ABSTRACT
The peculiarities of American politics have set the stage on which the labor-left has been required to perform. The labor reformers came mainly from the National Labor Union, America's first major national labor federation, which included in its decade of active life some thirty-four national union affiliates. The earlier Progressives, educated, genteel city cousins of populism, had called the Populists madmen, William Allen White wrote in the 1920s, then they had "caught the Populists in swimming and stole all of their clothing except the frayed underdrawers of free silver. By late 1886, the Knights assemblies had entered various local labor parties in 189 localities in thirty-four of thirty-eight states and four territories. In 1878, the Socialist Labor Party entered American elections with some success, but the party split in 1880 over support of the Greenbacks, and after running the first Socialist presidential candidate in American history in 1892, it faded as an electoral force.
