The fundamental idea of the Knights of Labor is the unity of all workers.... It regards this unity of interest as necessitating unity of policy and control; it conceives that unity of control can be effected only by concentrating all responsibility ... in the hands of the men who may be chosen to stand at the head of affairs. The control of the organization rests wholly in the general assembly, and ... the orders of the executive officers, elected by the general assembly, are required to be obeyed by all members. The several trades are separately organized within the order.... The Knights desired to include all productive workers, whether or not they received their compensation in the form of wages.[14] The emphasis placed by the Knights upon the union of skilled and unskilled is significant in relation to the later efforts of the I. W. W. to effect such a union. "I saw," said Grand Master Workman Terence V. Powderly, "that labor-saving machinery was bringing the machinist down to the level of a day laborer, and soon they would be on a level. My aim was to dignify the laborer."[15] Mr. Powderly is reported in the same interview as saying that his greatest difficulty in getting machinists and blacksmiths to join the Knights of Labor lay in the contempt with which they looked upon other workers. There was a much closer connection in the Knights of Labor between the central organization and the local bodies than is today the case with the American Federation of Labor, which, as its name implies, is a comparatively loose _federation_ of autonomous "international unions." This high degree of centralization of power in the hands of the General Assembly and the national officers was a factor in the disintegration of the order. More important still was the fact of internal dissension, especially the bitter animosity arising out of the Knights' participation in politics. "... There came the question whether the organization should go into politics as a body or not. That question was probably discussed in every Local Assembly in America ... [and] those political questions coming up drove men out of the organization...."[16]