No, it did not. On the contrary, during that period every measure of the
Democratic party was directly against the interests of laboring men. The
homestead law was repeatedly defeated by Democratic Congressmen, and was
never enacted until the Republicans came into power. Every attempt of
the Democratic party to legislate on the subject of the tariff was made
in the interest of foreign capital and low-priced labor, and against
home enterprise and American workingmen. The Democratic party formed an
alliance, offensive and defensive, with an aristocratic oligarchy which
held to the monstrous doctrine that capital should own its own
laborers—own and buy and sell them as cattle are owned, bought and sold.
The stronghold of the Democratic party was and is to-day this community
of great planters, and the favorite candidates of the Democratic party
are men with “bar’ls”—monopolists and millionaires, who are expected to
buy their way to place and power.