Thomas Skidmore (reformer)
He was forced out of the organization shortly after its initial electoral campaign by moderate leaders of the party on the grounds of Skidmore's excessive radicalism and unbending personality.
Skidmore was the author of three books, including an ambitious and controversial 1829 political treatise written against the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, The Rights of Man to Property!
This work depicted a two-class society consisting of a propertied ruling class and a propertyless majority inevitably subjected to a sort of economic slavery which made true liberty impossible.
It advocated a constitutional convention to abolish debt, end the right of inheritance, and bring about an equal distribution of productive and personal property of the nation among its adult citizens.
Previously critical of influential party leader Robert Dale Owen and others for their promotion of policies not of direct benefit to the working class, Skidmore found himself isolated in December 1829 when Owen joined prominent party politicians Noah Cook and Henry Guyon in seeking his removal for excessive radicalism.
[5] Political allies made these character traits into a virtue, casting Skidmore as self-assured but unwilling to accede to the ideas of others which he believed to be incorrect.
[6] As the year 1829 drew to a close, a meeting of "mechanics and other workingmen" was held in New York City on December 29 to set the future policy of the party.
"Let the parent reflect, if he now be a man of toil, that his children must be, 99 cases in 100, slaves, and worse, to some rich proprietor... Let him not cheat himself with empty pretensions; for, he who commands the property of the State, or even an inordinate portion of it, has the liberty and the happiness of its citizens in his own keeping....
"[13]To alleviate this fundamentally flawed state of affairs, Skidmore argued for the end of the right of inheritance and for a one-time equalization of property among adults.
Private inheritance would be abolished, and the wealth of the deceased would be pooled into a fund and reserved, in the future, for young people when they reached the age of 18.
[11] In addition to his redistributive ideas, Skidmore advocated state aid for child-rearing, the abolition of private charity, and the elimination of banks and corporate charters.
