ABSTRACT
Labor organizations in the early years of the United States were largely mutual aid societies or craft guilds that restricted entry into a craft and enforced workplace standards, as was also the case in Western Europe. By the 1820s, skilled workers were engaging in increasing numbers of protests and strikes over wage cuts, longer workdays, or layoffs, which were threats to both their economic well-being and social standing. The repression of 1886 led to a rapid decline for the Knights of Labor, but the events of that year also gave rise to a very different kind of union movement, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which took several lessons away from the failures of the Knights. For all the AFL’s careful planning and hopes, pure and simple trade unionism for skilled workers organized into craft unions did not enjoy much success within big industrial companies in its first decade.
