One made a schedule of particular demands; the other insisted on the single tax as the consummation of their purpose in seeking reform.

Both put presidential tickets in the field, but of the two, the Union Labor party made by far the better showing at the polls though, even so, it polled fewer votes than did the National Prohibition party.

Although making no very considerable showing at the polls, these new movements were very significant as evidences of popular unrest.

The fact that the heaviest vote of the Union Labor party was polled in the agricultural States of Kansas, Missouri, and Texas, was a portent of the sweep of the populist movement which virtually captured the Democratic party organization during President Cleveland's second term.
The withdrawal of Blaine from the list of presidential candidates in 1888 left the Republican Convention at Chicago to choose from a score of "favorite sons." Even his repeated statement that he would not accept the nomination did not prevent his enthusiastic followers from hoping that the convention might be "stampeded." But on the first ballot, Blaine received only thirty-five votes while John Sherman led with 229.
It was anybody's race until the eighth ballot, when General Benjamin Harrison, grandson of "Tippecanoe," suddenly forged ahead and received the nomination.
The defeat of the Democratic party at the polls in the presidential election of 1888 was less emphatic than might have been expected from its sorry record.

Indeed, it is quite possible that an indiscretion in which Lord Sackville-West, the British Ambassador, was caught may have turned the scale.