Ten weeks later appeared a new organization, the Workingmen’s Party of California (WPC). It is probable that at least some of its activists came from the ranks of the rioters, and certainly a great many of its supporters were unemployed. A large percentage were Irish immigrants. It was dedicated to the belief that the democratic traditions of the American Revolution had been subverted by great wealth amassed in the hands of the robber barons, who respected no laws, particularly laws that protected common people. Despite its name, it was open to small businesspeople as well as workers. In that respect the party’s ideas resembled those of other late nineteenth-century workers’ movements, which tended to define Americans as either useful “producers” or parasitical “exploiters.”