PARTY, or NATIONAL PARTY. The workingmen dur ing the "panic years" (1874-78) increasingly resorted to political activity to right their griev ances, and in Ohio in 1877 began to call their local organization the "National Party." In Massachusetts and Pennsylvania they fused with the Greenback Party (q.v.). On 22 Feb. 1878, at Toledo, Ohio, they held a convention which organized the fusion as the "National but the popular name for it was the old fusion name "Greenback-Labor." Their platform was the Greenback one, with planks against prison contract labor and in favor of legislation for shorter hours. The new organ ization awakened hopes in the hopeless minor ities in several States where the majority, Re publican or Democratic, could not be over turned; and they organized fusions with it, which raised it at once to a popular vote (ap parently) of over 1,000,000, and elected 14 Con gressmen. In the close States each old party kept its own vote, with a slight falling off to the new one. The party proper elected but two representatives, five of the 14 being really Re publicans and seven Democrats. In 1880 (9-10
June) it held a national convention at Chicago, and nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa, and B. J. Chambers of Texas, for President and Vice-President; Chambers declined, but no sub stitute was nominated. The platform had all the old planks in substance, and new ones against Chinese immigration, land-grants to rail roads, and favors to corporations and bond holders, and in favor of sanitary regulations for manufactories. The fusions had largely disappeared, and the popular vote sunk to
857, and the Congressmen to eight; four from Missouri, two from Maine, one from New York and one from Texas. It retained its organiza tion till 1884, when it fused with the Anti Monopoly Party (q.v.) and nominated Benjamin F. Butler for the Presidency, polling in all 175,380 votes. It then practically disappeared. Consult Usher,