Uriah stephens biography sample

About this article Uriah Stephens Updated About encyclopedia. Uri ben Simeon of Biala. Uri Phoebus ben Aaron Ha-Levi. Urgench ancient city, present-day Turkmenistan. Urge Overkill. Urganch city, Uzbekistan. Urfey, Thomas d. Uriarte—Bayarta Agreement. Uribe Uribe, Rafael — Uribe Velasco, David, St. Uribe, Cenaida —. Uribe, Juan Camilo — Urinary Anti-Infectives.

Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. American labor leader. Cape May, New Jersey. Philadelphia , Pennsylvania. Early life [ edit ]. Start of career [ edit ]. Labor activist [ edit ]. Garment Workers' Union [ edit ]. Knights of Labor [ edit ].

Uriah stephens biography sample

Resignation [ edit ]. Death and burial [ edit ]. Family [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Footnotes [ edit ]. Stephens, Founder of the Order of the Knights of Labor" , pp. An active Freemason, Odd Fellow, and Knight of Pythias, Stephens concluded that the stability of these long-lived organizations lay in their ritual and secrecy. He devised a ceremony for the Knights based largely on the Masonic tradition and insisted that the union keep even its name secret from nonmembers.

There were practical reasons for these policies, too. Secrecy was a necessity in an age when unions were weak and employers inclined to use violent retaliation to break them up. Stephens maintained his policies as the union grew from 9 members in to 9, in In he was elected the first grand master workman of the union. But by now Stephens was distracted by politics and spent much of his time running for Congress on the Greenback party ticket.

First, the Catholics, who made up a powerful section of the organized workers in the United States opposed secrecy as being in conflict with their religion. A good many unionists feared they would be accused of criminal activities if they continued their secret organization. In , Stephens resigned as Grand Master Workman. The oath and secrecy were expunged from the principles of the Knights.

A new preamble was written. This new preamble pointed to the necessity of checking wealth, which, unchecked, would lead to the pauperization of the working class. Under Powderly, the Knights reached its zenith of influence. But at the very time that it reached its peak in membership numbers, it was already on the downgrade.