=Labor and Politics.=—­As for the political program of labor, the main planks were clear and specific:  the abolition of imprisonment for debt, manhood suffrage in states where property qualifications still prevailed, free and universal education, laws protecting the safety and health of workers in mills and factories, abolition of lotteries, repeal of laws requiring militia service, and free land in the West.

Into the labor papers and platforms there sometimes crept a note of hostility to the masters of industry, a sign of bitterness that excited little alarm while cheap land in the West was open to the discontented.  The Philadelphia workmen, in issuing a call for a local convention, invited “all those of our fellow citizens who live by their own labor and none other.”  In Newcastle county, Delaware, the association of working people complained in 1830:  “The poor have no laws; the laws are made by the rich and of course for the rich.”  Here and there an extremist went to the length of advocating an equal division of wealth among all the people—­the crudest kind of communism.

Agitation of this character produced in labor circles profound distrust of both Whigs and Democrats who talked principally about tariffs and banks; it resulted in attempts to found independent labor parties.  In Philadelphia, Albany, New York City, and New England, labor candidates were put up for elections in the early thirties and in a few cases were victorious at the polls.  “The balance of power has at length got into the hands of the working people, where it properly belongs,” triumphantly exclaimed the Mechanics’ Free Press of Philadelphia in 1829.  But the triumph was illusory.  Dissensions appeared in the labor ranks.  The old party leaders, particularly of Tammany Hall, the Democratic party organization in New York City, offered concessions to labor in return for votes.  Newspapers unsparingly denounced “trade union politicians” as “demagogues,” “levellers,” and “rag, tag, and bobtail”; and some of them, deeming labor unrest the sour fruit of manhood suffrage, suggested disfranchisement as a remedy.  Under the influence of concessions and attacks the political fever quickly died away, and the end of the decade left no remnant of the labor political parties.  Labor leaders turned to a task which seemed more substantial and practical, that of organizing workingmen into craft unions for the definite purpose of raising wages and reducing hours.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND NATIONAL POLITICS

=Southern Plans for Union with the West.=—­It was long the design of Southern statesmen like Calhoun to hold the West and the South together in one political party.  The theory on which they based their hope was simple.  Both sections were agricultural—­the producers of raw materials and the buyers of manufactured goods.  The planters were heavy purchasers of Western bacon, pork, mules, and grain.  The Mississippi