Description:Between 1918-24 major city centers of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), opposed by the leadership, launched labor parties; yet there is very little published about this most substantial attempt to date, by US labor, to build an independent party. This study of labor's political activity in New York, Chicago, and Seattle not only attempts to rectify this, it also challenges the "exceptionalist" view of the American class system. It accomplishes this by showing that the failure to build a labor party had more to do with opposition from the employers, the main parties, and the AFL leadership than any ideological commitment to the "American Dream."