The Workingmen's Party of California (WPC) was a left-wing populist political party in the United States which was active from 1877 to 1883. The party was founded amid the "Long Depression" of 1873-1878, and it supported railroad regulation, and, most famously, ridding the country of Chinese immigrant cheap labor; the party absorbed the California chapter of the Workingmen's Party of the United States. In 1878, the Workingmen's Party of California won 11 seats in the State Senate and 17 seats in the State Assembly, and it rewrote the state's constitution to deny Chinese the right to vote, and to establish the California Railroad Commission. The party's founder Denis Kearney employed racist language to rally white Californian support for the party, frequently declaring, "The Chinese must go!" After the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the party dissolved in 1883.
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