This small
beginning grew into the famous Assembly No. 1. Soon the ship
carpenters wanted to join, and Assembly No. 2 was organized. The
shawl-weavers formed another assembly, the carpet-weavers
another, and so on, until over twenty assemblies, covering almost
every trade, had been organized in Philadelphia alone. By 1875
there were eighty assemblies in the city and its vicinity. As the
number of lodges multiplied, it became necessary to establish a
common agency or authority, and a Committee on the Good of the
Order was constituted to represent all the local units, but this
committee was soon superseded by a delegate body known as the
District Assembly. As the movement spread from city to city and
from State to State, a General Assembly was created in 1878 to
hold annual conventions and to be the supreme authority of the
order. In 1883 the membership of the order was 591,000; within
three years, it had mounted to over 700,000; and at the climax of
its career the society boasted over 1,000,000 workmen in the
United States and Canada who had vowed fealty to its knighthood.
It is not to be imagined that every member of this vast horde so
suddenly brought together understood the obligations of the
workman's chivalry. The selfish and the lawless rushed in with
the prudent and sincere. But a resolution of the executive board
to stop the initiation of new members came too late. The
undesirable and radical element in many communities gained
control of local assemblies, and the conservatism and
intelligence of the national leaders became merely a shield for
the rowdy and the ignorant who brought the entire order into
popular disfavor.
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