Powderly believed that the Knights were an educational tool to uplift the workingman, and he often cautioned against the use of strikes to achieve workers' goals.

[1]: 4 At the age of 13 he began work for the railroad as a switchman with the Delaware and Hudson Railway, before becoming a car examiner, repairer and eventually a brakeman.

In recalling the conversation, Powderly wrote that the master mechanic he worked for had explained to him, "You are the president of the union and it is thought best to dismiss you in order to head off trouble.

[3] Powderly ended his travels in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a machinist installing coal breakers.

After explaining to Scranton that he had been fired originally due to his connection to the union, Powderly recalled: He asked me if I was president then, I answered in the negative, but in order to be fully understood told him that I was at the time secretary.

"[1]: 30 Through W. W. Scranton, Powderly went on to work for the Dickson Manufacturing Company, a firm founded by the sons of his apprentice master.

[1]: 30 In 1878 following strikes and unrest in 1877, Powderly was elected to the first of three two-year terms as mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, representing the Greenback-Labor Party.

[citation needed] Powderly, along with most white labor leaders at the time, opposed the immigration of Chinese workers to the United States.

He urged West Coast branches of the Knights of Labor to campaign for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

[7] In speaking on nationwide violence against the "Chinese evil", Powderly blamed the "indifference of our law-makers to the just demands of the people for relief.

"[8] Powderly worked with Bishop James Gibbons of to persuade the Pope to remove sanctions against Catholics who joined unions.

Powderly was more influenced by the Greenback ideology of producerism than by socialism, a rising school of thought in Europe and the United States.

[13][14] Powderly, during the Knight's 1886 general assembly in Richmond, Virginia purposely invited a Black member to introduce him before his speech.

[18] President William McKinley appointed Powderly as the Commissioner General of Immigration where he served from July 1, 1897, to June 24, 1902.

[19] In this role he established a commission to investigate conditions at Ellis Island, which ultimately led to 11 employees being dismissed.

[19] Terence Powderly was appointed as the chief of the newly created Immigration Service's Division of Information, with a mission, following his own prior recommendation, to "promote a beneficial distribution of aliens admitted into the United States."

The citation reads as follows: As leader of the Knights of Labor, the nation's first successful trade union organization, Terence V. Powderly thrust the workers' needs to the fore for the first time in U.S. history.

In the 1800s, far in advance for the period, he sought the inclusion of blacks, women and Hispanics for full-fledged membership in his trade union.

Oestreicher continues: No other worker in these years, not even his rival Samuel Gompers, captured as much attention from reporters, from politicians, or from industrialists.

[5]: 30 [d][e]Oestreicher characterizes Powderly's legacy as leader of the Knights as generally one of failure to preserve the organization and its mission through the labor upheavals of the late 19th Century.

However, he continues to describe him as an "energetic and capable organizer," and is quick to point out the practical challenges both he and the Knights faced, and that in comparison to his heirs and contemporaries, "quite simply, no one else did much better [than they did] over the next forty years.