The United States Since the Civil War Part 20

The radical wing of the Democracy had now found its orator. Every word was driven straight to the hearts of the sympathetic hearers. The income tax law had been const.i.tutional, Bryan complained, until one of the judges of the Supreme Court had changed his mind; the tariff was less important than the currency because "protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands." Fundamentally, he insisted, the contest was between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling ma.s.ses who produce the capital:

If they come to meet us on that issue we can present the history of our nation. More than that; we can tell them that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not where the ma.s.ses have....

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the gra.s.s will grow in the streets of every city in the country....

Having behind us the producing ma.s.ses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

The frenzy of approval which this brief speech aroused was proof that the West and South had found a herald. Whether wisely or not, the radicals acclaimed their leader and the party was embarked upon a program that made the campaign of 1896 a memorable one. Without further ado, the amendments of the conservatives were voted down--the vote being sectional, as before. Proposals that changes in the monetary standard should not apply to existing contracts and that if free coinage should not effect a parity between gold and silver at a ratio of 16 to 1 within a year, it should be suspended, were both voted down without so much as a division. The platform was then adopted by an overwhelming majority and radical democracy had the bit in its teeth.

In the East the platform was viewed with amazement. The New York _World_, a Democratic newspaper, expressed the opinion that the only doubt about the election would be the size of McKinley's victory. The Republican _Tribune_ thought that the party was afflicted with "lunacy"; that it had become the "avowed champion of the right of pillage, riot and trainwrecking"; that the platform was an anarchist manifesto and a "call to every criminal seeking a chance for outrage."

Before Bryan's speech it had been impossible to foretell who the party candidate for the presidency would be, although the veteran free silver leader, Richard P. Bland, had been looked upon as a logical choice in case his well-known principles should become those of the convention.

After the speech, however, it was clear that Bryan embodied the feelings of many of his colleagues and on the fifth ballot he was chosen as the candidate. The vice-presidential choice was Arthur Sewall, of Maine, a shipbuilder and banker who believed in the free coinage of silver.

The gold Democrats were now in a quandary. Many of them had refrained from voting at all in the convention after the silver element had gained control. Strict partisans, however, adopted the position of Senator Hill who was asked after the convention whether he was a Democrat still. "Yes," he is said to have retorted, "I am a Democrat still--very still." Some frankly turned toward the Republican party, while others organized the National Democratic party and adopted a traditional Democratic platform, with a gold plank. After considering the possibility of nominating President Cleveland for a third term, the party chose John M. Palmer for the presidency and Simon B. Buckner for the vice-presidency. Soon after the Democratic convention, the People's party and the Silver party met in St. Louis. Both nominated Bryan for the presidency, and thereafter the Democrats and the Populists made common cause.

At the opening of the campaign, then, it was evident that cla.s.s and sectional hatreds would enter largely into the contest. The Populists and the radical Democrats felt that they were fighting the battle of the ma.s.ses against "plutocracy"--the subtle and corrupting control of public affairs by the possessors of great fortunes; they thought that they saw arrayed against them the forces of wealth and the corporations, seeking to enslave them. The conservative Democrats and the gold Republicans saw in their opponents an organized attempt to carry out a program of dishonesty and socialism. The one side believed that the creditor cla.s.s desired to scale debts upward; the other, that the debtor cla.s.s wished to scale them down. The radicals believed that the Supreme Court was in the control of the wealthy; the conservatives, that their opponents sought to a.s.sail the highest tribunal in the land.

The peculiar circ.u.mstances preceding the year 1896, however, focussed attention on the monetary standard rather than upon the other demands of the Populist-Democratic fusion.

Each candidate adopted a plan of campaign that was suited to his individual situation. Bryan was relatively unknown and he therefore decided to appeal directly to the people, where his powers as a speaker would have great effect. The usual "notification" meeting was held in Madison Square Garden, in New York City, so as to carry the cause into the heart of "the enemy's country." During the few months of the campaign the Democratic candidate travelled 18,000 miles, made 600 speeches and addressed nearly five million people. The effect was immediate. The forces of social unrest, hitherto silent in great measure, were becoming vocal and n.o.body could measure their extent.

McKinley had prophesied that thirty days after the Republican convention nothing would be heard about the currency. When the thirty days had pa.s.sed, on the contrary, scarcely anything was heard except that very question. Whatever his personal wishes, McKinley must meet the problem face to face, and in alarm, Hanna and the Republican campaign leaders put forth unparalleled efforts to save the party from defeat.

The share of McKinley in these efforts was a novel one. Instead of going upon the stump, he remained at his home in Canton, Ohio. A constant stream of visiting delegations of supporters from all points of the compa.s.s came to hear him speak from his front porch. Some of the delegations came spontaneously; the visits of others were prearranged; but in all cases the speeches delivered were looked over beforehand with great care. The candidate memorized or read his own remarks and carefully revised those which the spokesman of the visitors planned to offer. In this way, any such untoward incident as the Burchard affair was avoided and the accounts of the front-porch speeches which went out through the press contained nothing which would injure the chances for success. The effectiveness of the plan was attested on all sides.

In addition, extraordinary attempts were put forth to instruct the people on various aspects of the currency question. A small army was organized to distribute literature and address rallies; 120,000,000 doc.u.ments were distributed from the Chicago and New York headquarters; newspapers were supplied with especially prepared matter; posters and b.u.t.tons were scattered by the carload. At the dinner-table, on the street corner, in the railroad train, in store, office and shop, the people gave themselves over to a heated discussion of the merits of gold and silver as currency and to the feasibility of free coinage at a ratio of 16 to 1. The amount of money which these efforts required was unusually large. Business men and banking inst.i.tutions, especially in New York, contributed liberally. The Standard Oil Company gave $250,000; large life insurance companies helped freely, although the fact was well concealed at the time. Business men were fearful that Bryan's election would mean a great shrinkage in the value of their properties. Many feared that the Democrats would a.s.sail the Supreme Court and that their leader would surround himself with advisors of a reckless and revolutionary character. Funds therefore poured into the Republican war-chest to an amount estimated at three and a half million dollars.

Before the close of the campaign a feeling akin to terror swept over the East; contracts were made contingent upon the election of McKinley; employees were paid on the Sat.u.r.day night before election day and notified that they need not return to work in the event of Democratic success. Although caution and good manners characterized the utterances of the two candidates, their supporters were hardly so restrained. The following, for example, is typical of the editorial utterances of the New York _Tribune_:

Let us begin with the Ten Commandments. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy G.o.d in vain." The Bryan campaign from beginning to end has been marked with such a flood of blasphemy, of taking G.o.d's name in vain, as this country, at least, has never known before. "Thou shalt not steal." The very foundation of the Bryan platform is wholesale theft. "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

In what day have Bryan and his followers failed to utter lies, libels and forgeries? "Thou shalt not covet." Why, almost every appeal made by Bryan, or for him, has been addressed directly to the covetousness, the envy, and all the unhallowed pa.s.sions of human nature. A vote for Bryan is a vote for the abrogation of those four Commandments.

At the close of the campaign _The Nation_ sagely observed, "Probably no man in civil life has succeeded in inspiring so much terror, without taking life, as Bryan."

The result of the election was decisive. McKinley and a Republican House of Representatives were elected, and the choice of a Republican Senate a.s.sured. The successful candidate received seven million votes--a half million more than his compet.i.tor. All the more densely populated states, together with the large cities--where the greatest acc.u.mulations of capital had taken place--were carried by the Republicans. Not a state north of the Potomac-Ohio line and east of the Mississippi was Democratic, and even Kentucky, by a narrow margin, and West Virginia crowded their way into the Republican column. On the other hand Bryan's hold on the South and West was almost equally strong. Never before had any presidential candidate received so great a vote and not for twenty years did a Democratic candidate surpa.s.s it.

Moreover, although the Democratic vote on the Atlantic seaboard was less than that received by Cleveland in 1892, Bryan's support in the Middle West showed considerable gains over the earlier year, while Kansas, Nebraska and all the mining states except California were carried by the silver cause. On the whole the election seemed to indicate that the voters of the country, after unusual study of the issues of the campaign, clearly distrusted the free-silver program, but that cla.s.s and sectional discontent had reached large proportions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Presidential Election of 1896--the shaded states gave Bryan pluralities]

The political results of the election of 1896 were important. It definitely fixed the att.i.tude of the Republican party on the currency question; it gave the party control of the executive chair and of Congress at an important time; and it ensured the domination of the propertied cla.s.ses and the _laissez faire_ philosophy in the party organization. On the other hand, the Democratic party had incurred the suspicion and hostility of the East, with hardly a compensating increase of strength in the West; its principles had become radical for that day and had abruptly changed from those of previous years; its membership included more of the discontented cla.s.ses than before; and its leadership had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hands of an experienced and conservative leader and placed in the care of an untried radical. It remained to be seen whether the victors would attempt to study and meet the complaints of the farmer and the wage earner; whether the new Republican leaders would be able to preserve the _laissez faire_ att.i.tude toward the railroads and the corporations; and whether the forces of dissent represented in Populism and radical Democracy had received a death blow or only a rebuff.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Peck contains one of the most illuminating accounts of the rising in the West, together with the campaign of 1896. H. Croly, _Marcus A.

Hanna_ (1912), is one of the few critical biographies of leaders who have lived since the Civil War. W.J. Bryan, _The First Battle_ (1897), is indispensable; C.S. Olcott, _William McKinley_ (2 vols., 1916), is uncritical and eulogistic, but makes important material available; C.A.

Beard, _Contemporary American History_ (1914), contains a good chapter; W.H. Harvey, _Coin's Financial School_ (1894), is mentioned in the text; Carl Becker's clever essay in _Turner Essays in American History_ (1910), throws light on Kansas psychology; S.J. Buck, _Agrarian Crusade_ (1920), is excellent. Consult also D.R. Dewey, _National Problems_ (1907); J.A. Woodburn, _Political Parties and Party Problems_ (1914); _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, X, 269; and F.E. Haynes, _Third Party Movements_ (1916). The files of _The Nation_, and the New York _Tribune_ and _Sun_ well portray eastern opinion. The references to the rise of the populist movement under Chap. XII are also of service.

[1] I have drawn at this point upon Peck, _Twenty Years of the Republic_, 453-456.

[2] Peck, 451-453.

[3] For brief accounts of Tillman, see Leupp, _National Miniatures_, 117; N.Y. _Times_, July 4, 1918; N.Y. _Evening Post_, July 3, 1918.

[4] Cf. Whitlock, _Forty Years of It_, 64 ff.; Altgeld, _Live Questions_ and _The Cost of Something for Nothing_.

[5] In connection with the following pages, consult Croly, _Marcus A.

Hanna_, one of the few satisfactory biographies of this period.

[6] As finally adopted, the gold plank a.s.serted: "We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be preserved. All our silver and paper currency must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor all measures designed to maintain inviolably the obligations of the United States and all our money, whether coin or paper, at the present standard, the standard of the most enlightened nations of the earth." Several leaders claimed to have been the real author of the gold plank. It seems more nearly true that many men came to the convention prepared to insist on a definite statement and that each thought himself the originator of the party policy.

CHAPTER XVII

REPUBLICAN DOMINATION AND WAR WITH SPAIN

The ceremonies attendant upon the inauguration of William McKinley on March 4, 1897, were typical of the care-taking generalship of Mark Hanna. The details of policing the crowds had been foreseen and attended to; the usual military review was effectively carried out to the last particular; "the Republican party was coming back to power as the party of organization, of discipline, of unquestioning obedience to leadership."[1]

The political capacity, the characteristics and the philosophy of the new President were sufficiently representative of the forces which were to control American affairs for the next few years to make them matters of some interest. McKinley was a traditional politician in the better sense of the word. As an executive he was patient, calm, modest, wary.

Ordinarily he committed himself to a project only after long consideration, and with careful propriety he avoided entangling political bargains. His engaging personality, his consummate tact and his thorough knowledge of the temper and traditions of Congress enabled him to lead that body, where Cleveland failed to drive it. As a speaker he seldom rose above an ordinary plane, but he was simple and sincere.

His messages to Congress breathed an atmosphere of serenity and of deferential reliance upon the wise and judicious action of the legislative branch. Their smug and genial tone formed a sharp contrast with his predecessor's anxious demands for multifarious reforms; while Cleveland inveighed against narrow partisanship and selfish aims, McKinley benignantly observed: "The public questions which now most engross us are lifted far above either partisanship, prejudice, or former sectional differences."

The political philosophy of McKinley typified that of his party. The possibilities which he saw in protective tariffs, which occupied the foremost position among his principles, were well set forth in his message to Congress on March 15, 1897. Additional duties should be levied on foreign importation, he a.s.serted,

to preserve the home market, so far as possible, to our own producers; to revive and increase manufactures; to relieve and encourage agriculture; to increase our domestic and foreign commerce; to aid and develop mining and building; and to render to labor in every field of useful occupation the liberal wages and adequate rewards to which skill and industry are justly ent.i.tled.

Like most American presidents, McKinley was a peace-lover, pleasantly disposed toward the arbitration of international difficulties and prepared to welcome any attempt to further that method of preserving the peace of the world. His conception of the presidential office differed somewhat sharply at several points from that of his predecessor. Like Cleveland he looked upon himself as peculiarly the representative of the people, but he was far less likely either to lead public opinion or to attempt to hasten the people to adopt a position which he had himself taken. This fact lay at the bottom of the complaints of his critics that he always had his "ear to the ground" in order that he might be prepared to go with the majority. On the other hand, although he was aware of const.i.tutional limitation upon the functions of the executive, he was not so continually hampered by the strict constructionist view of the powers of the federal government as Cleveland had been. McKinley's att.i.tude toward Congress was far more sagacious than Cleveland's. He distributed the usual patronage with skill; he approached Congressmen individually with the utmost tact; he appointed them to serve on commissions and boards of arbitration, and later, when matters upon which the commissions had been engaged came before Congress in the form of treaties or legislation, these men found themselves in a position to lead in the adoption of the principles which the President desired. All this indicated an ability to "touch elbows" with Congress that has rarely been exceeded. When coupled with the organizing power of Hanna, the harmonizing sagacity of the President soon brought about a notable degree of party solidarity. As a political organization, the Republican party reached a climax.

McKinley was hardly an idealist, and distinctly not a reformer.

Although sensitive to pressure from the reform element, he was not ahead of ordinary public opinion on matters of economic and political betterment. Leaders in federal railroad regulation found the President cold toward projects to strengthen the Interstate Commerce law; the Sherman Anti-trust Act was scarcely enforced at all during McKinley's administration, and the parts of his messages which relate to the regulation of industry are vague and lacking in purpose. One searches these doc.u.ments in vain for any indication that the Republican leader had either vigorous sympathy with the economic and social unrest which had made the year 1896 so momentous or even any thorough understanding of it. Even if he had possessed both sympathy and understanding, however, it is doubtful whether he could have made real progress in the direction of economic legislation and the enforcement of the acts regulating railroads and industry, in view of his long-continued and close affiliation with business leaders of the Mark Hanna type and his deep obligation to them at the time of his financial embarra.s.sments in 1893.

McKinley's cabinet was composed of men whose advanced age and conservative characteristics indicated that his advisers would commend themselves to the business world and would instinctively avoid all those radical proposals that were coming to be known as "Bryanism." The dean of the cabinet in age and experience as well as in reputation and ability was John Sherman, who was now almost seventy-four years of age and had been occupying a position of dignity and honor in the Senate.

Two reasons have been given for his appointment to the post of Secretary of State. In the first place, important diplomatic affairs were on hand, in the settlement of which his long experience as a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations would be of obvious advantage. The second reason was the ambition of Hanna to enter the Senate. Since Sherman and Hanna were both from Ohio, it was possible to call the former to the cabinet and rely upon the Governor of the state to appoint the latter to the Senate. The propriety of this course of action depended somewhat on the question of Sherman's physical condition. Rumor declared that he was suffering from mental decay, due to his age, but McKinley believed the rumor to be baseless, summoned him to the cabinet, and Hanna was subsequently appointed to the Senate.

When Sherman took up the duties of his office it appeared that the rumor had been all too true, and a serious lapse of memory on his part in a diplomatic matter forced his immediate replacement by William R.

Day. Somewhat more than a year later Day retired and John Hay a.s.sumed the position. Many critics have a.s.serted that McKinley was aware of the precise condition of Sherman and that he made the choice despite this knowledge, but it now seems likely that he was guilty only of bad judgment and carelessness in failing to inform himself about Sherman's infirmities. Another error of judgment was made in the choice of Russell A. Alger as Secretary of War. Alger failed to convince popular opinion that he was an effective officer and he resigned in 1899. As in the case of Sherman, McKinley then somewhat retrieved his mistake by appointing a successor of undoubted ability, in the person of Elihu Root.[2] It thus came about that the political and economic theories which had been characteristic of the leaders of both parties during the seventies and eighties, but more particularly of the Republican party, were again in the ascendancy. The President and his cabinet were uniformly men who had grown up during the heyday of _laissez faire_, and Hanna, who would inevitably be regarded as the mouthpiece of the administration in the Senate, was the embodiment of that philosophy.

McKinley's experience with the distribution of the offices emphasized the progress that had been made since civil service reform had been inaugurated. One of the steps which President Cleveland had taken during his last administration, it will be remembered, was to increase the number of positions under control of the Civil Service Commission.

The immediate result, of course, was to increase the demand for places in the uncla.s.sified service. John Hay picturesquely described the situation in the State Department a few years later:

All other branches of the Civil Service are so rigidly provided for that the foreign service is like the topmost rock which you sometimes see in old pictures of the Deluge. The pressure for a place in it is almost indescribable.

Both in his inaugural address and in his message to Congress on December 6, 1897, McKinley expressed his approval of the prevailing system, but suggested the possibility of exempting some positions then in the cla.s.sified service. President Cleveland had, indeed, admitted to the Civil Service Commission that a few modifications might be necessary. The Senate promptly ordered an investigation and discovered 10,000 places which it believed could be withdrawn, but because of other events further action was delayed. In 1899 the President returned to the subject and promulgated an order authorizing the withdrawal of certain positions from compet.i.tive examination and the transfer of others from the Commission to the Secretary of War--a total of somewhat less than 5,000 changes.[3] It appeared, in view of the circ.u.mstances under which the change had occurred, that a retrograde step had been taken, and McKinley received the condemnation of the reformers.

The first legislation undertaken by the administration was that relating to the tariff. The election of 1896, to be sure, had been fought out on the silver issue, but it was not deemed feasible to proceed at once to legislation on the subject, because of the strong silver contingent within the party. Several other considerations combined to draw attention away from the currency question and toward the tariff. The Wilson-Gorman Act of 1894 had been pa.s.sed under circ.u.mstances that had caused the Democratic President himself to express his shame and disappointment; the period of industrial depression following the panic of 1893 had been attributed so widely to Democratic tariff legislation that a Republican tariff act could be hailed as a harbinger of prosperity; and the annual deficit which had continued since 1893 indicated a genuine need of greater revenue, if the current scale of expenditures was to be continued. The President and the party leaders in Congress were men who were prominently identified with the protective system, and it was not likely that the business interests which profited from protection, which believed in its beneficent operation, and which had contributed generously to the Republican war-chest would remain inactive in the presence of an opportunity to revise the tariff.