William Richter.
The Consolidated Laborers Federation is a North American labor union founded by William Richter in 1870. Richter was a tobacco worker who organized his fellow tobacco workers into an industry-wide union in 1861. Following a labor war between the dockworkers union and the Mechanics National Union in 1869 as both attempted to organize dockworkers in New York City, representatives of various industrial unions met in Philadelphia to create the Consolidated Laborers Federation. Within four years, the C.L.F. had over 500,000 members.
The C.L.F. was more radical than the rival M.N.U. Its goals were to gain higher wages for workers by engaging in industry-wide bargaining, recognition as sole negotiating agent, and encouraging political activism among workers. Although many C.L.F. locals worked for Conservative Party candidates in the 1873 Grand Council elections, Richter himself was instrumental in organizing a branch of the People's Coalition in the Northern Confederation.
During the Coalition's national convention in New York in January 1878, the leadership of the C.L.F. entered the convention hall, and Richter himself pledged his support for the new party. During the 1878 Grand Council elections, the older parties responded to the growing popularity of the Coalition by directing a wave of political violence against it. Richter himself was kidnapped by unknown assailants and held incommunicado until after the election, while the C.L.F. was warned that "Your leader will die if the Coalition wins in the Northern Confederation." In spite of the threats and violence, the Coalition increased its share of the N.C.'s Council seats from 1 to 10, which helped to raise the P.C. caucus in the Grand Council from 10 seats to 39.
Thomas Kronmiller.
The Coalition continued to increase its numbers in the Grand Council until the 1888 elections, when it gained a plurality of 73 seats, enough to allow Michigan City Mayor Ezra Gallivan to form a minority government. Worker representatives from the C.L.F. replaced those from the M.N.U. in Gallivan's government, but the efficiency of the government suffered until they gained experience at their new jobs. By then, Richter had been replaced as president of the union by Whitney Popper, who helped shape Gallivan's reform of the National Financial Administration into a quasi-governmental venture capital firm.
The C.L.F. continued to be an important source of strength for the People's Coalition, as demonstrated by the election of C.L.F. official Thomas Kronmiller to the Council in the 1893 Grand Council elections. Kronmiller became the leader of the radical wing of the P.C. in the Council, and Gallivan's chief rival in the party, until 1908.
Sobel makes no further mention of the C.L.F. after Kronmiller's election, though the union presumably continued to be an important element of the People's Coalition.
Sobel's source for the Consolidated Laborers Federation is Howard Hopkins' Saints in Overalls: The Consolidated Laborers Federation in Confederation of North American History (London, 1955).