nized. On January 5, 1878,
Kearney and a number of associates were indicted, arrested, and released
on bail. When the trial jury acquitted Kearney, what may be called the
terrorism of the movement attained its height, but it fortunately spent
itself in violent adjectives.

The Workingman's party, however, elected a workingman mayor of San
Francisco, joined forces with the Grangers, and elected a majority
of the members of the state constitutional convention which met in
Sacramento on September 28, 1878. This was a notable triumph for a third
party. The framing of a new constitution gave this coalition of farmers
and workingmen an unusual opportunity to assail the evils which they
declared infested the State. The instrument which they drafted bound the
state legislature with numerous restrictions and made lobbying a
felony; it reorganized the courts, placed innumerable limitations upon
corporations, forbade the loaning of the credit or property of the
State to corporations, and placed a state commission in charge of the
railroads, which had been perniciously active in state politics. Alas
for these visions of reform! A few years after the adoption of this new
constitution by California, Hubert H. Bancroft wrote:

"Those objects which it particularly aimed at, it failed to achieve. The
effect upon corporations disappointed its authors and supporters. Many
of them were strong enough still to defy state power and evade state
laws, in protecting their interests, and this they did without scruple.
The relation of capital and labor is even more strained than before
the constitution was adopted. Capital soon recovered from a temporary
intimidation... Labor still uneasy was still subject to the inexorable
law of supply and demand. Legislatures were still to be approached by
agents... Chinese were still employed in digging and grading. The state
board of railroad Commissioners was a useless expense,... being as wax in
the hands of the companies it was set to watch." *

* "Works" (vol. XXIV): "History of California," vol. VII, p.
404.

After the collapse of the Populist party, there is to be discerned in
labor politics a new departure, due primarily to the attitude of the
American Federation of Labor in partisan matters, and secondarily to the
rise of political socialism. A socialistic party deriving its support
almost wholly from foreign-born workmen had appeared in a few of the
large cities in 1877, but it was n