The crisis came in 1886. In the early months of this turbulent
year there were nearly five hundred labor disputes, most of them
involving an advance in wages. An epidemic of strikes then spread
over the country, many of them actually conducted by the Knights
of Labor and all of them associated in the public mind with that
order. One of the most important of these occurred on the
Southwestern Railroad. In the preceding year, the Knights had
increased their lodges in St. Louis from five to thirty, and
these were under the domination of a coarse and ruthless district
leader. When in February, 1886, a mechanic, working in the shops
of the Texas and Pacific Railroad at Marshall, Texas, was
discharged for cause and the road refused to reinstate him, a
strike ensued which spread over the entire six thousand miles of
the Gould system; and St. Louis became the center of the tumult.
After nearly two months of violence, the outbreak ended in the
complete collapse of the strikers. This result was doubly
damaging to the Knights of Labor, for they had officially taken
charge of the strike and were censured on the one hand for their
conduct of the struggle and on the other for the defeat which
they had sustained.
In the same year, against the earnest advice of the national
leaders of the Knights of Labor, the employees of the Third
Avenue Railway in New York began a strike which lasted many
months and which was characterized by such violence that
policemen were detailed to guard every car leaving the barns.
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