T. V. POWDERLY.
Terence V. Powderly was born January 22, 1849, at Carbondale, Pennsylvania. His parents were natives of Ireland and were honest hard-working people.The boy's school days ended at the age of thirteen. At fourteen he was examiner for the Delaware and Hudson Canal company: at seventeen he was apprenticed in the Delaware, and Hudson shops to learn the trade of machinist; at twenty he was a machinist in the locomotive shops of the Lackawanna railway at Scranton, and in 1871 joined a labor organization. Two years later, in spite of the fact that he was a Conservative, he was discharged from the shops because of his activity in the labor union. He worked at his trade wherever he could find employment notwithstanding the "black list" until 1878, when he was elected Mayor of Scranton, an office he retained for six years. He has been a chief factor in organizing the Knights of Labor, whose General Master Workman he has been since 1879.
IT is easier to point out the wrong than rectify it, less difficult to find something to condemn or find fault with than praise or endorse; and in the field of industry, while the advance toward better conditions has been more rapid during the past decade than for centuries before, the results are not so apparent to the worker in the field as to the looker-on. The great danger which presented itself to the people fifteen years ago was the law. The poor were without friends: they were the recipients of denunciation from statesman, press and pulpit. It was considered rude to even hint that the man who soiled his hands in manual toil had a right to any consideration other than a patronizing kindness at the hands of his employer, and to suggest that others should take an interest in his welfare was to incur the displeasure of society. The law made it a crime to be idle and gave to employers the privilege of turning the workman away without protest. To be out of money and on "tramp" was an offense against the law: it is today, but is not punished so rigorously as it used to be.