Lockout of the 20,000 on Thursday, June 5, at 5:00 p.m.

Little Falls’ Response to the Closure of 50 Mills in Upstate New York

Presented by the New York Labor History Association and Little Falls Historical Society at the Little Falls Public Library, 10 Waverly Place, Little Falls, NY, 13365. Free admission!

In 1886, mill owners locked out 20,000 Mohawk Valley mill workers from their jobs — a devastating, transformative event in New York State labor history — which vanished from historical memory. In the 1880s the Knights of Labor, whose membership was open to women and African Americans (in an era when organized labor generally restricted its organizing efforts to white males), organized knitting mills across Herkimer County. Hell-bent on crushing the Knights of Labor in the mills, mill owners used the pretext of a strike — in a different union, the Spinners Union — to lock out 20,000 of their employees.

Steve Davis, a retired NLRB administrative law judge, rediscovered the 1886 lockout from entries in 1885-1887 Knights of Labor minute books no one had looked at for 139 years. (Judge Davis found the bound volumes by advertising for “memorabilia concerning the Knights of Labor.” On June 5th he’ll donate these rare volumes to the Little Falls Historical Society.) With meticulous care, Davis pieced together a portrait of the three-month lockout, drawing on (generally hostile) news items in Mohawk Valley newspapers. His talk will describe evictions and hardships suffered by the 2500 Knights of Labor members working in six Little Falls mills; desperate efforts by the Knights of Labor to discipline members in adjacent towns — for taking in strikebreaker boarders; boycotts of local businesses advertising in newspapers opposed to the mill workers; and lives & livelihoods shattered — as 20,000 unionized mill workers were displaced.

Irwin Yellowitz, president of the NY Labor History Association will provide background on the Knights of Labor — 800,000 members strong in 1886 — but heading for a terrible reckoning in Haymarket Square, Chicago, May 1st that same year.

Little Falls middle-schoolers will impersonate some of the mill workers.