Sovereigns of Industry

After a few years a lengthy and severe financial depression of the American economy caused a net cash flow crisis in the stores associated with the organization beginning in 1878.

[1] Early in January 1874 Earle called an organizational meeting in Springfield among people he had met there who seemed favorable to his idea for a new workers mutual aid organization.

[1] Fifteen people responded to Earle's convention call and they worked for a week drafting a constitution for a new organization — the Order of Sovereigns of Industry.

[2] According to an article published by Earle later in 1874, the Sovereigns of Industry was to be dedicated to "elevating the character, improving the condition, and, as far as possible, perfecting the happiness of the laboring classes" through the establishment of consumer cooperatives.

"[3]Earle characterized "hand-workers" as "the real producers of wealth" and declared the Sovereigns of Industry's intention of establishing a cooperative network which would allow workers to "control the whole of what they produce, and exchange it as near as may be even with other hand-workers..."[3] Despite this orientation, the Sovereigns of Industry decried the "waging any war of aggression upon any other class, or for fostering any antagonism of labor against capital, or of arraying the poor against the rich," but rather insisted upon its goal of "mutual assistance in self-improvement and self-protection" of its members.

[2] At the organization's zenith in 1875, 101 local councils were reported as having established some form of cooperation, with 46 of these operating stores, 20 making use of the Rochdale system, and another 26 selling commodities at cost to members only.

[6] Moreover, some unions began to see the Order as part of the problem, trying to bid down labor costs in an effort to obtain commodities for their cooperative stores as cheaply as possible.

One October 1875 attack on the Order in the National Labor Tribune charged that "the only object of the Sovereigns is to buy cheap, if they have to help reduce wages to a dollar a day to do it.