Workingmen's Party

THE WORKINGMEN'S PARTY was one of the first organizations that represented the economic and political interests of the working class in the 19th century. There were essentially two phases in the development of the Workingmen's Party. Created in the early 19th century, the Workingmen's Party developed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a result of an increasing industrialization that enveloped the United States and its working people.

The Workingmen's Party organized to represent the interests of the working class, on both a political and social level. It aided workers to go to school to gain employment skills. As a result, it became increasingly a political party. Coupled with a migration into the major cities by farmers, the urban working class became increasingly dependent on this organization. In Philadelphia, journeymen house carpenters demanded less work hours and spoke out on other working-class issues. In 1829, at least 5,000 workers met in New York City in response to employers who were threatening to increase the working day. The workers promised that they would declare a strike against any employer who made them work in excess of 10 hours. The initial Workingmen's Party represented the regional interests of a class that felt alienated and disenchanted by a powerful political ruling class. The initial constituency of workers came primarily from journeymen, painters, bricklayers, and house carpenters.

On October 19, 1829, the party decided to run candidates in the elections in New York. They ran on a platform, considered radical for the time, of a free, taxsupported school system, abolition of debt imprisonment, shorter hours, better working conditions, and improved housing for workers. The result was that the Workingmen's Party became a viable political option between the Jacksonians and the the anti-Jacksonians. Essentially, the party offered serious and representative alternates to the dominant political parties of the era in America. By the 1830s, many within the Workingmen's Party abandoned the party and joined the Whig Party, [Page 495]primarily as a form of political protest against the Jacksonians.

The onslaught of the Industrial Revolution and the economic changes wrought by the rise of big businessmen like John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie as well as the rise of immigration led to the emergence of a new political party, patterned after the Jacksonian Workingmen's Party. This new party, emerging 1878 and created by Denis Kearney, was anti-immigrant and anti-foreign. Specifically, Kearney and others within the group believed that Chinese immigration had created a deplorable labor situation. Chinese workers worked longer hours and received less pay, thus making it difficult for American workers to effectively labor at a fair wage. Essentially, the party charged that the Chinese laborers had taken all of the natives jobs, thus creating a labor surplus. In response to the Workingmen's protest, Congress passed in 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act. The act essentially banned Chinese immigration into the country, reflecting widespread xenophobia.

The Workingmen's Party had been formed in 1876 out of the American remnants of the First International and included a number of prominent labor leaders and radicals. In addition to Samuel Gompers, the party numbered among its members a number of Marxist leaders of the German-American and IrishAmerican communities. The party membership grew to more than 7,000, but by 1877, the party split, as many members, including Gompers, left the party to concentrate on labor organizing. The remainder of the group reorganized as the Socialist Labor Party, which went on to play a significant party in Illinois politics. Like the earlier Workingmen's Party of 50 years earlier, the party was less important for its direct impact on politics, and more significant for demonstrating to the major political parties that the discontents of the working class, unless represented politically, might take the form of separate political organization. For this reason, in both eras, the Workingmen's Party represented a pressure to move American politics in a left direction.

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