Show THE PASSING OF POWDERLY those who have been particularly interested in the proceedings of the recent general assembly of the knights of labor and who have that degree of patience that enables them to read everything the newspapers have to say eay will have noticed and doubtless commented upon the removal of mr terence V powderly as ae head bead of the great labor organization mentioned and the very smal email I 1 excitement this seemingly important change has bus caused there have been times when powderly Powder lya a personality personal ltv was of much more importance to the order than was the strang tir of the order itself when not only corpora actions and communities but also alao states and a nation even eved hung upon his bis individual dictates and prow prom toes imes with all the breathlessness and interest that the influence of one man who stands at the bead of nearly a million men all voters and who to la p popularly e supposed to control them by the slightest crook of his hie finger could in emergencies excite he was court ed yet feared and if he be seemed sometimes offensively conscious of his big im regu ability it la Is but due to may eay that to e repelled any attempt at flattery and resisted re every assault upon his bis personal integrity we are not aware that he was so ever charged with accepting a bribe or that any of his hie followers had cause to lose faith in his honor there was no apparent diminution in his in fluence with his followers nor any impairment of the faculties and abilities of the possession of which under the severest strain and at the most trying crises he be bad given such signal proof we must look elsewhere therefore for the cause of his downfall for such it must now be deemed but we do not rj have to look very far politics and political ambition have been bis big ruin and the former has given the knights of labor organization a blow from which it will not readily recover powderly committed the monstrous error of to foist himself hlusek and his order into the political arena and to secure a controlling place and influence in political affairs he thought be saw great opportunities in this line and ana the phantasm warped big vision formerly moderate wise clear in mind and sincere of purpose purdon ha ae guided the great organization through many a maze and problem that would have baffled a less leas force ul and intelligent leader but when the false light above mentioned broke in on him he began to consider labor problems and their in more from the standpoint of political ex ped lency and popular passion than from rom his bis old ground of justice and right party strums nostrums no and cures cerep from frem one side and the other were too readily considered and tried by him and in exactly the same game degree that he be began to traffic and trim and feel his way forward as a politic politician lati he sacrificed his own influence and estranged sympathy and support from the organ he be directed the knights of labor have declined materially in weight and importance during the last two or three years and the cause Is as we have stated it his ambition required him to disregard the sacredness sao redness of bis big trust and he vot not only permitted but actually stimulated a forgetfulness of the fact that the knights constituted a labor organization not a party to make terms with or dominate any political faction the lesson is one that may well be heeded by leaders of men in any other organized capacity and by the rank and file who follow those leaders leaden the attempt to deliver votes in blocks of live five or any other wholesale quantity by reason of a up posed control of men in the industrial commercial social or religious world invariably and properly results result disastrously to the bosses who make it the voters who yield to it and the party that expects to receive and profit by it |