New York - Irish Museum has survived troubles
Leadership also became radicalized in the early ranks of organized labor, as with, for example, the all-trades Knights of Labor and its rival, the trade-union American Federation of Labor that arose in the 1880s.
Irish workers were leaders in the wildcat B&O Railroad strike of 1877, the first national strike, and were prominent organizers of longshoremen and structural ironworkers and carpenters and glovemakers.
The Irish leadership of the Knights of Labor in New York popularized the idea of a national Labor Day and promoted the minimum wage and the eight-hour workday.
Irishmen were also in the forefront on labor's violent fringe, such as the "Molly Maguires," agitators who fomented violence against the mine operators in Pennsylvania and whose repression by the government led to the creation of the United Mine Workers in 1890.