The Lockout of the 20,000

By Steve Davis of the New York Labor History Association

In 1886, 20,000 knitting mill employees were locked out of their jobs by 50 mill owners in New York’s Mohawk Valley. The lockout was mostly lost to history but came to light upon the discovery of the original 1885 to 1888 Minute Book of the Knights of Labor Local Assembly 3964 which represented the employees in Little Falls, New York.

The Minute Book detailed the efforts of the employers to destroy the Knights of Labor and the heroic actions of the 2,500 Little Falls employees to resist the bosses and survive their three month lockout.

The late 1800s was an era of spectacular wealth by employers created by the Industrial Revolution, and devastating poverty of their workers. Employees endured six-day workweeks, 12 to 14 hour workdays, poor working conditions and low pay.

Nationwide strikes and violence caused by the uprising of underpaid, overworked masses demonstrating against the greed of their employers were highlighted by the 1877 coast-to-coast railroad strike and the 1886 Haymarket bombing in which alleged anarchists threw a bomb at police at a demonstration in behalf of the 8-hour day. The extensive labor unrest caused workers and unions to be condemned as radical, revolutionary and un-American. President Cleveland called these activities an “insurrection.” A harsh anti-union clampdown followed Haymarket resulting in arrests of union leaders and destruction of union properties.

In the Mohawk Valley, the Knitgoods Employers Association seized on a minor incident in one mill in Amsterdam, New York as a pretext to lock out 20,000 mill workers in the region and destroy the local Knights of Labor union. An employer promoted an unskilled, nonunion worker to the position of spinner, a skilled job. The Spinners Union struck. The Amsterdam Knights of Labor assembly struck in support of the Spinners Union.

The Knights of Labor was the most powerful union of that time, representing 700,000 workers nationwide. The Employers Association said that local citizens have not “imbibed the principles of anarchism” and would not “consent to a reign of lawlessness.” They declared that “we will not submit the control of our business to anyone. We insist upon hiring and firing whom we please. We will not employ any employee who is a Knight and if any are employed they will be fired.”

Despite the fact that the Knights did not believe in anarchy and had amicable relations with the area employers, the bosses locked out their employees for three months. The workers suffered with lack of pay, area businesses lost their customers and workers who lived in employer-owned housing were evicted.

During the lockout the workers remained united and resolute in their resistance. The locked out Little Falls employees urged their co-workers to stand with them and not return to work, despite their employers’ offers.  They called returning workers “enemies of this assembly” and “traitors to their cause.” The employers sought workers from other cities. Locked out workers reacted to this by meeting trains from New York City, urging the prospective workers to leave and not take the jobs of locked out employees. They arranged “secret committees” to learn the names, addresses, and mills where returning workers were employed. Those who returned to work were suspended from the Knights and their names placed in a “black book for future reference.” They spoke to boarding house landlords, urging them not to take replacement workers as tenants. They picketed the mills to discourage replacement workers from taking their jobs and were arrested by the local police. Union members who placed ads in local newspapers which supported the employers were “ordered to appear before the assembly” and their names were placed in the “black book.”

After three months the Employers succeeded in gradually replacing all the locked out workers and fully staffing their mills with new hires from other cities. Those who were locked out were reinstated upon presentation of a withdrawal card from the Knights. They resumed work as “new employees” presumably at starting wages.

The last entry in the Little Falls Minute Book is in May, 1888. There is no evidence that the Knights continued in existence there or in nearby cities after that date.

In 1890, Knights Grand Master Workman Terence Powderly spoke in Little Falls about the importance of equal pay for women, and perhaps in an attempt to revitalize the Knights there. But by the early 1900s the Knights of Labor had disappeared nationwide.

On June 5, 2025 the Little Falls Public Library was the setting for a presentation by the New York Labor History Association, co-sponsored by the Little Falls Historical Society, about the 1886 lockout. The program utilized contemporary newspaper reports and graphics of the mills and their employees provided by the Little Falls Historical Society. The presentation included charming middle-school students dramatizing conversations between workers and employers. The 1886 Minute Book and a Register containing the names and financial obligations of the union’s members were donated by the New York Labor History Association to the Little Falls Historical Society.