In a democracy it is possible for organized labor to extend its influence far beyond the confines of a mere trade policy.It can move the political mechanism directly in proportion to its capacity to enlist public opinion.It is not surprising, therefore, to find that labor is eager to take part in politics or that labor parties were early organized.They were, however, doomed to failure, for no workingman's party can succeed, except in isolated localities, without the cooperation of other social and political forces.Standing alone as a political entity, labor has met only rebuff and defeat at the hands of the American voter.
The earlier attempts at direct political action were local.In Philadelphia a workingman's party was organized in 1828 as a result of the disappointment of the Mechanics' Union at its failure to achieve its ambitions by strikes.At a public meeting it was resolved to support only such candidates for the legislature and city council as would pledge themselves to the interests of "the working classes." The city was organized, and a delegate convention was called which nominated a ticket of thirty candidates for city and county offices.But nineteen of these nominees were also on the Jackson ticket, and ten on the Adams ticket; and both of these parties used the legend "Working Man's Ticket," professing to favor a shorter working day.The isolated labor candidates received only from 229 to 539 votes, while the Jackson party vote ranged from 3800 to 7000 and the Adams party vote from 2500 to 3800.So that labor's first excursion into politics revealed the eagerness of the older parties to win the labor vote, and the futility of relying on a separate organization, except for propaganda purposes.
Preparatory to their next campaign, the workingmen organized political clubs in all the wards of Philadelphia.In 1829 they nominated thirty-two candidates for local offices, of whom nine received the endorsement of the Federalists and three that of the Democrats.The workingmen fared better in this election, polling nearly 2000 votes in the county and electing sixteen candidates.
So encouraged were they by this success that they attempted to nominate a state ticket, but the dominant parties were too strong.In 1831 the workingmen's candidates, who were not endorsed by the older parties, received less than 400 votes in Philadelphia.After this year the party vanished.
New York also early had an illuminating experience in labor politics.In 1829 the workingmen of the city launched a political venture under the immediate leadership of an agitator by the name of Thomas Skidmore.Skidmore set forth his social panacea in a book whose elongated title betrays his secret: "The Rights of Man to Property! Being a Proposition to Make it Equal among the Adults of the Present Generation; and to Provide for its Equal Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation, on Arriving at the Age of Maturity." The party manifesto began with the startling declaration that "all human society, our own as well as every other, is constructed radically wrong." The new party proposed to right this defect by an equal distribution of the land and by an elaborate system of public education.
Associated with Skidmore were Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright of the "Free Enquirer," a paper advocating all sorts of extreme social and economic doctrines.It was not strange, therefore, that the new party was at once connected, in the public mind, with all the erratic vagaries of these Apostles of Change.It was called the "Fanny Wright ticket" and the "Infidel Ticket." Every one forgot that it aimed to be the workingman's ticket.The movement, however, was supported by "The Working Man's Advocate,"a new journal that soon reached a wide influence.
There now appeared an eccentric Quaker, Russell Comstock by name, to center public attention still more upon the new party.As a candidate for the legislature, he professed an alarmingly advanced position, for he believed that the State ought to establish free schools where handicrafts and morals, but not religion, should be taught; that husband and wife should be equals before the law; that a mechanics' lien and bankruptcy law should be passed; and that by wise graduations all laws for the collection of debts should be repealed.At a meeting held at the City Hall, for the further elucidation of his "pure Republicanism," he was greeted by a great throng but was arrested for disturbing the peace.He received less than one hundred and fifty votes, but his words went far to excite, on the one hand, the interest of the laboring classes in reform, and, on the other hand, the determination of the conservative classes to defeat "a ticket got up openly and avowedly," as one newspaper said, "in opposition to all banks, in opposition to social order, in opposition to rights of property."Elections at this time lasted three days.On the first day there was genuine alarm at the large vote cast for "the Infidels."Thoughtful citizens were importuned to go to the polls, and on the second and third days they responded in sufficient numbers to compass the defeat of the entire ticket, excepting only one candidate for the legislature.
The Workingman's party contained too many zealots to hold together.After the election of 1829 a meeting was called to revise the party platform.The more conservative element prevailed and omitted the agrarian portions of the platform.
