March 22 Monday – Sam presented a paper titled “Knights of Labor — The New Dynasty” to the Monday Evening Club. This was Sam’s tenth presentation to the Club since his election in 1873 [Monday Evening Club]. See Budd, Collected p.883-90. Also listed in Camfield, isterin. It wasn’t published until 1957, edited by Bernard DeVoto, in the New England Quarterly, XXX p.383-88.

Baetzhold writes of the significance of Sam’s interest in the Knights of Labor as it affected his change in midstream on the writing of CY:

“…during these years Clemens developed a new sympathy for equalitarian democracy. The breakdown of his earlier mistrust stemmed partly from his interest in the activities of the Knights of Labor in 1886. Intrigued by the group’s potentialities for improving conditions for the masses, he had treated the Monday Evening Club meeting of March 22, 1886, to a flowery eulogy that hailed the workers as ‘The New Dynasty.’ Admitting that power inevitably resulted in oppression, he argued that because this dynasty would be concerned with the nation’s good rather than the selfish interests of a small clique, it need not be feared. Rather, it would form a permanent defense ‘against the Socialist, the Communist, the anarchist, the tramp, and the selfish agitator for “reformes,”’ and ‘against all like forms of political disease, pollution and death’” [John Bull 108]. Note: Baetzhold quotes Carter here, and points out, “comments of that speech Clemens would transfer almost verbatim to the Yankee a year and a half later.” See Jan. 29 entry.

General Wesley Merritt at West Point wrote he was “delighted that the prospects of your coming are good. You will find many friends and admirers here.” Arrangements could be made later for Twichell to accompany Sam [Leon 234].