The outlook and goals of the organization were broad. The ILUs program represented an amalgam of the eight-hour philosophy that Steward had been propagandizing, and the industrial unionism of McDonnell and Sorge. Both saw the wages system as a despotism. Immediate demands included reduction of hours, state and local labor bureaus, workplace inspection and prohibition of child labor.[2] Reflecting the industrial unionist aspect of the organization were its goals to organized the unskilled and unorganized, to affiliate already existing unions with itself and to create a national, then international centralized union of all workers.[3]
In practice its organizing efforts were largely concentrated among textile workers in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. It had 700 members in July 1878. After leading a textile strike in Paterson, and organizing efforts in Fall River, Massachusetts, membership had grown to a reported 8,000.[4] By February 1880 the organization had rapidly shrunk to 1,400-1,500 in eight branches. By the next year, a single branch in Hoboken.[5]
The organization was dissolved when the leader of the Hoboken branch, Sorge, moved to Rochester, New York in 1887.[6]
References
^John R. Commons et al. History of Labour in the United States: Nationalisation (1860-1877) Volume 2 of History of Labour in the United States p. 301
^John R. Commons et al. History of Labour in the United States: Nationalisation (1860-1877) Volume 2 of History of Labour in the United States p. 303
^John R. Commons et al. History of Labour in the United States: Nationalisation (1860-1877) Volume 2 of History of Labour in the United States pp. 304-5
^John R. Commons et al. History of Labour in the United States: Nationalisation (1860-1877) Volume 2 of History of Labour in the United States pp. 304
^John R. Commons et al. History of Labour in the United States: Nationalisation (1860-1877) Volume 2 of History of Labour in the United States pp. 305
^John R. Commons et al. History of Labour in the United States: Nationalisation (1860-1877) Volume 2 of History of Labour in the United States p.306
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