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 conventions; and a National Labor Rform 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.[1] 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 workingman'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.[2]
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 Workingman'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 platform of the National Labor Union. The workers did not rally to the support of the labor candidates. After the election, the editor of The Workingman'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
