Background
John William Hayes was born on December 26, 1854 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the second of eight children and oldest son of Edward Hayes, a mason, and Mary (Galbraith) Hayes. Both parents were natives of Ireland.
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John William Hayes
Edit ProfileEducation
According to his own account, Hayes never attended school.
Career
Hayes went west at about the age of seventeen, worked as a farmhand in Illinois, and then drifted into railroading, becoming a brakeman on the Dayton & Michigan and then on the Pennsylvania Railroad. That hazardous calling cost him his right arm in 1878, after which he learned telegraphy.
He joined the Knights of Labor in 1874, and in his new trade he was a delegate to the national telegraphers' convention of 1883 which called a strike for higher wages. Blacklisted after the strike failed, he opened a grocery store in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where his family had settled in the late 1860s.
On good terms with the influential Knights of Labor District Assembly 49 in New York City, Hayes was elected to the General Executive Board of the Knights in 1884. He soon became the chief ally and confidant of Terence V. Powderly, General Master Workman of the Knights, and in 1888 was elevated to the post of General Secretary-Treasurer.
In 1888, working through Democratic party contacts in New Jersey, Hayes came close to winning the federal Commissionership of Labor for Powderly (and, presumably, a job for himself). He was a delegate, with Powderly, to the Omaha convention of the Populist party in 1892; unmoved by visions of reform, he worked behind the scenes with free-silver interests seeking to nominate Judge Walter Q. Gresham. The next year, turning against his friend and patron, Hayes served as hatchet man for a coalition of New York socialists led by Daniel De Leon and Populist-minded agrarians led by James R. Sovereign of Iowa that ousted Powderly from his post as head of the Knights of Labor.
By 1893 the Knights had long since lost its dominant place in the American labor movement, giving way to the American Federation of Labor. Through its declining years Hayes remained in firm control, as General Secretary-Treasurer until 1902 and then as General Master Workman, until he closed down the organization's Washington headquarters in 1916. He continued to use his title, however, and to publish the National Labor Digest, which he recommended to employers during the Red Scare of 1919 as an antidote to Bolshevism.
His chief activity of later years was business promotion. As early as 1892 Powderly had noted that Hayes "seems to be possessed of the idea of acquiring riches. " He developed the "Hayes process" for manufacturing illuminating gas from soft coal. His most successful venture was the North Chesapeake Beach Land and Improvement Company, a real estate development at North Beach, Maryland, which he began in 1907.
Living on to the age of eighty-seven, Hayes died at North Beach in 1942 of hypertensive cardiovascular disease. Following a requiem mass at St. Gabriel's Church in Washington, he was buried in Washington's Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Achievements
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John William Hayes went down in history as a prominent activist and labor leader. He is best remembered for his prolific career as General Master Workman of the Knights of Labor; for publishing the National Labor Digest; and also for developing the "Hayes process" for manufacturing illuminating gas from soft coal, securing its adoption in two cities by 1895.
Politics
Hayes typified one aspect of the Knights of Labor, its lack of a strong working-class consciousness, as seen in the casual way in which its leaders often shifted over to business or professional roles. He failed, however, to share another important characteristic: the vein of idealism, the urge toward reform found in such leaders as Powderly, Ralph Beaumont, and Richard Trevellick.
Personality
Hayes seems to have been an efficient administrator. Not an orator or a leader of men, he took naturally to wire-pulling.
His pince-nez and handlebar mustache of this period echoed those of Powderly.
Connections
On July 25, 1882, Hayes married a New Brunswick girl, Nellie A. Carlen. They apparently had no children.
References
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Born
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Died
January 25, 1942 (aged 87) -
Resting place
Mount Olivet Cemetery, Washington, District of Columbia, United States -
Nationality
American