Chicago became the center of the Great Upheaval. The labor unrest there involved all the elements agitating working people in the mid-1880s: the surge of new members into the Knights (who embodied, more than any other union, the noble, if sometimes disastrous, stance that an injury to one was an injury to all), the contest over control of work, the dangers and deskilling involved in the spread of mechanization, and a renewed push for the eight-hour day. All had become political.
