ng party. Had he been, as in Europe, a branded
spokesman of a particular economic class or interest, it would not have
been difficult to ward him off. But here in America, he said that he too
was a workingman and was heart and soul for the workingman. Moreover,
the workingman was just as much attached to an old party label as any
average American. In a way he considered it an assertion of his social
equality with any other group of Americans that he could afford to take
the same "disinterested" and tradition-bound view of political struggles
as the rest. This is why labor parties generally encountered such
disheartening receptions at the hands of workingmen; also why it was
difficult to "deliver the labor vote" to any party. This, on the whole,
describes the condition of affairs today as it does the situations in
the past.

In the end, should the workingman be pried loose from his traditional
party affiliation by a labor event of transcendent importance for the
time being, should he be stirred to political revolt by an oppressive
court decision, or the use of troops to break a strike; then, at the
next election, when the excitement has had time to subside, he will
usually return to his political normality. Moreover, should labor
discontent attain depth, it may be safely assumed that either one or the
other of the old parties or a faction therein will seek to divert its
driving force into its own particular party channel. Should the labor
party still persist, the old party politicians, whose bailiwick it will
have particularly invaded, will take care to encourage, by means not
always ethical but nearly always effective, strife in its ranks. Should
that fail, the old parties will in the end "fuse" against the upstart
rival. If they are able to stay "fused" during enough elections and also
win them, the fidelity of the adherent of the third party is certain to
be put to a hard and unsuccessful test. To the outsider these
conclusions may appear novel, but labor in America learned these lessons
through a long experience, which began when the first workingmen's
parties were attempted in 1828-1832. The limited potentialities of labor
legislation together with the apparent hopelessness of labor party
politics compelled the American labor movement to develop a sort of
non-partisan political action with limited objectives thoroughly
characteristic of American conditions. Labor needs protection from
interference by the courts in t