Web site offering headlines of 1886 Amsterdam mill strike
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History for 2-12-05
Frank Yunker’s history website sheds more light on a strike and manufacturers’ lockout that shut down Amsterdam’s knitting mills in 1886.
A computer information systems professor at Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Yunker has created an online database from almanacs published by the Daily Democrat and Amsterdam Evening Recorder from 1886 to 1925 (www.mohawkvalleyweb.com ). The almanacs, part of the collection of the college’s Kenneth Dorn history room, contain news headlines (not complete stories) from these papers.
Two weeks ago, we had a column on the 1886 spinners strike as reported by a rival Amsterdam paper, the Morning Sentinel. Sentinel owner George H. Loadwick was “aggressively progressive” according to historian Washington Frothingham and his paper was “the voice of area Democrats,” according to historian Hugh Donlon. Ironically, The Democrat newspaper became a Republican publication when purchased by William J. Kline of Fultonville in 1879, wrote Donlon. In 1893, Kline purchased The Recorder and relegated The Democrat name to a subsidiary position. The Recorder/Democrat and Sentinel competed until The Sentinel folded in 1918.
According to headlines from The Democrat, the spinners strike began in September 6, 1886 and lasted four months, putting two thousand people out of work. The Knights of Labor initially walked out because a non-union “spare hand” was assigned spinner’s work at the Schuyler and Blood mill.
On November 22, Knights of Labor pickets were arrested, according to The Democrat. On December 6, a non-union spinner named Henry Kline was “knocked down and cut on the head.” The next day, a non-union spinner named Jason Davis was “assaulted and terribly beaten.”
On December 15, The Democrat reported it published “an expose of the Knights of Labor secrets, creating great excitement.” The union, when it first formed, had been a secret organization. On December 23, members of the union were held as “disorderly persons.” On January 9, 1887, a non-union spinner named Charles McDonald was assaulted. McDonald then stabbed Thomas Finnan in the head and wounded two others. On January 12, the Knights of Labor went back to work amid “great excitement.”
The Knights of Labor, according to the online encyclopedia.com, was a national union started by Philadelphia tailors in 1869. It advocated for an eight-hour day, abolition of child labor and equal pay for equal work. The year 1886 was a high point for the union under leader Terence V. Powderly, whose name is mentioned in some Democrat headlines. Membership reached over 700,000. It was the first labor union to admit women. However, by 1900 the Knights of Lab! or had been marginalized by unsuccessful strikes and growth of the American Federation of Labor.
Leonora Barry joined the Knights of Labor in Amsterdam in the 1880s. She worked in a mill sewing men’s trousers for five cents a dozen. Barry left Amsterdam and went on to head the “women’s department” in the union, resigning in 1889 amid criticism by some of her “high moral tone.” Barry lived until 1930 and was popular on the lecture circuit as an advocate for temperance, suffrage and the rights of women in the workplace. This information comes from former Montgomery County historian Jacqueline Murphy, who was instrumental in getting an histo! rical marker about Barry placed at the east end of the Riverfront Center in Amsterdam in 1998.
Are you in the picture?
Mohawk Valley memorabilia collector Tom Foster provided the photo from the 1950s that accompanies today’s column. It shows a huge snowman outside a grocery store on what may be Locust Avenue in Amsterdam. If you know people in the picture or have information on the big snowman, please respond to the contact information below.
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