“in the opinion of this meeting, that the first appropriation of the soil of the State to private and exclusive possession was eminently and barbarously unjust. That it was substantially feudal in its character, inasmuch as those who received enormous and unequal possessions were lords and those who received little or nothing were vassals. That hereditary transmission of wealth on the one hand and poverty on the other, has brought down to the present generation all the evils of the feudal system, and that, in our opinion, is the prime source of all our calamities.”
After declaring that the Workingmen’s party would oppose all exclusive privileges, monopolies and exemptions, the resolutions proceeded:
“We consider it an exclusive privilege for one portion of the community to have the means of education in colleges while another is restricted to common schools, or perhaps, by extreme poverty, even deprived of the limited education to be acquired in those establishments. Our voice, therefore, shall be raised in favor of a system of education which shall be equally open to all, as in a real republic it should be.”
The banks, too, came in for a share of the denunciation. The bankers were styled “the greatest knaves, impostors and paupers of the age.” The resolutions continued:
“As banking is now conducted, the owners of the banks receive annually of the people of this State not less than two millions of dollars in their paper money (and it might as well be pewter money) for which there is and can be nothing provided for its redemption on demand.…”
The Workingmen put a full ticket in the field.
Tammany Hall, dominated by some of the same men and interests denounced by the Workingmen’s party, opened a campaign of abuse. Commercial and banking men outside the Wigwam joined ardently in the campaign. The new movement was declared to be a mushroom party, led by designing men, whose motives were destructive. The Evening Post, which represented the commercial element and which sided with Tammany in opposition to the new party, said that it remained for the really worthy mechanics who might have associated accidentally with that party, to separate themselves from it, now that its designs and doctrines were known. The Courier and Enquirer, partly owned and edited by Noah,[4] styled the Workingmen’s party an infidel ticket, hostile to the morals, to the institutions of society and the rights of property. The Tammany Hall, or to speak more technically, the Democratic-Republican General Committee, declaiming on the virtues of Jackson and Democracy, advised all good men, and especially all self-respecting laborers, not to vote the Workingmen’s ticket.
Nevertheless, its principles made such an impression that in November it polled over 6,000 votes, while Tammany, with its compact organization, could claim little more than 11,000 votes. It was well settled that numbers of Whig workingmen voted the new party’s ticket; and that the rich Whigs secretly worked for the success of Tammany Hall, whose ticket was almost entirely successful, though the Workingmen elected Ebenezer Ford to the Assembly.
Tammany was dismayed at the new party’s strength, and determined to destroy it by championing one of the reform measures demanded. In January, 1830, a bill for the better security of mechanics and other laborers of New York City was introduced by Silas M. Stillwell. The Tammany men immediately took it up as if it were their own, urged its passage and secured the credit of its adoption, when in April, much emasculated, it became a law. It required, under penalties, the owner of a building to retain from the contractor the amount due to the mechanics employed thereon. By exploiting this performance to the utmost, Tammany succeeded in making some inroads on the Workingmen’s party. The organization leaders had recognized that it was time they did something for the laboring classes. They were fast losing caste with even independent Democrats of means, because of their subservience to the aristocracy and of the common knowledge of the illegitimate ways in which they were amassing wealth.
One result of the Workingmen’s movement was the failure of the Wigwam to secure a majority in the Common Council. This seemed to frustrate the design to reelect, as Mayor, Walter Bowne (Grand Sachem in 1820 and 1831). Fourteen Aldermen and Assistants were opposed to Bowne, and thirteen favored him. There was but one expedient calculated to reelect him, and to this Tammany Hall resorted. Bowne, as presiding officer of the Council, held that the constitution permitted him to vote for the office of Mayor. “I will persist in this opinion even though the board decide against me,” he said. To prevent a vote being taken, seven of Bowne’s opponents withdrew on December 28, 1829. They went back on January 6, 1830, when Tammany managed to reelect Bowne by one vote. How this vote was obtained was a mystery. Fourteen members declared under oath that they had voted for Thomas R. Smith, Bowne’s opponent.[5] Charges of bribery were made, and an investigating committee was appointed on January 11; but as this committee was composed of Bowne’s own partizans, it announced its inability to find proofs. Meanwhile the general committee[6] had issued a loftily worded manifesto saying that it (the committee) was established and was maintained to watch over the political interests of the Democratic-Republicans of the city and “to expose and repel the insidious and open machinations of their enemies,” that it could not discover anything wrong in the conduct of the Chief Magistrate of the city, and that it “repelled the accusations of his enemies.”