The workingmen held the banks
responsible for the existing anarchy in currency, from which they
suffered both as consumers and producers. Moreover, they felt that there
was something uncanny and threatening about corporations with their
continuous existence and limited liability. Even while their attention
had been engrossed by trade unionism, the workingmen were awake to the
issue of monopoly. Together with their employers they had therefore
supported Jackson in his assault upon the largest "monster" of them
all--the Bank of the United States. The local organizations of the
Democratic party, however, did not always remain true to faith. In such
circumstances the workingmen, again acting in conjunction with their
masters, frequently extended their support to the "insurgent"
anti-monopoly candidates in the Democratic party conventions. Such a
revolt took place in Philadelphia in 1835; and in New York, although
Tammany had elected Ely Moore, the President of the General Trades'
Union of New York, to Congress in 1834, a similar revolt occurred. The
upshot was a triumphant return of the rebels into the fold of Tammany in
1837.
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