The machinists, too, throughout this period took an active interest in cooperation.  Their convention which met in October, 1865, appointed a committee to report on a plan of action to establish a cooperative shop under the auspices of the International Union.  The plan failed of adoption, but of machinists’ shops on the joint-stock plan there were a good many.  Two other trades noted for their enthusiasm for cooperation at this time were the shoemakers and the coopers.  The former, organized in the Order of St. Crispin, then the largest trade union in the country, advocated cooperation even when their success in strikes was at its height.  “The present demand of the Crispin is steady employment and fair wages, but his future is self-employment” was one of their mottoes.  During the seventies they repeatedly attempted to carry this motto into effect.  The seventies also saw the beginning of the most successful single venture in productive cooperation ever undertaken in this country, namely, the eight cooperative cooperage shops in Minneapolis, which were established at varying intervals from 1874 to 1886.  The coopers took care to enforce true cooperation by providing for equal holding of stock and for a division of ordinary profits and losses in proportion to wages.  The cooper shops prospered, but already ten years later four out of the eight existing in 1886 had passed into private hands.

In 1866 when the eight-hour demand was as yet uppermost, the National Labor Union resolved for an independent labor party.  The espousal of greenbackism in 1867 only reenforced that resolution.  The leaders realized only too well that neither the Republican nor Democratic party would voluntarily make an issue of a scheme purporting to assist the wage earner to become an independent producer.  Accordingly, the history of the National Labor Union became largely the history of labor’s first attempt to play a lone political hand on a national scale.

Each annual session of the National Labor Union faithfully reaffirmed the decision to “cut loose” from the old parties.  But such a vast undertaking demanded time.  It was not until 1872 that the National Labor Union met as a political convention to nominate a national ticket.  From the first the stars were inauspicious.  Charges were made that political aspirants sought to control the convention in order to influence nominations by the Republican and Democratic parties.  A “greenback” platform was adopted as a matter of course and the new party was christened the National Labor and Reform Party.  On the first formal ballot for nomination for President, Judge David Davis of Illinois, a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, received 88 votes, Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist, 52, and the remainder scattered.  On the third ballot Davis was nominated.  Governor J. Parker of New Jersey was nominated for Vice-President.  At first Judge Davis accepted the nomination, but resigned after the Democrats had nominated Horace Greeley.  The loss of the candidate spelled the death of the party.  The National Labor Union itself had been only an empty shell since 1870, when the national trade unions, disaffected with the turn towards politics, withdrew.  Now, its pet project a failure, it, too, broke up.