Martin Irons would be unfairly blamed for leading the Knights into a strike that paralyzed a good section of the nation over the firing of a single worker, but in fact he tried to prevent the walkout. He recognized that Gould’s strategy was to split the Knights, separating the most skilled from the rest. More critically, Gould would not fight the Knights in 1886 on the same losing ground that he had in 1885, when the strikers had considerable local support; he would bring the state and federal courts in on his side.
