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In early August of 1894, John McBride, the president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), announced his intention to form an Ohio labor party and to merge the party with the state's People's party. McBride told the state's unionists that recent labor strife had convinced "all honest, ardent advocates of labor's cause that corporate power, when aided and abetted by the judicial, executive and military arm of the state and national governments can and will override the rights of our people." Believing that labor unions, "as now constituted," had proven ineffective in protecting the rights of workers, McBride told trade unionists to reform their organizations, abandon their emphasis on strikes, boycotts, and arbitration, and enter into partisan politics. "By entering into politics," McBride explained, "we can free ourselves from the chain of slavery." Four months later McBride defeated Samuel Gompers for the presidency of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Upon taking office McBride predicted that the next year would witness a "great union of labor men" organized for political activity and that during the election of 1896 "we shall place a presidential candidate in the field." Although Gompers defeated McBride at the AFL's next election and the Federation never fielded a presidential candidate or entered into an alliance with the People's party, an examination of McBride's career suggests that a laborPopulist alliance was a viable option for many laborites and that labor republicanism and producerism remained powerful forces in Federation politics until at least 1896.1
Historians who have examined the Federation's stance toward political action have mistakenly concluded that McBride shared Gompers' union philosophy. Gompers's unionism went by a number of names-business unionism, trade unionism, voluntarism, pure and simple unionism, prudential unionism-but it rested on two fundamental assumptions. First, Gompers saw an inherent and unalterable conflict between employers and those who worked for wages. This led Gompers and like-minded unionists to eschew alliances with farmers, small producers, and shop keepers. For Gompers the workers alone were to work out their own salvation. Second, Gompers saw the conflict between labor and capital as essentially economic in nature. Thus political activity, although at times necessary, did not confront the main source of workers' oppression. Instead, Gompers counseled workers to confront capital on the economic...