“Lause, one of our most talented historians of nineteenth century America, spotlights the influential political huckster William A. A. Carsey. More than a century before the Tea Party’s phony ‘grass roots’ mobilizations, the underhanded techniques Carsey and his allies employed kept laborers from forming their own independent political organizations. An excellent study with a convincing answer to the age-old question: why no Labor Party in the U.S.?” --Chad E. Pearson, author of Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century