The Working Men's Parties (whose members were known as "the Workies") were the first labor-oriented political organizations in the United States. The first Working Men's Party was founded in Philadelphia in 1828. Similar parties were also established in New York City and Boston. Additionally, party member George Henry Evans established the Working Man’s Advocate, the first labor newspaper, in 1829.
The political platforms of the Working Men's Parties included such planks as state-supported public education, universal male suffrage, protection from debtor imprisonment and compulsory service in the militia, and shorter working hours. The Workingmen's Party attacked both the Whigs and the Democrats for their lack of interest in labor, and they achieved sizable votes in municipal elections.
Despite some local electoral successes, the Workingmen's Parties effectively died out in the early 1830s. Likely causes for this decline and disappearance include lack of experience with political organization, factional disputes over doctrine and leadership, and incursions by the increasingly pro-labor Democratic Party.
Famous quotes containing the words working, men and/or party:
“Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is only when men lose their contact with this eternal life-flame, and become merely personal, things in themselves, instead of things kindled in the flame, that the fight between man and woman begins.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“In every party there is one person who, through his dotingly credulous enunciation of party principles, incites the other members to defection.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)