With the idea of organising the opposition to the Chinese, the trades assembly called a state convention of labour and antiChinese organisations to be held in San Francisco, April 24, 1880. The meeting was attended by delegates from forty trade unions in the State. The outcome was the formation of a League of Deliverance with F. Roney as chairman. By the end of May, 13 branches of the League had been formed, especially in San Francisco, with a membership of more than 4,000.

• The weapon most frequently used by the League was the boycott of Chinese-made goods. It was conducted systematically and with great effect. It was in this connection that the first boycott case was tried in a California court, resulting in the acquittal of the defendants and causing many factories to discharge their Mongolian help. •

Meantime the movement for Chinese exclusion grew in intensity and became wide spread. It was urgently demanded by labour organisations throughout the country and by all the States west of the Rocky Mountains. The platforms of both national parties in 1880 contained planks pledging their candidates to its support. In 1882 the matter reached final solution in Congress. The fight for exclusion was led by the senators and representatives from California, who received ardent support from the members of the States west of the Rockies. The South also was in sympathy with the measure. The East, prompted by humanitarianism and business, opposed it. The bill, as finally passed, prohibited immigration of Chinese labourers for a period of twenty years. So eager had the Californians been over this first attempt at restriction by the Federal Government that the governor declared March 4 to be a state holiday in order that the people might thereby show approval of the acts of those congressmen and senators who had supported the measure. A monster demonstration was held in San Francisco under the auspices of the merchants and professional men. When President Arthur vetoed the bill, mainly on the ground that so long a period of suspension had not been contemplated by those negotiating the treaty of 1880, meetings of protest were held throughout the State, and for a time it seemed as though the agitation would become similar in char

acter to that of the early days of the Kearney movement. However, Congress amended the bill by decreasing the period of suspension to ten years to take effect in August, 1882, and it became law. With its passage, the League of Deliverance dis

banded.

CHAPTER VI

FROM SOCIALISM TO ANARCHISM AND

SYNDICALISM, 1876-1884

The Nationalised International. Preliminary union conference of all socialist organisations, 269. The Union Congress, 270. The Workingmen's party of the United States, 270. Resolution on political action, 270. Plan of organisation, 270. "Trade union" and "political" factions, 270. Phillip Van Patten, 272. New Haven experiment with politics, 272. Chicago election, 273. Factional differences, 273. Struggle for the Labor Standard, 274. Douai's effort of mediation, 275. Effect of the great strikes of 1877 on the factional struggle, 276. Part played by the socialists in the strike movement, 277.

Rush Into Politics. Election results, 277. Newark convention, 277. Control by the political faction, 278. Socialist Labor party, 278. Strength of the trade union faction in Chicago, 279. Success in the Chicago election, 279. Failure in Cincinnati, 279. Van Patten's attitude towards trade unions, 280. Workingmen's military organisations, 280. Autumn election of 1879, 282. Chicago — the principal socialist centre, 282. Influence in the state legislature, 283. Chicago municipal election of 1879, 284. Persistent pro-trade union attitude of the Chicago socialists, 284. Effect of prosperity, 284. National convention at Alleghany City, 284. Differences of opinion on a compromise with the greenbackers, 285. National greenback convention, 285. The "socialist" plank in the platform, 286. The double revolt: the "trade union" faction, and the revolutionists in the East, 287. Attitude of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, 287. Referendum vote, 288. Decrease in the greenback vote, 289. Struggle between the compromisers and non-compromisers in the socialist ranks, 289.

Evolution Towards Anarchism and "Syndicalism." Chicago and New York, 291. The national convention of the revolutionary socialists, 291. Affiliation with the International Working People's Association in London, 291. Attitude towards politics and trade unionism, 292. August Spies, 291. Proposed form or organisation, 292. Political action in Chicago once more, 292. Reorganisation in Chicago along revolutionary lines, 292. Johann Most and his philosophy, 293. The Pittsburgh convention and the Manifesto, 293. Crystallisation of a "syndicalist" philosophy in Chicago, 296. Attitude towards the state, trade unionism, politics, and violence, 294. A model syndicalist "trade union, 296. The Red International. 298. Burnette G. Haskell and Joseph R. Buchanan, 298. Ebb of the Socialist Labor party, 300.

THE NATIONALISED INTERNATIONAL

ALTHOUGH the Pittsburgh convention of 1876 refused to endorse socialism, it proved a potent agency in favour of

socialist unity. The same joint conference, which decided upon a common programme of action at the convention, drew up the articles of fusion.1 The preliminary terms were a victory for the International since they embodied their attitude on trade unionism and politics, and, besides provided for an international council to maintain permanent connection with the labour organisations of Europe.2

The conference appointed a committee of two to serve as an intermediary between the organisations until the final settlement at a Union Congress to be held in Philadelphia. The congress met July 19, 1876, with the following delegates: F. A. Sorge and Otto Weydemeyer, from the International; Conrad A. Conzett, from the Labor party of Illinois; Charles Braun, from the Social Political Workingmen's Society of Cincinnati; and A. Strasser, A. Gabriel, and P. J. McGuire, from the Social Democratic party. The platform of the united party, called the Workingmen's party of the United States, contained a Declaration of Principles, taken from the General Statutes of the International, and a list of demands adopted from the platform of the Social Democratic party. However, with regard to political action and trade unionism, the platform unequivocally took the position of the International. It said:

3

"The political action of the party is confined generally to obtaining legislative acts in the interest of the working class proper. It will not enter into a political campaign before being strong enough to exercise a perceptible influence, and then in the first place locally in the towns or cities, when demands of purely local character may be presented, providing they are not in conflict with the platform and principles of the party.

"We work for the organization of trades unions upon a national and international basis to ameliorate the condition of the working people and seek to spread therein the above principles."

In the matter of the form of organisation, a concession was

1 The following organisations were represented at the conference: the International with 635 members, the Labor party of Illinois with 593, the Social Democratic party with 1,500, and the Social-Political Workingmen's Society of Cincinnati (German) with 250 members.

2 Chicago Vorbote, Apr. 21, 1876.

3 In this respect it resembled the platform adopted by the German socialist congress in 1875 at Gotha at which there took place a fusion of the Lassalleans and the Marxists. The fusion in Germany was a factor in accelerating the fusion in America.

4 Labor Standard, Feb. 24, 1877.

made to the Social Democratic party, which demanded a national organisation instead of an international. The constitution provided for an Executive Committee and a Board of Control. Chicago was elected the seat of the former and Newark the seat of the latter. A further concession to the Lassalleans was made in a resolution put forward by McGuire and opposed by Sorge, Strasser, Weydemeyer, and Conzett, empowering the executive committee to allow local sections to enter political campaigns when circumstances were very favourable. The Vorbote in Chicago and the Sozial-Demokrat in New York were declared official organs, the name of the latter being changed to the Arbeiterstimme. The English organ of the Social Democratic party, the Socialist, was treated likewise. Its name was changed to Labor Standard and McDonnell of the United Workers was selected editor.

In order not to endanger union any further, the referendum vote of the membership on the resolutions of the congress was dispensed with, and the Workingmen's Party of the United States was launched immediately after the Congress.

The unification of the socialist factions in 1876 did not do away with the differences within the movement. The two opposing factions, the Internationalist and the Lassallean, continued to exist as before. However, their differences became more crystallised and were reduced, as it were, to their bare essence. The fundamental difference, that between trade unionism, emphasised by the International, and political action, advocated by the Lassalleans, was no longer hidden beneath other distinctions lying nearer the surface. The Internationalists had conceded to the Lassalleans that the labour movement must become nationalised in order to succeed; the Lassalleans, on their part, had conceded that the emancipation of labour might come through agencies different from co-operative societies with state credit. Similarly, the old terms "Lassallean" and "Internationalist" gradually gave way to the simpler ones, "political socialist and "trade union" socialist, which served to convey a better and more exact impression of the actual difference. The victory won by the "trade union" element in the negotiations for unity had been due mainly to the fact that the necessity for capturing the National Labor Convention had made its