most optimistic reformers are not realized. Poverty is not a permanent condition even today, if we may trust the analysis of Mr. Rowntree. Primary poverty is felt during the earlier years of married life, and many families rise out of this position of extreme pressure. Well conceived remedial legislation can doubtless diminish the length of this period of pressure, mitigate some of the hardships, and make it easier for the individual and the family to rise out of this condition. If ideals of individual responsibility are to be retained, there must be some possibility of failure, but the result of economic failure need not extend beyond a probationary interval, and this interval can be used for vocational training. Even if poverty cannot be abolished, it need not be a condition of abject misery unrelieved by prospects of ultimate achievement of a decent standard of living.

THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE

LOCO-FOCO DEMOCRACY

WILLIAM TRIMBLE

Department of History and Social Science, North Dakota Agricultural College

In a recent number of this Journal (May, 1918) there appeared a significant article from the pen of Professor William E. Dodd on "The Social Philosophy of the Old South," in which is described the development of an aristocratic conception of society which by the middle thirties had come to dominate the philosophy of southern leaders. It is a matter of no little moment in the history of democracy that, at about the time the aristocrats of the South were repudiating the ideas of Jefferson as "glittering fallacies," a determined group of common men in the city of New York were re-emphasizing and reformulating those ideas and promulgating anew the precepts of a philosophy founded on the theory of human equality.

The movement began to assume definite form in the fall of 1835 as a mutiny within the Tammany organization against the domination of a conservative element. It soon grew into a separate party which called itself the Equal Rights Party, but which is better known in history under the fantastic sobriquet of "LocoFoco," a term first applied in derision by its enemies. The party was active in a few local campaigns and held two state conventions in one of which it formulated an interesting model for a revision of the state constitution. It also fostered noteworthy mass meetings in New York City. Its achievements as a party organization, however, were not impressive, since its nominees at no time secured more than 5000 votes. Yet it did effect an important revolution in Tammany which allowed reunion in the fall of 1837, its career closing thus after scarcely two years of separate political activity.

Though in duration and in number of adherents this Equal Rights Party was almost negligible, its significance is enhanced by consideration of some of the forces back of it. Its existence was

made possible by that tremendous innovation in the world's practice of politics-American manhood suffrage. Massing of population, moreover, to a degree hitherto unknown in the New World and the ushering in of a new stage of industrial development were producing in the city so strategically situated at the mouth of the Hudson new economic and social tendencies. Hither had come from England noteworthy agitators and thinkers, fervid from the industrial unrest there. A strong labor movement for some years had been experimenting in forms of organization and formulating principles. A group of young intellectuals within the DemocraticRepublican party, which included William Cullen Bryant, John Bigelow, Samuel J. Tilden, and, most conspicuously, William Leggett (the prophet of the Loco-Foco movement), was keenly responsive to a philosophy of equal rights; and with these might then have been classed a brilliant independent editor, Horace Greeley. The New York Evening Post, of which Bryant was editor and Leggett associate editor, was the organ of this group and was distinctly sympathetic with the new movement. Furthermore, there were still surviving men like the Loco-Foco leader, Jaques, who reached back in feeling and experience to the hallowed days of the American Revolution. Finally, all fixed-income classes in general-laborers, professional men, holders of small estateswere under the economic pressure of a rapid rise in cost of living, a condition due chiefly to grave inflation of the currency.

This inflation and the prevalent widening of the credit system were defended vigorously by the speculative members of society, the entrepreneurs of the time, promoters of the new capitalism, whose philosophy of the new era would not have been difficult to affiliate with that of the aggressive young planters of the lower South. That the social principles of the two classes at least were not thought discordant appears from an appeal which was made by a group of New York merchants during the panic of 1837, as follows:

Avow your belief that in a great majority of cases the possession of property is the proof of merit, because in a country of free laws and equal rights, property, as a general rule, cannot be acquired without industry, skill and economy.

. . . With a firm faith that the many will follow the wise and the good, call upon the men of sound morals, of intelligence, and industry, throughout the

nation, to forget all the distracting topics which have agitated it, and unite in defense of the institutions, without which commercial society cannot exist. . . . Appeal to our brethren of the South for their generous co-operation, and promise them that those who believe that the possession of property is an evidence of merit will be the last to interfere with the rights of property of any kind.

The main sponsors of this manifesto were of Whig persuasion; but a large and influential division of the Democratic-Republican party was inclining to the same philosophy and was keeping in close touch with such southern leaders as Rives of Virginia and Legarè of South Carolina. Indeed, there were throughout the North, as Professor Dodd observes (citing as instances Chancellor Kent and Daniel Webster), numerous "conservatives" whose social philosophy agreed to a considerable degree with that which was obtaining in the South.

Between the conception of society held both by northern capitalists and southern planters and that advocated by themselves, the Loco-Focos thought there existed a fundamental, historic antagonism. Their perception of this antagonism was set forth in an address by Jaques, as follows:

There are two opinions abroad in the world on the subject of social relations and the government of men. The supporters of both profess to have the same objects in view-the peace, the order, and the happiness of the human race. But as they are founded on different views of our nature and the laws of the Creator, both cannot be true. It is therefore of the first importance that the question should be speedily settled in the minds of this community.

The theory of the one party is, that man, by reason of his ignorance, and of his corrupt nature, is not capable of self-government; it is therefore necessary that he should be restrained by force. They assert that the Creator in his providence has produced a different order of intelligence among men, and intended that the most intelligent should be the governors and rulers, as well as the owners, and live by the labor of the other portion of the human family. Most of the governments of the Old World have been founded on the above theory; its effects are well known, and need not be here enumerated.

The other theory referred to, is that man is a rational and moral being, "that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." That by nature he is also a social being, and that on entering society he does not give up any of his natural rights, but to secure those rights in their fullest enjoyment "governments are instituted among men."

The governments of these United States were founded on the latter theory, and it is now to be proved by after-experience whether it is capable of being carried out in practice.

That there was a very real danger of American democracy being diverted from its true course, the Loco-Focos believed; and so they fought bitterly (and at times irrationally) the money-power and the conservatism of their time and engaged zealously in the formulation and propagation of a social philosophy which they counted of incalculable worth to humanity.

The chief significance of Loco-Focoism, consequently, is not derived from its manifestation as a political party in New York, but from the spread of its tenets. Its conception of democracy, its social and political formulations, its spirit of aggressive radicalism became ascendant between 1837 and 1844 in the national Democratic party; and, furthermore, after the seizure of the leadership of the national party by the southern expansionists in 1844, the process of permeating the Democracy of the North with LocoFoco doctrines continued well up to the outbreak of the Civil War. By this assertion, however, it is not meant that the teachings of the Loco-Focos were the only source of radical democracy during this period; for, prior to and contemporaneously with the LocoFoco agitation, a large section of the Democratic Party (of which Senator Benton of Missouri was a representative leader) was developing similar views. The original Loco-Focos, in fact, may quite properly be regarded as constituting merely a militant vanguard of the general body of the progressive Democracy. Nevertheless, it is not too much to say that the congeries of principles which came to be known under their name especially that of unqualified belief in the philosophy of human equality-became ingrained in large portions of the northern populace and thus contributed an important element to the idealistic democratic movement which finally by armed force confounded the southern votaries of aristocracy. Another contribution to the advance of world democracy, perhaps of equal permanent worth, was due to the fact that Loco-Foco radicalism furnished important and lasting ingredients to the great process of remodeling state constitutions which went on in the United States in the two decades prior to the Civil War. During