Evans had a plan of political action, which was as unique as his economic program. His previous political experiences with the New York Workingmen's party had taught him that a minority party could not hope to win by its own votes and that the politicians cared more for offices than for measures. They would endorse any measure which was supported by voters who held the balance of power. His plan of action was, therefore, to ask all candidates to pledge their support to his measures. In exchange for such a pledge, the candidates would receive the votes of the workingmen. In case neither candidate would sign the pledge, it might be necessary to nominate an independent as a warning to future candidates; but not as an indication of a new party organization.
Evans' ideas quickly won the adherence of the few labor papers then existing. Horace Greeley's New York Tribune endorsed the homestead movement as early as 1845. The next five years witnessed a remarkable spread of the ideas of the free homestead movement in the press of the country. It was estimated in 1845 that 2000 papers were published in the United States and that in 1850, 600 of these supported land reform.
Petitions and memorials having proved of little avail, the land reformers tried Evans' pet plan of bargaining votes for the support of their principles. Tammany was quick to start the bidding. In May, 1851, a mass-meeting was held at Tammany Hall "of all those in favor of land and other industrial reform, to be made elements in the Presidential contest of 1852." A platform was adopted which proclaimed man's right to the soil and urged that freedom of the public lands be endorsed by the Democratic party. Senator Isaac A. Walker of Wisconsin was nominated as the candidate of the party for President.
For a while the professional politician triumphed over the too trusting workingman reformer. But the cause found strong allies in the other classes of the American community. From the poor whites of the upland region of the South came a similar demand formulated by the Tennessee tailor, Andrew Johnson, later President of the United States, who introduced his first homestead bill in 1845. From the Western pioneers and settlers came the demand for increased population and development of resources, leading both to homesteads for settlers and land grants for railways. The opposition came from manufacturers and landowners of the East and from the Southern slave owners. The West and East finally combined and the policy of the West prevailed, but not before the South had seceded from the Union.
Not the entire reform was accepted. The Western spirit dominated. The homestead law, as finally adopted in 1862, granted one hundred and sixty acres as a free gift to every settler. But the same Congress launched upon a policy of extensive land grants to railways. The homestead legislation doubtless prevented great estates similar to those which sprang of a different policy of the Australian colonies, but did not carry out the broad principles of inalienability and land limitation of the original Agrarians.
Their principle of homestead exemption, however, is now almost universally adopted. Thus the homestead agitation begun by Evans and a group of wage earners and farmers in 1844 was carried to victory, though to an incomplete victory. It contained a fruitful lesson to labor in politics. The vested interests in the East were seen ultimately to capitulate before a popular movement which at no time aspired toward political power and office, but, concentrating on one issue, endeavored instead to permeate with its ideas the public opinion of the country at large.
Of all the "isms" so prevalent during the forties, "Agrarianism" alone came close to modern socialism, as it alone advocated class struggle and carried it into the political field, although, owing to the peculiarity of the American party structure, it urged a policy of "reward your friends, and punish your enemies" rather than an out and out labor party. It is noteworthy that of all social reform movements of the forties Agrarianism alone was not initiated by the intellectuals. On the other hand, another movement for legislative reform, namely the shorter-hour movement for women and children working in the mills and factories, was entirely managed by humanitarians. Its philosophy was the furthest removed from the class struggle idea.
For only a short year or two did prosperity show itself from behind the clouds to cause a mushroom growth of trade unions, once in 1850-1851 and again in 1853-1854, following the gold discoveries in California. During these few years unionism disentangled itself from humanitarianism and cooperationism and came out in its wholly modern form of restrictive craft unionism, only to be again suppressed by the business depressions that preceded and followed the panic of 1857. Considered as a whole, however, the period of the forties and fifties was the zenith in American history of theories of social reform, of "panaceas," of humanitarianism.
The trade union wave of the fifties was so short lived and the trade unionists were so preoccupied with the pressing need of advancing their wages to keep pace with the soaring prices caused by the influx of California gold, that we miss the tendency which was so strong in the thirties to reach out for a wider basis of labor organization in city trades' unions, and ultimately in a National Trades' Union. On the other hand, the fifties foreshadowed a new form of expansion of labor organization—the joining together in a nation-wide organization of all local unions of one trade. The printers[9] organized nationally in 1850, the locomotive engineers and the hat-finishers in 1854; and the iron molders, and the machinists and blacksmiths in 1859; in addition there were at least a half dozen less successful attempts in other trades.