Organizational History
The party took particular aim against Chinese immigrant labor and the Central Pacific Railroad which employed them. Its famous slogan was "The Chinese must go!" Kearney's attacks against the Chinese were of a particularly virulent and openly racist nature, and found considerable support among white Californians of the time. This sentiment led eventually to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Their goal was to "rid the country of Chinese cheap labor."
Kearney's party should not be confused with another party based in the east of the United States called the Workingmen's Party of the United States, launched in 1876 and later known as the Socialist Labor Party of America. Kearney's racism was also not echoed by this organization, which blamed racism on the competition for jobs among the multicultural American workforce, and thus one of the many evils (along with crime, poverty, sexism, etc.) which they saw capitalism as being responsible for. Unlike Kearney's organization, this party was never politically powerful.
Read more about this topic: Workingmen's Party Of California
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“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)