" 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 into distant sections of the country. His energetic
canvass netted him only 308,578 votes, most of which came from
the West.
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