Tammany Hall, dominated by some of the same men and interests denounced by the Workingmen’s party, opened a campaign of abuse. Commercial and banking men outside the Wigwam joined ardently in the campaign. The new movement was declared to be a mushroom party, led by designing men, whose motives were destructive. The _Evening Post_, which represented the commercial element and which sided with Tammany in opposition to the new party, said that it remained for the really worthy mechanics who might have associated accidentally with that party, to separate themselves from it, now that its designs and doctrines were known. The _Courier and Enquirer_, partly owned and edited by Noah,[4] styled the Workingmen’s party an infidel ticket, hostile to the morals, to the institutions of society and the rights of property. The Tammany Hall, or to speak more technically, the Democratic-Republican General Committee, declaiming on the virtues of Jackson and Democracy, advised all good men, and especially all self-respecting laborers, not to vote the Workingmen’s ticket. Nevertheless, its principles made such an impression that in November it polled over 6,000 votes, while Tammany, with its compact organization, could claim little more than 11,000 votes. It was well settled that numbers of Whig workingmen voted the new party’s ticket; and that the rich Whigs secretly worked for the success of Tammany Hall, whose ticket was almost entirely successful, though the Workingmen elected Ebenezer Ford to the Assembly. Tammany was dismayed at the new party’s strength, and determined to destroy it by championing one of the reform measures demanded. In January, 1830, a bill for the better security of mechanics and other laborers of New York City was introduced by Silas M. Stillwell. The Tammany men immediately took it up as if it were their own, urged its passage and secured the credit of its adoption, when in April, much emasculated, it became a law. It required, under penalties, the owner of a building to retain from the contractor the amount due to the mechanics employed thereon. By exploiting this performance to the utmost, Tammany succeeded in making some inroads on the Workingmen’s party. The organization leaders had recognized that it was time they did something for the laboring classes. They were fast losing caste with even independent Democrats of means, because of their subservience to the aristocracy and of the common knowledge of the illegitimate ways in which they were amassing wealth.