g that O'Conor received only
29,489 votes and that these embraced both the labor and the so-called
"straight" Democratic strength.

* It is interesting to note that in this first National Labor Party
Convention a motion favoring government ownership and the referendum was
voted down.

For some years the political labor movement lost its independent
character and was absorbed by the Greenback party which offered a
meeting-ground for discontented farmers and restless workingmen. In
1876 the party nominated for President the venerable Peter Cooper, who
received about eighty thousand votes--most of them probably cast by
farmers. During this time the leaders of the labor movement were serving
a political apprenticeship and were learning the value of cooperation.
On February 22, 1878, a conference held at Toledo, Ohio, including
eight hundred delegates from twenty-eight States, perfected an
alliance between the Labor Reform and Greenback parties and invited all
"patriotic citizens to unite in an effort to secure financial reform
and industrial emancipation." Financial reform meant the adoption of
the well-known greenback free silver policy. Industrial emancipation
involved the enactment of an eight-hour law; the inspection of
workshops, factories, and mines; the regulation of interstate commerce;
a graduated federal income tax; the prohibition of the importation
of alien contract labor; the forfeiture of the unused portion of the
princely land grants to railroads; and the direct participation of the
people in government. These fundamental issues were included in the
demands of subsequent labor and populist parties, and some of them were
bequeathed to the Progressive party of a later date. The convention was
thus a forerunner of genuine reform, for its demands were based upon
industrial needs. For the moment it made a wide popular appeal. In the
state elections of 1878 about a million votes were polled by the party
candidates. The bulk of these were farmers' votes cast in the Middle
and Far West, though in the East, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York,
Maine, and New Jersey cast a considerable vote for the party.

With high expectations the new party entered the campaign of 1880. It
had over a dozen members in Congress, active organizations in nearly
every State, and ten thousand local clubs. General James B. Weaver,
the presidential nominee of the party, was the first candidate to make
extensive campaign journeys in