Protestant pietists in the North were tightly linked to the GOP. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially prohibition. While both parties cut across economic class structures, the Democrats were supported more heavily by its lower tiers. Cultural issues, especially prohibition and foreign language schools, became important because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate. In the North, about 50% of the voters were pietistic Protestants who believed that the government should be used to reduce the pervasiveness of social sins, such as drinking. Liturgical churches comprised over a quarter of the vote and they wanted the government to stay out of personal morality issues. Prohibition debates and referendums heated up elections in most states over a period of decades, as national prohibition was finally passed in 1918 (and it was repealed in 1932), serving as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry GOP. Source: Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System 1853-1892 (1979) p. 182 Labor union movement The Catholic Church exercised a prominent role in shaping America's labor movement. From the onset of significant immigration in the 1840s, the church in the United States was predominantly urban, with both its leaders and congregants usually of the laboring classes. Over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, nativism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-unionism coalesced in Republican elections, and Catholics gravitated toward unions and the Democratic Party. The Knights of Labor was the earliest labor organization in the United States, and in the 1880s, this was the largest labor union in the United States. It is estimated that at least half its membership was Catholic (including Terence Powderly, its president from 1881 onward). In Rerum novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII criticized the concentration of wealth and power, spoke out against the abuses that workers faced and demanded that workers should be granted certain rights and safety regulations. He upheld the right of voluntary association, specifically commending labor unions. At the same time, he reiterated the church's defense of private property, condemned socialism, and emphasized the need for Catholics to form and join unions that were not compromised by secular and revolutionary ideologies. Rerum novarum provided new impetus for Catholics to become active in the labor movement, even if its exhortation to form specifically Catholic labor unions was widely interpreted as