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.Capital soon recovered from a temporary intimidation...Labor still uneasy was still subject to the inexorable law of supply and demand.Legislatures were still to be approached by agents...Chinese were still employed in digging and grading.The state board of railroad Commissioners was a useless expense,...being as wax in the hands of the companies it was set to watch."** "Works" (vol.XXIV): "History of California," vol.VII, p.404.
After the collapse of the Populist party, there is to be discerned in labor politics a new departure, due primarily to the attitude of the American Federation of Labor in partisan matters, and secondarily to the rise of political socialism.A socialistic party deriving its support almost wholly from foreign-born workmen had appeared in a few of the large cities in 1877, but it was not until 1892 that a national party was organized, and not until after the collapse of Populism that it assumed some political importance.
In August, 1892, a Socialist-Labor convention which was held in New York City nominated candidates for President and Vice-President and adopted a platform that contained, besides the familiar economic demands of socialism, the rather unusual suggestion that the Presidency, Vice-Presidency, and Senate of the United States be abolished and that an executive board be established "whose members are to be elected, and may at any time be recalled, by the House of Representatives, as the only legislative body, the States and municipalities to adopt corresponding amendments to their constitutions and statutes."Under the title of the Socialist-Labor party, this ticket polled 21,532 votes in 1892, and in 1896, 36,373 votes.
In 1897 the inevitable split occurred in the Socialist ranks.
Eugene V.Debs, the radical labor leader, who, as president of the American Railway Union, had directed the Pullman strike and had become a martyr to the radical cause through his imprisonment for violating the orders of a Federal Court, organized the Social Democratic party.In 1900 Debs was nominated for President, and Job Harriman, representing the older wing, for Vice-President.The ticket polled 94,864 votes.The Socialist-Labor party nominated a ticket of their own which received only 33,432 votes.Eventually this party shrank to a mere remnant, while the Social Democratic party became generally known as the Socialist party.Debs became their candidate in three successive elections.In 1904 and 1908 his vote hovered around 400,000.In 1910 congressional and local elections spurred the Socialists to hope for a million votes in 1912 but they fell somewhat short of this mark.Debs received 901,873 votes, the largest number which a Socialist candidate has ever yet received.
Benson, the presidential candidate in 1916, received 590,579votes.*
The Socialist vote is stated differently by McKee, "National Conventions and Platforms." The above figures, to 1912, are taken from Stanwood's "History of the Presidency," and for 1912 and 1916 from the "World Almanac."In the meantime, the influence of the Socialist labor vote in particular localities vastly increased.In 1910 Milwaukee elected a Socialist mayor by a plurality of seven thousand, sent Victor Berger to Washington as the first Socialist Congressman, and elected labor-union members as five of the twelve Socialist councilmen, thus revealing the sympathy of the working class for the cause.On January 1, 1912, over three hundred towns and cities had one or more Socialist officers.The estimated Socialist vote of these localities was 1,500,000.The 1039Socialist officers included 56 mayors, 205 aldermen and councilmen, and 148 school officers.This was not a sectional vote but represented New England and the far West, the oldest commonwealths and the newest, the North and the South, and cities filled with foreign workingmen as well as staid towns controlled by retired farmers and shopkeepers.
