To write the history of the Knights of Labor is an impossibility. Its history was the history of the day in which it moved and did its work. I am aware that some young men fresh from college have tried to write the history of the organization but they failed. They applied logic and scientific research; they divided the emotions,
the passions, and feelings of the members into groups; they dissected and vivisected the groups; they used logarithms, algebraic formulas, and everything known to the young ambitious graduate of a university.
T.V. Powderly