social
reform, Father Hecker writes:

"We called ourselves the genuine Democracy, and in New York City were
for some years a separate political body, independent of the
'regular' Democracy, and voting our own ticket. I have before me the
files of our newspaper organ, the _Democrat,_ the first number of
which appeared March 9, 1836, published by Windt & Conrad, 11
Frankfort Street. In its prospectus the _Democrat_ promises to
contend for 'Equality of Rights, often trampled in the dust by
Monopoly Democrats,' to battle 'with an aristocratic opposition
powerful in talent and official entrenchment, and mighty in money and
facilities for corruption.' 'In the course of this duty it will not
fail fearlessly and fully to assert the inalienable rights of the
people['] against 'vested rights' and 'vested wrongs.' It claims to
be the 'instructive companion' of the mechanics' and workingmen's
leisure, 'the promotion of whose interests will ever form a leading
feature of the _Democrat.'_ And in the editorial salutatory it speaks
thus:

"'We are in favor of government by the people. Our objects are the
restoration of equal rights and the prostration of those
aristocratical usurpations existing in the state of monopolies and
exclusive privileges of every kind, the products of corrupt and
corrupting legislation. . . . At this moment we are the only large
nation on the face of the earth where the mass of the people govern
in theory--where they may govern in reality, if they will--where the
real taxes of government, although too heavy, are but trifling, and
where a majority of the population depend on their own labor for
support; yet such is the condition of that large class that the
fruits of their toil are inadequate to sustain themselves in comfort
and rear their families as the young citizens of a republic ought to
be reared.

"'. . . He is very shortsighted, however, who thinks that a majority
of the people, where universal suffrage exists, will submit long to a
state of toil and mendicity. The majority would soon learn to
exercise its political rights, and command its representatives to
carry the laws abolishing primogeniture and entails one step further,
and stop all devises of land and prohibit it from being an article of
sale. (In a foot-note of the editorial:) We actually heard these and
several such propositions discussed by a number of apparently very
intelligent mechanics, after the adjournment of a meeting called to