The United States Since The Civil War by Charles Ramsdell Lingley

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A minority of the platform committee now presented the opposing point
of view. It objected to many of the planks; complained that some were
ill-considered, others revolutionary; and offered two amendments,
one advocating the gold standard, the other expressing commendation
of Cleveland's administration. The contest was then on. Tillman
excoriated Cleveland and declared that the East held the West and
South in economic bondage; Hill denounced the currency, income tax and
Supreme Court planks as furiously as any Republican could have wished.
The currency plank, he thought, was unwise, that on the income tax
unnecessary, that on the Court assailed the supreme tribunal, and the
entire program was "revolutionary."

As yet, nobody had quite expressed the feelings of the convention.
Tillman was too crude; Hill had no remedy for long-standing ills. At
this juncture William J. Bryan stepped upon the platform. He was a
young man--only thirty-six years of age--and known but slightly as a
representative from Nebraska who possessed many of the arts and
abilities of an orator. Bryan began with a modest and tactful
declaration that his opposition to the gold wing of the party was
based solely on principles and not at all on personalities. The
convention had met, he insisted, not to debate but to register a
judgment already rendered by the people. Old leaders had been cast
aside because they had refused to express the desires of those whom
they aspired to lead. Briefly he outlined the reply of the radicals
to the objections made by Hill and the gold wing to the proposed
platform. The conservatives, Bryan declared, had complained that
free silver coinage would disturb business:

We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man
too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is
as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country
town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great
metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a
business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth
in the morning and toils all day--who begins in the spring and toils
all summer--and who by the application of brain and muscle to the
natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a
business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets
upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into
the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring
forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into
the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial
magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come
to speak for this broader class of business men.

The time was at hand, Bryan insisted, when the currency issue must be
squarely met:

We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have
entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have
begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no
longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them.

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 constitutional, 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 masses 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
masses 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 grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country....

Having behind us the producing masses 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 class and
sectional hatreds would enter largely into the contest. The Populists
and the radical Democrats felt that they were fighting the battle of
the masses 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 class desired to scale debts upward; the other, that
the debtor class 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 assail the highest tribunal in the land.
The peculiar circumstances 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 nobody 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 passed, 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 compass 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
documents were distributed from the Chicago and New York headquarters;
newspapers were supplied with especially prepared matter; posters and
buttons 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 institutions, 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 assail 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 Saturday 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 God in vain." The Bryan campaign from beginning
to end has been marked with such a flood of blasphemy, of taking
God'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 passions 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 assured. The successful candidate received seven million
votes--a half million more than his competitor. All the more densely
populated states, together with the large cities--where the greatest
accumulations 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 surpass 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 class and sectional discontent had reached large proportions.

[Illustration:
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 attitude 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 classes 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 classes than before; and
its leadership had been snatched 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_
attitude 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 asserted: "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 asserted,

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
entitled.

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 constitutional 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 attitude 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 documents 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 embarrassments 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 assumed
the position. Many critics have asserted 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.