THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 325 



eral rule, supported the candidates of the Greenback party at election 

 times in 1877, and in the congressional elections of 1878 this party 

 polled over 850,000 votes for congressional candidates, and succeeded 

 in electing thirteen independent men to Congress. The result of this 

 force in Congress compelled the government to reverse its financial 

 policy, which had been to retire the legal tender money and put out 

 bonds in its place. The government had also, in 1873, demonetized 

 silver, and at this session of Congress, through this independent force, 

 it was compelled to remonetize it. This same party held its next con- 

 vention in 1880, and placed in nomination for President, General James 

 B. Weaver of Iowa, who had been the Independent leader in Congress 

 during two years, and B. J. Chambers of Texas for Vice-President, and 

 that ticket received nearly 400,000 votes. 



The Knights of Labor started out on different lines from the trades- 

 union. They endeavored to be an educational organization, and for the 

 space of twelve years accomplished more in that line than any other 

 body of workingmen that had existed before that. But their work in 

 this line was hampered by the fact that a large per cent of its members 

 were of the wage working classes, and, as a result, the organization 

 drifted, in the latter years, back towards the trades-union spirit. It 

 could not carry both ideas and continue in operation. Those who 

 maintained the trades-union sentiment could not^ see the value of 

 spending money in education on the line of political action, which would 

 manifest itself in the construction of the planks in the platform; while, 

 on the other hand, those who believed in education along political lines 

 could not see the benefit to be gained by contributing their money to 

 make the fight in the line of strikes. The organization became weak- 

 ened by this struggle between conflicting ideas. In 1884 the Independ- 

 ent party held a convention in Chicago, and placed in nomination for 

 President, Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, and General A. M. West, 

 who was at the New York convention of the National Union, as Vice- 

 President. In 1888 this party changed its name to the Union Labor 

 party, and placed in nomination for President, A. J. Streeter, president 

 of the Farmers' Alliance, and Cunningham of Arkansas, as Vice-Presi- 

 dent. Every one of these presidential nominations was the outcome of 

 the conference held at Louisville in 1865, and the main points of that 

 platform, land, transportation, and finance, have never been deviated 

 from from that day to the present, and the same principles are to-day 

 embodied in the platform adopted by the Farmers' Alliance and Indus- 

 trial Union and the Knights of Labor, at their joint conference at St. 

 Louis in December, 1889. It was on this platform that the great politi- 



