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Show PRINTERS LED WORK OF ORGANIZATION Pioneers in Two Broad Fields of Expansion. The printers were the first craft of any consequence to extend their or- ganizatlon all over the United States. They established the National Typographical Typo-graphical union in 1850. In order to take in Canada, they established the International Typog r a p h i c a 1 union in 1862, being be-ing the leader also In this broader field. . ... . The formation Timothy Shea. . ' of great corpora tions and the Immense expansion in Industry In-dustry which began soon after the Civil war Incited larger labor combinations , than had existed prior to that time. Some of these formed the National Labor La-bor union, established at a convention in Baltimore in 1866, which entered politics pol-itics in 1872 by nominating the Labor Reform ticket, nutting Charles O'Conor up for President. Its votes were few, and It attracted no general attention In the campaign. That broke up the combination, and labor societies, as societies, kept out of politics for the next few years. As societies their most extensive participation In politics . - was in the congressional campaign of 1906. Starting as a local secret society in Philadelphia in 1869 and holding its first general assembly in 1878, the Knights of Labor was the earliest society so-ciety which aimed to gather all the workers of all trades into a single organization. It had 100,000 members in 18S6, with Terrence V. Powderly as the head. Then began Its decline and fall. Its strike on the Gould system of railways In St. Louis and the Southwest In 1885 It won, but the larger strike in 18S6 on the same roads it lost. From that time onward it gradually grad-ually shrunk In Importance. The American Federation of Labor rose as the Knights of Labor fell. At a convention In Columbus, Ohio, In 1880 the American Federation of Labor La-bor was formed, and It has gradually absorbed nine-tenths of all the labor organizations of the United States. In It the several crafts retain their autonomy, au-tonomy, but are federal for purposes of co-operation. In recent years the American Federation of Labor comprised com-prised 119 national and international unions and claimed to hnve 2,000,000 meir.iiers. The afllliuted unions publish pub-lish 245 weekly or monthly papers devoted de-voted to the cause of labor. |