1829. DEMANDS OF THE LABOR PARTY. 101 forced by dire poverty to have no education at all. We are therefore in favor of a system of education equally open to all men." On the same principle the Advocate was opposed to banks in general, and to the Bank of the United States in particular, was against imprisonment for debt, against the ownership of land in large quantities by private individuals, and in favor of a lien law. Shocking as these demands seemed to the clergy, the men of property, and the conservative part of the community, they were regarded as mild by a half-crazy Quaker named Russell Comstock, who now came forward as the agitator of reforms still more sweeping and radical. As described by himself in his handbills and advertisements, he was Ciderist," a steady friend to the downtrodden and oppressed, the enemy, of monopolists, and a firm believer in equal rights for men and women. No man, he thought, was fit to be an assemblyman or a State senator who did not believe in the establishment of national schools, where children should be taught trades and morality, but not religion; who was not willing to see the wife put on a par with her husband; who did not advocate a lien law for working-men, the abolition of imprisonment for debt, a bankrupt law for the benefit of honest debtors, and the gradual abolition of all laws for the collection of debts. These were the principles of what he called "pure republicanism"; and that they might be tested he issued a call for a public meeting one day in October, and asked that all who came should be prepared to pledge themselves to give his pure republicanism a hearty support. On the appointed day and hour quite a crowd gathered about the City Hall, from the steps of which Comstock made a long speech in explanation of his views. His hearers were so delighted that they nominated him for President, for State senator, for member of the Assembly, and would probably have gone on down the list of officers had not the constable arrested Comstock for disturbing the peace and carried him before a magistrate.* But he was not to be suppressed, and up to the day of election scattered handbills broadcast over the city. *New York American, November 6, 1829. Though his efforts did him little good-he received but one hundred and thirty-seven votes for member of the Assembly-they went far to arouse the working-men to support the ticket the committee of fifty had placed in the field. It was then the custom in New York to open the polls on three consecutive days. At the close of the first day it seemed so likely that the Working-men's Ticket would triumph that the journals which upheld the Republican cause called loudly on the friends of good order to rally. The general impression prevails, said one newspaper, that the ticket for Assembly got up by the disciples of Fanny Wright, and wrongfully called the Mechanics' Ticket, has received a large proportion of the votes given yesterday. Some have declared that it is far ahead of every other. Be this as it may, it becomes the friends of good order in this community, of whatever party, to go to the polls and by their votes prevent so shameful a result. Shameful it would be if even a moderate support were given to tickets prepared by persons who scoff at morality and demand a system of public robbery.* "We understand," said another, "with astonishment and alarm that the 'Infidel Ticket,' miscalled the Working-men's Ticket,' is far ahead of every other Assembly ticket in the city. What a state of things have we reached! A ticket got up openly and avowedly in opposition to all banks, in opposition to social order, in opposition to the rights of property, running ahead of every other! Is not this sufficient to startle men who have regard for the fundamental laws of society?" On the second and third days the friends of religion and order thus appealed to did rally, and but one candidate on the Mechanics' Ticket, Ebenezer Ford, was elected.‡ * The great vote cast for Ford-6,166-alarmed the community. All the horrors of anarchy seemed at hand. The "Fanny Wright Ticket," the "Infidel Ticket," was denounced, and the Legislature called on to unseat Mr. Ford. The leaders of this miscalled Mechanics' party, the people * New York American, November 6, 1829; New York Evening Post, Novem ber 3, 1829. + Courier and Enquirer, November 8, 1829. New York Evening Post, November 9, 1829. 1829. OWENISM DISAVOWED. 103 were told, held that everything was wrong in the present state of society, and that the whole system must be changed. Their object was represented to be to turn the State into an Owenite Community, confiscate all land and hold it for the general use of the people, strike down religion, and abolish marriage. So horrid a picture of socialism disturbed the mechanics, who now made haste to publicly disavow all connection with Owen, with Fanny Wright and the Free Enquirers, and at a ward meeting passed resolutions denying all sympathy with the "Infidel Party "; repelling with scorn the charge that they were hostile to the civil, moral, and religious institutions of the country; and declaring agrarian laws to be debasing, wicked, and dishonest. The New York Typographical Society went further yet. Some time before the election the newly formed Association for the Protection of Industry and the Promotion of National Education sent to every organized trade in the city a copy of the plan of the association, a pamphlet on National Education, by Robert Dale Owen, and a request that the society would join in the effort to secure the needed reforms. It was high time, the accompanying letter said, that the friends of equal rights made a firm stand against the unrepublican influences of the day. Labor was not only unprotected, but was oppressed, despised, and stripped of its just reward. There was no system of education affording instruction to the children of the rich and poor alike; none free from clerical and sectarian influences and class distinctions; none suited to induce in the rising generation habits of industry, plant principles of morality, or awaken feelings of brotherly love. Yet it was possible to obtain a better system of education and proper protection to industry if those most concerned would bestir themselves. Let tracts be written and scattered among the working-classes; let associations be formed all over the land, and a regular correspondence carried on between them; let the clergy be watched, and the needed legislation would soon be obtained. The Typographical Society, in common with the other trade associations, having received these documents, proceeded to consider them, and noticing that the pamphlet was written by Owen, and the letter signed by Owen as secretary of the association, supposed he was also the author of the plan, and appointed a committee to report as to who he was and in what his scheme consisted. The committee assured the typesetters that Robert Dale Owen was a Scotchman, that he probably had never been naturalized, and that he had been assisted in his labors "by one Fanny Wright, also an exotic of some notoriety." It does seem unaccountably strange, said the report, that a native of that part of the world where thousands are every day groaning under oppression should leave these unfortunates, come over to the New World, and in the midst of a people enjoying the fullest liberty proclaim himself the apostle of equal rights and tender them the hand of friendship against their oppressors. Such insolence might well be treated with contempt were it not for the fact that a band of choice spirits of foreign origin have united and, taking advantage of our mild laws, are sowing the seeds of discontent and rebellion. It is true that there is some distress among laboring people. It is true that labor is not as well paid as in times past; that a man working with his hands is now unable to earn as much as he once could. But in our country, at least, the distress is caused not by anything Owen would reform, but by the introduction of labor-saving machinery during the last thirty years. Has Owen any remedy to propose? Far from it. He calls on the working-men to associate for defence of their rights when no rights are endangered. The report ended with a repudiation of his plan and a denial of all sympathy with his purposes. The Painters' Society, on the other hand, took a different view, admitted that much Mr. Owen said was true, and was disposed to favor his plan for free education. At Philadelphia, where the working-men supported a ticket at the October election for city and county officers, they too denied the charge of sympathy with Miss Wright as warmly as their fellow-laborers in New York. "We view," so ran a resolution adopted at a public meeting after the election, "the re * 1 * New York Evening Post, December 8, 1829. Free Enquirer, December 19 1829. LABOR JOURNALS. 105 port charging us with being disciples of Miss Wright, and connecting religious points with our contention, as a base fabrication propagated by our enemies; we disclaim all adherence to Miss Wright's principles, and hold them foreign to our views, and appeal to the fact of the existence of the Working-men's party on the principles it now professes for nearly a year before she appeared among us." But it mattered little whether the working-men avowed or disavowed sympathy with the Free Enquirers. The fact remained that a serious reform movement was well under way, and was spreading and gaining in importance daily. All over the country journals were appearing to advocate it, and societies were forming to labor in its behalf. In New York city the Telescope was busy exposing the designs of the clergy, and holding up to public view the dangers of ecclesiastical encroachment. At Rochester the Spirit of the Age was denouncing imprisonment for debt and capital punishment, and calling loudly for a mechanics' lien law. At Canton, in Ohio, the Farmers' and Mechanics' Society of Stark County had been. founded to spread the new doctrines and agitate for co-operation and reform. At St. Louis there was a Society of Free Enquirers. In Alabama "The Ladies Bill," to give women the right to hold after marriage property which belonged to them before, was warmly debated in the Legislature, and in Tuscaloosa another Spirit of the Age upheld the cause of the people as vigorously as its Rochester contemporary. The Southern Free Press, of Charleston, South Carolina, announced its principles to be "No sect, no creed, open to all," and declared that it would collect such information as was useful to mechanics and working-men, and would look to them for support. "Our great object," said the editor in his prospectus, "will be to urge you to break down the barrier which separates your children from those of lordly aristocrats by the establishment of national schools." At New Castle, in Delaware, an Association of Working People was formed with a membership open to any person twenty-one years of age who was engaged in any branch of productive labor. How is it, said the preamble to their constitution, that all classes save the laboring are heard in the Legislature? The commercial, the |