Anti-Monopoly Party

Anti-Monopoly Party, American political party organized in Chicago in May 1884. At its founding convention, the party nominated the American general and politician Benjamin Franklin Butler for the presidency and adopted a platform calling for a new law to regulate interstate commerce, a direct popular vote for U.S. senators, a graduated income tax, the establishment of labor unions throughout the country, the repeal of all tariffs, and the prohibition of governmental grants of land to corporations. In the presidential election of 1884, the Anti-Monopoly party united with the Greenback-Labor party, and Butler received about 175,000 votes. Both parties passed out of existence soon afterward and were succeeded in the 1890s by the Populist party.