pathy
"with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of
labor"; it condemned "the fallacy of protecting American labor under the
present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes
of the world and crowds out our wage-earners"; and it opposed the
Pinkerton system of capitalistic espionage as "a menace to our
liberties." The party formally declared itself to be a "union of the
labor forces of the United States," for "the interests of rural and city
labor are the same; their enemies identical."

These national movements prior to 1896 are not, however, an adequate
index of the political strength of labor in partisan endeavor. Organized
labor was more of a power in local and state elections, perhaps because
in these cases its pressure was more direct, perhaps because it was
unable to cope with the great national organization of the older
parties. During these years of effort to gain a footing in the Federal
Government, there are numerous examples of the success of the labor
party in state elections. As early as 1872 the labor reformers nominated
state tickets in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In 1875 they nominated
Wendell Phillips for Governor of Massachusetts. In 1878, in coalition
with the Greenbackers, they elected many state officers throughout the
West. Ten years later, when the Union Labor party was at its height,
labor candidates were successful in several municipalities. In 1888
labor tickets were nominated in many Western States, including Colorado,
Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and
Wisconsin. Of these Kansas cast the largest labor vote, with nearly
36,000, and Missouri came next with 15,400. In the East, however, the
showing of the party in state elections was far less impressive.

In California the political labor movement achieved a singular
prominence. In 1877 the labor situation in San Francisco became acute
because of the prevalence of unemployment. Grumblings of dissatisfaction
soon gave way to parades and informal meetings at which imported Chinese
labor and the rich "nobs," the supposed dual cause of all the trouble,
were denounced in lurid language. The agitation, however, was formless
until the necessary leader appeared in Dennis Kearney, a native of Cork
County, Ireland. For fourteen years he had been a sailor, had risen
rapidly to first officer of a clipper ship, and then had settled in San
Francisco as a drayman. He was temperate