Preparatory to their next campaign, the workingmen organized
political clubs in all the wards of Philadelphia. In 1829 they
nominated thirty-two candidates for local offices, of whom nine
received the endorsement of the Federalists and three that of the
Democrats. The workingmen fared better in this election, polling
nearly 2000 votes in the county and electing sixteen candidates.
So encouraged were they by this success that they attempted to
nominate a state ticket, but the dominant parties were too
strong. In 1831 the workingmen's candidates, who were not
endorsed by the older parties, received less than 400 votes in
Philadelphia. After this year the party vanished.
New York also early had an illuminating experience in labor
politics. In 1829 the workingmen of the city launched a political
venture under the immediate leadership of an agitator by the name
of Thomas Skidmore. Skidmore set forth his social panacea in a
book whose elongated title betrays his secret: "The Rights of Man
to Property! Being a Proposition to Make it Equal among the
Adults of the Present Generation; and to Provide for its Equal
Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation,
on Arriving at the Age of Maturity." The party manifesto began
with the startling declaration that "all human society, our own
as well as every other, is constructed radically wrong." The new
party proposed to right this defect by an equal distribution of
the land and by an elaborate system of public education.
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