Editor's Introduction

By the mid-1850s, the prospects of a Californian striking it rich at the gold diggings were slim. Most of the prime mining sites were controlled by corporations. Nevertheless, thousands of people continued to migrate to California with great expectations of a better life in the Golden State.

While various studies have documented significant upward social and economic mobility after the gold rush, especially in San Francisco, California was still subject to the ups and downs of the national economy. Although some found riches on the Far West frontier, others experienced failure and disappointment. The opening of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 did not bring the prosperity and stability the railroad promoters had promised; indeed, its completion coincided with the onset of the "Terrible Seventies." An increased labor supply, the competition of cheap goods from the national market, and a national depression beginning in 1873 resulted in a sharp decline in wages and high levels of unemployment for most of the 1870s. All this came at a time when the Chinese population of San Francisco was growing rapidly, and inevitably the already strong anti-Chinese sentiment of many workingmen was fueled even further.

At the same time, farmers found that the railroad charged them exorbitant shipping fees, even as the prices of almost all their crops plummeted. Prospective California farmers discovered that much of the cultivatable land was still the subject of litigation dating back to the Mexican land disputes of the 1850s and that vast amounts of land had been engrossed by land speculators with the apparent connivance of the state government. In his pamphlet Our Land and Land Policy (1871), Henry George lamented: "In all of the new States of the Union land monopolization has gone on at

an alarming rate, but in none of them so fast as California, and in none of them perhaps, are its evil effects so manifest."

By the early 1870s, growing economic and social discontent was finding expression in various third-party political movements. Many Californians believed that the problems were as much political as economic and that the woes of working people were attributable to the machinations and corruption of politics at all levels of government. In 1877, this political dissent came to a head in the wake of a massive railroad strike in the East. Under the leadership of Denis Kearney, the Workingmen's Party of California (WPC) was founded. Within months, it had become a major force, with branches in most California counties, and it elected many representatives. Most spectacularly, in 1878 it elected a third of the delegates to a state constitutional convention—only the collaboration of the Democrats and the Republicans prevented these delegates from controlling the convention.

These developments attracted the interest of many of the world's most illustrious political observers. Englishman Lord Bryce visited California in the 1870s and was so fascinated by the WPC that in his classic work American Commonwealth he devoted a chapter to "Kearneyism in California." In 1880, Karl Marx appealed to his American correspondent Friedreich Sorge for "something good (meaty) on economic conditions in California," and added, "California is very important to me because nowhere else has the upheaval shamelessly caused by capitalist concentration taken place with such speed."

Most studies of the WPC have focused on San Francisco and mainly on the role that anti-Chinese sentiment played in the WPC's founding. The following article by Daniel Cornford examines the WPC in Humboldt County, situated in northwest California, two hundred miles north of San Francisco. Although strong anti-Chinese sentiment existed in Humboldt County, other factors were more important in the rise of the WPC in that area.

Tracing the emergence of the WPC back to the late 1860s, this essay describes how a variety of local, state, and even national issues fueled dissenting movements in the county. Crucial to understanding why a dissenting tradition evolved in Humboldt County is the fact that the political culture of most residents was shaped by a cluster of values often referred to as a "democratic-republican" tradition. In essence, Humboldt County inhabitants believed that the American Revolution, and further struggles

during the Jacksonian era, had established a republic in which "equal rights" for all should prevail. It is difficult to define this belief precisely, but to Humboldt County residents, developments after the Civil War—in particular, large concentrations of economic power, the perception that "class legislation" was being passed, and the belief that politics at all levels of government was riddled with corruption—violated their notion of what the republic was supposed to be. Viewing themselves as guardians of their cherished republic, a diverse group of farmers and workers united to form a workingmen's party.

Even when the WPC expired in 1880, these watchdogs of the democratic-republican tradition did not let down their guard. Their continued desire to purify the tainted republic was reflected in strong support for the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and the Populist party during the 1890s.

Viewed from San Francisco, as it usually is, the California Workingmen's party appears as a reactive formation organized in response to the depression of the 1870s and the flood of Chinese immigrants released into the labor market by the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.^[1] Yet Workingmen's parties were founded in forty of California's fifty-two counties, and within less than a decade labor tickets or parties would appear in one hundred and eighty-nine towns and cities in thirty-four states.^[2] Relatively little attention has been paid to dissenting third-party movements in the small towns and rural areas of Gilded Age America, although until 1900 two-thirds of the population lived in such places.^[3] Historians of nineteenth-century radicalism have concentrated instead on events in major metropolitan areas. Furthermore, to the extent that the third-party insurgencies of the late 1870s and 1880s have been examined, their ideological and institutional antecedents have often been neglected.

In far northern California's Humboldt County, a radical democratic-republican tradition sustained a succession of dissenting third-party political and social movements, including the California Workingmen's party, the Greenback Labor party, the International Workingmen's Association, the Knights of Labor, and the Populists. Although none lasted more than a few years, the persistent reappearance of such movements indicates the vitality of the critical perspective which spawned them. In newspaper editorials, letters to the local press, diaries, sermons, correspondence to regional and national labor leaders, and in party platforms, Humboldt dissidents, from a wide variety of callings, clearly articulated an ideology shaped by

the more radical elements of the values and rhetoric of the American Revolution and Jacksonian democracy.

The radical democratic-republican ideology drew on a cluster of ideas that embraced the notion of "equal rights" and the labor theory of value.^[4] This progressive antebellum ideological legacy was sustained and reinforced by the acrimonious Civil War debates in which Union supporters characterized the conflict as one between the noble free laborer of the North and an autocratic slavocracy in the South. Embodied in the free-labor ideology was a deep faith that under a government founded and maintained on true democratic-republican principles the workingman could rapidly ascend the social ladder. A Humboldt Times editorial in 1864 argued that "if there is one thing in our government which more than commends it to the people it is the fact that the gate of honor is open to the poor and rich alike."^[5] Moreover, any government that deprived a worker of the full product of his labor was guilty of "class legislation" and of fostering the interests of "monopolies" at the expense of the honest toiler. A government that adhered to true republican principles would result in a society in which, according to Humboldt pioneer James Beith, "none are very rich and none very poor."^[6] While even the most radical upholders of the democratic-republican tradition did not believe in the feasibility or desirability of absolute social equality, nevertheless, as Beith put it, the principal aim of government should be "how to promote best the true social equality."^[7]

As they scrutinized Gilded Age America, Humboldt County radicals were greatly alarmed by what they saw. They were convinced that economic power was becoming increasingly and dangerously concentrated and that the once pristine American political system was suffering from a serious affliction evidenced by a series of charges and revelations of corruption in local, state, and national government. Moreover, to the extent that the pioneers of Humboldt and other California counties expected to find a land of boundless opportunity and rough social equality in the Golden State, they were to be sorely disappointed. Within a decade of the Gold Rush, disparities of wealth were as marked as in many of the eastern communities from which the pioneers had come.^[8]

Unlike the Eastern urban artisans who have been the focus of most of the important studies of nineteenth-century working-class radicalism, Humboldt's dissenters were not being "deskilled" or seriously affected by the advent of industrialization.^[9] Twenty-five years after the Gold Rush had lured the first white settlers to Humboldt County, its economy was based primarily on lumber and agriculture. Humboldt County was on the verge of establishing itself as the heartland of the Redwood Empire's

lumber industry. By 1876 there were twenty mills in the county and overall the county's lumber industry employed at least a thousand workers. At this time the lumber industry was centered primarily in Eureka and the vicinity of Arcata. Eureka was the county's "metropolis"; the city and its environs contained approximately a third of the county's 15,000 inhabitants in 1880. Throughout the county, and especially in the fertile Eel River Valley, farming also flourished.^[10] The dissenters in Humboldt County constituted a broad coalition of lumber workers, farmers, artisans, and professionals.

Until the end of the Civil War, politics in Humboldt County was dominated by national issues. The county conventions and platforms of the major political parties hardly addressed local issues, and there is little evidence of divisiveness over them. The protracted sectional crisis probably helped subsume tensions, but there were other reasons for the consensus in local politics. Humboldt's pioneers were united by a desire to promote their community to outsiders. Highly conscious of their geographical isolation, they realized the need to attract outside capital and a larger population if the county was to become a viable economic entity. Accordingly, there was a widespread recognition of the need to use county revenues to lay the foundation of a basic economic infrastructure. At the same time, the possibility of discord over appropriations and expenditures was limited by their small scale. In addition, the transience of many early pioneers lessened the chances of polarization over local issues.

In the late 1860s, with the sectional conflict no longer the preeminent issue and with the county population growing and becoming more settled, important questions arose concerning county revenues that brought the consensus to an abrupt end. An increasing number of citizens began to feel that the county was going too deeply into debt to fund internal improvements and that the burden of taxation was falling disproportionately on small farmers and workers. A proposal in 1867 to build a hundred-mile road to link Humboldt County with the state road system raised a storm of protest amid charges of corruption and incompetence in the county government.^[11] The bond issue to finance the project was defeated by a vote of 1,038 to 134 in the 1868 election.^[12] In 1870, a bitter debate erupted over the extent of the county's indebtedness for expenditures financed by county warrants which no longer sold at anything like their par value. A year later, a plan to build a railroad from Eureka to the Eel River Valley encountered fierce opposition; voters repudiated a proposed $100,000 bond issue 899 to 143.^[13]

The Republican party retained its ascendancy over the Democrats in Humboldt County for the immediate postbellum years, but its image was tainted and its support eroded by charges of corruption. A series of letters in the Northern Independent alleged that Republican candidate for the state assembly J. De Haven paid almost no local taxes and that the taxes paid by everyone on the 1869 Republican ticket amounted to "a mere pittance."^[14] At the same time, H. L. Knight, the future secretary of the California Workingmen's party, charged that the vote at the Republican party convention had been blatantly manipulated to secure the renomination of Humboldt County sheriff W. S. Barnum and that Barnum was guilty of various forms of tax evasion.^[15] Barnum's rebuttal was not convincing, and the Humboldt Times , which had supported the Republican party since the Civil War, endorsed several "independent" candidates while refraining from disputing the charges. At the election, the Republican party's traditional large majority was severely pruned, and Sheriff Barnum was not reelected.

Increasingly, the issues of taxation, public indebtedness, corruption, and political cliques became linked in the minds of many Humboldt County residents, a perception that was reinforced by their view of developments in state and national politics. To a growing number of people it seemed that, whether the symptom was a corrupt local sheriff or a national Crédit Mobilier scandal, a serious malaise had begun to afflict the American body politic. Numerous instances of actual or alleged corruption at all levels of government in the late 1860s and early 1870s shook people's faith in their political institutions. In Humboldt County, the Republican party had emerged from the Civil War with a large reservoir of moral and political credit that enabled it to buck the trend toward the Democratic party that occurred throughout most of California. But by the early 1870s, many Humboldters felt that the Republicans had exhausted their credit.

In 1871, Louis Tower, who had been an ardent supporter of the Republican party in the 1860s, eloquently expressed the growing sense of foreboding and disenchantment of many Humboldters in a series of articles entitled the "Next Irrepressible Conflict." Tower stated that it was his duty to "call the attention of my fellow laborers—the producers of wealth—to the consideration of our interests as treated in the policies and practices of our government." He asserted that "the tendency of our legislatures both national and state . . . is drifting in favor of capital" and mentioned specifically the growing wealth and power of corporations and railroads; the pervasiveness of corruption in politics; and the "absorption" of the pub-

lic domain "into the hands of capitalists through Congressional action," which threatened the free laborer with "the fate that has befallen the workers of the older more densely populated countries." Tower spoke of the Republican party in its early days as representing "the rise, progress and culmination of the principle that labor should be free and that the soil, the great bank of labor exchange, should be free also." But, he argued, the conflict between labor and capital was not inevitable, and the "producers of wealth" should form a new party that would elect men of integrity.^[16]

The Humboldt Times sensed the growing disaffection and entreated the "laboring classes" to retain their loyalty to the Republican party. The newspaper reminded readers that the Democratic party had supported slavery, "the very bane of free labor," had opposed the income tax, and had failed to provide public education in many states; the Republican party, in contrast, had abolished slavery, had thrown open the public lands to settlement, and had established a public educational system in many states.^[17] Despite such pleas, disillusionment with the Republicans in Humboldt County mounted. In 1873, when Henry McGowan announced his candidacy for the state assembly as an independent, he expressed many of the same sentiments as Tower. He praised the Republicans for seeing the nation through the ordeal of the Civil War, but, he said, the party "has unfortunately allowed itself to be led by corrupt and designing men into a state of political depravity."^[18]

On August 2, 1873, at a mass meeting at Ryan's Hall in Eureka, a Tax-Payer party was formed. The party's formation paralleled but apparently had no direct links with a Tax-Payer Independent party that was beginning to pick up momentum in California under Newton Booth.^[19] Booth, the Republican governor of California, had been elected in 1871 with the strong support of the Grange, running on a platform that stressed opposition to railroad subsidies. In Humboldt County, many of the leading figures in the new party were former Republicans. The most notable among them was W. J. Sweasey, who had been chairman of the county's Republican party since the Civil War. Sweasey was elected president of the new party, and a full slate of candidates was chosen for upcoming elections. First among a long list of party resolutions was an expression of strong opposition to "giving lands or money or loaning the National credit to corporations or other persons, for the purposes of creating dangerous monopolies to oppress the people." Another resolution denounced corruption "whether by means of 'Credit Mobilier Frauds' in the East" or "Contract and Finance Companies in California." The Tax-Payer party declared its support for

"equality of taxation, so that the burden of maintaining the government shall be borne by the rich in proportion to their wealth." Finally, it endorsed a measure to regulate "the carrying business of the country" by controlling railroad freight rates.^[20]

The ensuing campaign was one of the most heated in the county's history. The Tax-Payer party faced difficulties from the outset. The Republican platform, although not quite as populist in tone, was almost indistinguishable from the Tax-Payer program in its planks on taxation, corruption, and monopoly. Several Republican candidates openly acknowledged that corruption and monopoly were serious problems. The Tax-Payer party also had to face the opposition of the county press and repeated allegations that party members were a group of "sore heads and broken down political hacks" who had been shunned by the Republican party, notwithstanding the fact that the Tax-Payer party held its convention before the Republicans.^[21]

The Republicans fretted, in particular, about the allegiance of Humboldt's farmers. In 1872 and 1873, there were growing manifestations of their discontent. Farmers in various locales throughout the county began forming Farmers' Protective Unions in 1872 "for the purposes of reflecting the best interests of the farming community of the county and deriving some plan of action for mutual benefit."^[22] In 1873, Humboldt County farmers affiliated with the California Grange.^[23] While the Humboldt Grange did not make political endorsements, there can be no doubt that the organization reflected deep-seated discontents. Farmers complained repeatedly to the county press about low prices, and the Humboldt Times reported that for "several years" local farmers "have received but indifferent rewards for their labor" and that "in some instances it has taken nearly all . . . to pay commission and expenses of transportation."^[24]

The overall performance of the Tax-Payer party was impressive. It succeeded in electing its candidate to the state assembly and lost most of the county contests by narrow margins. The extent of the county farmers' disaffection showed in the strong support the Tax-Payer party received in most rural precincts, equivalent to its showings in Eureka and Arcata.^[25] The 1873 election was the first electoral expression of a rising tide of dissent in Humboldt County. Rumblings of discontent had been growing louder since the Civil War and were finally crystallizing into a coherent political movement. Several leading political figures in Humboldt County permanently severed their connections with the Republican and, to a lesser extent, Democratic parties. Sweasey emerged as the leading dissident in the

county—a position he occupied for the next decade and that culminated in his nomination for the lieutenant governorship of California on the Greenback Labor party ticket in 1882. No one else in the county expressed with such lucidity and forcefulness the profound sense of disillusionment felt by many people.

Sweasey was born in London, England, in 1805. At age twenty-one, he captained a sea vessel engaged in trade with the West Indies. In 1837, he left "'perfidious Albion' to set out for the land of the free," and, shortly after arriving in America, he and his family joined Robert Owen's communitarian settlement in New Harmony, Indiana. For several years he was a "near neighbor" and employee of Owen, whom he described as "an old and valued friend." In the 1840s, Sweasey became involved with the Young America movement before taking the overland route to California in 1850. Soon after his arrival, he became a champion of settlers' rights in their battle with the Spanish land grant holders. He became known as the "Squatter King," and he lived on a ranch near Redwood City until he was evicted. He joined the Democratic party and in 1853 was elected to the California Assembly as a representative from San Francisco. In 1855 he moved to Hydesville, in southern Humboldt County, where he engaged in dairy farming. Within a year, he was chairman of the Humboldt County Democratic party, but shortly after the election of James Buchanan in 1856, he left the party. He helped found the county's Republican party and was its chairman from its inception until 1872.

Sweasey moved with his family to Eureka in 1862 and established a successful general store there.^[26] By 1867, in spite of his prominent position in the county's Republican party, Sweasey had become highly critical of the Republican-dominated county administration. Just before the 1873 elections, he severed his ties with the party. He wrote frequent letters to the local press voicing his profound concern at the direction in which he believed America was heading, the most eloquent of which appeared a few months after the 1873 election.

Look at the corruption and venality exposed in our late national councils. Look at the profligate disposal of our public domain, the noblest inheritance ever bequeathed to a people. Look at our swindling financial system, made and perpetuated to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Look at the mass of misery and crime in our great cities; near 1,500 homicides in the city of New York alone in one year; thousands thrown houseless, breadless on the street. Why? Are they idle, unwilling to work? Has nature refused her support? Neither. Our harvests were never more bountiful. . . . A cen-

tury ago honesty and ability guided our national councils. Today can we say so? A few years more of this misrule of the weak minded and where will be the superiority of the condition of our people over the condition of the people of the monarchial governments of Europe? Already our taxes are greater than the taxes of any other people or nation. Our lands are held in quantities larger than German principalities; not by aristocracies of birth, but by aristocracies of wealth, by corporations who have no souls, who never die, who control the weak minded men, who fill our legislative halls, both National and State, while thousands upon thousands are suffering for food, shelter and the commonest necessaries of life.^[27]

The depression of the late 1870s reinforced the fears of men like Sweasey and led to a revival of organized dissenting political activity. The dissidents were struck both by the social and political turmoil at state and national levels and by unprecedented social and economic dislocations in their own community. The destitution caused by the depression hit Humboldt County as early as January 1877. The Humboldt Times complained about the "insufferable nuisance" caused by the "professional beggar."^[28] A few weeks later, the Times stated that "there seems to be a regularly organized band of ruffians in this city. Scarcely a day passes but what we hear of an assault being made upon some of our citizens."^[29]

The depression severely affected the Humboldt County lumber industry as the price of redwood lumber plummeted. In 1876, prices stood at an all-time high of $30 per thousand board feet for clear lumber; by 1879, they had slumped to $18 per thousand feet.^[30] Lumber workers' wages were cut by $5 to $25 a month in February 1877, a move that reportedly gave rise to "considerable complaint."^[31] After the July 4 holiday that year, lumber employers closed their mills indefinitely. Hundreds of lumber workers lost their jobs, and there were grave predictions about the repercussions on the local economy.^[32] Few mills resumed operations in 1877, and poverty and unemployment were widespread. The local press reported that many families were in dire straits. There were recurrent complaints about tramps and incidents of alleged arson.^[33]

The press received a stream of anonymous letters that were indicative of growing social tensions. The Democratic Standard , which in 1877 came under the auspices of Greenback Labor party supporter William Ayres, provided a fresh outlet for expressions of discontent. In November 1877, it published a strongly worded letter from "Argonaut," insisting that a man had the right to work and warning that, while people prefer legal remedies, "men cannot be patient when they are hungry." He compared the plight of labor to a turtle "upon which the elephants of capital stand."^[34] The Hum-

boldt Times received an equally strongly worded communication from "Justice":

Dissensions, like contagions, seem to spread over the country. Even the little Hamlet of Arcata is not an exception. She has a few pioneers who have been fortunate enough to make a little money out of the Indians, the soldiers and the later immigrants, until they have acquired a few town lots and some tenantable housing. Not unlike the railroad kings they are the self-constituted aristocrats who claim the right to extort by law . . . all the blood money possible from the poorer classes.^[35]

Another theme expressed in critical letters to the editor was suspicion that public land laws were being violated. One writer charged the county surveyor with long delays in filing plats for preemption claims and suggested that the delays were a conspiracy to aid the "land grabbers."^[36] In fact, it was a common practice for large Humboldt County landholders to circumvent the 160-acre homestead limit by paying another person a fee to file the initial claim with the understanding that the land title would soon be transferred to the sponsoring landholder.^[37]

Land fraud and the growing concentration of land ownership received considerable attention in the state press. Thus, in 1873 the Sacramento Daily Record published articles based on data from the State Board of Equalization which revealed that land distribution had become very skewed in many California counties. These findings were reported in many California newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle and the Humboldt Times .^[38] In Humboldt, forty individuals or businesses owned over a thousand acres in 1873, and five owned more than five thousand. One individual owned 23,169 acres.^[39] By the late 1870s, letters to the county press on the land question were frequent enough to suggest that sentiment on this issue contributed significantly to the discontent.

In the debates surrounding the election of delegates to the California constitutional convention in 1878, land monopoly and fraud were the most frequently discussed issues.^[40] Sweasey wrote several long, impassioned letters on the subject. He asserted that unless reforms were undertaken to ensure a more equitable distribution of land, the result would be "serfdom and slavery or a bloody revolution."^[41] He pointed to the turmoil in Ireland as proof of his argument and added that "what was done in Ireland by war and conquest was more successfully done in California by fraud under the pretense of law."^[42] Sweasey described in great detail the fraudulent means by which much of California's land was acquired shortly after the Mexican-American War. He insisted that similar frauds were being used

to obtain land in parts of California not covered by the Spanish land grants and alluded to one scheme to aggrandize "thirty square leagues, north of Cape Mendocino."^[43] In another letter, Sweasey spoke of land monopoly as the "greatest evil," and recalled the day he had witnessed eighty families being evicted from their land under the English enclosure laws to make way for a deer park.^[44] At the Franklin Society Debating Club in Eureka in 1878, a schoolteacher, George Sarvis, echoed many of Sweasey's arguments. Sarvis spoke in favor of a motion to limit the amount of land an individual or corporation might own on the grounds that "the holding of large and unlimited quantities of land by one individual or an association of individuals disturbs the unalienable right of each citizen and when carried out, destroys popular government."^[45]

Humboldt County farmers were not immediately hit by the depression of the late 1870s. Harvests in 1877 and 1878 were bountiful, and prices for most crops held constant, although they began to fall slightly in 1879. Nevertheless, the county's Grange did not hesitate to join other dissidents in calling for far-reaching reforms. The Grange had become a strong force in the social and political life of the county by the late 1870s. There were at least six branches of the Grange in 1877. Complete lists of branches and membership figures are unfortunately hard to obtain, but the fact that the Ferndale Grange boasted a membership of 150 in 1877 (up from 90 in 1874) suggests that the Humboldt County Grange was flourishing.^[46] The Grange performed important social and economic functions. The Table Bluff Grange built its own hall,^[47] and all the Granges frequently held dances and other events. The Table Bluff Grange (and perhaps others) also established cooperative retail facilities.^[48] In the political realm, Humboldt Grangers stressed the need for a stable and expanded money supply based on silver and greenbacks. And, in general, their prognosis for the American body politic was gloomy. In March 1878, the Ferndale Grange passed the following resolution:

Whereas, a people view with alarm the growing tendency (by legislation) of a bourbon aristocracy, a system of landlordism such as exists in Germany, England and throughout Europe, and which if not checked soon will finally reduce the working classes of America to mere slaves and vassals. . .. The toiling masses of this country are today to the banks and corporations what the peons of Mexico are to the aristocracy of that so called Republic.

Resolved, that we look upon this bourbon element with suspicion and distrust in their efforts to subvert that form of government bequeathed to us by our fathers, and to erect instead a semi-despotic government, controlled by a centralized aristocracy.^[49]

A host of grievances that had been simmering for a decade surfaced in 1877-1878 in the context of the depression and the debate over the need for a new state constitution. Complaints included the costs of state government, inequitable tax laws, corruption in government at all levels, and the political power of the railroads in California and nationwide. This conjuncture of events and discontents led to the formation of a California Workingmen's party in Humboldt and thirty-nine other California counties. Humboldt voters expressed their growing disquiet in September 1877 when a statewide referendum was held on whether to call a convention to rewrite the 1849 California Constitution. In general, Californians content with the status quo were opposed to a convention. Humboldt County voted in favor of a convention by a margin of 10-1 (2,552 votes to 258);^[50] voters statewide approved the measure by less than a 2-1 majority (73,400 to 44,200).^[51]

In San Francisco, another issue gained prominence at this time. Anti-Chinese sentiment reached new heights during the depression of the late 1870s, a fact that historians have viewed as the most important element in the birth of the Workingmen's party there. The Chinese population of Humboldt County also increased, from 38 in 1870 to 242 in 1880,^[52] and by the late 1870s Eureka possessed a Chinatown of sorts.^[53] The local press commented occasionally on the alleged existence of opium dens and brothels in Eureka's Chinatown, and several attacks on Chinese people, usually by Eureka youths, took place. Notwithstanding this, and the fact that in 1885 Eureka achieved the dubious distinction of being one of the first western communities to expel its Chinese population, Sinophobia was not a major issue in county politics in the late 1870s for a number of reasons.^[54] First, by 1880 the Chinese constituted only 1.5 percent of the county's population, whereas in San Francisco they made up 16.3 percent of the inhabitants, and they were 8.7 percent of the state population. Moreover, Humboldt's Chinese population was relatively dispersed. Eureka, with its so-called Chinatown, in 1880 contained only 101 Chinese people. Second, while competition from Chinese labor may have aroused some animosity, few Chinese were employed in the county's two principal industries, lumber and agriculture. Most worked as miners (66), laborers (62), cooks (37), and in the laundry business (23). Only 6 of the 228 Chinese employed in the county worked in the lumber industry.^[55] Thus, the Chinese in Humboldt County did not threaten white labor as directly as they did in San Francisco and other parts of California. Significantly, when lumber employers tried to make more extensive use of Chinese labor in the early 1880s, anti-Chinese sentiment rose dramatically. Undoubtedly, most

Humboldters favored Chinese exclusion by the late 1870s, but a host of other grievances were far more important in the formation of the California Workingmen's party.

The Humboldt County Workingmen's party was organized in May 1878 to participate in elections to choose delegates to the California constitutional convention. Sweasey, the party's first chairman, was the candidate for the county delegate seat. J. N. Barton, a farmer from Ferndale, received the senatorial nomination for the 27th District. The party's convention passed a string of resolutions: Public officers convicted of bribery should be liable to a twenty-year jail sentence; taxes should be levied only "to meet the expenses of government"; and "taxation should be equal, so that the burden of maintaining government be borne by the rich in proportion to their wealth." Also, railroads should be taxed in relation to their "actual cash value," while the large landholdings of corporations and wealthy individuals should be taxed at the same rate per acre as small landholders. All legal means should be used to halt the immigration of the Chinese "and other inferior races who cannot amalgamate with us."^[56] A few days after the convention, the party founded a newspaper, the Workingman , edited by Sweasey and Barton.

The county Democratic and Republican organizations joined forces to elect delegates to the constitutional convention. County judge C. G. Stafford applauded this cooperation, for "as matters now stand it is possible for the Communists to get control of the Convention."^[57] The fusion plan aroused the ire of the Workingmen's party. The Democratic Standard asserted that "the managers of the two parties, under the direction of the monopolists, have joined hands . . . against the 'common enemy,' that is, the workingman."^[58]

At the June 19 election, the Humboldt County Workingmen's party triumphed over the "nonpartisan" party. Both Sweasey and Barton were elected delegates to the constitutional convention. On the whole, the votes for the two men were remarkably evenly distributed over the county, with both candidates picking up approximately the same levels of support in Eureka as they did in the rural precincts. In Eureka, Sweasey and Barton won fifty-six percent and sixty percent of the vote, respectively. Outside Eureka, Sweasey's share of the vote in all precincts combined was slightly lower (fifty percent) and Barton's somewhat higher (sixty-seven percent). The consistency of the two men's performance throughout the county's twenty-three precincts indicates the breadth of support for the Workingmen's party.^[59]

Barton proved an especially effective spokesman at the constitutional convention. He spoke with particular stridency on the issue of "land grabbing," calling for a state investigation and the repossession of fraudulently acquired lands. But he declared that he was pledged to no "agrarian measures" and that he was not at the convention "to disturb the rights of property." He advocated "equal taxation" as the best means to stop land grabbing. To this end, he introduced several resolutions calling for amendments to the state's tax system, including the adoption of a state income tax. He also spoke in favor of retrenchment in state expenditures and a reduction in the salaries of state officials.^[60]

The Humboldt Workingmen's party was pleased with the outcome of the constitutional convention, unlike the San Francisco branch of the party, which split on the question of ratification. Within two weeks of the convention, the Humboldt party launched a vigorous campaign to ratify the new constitution, which promised strict regulation of railroads and other public utilities, a more equitable system of taxation, an eight-hour day on all public works projects, and a series of anti-Chinese provisions. The Democratic Standard was the only newspaper in the county to endorse ratification unequivocally. It denounced the California Democratic party for opposing ratification and accused the party of betraying "the true principles taught us by a Jefferson and a Jackson," and called on its readers to "remember General Jackson and his war upon the privileged classes."^[61] In the ratification referendum on May 7, 1879, California voters endorsed the new constitution by a relatively small margin of 77,959 to 67,134 votes; but in Humboldt County the ratification majority was much more decisive, with 1,714 votes in favor and 1,051 against.^[62]

The Humboldt Workingmen's party perceived the ratification as a triumph for the workingman, and the party's success encouraged the belief that the time was ripe for a basic realignment of political forces to regenerate a corrupt and decadent American body politic. With remarkable frequency, letters to local newspapers harkened back nostalgically to the days of Jefferson and Jackson when the American republic supposedly had true Democrats at the helm. As one voter, "Jeffersonian," put it: "We are upon the eve of a reorganization of political forces. The two old parties have had their day." The Democratic party represented democracy in name only and had "drifted far from its moorings," while the Republican party was dominated by corporations and pro-Chinese sentiment. He concluded that the Workingmen's party was the only true standard-bearer of pure democratic principles.^[63]

The profound concern expressed about the peril to American democracy cannot be dismissed as partisan political rhetoric. "Is this a Republic?" asked the Democratic Standard at the head of its editorial column immediately after the ratification election. It recounted how, just before the election, workers at one lumber mill had found a ticket under their dinner plates marked "Against the Constitution." The Standard commented: "When the daily laborer can be intimidated and forced to vote against his judgement what is he but a slave," and the editorial concluded that "if we are to be a republic let it be so in fact. Our sires laid down their lives to establish one. We should be prepared to maintain it, if needs be with our lives."^[64] A month later, the Standard reported that some employers in the county had dismissed workers who had voted for the new constitution.^[65] Events at the local, state, and national levels produced profound disquiet on the part of many Humboldters, who saw themselves as defending a sacred democratic-republican legacy. Not surprisingly, they invoked the figureheads, symbols, and rhetoric of a supposedly golden age.

The Humboldt Workingmen's party began taking steps in the spring of 1879 to consolidate its organization to contest the forthcoming statewide and county elections. In March 1879, a convention was held to elect delegates to a state convention of the Workingmen's party and to encourage the establishment of workingmen's clubs. By June 1879, clubs were mushrooming throughout the county.^[66] In the same month, a convention nominated candidates and drew up a platform. The platform extolled the new constitution, stressing in particular how it would reduce the burden of taxation. But it reiterated that the resolute implementation of the new constitution depended on electing "faithful friends" to all branches of the government.^[67]

Who were the "faithful friends" nominated by the Workingmen's party?^[68] Most of the candidates were in their forties or early fifties and had come to California in the 1850s. Almost all had resided in Humboldt County for at least ten years. A majority were natives of the New England and Middle Atlantic regions and came from relatively humble origins. Very few had held public office before, and only one had done so in Humboldt County. Two farmers, both Grangers, were on the ticket; one owned a "small farm" and the other a "comfortable farm." Thomas Cutler, the candidate for sheriff, was the only businessman on the ticket. He was, allegedly, one of only two merchants in Eureka who supported the Workingmen's party "against all the threats of the San Francisco wholesale merchants and railroad carriers." Two of the men on the ticket ran livery stables. One was Pierce Ryan, the senatorial candidate for the state's 27th

District; the other, John Carr, had spent most of his life as a miner and blacksmith. The nominee for county clerk was a carpenter, and the candidate for county treasurer had worked in the lumber mills for six years. Three professional people—two lawyers and a schoolteacher—rounded out the ticket. Their prospective offices of district attorney, superior court judge, and school administrator demanded at least a modicum of professional training and experience.

The Workingmen's party conducted a spirited campaign against the Republicans and Democrats in the county. Leaders of the new party berated the old-line forces for opposing ratification of the state constitution and portrayed themselves as the true standard-bearers of the American democratic tradition. J. D. H. Chamberlin, the Workingmen's party candidate for superior county judge, opened a speech at Ferndale by quoting at length from the Declaration of Independence.^[69] The Democratic Standard warned that there are "vital principles involved in the election of the most unimportant officer. . .. The tory spirit has revived after 100 years of rest and today opposes the honest yeomanry of our country with all the oppressive bitterness that persecuted the heroes of American freedom."^[70] On the evening before election day, the Workingmen's party staged a torchlight parade in Eureka that drew supporters from all over the county. The Standard described the procession as "composed entirely of farmers, laborers and mechanics."^[71]

Although the Workingmen's party did not achieve the sweeping success it had in electing delegates to the constitutional convention, its performance was impressive. Every candidate for statewide office on the Workingmen's ticket got a majority of the vote in Humboldt County. Party candidates for the state senate and legislature were elected, and the party won half the county's executive positions, losing the remainder by only a few votes to the fusionist opposition. Precinct returns again indicated that the Workingmen's party received consistent support throughout the county, performing best in the burgeoning agricultural townships of Ferndale and Table Bluff. In most other rural precincts the party performed no better, and sometimes worse, than in Eureka, where it fell only a few votes short of a majority in almost all county and state contests. Statewide, the Workingmen elected the chief justice of the state supreme court, five of six associate justices, and sixteen assemblymen and eleven state senators. This re-suit failed to give the party the hoped-for majority in the state legislature and was somewhat disappointing in view of its strong showing in the 1878 constitutional convention elections.

The ineffectual performance of many party representatives once in state and local office and persistent factionalism in the San Francisco branch led to a rapid decline of the party after the 1879 state elections. The gathering political momentum of the National Greenback party encouraged some members of the Workingmen's party, including Denis Kearney, leader of the San Francisco branch, to join the Greenbacks. In addition, the success of the Workingmen's party prompted California's Republican and Democratic parties (especially the latter) to become more responsive to the demands of the Workingmen's party on such issues as Chinese exclusion, land monopoly, and stricter regulation of railroads. Many Workingmen's representatives aligned with one of the two major parties, usually the Democrats, in a process that Alexander Saxton dubbed "the institutionalization of labor politics."^[72]

The decline of the Workingmen's party in Humboldt County reflected its demise statewide. Supporters were discouraged by the overall performance of the party in the 1879 state elections and in municipal elections in Humboldt and other counties in early 1880. Throughout the 1879 campaign party leaders stressed that the new constitution was a dead letter unless the party obtained a majority in the state legislature. Thus, the Humboldt County Workingmen's party virtually turned the election into a referendum on the future of the party. Immediately after the election, the Democratic Standard declared that the new constitution had been "practically nullified." It lamented the well-publicized factionalism of the San Francisco branch and the fact that a considerable number of Working-men's party representatives were moving into the old parties.^[73] Humboldters who retained their faith in the new party after the elections became disillusioned with the performance of some representatives. In April 1880, the Standard reported "much talk of dissatisfaction among the workingmen of Eureka about the policy which some of the county officers elected on the Workingmen's ticket have chosen to pursue."^[74] George Shaw, who had been elected county assessor on the party ticket, incurred the wrath of many people when he added an office clerk to his staff at a salary of $135 per month and selected a long-time enemy of the Working-men's party as his main adviser.^[75] By April 1880, Shaw was so unpopular that he required a bodyguard.^[76]

Growing interest in the Greenback Labor party hastened the dissolution of the Humboldt County Workingmen's party. Greenback clubs sprang up throughout the county between 1878 and 1880. In fact, remnants of the Workingmen's party reconstituted themselves as the Humboldt Greenback Labor party. The Greenbackers' panaceas had a much

stronger appeal in Humboldt County than they did in San Francisco and many other California counties.

By the late 1870s, a coherent dissenting tradition had emerged in Humboldt County. The evolution of this tradition owed much to the persistence of values associated with an antebellum democratic-republican ideology that stressed the superiority of the American political system. Chauvinistic and almost millennial assumptions engendered a profound set of beliefs and expectations about the nature of the American political economy. In particular, the free-labor tenet and its corollary, the labor theory of value, stressing as they did the immense contribution of the free laborer to America's progress, heightened expectations about the future, reinforced the workingman's sense of his moral worth, and endowed him with a civic responsibility to scrutinize the destiny of the republic. Between 1866 and 1880, developments at the local, state, and national levels convinced many Humboldters that pernicious economic and political events threatened the sanctity and purity of the American Republic and seriously threatened the free laborer's advancement.

Undeniably, contradictions and ambiguities existed in the democratic-republican legacy. Two contradictions, in particular, are worth noting. Both derived from a marked discrepancy between the dissenters' penetrating political analysis and their often superficial prescriptions. On the crucial question of land monopoly, for example, Sweasey took a radical stance in advocating a statutory limitation on the amount of land a person might own. Barton and the Ferndale Grange, for all their deeply felt anxieties about the concentration of land ownership and land fraud, could not countenance so direct an interference with the rights of private property.^[77] Paradoxically, many dissenters railed against what they perceived as the dangers of unfettered capitalism but could not bring themselves to advocate far-reaching controls (with the possible exception of railroad regulation) over private property rights. This disparity between a keen perception of fundamental problems and a naïve faith in piecemeal solutions that ignored underlying structural problems stands out in the dissenters' faith that all could be rectified if only good, honest men were elected. Even a man as disenchanted as Sweasey could in one breath speak of the gravity of social and economic trends and the threat to the republic and in the next proclaim his belief in the ability of the "best men" to correct the situation.

Notwithstanding its ambiguous features, the democratic-republican tradition provided Humboldt's dissenters with an arsenal of ideas. Increasingly, they would jettison many (but not all) of the contradictory strands of

the tradition and embrace reforms that entailed at least a measure of state control over private property. The Humboldt Workingmen's party bequeathed to the county a dissenting ideological legacy that the Greenback Labor party, the International Workingmen's Association, and the Knights of Labor were able to draw on in the 1880s, and that the Humboldt Populists relied on heavily in the 1890s. Many leaders of the Humboldt Workingmen's party played important roles in these movements. In 1886, the Arcata Union commented with alarm and derision on the growing strength of the People's party, the political arm of the Humboldt Knights of Labor, describing its leadership as "in the main the same old political fossils . . . that have monopolized every reform movement from the days of Kearney."^[78]