The Knights in Fiction

Breaking the chains was first published in 1887, in serial form, in The Lance, a labor newspaper in Salem, Oregon. Many other novels from this period addressed the problems of labor conflict and inequality, but Gantt was one of the very few to see unionization as the answer to the problems of working people. Although the Knights officially prohibited lawyers (“non-producers”) from membership, Gantt was both a member of the bar and the Knights. Gantt’s description, which presumably drew from his own experience in District Assembly 66 in Washington, D.C., conveyed a sense of the diverse social, political, and intellectual functions that the meeting hall played for its members, as well as the issues that animated their debates.