Credit: Image donated by Corbis Bettmann
The son of Irish immigrants, Terence Powderly was born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and began his work as a labor organizer while working as a machinist. A three-term mayor of Scranton, elected on the Greenback-Labor Party ticket, Powderly led the Knights of Labor, the nation's largest labor union, from 1879 through the 1880s.
