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Henry Clews & Co. Monthly Financial Circular May 3, 1886 (NY, 1886) 4 pp. 11x8½"

A Wall Street notable's critique of the Knights of Labor trade union organization on the day of the Haymarket Bombing in Chicago.

Best-known for his classic 1888 memoir of Wall Street in the Civil War era, Clews’ firm issued scores of Financial Circulars - fragile imprints on flimsy paper - during the last decades of the 19th century. This issue featured a long diatribe against the Knights of Labor, the first national trade union organization, then launching strikes against the Railroads, “…the outbreak of labor derangements more general and more threatening than anything of the kind ever experienced in the history of the country…”, an attempt by employees to “wrest to their own profit power and control which, in every civilized community, are secured as to the most sacred and inalienable rights of the employer… absolutely revolutionary of the normal relations between labor and capital…utterly anarchical movement…completely subversive of social order… impracticable, unjust and reckless…”, with the prospect of “further spread of strikes…possibly with even worse forms of violence than we have yet witnessed…” Ironically, this was published in New York just hours before the “Haymarket Massacre”, the bomb explosion which killed seven policemen who were battling radicals in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. Several radical agitators were later tried and executed for complicity in the bombing, which hastened the decline and fall of the Knights of Labor. A rare imprint of significance for both financial and labor history.