The Knights were the largest and most unusual labor organization in the United States, but by the 1880s most big American cities also contained Central Labor Councils or Central Labor Unions formed from affiliated unions of skilled workers, some of whom belonged to the Knights as well. The Knights and the Councils occupied a rather large swath of ideological terrain. Both contained socialists as well as the more conservative “brotherhoods.” Both drew heavily from native-born and Irish workers, but in Chicago and other cities they also contained more radical German and Bohemian workers.
