ABSTRACT
The Knights of Labor was a secret society, a socialist secret society. During "the Gilded Age" of American history, the boundaries between unions for mutual aid, guild-based secret societies, trade unions that came from associations for journeymen, and political, Christian and esoteric organizations were fluid. The Knights' use of the medievalist mythology was thus part of the overall trend sometimes referred to as "the Gothic revival". Historian Bob James has calculated that the Knights of Labor – during the era that is sometimes called "the Golden Age of fraternalism" – shared the word knights with at least sixty-six other organizations of the times. The purpose of fraternalism – with medieval monks and knightly orders as models – was to promote a higher sense of ethics within the labor movement and at the same time to appeal to the conscience of Croesus.
