Joseph P. Devine (d. 2 February 1890), labor leader, was born in Richmond in the first half of the 1850s, not long after his parents emigrated from Ireland. His father, William Devine, worked in a foundry and later kept a saloon; the maiden name of his mother, Bridget Devine, is not recorded. Devine became a fabricator of boilers for steam engines. On 25 October 1877 he married Margaret Teresa O'Connell, in Richmond. They had three daughters, three sons, and three other children of unknown gender who died in childhood.

By 1876 Devine had joined the Workingmen's Union Club in Madison Ward and was serving as its sergeant at arms. He combined his Irish nationalism with labor rights and politics when in 1884 he helped reestablish in Richmond the Irish National Republican Association. He became treasurer of the association, which supported the presidential bid of the Republican candidate, James G. Blaine. Like his fellow Irishmen, Devine opposed the Democratic presidential nominee, Grover Cleveland, whom they perceived as hostile to Irish interests and as a supporter of free trade with Britain.

Devine joined the Richmond chapter of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor within a year of its establishment in April 1884. He helped organize the Knights' dramatic society's performance in November 1885 of The Long Strike, a play that evoked the suffering of the average workingman. In March 1886, at the height of the Knights' power, Devine served alongside John Taylor Chappell in the Richmond District Knights of Labor Building Association, one of the most powerful of the Knights' state deliberative bodies.

In 1886 William Henry Mullen, leader of the Knights of Labor in Richmond, sought Republican support for his Reform Party candidacy to Congress. At a meeting of African American Republicans on 15 September, Devine endorsed Mullen's candidacy and insisted that he spoke for the workingmen who were often ignored. He argued that it was in the best interest of laborers to unite with the Republican Party. On 2 October, Devine and six African American delegates from Monroe Ward attended the Republican Party's nominating convention in support of Mullen and the Reformers. Mullen did not win the nomination, but Devine continued to support his campaign until 30 October, when Mullen withdrew from the race. In Mullen's newspaper, the Labor Herald, Devine and other labor men then publicly endorsed the Democratic incumbent in opposition to the Republican nominee.

Devine served as president of the Alliance Club, a group of Richmond Reform Party members who sought to elect candidates to the city council. In April 1887 Devine and Mullen spoke out about a controversy that had arisen during construction of a new city hall. They argued that the Knights of Labor had been discriminated against in favor of nonunion labor during the project's hiring process. Addressing the city council's grounds and building committee, Devine hurled questions and accusations at the project's leaders and offered a moving statement concerning the plight of Richmond's laboring class. "We represent the people," Devine declared. "We don't come here as a big railroad corporation, in royal array, but we are poor workmen. I have just laid down my hammer. We represent the sons and daughters of men whose bones are strewn over your battle-fields." The committee adjourned without taking action on Devine's complaint.

By then the Knights of Labor had lost much of its political influence in Richmond. Electoral defeats and defections to local trade-specific and national unions reduced membership, and the union's central leadership did not function in concert with its working-class members. The leaders' idealistic, near-utopian vision of an egalitarian and socialist future did not mesh well with the perspectives of common laborers, whose primary concern was improving their present situations.

As the Knights' influence decreased, Devine's public and political presence increased. He threw himself into the Reform Party and spoke at several rallies in the autumn of 1887. Distancing themselves from the Knights, the Reformers resumed friendly relations with Republicans. On 7 October Devine chaired a Reform Party caucus to choose candidates for the upcoming elections to the House of Delegates. He himself numbered among the potential nominees, but when the joint ticket with the Republicans was named a week later he lacked enough support to become one of the candidates. He campaigned for the coalition's four nominees, all of whom lost in the general election.

A week before the election on 8 November 1887, Devine concluded public remarks with a statement that made him a lightning rod for controversy. After castigating Democratic leaders, Devine closed with a reference to the May 1886 Haymarket riot in Chicago, following which several anarchists had been convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to death. Devine declared that "in 1775 the people of Boston threw the British tea overboard into Boston harbor, and for doing so they were called patriots. On the 11th of this month seven men are to be hung in Chicago for endeavoring to maintain their principles, and their acts are called a crime."

Democrats blasted Devine and characterized the Reform-Republican coalition as un-American. United States senator John Warwick Daniel spoke of Devine in demonic terms, accused him of wanting to re-create the Haymarket riot in Richmond, and offered to lynch Devine as an accomplice of anarchists. One Republican Party leader, John Sergeant Wise, was forced to denounce any ties, supposed or otherwise, to anarchism and to the Chicago men. Some Reformers, however, defended Devine, who continued to appear at rallies for Republican candidates. "I did not come here to throw bombs," Devine declared at one meeting. "If I did, I would go down to the Democratic headquarters and get some of their political bummers and throw them."

Following a resounding Democratic victory in the election, Devine retreated from Richmond politics. In August 1888 he attended a statewide labor conference in Lynchburg, at which delegates favored a protective tariff and denounced the Virginia congressmen who had supported a bill that reduced tariffs on various commodities. Still in his mid-thirties, Joseph P. Devine died of complications from pneumonia at his home in Richmond on 2 February 1890 and was buried in Mount Calvary Cemetery.

Sources Consulted:
United States Census Schedules, Henrico Co., 1860 (age six on 21 June 1860), 1870 (age seventeen on 25 Aug. 1870), 1880 (age twenty-six in June 1880), all in Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C; Marriage Register, Richmond City (age twenty-four on 25 Oct. 1877), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; New York Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, 4 Oct. 1884; Richmond Dispatch, 16 Sept., 2 Oct. 1886, 19 Apr. (first quotation), 18 Sept., 8, 14 Oct., 2 (second quotation), 3, 5, 8 (third quotation) Nov. 1887; Richmond Whig, 19 Apr. 1887; Leon Fink, "'Irrespective of Party, Color or Social Standing': The Knights of Labor and Opposition Politics in Richmond, Virginia," Labor History 19 (1978): 325–349, esp. 348; Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890 (1984); Richmond City Death Certificate (age thirty-five); Death Register, Richmond City (age thirty-five), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; death notice in Richmond Dispatch, 4 Feb. 1890.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Nathan Vernon Madison.

How to cite this page:
Nathan Vernon Madison,"Joseph P. Devine (d. 1890)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Devine_Joseph_P, accessed [today's date]).

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