Terence Vincent Powderly

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Terence Vincent Powderly

Terence Vincent Powderly (born January 22, 1849 in Carbondale , Pennsylvania , † June 24, 1924 in Washington, DC ) was an American trade unionist , leader of the Knights of Labor from 1879 to 1893 , mayor, attorney, agent general of the United States immigration authorities and later an arbitrator for the US Department of Labor .

Life

Terence V. Powderly grew up as a child of 11, Irish - Catholic on immigrant family. His father was Terence Powderly and a truck driver by trade. His mother was Margery Walsh and raised a total of 12 children (8 boys and 4 girls).

Terence attended school in his hometown of Carbondale, became a switchman for the Delaware and Hudson Railway at the age of 13 and decided at the age of 17 to train as a machinist , in which he worked for 11 years until 1877.

On September 19, 1872 he married Hanna Deyer and 18 years after her death on March 31, 1919, Emma Fickenscher.

In 1871 he joined the machinists and blacksmiths union , one year later was elected chairman of a subordinate branch and three years later its organizer for the Western Pennsylvania area. His union activities put him on the black list and then, together with the economic crisis of 1873 , into unemployment.

On September 6, 1876, Powderly was introduced to the Knights of Labor, was elected Master Workman for the city of Scranton in 1877 and took over the mayor's office of the city on the ticket of the Greenback Labor Party in 1878, for which he was again for 2 years in 1880 and 1882 was chosen.

In 1879 he took over from Uriah Smith Stephens (1821-1882) as head of the Knights of Labor union, which he held until 1893.

In addition to his work as a union leader and mayor , he studied law and was admitted to the bar in Lackawanna County , Pennsylvania in 1894 after successfully completing his studies . In 1897 he was admitted to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and four years later admitted to the Supreme Court of the United States .

In 1897 he was appointed to the US Federal Administration by US President William McKinley , where he held the post of Chief Representative of the US Immigration Service from 1897 until he was recalled by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. After a few different jobs in the following years, he was entrusted with the position of Special Representative of the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1906 . He used the position to travel to Europe and there studied the reasons for the emigration of Europeans to America .

From 1907 to 1921 he took over the head of the information office of the immigration authorities and from 1921 until his death in 1924 he was also the agent for mediation for the Ministry of Labor.

House of Terence Powderly in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA

Powderly died on June 24, 1924 in Washington DC in 1999. He was posthumously inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame of the US Department of Labor.

Act

Powderly once put it this way:
When the bodies of men are abused, overused and starved until the stage in human development is reached in which the man mutates into an animal, spirituality is stunted, if not killed and the finest, noblest quality the human soul is suffocated.

It was this suffocating process that I had to deal with, and I came into more direct and closer contact with it than any of my critics did.

I came to the belief, and through my observation and experience with employers, I was confirmed in this belief that they did not think or care whether it was the worker's job to work as long as he could, whereupon the exploiter could realize his profit .

Powderly was on the side of the workers, the manufacturing workers and wage earners. He criticized the system and the conditions clearly: "Five men in the country control the main interests of five hundred thousand working men and can take the means for the livelihood of two and a half million souls at any moment", but he did not become radical.

He was committed to the introduction of the 8-hour working day and equal pay for equal work, regardless of race or gender. He fought for the abolition of child labor and the loan of convicts.

However , he rejected the means of strike to achieve the goals. He firmly believed that strikes would ultimately weaken the workers' organizations and lead to the disadvantage and damage of the economy and companies and thus also to the disadvantage of employees.

Powderly was a humanist embossed visionary who was more interested in longer-term goals. So he promoted z. B. during his time as union leader of the Knights of Labor actively the formation of cooperatives . Under his direction and support, 135 production and consumption cooperatives were set up.

He was a good organizer, speaker and writer, had tact and diplomatic skills. His somewhat arrogant and snobbish appearance sometimes let his advantages fade into the background.

In addition to his professional work, Powderly later proved himself to be a talented amateur photographer on his European trips .

Works

  • Terence Vincent Powderly: Thirty Years of Labor, 1859 to 1889 . Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1967. (autobiographical work).
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: The Path I Trod . AMS Press, New York, 1940. (1921 autobiographical work, published posthumously in 1940) ISBN 0-404-05098-0 .
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: The Organization of Labor . The North American review 135: 118-127, University of Northern Iowa, Aug 1882.
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: The Army of the Discontented . The North American review 140: 369-378, University of Northern Iowa, April 1885.
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: A Menacing Irruption . The North American review 147: 369-378, University of Northern Iowa, Aug 1888.
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: The Plea for Eight Hours . The North American review 150: 464-470, University of Northern Iowa, April 1890. - (link to text accessed July 2, 2008).
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: The Workingman and Free Silver . The North American review 153: 728-737, University of Northern Iowa, December 1891.
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865 . The Knights of Labor, 1894. - (link to text accessed July 2, 2008).
  • Terence Vincent Powderly: A Healthy Public Opinion . Distances the Knights of Labor from the Haymarket Martyrs, 1890. - (Web link to the text accessed July 2, 2008).
  • Terence Vincent Powderly, Edmund Janes: The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-day. The MW Hazen Company, 1891.

literature

  • Gary M. Fink, Biographical Dictionary of American Labor Leaders , Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1974. ISBN 0-8371-7643-3
  • Terence Vincent Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859 to 1889 , Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1967.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography . Catholic University of America , archived from the original on June 11, 2010 ; accessed on January 13, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).
  2. ^ Translated by: Harry J. Carman, Terence Vincent Powderly - An Appraisal , The Journal of Economic History, Vol.1 No.1, May 1941, pp.83-87.
  3. ↑ Donald L. Kemmerer and Edward D. Wickersham, Reasons for the Growth of the Knights of Labor in 1885-1886 , Industrial and Labor Relations Review, January 1950, pp.213-220.
  4. ^ Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States 1860-1895 (A Study in Democracy) , Vintage Books, Toronto, Canada, 1929.
  5. ↑ Photographs . Catholic University of America , archived from the original on June 10, 2010 ; accessed on January 13, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).

further reading

  • Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States 1860-1895 (A Study in Democracy) , Vintage Books, Toronto, Canada, 1929.
  • Vincent J. Falzone, Terence V. Powderly, Middle Class Reformer , University Press of America, Washington, 1978.
  • Craig Phelan, Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor , Greenwood Press, Westport, 2000.
personal data
SURNAME Powderly, Terence Vincent
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Powderly, Terence
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American trade unionist, mayor, lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Carbondale , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1924
Place of death Washington, DC