James Lendrew Wright

Background

James Wright was born on April 6, 1816, in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, of Scotch-Irish parentage. After a brief residence in Saint John, New Brunswick, the Wright family settled in Philadelphia in 1827.

Education

Wright was educated at the Mount Vernon Grammar School and at Charles Mead's private academy, a circumstance which seems to indicate that his family was for a time well-to-do. He was later apprenticed to George W. Farr, a tailor, whom he served six years.

Career

Thereafter he continued in tailoring and opened his own shop in Frankfort, Pennsylvania, in 1847. Seven years later he became the manager of a large Philadelphia clothing store. In his late years, along with Terence V. Powderly and John W. Hayes, Wright engaged in several commercial ventures, including the soliciting of advertising from Armour and other employers whom, as labor leader, he had previously fought. As early as 1837 Wright joined the Tailors' Benevolent Society of Philadelphia, but his career as a labor leader was delayed by the middle-class interludes. In 1862 he and Uriah Smith Stephens helped organize the Garment Cutters' Association, a benevolent organization, whose president he was for a number of years. In 1863 he helped establish the Philadelphia Trades' Assembly and was elected its treasurer. In 1869 Stephens, Wright, and five others founded the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, whose name Wright devised, and of which he was a leading functionary for more than two decades. He served as temporary chairman of the Pittsburgh convention in 1876 which endeavored to set up a national labor organization. As a member of the Knights' delegation he helped determine the convention's final decision for Greenbackism and against socialism and a political labor party. The countrywide flare-up of labor militancy which resulted from the use of federal and state troops in suppressing the great strike of July 1877 took in part political form, and Wright entered politics. The Harrisburg convention of the United Workingmen in that year nominated him for Pennsylvania state treasurer; he polled more than 52, 000 votes, or some ten per cent. of the total cast. As Greenback-Labor candidate for state secretary of internal affairs in 1878, he got about 82, 000 votes. The economic revival of 1879 swept aside the political labor movement, and Wright thereafter was active chiefly as a leader of the Knights of Labor, the most important labor organization of the period. He contributed much to building and extending its influence and to shaping its policies.

James Lendrew Wright died on August 3, 1893, at his home in Germantown, Maryland.

Achievements

• James Lendrew Wright was a labor leader, best known as leading functionary of the Knights of Labor, the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s.

Membership

James Wright was a member of numerous societies, including the Tailors' Benevolent Society of Philadelphia, the Garment Cutters' Association, the Philadelphia Trades' Assembly and the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor.

Connections

colleague:

Uriah Smith Stephens

Uriah Smith Stephens was an American labor leader.

colleague:

John W. Hayes

colleague:

Terence Vincent Powderly

Terence Vincent Powderly was an American labor union leader, politician and attorney.