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American Liberalism and Labour Politics: Labour Leaders and Liberty Language in Late Nineteenth Century Australia and the United States

Robin Archer*

It has long been argued that the prevalence of liberal values is one of the main reasons why there is no labour party in the United States. This article seeks to reassess these arguments by comparing the United States with Australia, where the influence of liberal values was also strong. It focuses on the early 1890s, when Australian unionists established an electorally successful labour party, and when their American counterparts came closest to doing something similar. The article tests the claim that the prevalence of the idea of individual freedom was a constraint on the emergence of a labour party, by examining how labour leaders themselves responded to this idea and made use of it. It finds that, far from being a constraint, the prevalence of the idea of individual freedom was treated as an ideological opportunity by those who were seeking to establish a labour party.

 1
In this article I want to examine the claim that the prevalence of liberal values in American political culture helps to explain why there is no labour party in the United States. I will refer to this as the 'liberalism thesis', and I will focus especially on one aspect of it: namely, the claim that the prevalence of the idea of individual freedom helps to explain why no labour party was established in the late nineteenth century, when similar parties were emerging elsewhere. Despite all the scholarly criticism to which it has been subjected, the liberalism thesis retains a powerful hold on both the popular and the scholarly imagination. In part, this is simply because, as its most influential proponent acknowledges, it is based on 'the storybook truth about American history'.1 2
      Two interrelated claims provide the starting point for proponents of the liberalism thesis. The first is the claim that feudalism, and the values that it left in its wake, had little or no influence in the United States. The second, that liberal values were able to monopolise ideological space. Unlike in Europe, so the claim goes, liberal values did not have to compete with the continuing cultural legacy of declining feudalism, and hence they were able to become the ubiquitous and largely unchallenged evaluative criteria for the whole society. According to the proponents of the liberalism thesis, this prevalence of liberal values constrained (or perhaps even precluded) the emergence of an independent labour party.2 3
      The liberalism thesis has been subjected to a number of criticisms. One of the most important of these rejects the claim that liberalism has been hegemonic, and instead sees it as one among a number of ideological traditions that have constituted American political culture.3 I am sympathetic to this argument.4 Here, however, I want to set this objection to one side. Whether or not they were hegemonic, liberal values certainly have been an important component of American political culture, and there can be little doubt that, compared with Europe in the late 19th century, the United States was less marked by feudalism, and more heavily influenced by liberal values. In this article I want to consider what effect these values had on American labour leaders and their decisions. 4
      Comparison with Australia will help to facilitate this. Building on the classic work of Tocqueville,5 all the main proponents of the liberalism thesis take over the New World – Old World comparison which lies at the heart of his work, and place it in turn at the centre of their own analysis. But New World Australia shared many core liberal values with the United States, and, like the United States, it was less marked by feudalism and more strongly influenced by these values than Old World Europe. 5
      Many contemporary observers and subsequent historians have argued that liberalism was a dominant, even a hegemonic, political ideology in late nineteenth century Australia. Advocates of the liberalism thesis are fond of quoting H.G. Wells claim that 'all Americans are, from the English point of view, Liberals of one sort or another'. But numerous commentators have made the very same claim about Australia. According to Wedderburn in 1876, 'most of the objects for which Liberals in England have hitherto struggled ... are ... so much a matter of course ... that they are hardly regarded as questions of controversy.' And according to Macintyre, 'deprived of its natural enemy' liberalism spread 'like the rabbit ... run wild because of the absence of ecological checks'.6 Some also suggest that liberalism generated an ideologically-based identity: a kind of 'Australianism'. According to the Bulletin, which was arguably the most influential journal in late nineteenth century Australia,
all men who leave the tyrant-ridden lands of Europe for the freedom of speech and the right of personal liberty are Australians before they set foot on the ship that brings them hither.7
 		6
      Australia shared a great many other characteristics with the United States as well: characteristics like a high standard of living, a precocious democracy, an immigrant population, and intense racial hostility. And yet, in the early 1890s, Australian unions established an electorally successful labour party. Moreover, they did this just when American unions came closest to establishing a party of their own, during a decisive debate about a proposed 'Political Programme' which sought both to set out labour's political goals and to establish an independent party to pursue them. 7
      In each case, discussions about the establishment of a labour party were initiated against a similar backdrop of events. In the early 1890s, both countries suffered their worst depression of the nineteenth century, and a series of major industrial confrontations took place in which governments sided with employers and left the unions completely defeated. But in each case the response of the union movement was different. After some initial vacillation, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) rejected independent labour politics at its 1894 convention, and opted instead to remain aloof from all partisan politics and to focus on AFL President Samuel Gompers' strategy of 'pure-and-simple' unionism. The Australian unions, on the other hand, set aside long-standing apolitical traditions, and decided to launch labour parties, first in New South Wales (NSW) in 1891, and then in other states. 8
      Elsewhere I have argued that, because of these characteristics, Australia is well-placed to play the role of a most-similar case in comparison with the United States.8 Here, however, I want to consider just one element of such a comparison. In particular, I want to see what light comparison with Australia can shed on the effect which liberal values had on the decision not to establish a labour party in the United States. 9
      Simply by demonstrating that a labour party could be successfully founded in a country with a political culture strongly influenced by liberal values, the Australian case casts doubt on the liberalism thesis. But the Australian case does more than that. For, as I hope to show, it suggests that, to the extent that liberal values had an effect, they were not a constraint at all, but were rather an opportunity, for those seeking to found a labour party. 10
      Systematic comparison of the effect of liberal values must overcome a number of difficulties. In the first place, the liberal tradition which is said to prevail in the United States, is composed of a cluster of different values, and systematic analysis of more than a few of these would quickly become unmanageable. This problem is compounded by the fact that there is no agreement on which cluster of values constitutes the key components of the American liberal tradition. Indeed, the values that have been proposed do not all operate at the same level of abstraction or generality. Even within some of the proposed clusters, some values are more foundational and others more derivative.9 Similar problems attend discussion of liberalism in Australia.10 Both countries were influenced by a common English-language debate (in which ideas flowed more freely between countries than is often recognised), and similar trends in the interpretation of liberalism can be seen in both. In the late nineteenth century, the most important of these was the emerging influence of the 'New Liberalism', which distinguished itself from classical liberalism by allowing an important role for the state in facilitating the full development of each individual.11 But, in the absence of any agreement about which cluster of values constituted liberalism in either in the United States or Australia, it is difficult to compare the impact of liberalism as a whole in each. 11
      Here I propose to deal with these problems by focusing on just one value – a value which is widely accepted as being central to late nineteenth century liberalism in both countries – the value of individual freedom. Why is the prevalence of this idea thought to have constrained the development of independent labour politics? Two kinds of causal mechanisms are suggested by the proponents of the liberalism thesis. 12
      The first sees liberty as a moral norm against which the legitimacy of the labour movement and its demands were judged. On this account the widespread belief in the value of individual freedom served to delegitimise attempts to establish a labour party. The main reason it is supposed to have done this is because many of the political goals of the labour movement called for greater state interference in the labour market and the decisions of economic enterprises. They thus rested on collectivist aspirations that are said to be incompatible with the individualism implicit in the idea of individual freedom. These 'positive' political goals were not the only political goals of the labour movement. Some of the unions' most pressing political goals were 'negative' ones which sought to stop the state from intervening in the labour market to support employers and to repress unions.12 Nevertheless, proposals to increase state involvement in economic activity were a standard feature of proposed labour party programs. And this was so whether the program called for full socialist ownership and control of the means of production, or merely advocated the regulation of labour markets and certain economic activities. 13
      The second causal mechanism sees liberty as a source of identity against which the patriotism or nationalism of the labour movement was judged. On this account, the idea of liberty had become intimately connected to the idea of what it meant to be an American: a connection that was articulated in an ideology of 'Americanism'. Thus any labour party program that was inimical to freedom, was not just illegitimate, but threatened the sense of identity that all US citizens shared – whether workers or others – and undermined one of the key characteristics that bound them together and made their society distinctive. This second mechanism plays an important role in Hartz's argument. He repeatedly emphasises that liberalism is not just a rational moral commitment that delegitimises labour politics, but that it is also a nationalist sentiment and an irrational emotion.13 14
      In this article I want to test the claim that the prevalence of the idea of individual freedom was a constraint on the establishment of a labour party. There are various ways to do this. Here, I want to test this claim by examining how union leaders, and other opinions formers within the labour movement, responded to the prevalence of this idea, and how they themselves made use of it. Did these leaders treat the prevalence of idea of individual freedom as a constraint? I will begin by examining the use of liberty language by labour leaders in Australia, and then turn to the United States. 15
      The findings I will set out are based on extensive reading of the pro-labour press, the transcripts, minutes and resolutions of labour meetings and conventions, and the speeches, writings and personal papers of labour leaders in the late 1880s and the early to mid-1890s. I have paid particularly close attention to the arguments which were made in the year or so leading up to the 1891 decision to establish a labour party in Australia, and the 1894 decision not to do so in the United States. 16
   

Labour Leaders in Australia

 
How did labour leaders in Australia respond to the fact that the idea of individual freedom commanded widespread support? One of their dominant responses was to see themselves as freedom's defenders. It was a common place of union rhetoric that Australia was 'the land of the free', and that Australians were a 'free people', who could boast that they had turned a 'wilderness of political and social slavery' into a 'garden of liberty'.14 But the industrial conflicts of the early 1890s suggested to labour leaders that all this was now threatened. In the middle of the Maritime strike (which was the first, largest and most important of these conflicts), the Australian Workman, the Official Organ of the trade unions of NSW, issued an appeal to 'Young Australia':
The liberty which you today enjoy, the rich heritage of citizenship, of which you will shortly take possession; these things have in the past been bought for you with a great price ... by your heroic ancestors ... With their great bequest of Liberty, which has had its fullest development in Australia, they also bequeathed to you the sacred responsibility of guarding those liberties ... We believe that the time has arrived in the history of our commonwealth, when its liberties are in danger; we believe a great struggle is imminent; and, therefore, we appeal to you young men of Australia, to prove that you are not unworthy of your ancestors.
 Urging the young men of Australia to defend their liberties armed with 'the sword of individual thought', the Workman ended by appealing to the full force of liberty as a source of identity as well as a moral norm: 'Your country expects this from you; it is included in the patriotic duty which you owe to her.'15		 17
      On this account, the establishment of the Labor Party was an opportunity to restore liberty to its rightful place. Indeed according to the Worker, the party was literally born of liberty.16 For the Australian Workman, the basic purpose of both the party and the unions was 'social equality and freedom for all', and the victory of the party at its first election was seen as vindicating Australia's claim to be a free society.17 18
      That this commitment to individual freedom was deeply felt, and not merely opportunistic rhetoric, can be seen from the fact that labour leaders were also prepared to defend it against their own supporters. When speakers like the prominent employer-politician, Bruce Smith, were howled off the platform at election meetings, union leaders and the labour press immediately denounced this as a threat to basic freedoms. Speaking for the Sydney Trades and Labour Council (TLC), its Secretary, T.J. Houghton insisted that 'no greater calamity than the stifling of free speech could possibly befall the workers in this or any other land'.18 19
      Of course many of labour's opponents were also claiming to champion liberty. To deal with these claims, labour leaders regularly deployed a distinction between real freedom and sham freedom, and between real and sham liberals. This distinction was not new in the early 1890s. Unionists and their supporters had been using it for some time to express their enthusiasm for certain established liberal politicians and judges, and their growing disaffection with many others.19 But in the wake of the great strike defeats of the early 1890s it gained an added urgency as they sought to respond to employers' attempts to defend a laissez-faire interpretation of liberty that juxtaposed unionism with 'freedom of contract', and characterised workers who were not unionised as 'free labour'. 20
      Unionists and their supporters argued that the supposed freedom offered by 'freedom of contract' was a sham because it left most workers with no real choices, and simply forced them to accept whatever their employers chose to offer. Labour-supporting publications regularly drove this point home. In a front-page cartoon during the 1891 Queensland Shearers' Strike, the Bulletin depicted the 'free labour' exchange as a slave auction, argued that only with the advent of strong unions had something approaching 'freedom of contract' become possible, and depicted the pastoralists' efforts to break the shearers' organisation as an assault on this partially-won freedom.20 What was initially a defence of union-only labour agreements developed into a standard argument for state intervention on the grounds that the absence of economic security, and the one-sided balance of power between employers and employees, were constraints on the individual freedom of most ordinary workers. The state had to intervene to ensure that the weak as well as the strong had meaningful choices in the labour market, and to ensure that all had access to basic economic resources without which it was impossible to lead an independent life. 21
      These arguments were posed not only in terms of 'freedom', but also in terms of 'individualism'. Many union leaders embraced individualism. The Australian Workman declared itself 'individualistic to the backbone'.21 Here, too, a distinction was made between 'real' or 'true' individualism and the 'so-called' individualism defended by labour's opponents.22 A characteristic example of this type of argument can be found in a letter written by William Morris Hughes in 1891. According to Hughes, the kind of state intervention called for by socialism
will no more superogate the true functions of the individual than any other form of government; on the contrary, it will do much to expand and accentuate the individuality of the members of the community by assisting them to find their proper spheres, and as far as it removes from the shoulders of the unit the necessity of thinking and planning, etc., as to how he shall supply himself with the necessaries of life – a process of thought which, so far from being conducive to the retention or development of individuality, tends rather to reduce all men to one pattern – it will, in a much greater degree, have the effect of bringing out all that is best and noblest in the man.23
 Underlying this defence of 'true individualism' is a developmental conception of freedom according to which an individual is only free to the extent that he or she is able to develop his or her own capacities.24 On this account, true individualism, like true freedom, requires the state to intervene in the regulation of the economy in order to ensure that everyone has access to the basic economic resources without which this self-development would be impossible. Those who rejected this kind of state intervention were merely trying to restrict freedom to a privileged few. Labour sought freedom for all.		 22
      Australian labour leaders did occasionally articulate anti-statist themes, or suggest that either freedom or individualism were not wholly compatible with state intervention. For example, the prominent labour journalist and writer, William Lane, endorsed the view that state socialism would establish a society in which 'individualism finds unlimited scope'.25 At the same time, however, he argued that men would be freer under socialism because 'nineteen laws out of twenty could then be dropped', and he looked forward to the evolution of socialism into a purely voluntary system of anarchist co-operation. Only anarchism could provide 'that free ground whereon true Socialists and true Individualists meet'.26 Hughes later also agreed that 'the ideal State is surely one in which State acts are reduced to a minimum'.27 Overall, however, Australian labour leaders did not accept anti-statist interpretations of liberty. 23
      But they did worry that their foray into politics might be illegitimate for a different freedom-related reason. Their concern centered on antagonism to the idea of organising parliamentary parties around the representation of sectional interests, and the pursuit of 'class legislation'. Parliament, it was said, should rather legislate for the general good by representing the interests of each citizen as an individual. This concern was frequently raises by unionists themselves during the regular debates about the 'direct representation of labour in parliament' at the Intercolonial Trades Union Congresses in the second half of the 1880s. According to a delegate to the 1889 Congress, for example, 'two wrongs would not make a right. In the past they had had too much class legislation, and now were they to introduce another kind of class legislation'.28 Sometimes – as with this delegate – this allegation was raised in order to uphold the charge. Typically, however, the charge was raised for the purpose of rejecting it. Labour leaders responded to the allegation that the establishment of a labour party would lead to class legislation in one of two ways. These two responses coexisted in the rhetoric of many labour leaders. 24
      One response was to counter-charge that, since every other section had long been pursuing class legislation, they had no choice but to do likewise. 'Another great argument against direct representation is that it produces class feeling and class legislation', said a delegate at the 1886 Congress,29
We reply that we have it now without it ...Land, commerce, and capital are all cared for in our Legislative Assemblies ... direct representation ... has been forced upon the working classes from the fact that their interests are studiously ignored.
 All this lead him to conclude that 'Class questions require class knowledge to state them, and class sympathy to fight for them.' A statement which became something of a mantra.30 Similar arguments were made by many other delegates, and they remained a staple response when a labour party was in fact launched in 1891.31		 25
      The other response was to deny that labour was a 'class party', and to characterise it instead as a 'people's party'. This response drew on the longstanding liberal juxtaposition of the 'people' and the 'interests', or the 'masses' and the 'classes', and it relied on the populist strategy of forging a producers' alliance with farmers and others. Those who saw the labour party in these terms emphasised its similarity with the People's Parties that were emerging in the United States. Given its constituency, the shearers' journal, the Hummer, was particularly keen on this comparison. The US People's Party, it said:
cannot be denounced as a class movement, for behind it stands a labourer, a farmer, an average merchant and a nationalist ... the above applies exactly ... [to] the Labour Party in NSW.32
 But similar comparisons can also be found in other pro-labour papers.33		 26
      Australian labour leaders showed that it was possible to treat the widespread support for individual freedom as an ideological opportunity. They accused their opponents of failing to honour the shared values of their society, and sought to establish that a gap existed between actual social practices and the social practices that a commitment to individual freedom required. Labour leaders confidently portrayed their defence of freedom as the latest episode in the long history of labour's involvement in the patriotic struggle for freedom. 27
      Sometimes, labour leaders used the language of individual freedom to make the case for purely negative goals. These laissez-faire compatible criticisms emphasised the threat to the freedom of individual workers emanating from combinations of employers backed by state repression. At other times they appealed to individual freedom to support union-only labour contracts and positive demands for state intervention. This drew them into a battle of interpretation over what constituted freedom and individualism with opponents who rejected their claim to champion these values. In this battle, labour leaders emphasised the idea that freedom depended on the availability of meaningful choices, and that individualism depended on the ability to develop one's own capacities. These interpretations allowed them to argue that individual freedom required the kind of state intervention that many unionists demanded. 28
      Although Australian labour leaders did sometimes feel constrained by the liberal political culture of which they were a part, the constraint which they felt was not usually the one identified by the liberalism thesis. According to the liberalism thesis, it was not the existence of a labour party per se that was illegitimate, but rather its likely program. The doubts of Australian union leaders tended to run in the opposite direction. They were less concerned about the possibility that their demands for state intervention may be illiberal, and more concerned that the existence of a party which pursed purely sectional interests and 'class legislation' may be illiberal. Labour leaders overcame their qualms by straddling two different positions: sometimes characterising the party as a reluctant class party, sometimes as a populist party. 29
   

Labour Leaders in the United States

 
American labour leaders responded to the prevalence of the idea of individual freedom with very similar arguments. Many made a straightforward appeal to the need to defend and restore liberty without reference to the need for collectivism or state intervention. Eugene Debs' speech in Chicago on his release from gaol in November 1895 is a classic example of this kind of appeal. Debs was the leader of the American Railway Union, and he and fellow leaders had been gaoled for coordinating the 1894 Pullman strike: the most important of the wave of strikes that occurred in the early 1890s. His speech eulogises liberty, insists that it is a unique virtue, and emphasises its special status as a sacred founding principle of American government. Speaking to a vast crowd of over 100,000 people, Debs declared that 'the theme to-night is personal liberty; or giving it its full height, depth and breadth, American liberty'. But, said Debs, the treatment which he and others received showed that this American 'birthright ... has been wrested from the weak by the strong' and 'placed in peril'. Debs argued that to rescue 'American liberties' and to regain their 'priceless heritage' workers must reach for the ballot, and they must do this, not just for themselves, but because it is their patriotic duty as Americans.34 30
      These sentiments recurred repeatedly in Debs' response to the defeat of the Pullman strike35. Indeed, as contemporaries like J.A. Wayland recognised, Debs himself came to symbolise this kind of appeal to the defence of freedom both as a moral norm and a source of identity. Wayland's paper, the Coming Nation, ran a special 'Liberty' issue to celebrate Debs' release. Under a banner headline declaring that 'The Danger to the Liberties of the People from an Organised Plutocracy Cannot be Denied or Disguised', prominent reformers filled the paper with articles which made these kinds of Debsian appeals.36 31
      This use of liberty language was certainly not unique to Debs and his confreres. Characteristic leaders of the AFL – both those who supported independent political action, like the coal miners leader John McBride, and those who opposed it, like AFL President Samuel Gompers – made similar arguments. McBride's call to labour organisations in Ohio to meet to discuss the establishment of a labour-populist alliance, and the resolution which he successfully moved at that meeting to establish this alliance, are framed in term of the need to restore 'that liberty of speech and action for which the founders of the government fought'.37 And Gompers, in a Fourth of July editorial published in the midst of the Pullman strike, identified the struggle of the labour movement with the struggle for liberty, suggested that the values of Declaration of Independence are in danger of becoming little more than 'glittering generalities', and concluded that 'the perpetuity of the liberties of our people' depended on 'determined action' by the wage workers.38 32
      An appeal for the defence of liberty is also central to the thought of the journalist and writer Henry Demarest Lloyd. Lloyd was one of the leading advocates of independent labour politics, and his arguments are especially important because they provided the ideological common ground which briefly enabled a labour-populist party, which many saw as a model, to be established in Chicago in the wake of the Pullman strike. Lloyd's arguments had been developing for some time.39 But they are set out particularly clearly in his widely circulated speech to the AFL's 1893 convention, and in a major campaign speech in Chicago prior to the 1894 elections.40 Lloyd argued that a revolution of millionaires and corporate capitalists was already in progress, and that the defence of traditional Jeffersonian liberty was the order of the day. But he also urged the labour movement to pursue an extension of liberty: an extension which he saw as a necessary condition for its defence. Lloyd interpreted the putative Political Programme which was being debated by the AFL as a call for American values to be applied to the government of industry, through the establishment of a system of industrial democracy.41 'Political freedom is but the first instalment of economic freedom', he told the AFL, 'Shall we go on?'42 In this respect, Lloyd's message is distinct from that of Debs at this time. For Debs' overwhelming concern was with the simple defence of established American values.43 33
      Many American unionists also distinguished between 'real' or 'true' freedom and 'supposed' freedom in order to challenge the claims of opponents who deployed the language of individual liberty against them. Those making this distinction typically argued that real freedom requires economic security, and many went on to argue that this in turn would require state intervention in the economy: whether in the form of socialism, or in some more limited form. These arguments appear in a number of contributions to AFL publications.44 They are also given a prominent place in some socialist papers,45 where the influence of Laurence Gronlund is often pronounced. Gronlund argued that 'to be free the man must be possessed of economic security', and, foreshadowing contemporary debates, he specifically distinguished liberty as the absence of constraint, from this 'positive' freedom.46 He concluded that 'State-action and individual Freedom, far from being antagonistic, are really complementary of each other.'47 34
      Similar arguments were made by appealing to a distinction between 'true' and 'supposed' individualism. The true individualist is said to recognise that some form of state or collective intervention is required in order to remove the need to work long hours just to provide necessities. Only then 'everyone would be free ... free to exercise full individualism untrammelled'.48 As in Australia, these arguments are often underwritten by a developmental conception of individual freedom. 35
      However there were some voices within the union movement that articulated the kind of anti-statist arguments that the liberalism thesis would lead one to expect. And these voices were present in the AFL's 1894 debate on its Political Programme. In the debate on the plank of the Programme which called for a legal eight-hour-day, delegate Weismann suggested that workers would be more independent and self-reliant if they won the eight-hour-day without the help of legislation. And in the debate on the plank which called for sanitary inspection, he warned against giving too much power to government. The delegates, however, voted to endorse both of these planks.49 36
      Anti-statist arguments were also articulated in the debate on plank 10, which called for 'the collective ownership by the people of all means of production and distribution'. Delegate McCraith, who moved that it be replaced by a plank calling for 'the abolition of the monopoly system of land holding', argued that 'plank 10 is a menace to liberty fraught with danger' and stated that he was 'opposed to any legislation which will tend to increase governmental power'. Similar arguments were made by delegates Cohen and Greenhalgh. Delegate Pomeroy went further, and claimed that 'the cause of our present evils are largely due to the socialistic institutions that already exist'. And delegate Sullivan, while seeing some role for state intervention, cited Jefferson's aphorism that 'the government which governs the least governs best'.50 37
      Although plank 10 was defeated, these contributions need to be placed in context. Anti-statist arguments were not the main reason for this defeat. The most important opponents of the plank were Samuel Gompers and his close associates, and they did not deploy these arguments. Many of them had in fact been deeply influenced by Marx and other German socialists. Indeed only 5 of the 29 contributors to the debate appealed to anti-statist sentiments, and all of these were either one-time anarchists or single taxers.51 Moreover, immediately prior to this debate, delegates had voted overwhelmingly for planks which committed the AFL to support an extensive increase in state intervention in the economy in the form of 'municipal ownership of street cars, water works, and gas and electric plants for public distribution of light, heat and power' and 'nationalisation of telegraphs, telephones, railroads and mines'.52 38
      The charge of 'class legislation' was regularly levelled by labour leaders from all currents of reform thought to draw attention to the extent to which capitalist special interests had captured the legislative process.53 But fears that the establishment of a labour party might breach the injunction against 'class legislation' did not play as large a role in the United States as they did in Australia, although criticisms of this sort did occasionally emerge from within the labour movement. A contributor to the Official Book issued for the AFL's 1891 convention, rejected calls for labour to enter politics on the grounds that 'morally we have no right ... Class legislation and administration has no place in a republican form of government' and asked 'are we justified in imitating capital? Since when have two wrongs made one right?'54 And one delegate at the AFL's 1894 convention briefly alluded to class legislation to reject both Plank 10 and its proposed replacement.55 But in the early 1890s opponents of independent labour politics within the labour movement rarely took up this criticism. And proponents rarely felt the need to address it. This may in part be because all sides envisaged any such initiative taking the form of a labour-populist alliance. 39
      There is a great deal of evidence that American labour leaders were committed to the value of individual freedom. But in most cases this did not lead them to conclude that it would be wrong for them or their unions to engage in independent labour politics. Though there were some labour leaders who viewed individual liberty as a constraint. It was far more common for them to see the prevalence of this value as an opportunity which could help to legitimise such an initiative. Nor is there much evidence to suggest that labour leaders thought that independent labour politics would compromise their identity as Americans. On the contrary, those for whom freedom was most closely enmeshed with their identity as Americans were among the strongest supporters of independent labour politics. These leaders often located the labour movement within a narrative which charted the progressive fulfilment of America's promise. Those, like Gompers, who rejected independent labour politics, largely did so on other grounds.56 They tended to endorse the claim of their union opponents that liberty was under threat, but they rejected the political solution which was prescribed. 40
   

Conclusion

 
How did the use of liberty language by labour leaders in the United States and Australia compare? There were some differences of emphasis. In the United States, the argument about 'Plank 10' socialism played a larger role in the debate about the establishment of a labour party, and so there was somewhat more emphasis on accusations of 'statism'. In Australia there was not a ready-made populist vehicle (like the People's party in the United States) through which independent labour politics could be expressed, and so there was somewhat more emphasis on accusations of 'class legislation'. In addition, rhetoric about real freedom was more often focused on arguments about 'freedom of contract' in Australia, because, unlike in the United States, the attempt to enforce a closed shop had played an important role in the strike wave there. But overall, the use of liberty language by labour leaders and pro-labour papers in the early 1890s is strikingly similar in the two countries. 41
      In both countries labour leaders saw themselves as defending established freedoms, and the prevalence of the idea of individual liberty was usually viewed as an ideological opportunity. Sometimes their arguments were directed at the negative goal of ending the infringement of these freedoms by employers and governments. At other times they were directed at the positive goal of encouraging certain forms of state intervention. In both countries labour leaders had to defend themselves against the liberty-based counter-arguments of their opponents. In each case they sought to do this by deploying a distinction between real and supposed freedom, and they frequently used it to argue that real freedom required state intervention in the economy. And in each case they made a similar distinction between real and supposed individualism, and saw real individualism as underwritten by a developmental conception of freedom, according to which each person should be able to fully develop their capacities. 42
      Proponents of the liberalism thesis make their case by pointing to a correlation and a causal mechanism. The correlation to which they point is between the prevalence of liberal values and the absence of a labour party. But the United States was not the only country to be heavily marked by liberal values. Liberal values were also prevalent in Australia, and yet there a successful labour party was established. This casts doubt on the correlation. But what about the causal mechanism? The causal mechanism – or rather the mix of mechanisms – on which the liberalism thesis rests suggests that the prevalence of liberal values established both moral norms and a source of identity which constrained or even precluded the establishment of a labour party. Perhaps it might be argued that these constraints also applied in Australia, but that unions there managed to establish a labour party in spite of the difficulties which they imposed. A closer look at the Australian case suggests that this, too, in mistaken. 43
      In Australia, labour leaders and the pro-labour press treated the prevalence of liberal values as an opportunity rather than as a constraint. They saw themselves as defenders of these values, which, they argued, were being threatened by contemporary social developments. The defeat of the great strikes of the early 1890s highlighted these threats and lead opinion-formers in the labour movement to suggest that the only way that unions could defend established liberal values was by forming a party and contesting elections. In the wake of their own strike defeats, many labour leaders in the United States offered very similar arguments. Of course opponents of independent labour politics did not accept the need to form a party, but in most cases they did not reach this conclusion because they felt constrained by liberal values. 44
      So what was the effect of the prevalence of liberal values in these two countries? The short answer is that – at least with respect to the idea of individual freedom – liberal values tended to help rather than hinder the effort to establish a labour party. The evidence suggests that in neither country did most labour leaders view the prevalence of this idea as a constraint. On the contrary, the prevalence of the idea of individual freedom was treated as an ideological opportunity by those seeking to establish a labour party.57 45
      In this article I have sought to reassess a longstanding thesis about the effects of liberal values on the prospects for labour party politics. To test this thesis I have compared the use of liberty language by labour leaders at a critical conjuncture in the late nineteenth century, in two carefully matched cases. The similar influence of the idea of individual freedom in each, and the similar use which labour leaders made of it, suggests that the conventional thesis is not well founded, and that the prevalence of this idea is unlikely to help explain the different outcomes in the United States and Australia.58 46
      One of the strangest versions of the liberalism thesis is the claim that labour and socialist political movements have been weak in the United States because the ideological content of its dominant liberal values was so similar to socialism. In effect, according to this argument, 'Americanism' became a 'substitute socialism'.59 What this fails to see is that, because of the gap between the promise of these values and actual social practices, the prevalence of liberal values gave labour leaders in the United States some important advantages. Unlike their counterparts in countries where feudal values remained influential, they did not have to defend the desirability of a social order built around the idea of freedom for all. Their goals could be presented, not as requiring a revolution or a sharp break with existing values and traditions, but rather as the completion of the American project and the fulfilment of its promise. 47


Robin Archer is the director of the postgraduate program in political sociology at the London School of Economics. He was previously the fellow in politics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. His new book Why is there No Labor Party in the United States? will be published by Princeton University Press in late 2007.
<r.archer@lse.ac.uk>


Endnotes

* An early version of this argument was presented on 13 September 2001 to the seminar on Twentieth Century American Politics and Society at Columbia University in New York, where I was on sabbatical leave from Corpus Christi College, Oxford. I would like to thank Ira Katznelson, Alan Brinkley, Vicky Hattam, Kim Philips-Fein and all the participants in the seminar, not only for their comments, but also for coming and participating at such a very unusual time. My thanks also to Daniel Rodgers, Michael Freeden, Gary Gerstle, Sanjay Seth, Elisabeth Koegler, and my father, Richard Douglas Archer, for some very helpful comments and discussions. Finally I would like to thank the two anonymous referees who reviewed this article for Labour History.

1. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1955, p. 3.

2. Among the most important proponents of this thesis have been: Werner Sombart, Why is there no Socialism in the United States?, Macmillan, London, 1976 [1906]; Louis Hartz, Liberal Tradition, and The Founding of New Societies, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1964; Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective, Heinemann, London, 1963; Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, W.W. Norton, New York, 1996; J. David Greenstone, 'Political Culture and American Political Development: Liberty, Union, and the Liberal Bipolarity', Studies in American Political Development, vol. 1, 1986, and J. David Greenstone, The Lincoln Persuasion: Remaking American Liberalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993. For other recent, if modified, examples see David F. Ericson and Louisa Bertch Green (eds), The Liberal Tradition in American Politics, Routledge, New York, 1999, and Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, W.W. Norton, New York, 2000. In my experience, when students are first introduced to the debate about why there is no labour party in the United States, they frequently tend to gravitate towards a version of this thesis.

3. For example, see Rogers M. Smith, 'Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America', American Political Science Review, vol. 87, 1993, though note that he still accepts that liberal values were unusually potent and had a constraining effect on labour politics in 'Liberalism and Racism' in Ericson and Green (eds), Liberal Tradition, p. 20.

4. Robin Archer, Why is there No Labor Party in the United States?, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007, and Robin Archer, 'Secularism and Sectarianism in India and the West: What are the Real Lessons of American History?', Economy and Society, vol. 30, no. 3, 2001.

5. Alexis Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vintage Books, New York, 1990.

6. On Wells see Lipset, American Exceptionalism, p. 32. For Wedderburn see Noel Ebbels, The Australian Labor Movement 1850–1907: Historical Documents, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1983, p. 44. For Stuart Macintyre see his A Colonial Liberalism, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 12–13. For similar comments see: Charles Wentworth Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain, Macmillan, London, 1890, p. 490; Francis Adams, The Australians: A Social Sketch, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1893, pp. 48–9; W. Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1969 [1902], p. 60; Geoffrey Serle, The Rush to be Rich: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1883–1889, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1971, pp. 22–4; Peter Loveday et al, The Emergence of the Australian Party System, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1977, pp. 12, 477–81; Peter Loveday and A.W. Martin, Parliament Factions and Parties, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1966, pp. 56–7; and June Philipp, '1890: The Turning Point in Labour History?' in Margot Beever and F.B. Smith (eds), Historical Studies: Selected Articles, Second Series, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1967, p. 131.

7. Richard White, Inventing Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981, pp. 52, 81, and Bulletin, 2 July 1887, though note that this editorial goes on to suggest that race was also a critical source of identity.

8. Archer, Why is there No Labor Party?

9. Sombart, Why is there No Socialism, pp. 20, 39–40, 55–58, 109–110, identifies egalitarianism, democratic radicalism, and a capitalist spirit as important. Though note that Sombart does not refer to a liberal tradition, but rather to an over arching 'American spirit' or 'Anglo-Saxon' spirit. Lipset, American Exceptionalism, pp. 19, 31, identifies liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. See also Lipset and Marks, It Didn't Happen Here, p. 30, where he substitutes anti-statism for liberty. Greenstone, Lincoln Persuasion, pp. 35, 36, 48, identifies individual freedom, private property, and government by popular consent. But note that Greenstone's categories also vary: sometimes individual freedom, sometimes individual rights; sometimes private property, sometimes private enterprise, and so on. Smith, 'Beyond Tocqueville', p. 563, identifies limited government, individual rights, and a market economy, and treats democracy as part of separate republican tradition. Ira Katznelson, 'Working-Class Formation and American Exceptionalism, Yet Again' in Rick Halpern and Jonathon Morris (eds), American Excepionalism?, Macmillan, London, 1997, p. 43, identifies equal respect, individualism, rights, consent, toleration, the distinction between public and private, democracy and markets. Gary Gerstle, 'The Protean Character of American Liberalism', American Historical Review, vol. 99, no. 4, October 1994, p. 1046, identifies emancipation, rationality and progress. And Hartz, Liberal Tradition, in the single most influential statement of the liberalism thesis, does not clearly specify the nature of liberal values at all, relying instead on suggestive associations and allegorical categories like Lockeanism and Algerism. Though later, in Founding of New Societies, pp. 71, 102, 109, he identifies egalitarianism, individualism, democracy and capitalism.

10. See, for example: H.V. Evatt, Liberalism in Australia, Law Book Co, Sydney, 1918; Tim Rowse, Australian Liberalism and National Character, Kibble Books, Melbourne, 1978; Macintyre, Colonial Liberalism; Gregory Melleuish, Cultural Liberalism in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995; Marian Sawer, 'The Ethical State: Social Liberalism and the Critique of Contract', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 31, no. 114, April 2000.

11. Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978.

12. On the difference between labour's positive and negative political goals see Robin Archer, 'Unions, Courts and Parties: Judicial Repression and Labor Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century America', Politics and Society, vol. 26, no. 3, September 1998, pp. 394–9.

13. Hartz, Liberal Tradition, pp. 6, 29, 30, 205–8, 231.

14. Australian Workman, 20 June 1891, p. 2, Intercolonial Trades and Labor Union Congress (hereafter ICTUC), Official Report of the Seventh Intercolonial Trades and Labor Union Congress of Australasia Held at Ballarat on the 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 27th 28th and 29th April, 1891, J. Anderson and Co, Ballarat, p. 90, and ICTUC, Official Report of the Third Intercolonial Trades Union Congress Held in Sydney on the 4th 5th 6th and 7th of October, 1885, Batson & Co, Sydney, p. 15.

15. Australian Workman, 7 September 1890, p. 6. In a similar fashion, the President of the Australian Intercolonial Trades Union Congress (ICTUC, Official Report, 1891, p. 15) declared in his Inaugural Address to its first meeting following the Maritime strike, that 'we look to our young men to defend our liberty.'

16. See drawing 1 in the cartoon in the Worker, 23 December 1893, which shows a young woman, 'Liberty', handing the new born baby of 'Politics' to a man representing Labour.

17. Australian Workman, 20 June 1891. See p. 1 'Why You Should Join a Union' and p. 2 'The Labour Victory'.

18. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 March 1891. For a similar response see Australian Workman, 7 March 1891. See also the Bulletin, 23 May 1891: 'Allow your avowed enemies a fair hearing on the platform ... free speech means a free country', and again on 30 May 1891.

19. For a good example of this see ICTUC, The Second Intercolonial Trades Union Congress: An Official Report of the Debates ... During the 22nd 23rd 24th and 25th April, 1884, Walker, May and Co, Melbourne, p. 130. See also D.J. Murphy and R.B. Joyce (eds), Queensland Political Portraits 1859–1952, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1978, p. 172, and the Bulletin 28 April, 9 May and 11 July 1891 on sham liberals. For an example of enthusiasm see reports on the reception for the New Zealand-based statesman, George Grey, in the Australian Workman, 11 April, 6 June 1891, and the Bulletin, 28 February 1891.

20. Bulletin, 11 April 1891, pp. 1, 7. See also William Lane in the Brisbane Worker, 1 October 1890 in Ebbels, Australian Labor Movement, p. 137, Australian Workman, 24 January 1891, and the Bulletin, 19 September 1891. The sources of the prevalence of the idea of individual freedom are beyond the scope of this article. But it is worth noting that, at times, drawing an explicit comparison with the American 'Deep South', Australian workers partly defined their freedom by invoking the dangers of allowing the emergence of a plantation economy and quasi-slave labour in the Australian 'Far North'.

21. Australian Workman, 24 December 1892, p. 4.

22. See, for example, Australian Workman, 3 January 1891 and Worker, 31 March 1892.

23. L.F. Fitzhardinge, William Morris Hughes. Vol I: That Fiery Particle 1862–1914, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1964, p. 32. Hughes, who later became Prime Minister, was at the time just beginning his involvement in labour politics. For his mature articulation of the same point see William Morris Hughes, The Case for Labor, The Worker Trustees, Sydney, 1910, pp. 59–65. Socialists often argued that they were the only true individualists. For similar arguments see the article on 'Socialism' by the journalist and new Labor MP, George Black, in Australian Workman, 23 January 1892, and the undated election pamphlet by the shearers' union leader W.G. Spence entitled 'Private Enterprise: Is it possible under Present Conditions' which was published by the Worker (held in the Mitchell Library, Sydney at 335.0901 I): 'True 'individualism' means the development of the highest character in each. ... Social conditions as they exist today are against man's best development.'

24. For other examples see Labour Defence Committee, Official Report and Balance Sheet of the New South Wales Labour Defence Committee ... August to November 1890, Higgs and Townsend, Sydney, p. 19, and the Bulletin, 21 March and 19 September 1891. For more on the developmental conception of freedom see C.B. Macpherson, Democratic Theory, Clarendon, Oxford, 1973, and Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985.

25. See the Brisbane Worker, 1 March 1890 cited in Michael Wilding, 'Introduction' in William Lane, The Workingman's Paradise, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1980, p. 37.

26. William Lane, The Workingman's Paradise, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1980 [1892], pp. 113, 119. See also the similar argument in Lane's article 'Mates' in the Hummer, 16 January 1892. Lane wrote both this article and the novel from which the above quotes are taken under the pseudonym John Miller.

27. Hughes, Case for Labor, p. 59. See also Fitzhardinge, Hughes, pp. 31–32. There is also an ambivalence in Hughes attitude to individual liberty. On the one hand, as we have seen, he asserts that it will be maximised by the increased opportunity for self-development. On the other he sometimes asserts that it will be subordinated to the welfare (or the freedom) of the community. Compare the citations above with Hughes, Case for Labor, pp. 140–44.

28. ICTUC, Official Report of the Sixth Intercolonial Trades and Labor Union Congress Held in Hobart on the 5th 6th 7th and 8th February, 1889, 'Tasmanian News' Steam Printing Office, Hobart, p. 34. See also the remarks of Delegate Elmslie on p. 36.

29. ICTUC, Official Report of the Fourth Intercolonial Trades Union Congress Held in Adelaide on the 2nd 3rd 6th and 7th of September, 1886, Burden and Bonython, Adelaide, pp. 32–33.

30. See ICTUC, Official Reports, 1885, p. 11, 1886, p. 33, and 1891, p. 90.

31. See especially the contributions by delegates Kirkpatrick, Barrett, Trenwith, Spur and Gibson (ICTUC, Official Report, 1886, pp. 29–42), though note that Gibson also hopes that labour MPs 'will only legislate for the general good, independent of class interests' (p. 35). For responses in 1891 see the labour party's election flyer in Ebbels, Australian Labor Movement, p. 213, the response to the Sydney Morning Herald and others in the Bulletin, 11 July 1891, p. 6, Bulletin, 19 September 1891, p. 7, and ICTUC, Official Report, 1891, p. 90.

32. Hummer, 19 October 1891, p. 3. See also Hummer, 7 November 1891, p. 2 and the election manifesto which is a supplement to the issue of 18 June 1892.

33. Australian Workman, 8 August 1891, p. 4, and Bulletin, 18 July 1891, p. 7. See also the argument that 'Labour is "the people"' in the Bulletin, 11 July 1891, p. 7. When the United Labour Party was founded in Victoria, many wanted to call it the People's Party (Peter Love, Labour and the Money Power: Australian Labour Populism 1890–1950, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1984, p. 10).

34. Eugene V. Debs, 'Liberty: A Speech by Eugene V. Debs', E.V. Debs and Co., Terre Haute, 1895, pp. 3, 6–7, 10–11. For a description of the atmosphere at this meeting see Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1982, pp. 153–55.

35. See, for example, Railway Times, 1 March 1895, Evening Press and Chicago Mail, 14 October 1895, and Coming Nation, 23 November 1895.

36. See Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, p. 155. Also see Coming Nation, 23 November 1895. The next issue on 30 November continued to focus on these themes. See especially Rev. Carwardine's claim that America is a land of 'Liberty in Spots'. The Coming Nation was the forerunner of the Appeal to Reason which, during its existence between 1895 and 1922, became the most widely circulated leftwing paper ever in the United States (Mari Jo Buhle et al (eds), Encyclopedia of the American Left, second edition, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998).

37. United Mine Workers' Journal, 23 August 1894. See also United Mine Workers' Journal, 9 August 1894, 'Declaration, Notice and Invitation'. These declarations drew their urgency from the recent action of governments and employers against coal miners as well as railway workers. For an earlier statement of a liberty-based argument for political action see United Mine Workers' Journal, 1 June 1893.

38. American Federationist, July 1894, 98. See also Gompers opening address to the 1896 American Federation of Labor (AFL) convention (AFL, Report of Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor held at Cincinnati, Ohio, December 14 to 21, 1896, pp. 11–12, in Proceedings of the American Federation of Labor 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, Pantagraph Printing and Stationary Company, Bloomington, Illinois, 1905), and his angry letter to Judge Gosscup, one of the judges who issued the injunction which led to Debs being gaoled. 'Year by year', he wrote to Gosscup, 'men's liberties are trampled underfoot at the bidding of corporations and trusts, rights are invaded and law perverted ... trade unions stand for right, for justice and for liberty' (Stuart B. Kaufman and Peter J. Albert (eds), The Samuel Gompers Papers. Volume 3: Unrest and Depression, 1891–94, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1989, p. 560). Gompers sometimes put a Marxian gloss on this point to justify his opposition to the establishment of a labour party, arguing that freedom, including political freedom, can only become meaningful once workers have gained economic independence. See Samuel Gompers (1892), 'Organised Labor in the Campaign', North American Review, vol. 155, no. 1, July 1892, pp. 94–95.

39. They can be seen, for example, in his influential expose, Wealth Against Commonwealth (Chester McArthur Destler, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1963, pp. 290–314).

40. Henry D. Lloyd, The Safety of the Future Lies in Organised Labor, American Federation of Labor, Washington, 1893, and Henry D. Lloyd, 'The Revolution is Here' reproduced in Chester McArthur Destler, American Radicalism 1865–1901, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1946, pp. 212–221.

41. This, argued Lloyd (Destler, American Radicalism, p. 221), would add 'another great emancipation ... to the glorious record of liberties achieved by mankind'.

42. Lloyd, Safety of the Future, p. 8.

43. In his speech in Chicago, Debs does once briefly mentions the possibility that the ballot may lead to something more: the cooperative commonwealth (Debs, 'Liberty', p. 11), and, like most labour leaders, he called for government ownership and regulation of the railroads in the wake of the Pullman strike (Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1942, p. 352. But, as Salvatore (Eugene V. Debs, pp. 147–55) has shown, although Debs later embraced socialist positions, he remained resistant to them at this time, and his general ideological posture was closer to a kind of Jeffersonianism.

44. Among the articles published in the American Federationist during the year long debate over the Political Program, these arguments find their fullest expression in a contribution by Boyle who combines them with a Debsian invocation to 'rebuild the temple of liberty'. See American Federationist, December 1894, pp. 215. See also Weissman in AFL, Official Book of the American Federation of Labor, AFL, New York, 1891, pp 29–37, Gross in American Federationist, October 1894, pp. 166–7, and Gross, 'What is Liberty?' in United Mine Workers' Journal, 21 December 1893.

45. See, for example, St Louis Labor, 7 October 1893, Labor News, 10 March 1894, Labor News, 24 March 1894.

46. See Laurence Gronlund, The Cooperative Commonwealth, Lee and Shepard, Boston, 1884, pp. 95–7, and the report of his lecture in St Louis Labor, 7 October 1893.

47. Gronlund, Cooperative Commonwealth, pp. 76–7.

48. Railway Times, 1 February 1895. This 'Friendly Symposium' takes the form of a debate between a 'Mr Populism', who favours a modified form of socialism, and his critic. For related arguments see 'Individuality' in Labor News, 24 March 1894, Eugene B. Debs, 'Individualism vs Socialism' in Coming Nation, 23 January 1897, and Henry D. Lloyd, 'Why the Workmen Should Organise' in AFL, Official Book, 1891, p. 19. See also Flynn in American Federationist, July 1894, p. 103, Myer in American Federationist, December 1894, pp. 126–7, and Foster for whom the purpose of class organisation is progress towards 'the full consummate flower of physical, intellectual and moral freedom' in AFL, Official Book, 1891, pp. 21–5.

49. AFL, An Interesting Discussion on a Political Programme at the [1894] Denver Convention of the American Federation of Labor, American Federation of Labor, 1895, pp. 17, 25. The eight-hour-day plank passed by a vote of 42–21. There is no record of the vote on the inspection plank. See AFL, Report of Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor held at Denver, Colorado, December 10 to 18, 1894, p. 37 in Proceedings of the American Federation of Labor 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, Pantagraph Printing and Stationary Company, Bloomington, Illinois, 1905.

50. For the remarks of these delegates see AFL, An Interesting Discussion, pp. 27–8, 29, 29–30, 30–31, 46–48.

51. Cohen was a 'philosophical anarchist' and it seems likely that McCraith and Greenhalgh were too. Their position was elaborated in a series of three articles some months after the convention in the American Federationist, August, 1895, p. 103, and September, 1895, pp. 116–8, 120–1. Single taxers took their lead from the arguments of Henry George. Sullivan was a single taxer (Kaufman and Albert, Gompers Papers, Vol 3, p. 721) and Pomerory had opportunistically aligned himself with the single taxers earlier in the year (Eugene Staley, History of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1930, pp. 123–5, and Destler, American Radicalism, p. 201). Weismann had also been an anarchist (Kaufman and Albert, Gompers Papers, Vol 3, p. 726). His arguments are echoed in an AFL-circulated pamphlet by another former anarchist (Dyer Lum, Philosophy of Trade Unions, American Federation of Labor, New York, 1892).

52. AFL, Proceedings, 1894, p. 37.

53. For examples from various currents of labour reform thought (including socialists, single taxers, Fabians, Debsians and populists) see Gros in American Federationist, December 1894 and August 1895, Miller in American Federationist, August 1895, Lloyd in Destler, Lloyd, pp. 232–3, Louise in Railway Times, 1 February 1895, and Watson in R. Jeffrey Lustig, Corporate Liberalism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982, p. 70.

54. Spring in AFL, Official Book, 1891, p. 8. See also Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, Ticknor and Company, Boston, 1888, who also rejects labour parties as too narrow because they are class based organisations.

55. AFL, An Interesting Discussion, p. 28.

56. For the arguments of Gompers and other Marxian influenced opponents of independent labour politics see Archer, 'Unions, Courts and Parties', pp. 407–12, and ch. 8 of Archer, Why is there No Labor Party?.

57. Note that this does not imply that the prevalence of liberal values was a significant cause of the success or failure of labour party politics. It implies only that, to the extent that they had an effect, these values were an opportunity rather than a constraint.

58. Of course other ideas may still have played an important role. For a comparative analysis of the most important contenders see Archer, Why is there No Labor Party?. On racial ideas see ch. 2. On egalitarian ideas see ch. 6. For the religious aspects of American political culture see ch. 7. And for the influence of socialism and other currents of labour reform thought see ch. 8.

59. Michael Harrington, Socialism, Saturday Review Press, New York, 1972, p. 111, Lipset, American Exceptionalism, pp. 87–8 and Lipset and Marks, It Didn't Happen Here, pp. 25, 30.

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