Abstract
Prior to the Civil War, and for a decade afterwards, the American labor movement was not a success. Temporary progress was evident in a number of these decades, but always some situation or circumstance developed to retard or bring disaster to the movement. In the decades of the seventies and eighties emerged the first successful and continuous labor movement-- the Knights of Labor, and, more especially, the American Federation of Labor, for the Knights collapsed during the early years of the 1890's. |In resisting many of the demands of labor, employers often charged that the agitation was the inspiration and work of un-American persons, socialists and foreigners. It is the purpose of this paper to present a study of this labor movement in order to determine what influence socialists had upon its beginnings and its early character, and to establish to what extent there were foreigners in this movement and what influence they had in the formation and upon the principles of this American labor movement.