iii'ii Pnwdr! v was elected mayor of Scran ton on a labor la-bor ticket. Ho was re-elected in 18S0 I and again in 18S2. While he was still mayor of Scranton ' he was made grand master workman of the Knights of Labor the highest offico ! of that organization. All the time Pow-I Pow-I derly could spare from his official duties he spent in developing the labor pro-I pro-I gram. j t was about this time that the ap- pollution of "crank" became fastened on him. He had declared for government ownership of transportation lines and had openly advocated "women's rights," : an idea almost unthinkable in that generation. gen-eration. He was styled an -"anarchist" for having said things like these: "I believe the day has come tor united labor to ask at the hands of congress the passage of a law creating a department depart-ment of labor at the seat of national government." "It is demanded by the Knights of Labor La-bor that a graduated income tax bo levied. If is hoped by this operation to reach our wealthy men and forco them to pay a just proportion of the revenue necessary to conduct affairs of state." "There should be a universal eight-hour eight-hour working day." "I believe the government should control con-trol the telegraph." "The value of the money used by the people is not fixed or regular. It fluctuates fluc-tuates at the will of those who have it to lend, or who are enabled, by reason of their control over a portion nf it, to withdraw it from circulation at pleasure. The right to issue money Is a sovereign prerogative which should not he delegated dele-gated to any less creature than the government gov-ernment itself." Such things are not today regarded as anarchistic and most of them h.ive become actual facts. A radical has only to live long enoiii;h and ho will become a conservative without changing his views. In 1001 Mr. Powderly was admitted to the bar. Six. years later lie was appointed appoint-ed a spcbil representative of the department depart-ment of labor to study causes of Immigration. Immi-gration. The year following he was made chief of the division of information informa-tion of the bureau of Immigration, and when that body moved to tb" department of labor, Powderly moved with it. |