EPHEMERAL LABOR MOVEMENTS 495 



The New Year opens with flattering auspices to the cause of labor reform. 

 Many governors of states and members of state legislatures have been elected 

 upon the workingmen's tickets, as friends of the eight-hour system. 



The first Congress of the National Labor Union (1866) declared 

 that only candidates favorable to an eight-hour law should be deemed 

 desirable by the workingmen of the country. In 1867, at least three 

 states, New York, Connecticut and Michigan, held workingmen's con- 

 ventions; and a National Labor Eeform Party seems to have been 

 organized. In a platform adopted August 22, 1867, it opposed national 

 banks. The "money monopoly" was held to be "the parent of all 

 monopolies." The issuance of treasury notes was recommended as a 

 preventive of growing inequality in the distribution of wealth. Land 

 monopoly was feared; and as a remedy for insufficient employment, it 

 was urged that workers proceed to the public lands and become actual 

 settlers. The platform contained a clause favoring cooperation; and 

 strikes were deprecated. A demand was made for improved dwellings 

 and tenements for workers. 25 This party undoubtedly died soon after 

 its birth, because William H. Sylvis, upon being elected president of the 

 National Labor Union in 1868, urged the organization of a working- 

 man's party, and the congress voted to organize a " labor reform party." 



The leaders of the labor movement in the late sixties often deplored 

 the rottenness which prevailed in partisan politics. 



It is a sad day for the people when such rottenness prevails in the Senate; 

 when knavery rules the House; when pampered debility occupies the presidential 

 chair, and cabinets are composed of corrupt politicians or political ingrates. . . . 

 The laboring man of to-day in America whatever he may be theoretically, is 

 practically a paria and a slave, at the mercy of corrupt swindlers, under the 

 guise of respectable capitalists.26 



An address of the National Labor Union, issued in 1870, declared 

 that the whole country was under "the supreme control of bankers, 

 moneyed men and professional politicians." The editor of The WorJc- 

 ingman's Advocate urged the formation of a " Great Peoples' Party." 

 At this time "money and monopoly" were repeatedly mentioned as 

 menaces to free government. 



In 1870, the National Labor Congress voted to take independent 

 political action throughout the country. It was stated that the two old 

 parties would not join hands with labor and would not accept the plat- 

 form of the National Labor Union. The workers did not rally to the 

 support of the labor candidates. After the election, the editor of The 

 WorJcingman's Advocate declared with some bitterness that the labor- 

 reform candidates had been overwhelmingly defeated — and by the 

 workers themselves. The candidates, it was stated, " were for the most 



25 WorJcingman's Advocate, September 12, 1868. 



26 Letter written by H. H. Day, member of executive committee of the N. L. 

 XL, to Senator Henry Wilson, Working man's Advocate, June 19, 1869. 



