Probably the most striking figure of all was Daniel DeLeon, editor of the _Daily People_, a man with a university education, and a graduate of the Columbia University Law School. He was active in the organization of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance in 1895 and was an officer in the Alliance until it was merged in the I. W. W. He came to the first convention as a delegate from the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. He, too, believed that harmony was possible. During this process of pounding one another we have both learned [he said], both sides have learned, and I hope and believe that this convention will bring together those who will plant themselves squarely upon the class struggle and will recognize the fact that the political expression of labor is but the shadow of the economic organization.[116] He had been instrumental in creating the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, of which the Socialist Labor party was thenceforward to be the shadow. It transpired, however, that the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance actually became the "shadow" or understudy of the Socialist Labor party, and this fact was looked upon by A. M. Simons and others of the Socialist Labor party as having an ominous significance for any new organization to which DeLeon might wish to hitch the Socialist Labor party as a "shadow." There seemed, in short, to be some suspicion afloat at the first convention that the Socialist Labor party proposed, through DeLeon, to tuck the I. W. W. under its wing. Hillquit asserts that "the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance had a record of having caused more disputes and schisms within the Socialist labor movement in America in recent years than any other factor, and its affiliation with the new movement was fateful for the latter."[117] And Simons declared that if DeLeon "could in some way hitch himself on to this new organization, he would be able to infuse the semblance of life into the political and economic corpses of the S. L. P. and the S. T. & L. A."[118] DeLeon emphatically opposed the policy of "boring from within" advocated by the Socialist party opportunists. He believed it had been tried as a constructive policy and found wanting. So he proposed to build up on the outside the necessary economic organization, which finally should move "under the protecting guns of a labor political party."[119] On the other hand, the Socialist party men believed in making use of the "boring from within" policy among the local unions, and considered it quite unnecessary for the economic organization to have any political connections whatsoever. They considered the political unity of the workers less vitally important than did the DeLeon group of doctrinaires.