EPHEMERAL LABOR MOVEMENTS 497 



David Davis of Illinois was nominated for president and Joel M. Parker 

 of New Jersey for vice-president. Neither of the gentlemen were 

 workingmen. Both withdrew a few weeks later ; and no further nomina- 

 tions were made. Two years later, independent reform candidates were 

 nominated in Illinois and, perhaps, elsewhere. In 1875, the editor of 

 The Worhingmans Advocate was interested in the Greenback Party. 



Undoubtedly many members of the National Labor Union who were 

 committed to political action and opposed to the "money monopoly" 

 became members of the Greenback Party. Others who were more 

 radical turned to the Workingmen's Party of the United States. In 

 other words, the small but aggressive class-conscious element within the 

 National Labor Union joined the latter party; and the element which 

 stood for reform affiliated with the Greenback movement. Those who 

 joined the Greenback Party adopted the philosophy of the small pro- 

 prietor and the skilled artisan ; but those who united with the Working- 

 men's Party and later the Socialist Labor Party, adopted the economic 

 theories of Karl Marx. The Greenbackers did not propose to do away 

 with private ownership of capital ; they only desired to prevent the con- 

 centration of capital in the hands of a few large capitalists. The Green- 

 backer was a reactionist rather than a progressive ; he wished to prevent 

 the growth of monopoly and large-scale industry. His viewpoint was 

 that of the pre-Civil-War period; he looked backward instead of 

 forward. Consequently, the Greenback movement is much more closely 

 related to anarchism than to socialism. 30 



The American workingman of the generation immediately following 

 the Civil War was still saturated with the philosophy of the frontier or 

 of Jacksonian democracy; he as yet accepted the oft-repeated, and not- 

 frequently contradicted, dictum that each and every wage earner had 

 an excellent opportunity to become a small proprietor or even a captain 

 of industry. As long as this situation obtained, it was not difficult for 

 "pure and simple" trade unionism generated in a period of stress and 

 of rising prices like the last years of the Civil War, to be gradually 

 transmuted into " labor reformism " and " greenbackism." The greatest 

 labor organization of the period under discussion, the Knights of Labor, 

 was primarily a reform association. The ultimate aim of its leaders 

 during its years of growth was some form of a cooperative common- 

 wealth. Its famous preamble was taken almost verbatim from one 

 drawn in 1874 for another organization, by George E. McNeill, the 

 " Apostle of the Eight-hour Movement." But hard times, unemploy- 

 ment, the disappearance of the famous westward-moving frontier line, 

 the rush of immigrants from Southern Europe, the consolidation of 

 capital, and the failure of sundry reform movements were preparing 



30 For a statement of the theory of greenbackism, see ' ' Documentary His- 

 tory of American Industrial Society," Vol. 9: 33-43. 



vol. lxxxv. — 34. 



