ABSTRACT
From the watchtowers of areligiosity and atheism, the Christianity and ethics/moralism of the Knights of Labor did not merely echo naïvety – and its rituals seem "ridiculous" and "muddle-headed principles". The Knights of Labor was not just a fraternal association; it was also a ritualoriented order. The best and perhaps the only way to get a glimpse into the ritual life of the order is to study its manual of rituals, known as the Adelphon Kruptos, "The Secret Brotherhood". At the time when the Knights of Labor was founded in 1869, only a few typewritten copies of the Adelphon Kruptos seem to have been circulated, but at some point after 1872 a few copies were printed. The American writer Mark Twain, a supporter of the Knights of Labor and the labor movement itself, expressed the same objection as the poem: the refusal to let spectacular suffering obscure anonymous, drawn-out suffering.
