The ILUs program represented an amalgam of the eight-hour philosophy that Steward had been propagandizing, and the industrial unionism of McDonnell and Sorge.
[2] Reflecting the industrial unionist aspect of the organization were its goals to organized the unskilled and unorganized, to affiliate already existing unions with itself and to create a national, then international centralized union of all workers.
[3] In practice its organizing efforts were largely concentrated among textile workers in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts.
After leading a textile strike in Paterson, and organizing efforts in Fall River, Massachusetts, membership had grown to a reported 8,000.
[5] The organization was dissolved when the leader of the Hoboken branch, Sorge, moved to Rochester, New York in 1887.