When the trial
jury acquitted Kearney, what may be called the terrorism of the
movement attained its height, but it fortunately spent itself in
violent adjectives.
The Workingman's party, however, elected a workingman mayor of
San Francisco, joined forces with the Grangers, and elected a
majority of the members of the state constitutional convention
which met in Sacramento on September 28, 1878. This was a notable
triumph for a third party. The framing of a new constitution gave
this coalition of farmers and workingmen an unusual opportunity
to assail the evils which they declared infested the State. The
instrument which they drafted bound the state legislature with
numerous restrictions and made lobbying a felony; it reorganized
the courts, placed innumerable limitations upon corporations,
forbade the loaning of the credit or property of the State to
corporations, and placed a state commission in charge of the
railroads, which had been perniciously active in state politics.
Alas for these visions of reform! A few years after the adoption
of this new constitution by California, Hubert H. Bancroft wrote:
"Those objects which it particularly aimed at, it failed to
achieve. The effect upon corporations disappointed its authors
and supporters. Many of them were strong enough still to defy
state power and evade state laws, in protecting their interests,
and this they did without scruple. The relation of capital and
labor is even more strained than before the constitution was
adopted.
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