An Unequal Clash An Unequal Clash 121 meant that mates and even able-bodied seamen, given the necessary financial resources could all aspire to their own commands. The new steamships resembled factories on-shore with specific tasks of limited responsibility, a sharp de-skilling of deck work, and new pressure to meet schedules. It also meant that sailors faced declining wages as they could no longer claim sole possession of skills acquired by years of training and experience.3 Vessel owners had defeated many union efforts during the early 1880s and new efforts coalesced around the Knights of Labor in 1886. They had been formed in 1869, and by 1886 were the largest labor union in the United States counting nearly 800,000 members. Unlike the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor, the Knights of Labor accepted unskilled workers into their ranks as well. This broad coalition would also prove their undoing when faced with economic unrest, internal dissent, and the hostility of state and federal government. They allowed steam sailors to join, but the lack of a broad organizing plan weakened the Knights. A group abandoned them in 1894 to form a union federated with the new International Seamen's Union. The new Lake Seamen's Union admitted sail and steam mariners, which was a contentious issue. Traditional sailors were angered by their loss of collective identity and autonomy. Worse, the union demanded that they find common cause with those viewed as the reason for their situation. This they encapsulated in the lament: "Wooden boats, iron men: iron boats, wooden men."4 The 1890s saw further labour changes. Led by longshoreman and tugboat captain Daniel Keefe, the International Longshoreman's Association was formed from the 1877 Association of Lumber Handlers. In 1892 it became the National Longshoremen's Association of the United States. The latter was also affiliated with the conservative American Federation of Labor and became international by adding Canadian longshoremen in 1895. Keefe took far more conservative positions than other unions by asserting strict central control over locals and agreeing to contracts that had the longshoremen provide strike-breakers should locals engage in unauthorized strikes. Such actions earned it the accusation of being a mere company union that limited opportunities for workers.5 Though both unions initially avoided conflict, the jurisdiction disputes between them, the tension between steam and traditional sailors, and the growing strength of the owners would alter the balance. The longshoremen's desire to expand onto the ships by recognizing the Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders Benevolent Association, an explicit rejection of the Lake Seamen's brought the two unions 3 Theodore J. Karamanski, Schooner Passage: Sailing Ships and the Lake Michigan Frontier (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 111-116; Jay Cohen Martin, "Sailing the Freshwater Seas A Social History of Life Aboard the Commercial Sailing Vessels of the United Stated and Canada on the Great Lakes, 1815 - 1930" PhD thesis, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, 1995, 181-184. 4 Journal of the Lake Seamen's Union, 20 February, 1894, quoted in Hoagland, 16. 5 Maud Russell, Men along the Shore (New York: Brussel & Brussel, 1966), 63.