The unions failed to gain higher wages that year, but in 1878 they elected labor leader Terence V. Powderly of the Knights of Labor as mayor of Scranton. After that, he became national leader of the KoL, a predominately Catholic organization that had a peak membership of 700,000 circa 1880.Vincent J. Falzone, "Terence V. Powderly: Politician and Progressive Mayor of Scranton, 1878–1884," Pennsylvania History 41.3 (1974): 289–309. While the Catholic Church had prohibited membership in secret organizations since the mid-18th century, by the late 1880s with the influence of Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore, Maryland, it supported the Knights of Labor as representing workingmen and union organizing.
The unions failed to gain higher wages that year, but in 1878 they elected labor leader Terence V. Powderly of the Knights of Labor as mayor of Scranton. After that, he became national leader of the KoL, a predominately Catholic organization that had a peak membership of 700,000 circa 1880.Vincent J. Falzone, "Terence V. Powderly: Politician and Progressive Mayor of Scranton, 1878–1884," Pennsylvania History 41.3 (1974) 289–309. While the Catholic Church had prohibited membership in secret organizations since the mid-18th century, by the late 1880s with the influence of Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore, Maryland, it supported the Knights of Labor as representing workingmen and union organizing.