The Knights of Labor Salaries
By Editor
At the late general assembly of the Knights of Labor there was a great increase of the salaries of its officers. The salary of Grand Master Powderly was made $5,000. But one of the workingmen thoughtfully said: "It may be true enough that Mr. Powderly is worth $5,000 a year, but when you think that much of it comes from men who earn only a dollar a day, it seems much too large a sum." And a delegate writing of it says: "Could Mr. Powderly have been familiar with our missionary secretaries, and have taken their pay instead of that of a congressman, it would have been better for him and for the Order." We cannot see exactly how it would be better for him to take $1,500 or $2,000 instead of $5,000. The whole system is one of selfishness, and Mr. Powderly, as Grand Master, seems simply to have magnified his office, and to have exemplified the fundamental principle of the Order. The Order of Knights of Labor is not a missionary society, and neither its officers nor its members are going to act as missionaries. It is, rather, a most promising field for the action of political schemers and men ambitious of power; and if in accepting a $5,000 salary, Mr. Powderly had a congressman in his mind as a model, he was certainly acting more in keeping with the nature of his Order than he would have been had he taken a missionary worker for his pattern.