We must notice the formation of a new political party
in America, because it may become important, though we do not think it will. This is the Union of Working-men which has been established in the West, with branches in New York and Now England, and which proposes to return workmen to Con- gress, to " abolish all laws pressing on labour," and to make laws tending to protect its interests. Its real objects, we see, are explained to be to apply pressure to Congress and the State Legis- latures to establish a legal maximum for hours of work and a legal minimum for wages, objects declared to be impracticable in the States, though already secured in this country by the Factory Acts and the operation of the Poor Law, which does in a rough way fix a minimum for wages. The new organisation will not, we think, prove very strong. Employers in America are very hard in resisting all such demands, because they know that there is danger from the ascendancy of numbers, and they are backed in the long-run by the freeholders, who are sixty-six per cent, of all electors. The Democrat party seems inclined to fraterniee with the workmen, but the unanimous hostility of the Press shows which way opinion still goes.
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