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Biography of Terence Vincent PowderlyName: Terence Vincent PowderlyBirth Date: January 22, 1849 Death Date: January 24, 1924 Place of Birth: Carbondale, Pennsylvania, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: labor leader Terence Vincent Powderly American labor leader Terence Vincent Powderly (1849-1924) presided over the Knights of Labor during the union's remarkable growth and rapid decline in the 1880s.Terence V. Powderly was born in Carbondale, Pa., on Jan. 22, 1849. His parents were Irish immigrants. At 13 he began work in a railroad yard. At 17 he apprenticed himself to a machinist and began to practice the trade in 1869 in the shops of the Delaware and Western Railroad in Scranton, Pa. Interested in labor unionism, he joined the International Union of Machinists and Blacksmiths in 1871 and, in 1874, was an organizer for the Industrial Brotherhood. That year he was initiated into the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, a small secret society centered on Philadelphia. Powderly organized the Knights' local assembly in Scranton and was elected its master workman in 1876; he was also an officer in district assembly no. 5.In 1878, at the age of 29, Powderly was elected …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…something of a snob. Ultimately these qualities neutralized his competence as an organizer and administrator, his considerable abilities as a speaker and correspondent, and his tact and diplomacy.After retiring from leadership of the Knights, Powderly practiced law and was named commissioner general of immigration (1897). He became chief of the Division of Information in the Immigration Bureau in 1907. He died on Jan. 24, 1924. Associated Organizations Further Reading The basic sources for studying Powderly are his autobiographical Thirty Years of Labor, 1849-1924 (1889; rev. ed. 1890) and The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (1940). The most comprehensive discussion of Powderly is in Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860-1895 (1929). Information on Powderly can be found in any standard labor history of the period; the best is probably Foster Rhea Dulles, Labor in America (1949; 3d ed. 1966).Falzone, Vincent J., Terence V. Powderly, middle class reformer, Washington: University Press of America, 1978. |