The United States Since The Civil War by Charles Ramsdell Lingley

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After he had finished with the southern problem, Hayes confided to his
diary, "Now for civil service reform!" And for appointments in general
he recorded several principles: no sweeping changes; recommendations by
congressmen to be investigated--not merely accepted; and no relatives of
himself or his wife to be appointed, however good their qualifications
might be. In the meanwhile Secretary Schurz set to work to put the
Department of the Interior on a merit basis. The principles that Hayes
set up for himself and the steps that Schurz took were in conformity
with the party platform of 1876 and with the President's inaugural
address; nevertheless the party leaders were displeased, if not
surprised, for platform promises were lightly regarded and inaugural
addresses were sometimes not to be taken very seriously.

The earliest acts of Hayes were not such as to facilitate the further
progress of reform. The appointment of the members of the Louisiana
Returning Board to federal offices gave color to charges that they were
receiving their reward for assisting the President into his position.
Furthermore, on June 22, 1877, he issued an executive order forbidding
any United States officials to take part in the management of political
organizations and declaring that political assessments on federal
officers would not be allowed. So drastic an order brought amazement to
the party leaders, who had not dreamed of anything so radical. Perhaps
the order was too sudden and sweeping, considering the practices of the
time. At any rate it was not enforced and the President seemed to have
set a standard to which he had not the courage to adhere. Nevertheless,
reform principles were successfully tested in the New York Post Office
by Thomas L. James, a vigorous exponent of the merit system who had been
appointed by President Grant and was now re-appointed and upheld by
President Hayes.

But the great battle for the new idea came in connection with the New
York Custom House. Through the port of New York came two-thirds to
three-fourths of the goods which were imported into this country, and
the necessity for a businesslike conduct of the custom house seemed
obvious. Yet there had for some time been complaints concerning the
service, and Sherman appointed commissions, with the approval of the
President, to investigate conditions in New York and elsewhere. The
commission which studied the situation in New York reported that
one-fifth of the persons employed there were superfluous, that
inefficiency and neglect of duty were common, and that the positions at
the disposal of the collector had for years been used for the reward of
party activity. The commission recommended sweeping changes which
Secretary Sherman and President Hayes approved. It then appeared that
the New York officials were not favorable to the President's reform
plans. Furthermore, Chester A. Arthur, the collector of the port, was a
close friend of Roscoe Conkling, the head of the state machine; and A.B.
Cornell, the naval officer, was chairman of the state and national
Republican committees; It was evident that an attempt to change
conditions in New York would precipitate a test of strength between the
administration and the New York organization.

As Arthur and Cornell would not further the desired reforms and would
not resign, the President removed them. When he nominated their
successors, however, the Senate, led by Conkling, refused to add its
confirmation and there the matter rested for some months. Eventually the
President's nominations were confirmed, an outcome which seems to have
been brought about in part at least by letters from. Secretary Sherman
to personal friends in the Senate in which he urgently pressed the case
of the administration. The President's victory emphasized the
disagreement of the powerful state organization with the reform idea,
and while the reformers rejoiced that the warfare had been carried into
the enemy's country, newspaper opinion varied between the view that the
President was playing politics and that he was actuated by the highest
motives only. Agitation for reform, meanwhile, continued to increase.
The literary men among the reformers, aided by scores of lesser lights,
conducted a campaign of education; the New York Civil Service Reform
Association, founded in 1877, and the National Civil Service Reform
League, in 1881, gave evidence of an effort towards the organization of
reform sentiment.

While the attention of the President and the politicians was directed
toward the reform of the civil service, there occurred an event for
which none of them was prepared. Early in the summer of 1877 train hands
on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad struck because of a reduction in
wages, the fourth cut that they had suffered in seven years. The strike
spread with the speed of a prairie fire over most of the northern roads
between New England and the Mississippi. At the height of the
controversy at least 100,000 strikers and six or seven thousand miles of
railway were involved, while at several points especially Martinsburg,
West Virginia, and Pittsburg, rioting and destruction took place. A
considerable number of people were killed or wounded, and the loss of
property in Pittsburg alone was estimated at five to ten millions of
dollars. Eventually, when the state militia failed to check the
disorder, the President was called upon for federal troops and these
proved effectual. That even so thoughtful and conscientious a man as
Hayes was far from understanding the meaning of the strike was indicated
in his message to Congress in which he merely expressed his
gratification that the troops had been able to repress the disorder.
Repression, that is to say, was the one resource that occurred to the
mind of the chief executive and to the majority of the men of his day.
That repression alone could not remedy evils permanently, that salutary
force ought to be immediately supplemented by a study of the rights and
wrongs of the two sides and by a dispassionate correction of
abuses,--all this did not even remotely occur to the thoughts of the
political leaders of the time.

The breach in the ranks of the Republicans which was made by the events
of the early days of the Hayes administration was closed in the face of
an attack by the common enemy--the Democrats. The latter, being in
control of the House, appointed the "Potter Committee" to investigate
the title of Hayes to the Presidency, hoping to discredit him and
thereby turn the tables in the election of 1880. The committee examined
witnesses and reported, the Democrats asserting that Tilden had been
elected and the Republicans that Hayes had been. The Republican Senate,
meanwhile, had prepared a counterblast. By legal proceedings a committee
had obtained from the Western Union Telegraph Company over thirty
thousand of the telegrams sent by both parties during the campaign. The
Republicans declared that the "cipher despatches" among these messages
showed that the Democrats had offered a substantial bribe for the vote
of an Oregon Republican elector. Before the dispatches were returned to
the telegraph company, somebody took the precaution to destroy those
that concerned Republican campaign methods and to retain those relating
to the Democrats. The latter were published by the New York _Tribune_
and revealed attempts to bribe the Florida and South Carolina Returning
Boards. Most of them had been sent by Tilden's nephew or received by
him, so that the corrupt trail seemed to lead straight to the candidate
himself, but the evidence was inconclusive. The Potter Committee then
investigated the telegrams, together with a great number of witnesses,
and another partisan report resulted. It thus appeared that both pot and
kettle were black and there the matter rested. The Democrats had done
themselves no good and had done the Republicans no harm.[5]

The Democrats also attacked the election laws, under which federal
officials supervised elections, and federal judges and marshals had
jurisdiction over cases concerning the suffrage. Under these laws, also,
troops could be used to enforce the judgments of the Courts. There is no
doubt that intimidation, unfair practices and bribery were all too
common in the North as well as in the South. The lack of official
ballots and secret voting made abuses inevitable. In New York,
Cincinnati and other northern cities, and on a smaller scale in the
rural districts, abuses of one sort or another were normal
accompaniments of elections. Intimidation in the South was notorious and
not denied. The existing election laws gave the dominant party an
opportunity to appoint large numbers of deputy-marshals--largely party
workers, of course-paying them from the national treasury and so
solidifying the party organization. In the election of 1876 about
$275,000 had been spent in this way. Some of the federal supervisors had
been extremely energetic--so much so that in one case in Louisiana their
registration lists showed 8,000 more colored voters in 1876 than were
discovered by the census enumerators four years later.

If the Republicans saw involved in the laws both a principle and a party
weapon, the Democrats saw both a principle and an opportunity. They
attached a "rider" to an army appropriation bill, which made it unlawful
to use any part of the army for any other than the purposes expressly
authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress. Since the
Constitution allowed the use of troops only to "execute the laws of the
Union, to suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions," the new law would
prevent the employment of armed forces for civil purposes at the polling
places. The President was compelled to yield to save the appropriation
bill.

In the next Congress the Democrats controlled both House and Senate and
they advanced to the attack on the remainder of the election laws.
Attempts were made to prevent the appointment of special deputy-marshals
by forbidding the payment of any compensation to them or to the regular
marshals when used in elections. Each time that Congress passed such a
law the President vetoed it, even though special sessions had to be
called to make up for lost time. He saw in the use of the rider a
dangerous assertion of coercive power on the part of Congress. By means
of it, Congress was withholding funds essential for military and civil
purposes until the President should assent to legislation totally
unconnected with the appropriations. He felt himself being threatened
and driven by a hostile legislature. For the President to give way
before such constraint would be to lose the veto power and to destroy
the independence of the executive as a branch of the government. The
Democrats were unable to muster force enough to overrule the veto, and
here the matter rested while other forces, which have already been
described, were sapping the strength of the election laws. On the whole,
the result was probably to bring the Republican factions together and so
to strengthen the party for the election of 1880. The Democrats, on the
other hand, probably lost ground.

In the meanwhile a difficult and technical problem--the monetary
question--was forcing itself upon the attention of Congress and of the
country. The rapid development of the economic life of the United States
was demanding an increased volume of currency with which to perform the
multitude of exchanges which constantly take place in the life of an
industrial people. Unless the volume of the currency expanded
proportionately with the increase of business, or there was a
corresponding increase in the use of bank checks, the demand for money
would cause its value to go up--that is, prices to go down. If the
volume expanded more rapidly than was necessitated by business, the
value of money would fall and prices would go up. A change in the price
level in either direction, as has been seen, would harm important groups
of people. The exact amount, however, by which the volume should be
increased was not easy to determine. Furthermore, assuming that both
gold and silver should be coined, what amount of each would constitute
the most desirable combination? What ought to be the weight of the
coins? If paper currency was to supplement the precious metals, what
amount of it should be in circulation? These are difficult questions
under any circumstances. They did not become less so when answered by a
bulky and uninformed Congress acting under the influence of definite
personal, sectional and property interests.

Several facts tended to restrict the kind of money whose volume could be
greatly increased. It was not advisable to expand the greenbacks because
legislation had already limited their amount and because such action
would unfavorably affect the approaching resumption of specie payments.
The quantity of national bank notes, another common form of paper money,
was somewhat rigidly determined by the amount of federal bonds
outstanding, for the national bank notes were issued upon the federal
bonds as security. Moreover, the bonds were being rapidly paid off
during the seventies and it was, therefore, impossible to expect any
increase of the currency from this source. Normally the supply of gold
available for coinage did not vary greatly from year to year and
certainly did not respond with exactness to the demand of industry for a
greater or smaller volume of circulating medium. It seemed to remain for
silver to supply any needed increase.

But silver was not in common use except as a subsidiary coin. For many
years the value of the bullion necessary for coining a silver dollar had
been greater than the value of the coin. Nobody therefore brought his
silver to the mint but sold it instead in the commercial markets. Indeed
so insignificant was the amount of silver usually coined into dollars
that an act of 1873 systematizing the coinage laws had omitted the
silver dollar completely from the list of coins. The omission was later
referred to by the friends of silver currency as the "Crime of 1873." At
the same time a remarkable coincidence was providing the motive power
for the demand that silver be more largely used as currency. Early in
the seventies Germany and the Latin Monetary Union, (France,
Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Greece), had reduced the amount of their
silver coinage, thus throwing a large supply of bullion on the market.
Simultaneously, enlarged supplies of silver were being found in western
United States. A Nevada mine, for example, which had produced six
hundred and forty-five thousand dollars' worth of ore in 1873 had turned
out nearly twenty-five times that amount two years later. Naturally the
market price of silver fell and the mine owners began to seek an outlet
for their product. Thus the people who were convinced that the volume of
the currency was insufficient for the industrial demands of the nation
received a new and powerful reenforcement from the producers of silver
ore. There arose what the New York _Tribune_ referred to as "The Cloud
in the West."

Inevitably the cloud in the West threw its shadow into Congress where
the demand was insistent that the government "do something for silver."
A commission had been appointed in 1876 to study the currency problem
and make recommendations. When the report was made it appeared that the
opinions of the members were so divergent that little was gained from
the investigation. While the commission was deliberating, Richard P.
Bland of Missouri introduced a bill providing for the free and unlimited
coinage of silver. Under its provisions the owner of silver bullion
could present any quantity of his commodity to the government to be
coined under the conditions which controlled the coinage of gold. The
House responded readily to Bland's proposal. In the Senate, under the
leadership of William B. Allison, the free and unlimited feature of the
bill was dropped and a provision adopted limiting the purchase of
bullion to an amount not greater than four million dollars' worth per
month and not less than two million dollars' worth. The bullion so
obtained was to be coined into silver dollars, which were to be legal
tender for all debts public and private. Bland was ready to accept the
compromise because he hoped to be able to increase the use of silver by
subsequent legislation. "If we cannot do that," he said, "I am in favor
of issuing paper money enough to stuff down the bond-holders until they
are sick." The remark was typical of the sectional and class hatreds and
misunderstandings which this debate aroused, and of the maze of
ignorance in which both sides were groping. To the silver faction, their
opponents were "mendacious hirelings" and "Gilded Shylocks." God, in His
infinite wisdom had imbedded silver in the western mountains for a
beneficent purpose. "The country," said one speaker, "is in an agony of
business distress and looks for some relief by a gradual increase of the
currency." On the other hand, the opponents of silver scorned the
"delusion" of a "clipped" coin and the dishonest proposition to make
ninety cents' worth of silver pass as a dollar. The "storm-driven,
buffeted, and scarred" ship of industrial peace, an easterner declared,
"deeply laden with all precious and golden treasure is sighted in the
offing!... shall we put out the lights?... Dare we remove the ship's
helm, leaving her crippled and helpless!"

Sherman believed that this limited amount of silver could be taken into
the currency system without difficulty, but President Hayes thought that
harm would result from making the silver dollar a legal tender when the
market value of the bullion in the coin was not equal in value to that
of the gold dollar. He therefore vetoed the bill on February 28, 1878.
He could not carry Congress with him, however, and the measure was
passed over the veto on the same day.

Party lines had disappeared during the debates over the passage of the
act. Eastern members of both houses and of both parties had been
opposed, with few exceptions, to the increased use of silver; the
westerners had been equally united in its favor. The East, the creditor
section and the holder of most of the Civil War bonds, had no desire to
try an experiment with the currency which would, in their opinion,
reduce the purchasing power of their income. The debtor West looked with
disfavor upon an increase in the real amount of their debts which was
brought about by an inadequate supply of currency. Since prices
continued to decline they believed that the remedy was a greater
quantity of money. Evidently the greenback controversy was reviving in a
new garb.

The approach of the resumption of specie payments which had been set, it
will be remembered, for January 1, 1879, increased the burden under
which the westerners and the debtor classes in general were working.
Favorable commercial conditions and Sherman's foresight, tact and
intelligence made it possible to overcome the various difficulties in
the way of accumulating a sufficient reserve of gold, and on December
31, 1878, the Treasury had on hand about $140,000,000 of the precious
metal, an amount nearly equal to forty per cent. of the paper in
circulation. Despite the desirability of resumption, the first effects
of preparations for it were harmful to considerable bodies of people. As
January 1 approached, the greenbacks, which had been circulating at a
depreciated value, rose nearer and nearer to par. Debts which had been
incurred when paper dollars were worth sixty cents in gold, had to be
paid in dollars worth eighty, ninety or a hundred cents, according to
the date when the debt fell due. Business men who were heavily in debt
and farmers whose property was mortgaged found their burden daily
growing in size.

Notwithstanding the steady advance of paper toward par value, Sherman
nervously awaited business hours on January 2, 1879, (since the first
fell on Sunday) to see whether there would be such a rush of holders of
paper who would wish gold that his slender stock would be wiped out. New
York, the financial center, was watched with especial anxiety. To
Sherman's surprise, only $135,000 of paper was presented for redemption
in gold; to his amazement and relief, $400,000 in gold was presented in
exchange for paper. Evidently, now that paper and metal were
interchangeable, people preferred the lighter and more convenient
medium. Favorable business conditions enabled the government to continue
specie payments; a huge grain crop in 1879, coupled with crop failures
in England, caused unprecedented exports of wheat, corn and other
products, and a corresponding importation of gold. The damage resulting
from the appreciation of paper was temporary in character; the public
credit was vastly benefited; and the greater amount of stability in the
value of paper proved invaluable to industry.

Happily Hayes's stormy political relations were balanced by comparative
quiet in foreign affairs. Only Mexico caused trouble, and that was of
negligible importance. A few raiders made sporadic excursions into
Texas, which necessitated an expedition for the punishment of the
marauders. General Ord was directed to cross the border if necessary,
but General Diaz, at the head of the Mexican government, concluded an
agreement for cooperation with the United States in the protection of
the boundary. The agreement was only partly successful, however, and on
several occasions troops crossed the Rio Grande and fought with bandits.

On the Pacific Coast, meanwhile, the Chinese question was becoming a
political issue. In earlier times the immigration of the Chinese had
been encouraged because of the need of a cheap labor supply when the
transcontinental railroads were being built. As the coast filled up,
however, with native population, and the demand for laborers fell off,
there arose numerous objections to the oriental. It was seen that since
he was willing to work for extremely low wages he could drive American
laborers out of their places. Labor leaders such as Dennis Kearney held
meetings on the "sand lots" in San Francisco and aroused anti-Chinese
feeling. Riots and violence, even, were not unknown.

Just before the inauguration of President Hayes a commission of inquiry
had visited the coast and examined many witnesses. The commission
reported that the resources of the Pacific states had been more rapidly
developed with coolie labor than they would otherwise have been, but
that the Chinese lived under filthy conditions, formed an inferior
foreign element and were, on the whole, undesirable. It recommended that
the executive take steps in the direction of a modification of the
existing treaty with China, for fear that the problem might spread
eastward with increasing immigration. The electioneering possibilities
of the subject had appealed to both parties and they had earnestly
demanded action in their platforms of 1876. Opinion was forming
throughout the country, aided by Bret Harte's famous lines:

Which I wish to remark
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar
Which the same I would rise to explain.

Action by Congress was hindered by the Burlingame treaty of 1868 with
China, which covered the subject of immigration in unmistakable
language. By its provisions citizens of China were to have the same
rights of travel and residence in America as the subjects of the most
favored nation. Reciprocally, China was to grant equal privileges to
citizens of the United States. The process of modifying a treaty through
the ordinary diplomatic channels was so slow that Congress sought to
avoid delay by passing a law forbidding shipmasters to bring in more
than fifteen Chinese at one time, and calling upon the President to
notify China that the terms of the Burlingame treaty, in so far as they
related to immigration, would not hold after July 1, 1879, when the
proposed legislation would take effect. President Hayes sympathized with
the purpose of the bill but felt obliged to veto it because of the
Burlingame treaty. The veto message recalled that the treaty had been of
American seeking and that its ratification had been applauded all over
the country. The abrogation of part of the agreement would be equivalent
to abrogation of the whole, leaving American citizens in China without
adequate treaty protection. Furthermore Hayes felt that treaties could
not rightfully be violated by legislation, but advocated other measures
for the relief of the people of the Pacific Coast. He thereupon sent to
China a commission, headed by James B. Angell of Michigan, which
succeeded in liberally modifying the existing treaty. Under the new
arrangement the United States might "regulate, limit, or suspend" the
immigration of Chinese laborers; and as the treaty was promptly
ratified, it redounded somewhat to the credit of the Republicans in the
election of 1880.

The administration of Hayes was, on the whole, an admirable one. The
problems which he faced were varied and difficult, but most of them were
met sensibly and with success. To be sure, he did not grasp the social
and economic forces behind the monetary agitation; nor did he have the
insight and originality necessary for attacking the problem of industrial
unrest as it appeared in the strike of 1877. But neither did his
associates, nor his successors in the presidency for many years to
come. On the other hand, the ethical standards of the administration
were high and the atmosphere of the White House sane and wholesome. The
home life of the President was exceptionally attractive, for Mrs. Hayes
was a woman of unusual charm and social capacity. The attitude of Hayes
on the southern question and on civil service reform was courageous and
progressive. And most of all, his ideas on public questions were stated
with unmistakable clearness in a day when old issues were sinking into
the background and both parties were reluctant to define their position
on the new ones.