Terence Vincent Powderly was the eloquent though flawed personification of the American Labor movement during the late 19th century, specifically during his tenure, 1879-1893, as head of the fledgling Knights of Labor union that became the largest organization of American workers in the 19th century. He was a major celebrity who captured national attention. He was also a dedicated public servant, on both the local and federal levels, with three terms as a progressive mayor of Scranton, 1878-1884, and a reform minded career in Washington, D.C., as a bureaucrat with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration, 1897-1902 and 1906-1921, as well as the U.S. Department of Labor, 1921-1924. He was also a strong supporter of Irish nationalism, serving as a member of Clan Na Gael, a secret society committed to Irish independence, and the Irish Land League, a political organization that sought to abolish Irish landlordism in favor of tenant farmers.

Terence Vincent Powderly, a child of the Anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, was born 22 January 1849 in the industrial community of Carbondale to Irish immigrants Terence and Madge (Walsh) Powderly. According to his son, Terence Sr. had said "Let us leave this damn country and go to America where a man may own himself and a gun too, if he wants to." The newly wedded couple left County Meath in 1827, landed in Montreal, and lived a few years in Ogdensburg, New York, where Terence Sr. worked on a farm. In 1829, the family relocated to Carbondale, where the elder Powderly worked as a coal miner. He was successful enough to open his own mine in 1845, though it went under by 1858, when he was forced to secure employment as a mechanic with the Delaware and Hudson Railroad.

With seven brothers and four sisters young Terence had scant opportunity for more than a rudimentary education. He was employed at age 13 as a switchman for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. He then apprenticed for three years, 1866-1869, as a machinist to James Dickson, a master mechanic who had in turn apprenticed under the Englishman, George Stephenson, the inventor of the steam locomotive and thus the modern railroad. After completing his apprenticeship, Powderly was out of work temporarily, though he was then employed for the next four years in the machine shops of the Pennsylvania Coal Company and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Powderly later stated that the strike and subsequent mine fire in Avondale, Pennsylvania, in September 1869, that killed 110 coal miners, were major influences in his life. Resolved to do what he could to help his fellow workers, he joined the International Union of Machinists and Blacksmiths in 1871. He also read widely and impressed people with both his writing and speaking abilities. As a result, he was elected both local president and corresponding secretary of this union in 1872.

His union activities and the Depression of 1873 left him jobless and blacklisted as a union agitator. Over the next two years, he was repeatedly unemployed and traveled throughout the Midwest and Canada searching for work. He was often separated from his extended family and wife, Hannah (nee Dever), who he had married in 1872, and became depressed. He finally returned to employment in Scranton in 1875, but had his wages cut the next year, and in 1877 was discharged once more, never to work as a machinist again. He was also involved in a personal tragedy in 1875 when his wife, who he refers to in his diary as "my little darling," almost died when she delivered their only known child, a daughter who passed a few days later. Her grieving father "took the baby to the grave yard…and buried it."

Powderly had joined the Scranton, Local Assembly #88 of the Order of the Knights of Labor in 1876 while he was still employed as a machinist, though he had actually been sworn in to the Knights while in Philadelphia in 1874. He organized them into an assembly in Scranton and became their leader with the title of Master Workman. Rising steadily, he became Corresponding Secretary of District Assembly No. 5 in 1877, and assumed the national leadership as Grand (later General) Master Workman in 1879. The Knights came into national prominence during Powderly's tenure, peaking in national membership and influence in 1886 with nearly 700,000 predominantly Catholic members. He was popular as people greeted him with cheers when he traveled, wrote songs and poetry about him, and even named their children after him. Unfortunately, he also came under increasing assault from various political, economic, and religious interests. His grand and idealistic rhetoric and devotion to workers' rights were often belied by his instinctive caution and desire to avoid open conflict.

The Knights soon went into decline. They were linked to a bombing in Chicago during a workers rally in that city's Haymarket Square and the abortive Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 caused greater division and resentment against Powderly since he had called off the strike. Finally, the founding of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by Samuel Gompers, also in 1886, lured workers away so that by 1889 membership had dropped to 120,000. Thereafter, the Knights were beset with a divisive power struggle resulting in Powderly's removal in 1893 and eventual succession by his protégé and betrayer, John William Hayes. Perhaps Powderly's greatest achievement, greatly aided by Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, was to bring about reconciliation in 1888 between the labor movement and the Roman Catholic Church that had hitherto distrusted and disapproved of labor organizations due to their secretive and ritualistic activities. This action, which included recognition by the Vatican, resulted in a virtual alliance between the Church and the American labor movement that lasted well into the next century.

In addition to his labor connections, Powderly was active in local Pennsylvania politics. In the 1876 U.S. presidential election, he supported the Greenback ticket, a largely agrarian reaction following the economic depression of 1873 in opposition to federal government's currency policies. In the wake of the massive railroad strikes of 1877, political activism surged through the labor movement resulting in the organization of a Labor Party that partnered with the Greenbacks to make Powderly Mayor of Scranton. During his three term tenure of 1878 to 1884 he progressively worked to transform Scranton, which had been incorporated as a borough in 1856 and only chartered as a city in 1866, into a model and modern municipality. He did this by advancing and largely accomplishing an agenda that included, among other things, the establishment of a board of health and a municipal sewage system as well as signing a bill reforming the city's tax structure. He also worked for paved roads and legislation against adulterated foods and for a meat inspector.

After being forced from the Knights in 1893 he was unable to find employment as his former labor connection led to him being viewed as a potential troublemaker in the workplace. Some advised him to go into the saloon business but instead he studied law. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1894 and eventually argued before both the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and the Supreme Court of the United States. Unfortunately, he became convinced that the administration of justice was hindered by bias and technicalities. He also returned to politics, and having previously been soured on third party infighting and electoral prospects, become a member of the Central Republican Club of Scranton. Shortly thereafter, in the contentious presidential election of 1896, he advanced his own ambitions by avidly campaigning for the successful Republican ticket of William McKinley of Ohio and Garrett Hobart of New Jersey.

In 1897, the newly inaugurated President William McKinley appointed Powderly as Commissioner General of Immigration, a significant office under the U.S. Treasury Department. After a lengthy Senate confirmation battle, Powderly assumed his position March 1898 and for most of his tenure reported to Lyman Gage (1836-1927), a sound conservative businessman, as well as also serving briefly under the former Governor of Iowa, Leslie M. Shaw (1848-1932). As Commissioner-General of Immigration, Powderly created a commission to investigate conditions at Ellis Island that resulted in charges of corruption and nearly a dozen firings. Unfortunately for Powderly, his benefactor, William McKinley, was assassinated in September 1901 and succeeded by the brilliant and energetic Theodore Roosevelt of New York. The new president terminated Powderly from office on July 2, 1902. This action resulted from the slanderous efforts of some of those previously fired at Ellis Island, headed by Edward F. McSweeney, former Assistant Commissioner of Immigration of the Port of New York. They managed to convince Roosevelt that Powderly was himself corrupt and had actively conspired with Roosevelt's political enemy Thomas Platt. Powderly, however, did not go down without a fight and waged a vigorous campaign to exonerate himself before both the new President and the nation at large.

Following an investigation, Roosevelt realized that accusations against Powderly were baseless and reinstated him in 1906 as a Special Immigration Inspector. This position made Powderly a special representative of the Department of Commerce and Labor with the charge to study the causes of emigration from Europe to America. He traveled to Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary. His report advocated that U.S. Immigration agents should be sent to Europe to select prospective immigrants before they left their homes, travel with them on the ships bringing them over, and immigrants be more evenly distributed throughout the country once they were here. Powderly next served, 1907-1921, as Chief of the Immigration bureau's Division of Information. Until 1913, a period that ran from the latter part of the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt through that of Republican William Howard Taft, the Division of Information was part of the Immigration and Naturalization Bureau of the Department of Commerce and Labor. The bureau was headed until 1908 by Frank Sargent, the Vermonter who had replaced Powderly in 1902, and then by the Illinois born former International Longshoreman's Association President Daniel Keefe, 1909-1913. The Commerce and Labor secretaries were first, 1906-1909, the German-Jewish born Oscar Straus and then, 1909-1913, the Texas born founder of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Charles Nagel.

The advent of the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson following the contentious election of 1912 saw the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization divided into separate bureaus of Immigration and Naturalization, with both placed in the new Department of Labor. For the next eight years, Powderly reported to Commissioner-General Anthony Camenetti (1854-1923), a former lawyer and Congressman from California who argued that Asian immigration, particularly from China and Japan, was a menace that should be formally ended by Congress. Powderly also had occasion to work with Camenetti's boss, William B. Wilson (1870-1934), the Scottish born first Secretary of Labor, who had been a member of the Knights of Labor and also a founding member of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Wilson went on to be a Congressional Representative from Pennsylvania, 1907-1913, where he sponsored an investigation of mining safety conditions and helped organize the Federal Bureau of Mines in 1910. He also promoted the eight-hour workday for public employees, anti-injunction legislation, the establishment of the Children's Bureau, and the creation of the Department of Labor, which he headed, 1913-1921. His work there involved developing agencies for industrial mediation and forming the United States Employment Service to handle work issues during World War I, 1917-1918.

During these years Powderly was also able to keep in close contact with important leaders of the labor movement. He was especially close to Mary 'Mother' Harris Jones (ca. 1836-1930), the Irish born rabble rouser and 'Miner's Angel' who was an active participant in the front line's of the American labor movement for nearly sixty years. Affiliated with both the Knights of Labor and the UMWA, she also led the famous Children Textile Workers March from Philadelphia to Teddy Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York in 1902. She was often photographed with Powderly and was his frequent houseguest (he also paid many of her bills). Another labor comrade of Powderly's was John B. White (1870-1934), Illinois born coal miner and progressive president of the UMWA from 1911 to 1917. It was during his presidency that the Colorado Coal Strike of 1913-1914, including the infamous Ludlow Massacre, which also involved 'Mother' Jones, occurred. He secured UMWA approval of a ban on the employment of children under 16, old age pensions, and workmen's compensation. He is also notable for appointing John L. Lewis as the UMWA's chief statistician, a launching point for Lewis historic tenure as UMWA President from 1920 to 1960.

Powderly's final position, 1921-1924, was as Commissioner of Conciliation of the U.S. Labor Department under James J. Davis (1873-1947), 'The Iron Puddler' and 'Puddler Jim,' the Welsh born steel worker from Pittsburgh who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor, 1921-1930, under Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, before going on to serve as a senator from Pennsylvania. Davis was notable for establishing the U.S. Border Patrol and proposing immigration quotas. Powderly died in Washington, DC, on 24 June 1924. American labor historians have dismissed Powderly and the Knights as relics of the utopian traditions of the antebellum years which were unsuited to the economic realities of the Gilded Age, especially in comparison with the rival American Federation of Labor (AFL) with its more apolitical craft unionism. Powderly was charged with being sensitive, vain, naïve, and a "windbag" according to mid twentieth century historian Norman Ware. Recent studies of the Knights, especially by Craig Phelan, have transformed the view of them into that of an authentic working-class organization with a convincing critique of industrial capitalism. This has helped make the case that Powderly was a worthy if somewhat flawed hero who articulated the collective progressive vision of the working masses in the face of the inhumanity of the industrial capitalist system. In 1999, Powderly was honored as an inductee into the United States Department of Labor's Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C., joining figures such as rival Samuel Gompers, friend Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, and fellow Pennsylvanian labor leader Philip Murray. A fair and comprehensive biography encompassing his full career, especially his later years, is still awaited.

Powderly was often photographed, or had photographs given to him, throughout his long life and varied career, and over 300 of these, dated from about 1865 to 1922, survive as part of his collection of papers at The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives of The Catholic University of America (CUA) in northeast Washington. Additionally, by the turn of the twentieth century, Powderly himself had become an avid and skilled photographer, with several thousand taken by him, dating from about 1902 to 1921 and including over 900 relating to Washington, D.C., also preserved as part of his aforementioned collection. Overall, the photographs are a rich archival resource documenting one man's turbulent journey through a tumultuous period in American history.