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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK * BOSTON * CHICAGO * DALLAS ATLANTA * SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., L
COPYRIGHT, 1914,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1914.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.-- Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
IN teaching American government and politics, I constantly meet large
numbers of students who have no knowledge of the most elementary facts of American history
since the Civil War. When they are taken to task for their neglect, they reply that there
is no textbook dealing with the period, and that the smaller histories are sadly deficient
in their treatment of our age.
It is to supply the student and general reader with a handy guide to contemporary history that I have undertaken this volume. I have made no attempt to present an "artistically balanced" account of the last thirty-five years, but have sought rather to furnish a background for the leading issues of current politics and to enlist the interest of the student in the history of the most wonderful period in American development. The book is necessarily somewhat "impressionistic" and in part it is based upon materials which have not been adequately sifted and evaluated. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to be accurate and fair, and at the same time to invite on the part of the student some of that free play of the mind which Matthew Arnold has shown to be so helpful in literary criticism.
Although the volume has been designed, in a way, as a textbook, I have thrown aside the
methods of the almanac and chronicle, and, at the risk of displeasing the reader who
expects a little about everything (including the Sioux war and the San Francisco
earthquake),
In the preparation of the book, I have made extensive use of the volumes by Professors Dunning, Sparks, Dewey, and Latané, in the American Nation Series, and I wish to acknowledge once for all my deep debt to them. My colleague, Mr. B. B. Kendrick, read all of the proofs and saved me from many an error. Professor R. L. Schuyler gave me the benefit of his criticisms on part of the proof. To Dr. Louis A. Mayers, of the College of the City of New York, I am under special obligations for valuable suggestions as to arrangement and for drafting a large portion of Chapter III. The shortcomings of the book fall to me, but I shall be recompensed for my indiscretions, if this volume is speedily followed by a number of texts, large and small, dealing with American history since the Civil War. It is showing no disrespect to our ancestors to be as much interested in our age as they were in theirs; and the doctrine that we can know more about Andrew Jackson whom we have not seen than about Theodore Roosevelt whom we have seen is a pernicious psychological error.
CHARLES A. BEARD.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
November, 1913.
WHEN President Hayes was inaugurated on March 4, 1877, the
southern whites had almost shaken off the Republican rule which had been set up under
the protection of Federal soldiers at the close of the Civil War. In only two states,
Louisiana and South Carolina, were Republican governors nominally in power, and these
last "rulers of conquered provinces" had only a weak grip upon their offices, which
they could not have maintained for a moment without the aid of Union troops stationed
at their capitals. By secret societies, like the Ku Klux Klan, and by open
intimidation, the conservative whites had practically recovered from the negroes, whom
the Republicans had enfranchised, the political power which had been wrested from the
old ruling class at the close of the War. In this nullification of the Fifteenth
Amendment to the Federal Constitution and other measures designed to secure the
suffrage for the former bondmen, President Grant had acquiesced, and it was openly
rumored that Hayes would put an end to the military régime in Louisiana and South
Carolina, leaving the southern people to fight out their own battles.
Nevertheless, the Republicans in the North were apparently loath to accept accomplished facts. In their platform of 1876, upon which Hayes was elected, they recalled with pride their achievement in saving the Union and purging the land of slavery ; they pledged themselves to pacify the South and protect the rights of all citizens there; they pronounced it to be a solemn obligation upon the Federal government to enforce the Civil War amendments and to secure "to every citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political, and public rights." Moreover, they charged the Democratic party with being "the same in character and spirit as when it sympathized with treason."
But this vehement declaration was only the death cry of the gladiators of the radical Republican school. Stevens and Sumner, who championed the claims of the negroes to full civil and political rights, were gone; and the new leaders, like Conkling and Blaine, although they still waxed eloquent over the wrongs of the freedmen, were more concerned about the forward swing of railway and capitalist enterprises in the North and West than they were about maintaining in the South the rule of a handful of white Republicans supported by negro voters. Only a few of the old-school Republicans who firmly believed in the doctrine of the "natural rights" of the negro, and the officeholders and speculators who were anxious to exploit the South really in their hearts supported a continuance of the military rule in "the conquered provinces."
Moreover, there were special circumstances which made it improbable that President
Hayes would permit
Whether there was any real "bargain" between Hayes and the Democratic managers
matters little, for the policy which he adopted was inevitable, sooner or later,
because there was no active political support even in the North for a contrary policy.
A few weeks after his inauguration Hayes sent a commission of eminent men to Louisiana
to investigate the claims of the rival governments there--for there were two
legislatures and two governors in that commonwealth contending for power. The
commission found that the Republican administration, headed by Governor Packard,
Having secured the abolition of direct Federal military interference with state administrations in the South, the Democrats turned to the abrogation of the Federal election laws that had been passed in 1870-1871, as a part of the regular reconstruction policy for protecting the negroes in the exercise of the suffrage. These election laws prescribed penalties for intimidation at the polls, provided for the appointment, by Federal circuit courts, of supervisors charged with the duty of scrutinizing the entire election process, and authorized the employment of United States marshals, deputies, and soldiers to support and protect the supervisors in the discharge of their duties and to keep the peace at the polls.
These laws, the Republican authors urged, were
At all events, the Democrats, finding themselves in a majority in the House of
Representatives in 1877, determined to secure the repeal of the "force laws," and in
their desperation they resorted to the practice of attaching their repeal measures to
appropriation bills in the hope of compelling President Hayes to sign them or tying up
the wheels of government by a stoppage in finances. Hayes was equal to the occasion,
and by a vigorous use of the veto power he defeated the direct assaults of the
Democrats on the election laws. At length, however, in June, 1878, he was compelled to
The effect of this achievement on the part of the Democrats was apparent in the succeeding congressional election, for they were able to carry all of the southern districts except four. This cannot be attributed, however, entirely to the suppression of the negro vote, for there was a general landslide in 1878 which gave the Democrats a substantial majority in both the House and the Senate. Inasmuch as a spirit of toleration was growing up in Congress, the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment excluding from Congress certain persons formerly connected with the Confederacy, was not strictly enforced, and several of the most prominent and active representatives of the old régime found their way into both houses. Under their vigorous leadership a two years' political war was waged between Congress and the President over the repeal of the force bills, but Hayes won the day, because the Democrats could not secure the requisite two-thirds vote to carry their measures against the presidential veto.
However, the Supreme Court had been undermining the "force laws" by nullifying
separate sections, although it upheld the general principle of v. Reese,
the Court, in 1875, declared void two sections of the law of 1870 "because they did
not strictly limit Federal jurisdiction for protection of the right to vote to cases
where the right was denied by a state," but extended it to denials
by private parties. In the same year in the case of United States v.
Cruikshank the Court gave another blow to Federal control, in the South. A number of
private citizens in Louisiana had waged war on the blacks at an election riot, and one
of them, Cruikshank, was charged with conspiracy to deprive negroes of rights which
they enjoyed under the protection of the United States. The Supreme Court, however,
held that the Federal government had no authority to protect the citizens of a state
against one another, but that such protection was, as always, a
duty of the state itself. Seven years later the Supreme Court, in the case of United
States v. Harris, declared null that part of the enforcement laws
which penalized conspiracies of two or more citizens to deprive another of his rights,
on the same ground as advanced in the Louisiana case.1
On the withdrawal of Federal troops and the open abandonment of the policy of
military coercion, the whites, seeing that the Federal courts were not inclined to
interfere, quickly completed the process of obtaining control over the machinery of
state government. That process had been begun shortly after the War, taking
These early stages in the process of disfranchisement were described by Senator
Tillman in his famous speech of February 26, 1900. "You stood up there and insisted
that we give these people a 'free vote and a fair count.' They had it for eight years,
as long as the bayonets stood there. . . We preferred to have a United States army
officer rather than a government of carpet baggers and thieves and scallywags and
scoundrels who had stolen everything in sight and mortgaged posterity; who had run
their felonious paws into the pockets of posterity by issuing bonds. When that
happened we took the government away. We stuffed the ballot boxes. We shot them. We
are not ashamed of it. With that system--force, tissue ballots, etc.--we got tired
ourselves. So we had a constitutional convention, and we eliminated, as I said, all of
the colored people whom we could under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments." The
experience of South Carolina was duplicated in Mississippi. "For a time," said the
Hon. Thomas Spight, of that state, in Congress, in 1904, "we
A peaceful method of disfranchising negroes and poor whites was the imposition of a poll tax on voters. Negroes seldom paid their taxes until the fight over prohibition commenced in the eighties and nineties. Then the liquor interests began to pay the negroes' poll taxes and by a generous distribution of their commodities were able to carry the day at the polls. Thereupon the prohibitionists determined to find some effective constitutional means of excluding the negroes from voting.
This last stage in the disfranchisement process--the disqualification of negroes by
ingenious constitutional and statutory provisions--was hastened by the rise during the
eighties and nineties of the radical or Populist party in the South, which evenly
balanced the Democratic party in many places and threatened for a time to disintegrate
the older organization. In this contest between the white factions a small number of
active negroes secured an extraordinary influence in holding the balance of power; and
both white parties sought to secure predominance by purchasing the venal negro vote
which was as large as, or perhaps larger than, the venal white vote in such northern
states as Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Indiana. The conservative wing of
Out of this condition of affairs came a series of constitutional conventions which devised all sorts of restrictions to exclude the negroes and large numbers of the "lower classes" from voting altogether, without directly violating the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution providing against disfranchisement on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The series of conventions opened in Mississippi in 1890, where the Populistic whites
were perhaps numerically fewest. At that time Mississippi was governed under the
constitution of 1868, which provided that no property or educational test should be
required of voters, at least not before 1885, and also stipulated that no amendment
should be made except by legislative proposal ratified by the voters. Notwithstanding
this provision, the legislature in February, 1890, called a convention to amend the
constitution "or enact a new constitution." This convention proceeded to "ordain and
establish" a new frame of government, without referring it to the voters for
ratification; and the courts of the state set judicial sanction on the procedure,
saying that popular ratification was not necessary. This constitution provides that
every elector shall, in addition to possessing other qualifications, "be able to read
any section of the constitution of this state; or he shall be able to understand the
same when read to
Five years later South Carolina followed the example of Mississippi, and by means of a state convention enacted a new constitution disfranchising negroes; and put it into force without submitting it to popular ratification.1 The next year (1896) the legislature of Louisiana called a convention empowered to frame a new constitution and to put it into effect without popular approval. This movement was opposed by the Populists, one of whom declared in the legislature that it was "a step in the direction of taking the government of this state out of the hands of the masses and putting it in the hands of the classes." In spite of the opposition, which was rather formidable, the convention was assembled, and ordained a new frame of government (1898) disfranchising negroes and many whites. The Hon. T. J. Symmes, addressing the convention at the close, frankly stated that their purpose was to establish the supremacy of the Democratic party as the white man's party.
Four principal devices are now employed in the The People's Law, pp. 301
ff. ; W. F. Dodd, Revision and Amendment of State
Constitutions.
The effect of these limitations on the colored vote has been to reduce it seriously
in the far South. If the negro has the amount of taxable property required by the
constitution, he is caught by the provision which requires him to explain a section of
the state constitution to the satisfaction of the white registering officers. The
meanest white, however, can usually get through the net with the aid of his
grandfather, or by showing his expertness in constitutional law. Mr. J. C. Rose has
published the election statistics for South Carolina and Mississippi;1 it appears that in those states there were,
in 1900, about 350,796 adult male negroes and that the total Republican vote in both
commonwealths in the national election of that year was only 5443. At a rough guess
perhaps 2000 votes of this number were cast by white men, and the conclusion must be
that about ninety-nine out of every hundred negroes failed The Political Science Review, November, 1906, p. 20.
The legal restrictions completed the work which had been begun by intimidation. Under the new constitution of 1890 in Mississippi, only 8615 negroes out of 147,000 of a voting age were registered. In four years, the number registered in Louisiana fell from 127,000 in 1896 to 5300 in 1900. This was the exact result which the advocates of white supremacy desired to attain, and in this they were warmly supported by emi- eminent Democrats in the North. "The white man in the South," said Mr. Bryan in a speech in New York, in 1908, "has disfranchised the negro in self-protection; and there is not a Republican in the North who would not have done the same thing under the same circumstances. The white men of the South are determined that the negro will and shall be disfranchised everywhere it is necessary to prevent the recurrence of the horrors of carpet bag rule."
Several attempts have been made to test the constitutionality of these laws in the
Supreme Court of the United States, but that tribunal has been able to avoid coming to
a direct decision on the merits of the particular measures--and with a convincing
display of legal reasoning. The Constitution of the United States simply states that
no citizen shall be deprived of the right to vote on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude, and that the representation of any state in Congress
shall be reduced in the proportion to which it deprives adult male citizens of the
franchise.
The whites in the South were even less willing to submit to anything approaching social equality with the negro than they were to accept political equality. Discriminations against the negro in schools, inns, theaters, churches, and other public places had been common in the North both before and after the Civil War, and had received judicial sanction; and it may well be imagined that the southern masters were in no mood, after the War, to be put on the same social plane as their former slaves, and the poor whites were naturally proud of their only possession--a white skin. Knowing full well that this temper prevailed in the South the radical Republicans in Congress had pushed through on March 1, 1875, a second Civil Rights Act designed to establish a certain social equality, so far as that could be done by law.
The spirit of this act was reflected in the preamble: "Whereas it is essential to just government, we recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political; and it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental principles into law." After this profession of faith, the act proceeds to declare that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other places of amusement, subject to limitations applied to all alike, regardless of race or color. The act further provided that in the selection of jurors no discrimination should be made on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude under a penalty of not more than $5,000. Jurisdiction over offenses was conferred upon the district and circuit courts of the United States, and heavy penalties were imposed upon those who violated the law. This measure was, of course, hotly resisted, and, in fact, nullified everywhere throughout the Union, north and south--except in some of the simple rural regions.
The validity of the act came before the Supreme Court for adjudication in the
celebrated Civil Rights Cases in 1883 and a part of the law was declared
unconstitutional in an opinion of the Court rendered by Mr. Justice Bradley. According
to his view, the Fourteenth Amendment did not authorize Congress to legislate
The question as to whether the equal enjoyment of the accommodations in inns,
conveyances, and places of amusement was an essential right of the citizen which no
state could abridge or interfere with, Justice Bradley declined to examine on the
ground that it was not necessary to the decision of the case. He did, however, inquire
into the proposition as to whether Congress, in enforcing the Thirteenth Amendment
abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, could secure the social equality
contemplated by the act, under the color of sweeping away all the badges and incidents
of slavery. And on this point he came to the conclusion that mere discriminations on
account of race or color could not be regarded as badges of slavery. "There were," he
added, "thousands of free colored people in this country before the abolition of
slavery, enjoying all of the essential
Clearly, there was no authority in either the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendment for the section of the Civil Rights Act relative to inns, conveyances, and places of amusement, at least so far as its operation in the several states was concerned. If, however, any state should see fit to make or authorize unlawful discriminations amenable to the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had the power to afford a remedy or the courts in enforcing the Amendment could give judicial relief. Thus, while the Justice did not definitely say that the elements of social equality provided in the Civil Rights Act were not guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, his line of reasoning and his language left little doubt as to what was the view of the Court.
Section four of the Civil Rights Act forbidding, under penalty, discrimination
against any person on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude in
the selection of jurors had been passed upon by the Supreme Court in the case of Ex parte Virginia, decided in 1879, in which the section was held to
be constitutional as providing not a code of municipal law for the regulation of
private rights, but a mode of redress against the operation of state laws. The ground
of distinction between the two cases is clear. A section forbidding
Undoubtedly there is an admissible distinction between discrimination against negroes
in the selection of juries and the discrimination against them in inns and public
conveyances, for the former may have definite connection with the security of those
civil rights of person and property--as distinct from social rights--which the
Fourteenth Amendment was clearly designed to enforce. This was the principle which was
brought out by the Court in the two decisions.1 But if Justice Bradley in the Civil Rights cases had
frankly made the distinction between civil and social rights, and declared the act unconstitutional on the ground that it
attempted to secure social rights which the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to
establish, then the decisions of the Court would have been far more definite in
character.
Even if the Supreme Court had not declared the social equality provision of the Civil
Rights Act unconstitutional, it is questionable whether any real attempt would have
been made to enforce it. As it turned out, the Court gave judicial sanction to a view
undoubtedly entertained by the major portion of the whites everywhere, and it
encouraged the South to proceed with Cases on
Constitutional Law, Vol. I, p. 576.
Undoubtedly there are mixed motives behind such legislation. It is in some part a class feeling, for whites are allowed to take their colored servants in the regular coaches and sleeping cars. Nevertheless, the race feeling unquestionably predominates. As the author of the Louisiana "Jim Crow Car" law put it: "It is not only the desire to separate the whites and blacks on the railroads for the comfort it will provide, but also for the moral effect. The separation of the races is one of the benefits, but the demonstration of the superiority of the white man over the negro is the greater thing. There is nothing that shows it more conclusively than the compelling of negroes to ride in cars marked for their especial use."
Although all possibility of northern interference with the southern states in the
management of their domestic affairs seemed to have disappeared by Cleveland's first
administration, the negro question was continuously agitated by Republican
politicians, and at times with great vigor. They were much distressed at losing their
Under the original Constitution of the United States, only three fifths of the slaves were counted in apportioning representatives among the states; under the Fourteenth Amendment all the negroes were counted, thus enlarging the representation of the southern states. And yet the negroes were for practical purposes as disfranchised as they were when they were in servitude. It was pointed out that "in the election of 1888 the average vote cast for a member of Congress in five southern states was less than eight thousand; in five northern states, over thirty-six thousand. Kansas, which cast three times the vote of South Carolina, had only the same number of congressmen." The discrepancy tended to increase, if anything. In 1906, a Mississippi district with a population of 232,174 cast 1540 votes, while a New York district with 215,305 cast 29,119 votes.
The Republicans have several times threatened to alter this anomalous condition of
affairs. In 1890, Mr. Lodge introduced in the House of Representatives a bill
providing for the appointment of federal election commissioners, on petition of local
voters, endowed with
With the decline in the influence of the Civil War veterans in politics, the
possibility of Federal interference has steadily decreased. The North had never been
abolitionist in temper or political belief, as the vote of the Free Soil party
demonstrates. The Republican party was a homestead, railway, and protectionist party
opposed to slavery in the territories, and its great leader, Lincoln, had long been on
record as opposed to political and social equality for the negro. Emancipation had
come as a stroke of fortune--not because a majority of the people had deliberately
come to the conclusion that it was a measure of justice. As in the
Thus the negro, suddenly elevated to a great height politically, was almost as suddenly dropped by his new friends and thrown largely upon his own ingenuity and resources for further advance. His emancipation and enfranchisement had come almost without effort on his own part, without that development of economic interest and of class consciousness that had marked the rise of other social strata to political power. It was fortuitous and had no solid foundation. It became evident, therefore, that any permanent advance of the race must be built on substantial elements of power in the race itself. The whites might help with education and industrial training, but the hope of the race lay in the development of intellectual and economic power on its own account.
In relative numerical strength the negro is not holding his own, because of the large immigration from Europe. In 1790, the negro population formed 19.3 per cent of the whole, and since that time it has almost steadily declined, reaching at the last census 10.7 per cent of the whole. Even in the southern states where the stream of foreign immigration is the least, the negro population has fallen from 35.2 per cent in 1790 to 29.8 per cent in 1910. In education, the negro has undoubtedly made great progress since the War, but it must be remembered that he was then at the bottom of the scale. The South, though poor as compared with the North, has made large expenditures for negro education, but it is authoritatively reported that "nearly half of the negro children of school age in the South never get inside of the schoolhouse." 1 The relative expenditures for the education of white and colored children there are not ascertainable, but naturally the balance is heavily in favor of the former. When we recall, however, the total illiteracy of the race under slavery and then discover that in 1910 there was an average daily attendance of 1,105,629 colored children in the southern schools, we cannot avoid the conclusion that decided changes are destined to be made in the intellectual outlook of the race.
Reports also show that negroes are accumulating considerable property and are
becoming in large numbers the holders of small farms. Nevertheless a very careful
scholar, Dr. Walter Willcox, believes that the figures "seem to show that the negro
race at the South, in its
The conclusions of the statistician are confirmed by the impressions of such eminent
champions of the negro as Dr. W. B. Dubois and Mr. Thomas Fortune. The former declares
that "in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and
custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the
penitentiary." The latter holds that the negro has simply passed from chattel to
industrial slavery "with none of the legal and selfish restraints upon the employer
which surrounded and actuated the master." These writers attribute the slow advance of
the race to the bondage of law and prejudice to which it is subjected in the South,
and everywhere in the country, as a matter of fact. Whatever the cause may be, there
seems to be no doubt that the colored race has not made that substantial economic
advance and achieved that standard of life which its friends hoped would follow from
emancipation. Those writers who emphasize heredity in social evolution point to this
as an evidence of the
Whatever may be the real truth about the economic status of the race, and after all it is the relative progress of the mass that determines the future of the race, there can be no doubt that there is an increasing "race consciousness" which will have to be reckoned with. The more conservative school, led by Booker T. Washington, is working to secure for the negro an industrial training that will give him some kind of an economic standing in the community, and if this is achieved for large numbers, a radical change in social and political outlook will follow, unless all signs of history fail. On the other hand, there is growing up a radical party, under the inspiration of Dr. W. B. Dubois, which pleads for unconditional political and social equality as a measure of immediate justice. Dr. Dubois demands "the raising of the negro in America to full rights and citizenship. And I mean by this no halfway measures; I mean full and fair equality. That is, a chance to work regardless of color, to aspire to position and preferment on the basis of desert alone, to have the right to use public conveniences; to enter public places of amusement on the same terms as other people, and to be received socially by such persons as might wish to receive them."
With both of these influences at work and all the forces of modern life playing upon
the keener section of the colored population, nothing but congenital disabilities can
prevent a movement which ruling persons, North and South, will have to take into
account. How
LONG before the Civil War, steam and machinery had begun to invade
American industries and statesmen of the new commercial and industrial order had
appeared in Washington. The census of 1860 reported nearly a million and a half wage
earners in the United States, and more than a billion dollars invested in
manufacturing. By that year over thirty thousand miles of railway had been
constructed, including such important lines as the New York Central, the Erie, the
Baltimore and Ohio, and the Pennsylvania. Politicians of the type of Stephen A.
Douglas, who discussed slavery in public and devoted their less obvious activities to
securing grants of public lands and mineral resources to railway and manufacturing
corporations, had begun to elbow the more cultivated and respectable leaders like
Calhoun, Webster, and Alexander Stephens, who belonged to the old order.
But the spectacular conflict over slavery prevented the political results of the
economic transformation from coming to the surface. Those who had occasion to watch
the proceedings of Congress during the two decades just before the War discovered the
manipulations of railway corporations seeking land grants and
The Civil War sharply shifted the old scenery of politics. It gave a tremendous impetus to industry and railway construction. The tariff measures during the War gave to manufacturers an unwonted protection against foreign competition; the demand for war supplies, iron, and steel, railway materials, textiles, and food supplies, quickened every enterprise in the North; the great fortunes made out of speculations in finances, contracts for government supplies, and land-grants placed an enormous capital in private hands to carry forward business after the War was over.
Within little more than a quarter of a century the
The building of railways more than kept pace with the growth of the population and
the increase in manufacturing. There were 30,000 miles of lines in 1860; 52,000 in
1870; 166,000 in 1890; and 242,000 in 1910. Beginning at first with the construction
of lines between strategic centers like Boston and Albany, and Philadelphia and
Reading, the leaders in this new enterprise grew more bold. They pushed rapidly into
the West where there were no cities of magnitude and no prospect of developing a
profitable business within the immediate future. Capital flowed into the railways like
water; European investors caught the fever; farmers and merchants along prospective
lines bought stocks and bonds, expecting to reap a harvest from increased land values
and business, only to find their paper valueless on account of preferred claims for
construction; and the whole West was aflame with dreams
The era of feverish construction was shortly followed by the combination of lines and the formation of grand trunk railways and particular "systems." In 1869, Cornelius Vanderbilt united the Hudson River and New York Central lines, linking the metropolis and Buffalo, and four years later he opened the way to Chicago by leasing the Lake Shore Michigan and Southern. About the same time two other eastern companies, the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio secured western connections which let them into Chicago.
It must not be thought that this rapid railway expansion was due solely to private
enterprise, for, as has been the standing custom in American politics, the cost of
doubtful or profitless undertakings was thrown as far as possible upon the public
treasury. Up to 1872, the Federal Government had granted in aid of railways
155,000,0000 acres of land, an area estimated as "almost equal to the New England
states, New York, and Pennsylvania combined; nineteen different states had voted sums
aggregating two hundred million dollars for the same purpose ; and municipalities and
individuals had subscribed several hundred million dollars to help railway
construction." To the Union Pacific concern alone the Federal Government had granted a
free right of way through public lands, twenty sections of land with each mile of
railway, and a loan up to fifty million dollars secured by a second mortgage on the
company's property. The Northern Pacific obtained lands which a railway official
estimated to be worth enough "to
The chronicle of all the frauds connected with the manipulation of land grants to
railways and the shameless sale of legal privileges cannot be written, because in most
instances no tangible records have been left. Perhaps the most notorious of all was
the Crédit Mobilier scandal connected with the Union Pacific. The leading stockholders
in that company determined to secure for themselves a large portion of the profits of
construction, which were enormous on account of the prodigal waste; and they organized
a sham concern known as the Crédit Mobilier in which they had full control and to
which the construction profits went. Inasmuch as the Federal Government through its
grants and loans was an interested party that might interfere at any time, the
concern, through its agent in Congress, Oakes Ames, a representative from
Massachusetts, distributed generous blocks of stock to "approachable" Senators and
Representatives. News of the transaction leaked out, and a congressional investigation
in 1872 showed that a number of men of the highest standing, including Mr. Colfax, the
Vice President, were deeply implicated. Nothing was done, however; the leading
conspirator, Ames, was merely censured by the House, and the booty, for the most part,
remained in the
It would be easy to multiply figures showing astounding gains in industry, business, foreign trade, and railways; or to multiply stories of scandalous and unfair practices on the part of financiers, but we are not primarily concerned here with the technique of inventions or the history of promotion.1 The student of social and political evolution is concerned rather with the effect of such material changes upon the structure of society, that is, with the rearrangements of classes and the development of new groups of interests, which are brought about by altered methods of gaining a livelihood and accumulating fortunes. It is this social transformation that changes the relation of the individual to the state and brings new forces to play in the struggle for political power. The social transformation which followed the Civil War embraced the following elements.
In the first place, capital, as contrasted with agriculture, increased enormously in amount and in political influence. Great pecuniary accumulations were thenceforward made largely in business enterprise--including the work of the entrepreneur, financier, speculator, and manipulator under that general term. Inevitably, the most energetic and the keenest minds were attracted by the dominant mode of money-making. Agricultural regions were drained of large numbers of strenuous and efficient men, who would otherwise have been their natural leaders in politics. To these were added the energetic immigrants from the Old World. That forceful, pushing, dominating section of society historically known as the "natural aristocracy " became the agents of capitalism. The scepter of power now passed definitively from the masters of slaves to the masters of "free laborers." The literary and professional dependents of the ruling groups naturally came to the defense of the new order.1 The old contest between agrarianism and capitalism now took on a new vigor.2
On the side of the masses involved in the transition this economic revolution meant
an increasing proportion of wage workers as contrasted with agriculturalists, owning
and operating their farms, and with handicraftsmen. This increase is shown by the
following table, giving the number of wage earners in manufacturing
alone :
In terms of social life, this increase in wage workers meant, in the first place, a rapid growth of city populations. In 1860, the vast majority of the people were agriculturists; in 1890, 36.1 per cent of the population lived in towns of over 2500; in 1900, 40.5 per cent; in 1910, 46.3 per cent. In the forty years between the beginning of the Civil War and the close of the century, Chicago had grown from 109,260 to 1,698,575; Greater New York from 1,174,779 to 3,437,202; San Francisco from 56,802 to 342,782.
In the next place, the demand for labor stimulated immigration from Europe. It is
true there was a decline during the Civil War, and the panic of 1873 checked the tide
when it began to flow, but by 1880 it had nearly touched the half-a-million mark, and
by 1883 it reached the astounding figure of 788,992. Almost all of this immigration
was from Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, and Scandinavian countries, less than one in
twenty of the total number coming from Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Poland in 1880. On
the Pacific coast, railway building and industrial enterprise, in the great dearth
This industrial development meant the transformation of vast masses of the people into a proletariat, with all the term implies: an immense population housed in tenements and rented dwellings, the organization of the class into trades-unions, labor parties, and other groups; poverty and degradation on a large scale; strikes, lockouts, and social warfare; the employment of large numbers of women and children in factories; the demand for all kinds of legislation mitigating the evils of the capitalist process; and finally attacks upon the very basis of the industrial system itself.
This inevitable concomitant of the mechanical revolution, the industrial proletariat, began to make itself felt as a decided political and economic factor in the decade that followed the War. Between 1860 and 1870, the railway engineers, firemen, conductors, bricklayers, and cigar makers had formed unions. In the campaign of 1872 a party of Labor Reformers appeared; and a few years later the Knights of Labor, a grand consolidated union of all trades and grades of workers, came into existence as an active force, conducting an agitation for labor bureaus, an eight hour day, abolition of contract labor systems, and other reforms, and at the same time engineering strikes.
In 1877 occurred the first of the great labor struggles in that long series of
campaigns which have marked the relations of capitalists and workingmen during the
past four decades. In that year, trouble began between the management of the Baltimore
and Ohio railway and
The last, but perhaps most significant, result of the industrial revolution above
described has been the rise of enormous combinations and corporations in industry as
well as in transportation. An increasing proportion of the business of the country has
passed steadily into corporate, as contrasted with individual, ownership; 1 and this implies a momentous
change in the rights, responsibilities, and economic theories of the owners of
capital. Moreover, it involves the creation of a new class of men, not entrepreneurs
in the old sense, but organizers of already established concerns into larger units.
The industrial revolution had not advanced very far before an intense competition began to force business men to combine to protect themselves against their own weapons. As early as 1879 certain oil interests of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and other centers had begun to control competition by making agreements through their officers. Three years later, they devised an excellent scheme for a closer organization in the formation of a "trust." They placed all their stocks in the hands of nine trustees, including John D. Rockefeller, who issued in return certificates representing the proportionate share of each holder in the concern, and managed the entire business in the interests of the holders.
The trust proved to be an attractive proposition to large business concerns. Within
five years combinations had been formed in cotton oil, linseed oil, lead, sugar,
whisky, and cordage, and it was not long before a system of interlocking interests
began to consolidate the control of all staple manufactures in the hands of a few
financiers. Six years after its formation the Standard Oil Company was paying
to a small group of holders about $20,000,000 annually in dividends on a capital of
$90,000,000, and the recipients of these large dividends began to invest in other
concerns. In 1879, one of them, H. M. Flagler, became a director of the Valley
Railroad; in 1882, William Rockefeller appeared as one of the directors of the
Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul; in 1887, John D. Rockefeller was connected with a
syndicate which absorbed the Minnesota Iron Company, and about the same time
representatives of
But on the whole the decades following the Civil War were characterized by economic
anarchy--laissez faire with a vengeance. There were prolonged
industrial crises accompanied by widespread unemployment and misery among the working
classes. In the matter of railway management the chaos was unparalleled.
Shortly after 1870 a period of ruinous competition set in and was followed by severe financial crises among the railways. Passenger and freight rate "wars" for the "through" traffic brought many roads to the verge of bankruptcy, in spite of their valiant efforts to save themselves by exorbitant charges on subsidiary branches where they had no competition. Crooked financeering, such as the watering of stocks, misappropriation of construction funds by directors, and the purchase of bankrupt lines by directors of larger companies and their resale at great advances, placed a staggering burden of interest charges against practically all of the lines. In 1873 nearly half of the mileage in the country was in the hands of court receivers, and between 1876 and 1879 an average of more than one hundred roads a year were sold under the foreclosure of mortgages. In all this distress the investors at large were the losers while the "inside" operators such as Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage doubled their already overtopping fortunes.
A very good example of this "new finance" is afforded
The anarchy in railway financing, which characterized the two decades after the War,
was also accompanied by anarchy in management. A Senate investigating committee in
1885 enumerated the following charges against the railroads: that local rates were
unreasonably high as compared with through rates; that all rates were based apparently
not on cost of service but "what the traffic would bear"; that discriminations between
individuals for the same services were constant; that "the effect of the prevailing
policy of The
Economic Causes of Great Fortunes, p. 75.
However, emphasis upon this great industrial revolution should not be allowed to
obscure the no less remarkable development in agriculture. The acreage in improved
farm lands rose from 113,032,614 in 1850 to 478,451,750 in 1910. In the same period
the number of farms increased from 1,449,073 to 6,361,502. Notwithstanding the
significant fact that "whereas the total population increased 21 per cent between 1900
and 1910, the urban population increased 34.8 per cent and the rural population 11.2
per cent," the broad basis of the population during the half a century here under
consideration has remained agricultural, and in 1913 it
When Hayes was inaugurated, a broad wedge of territory separated the organized states of the East from their sister commonwealths in the far West--Oregon, California, and Nevada. Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Dakota, and Indian Territory still remained territories. Their combined population in 1870 was under half a million, less than that of the little state of Connecticut. New Mexico with 91,000 and Utah with 86,000 might, with some show of justification, have claimed a place among the states because Oregon was inhabited by only 90,000 people. The commonwealth of Nevada, with 42,000, was an anomaly; it had been admitted to the Union in 1864 to secure the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.
This vast and sparsely settled region was then in the second stage of its economic
evolution. The trapper, hunter, and explorer had gathered most of their harvest, and
the ranchmen and cowboys with their herds of cattle were roaming the great grazing
areas, waging war on thieves, land syndicates, and finally going down to defeat in the
contest with the small farmer who fenced off the fertile fields and planted his
homestead there. So bitter were the contests among the cattle
Of course, the opening of the railways made possible a rapidity in the settlement of the remaining territories which outrivaled that of the older regions. The first Pacific railroad had been completed in 1869; the Southern Pacific connecting New Orleans with the coast was opened in 1881; and two years later the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe was finished, and the last stroke was put on the Northern Pacific, connecting Chicago and Portland, Oregon. Thus four lines of communication were established with the coast, traversing the best agricultural regions of the territories and opening up the mineral-bearing regions of the mountains as well. Lawless promoters fell upon the land and mineral resources with that rapacity which Burke attributed to Hastings.
Utah presented, in the eighties, the elements of an ordered and well-advanced
civilization and could with some show of reason ask for admission as a state. The
territory had been developed by the Mormons who settled there, after suffering
"persecution" for their religious opinions and their plural marriages, in Illinois and
Missouri. Notwithstanding an act of Congress passed in 1862 prohibiting polygamy, it
continued to flourish. The territorial officers were nearly all Mormons and the
remoteness of the Federal authority prevented an enforcement of the law. Consequently,
it remained a
Meanwhile the gentile population increased in the territory; and at length the Mormons, seeing that the country was determined to suppress polygamy and that, while the institution was maintained, statehood could not be secured, decided upon at least an outward acquiescence in the law. After much discussion in Congress, and notwithstanding the repeated contention that the Mormons were not sincere in their promises, Utah was admitted as a state in 1895 under a constitution which, in accordance with the provisions of the enabling act of Congress, forbade polygamous and plural marriages forever. Thus the inhabitants of the new state were bound by a solemn contract with the Union never to restore the marriage practices which had caused them so much trouble and "persecution," as they called it.
Although the Mormons were the original pioneers and homestead makers in that great
region, theirs was in fact the last of the middle tier of territories to receive
statehood. They had left the advancing frontier line far behind. To the northward that
advance was checked by the enormous Sioux reservation in Dakota, but the discovery of
gold in the Black Hills marked the
Far over on the western coast, the claims of Washington to statehood were being urged. The population there had increased until it rivaled Oregon and passed the neighboring commonwealth in 1890. In addition to rich agricultural areas, it possessed enormous timber resources which were to afford the chief industry for a long time; and keen-sighted men foresaw a swift development of seaward trade. Between the Dakotas and Washington lay the narrow point of Idaho and the mountainous regions of Montana, now rapidly filling up with miners and capitalists exploiting the gold, silver, coal, copper, and other mineral resources, and rivaling the sheep and cattle kings in their contest for economic supremacy.
After the fashion of enterprising westerners, the citizens of these territories began
to boast early of their
As had been the case almost from the beginning of the Republic, the admission of these new states was a subject of political controversy and intrigue at the national capital. During Cleveland's first administration the House was Democratic and the Senate Republican. Believing that Dakota was firmly Republican, the Senate passed the measure admitting the southern region in 1886, but the Democratic House was unable to see eye to eye with the Senate on this matter. In the elections of i888, the Republicans carried the House, and it was evident that the new Congress would take some action with regard to the clamoring territories. Montana was probably Democratic, and Washington was uncertain. At all events the Democrats thought it wise to come to terms, and accordingly on February 22, 1889, the two Dakotas, Washington, and Montana were admitted simultaneously.
With less claim to statehood than any commonwealths admitted up to that time, except
Nevada, the two territories of Idaho and Wyoming were soon enabled,
Notwithstanding the prominence given to the negro question during and after
Reconstruction, the South had other problems no less grave in character to meet.
Industry and agriculture were paralyzed by the devastations of the War. A vast amount
of material capital--railways, wharves, bridges, and factories--had been destroyed
during the conflict; and fluid capital seeking investment had been almost destroyed as
well. The rich with ready money at their command had risked nearly all their store in
confederate securities or had lost
The difficulties of carrying forward the plantation system with free negro labor compelled the holders of large estates (many of which were heavily mortgaged) to adopt one of two systems: the leasing or renting of small plots to negroes or poor whites, or the outright sale in small quantities which could be worked by one or two hands. This disintegration of estates went forward with great rapidity. In 1860 the average holding of land in the southern states was 335.4 acres; in 1880 it had fallen to 153.4; and in 1900 it had reached 138.2. The great handicap was the difficulty of securing the capital to develop the small farm, and no satisfactory system for dealing with this problem has yet been adopted.
The very necessities of the South served to bind that section to the North in a new
fashion. Fluid capital had to be secured, in part at least, from the North, and
northern enterprise found a new outlet in the reconstruction of the old, and the
development of the new, industries in the region of the former confederacy. The number
of cotton spindles in the South increased from about 300,000 in 1860 to more than
4,000,000 at the close of the century; the number of employees rose
Even in the iron and steel industry, West Virginia and Alabama began to press upon the markets of the North within less than twenty years after the close of the War. In 1880, the latter state stood tenth among the pig-iron producing states; in 1890 it stood third. The southern states alone now produce more coal, iron ore, and pig iron than all of the states combined did in 1870. The census of 1909 reports 5685 manufacturing establishments in Virginia, 4931 in North Carolina, 4792 in Georgia, and 3398 in Alabama.
The social effects which accompany capitalist development inevitably began to appear
in the South. The industrial magnate began to contest with the old aristocracy of the
soil for supremacy; many former slave owners and their descendants drifted into
manufacturing and many poor whites made their way upward into wealth and influence.
The census of 1909 reports more than thirty thousand proprietors and firm members in
the South Atlantic states, an increase over the preceding report almost equal to that
in the New England states. The same census reports in the southern states more than a
million wage earners--equal to almost two thirds the entire number in the whole
country at the opening of the Civil War. The percentage of increase
With this swift economic development, northern capital streamed into the South; northern money was invested in southern public and industrial securities in enormous amounts; and energetic northern business men were to be found in southern market places vying with their no less enterprising southern brethren. The men concerned in creating this new nexus of interest between the two regions naturally deprecated the perpetual agitation of sectional issues by the politicians, and particularly northern interference in the negro question. Business interest began to pour cold water on the hottest embers which the Civil War had left behind.
THE economic revolution that followed the War, the swift and
potent upswing of capitalism, and the shifting of political power from the South to
the North made their impress upon every branch of the Federal Government. Senators of
the old school, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Roger Baldwin, John P. Hale, James Mason, and
Jefferson Davis were succeeded by the apostles of the new order: Roscoe Conkling and
Thomas Platt, James Donald Cameron, Leland Stanford, George Hearst, Arthur P. Gorman,
William D. Washburn, John R. McPherson, Henry B. Payne, Matthew S. Quay, Philetus
Sawyer, John H. Mitchell, and James G. Blaine. The new Senate was composed of men of
affairs--practical men, who organized gigantic enterprizes, secured possession
of natural resources and franchises, collected and applied capital on a large scale to
new business undertakings, built railways, established cities with the advancing line
of the western frontier--or represented such men as counsel in the courts of law.
Not many of them were great orators or widely known as profound students of politics
in its historical and comparative aspects. A few, like Blaine, Hoar, and Conkling,
studied the classic oratory of the older
Of this group, Roscoe Conkling was undoubtedly typical, just as Marcus A. Hanna
represented the dominant politicians of a later time. He was an able lawyer and an
orator of some quality, but of no permanent fame. He took his seat in the Senate in
1867 and according to his biographer "during the remainder of his life his legal
practice was chiefly connected with corporations that were litigants in the district
and circuit courts of the United States," 1--the judges of which courts he was, as Senator,
instrumental in appointing. His practice was lucrative for his day, amounting to some
Life of Roscoe Conkling, p. 297.
Criticism of the Republican party, and particularly of the policies for which he
stood, Mr. Conkling regarded as little short of treason. For example, when Mr. George
William Curtis, in the New York state convention of 1877, sought to endorse the
administration of President Hayes, whose independence in office had been troublesome
to Mr. Conkling, the latter returned in a passionate attack on the whole party of
opposition: "Who are these men who in newspapers and elsewhere are 'cracking their
whips' over Republicans and playing schoolmaster to the Republican party and its
conscience and convictions? They are of various sorts and conditions. Some of them are
the man-milliners, the dilettanti and carpet knights of politics, men whose efforts
have been expended in denouncing and ridiculing and accusing honest men. . . . Some of
these worthies masquerade as reformers and their vocation and ministry Life of Roscoe Conkling, p. 699.Ibid., p. 671.Ibid.,
pp. 679 ff.
The political philosophy of this notable group of political leaders was that of their
contemporaries in England, the Cobden-Bright school. They believed in the widest
possible extension of the principle of private property, and the narrowest possible
restriction of state interference, except to aid private property to increase its
gains. They held that all of the natural resources of the country should be
transferred to private hands as speedily as possible, at a nominal charge, or no
charge at all, and developed with dashing rapidity. They also believed that the great
intangible social property created by community life, such as franchises for street
railways, gas, and electricity, should be transformed into private property. They
supplemented their philosophy of property by a philosophy of law and politics, which
looked upon state interference, except to preserve order, and aid railways and
manufacturers in their enterprises, as an intrinsic evil to be resisted at every
point, and they developed a system of jurisprudence which, as Senators having the
confirming power in appointments and as counsel for corporations before the courts of
the United States, they succeeded in transforming into judicial decisions. Some of
them were doubtless corrupt, Ibid., p. 540.
Inasmuch as the attacks on private rights in property, franchises, and corporate
privileges came principally from the state legislatures, it was necessary to find some
way to subject them to legal control--some juristic process for translating laissez faire into a real restraining force. These leading statesmen
and lawyers were not long in finding the way. The Federal courts were obviously the
proper instrumentalities, and the broad restrictions laid upon the states by the
Fourteenth Amendment no less obviously afforded the constitutional foundation for the
science of legislative nihilism. "No state," ran the significant words of that
Amendment, "shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
What unseen implications lay within these phrases the most penetrating thinkers
divined at once. Protest was made by the New Jersey legislature against the Fourteenth
Amendment in 1866 on the ground that it would destroy all the essential rights of a
state to control
The problem of how best to check the assaults of state legislatures on vested rights
was not new when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. On the contrary, it was one of
the first concerns of the Convention of 1787 which drafted the original Constitution
of the United States, and it was thought by the framers that security had been
attained by forbidding states to emit bills of credit and make laws impairing the
obligation of contract. Under Chief Justice Marshall, these clauses were so generously
interpreted as to repel almost any attack which a state legislature might make on
acquired rights. However, in the closing years of Marshall's service, the Supreme
Court, then passing into the hands of states' rights justices, rendered an opinion in
the case of Ogden v. Saunders, which clearly held that the contract
clause did not prevent the legislature from stipulating that future
contracts might be practically at its mercy. When a legislature provides by general
law that all charters of corporations are subject to repeal and alteration, such
provision becomes a part of all new
The case of Ogden v. Saunders was decided in 1827. Between that
year and the Civil War the beginnings of corporate enterprise were securely laid in
the United States; and the legislatures of the several states began the regulation of
corporations from one motive or another, sometimes for the purpose of blackmailing
them and sometimes for the laudable purpose of protecting public interests. At all
events, large propertied concerns began to feel that they could not have a free hand
in developing their enterprises or enjoy any genuine security unless the legislatures
of the states were, by some constitutional provision, brought again under strict
Federal judicial control.
The opportunity to secure this judicial control was afforded during the Civil War when the radical Republicans were demanding Federal protection for the newly emancipated slaves of the South. The drastic legislation relative to negroes adopted by the southern states at the close of the War showed that even in spite of the Thirteenth Amendment a substantial bondage could be reestablished under the color of criminal, apprentice, and vagrant legislation. The friends of the negroes, therefore, determined to put the substantial rights of life, liberty, and property beyond the interference of state legislatures forever, and secure to all persons the equal protection of the law.
Accordingly, the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection
of the law."
Here was a restriction laid upon state legislatures which might be substantially
limitless in its application, in the hands of a judiciary wishing to place the
broadest possible interpretation upon it. What are privileges and immunities? What are
life, liberty, and property? What is due process of law? What is the equal protection
of the law? Does the term "person" include not only natural persons but also
artificial persons, namely, corporations? That the reconstruction committee of
Congress which framed the instrument intended to include within the scope of this
generous provision not only the negro struggling upward from bondage, but also
corporations and business interests struggling for emancipation from legislative
interference, has been often asserted. In arguing before the Supreme Court in the San
Matteo County case, on December 19, 1882, Mr. Roscoe Conkling, who had been a member
of the committee which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, unfolded for the first time
the deep purpose of the committee, and showed from the journal of that committee that
it was not their intention to confine the amendment merely to the protection of the
colored race. In the course of his argument, Mr. Conkling remarked, "At the time the
Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, as the records of the two Houses will show,
individuals
In spite of important testimony to the effect that those who drafted the Fourteenth
Amendment really intended "to nationalize liberty," that is laissez
faire, Origin and Growth of the American Constitution, p. 355. As a
matter of fact, Conkling, who was a member of the committee that drafted the
Fourteenth Amendment, voted against these provisions in Committee.
The first judicial interpretation of the significant phrases of the Fourteenth Amendment which were afterward to be the basis of judicial control over state economic legislation of every kind was made by the Supreme Court in the Slaughter-House cases in 1873--five years after that Amendment had been formally ratified. These particular cases, it is interesting to note, like practically all other important cases arising under the Fourteenth Amendment, had no relation whatever to the newly emancipated slaves; but, on the contrary, dealt with the regulation of business enterprises.
In 1869, the legislature of Louisiana passed an act designed to protect the health of
the people of New Orleans and certain other parishes. This act created a corporation
for the purpose of slaughtering animals within that city, forbade the establishment of
any other slaughterhouses or abattoirs within the municipality, and conferred the sole
and exclusive privilege of conducting the live-stock landing and slaughterhouse
business, under the limitations of the act, upon the company thus
The opinion of the court was rendered by Mr. Justice Miller. The Justice opened by
making a few remarks upon the "police power," in the course of which he said that the
regulation of slaughtering fell within the borders of that mysterious domain and
without doubt constituted one of the powers enjoyed by all states previous to the
adoption of the Civil War amendments. After commenting upon the great responsibility
devolved upon the Court in construing the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments and
remarking on the careful deliberation with which the judges had arrived at their
conclusions, Justice Miller then turned to an examination of the historical purpose
which underlay the adoption of the amendments in question. After his recapitulation of
recent events, he concluded: "On the most casual examination of the language of these
amendments, no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose
Justice Miller dismissed with a tone of impatience the idea of the counsel for the
plaintiffs in error that the Louisiana statute in question imposed an "involuntary
servitude" forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment. "To withdraw the mind," he said,
"from the contemplation of this grand yet simple declaration of the personal freedom
of all the human race within the
In Justice Miller's long opinion there is no hint of that larger and more comprehensive purpose entertained by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment which was asserted by Mr. Conkling a few years later in his argument before the Supreme Court. If he was aware that the framers had in mind not only the protection of the freedmen in their newly won rights, but also the defense of corporations and business enterprises generally against state legislation, he gave no indication of the fact. There is nowhere in his opinion any sign that he saw the broad economic implications of the Amendment which he was expounding for the first time in the name of the Court. On the contrary, his language and the opinion reached in the case show that the judges were either not cognizant of the new economic and political duty placed upon them, or, in memory of the states' rights traditions which they had entertained, were unwilling to apply the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments in such a manner as narrowly to restrict the legislative power of a commonwealth.
In taking up that clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides that no state
shall make or enforce any law abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of
the United States, Justice Miller declared that it was not the purpose of that
provision to transfer the security and protection of all fundamental civil rights it was these and these only which the Fourteenth Amendment
contemplated. He enumerated some of them: the right of the citizen to come to the seat
of government, to assert any claim he may have upon that government, to transact any
business he may have with it, to seek its protection, share its offices, engage in
administering its functions, to have free access to its seaports, subtreasuries, land
offices, and courts of justice, to use the navigable waters of the United States, to
assemble peaceably with his fellow citizens and petition for redress of grievances,
and to enjoy the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus. It was rights of this
character, the learned justice argued, and not all the fundamental rights of person
and property which had been acquired in the evolution of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence,
that were placed by the Fourteenth Amendment under the protection of the Federal
Government.
Within this view, all the ordinary civil rights enjoyed by citizens were still within
the control of the organs of the state government and not within Federal protection at
all. If the privileges and immunities, brought within the protection of the Federal
Government by the Fourteenth Amendment, were intended to embrace the whole domain of
personal and property rights, then, contended the justice, the Supreme Court would be
constituted "a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the states, on the civil
rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as
consistent with
In two short paragraphs, Justice Miller disposed of the contention of the plaintiffs in error to the effect that the Louisiana statute deprived the plaintiffs of their property without due process of law. He remarked that inasmuch as the phraseology of this clause was also to be found in the Fifth Amendment and in some form in the constitutions of nearly all of the states, it had received satisfactory judicial interpretation; "and it is sufficient to say," he concluded on this point, "that under no construction of that provision that we have ever seen or any that we deem admissible, can the restraint imposed by the state of Louisiana upon the exercise of their trade by the butchers of New Orleans be held to be a deprivation of private property within the meaning of that provision."
Coming now to that clause requiring every state to give all persons within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws, Justice Miller indulged in the false prophecy : "We doubt very much whether any action of a state not directed by way of discrimination against the negroes. as a class or on account of their race will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision." An emergency might arise, he admitted, but he found no such a one in the case before him.
Concluding his opinion, he expressed the view that the American Federal system had
come out of the Civil
Under this strict interpretation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments, all the fundamental rights of persons and property remained subject to the state governments substantially in the same way as before the Civil War. The Supreme Court thus could not become the final arbiter and control the social and economic legislation of states at every point. Those champions of the amendments who looked to them to establish Federal judicial supremacy for the defense of corporations and business enterprises everywhere throughout the American empire were sadly disappointed.
Nowhere was that disappointment more effectively and more cogently stated than in the
opinions of the judges who dissented from the doctrines announced by the majority of
the court. Chief Justice Chase and Justices Field, Bradley, and Swayne refused to
accept the interpretation and the conclusions reached by the majority, and the last
three judges wrote separate
In the opinion of Justice Bradley, the Louisiana statute not only deprived persons of
the equal protection of the laws, but also of liberty and property--the right of
choosing, in the adoption of lawful employments, being a portion of their liberty, and
their occupation being their property. In the opinion of Mr. Justice Swayne, who
dissented also, the word liberty as used in
Three years after the decision in the Slaughter-House cases, the Supreme Court again
refused to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment so broadly as to hold unconstitutional a
state statute regulating business undertakings. This case, Munn v.
Illinois, decided in 1876, involved the validity of a statute passed under the
constitution of that state, which declared all elevators where grain was stored to be
public warehouses and subjected them to strict regulation, including the establishment
of fixed maximum charges. It was contended by the plaintiffs in error, Munn and Scott,
that the statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment in two respects: (I) that the
business attempted to be regulated was not a public calling and was, therefore,
totally outside of the regulatory or police power of the state; and (2) that even if
the business was conceded to be public in character, and therefore by the rule of the
common law was permitted to exact only "reasonable" charges for its services,
nevertheless the determination of what was reasonable belonged to the judicial branch
of the government and could not be made by the legislature without violating the
principle of "due process."
Both of these contentions were rejected by the Court, and the constitutionality of the Illinois statute was upheld. The opinion of the Court was written by Chief Justice Waite, who undertook an elaborate examination of the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The principle of this Amendment, he said, though new in the Constitution of the United States, is as old as civilized government itself; it is found in Magna Carta in substance if not in form, in nearly all of the state constitutions, and in the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. In order to ascertain, therefore, what power legislatures enjoyed under the new amendment, it was only necessary to inquire into the limitations which had been historically imposed under the due process clause in England and the United States; and after an examination of some cases in point the Chief Justice came to the conclusion that "down to the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment it was not supposed that statutes regulating the use or even the price of the use of private property necessarily deprived an owner of his property without due process of law." When private property "is affected with public interest" and is used in a manner to make it of public consequence, the public is in fact granted an interest in that use, and the owner of the property in question "must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good, to the extent of the interest he has thus created."
But it was insisted on behalf of the plaintiffs that the owner of property is
entitled to a reasonable compensation for its use even when it is clothed with the
public interest, and that the determination of what is reasonable judicial, not a legislative, matter. To this Chief
Justice Waite replied that the usual practice had been otherwise. "In countries where
the common law prevails," he said, "it has been customary from time immemorial for the
legislature to declare what shall be a reasonable compensation under such
circumstances, or perhaps more properly speaking to fix a maximum beyond which any
charge made would be unreasonable. . . . The controlling fact is the power to regulate
at all. If that exists, the right to establish the maximum of charge as one of the
means of regulation is implied. In fact, the common law rule which requires the charge
to be reasonable is itself a regulation as to price . . . To limit the rate of charge
for services rendered in a public employment, or for the use of property in which the
public has an interest, is only changing a regulation which existed before. It
establishes no new principle in the law, but only gives a new effect to an old one. We
know that this is a power which may be abused; but that is no argument against its
existence. For protection against abuses by legislatures the people must
resort to the polls, not to the courts." 1
review of the reasonableness of a rate fixed by the legislature, but
a total denial of the power of a legislature to act in the matter. The question of the propriety of a
judicial review of the reasonableness of the rates in question was not raised in the
pleadings. It was not difficult, therefore, for judges in subsequent cases in which
the question of judicial review was squarely raised to explain away as mere dictum this solemn statement by Chief Justice Waite to the effect
that the power of the legislature to regulate being conceded, the determination of
the legislature was binding on the courts and not subject to review.
The principle involved in the Munn case also came up in the same year (1876) in Peik
v. Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company, in which Chief
Justice Waite, speaking of an act of Wisconsin limiting passenger and freight charges
on railroads in the state, said: "As to the claim that the courts must decide what is
reasonable and not the legislature, this is not new to this case. It has been fully
considered in Munn v. Illinois. Where property has been clothed with
a public interest, the legislature may fix a limit to that which shall be in law
reasonable for its use. This limit binds the courts as well as the people. If it has
been improperly fixed, the legislature, not the courts, must be appealed to for the
change."
The total results of the several Granger cases, decided in 1876, may be summed up as
follows:
Although the denial of the right
of the judiciary to dictum that the judiciary can grant no relief from an unjust
exercise of this regulatory power by the legislature.dictum,
a case was not long arising in which the issue was squarely raised. Had this case gone
to the Supreme Court, the question of judicial review would have been decided a full
decade or more before it really was. In this case, the Tilley case, a bondholder of a
railroad operating in Georgia sought to restrain the railroad from putting into force
a tariff fixed by the state railroad commission, on the ground that it was so
unreasonably low as to be confiscatory. Judge Woods, of the Federal circuit court,
refused to grant the injunction, basing his decision squarely upon the dictum in Munn
v. Illinois, and declaring that the railroad must seek relief from
unjust action on the part of the commission at the hands of the legislature or of the
people.
It was not till seven years after the Granger cases that another case involving rate
regulation was presented to the Federal courts.1 The Ruggles case, brought to the Supreme Court by writ of
error to the supreme court of Illinois, in 1883, involved a conviction of one of the
agents of the Illinois Central Railway for violating a maximum passenger fare statute
of that state, and raised substantially the same question as all of the Granger cases
except the Munn case--the right of the legislature to regulate the rates of a railroad
which was itself empowered by its charter to fix its own rates. The Court affirmed the
doctrine of the Granger cases, Chief Justice Waite again writing the opinion. The case
is noteworthy only for the opinion of Justice Harlan,
Justice Harlan's opinion is interesting not only because it touches upon the
possibility of a judicial review of the rate fixed by the
legislature; but because the learned Justice bases his contention on the contract between the railroad and the state to the effect that rates should be
"reasonable." This indicates plainly that not even in the mind of Justice Harlan, who
later became the firm exponent of the power of judicial review, was there any clear
belief that the Fourteenth Amendment as such gave the Court any power to review the
"reasonableness" of a rate fixed by the legislature. In other words, he derived his
doctrine of judicial review from the power of the Federal judiciary to enforce the
obligation of contracts, and not from its power to compel "due process of law."
It is impossible to trace here the numerous decisions following the Ruggles case in
which the Supreme Court was called upon to consider the power of state dictum of Chief Justice Waite, in the Munn
case, to the effect that private parties must appeal to the people, and not to the
courts, for protection against state legislatures, was supplanted by the firm
interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in such a manner as to confer upon the
courts the final power to review all state legislation regulating the use of property
and labor. Of course we do not have, in fact, this clear-cut reversal of opinion by
the Court, but rather a slow working out of the doctrine of judicial review as opposed
to an implication that the Court could not grant to corporations the relief from
legislative interference which they sought. There are but few clear-cut reversals in
law; but the political effect of the Court's decisions has been none the less clear
and positive.
It seems desirable, however, to indicate some of the leading steps by which the Court
moved from the doctrine of non-interference with state legislatures to the doctrine
that it is charged with the high duty of reviewing all and every kind of economic
legislation by the states. One of the leading cases in this momentous transition is
that of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway Company v.
Minnesota, decided in 1889, which made a heavy contribution to the doctrine of
judicial review of questions of political economy as well as law.
The railroad having refused to put the rate into effect, the commission applied to the supreme court of the state for a writ of mandamus. In its answer the railroad claimed, among other contentions, that the rate fixed was unreasonably low. The supreme court of the state refused to listen to this contention, saying that the statute by its terms made the order of the commission conclusively reasonable; accordingly it issued the mandamus. By writ of error, the case was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States, which, by a vote of six to three, ordered the decree of the state court vacated, on the ground that the statute as construed by the supreme court of the state was unconstitutional, as a deprivation of property without due process of law.
The opinion of the Court, written by Justice Blatchford, has frequently been
interpreted to hold, and was indeed interpreted by the dissenting minority to hold,
that the judiciary must, to satisfy the requirements of "due process," have the power
of final review over the reasonableness of all rates, however fixed. It is doubtful
whether the language of the opinion sustains this reading; but the strong emphasis on
the place of the judiciary in determining the reasonableness of rates lent color to
the contention that Mr. Justice Blatchford was setting up "judicial supremacy." In the
course of his opinion,
The dissenting members of the Court in this case certainly saw in Justice
Blatchford's opinion an assertion of the doctrine that whatever the nature of the
commission established by law or the form of procedure adopted, the determination of
rates was subject to review by a strictly judicial tribunal. In his dissent, Mr.
Justice Bradley declared that the decision had practically overruled Munn v. Illinois and the other Granger cases. "The governing principle of those
cases," he said, "was that the regulation and settlement of the affairs of railways
and other public accommodations is a legislative prerogative and not a judicial one.
... The legislature has the right, and it is its prerogative, if it chooses to
exercise it, to declare what is reasonable. This is just where I differ from the
majority of the Court. They say in effect, if not in terms, that the final tribunal of
arbitrament is the judiciary; I say it is the legislature. I hold that it is a
legislative question, not a judicial one,
A further step toward judicial review even still more significant was taken, in the
case of Reagan v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, decided by the
Supreme Court in 1894. This case came up from the Federal circuit
The opinion of the Court, written by Justice Brewer, who, as Federal circuit judge,
had already taken advanced ground in favor of judicial review, went the whole length
in upholding the right of the judiciary to review the reasonableness, not only of a
rate fixed by a commission, as in the case in hand, but even of one fixed by the
legislature. The case differed in no essential way, declared the justice, from those
cases in which it had been the age-long practice of the judiciary to act as final
arbiters of reasonableness--cases in which a charge exacted by a common carrier was
attacked by a shipper or passenger as unreasonable. The difference between the two
cases was merely that in the one the rate alleged to be unreasonable was fixed by the
carrier; in the other it was fixed by the commission or by the legislature. In support
of this remarkable bit of legal reasoning, the opinion adduced as precedents merely a
few brief excerpts, from previous decisions of the Court, nearly all of which were
pure dicta.
The absence of any dissent from this opinion, in spite of the fact that Judge Gray,
who had concurred in Justice Bradley's vigorous dissenting opinion in the Chicago-
Minnesota case four years before, was still on the bench, indicates that the last
lingering opposition to the doctrine of judicial review in the minds of any of
the Court had been dissolved. Henceforth it was but the emphatic
If we leave out of account Mr. Justice Brewer's dicta and consider
the Court to have decided merely the issues squarely presented, the Reagan case left
much to be done before the doctrine of judicial review could be regarded as
established beyond all possibility of limitation and serious qualification. Other
cases on the point followed quickly, but it was not until the celebrated case of Smyth
v. Ames, decided in 1898, that the two leading issues were fairly
presented and settled. In this case the rate attacked was not fixed by a commission,
but by a state legislature itself; and the rate was not admitted by the counsel for
the state to be unreasonable, but was strongly defended as wholly reasonable and just.
The Court had to meet the issues.
The original action in the case of Smyth v. Ames was a bill in
equity brought against the attorney-general and the Nebraska state board of
transportation, in the Federal circuit court, by certain bondholders of the railroads
affected, to restrain the enforcement of the statute of that state providing a
comprehensive schedule of freight rates. The bills alleged, and attempted to
demonstrate by elaborate calculations, that the rates fixed were confiscatory, inasmuch as a proportionate reduction on all the rates of the
railroads affected by them would so reduce the income of the companies as to make
it impossible for them to pay any dividends; and in the case of some of them, even to
meet all their bonded obligations. On behalf of the state, it was urged that the
reduction in rates would increase business, and, therefore, increase
The opinion of the Supreme Court, affirming the decree of Judge Brewer, was, in the
essential part of it--that asserting the principle of judicial review in its broadest
terms--singularly brief. Contenting himself with citing a few short dicta from previous decisions, Justice Harlan, speaking for the Court,
declared that the principle "must be regarded as settled" that the reasonableness of a
rate could not be so conclusively determined by a legislature as to escape review by
the judiciary. Equally well settled, it was declared, was the principle that property
affected with a public interest was entitled to a "fair return" on its " fair"
valuation. These prin principles regarded as established, the Court proceeded to
examine the evidence, although it admitted that it lacked the technical knowledge
necessary to a completely equitable decision; and sustained the finding of the lower
court in favor of the railroads. There was no dissent.
With Smyth v. Ames the doctrine of judicial review may be regarded
as fully established. No portion of the judicial prerogative could now be surrendered
without not merely "distinguishing" but flatly overruling a unanimous decision of the
Court.
The significance of Smyth v. Ames was soon observable in the
activities of the lower Federal courts. Within the nine months of 1898 that followed
that decision, there were at least four applications for injunctions against alleged
unreasonable rates, and in three of these cases the applications were granted. During
the years that followed Smyth v. Ames, Federal courts all over the
country were tying the hands of state officers who attempted to put into effect
legislative measures regulating railway concerns. In Arkansas, Florida, Alabama,
Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Oregon, rates fixed by
statute, commission, or ordinance were attacked by the railways in the Federal courts
and their enforcement blocked. In several instances the injunctions of the lower
courts were made permanent, and no appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the
United States. With Smyth v. Ames staring them in the face, state
attorneys accepted the inevitable.
The decision in Smyth v. Ames left still one matter in doubt. The
allegation of the railroads in that case had been that the rates fixed were actually
confiscatory--that is, so low as to make dividends impossible. In the course of his
opinion, Justice Harlan had stated, however, that the railroads were entitled to a
"fair return," an opinion that had been expressed also in the Reagan case, where
indeed it had been necessary to the decision, and still earlier, but with little
relevancy, in the Chicago-Minnesota case. In none of these cases, however, had any
precise definition of the terms "reasonable" or "fair" return been necessary, and none
had been made.
The first direct suggestion of the development of the
Eleven years later, in 1909, the Supreme Court sustained virtually the same rule
in the New York Consolidated Gas case, holding, with the lower court, that the company
was entitled to six per cent return on a fair value of its property
(including franchises and the high values of the real estate used by it in the
business), because six per cent was the "customary" rate of interest at that time in
New York City. On the same day the court decided that a return of six per cent on
waterworks property in Knoxville, Tennessee, was also not unreasonable. In neither of
these cases, however, did the Court attempt any examination or explanation of the
evidence on which it rested its determination that six per cent was the "customary"
rate in the places named; nor did it attempt to explain the principle on which such
"customary" rate could be determined for other times and places. Plainly there is
still room for a great deal of "distinguishing" on this point. The extreme vagueness
of the rule was exemplified by the decision of Federal circuit Judge Sanborn in the
Shephard case (1912), in which he seven per cent was no more than
a "fair" return, and that any reduction in rates which would diminish the profits of
the road below that figure was unreasonable.
Equally important and of as great difficulty are the questions entering into the
determination of a "fair" valuation. This point is both too unsettled and too
technical to render any discussion of it profitable here. Attention may, however, be
called to two of the holdings in the Consolidated Gas case. In arriving at a "fair"
valuation of the gas company's property, the Court allowed a large valuation to be
placed upon the franchises of the company--none of which had been paid for by the
companies to which they had originally been issued, and which had not been paid for by
the Consolidated Company when it took them over, except in the sense that a large
amount of stock, more than one sixth of the total stock issued by the company, had
been issued against them, when the consolidation was formed. The particular facts
surrounding this case are such as to make it very easy for the Court to "distinguish"
this case from the usual one, for the consolidation was formed, and its stock
issued, under a statute that authorized the formation of consolidations, and forbade
such consolidations to issue stock in excess of the fair value of the "property,
franchises, and rights" of the constituent companies. This last prohibition the Court
construed as indicative of the legislative intention that the franchises should be
capitalized. Equally plain is it, however, that this particular circumstance of the
Consolidated Gas case is so irrelevant that it will gratis, should it so desire.
Another holding of great importance in the Gas case was that the company was entitled to a fair return on the value of real estate used in the business, that value having appreciated very greatly since the original purchase of the real estate, and there being no evidence to show that real estate of so great value was essential to the conduct of the business.
The importance of these two holdings is exemplified by the fact that in this particular case the combined value attributed to the franchises and the appreciation of real estate was over $15,000,000--more than one fourth of the total valuation arrived at by the Supreme Court. It will readily be seen that if these two items had been struck from the valuation by the Court, it would be possible for the state to make a still further substantial reduction in the rate charged for gas in New York City without violating the Court's own canon of reasonableness--a six per cent return.
The steps in the evolution of the doctrine of judicial review may be summarized in the following manner:
The Supreme Court first declared that the legislative determination of what was a "reasonable" rate was not subject to review by the courts.
The first departure from this view was an intimation, confirmed with increasing
emphasis in several cases, that a rate so low as to make any return whatever
impossible was confiscatory and would be set aside by the Court as violating the
Fourteenth Amendment. For a time,
Next in order came the holding that the determination of a commission as to what was reasonable could not be made conclusive upon the courts, at least when the commission had acted without the forms and safeguards of judicial procedure, and, probably, even when it had acted with them.
In the same decision appeared an intimation, which in subsequent decisions became crystallized into "settled law," that not only were totally confiscatory rates prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment, but also any rates which deprived the owners of the property regulated of a return equal to what was "customary" in private enterprises.
This rule was applied by the Court for the first time against a rate fixed by a commission, and where the rate was admitted by the pleadings to be confiscatory. But it was shortly thereafter applied to a rate fixed by a legislature, and where the "reasonableness" (not the confiscatory character) of the rate was a direct issue on the facts and evidence.
Finally, the principle that what is a "fair" or "reasonable" rate is to be measured by the customary return in private enterprises under similar conditions, has been applied in several cases to warrant the requirement of a definite rate of interest; but no precise rules have been laid down for the determination of such rate in all cases.
The most striking feature, perhaps, of the development of the doctrine of judicial
review here traced, as seen in the opinions of the Supreme Court, is the brevity and
almost fortuitous character of the reasoning given in support of the most important
and novel holdings. A comparison of the reasoning in Smyth v. Ames,
for example, with that in Marbury v. Madison, in which Chief Justice
Marshall first held a law of Congress unconstitutional, will forcibly exemplify this.
The explanation is to be found largely in the fact that each step in advance in the
building up of the doctrine had been foreshadowed in dictum before
it was established as decision. It was thus possible for the judge writing the opinion
in a case when a new rule was actually established, to quote, as "settled law," a mere
dictum from a previous opinion. Justice Gray's citation, in this
fashion, in the Dow case, of Chief Justice Waite's dictum in the
Ruggles case (although he might, with equal cogency, have cited the Chief Justice's
contrary dictum in the Munn or Peik cases), is a good instance of
this curious use of "precedent"; and parallel instances could be adduced from
virtually every one of the important subsequent cases on this subject.1
It is apparent from this all too brief and incomplete v. Illinois (118 U. S. 557) to be an interference with
interstate commerce which was subject to control by Congress only.laissez
faire and directed their popular battalions in that direction.
Those who undertake to criticize the Supreme Court for this assumption of power do
not always distinguish between the power itself and the manner of its exercise. What
would have happened if the state legislatures had been given a free hand to regulate,
penalize, and blackmail corporations at will during the evolution of our national
economic system may be left to the imagination of those who recall from their history
the breezy days of "wild-cat" currency, repudiation, and broken faith which
characterized the thirty years preceding the Civil War when the Federal judiciary was
under the dominance
Thus far attention has been directed to the activities of the Federal Supreme Court
in establishing the principle of judicial review particularly in connection with
legislation relative to railway corporations, but it should be noted that judicial
review covers all kinds of social legislation relative to hours and conditions of
labor as well as the charges of common carriers. In 1905, for example, the Supreme
Court in the celebrated case of Lochner v. New York declared null
and void a New York law fixing the hours of work in bakeshops at ten per day, basing
its action on the principle that the right to contract in relation to the hours of
labor was a part of the liberty which the individual enjoyed under the Fourteenth
Amendment. Mr. Justice Holmes, who dissented in the case, declared that it was decided
on an economic theory which a large part of the country did not entertain, and
protested that the Fourteenth Amendment did not "enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics."
As a matter of fact, however, the Supreme Court of the United States has declared
very little social legislation
As examples, in New York a law prohibiting the manufacture of cigars in tenement houses, in Pennsylvania a law prohibiting the payment of wages in "scrip" or store orders, and in Illinois a statute forbidding mining and manufacturing corporations to hold back the wages of their employees for more than a week were declared null and void. Such laws were nullified not only on the ground that they deprived the employer of property without due process, but also on the theory that they deprived workingmen of the "liberty" guaranteed to them to work under any conditions they chose. In one of these cases, a Pennsylvania court declared the labor law in question to be "an insulting attempt to put the laborer under a legislative tutelage which is not only degrading to his manhood but subversive of his rights as a citizen of the United States."
Where the state court nullified under the state
IT was a long time before the conditions created by the great
economic revolution were squarely reflected in political literature and party
programs. Indeed, they were but vaguely comprehended by the generation of statesmen
who had been brought up in the days of the stagecoach and the water mill. It is true
that the inevitable drift of capitalism in the United States might have been foreseen
by turning to Europe, particularly to England, where a similar economic revolution had
produced clearly ascertainable results; but American politicians believed, or at least
contended, that the United States lived under a special economic dispensation and that
the grave social problems which had menaced Europe for more than a generation when the
Civil War broke out could never arise on American soil.
From 1861 to 1913, the Republican party held the presidential office, except for
eight years. That party had emerged from the Civil War fortified by an intense
patriotism and by the support of the manufacturing interests which had flourished
under the high tariffs and of capitalists anxious to swing forward with the
development of railways and new enterprises. Its origin had been marked by a wave of
moral enthusiasm such as has seldom appeared in the history of politics.
And over all it spread the mantle of patriotism. It had saved the Union, and it had
struck the shackles from four million bondmen. In a baptism of fire it had redeemed a
nation. Europe's finger of scorn could no longer be pointed to the "slave republic
paying its devotions to liberty and equality within the sound of the bondman's wail."
The promises of the Declaration of Independence had been fulfilled and the heroic
deeds of the Revolution rivaled by Republican leaders. As it declared in its platform
of 1876, the Republican party had come into power "when in the economy of Providence
this land was to be purged of human slavery and when the strength of the government of
the people, by the
Against such a combination of patriotism and economic interest, the Democratic party had difficulty in making headway, for its former economic mainstay, the slave power, was broken and gone; it was charged with treason, and it enjoyed none of the spoils of national office. But in spite of all obstacles it showed remarkable vitality. Though divided on the slave question in 1860, those who boasted the name of "Democrat" were in an overwhelming majority, and even during the Civil War, with the southern wing cut off completely, the party was able to make a respectable showing in the campaign which resulted in Lincoln's second election. When the South returned to the fold, and white dominion drove the negro from the polls, the Democratic party began to renew its youth. In the elections of 1874, it captured the House of Representatives; it narrowly missed the presidency in 1876; and it retained its control of the lower house of Congress in the elections of 1876 and 1878.
The administration of President Hayes did little to strengthen the position of the
Republicans. His policy of pacification in the South alienated many partisans who
believed that those who had saved the Union should continue to rule it; but it is
difficult to say how much disaffection should be attributed to this cause. It seems to
have been quietly understood within official
Charges based on sectional feeling were also brought forward in criticism of some of Hayes' cabinet appointments. He terrified the advocates of "no concession to rebels" by appointing David M. Key, an ex-Confederate soldier of Tennessee, to the office of Postmaster-General; and his selection of Carl Schurz, a leader of the Liberal Republican Movement of 1872 and an uncertain quantity in politics, as Secretary of the Interior, was scarcely more palatable in some quarters. He created further trouble in Republican ranks by his refusal to accede to the demands of powerful Senators, like Cameron of Pennsylvania and Conkling of New York, for control over patronage in their respective states. No other President for more than a generation had so many nominations rejected by the Senate.
On the side of legislation, Hayes' administration was nearly barren. During his
entire term the House of Representatives was Democratic, and during the last two years
the Senate was Democratic also by a good margin. Had he desired to carry out a large
legislative policy, he could not have done so; but he was not a man of great capacity
as an initiator of public policies.
In their desperation, the conservative leaders of the Republican party resolved to have no more "weak and goody-goody" Presidents, incapable of fascinating the populace and keeping it in good humor, and they made a determined effort to secure the renomination of Grant for a third term, in spite of the tradition against it. Conkling captured the New York delegation to the national convention in 1880 for Grant; Cameron swung Pennsylvania into line; and Logan carried off Illinois. Grant's consent to be a candidate was obtained, and Conkling placed his name in nomination in a speech which Senator Hoar describes as one of "very great power."
Strong opposition to Grant developed, however, partly on account of the feeling
against the third term, and particularly on account of the antagonism to the Conkling
faction which was backing him. Friends of Blaine, then Senator from Maine, and
supporters of John Sherman of Ohio, thought that Grant had had enough honors at the
hands of the party, and that their turn had come. As a result of a combination of
circumstances, Grant never received more than 313 of the 378 votes necessary to
nomination at the Republican convention. After prolonged balloting, the deadlock was
broken by the nomination of James A. Garfield, of Ohio, as a "dark horse." The Grant
contingent from New
In spite of the promising signs, the Democrats were unable to defeat the Republicans in 1880. The latter found it possible to heal, at least for campaign purposes, the breaches created by Hayes' administration. It is true that Senator Conkling and the "Stalwart" faction identified with corporation interests were sorely disappointed in their failure to secure the nomination of Grant for a third term, and that Garfield as a "dark horse" did not have a personal following like that of his chief opponents, the Hero of Appomattox, Blaine of Maine, and Sherman of Ohio. But he had the advantage of escaping the bitter factional feeling within the party against each of these leaders. He had risen from humble circumstances, and his managers were able to make great capital out of his youthful labors as a "canal-boat boy." He had served several terms in Congress acceptably; he had been intrusted with a delicate place as a member of the electoral commission that had settled the Hayes-Tilden dispute; and he was at the time of his nomination Senator-elect from Ohio. Though without the high qualities of leadership that distinguished Blaine, Garfield was a decidedly "available" candidate, and his candidature was strengthened by the nomination of Arthur, who was acceptable to the Conkling group and the spoilsmen generally.
The Republican fortunes in 1880 were further enhanced by the divisions among the
Democrats and their inability to play the game of practical politics. Two sets
Whether Garfield would have been able to consolidate his somewhat shattered party by
effective leadership is a matter of speculation, for, on July 2, 1881, about four
months after his inauguration, he was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed and
half-crazed office seeker, and he died on September 19. His successor, Vice President
Arthur, though a man of considerable ability, who managed his office with more acumen
and common honesty than his opponents attributed to him, was unable to clear away the
accumulating dissatisfaction within
In fact, Arthur, notwithstanding the taint of "spoils" associated with his career, proved to be by no means the easy-going politician that had been expected. He took a firm stand against extravagant appropriations as a means of getting rid of the Treasury surplus, and in 1882 he vetoed a river and harbor appropriation bill which was specially designed to distribute funds among localities on the basis of favoritism. In the same year, he vetoed a Chinese exclusion act as violating the treaty with China, and made recommendations as to changes which were accepted by Congress. Arthur also advocated legislation against the spoils system, and on January 16, 1883, signed the Civil Service law.1 He recommended a revision of the tariff, including some striking reductions in schedules, but the tariff act of 1883 was even less satisfactory to the public than such measures usually are. Judging by past standards, however, Arthur had a claim upon his party for the nomination in 1884.
But Arthur was not a magnetic leader, and the election of Grover Cleveland as
governor of New York in 1882 and Democratic victories elsewhere warned the Republicans
that their tenure of power was not indefinite. Circumspection, however, was difficult.
A "reform" faction had grown up within the party, protesting against the gross
practices of old leaders like Conkling and urging at least more outward signs of
propriety. In this
The hopes of the Republican reformers were completely dashed, however, by the nomination of Blaine. This "gentleman from Maine" was a man of brilliant parts and the idol of large sections of the country, particularly the Middle West; but some suspicions concerning his personal integrity were widely entertained, and not without reason, by a group of influential leaders in his party. In 1876, he was charged with having shared in the corruption funds of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and as Professor Dunning cautiously puts it, "the facts developed put Mr. Blaine under grave suspicion of just that sort of wealth-getting, if nothing worse, which had ruined his colleagues in the Credit Mobilier." Moreover, Mr. Blaine's associations had been with that wing of his party which had been involved or implicated in one scandal after another. Partly on this account, he had been defeated for nomination in 1876, when he was decidedly the leading aspirant and again in 1880 when he received 285 votes in the convention. But in 1884, leaders like Senator Platt, of New York, declared "it is now Blaine's turn," and he was nominated in spite of a threatened bolt.
The Democrats were fortunate in their selection of Grover Cleveland as their standard
bearer. He had
These qualities drew to Cleveland the support of a group of eminent Republicans, like
Carl Schurz who had been Secretary of the Interior under Hayes, George William Curtis,
the civil service reformer, Henry Ward Beecher, and William Everett, who were
nicknamed "Mugwumps" from an Indian word meaning "chief." Although the "reformers"
talked a great deal about "purity" in politics, the campaign of 1884 was principally
over personalities; and, as a contemporary newspaper put it, it took on the tone of "a
pothouse quarrel." There was no real division over issues, as will be seen by a
comparison of platforms, and scandalous rumors respecting the morals of the two
candidates were freely employed as campaign arguments. Indeed, the spirit of the fray
is reflected in the words of the Democratic platform: "The Republican party, so far as
principle is concerned, is a reminiscence. In practice, it is an organization for
enriching those who control its machinery.
Their demand for a change was approved by the voters, for Cleveland received 219 electoral votes as against 182 cast for Blaine. A closer analysis of the vote, however, shows no landslide to the Democrats, for had New York been shifted to the Republican column, the result would have been 218 for Blaine and 183 for Cleveland. And the Democratic victory in New York was so close that a second count was necessary, upon which it was discovered that the successful candidate had only about eleven hundred votes more than the vanquished Blaine. Taking the country as a whole, the Democrats had a plurality of a little more than twenty thousand votes.
Cleveland's administration was beset by troubles from the beginning. The civil
service reformers were early disappointed with his performances, as they might have
expected. It is true that the Democratic party had posed in general as the party of
"reform," because forsooth having no patronage to dispense nor favors
Cleveland's executive policy was negative rather than positive. He vigorously applied
the veto to private pension bills. From the foundation of the government until 1897,
it appears that 265 such bills were denied executive approval; and of these five were
vetoed by Grant and 260 by Cleveland--nearly all of the latter's negatives being in
his first administration. Cleveland also vetoed a general dependent pension bill in
1887 on the ground that it was badly drawn and ill considered. Although his enemies
attempted to show that he was hostile to the old soldiers, his vetoes were in fact
based
On the constructive side, Cleveland's first administration was marked by a vigorous land policy under which upwards of 80,000,000 acres of land were recovered from private corporations and persons who had secured their holdings illegally. He was also the first President to treat the labor problem in a special message (1886); and he thus gave official recognition to a new force in politics, although the sole outcome of his recommendations was the futile law of 1888 providing for the voluntary arbitration of disputes between railways and their employees. The really noteworthy measure of his first administration was the interstate commerce law of 1887, but that could hardly be called a partisan achievement.1
Holding his place by no overwhelming mandate and having none of those qualities of
brilliant leadership which arouse the multitude, Cleveland was unable to intrench his
party, and he was forced to surrender
On this issue they carried the election of 1888. Passing by Blaine once more, the
Republicans selected Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana, a United States Senator, a shrewd
lawyer, and a reticent politician. Mr. Wanamaker, a rich Philadelphia merchant, was
chosen to raise campaign funds, and he successfully discharged the functions of his
office. As he said himself, he addressed the business men of the country in the
following language: "How much would you pay for insurance upon your business? If you
were confronted by from one to three years of general depression by a change in our
revenue and protective measures affecting our
Harrison's administration opened auspiciously in many ways. The appointment of Blaine as Secretary of State was a diplomatic move, for undoubtedly Blaine was far more popular with the rank and file of his party than was Harrison. The civil service reformers were placated by the appointment of Theodore Roosevelt as president of the Civil Service Commission, for he was a vigorous champion of reform, who brought the whole question forcibly before the country by his speeches and articles, although it must be said that no very startling gains were made against the spoils system under his administration of the civil service law. It required time to educate the country to the point of supporting the administrative heads in resisting the clamor of the politicians for office.
Harrison's leadership in legislation was not noteworthy. The Republicans were in
power in the lower house in 1889 for the first time since 1881, but their majority was
so small that it required all of the parliamentary ingenuity which Speaker Reed could
command to keep the legislative machine in operation. Nevertheless, several important
measures were enacted into law. The McKinley tariff act based upon the doctrine
There had been nothing decisive, however, about the Republican victory in 1888, for a few thousand votes in New York changed the day as four years before. Harrison had not proved to be a very popular candidate, and there was nothing particularly brilliant or striking about his administration to enhance his reputation. He was able to secure a renomination in 1892, largely because he controlled so many officeholding delegates to the Republican convention, and there was no other weighty candidate in the field, Blaine being unwilling to make an open fight at the primaries.
In the second contest with Cleveland, Harrison was badly worsted, receiving only 145
electoral votes against 277 cast for the Democratic candidate and 22 for the Populist,
Weaver. The campaign was marked by no special incidents, for both Cleveland and
Harrison had been found safe and conservative and there was no very sharp division
over issues. The tariff, it is true, was vigorously discussed, but Cleveland made it
clear
President Cleveland went into power for the second time on what appeared to be a wave of business prosperity, but those who looked beneath the surface knew that serious financial and industrial difficulties were pending. Federal revenues were declining and a deficit was staring the government in the face at a time when there was, for several reasons, a stringency in the gold market. The Treasury gold reserve was already rapidly diminishing, and Harrison was on the point of selling bonds when the inauguration of Cleveland saved the day for him. Congress was deadlocked on the money question, though called in a special session to grant relief; and Cleveland at length resorted to the sale of bonds under an act of 1875 to procure gold for the Treasury. The first sale was made in January, 1894, and the financiers, to pay for the bonds, drew nearly half of the amount of gold out of the Treasury itself.
The "endless chain" system of selling bonds to get gold for the Treasury, only to
have it drawn out immediately, aroused a great hue and cry against the financial
interests. In November, 1894, a second sale was made with similar results, and in
February, 1895, Cleveland in sheer desperation called in Mr. J.P. Morgan and
While the government was wrestling with the financial problem, the country was in the midst of an industrial crisis. The number of bankruptcies rose with startling rapidity, hundreds of factories were closed, and idle men thronged the streets hunting for work. According to a high authority, Professor D.R. Dewey, "never before had the evil of unemployment been so widespread in the United States." It was so pressing that Jacob Coxey, a business man from Ohio, planned a march of idle men on Washington in 1894 to demand relief at the hands of the government. His "army," as it was called, ended in a fiasco, but it directed the attention of the country to a grave condition of affairs.
Reductions in wages produced severe strikes, one of which--the Pullman strike of
Chicago--led to the paralysis of the railways entering Chicago, because the Pullman
employees were supported by the American Railway Union. The disorders connected with
the
The most important piece of legislation during Cleveland's second administration was the Wilson tariff bill--a measure which was so objectionable to the President that he could not sign it, and it therefore became law. without his approval. The only popular feature in it was the income tax provision, which was annulled the following year by the Supreme Court. Having broken with his party on the money question, and having failed to secure a revision of the tariff to suit his ideas, Cleveland retired in 1897, and one of his party members declared that he was "the most cordially hated Democrat in the country."
The tariff was one of the issues bequeathed to the parties from ante-bellum days, but
there was no very
From that campaign forward the Democrats appeared to favor a "revenue tariff" in
their platforms. It is true they accepted the Liberal Republican platform in 1872,
which frankly begged the question by acknowledging the wide differences of opinion on
the subject and remitted the discussion of the matter "to the people in their
congressional districts and the decision of Congress thereon." But in 1876, the
Democrats came back to the old doctrine and demanded "that all custom-house taxation
shall be only for revenue." In their victorious campaign of 1884, however, they were
vague. They pledged themselves "to revise the tariff in a spirit of fairness to all
interests"; but they promised, in making reductions, not "to injure any domestic
Cleveland, in the beginning of his administration, faithfully followed his platform,
for in his first message he "placed the need of tax reduction solely on the ground of
excess revenue and declared that there was no occasion for a discussion of the wisdom
or expediency of the protective system." But within two years he had seen a new light,
and he devoted his message of December, 1887, exclusively to a discussion of the
tariff issue, in vague and uncertain language it is true, but still characterized by
such a ringing denunciation of the "vicious, illegal, and inequitable" system of
taxation then in vogue, that the Republicans were able to call it, with some show of
justification, a "free trade document." The New York Tribune
announced with evident glee that Cleveland had made "the issue boldly and distinctly
and that the theories and aims of the ultra-opponents of protection have a new and
zealous advocate." Of course, Cleveland hotly denied that he was trying to commit his
party to a simple doctrine of free trade or even the old principle of the platform,
"tariff for revenue only." Moreover, the Democrats, in their platform of the following
year, while indorsing Cleveland's messages, renewed the tariff pledges of their last
platform and promised to take "labor" into a careful consideration in any
revision.
In spite of the equivocal position taken by the Democrats, the Republicans made great
political capital out of the affair, apparently on the warranted assumption that the
voters would not read Cleveland's message or the platform of his party. In their
declaration of principles in 1888, the Republicans made the tariff the leading issue:
"We are uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of protection. We protest
against its destruction, as proposed by the President and his party. They serve the
interests of Europe; we will support the interest of America. We accept the issue and
confidently appeal to the people for their judgment. The protective system must be
maintained. . . . We favor the entire repeal of internal taxes rather than the
surrender of any part of our protective system, at the joint behest of the whisky
trusts and the agents of foreign manufacturers." Again, in 1892, the Republicans
attempted to make the tariff the issue : "We reaffirm the American doctrine of
protection. We call attention to its growth abroad. We maintain that the prosperous
condition of our country is largely due to the wise revenue legislation of the
Republican Congress," i.e. the McKinley bill.
The effect of this Republican hammering on the subject was to bring out a solemn
declaration on the part of the Democrats. "We denounce," they say in 1892, "the
Republican protection as a fraud, a robbery of the great majority of the American
people for the benefit of the few. We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the
Democratic party that the Federal government has no constitutional power to impose and
collect tariff
A close analysis of the platforms and performances of the parties from 1876 to 1896 shows no clear alignment at all on the tariff. Both parties promise reductions, but neither is specific as to details. The Republicans, while making much of the protective system, could not ignore the demand for tariff reform; and the Democrats, while repeating the well-worn phrases about tariff for revenue, were unable to overlook the fact that a drastic assault upon the protective interests would mean their undoing. In Congress, the Republicans made no serious efforts to lower the duties, and the attempts of the Democrats produced meager results.
Among the new issues raised by the economic revolution was the control of giant
combinations of capital. Although some of the minor parties had declaimed against
trusts as early as 1876, and the Democratic party, in 1884, had denounced "land
monopolies," industrial combinations did not figure as distinct issues in the
platforms of the old parties until 1888. In that year, the Democrats vaguely referred
to unnecessary taxation as a source of trusts and combinations, which, "while
Both old parties returned to the trust question again in 1892. The Democrats recognized "in the trusts and combinations which are designed to enable capital to secure more than its just share of the joint product of capital and labor, a natural consequence of the prohibitive taxes which prevent the free competition which is the life of honest trade, but we believe the worst evils can be abated by law." Thereupon follows a demand for additional legislation restraining and controlling trusts. The Republicans simply reaffirmed their declaration of 1888, indorsed the Sherman anti-trust law already enacted by Congress in 1890, and favored new legislation remedying defects and rendering the enforcement of the law more complete.
The railway issue emerged in 1880 when the Republicans, boasting that under their
administration railways
Even before the Civil War, the labor vote had become a factor that could not be
ignored, and both old parties consistently conciliated it by many references. The
Republicans in 1860 commended that "policy of national exchanges which secures to the
workingmen liberal wages." The defense of the protective system was gradually shifted
by the Republicans, until, judging from the platforms, its continuation was
justifiable principally on account of their anxiety to safeguard the American
workingman against "the pauper labor of
Among the more concrete offerings to labor were the promises of homesteads in the West by the Republicans--promises which the Democrats reiterated; protection against Chinese and coolie labor, particularly in the West, safety-appliance laws applicable to interstate carriers, the establishment of a labor bureau at Washington, the prohibition of the importation of alien laborers under contract, and the abolition of prison contract labor. On these matters there was no marked division between the two old parties; each advocated measures of its own in general terms and denounced the propositions of the other in equally general terms.
The money question bulked large in the platforms, but until 1896 there was nothing
like a clean-cut division.1
Both parties hedged and remained consistently vague. The Republicans in 1888 declared
in favor of "the use of both gold and silver as money," and condemned "the policy of
the Democratic administration in its efforts to demonetize silver." Again, in 1892,
the Republicans declared: "The American people, from tradition and interest, favor
bimetallism, and the Republican party demands the use of both gold and silver as
standard money, with such restriction and under such provisions, to be determined by
legislation, as will secure the maintenance of the parity of values of the two metals,
so that the purchasing and debt-paying power of the dollar, whether of silver, gold,
or paper, shall be at all times equal." The Democrats likewise hedged their profession
of faith about with limitations and provisions. They declared in favor of both metals
and no discrimination for mintage; but the unit of coinage of both metals "must be of
equal intrinsic or exchangeable value, or be adjusted through international agreement
or by such safeguards of legislation as shall insure the maintenance of the parity of
the two metals." Thus both of the platforms of 1892 are paragons of ambiguity.
IT was inevitable that financial measures should occupy the first
place in the legislative labors of Congress for a long time after the War. That
conflict had left an enormous debt of more than two billion eight hundred million
dollars, and the taxes were not only high, but they reached nearly every source which
was open to the Federal government. There were outstanding more than four hundred
millions of legal tender treasury notes, "greenbacks," which had seriously depreciated
and, on account of their variability as compared with gold, offered unlimited
opportunities for speculation and jugglery in Wall Street--of which Jay Gould's
attempt to corner the gold market and the precipitation of the disaster of Black
Friday in 1869 were only spectacular incidents.
Three distinct problems confronted the national administration: the refunding of the
national debt at lower rates of interest, the final determination of the place and
basis of the paper money in the currency system, and the comparative treatment of gold
and silver coinage. The first of these tasks was undertaken by Congress during Grant's
administration, when, by
The two remaining problems were by no means so easy of solution, because they went to the root of the financial system of the country. Most of the financial interests of the East were anxious to return to a specie basis for the currency by retiring the legal tender notes or by placing them on a metallic foundation. The Treasury under President Johnson began to withdraw the greenbacks from circulation under authority of an act of Congress passed in 1866; but it soon met the determined resistance of the paper money party, which looked upon contraction as a banker's device to appreciate the value of gold and reduce the amount of money in circulation, thus bringing low prices for labor and commodities. Within two years Congress peremptorily stopped the withdrawal of additional Treasury notes.1
Shortly after forbidding the further retirement of legal tender notes, Congress
reassured the hard money party by passing, on March 18, 1869, an act promising, on the
faith of the United States, to pay in coin "all obligations not otherwise redeemable,"
and to redeem the legal tender notes in specie "as soon as practicable." A further
gain for hard money was made in 1875 by the passage of the Resumption Act, providing
that on and after January 1, 1879, "the Secretary of the Treasury shall redeem in coin
the United States legal tender notes then outstanding, on their presentation for
redemption
Out of the conflict over the inflation and contraction of the currency grew the struggle over "free silver" which was not ended until the campaign of 1900. To understand this controversy we must go back beyond the Civil War. The Constitution, as drafted in 1787, gives Congress the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof and forbids the states to issue bills of credit or make anything but the gold and silver coin of the United States legal tender in the payment of debts. Nothing is said in that instrument about the power of Congress to issue paper money, and it is questionable whether the framers intended to leave the door open for legal tenders or notes of any kind.
In 1792, the new Federal government began to coin gold and silver at the ratio of 1
to 15, but it was soon found that at this ratio gold was undervalued, and consequently
little or no gold was brought to the Treasury to be coined. At length, in 1834,
Congress, by law, fixed the ratio between the two metals approximately at 16 to 1; but
this was found to be an overvaluation of gold or an undervaluation of silver, as some
said, and as a result silver was not brought to the Treasury for coinage and almost
dropped out of the monetary system. Finally, in 1873, when the silver dollar was
already 119
It happened about this time that the price of silver began to decline steadily, until within twenty years it was about half the price it was in 1870. Some men attributed this fall in the price of silver to the fact that Germany had demonetized it in 1871, and that about the same time rich deposits of silver were discovered in the United States. Others declared that silver had not fallen so much in price, but that gold, in which it was measured, had risen on account of the fact that silver had been demonetized and gold given a monopoly of the coinage market. On this matter Republicans and Democrats were both divided, for it brought a new set of economic antagonisms into play--the debtor and the creditor--as opposed to the antagonisms growing out of slavery and reconstruction.
Some Republicans, like Senator Morrill, of Vermont, firmly believed that no approach
could be made to a genuine bimetallic currency, both metals freely and equally
circulating, without the cooperation of the leading commercial nations of the world;
and they also went so far as to doubt whether it would be possible even then to adjust
the "fickle ratio" finely enough to prevent supply and demand from driving one or the
other metal out of circulation. Other Republicans, like except those
investments which yield a fixed return in money."
It was this exception made by Blaine that formed the crux of the whole issue. The
contest was largely between creditors and debtors. Indeed, it is thus frankly stated
by Senator Jones of Nevada in a speech in the Senate on May 12, 1890: "Three fourths
of the business enterprises of this country are conducted on borrowed capital. Three
fourths of the homes and farms that stand in the name of the actual occupants have
been bought on time, and a very large proportion of them are mortgaged for the payment
of some part of the purchase money. Under the operation of a shrinkage in the volume
of money, this enormous mass of borrowers, at the maturity of their respective debts,
though nominally paying no more than the amount borrowed, with interest, are, in
reality, in the amount of the principal alone, returning a percentage of value so long as the change is in one direction. Who ever heard
from an Eastern journal any complaint against a contraction of our money volume, any
admonition that in a shrinking volume of money lurk evils of the utmost magnitude? . .
. In all discussions of the subject the creditors attempt to brush aside the equities
involved by sneering at the debtors." Both parties to the conflict assumed a monopoly
of virtue and economic wisdom, and the controversy proceeded on that plane, with no
concessions except where necessary to secure some practical gain.
By 1877, silver had fallen to the ratio of seventeen to one as compared with gold,
and silver mine owners were anxious to have the government buy their bullion at the
old rate existing before the "demonetization" of 1873. In this they were supported by
the farmers and the debtor classes generally, who thought that the gold market was
substantially controlled by a relatively few financiers and that the appreciation of
the yellow metal meant lower prices for their commodities and the maintenance of high
interest rates. Criticism was leveled particularly against the bondholders, who
demanded the payment of interest and principal in gold, in spite of the fact that, at
the time the bonds were
In the Forty-fourth Congress, the silver party, led by Bland, of Missouri, attempted to force the passage of a law providing for the free and unlimited coinage of silver approximately at the ratio of sixteen to one, but their measure was amended on the motion of Allison, of Iowa, in the Senate, in such a manner as simply to authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase not less than two million nor more than four million dollars' worth of silver each month to be coined into silver dollars. The measure thus amended was vetoed by Hayes, but was repassed over his protest and became a law in 1878, popularly known as the Bland-Allison Act. The opponents of contraction were able to secure the passage of another act in the same year forbidding the further retirement of legal tender notes and providing that the Treasury, instead of canceling such notes on receiving them, should reissue them and keep them in circulation.
None of the disasters prophesied by the gold advocates followed the enactment of the
Bland-Allison bill, but no one was satisfied with it. The value of silver as compared
with gold steadily declined, until the ratio was twenty-two to one in 1887. The silver
party claimed that the trouble was not with silver, but that the
At the opening of Hayes' administration the Civil War tariff was still in force. It is true, there had been some slight reduction in 1872, but this was offset by increases three years later. During the two decades following, there was much political controversy over protection, as we have seen, and there were three important revisions of the protective system: in 1883 on the initiation of the Senate, in 1890 when the McKinley bill was passed, and in 1894 when the Wilson bill was enacted under Democratic auspices.
The first of these revisions was induced largely by the growing surplus in the Federal Treasury and the inability of Congress to dispose of it, even by the most extravagant appropriations. In 1882, the surplus rose to the startling figure of $145,000,000, and a tariff commission was appointed to consider, among other things, some method of cutting down the revenues by a revision of duties. This commission reported a revised schedule of rates providing for considerable reductions, but still on a highly protective basis. The House at that time was Republican, and the Senate was equally divided, with two independents holding the balance of power. The upper house took the lead in the revision and escaped the constitutional provision requiring the initiation of revenue bills in the lower house by tacking their measure to a bill which the House had passed at the preceding session.
Under the circumstances neither party was responsible for the measure, and it is
small wonder that it pleased no one, after the fashion of tariff bills. There was a
slight reduction on coarse woolens, cottons, iron, steel, and several other staple
commodities, but not enough to place the industries concerned on a basis of
competition with European manufactures. New England agricultural products were
carefully protected, but the wool growers of Ohio and other middle western states lost
the ad valorem duties on wool. The Democrats in the House denounced the measure, and
most of them voted against it because, they alleged, it did not go far enough. William
McKinley, of Ohio, then beginning his career, opposed it on other grounds; and Senator
Almost immediately attempts were made to amend the law of 1883. For two years the Democrats, under the leadership of W. R. Morrison, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, pottered about with the tariff, but accomplished nothing, partially on account of the opposition of protectionist Democrats, like Randall, of Pennsylvania. In 1886, President Cleveland, in his second message, took up the tariff seriously; and under the leadership of Roger Q. Mills, of Texas, the Democratic House, two years later, passed the "Mills bill" only to see it die in the Senate. The Republican victory of 1888, though narrow, was a warning that no compromise would be made with those who struck a blow at protection.
The Republican House set to work upon a revision of the tariff with a view to
establishing high protection, and in May, 1890, Mr. McKinley, chairman of the Ways and
Means Committee, introduced his bill increasing the duties generally. In the
preparation of this measure, the great manufacturing interests had been freely
consulted, and their requests for rates were frequently accepted without change, or
made the basis for negotiations with opposing forces, as in the case, for example, of
the binding twine trust and the objecting farmers. On the insistence of Mr. Blaine,
then Secretary of State, a "reciprocity" clause was introduced into the bill,
authorizing the President to place higher
The opposition to the McKinley bill was unusually violent, and no opportunity was given to test its working before the country swung again to the Democrats in the autumn of 1890; but the Republican majority in the Senate prevented the House from carrying through any of its attacks on the system. The election of Cleveland two years later and the capture of the Senate as well by the Democrats seemed to promise that the long-standing threat of a general downward revision would be carried out. William Wilson, of West Virginia, reported the new bill from the Ways and Means Committee in December, 1893. Although it made numerous definite reductions in duties, it was by no means a drastic "free trade" measure, such as the Republicans had prophesied in their campaign speeches. The bill passed the House by a large majority, with only a few Democrats voting against it. Even radical Democrats from the West, who would have otherwise demanded further reductions, were conciliated by the provision for a tax on all incomes over $4000.
When the Wilson bill left the House of Representatives, it had some of the
appearances at least of a "tariff-for-revenue" measure. Reductions had been made all
along the line, not without regard, of course, for sectional interests, in memory of
the principle that the "tariff is a local issue." But the Senate made short work of
it. There the individual member counted for more. He had the right to talk as long as
he pleased,
The action of the Democratic Senate is easily accounted for. Hill, of New York, was almost rabid in his opposition to the income tax provision. Louisiana was a great sugar-growing state, and her Senators had their own notion as to what were the proper duties on sugar. Alabama had rising iron industries, and her Senators shared the emotions of the representatives from Pennsylvania as the proposed reductions on iron products were contemplated. Senator Gorman, of Maryland, had no more heart in "attacking the interests" than did Senator Quay, of Pennsylvania, who, by the way, used his "inside information" during the passage of the bill to make money by speculating in sugar stocks.
With glee the Republicans taunted the Democrats that their professions were one thing
and their performances another. "This is not a protective bill," said Senator O. H.
Platt, of Connecticut. "It is not in any sense a recognition of the doctrine of
protection high or low. It is not a bill for revenue with incidental protection. It is
a bill (and the truth may as well be told in the Senate of the United States) which
proceeds upon free trade principles, except as to such articles as it has
Twenty years of tariff agitation and tinkering had thus ended in general
dissatisfaction with the promises and performances of both parties. The Republicans
had advanced to a position of high protection based principally upon the demands of
manufacturing interests themselves, modified by such protests on the part of consumers
as became vocal and effective in politics. The Democrats had been driven, under Mr.
Cleveland's leadership, to what seemed to be a disposition to reduce the tariff to
something approaching a revenue basis, but when it came to an actual performance,
their practical views, as manifested in the Wilson-Gorman act, were not far behind
those of the opposing party. Representatives of both parties talked as if the issue
was a contest between tariff-for-revenue and protection, but in fact it was not. The
question was really, "which of the several regions shall receive the most protection?"
Of attempts to get the tariff upon a "scientific basis," striking a balance among all
the interests of the country,
The "spoils system" of making Federal offices the reward for partisan services began to draw a strong fire of criticism in Grant's first administration. It was natural that the Democrats should view with disfavor a practice which excluded them entirely from serving their country in an official capacity, and the reformers regarded it as a menace to American institutions because it was the basis of a "political machine" which controlled primaries and elections and shut out the discussion of real issues. In response to this combined attack, Congress passed in 1871 a law authorizing the President to prescribe regulations for admission to the civil service and provide methods for ascertaining the fitness of candidates--a law which promised well while the distinguished champion of reform, George William Curtis, was head of the board in charge of its administration. Congress, however, had accepted the reform reluctantly and refused to give it adequate financial support. After two years' experience with the law, Curtis resigned, and within a short time the whole scheme fell to the ground.
The reformers, however, did not give up hope, for they were sufficiently strong to
compel the respect of the Democrats, and the latter, by their insistence on a reform
that cost them nothing, forced the Republicans
Never was the spoils system more odious than when the assassination of Garfield by a disappointed office hunter startled the country from its apathy. Within a year, a Senate committee had reported favorably on a civil service reform bill. It declared that the President had to wear his life out giving audiences to throngs of beggars who besieged the executive mansion, and that the spectacle of the chief magistrate of the nation dispensing patronage to "a hungry, clamorous, crowding, and jostling multitude" was humiliating to the patriotic citizen. And with the Congressman the system "is ever present. When he awakes in the morning it is at his door, and when he retires at night it haunts his chamber. It goes before him, it follows after him, and it meets him on the way." The only relief, concluded the report, was to be found in a thoroughgoing merit system of appointing civil servants.
At length in 1883 Congress passed the civil service act authorizing, but not
commanding, the President to appoint a commission and extend the merit system to
certain Federal offices. The commission was to be composed of three members, not more
than two of the
In the beginning of the railway era in the United States, Congress made no attempt to
devise a far-sighted plan of public control, but negligently devoted its attention to
granting generous favors to railways. It was not until the stock-watering,
high-financing, discriminations and rebates had disgraced the country that Congress
was moved to act. It is true that President Grant in his message of 1872 recommended,
and a Senate committee approved, a comprehensive plan for regulating railways, but
there was no practical outcome. The railway interests were too strong in
This act was a timid, halting measure, and the Supreme Court almost immediately
sheared away its effectiveness by decisions in favor of the railway companies. The law
created a commission of five members empowered to investigate the operations of common
carriers and order those who violated the law to desist. The act itself forbade
discriminations in rates, pooling traffic, and the charging of more for "short" than
"long hauls" over the same line, except under special circumstances. In spite of the
good intentions of the commission, the law was practically a dead letter. According to
a careful scholar, Professor Davis R. Dewey, "By 1890 the practice of cut rates to
favored shippers and cities was all but universal at the West; passes were generally
issued; rebates were charged up to maintenance of way account; special privileges of
yardage, loading, and cartage were granted; freight was underbilled or carried under a
wrong classification and secret notification of intended reduction of rates was made
to favored shippers. . . . The ingenuity of officials in breaking the spirit of the
law knew no limit, and is a discouraging commentary on the dishonesty
The critics of railway policy who were able to force the passage of the interstate commerce act usually coupled the denunciation of the industrial monopolies with their attacks on common carriers; and, three years after the establishment of the interstate commerce commission, Congress, feeling that some kind of action was demanded by the political situation, passed the Sherman anti-trust law of 1890. There was no consensus of opinion among the political leaders as to the significance of the trust. Blaine declared that "trusts were largely a private affair with which neither the President nor any private citizen had any particular right to interfere." Speaker Reed dismissed the subject by announcing that he had heard "more idiotic raving, more pestiferous rant, on that subject than on all others put together." Judge Cooley, on seeing "the utterly heartless manner in which the trusts sometimes have closed many factories and turned men willing to be industrious into the streets in order that they may increase profits already reasonably large," asked whether the trust "as we see it is not a public enemy; whether it is not teaching the laborer dangerous lessons; whether it is not helping to breed anarchy."
In the midst of this general confusion of opinion on the trust, it is not surprising
that Congress in the Sherman law of 1890 enunciated no clear principles. Apparently it
intended to restore competition by declaring illegal "every contract, combination in
the form of trust or National Problems, p. 103.
The vagueness of the Sherman anti-trust law was a subject of remark during its passage through Congress. O.H. Platt, in the Senate, criticized the bill as attacking all combinations, no matter what their practices or forms. "I believe," he said, "that every man in business--I do not care whether he is a farmer, a laborer, a miner, a sailor, manufacturer, a merchant--has a right, a legal and a moral right, to obtain a fair profit upon his business and his work; and if he is driven by fierce competition to a spot where his business is unremunerative, I believe it is his right to combine for the purpose of raising prices until they shall be fair and remunerative. This bill makes no distinction. It says that every combination which has the effect in any way to advance prices is illegal and void. . . . The theory of this bill is that prices must never be advanced by two or more persons, no matter how ruinously low they may be. That theory I denounce as utterly untenable, as immoral."
Senator Platt then went on to say that the whole
Senator Hoar, who claimed that he was the author of the Sherman anti-trust law, says,
however, that the act was not directed against all combinations in
business. "It was expected," he says, "that the court in administering that law would
confine its operations to cases which are contrary to the policy of the law, treating
the words 'agreements in restraint of trade' as having a technical meaning, such as
they are supposed to have in England. The Supreme Court of the United States went in
this particular farther than was expected1. . . It has not been carried to its full extent since, and
I think will never be held to prohibit those lawful and
The immediate effects of the Sherman anti-trust law were wholly negligible. Seven of the eight judicial decisions under the law during Harrison's administration were against the government, and no indictment of offenders against the law went so far as a trial. During Cleveland's second term the law was a dead letter. Meanwhile trusts and combinations continued to multiply.
In the debates over tariff reduction, silver, and paper money, evidences of group and class conflicts were almost constantly apparent, but it was not until the enactment of the income tax provision of 1894 that political leaders of national standing frankly avowed a class purpose--the shifting of a portion of the burden of national taxes from the commodities consumed by the poor to the incomes of the rich.
The movement for an income tax found its support especially among the farmers of the
West and South and the working classes of the great cities. The demand for it had been
appearing for some time in the platforms of the agrarian and labor parties. The
National or Greenback party, in its platform of 1884, demanded "a graduated income
tax" and "a wise revision of the tariff laws with a view to raising revenues from
luxury
In the campaign of 1892, the demand for an income tax was made by the Populist party and by the Socialist Labor party. The former frankly declared war on the rich, proclaiming in its platform that, "The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty." Among the remedies for this dire condition of things the Populists demanded "a graduated income tax." The Democrats, at their convention of that year, denounced the McKinley tariff law "as the culminating atrocity of class legislation," and declared that "The Federal government has no constitutional power to impose and collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue only."
When it was discovered in the ensuing election that the Democratic party, with its
low tariff pronunciamento
When the tariff bill was introduced in Congress, on December 19, 1893, it contained
no provision for an income tax, and it was not until January 29 that an income tax
amendment to the Wilson bill was introduced in behalf of the Committee. In defending
his amendment, the mover, Mr. McMillin, declared that the purpose of the tax was to
place a small per cent of the enormous Federal burden "upon the accumulated wealth of
the country instead of placing all upon the consumption of the people." He announced
that they did not come there in any spirit of antagonism to wealth, that they did not
intend to put an undue embargo upon wealth, but that they did intend to make
accumulated wealth pay some share of the expenses of the government. The tariff, in
his opinion, taxed want, not wealth.
The champions of property against this proposal to tax incomes in order to relieve
the burden upon consumption summoned every device of oratory and argument to their
aid. They ridiculed and denounced, and endeavored to conjure up before Congress
horrible visions of want, anarchy, socialism, ruin, and destruction. J. H. Walker, of
Massachusetts, declared that, "The income tax takes from the wealth of the thrifty and
the enterprising and gives to the shifty and the sluggard." Adams, of Pennsylvania,
found the income tax "utterly distasteful in its moral and political aspects, a piece
of class legislation, a tax upon the thrifty, and a reward to dishonesty.". In the
Senate, where there is
In spite of this vigorous opposition, the House passed the provision by a vote of 204 to 140 and the Senate by a vote of 39 to 34. In its final form the law imposed a tax of two per cent on all incomes above $4000--an exemption under which the farmer and the lower middle class escaped almost entirely. Cleveland did not like a general income tax, and he was dissatisfied with the Wilson tariff bill to which the tax measure was attached. He, therefore, allowed it to go into effect without his signature.
The only measures directly in the interests of labor generally passed during this
period were the Chinese
IMPORTANT as was the legislation described in the preceding chapter,
there were sources of discontent which it could not, in the nature of things, dry up.
With the exception of the income tax, there had been no decisive effort to placate the
poorer sections of the population by distinct class legislation. It is true, the alien
contract labor law and the Chinese exclusion act were directed particularly to the
working class, but their effects were not widely felt.
The accumulation of vast fortunes, many of which were gained either by fraudulent
manipulations, or shady transactions within the limits of the law but condemned by
elementary morals, and the massing of millions of the proletariat in the great
industrial cities were bound in the long run to bring forth political cleavages as deep
as the corresponding social cleavage. The domination of the Federal government by the
captains of machinery and capital was destined to draw out a counter movement on the
part of the small farmers, the middle class, and the laborers. Mutterings of this
protest were heard in the seventies; it broke forth in the Populist and Socialist
movement in the nineties; it was voiced in the Democratic campaign of 1896; silenced
This protest found its political expression in the organization of "third" or minor parties. The oldest and most persistent of all these groups is the Prohibitionist party, which held its first national convention at Columbus, Ohio, in 1872, and nominated Mr. Black, of Pennsylvania, as its candidate. In its platform, it declared the suppression of the liquor traffic to be the leading issue, but it also proposed certain currency reforms and the regulation of transportation companies and monopolies.
Although their popular vote in 1872 was less than six thousand, the Prohibitionists
returned to their issue at each succeeding campaign with Spartan firmness, but their
gains were painfully slow. They reached 9522 in 1876, and 10,305 in 1880. In the
campaign of 1884, when many Republicans were dissatisfied with the nomination of Blaine,
and unwilling to follow Curtis and Schurz into the Democratic camp, the Prohibition vote
rose to 150,369. A further gain of nearly one hundred thousand votes in the next
election, to which a slight addition was made in 1892, encouraged the Prohibitionists to
hope that the longed-for "split" had come, and they frightened the Republican
politicians into considering concessions, especially in the states where the temperance
party held the balance of power. In fact, in their platform of 1892 the Republicans
announced in a non-committal fashion that they
Almost immediately after the Civil War, labor entered politics in a small way on its own account. In 1872, a party known as the "Labor Reformers" held a national convention at Columbus which was attended by delegates from seventeen states. It declared in favor of restricting the sale of public lands to homesteaders, Chinese exclusion, an eight-hour day in government employments, civil service reform, one term for each President, regulation of railway and telegraph rates, and the subjection of the military to the civil authorities. The party nominated Justice Davis, who had been appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Lincoln and had shown Populist leanings immediately after the War; but Mr. Davis declined to serve, and O'Connor of New York, to whom the place was then tendered, only polled about 29,000 votes.
This early labor party was simply a party of mild protest. It originated in
Massachusetts, where there had been a number of serious labor disputes and a certain
shoe manufacturer had imported a carload of Chinese to operate his machinery. Although
Wendell Phillips,
Standing upon such a temporary platform, and unsupported by any general philosophy of politics, the labor reform party inevitably went to pieces. Its dissolution was facilitated by the rise of an agrarian party, the Greenbackers, who, in their platform of 1880, were more specific and even more extensive in their declaration of labor's rights than the "Reformers" themselves had been. It was not until 1888 that another "labor" group appeared, but since that date there has been one or more parties making a distinct appeal to the working class. In that year, there were two "labor" factions, the Union Labor party and the United Labor party. Both groups came out for the public ownership of the means of transportation and communication and a code of enlightened labor legislation. The former advocated the limitation of land ownership and the latter the application of the single tax. Both agreed in denouncing the "Democratic and Republican parties as hopelessly and shamelessly corrupt, and, by reason of their affiliation with monopolies, equally unworthy of the suffrages of those who do not live upon public plunder." The vote of both groups in the ensuing election was slightly over 150,000.
The labor groups which had broken with the old
Indeed, the discontent of the two decades from 1876 to 1896 was confined principally to
the small farmers, who waged, in fact, a class war upon capitalists and financiers,
although they nowhere formulated it into a philosophy. They chose to rely upon the
inflation of the currency as their chief weapon of offense. A precursor to the agrarian
movement in politics is to be found in the "Granger Movement," which began with the
formation of an
The sources of agrarian discontent were obvious. During the War, prices had been high and thousands of farm "hands" and mechanics had become land owners, thanks to the homestead laws enacted by the Republican party; but they had little capital to start with, and their property was heavily mortgaged. When the inflated War prices collapsed, they found themselves compelled to pay interest at the old rate, and they figured it out that capitalists and bondholders were the chief beneficiaries of the Federal financial legislation. In spite of all that had been paid on the national and private debts, the amount still due, they reckoned, measured in the products of toil, wheat and corn, was greater than ever. They, therefore, hit on the conclusion that the chief source of trouble was in the contraction of the currency which reduced the money value of their products. The remedy obviously was inflation in some form.1
While the currency thus became the chief agrarian issue, the farmers attributed a part
of their troubles to the railway companies whose heavily "watered" capital made high
freight rates necessary, and whose discriminations
Of course, the fixing of flat rates without any inquiry into the cost of specific
services was open to grave objections; but the opposition of the companies was generally
based on the contention that they had a right to run their business in their own way.
The spirit of this opposition is reflected in an editorial published in the Nation, of New York, in January, 1875: "We maintain that the principle of such
legislation is either confiscation, or, if another phrase be more agreeable, the change
of railroads from pieces of private property, owned and managed for the benefit of those
who have invested their money in them, into eleemosynary or charitable corporations,
managed for the benefit of a particular class of applicants for outdoor relief--the
farmers. If, in the era of progress to which the farmers'
Not content with their achievements in the state legislatures, the agrarians entered
national politics in 1876 in the form of the Independent National or Greenback party,
designed to "stop the present suicidal and destructive policy of contraction." They
declared their belief that "a United States note, issued directly by the government and
convertible on demand into United States obligations, bearing a rate of interest not
exceeding one cent a day on each one hundred dollars and exchangeable for United States
notes at par, will afford the best circulating medium ever devised." In spite of the
small vote polled by their standard bearer, Peter Cooper, of New York, they put forward
a candidate in the next campaign1
and made a third attempt in 1884, growing more and more radical in tone. In their last
year, they declared: "Never in our history have the banks, the land-grant railroads, and
other monopolies been more insolent in their demands for further privileges--still more
class legislation. In this emergency the dominant parties are arrayed against the people
and are the abject tools of the corporate monopolies." The Greenbackers demanded, in
The agrarian interest was, however, still the chief source of conscious discontent, and the disappearance of the Greenbackers was shortly followed by the establishment of two societies, the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union and the National Farmers' Alliance, the former strong in the South and West, and the latter in the North. In 1890, these orders claimed over three million members, and in several of the southern states they had dominated or split the Democratic party. The Northern Alliance was likewise busy with politics, and in Kansas and Nebraska, by independence or fusion, carried a large number of legislative districts.
Although professing to be non-political in the beginning, the leaders of these
alliances called a national convention at Omaha in 1892 and put forth the most radical
platform that had yet appeared in American politics. It declared that the newspapers
were subsidized, corruption dominated the ballot box, homes were covered with mortgages,
labor was impoverished and tyrannized over by a hireling standing army, and the nation
stood on the verge of ruin. "The fruits of the toils of millions," runs the platform,
"are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented
Fuel was added to the discontent in the spring of 1895, when the Supreme Court declared
null and void the income tax law of the previous year.1 The opponents of the tax, having lost in the Congress, made
their last stand in the highest Federal tribunal, and marshaled on their side an array
of legal talent seldom seen in an action at law, including Senator Edmunds, Mr. Joseph
H. Choate, and other attorneys prominently identified with railway and corporation
litigation. No effort was spared in bringing pressure to bear on the Court, and no
arguments, legal, political, and social, were neglected in the attempt to impress upon
the Court the importance of stopping Populism by a judicial pronunciamento. Conservative
New York papers, like the Herald, boldly prophesied in the summer of 1894 that "the income tax
will be blotted from the statute books before the people are cursed with its
inquisitorial enforcement."
No easy victory lay before the opponents of the income tax, for the law seemed to be against them. In 1870, the Supreme Court had upheld the Civil War income tax without a dissenting voice, and had distinctly said: "Our conclusions are that direct taxes, within the meaning of the Constitution, are only capitation taxes as expressed in that instrument and taxes on real estate, and that the tax of which the plaintiff in error complains [the income tax] is within the category of an excise or duty." Of course, the terms of the new law were not identical with those of the Civil War measure, and the Supreme Court had been known to reverse itself.
The attorneys against the tax left no stone unturned. As Professor Seligman remarks,
"Some of the important financial interests now engaged a notable array of eminent
counsel to essay the arduous task of persuading the Supreme Court that it might declare
the income tax a direct tax without reversing its previous decisions. The effort was
made with the most astonishing degree of ability and ingenuity, and the briefs and
arguments of the opposing counsel fill several large volumes. . . . The counsel's
arguments abound in historical errors and economic inaccuracies. . . . Errors and
misstatements which might be multiplied pale into insignificance compared with the
misinterpretation put upon the origin and purpose of the direct-tax clause--a
misinterpretation which like most of the preceding mistakes
The introduction of the passions of a social conflict into what purported to be a legal contest was intrusted to Mr. Choate. He threatened the Court with the declaration that if it approved the law, and "the communistic march" went on, a still higher exemption of $20,000 might be made and a rate of 20 per cent imposed--a highly important statement, but one that had no connection with the question whether an income tax was a direct tax. "There is protection now or never," he exclaimed. The very keystone of civilization, he continued, was the preservation of the rights of private property, and this fundamental principle was scattered to the winds by the champions of the tax. Mr. Choate concluded by warning the Court not to pay any attention to the popular passions enlisted on the side of the law, and urged it not to hesitate in declaring the law unconstitutional, "no matter what the threatened consequences of popular or populistic wrath may be."
The Court was evidently moved by the declamation of Mr. Choate, for Justice Field, in
his opinion, replied in kind. "The present assault upon capital," he said, "is but the
beginning. It will be but the stepping stone to others larger and more sweeping till our
political conditions will become a war of the poor against the
At the best, the nullification of the income tax law was not an easy task. There were eight justices on the bench when the decision of the Court was handed down on April 8, 1895. All of them agreed that the law was unconstitutional in so far as it laid a tax on revenues derived from state and municipal bonds; five of them agreed that a tax on rent or income from land was a direct tax and hence unconstitutional unless apportioned among the states on the basis of population--which was obviously impolitic; and the Court stood four to four on the important point as to the constitutionality of taxes on incomes derived from mortgages, interest, and personal property generally. The decision of the Court was thus inconclusive on the only point that interested capitalists particularly, and it was so regarded by the Eastern press.
On April 9, the day following the decision of the Court, the New York Sun declared: "Twice in great national crises the Supreme Court of the United
States has failed to meet the expectations of the people or to justify its existence as
the ultimate tribunal of right and law. In both instances the potent consideration has
been neither right nor law, but the supposed demands of political expediency. . . .
Yesterday the failure of the Supreme Court to decide the main question of
constitutionality submitted to it was brought about by political considerations. It was
not Democracy against Republicanism as before, but Populism and Clevelandism against
Democracy, and the vote was four to four." The Tribune, on April 10,
declared that "the Court reached a finding which is as near an abdication of its power
to interpret the Constitution and a confession of its unfitness for that duty as
anything well can be."
In view of the unsatisfactory condition created by its decision, the Court consented to
a rehearing, and, on May 20, 1895, added its opinion that the tax on incomes from
personal property was also a direct tax, thus bringing the whole law to the ground by a
vote of five to four. Justice Jackson, who was ill when the first decision was made, had
in the meantime returned to the bench, and he was strongly in favor of declaring the law
constitutional. Had the Court stood as before, the personal property income tax would
have been upheld, but one Justice, who had sustained this particular provision in
the first case, was induced to change his views and vote against it on the final count.
Thus by a narrow vote of five to four, brought about by a Justice
The temper of the country over the affair was well manifested in the press comments on
the last decision. The New York Sun, which had roundly denounced the
Court in the first instance, now joined in a chorus of praise: "In a hundred years the
Supreme Court of the United States has not rendered a decision more important in its
immediate effect or reaching further in its consequences than that which the Sun records this morning. There is life left in the institutions which
the founders of this republic devised and constructed. There is a safe future for the
national system under which we were all born and have lived and prospered according to
individual capacity. The wave of socialistic revolution has gone far, but it breaks at
the foot of the ultimate bulwark set up for protection of our liberties. Five to four,
the court stands like a rock."
The Tribune, on May 24, added: "The more the people study the
influences behind this attempt to bring about a communistic revolution in modes of
taxation, the more clearly they will realize that it was an essential part of the
distinctly un-American and unpatriotic attempt to destroy the American policy of defense
for home industries, in the interest of foreigners. . . . Thanks to the Court, our
government is not to be dragged into communistic warfare against rights of property and
the rewards of industry while the Constitution of its founders remains a bulwark of the
rights of states and of individual citizens."
The New York World, on the other hand, which had so stoutly
championed the tax in behalf of "the masses," represented the decision of the Court as
"the triumph of selfishness over patriotism. It is another victory of greed over need.
Great and rich corporations, by hiring the ablest lawyers in the land and fighting
against a petty tax upon superfluity as other men have fought for their liberties and
their lives, have secured the exemption of wealth from paying its just share towards the
support of the government that protects it. . . . The people at large will bow to this
decision as they habitually do to all the decrees of their highest courts. But they will
not accept law as justice. No dictum or decision of any wrong can make wrong right, and
it is not right that the entire cost of the Federal government shall rest upon
consumption. . . . Equity demands that citizens shall contribute to the support of the
government with some regard to benefits received and ability to pay."
Although the conservative elements saw in the annulment of the income tax nothing but a
wise and timely exercise of judicial authority in defense of the Constitution and sound
policy, the radical elements regarded it as an evidence "that the judicial branch of the
government was under the control of the same interests that had mutilated the Wilson
tariff bill in the Senate." The local Federal courts augmented this popular feeling by
frequently issuing injunctions ordering workingmen in time of strikes not to interfere
with their employers' business, thus crippling them in the coercion of employers,
Although the injunction was an ancient legal device, it was not until after the Civil War that it was developed into a powerful instrument in industrial disputes; and it became particularly effective in the hands of Federal judges. They were not popularly elected, but were appointed by the President and the Senate (where corporate influences were ably represented). Under the provisions of the law giving Federal courts jurisdiction in cases involving citizens of different states, they were called upon to intervene with increasing frequency in industrial disputes, for railway and other corporations usually did business in several states, and they could generally invoke Federal protection by showing that they were " non-residents" of the particular states in which strikes were being waged. Moreover, strikers who interfered with interstate commerce were likely to collide with Federal authorities whose aid was invited by the employers affected. Whenever a corporation was in bankruptcy, control over its business fell into the hands of the Federal courts.
The effectiveness of Federal judicial intervention in labor troubles became apparent in
the first great strikes of the seventies, when the state authorities proved unable to
restrain rioting and disorder by the use of the local militia. During the railway war of
1877 a Federal judge in southern Illinois ordered the workingmen not to interfere with a
railway for which he had appointed a receiver, and he then employed Federal troops under
the United States marshal to execute his mandate. North American
Review for September, 1877, how much more potent Federal authority was in such
trying crises to give railway corporations efficient protection.
From that time forward the injunction was steadily employed by Federal and state courts, but it was not until the great railway strike of 1894 in Chicago that it was brought prominently before the country as a distinct political issue. In that strike, the Democratic governor, Mr. Altgeld, believing that the employers had fomented disorder for the purpose of invoking Federal intervention (as was afterward pretty conclusively shown), refused to employ the state militia speedily and effectively, contending that the presence of troops would only make matters worse. The postal authorities, influenced by a variety of motives, of which, it was alleged, a desire to break the strike was one, secured prompt Federal intervention on the part of President Cleveland and the use of Federal troops. Thus the labor unions were quickly checkmated.
This action on the part of President Cleveland was supplemented in July, 1894, by a
general blanket injunction issued from the Federal district court in Chicago to all
persons concerned, ordering them not to interfere with the transmission of the mails or
with interstate commerce in any form. Mr. Debs, president of the American Railway Union,
who was directing the strike
It was not merely labor leaders who were stirred to wrath by this development in judicial authority. Many eminent lawyers saw in it an attack upon the ancient safeguards of the law which provided for regular proceedings, indictment, the hearing of witnesses, jury trial, and the imposition of only such punishments as could be clearly ascertained in advance. On the other hand others held it to be nothing new at all, but simply the application of the old principle that injunctions could issue in cases where irreparable injury might otherwise ensue. They pointed out that its effectiveness depended upon speedy application, and that the delays usually incident to regular judicial procedure would destroy its usefulness altogether. To workingmen it appeared to be chiefly an instrument for imprisoning their leaders and breaking strikes by the prevention of coercion, peaceful or otherwise. At all events, the decision of the Supreme Court upholding the practice and its doctrines added to the bitterness engendered by the income tax decision--a bitterness manifested at the Democratic convention at Chicago the following year.
The crowning cause of immediate discontent was the financial policy pursued by President Cleveland,1 which stirred the wrath of the agrarians already agitated over inflation, and gave definiteness to an issue on which both parties had been judiciously ambiguous in their platforms in 1892. The farmers pointed out that, notwithstanding the increased output of corn, the total amount of money received in return was millions less than it had been in the early eighties. They emphasized the fact that more than half of the taxable acreage of Kansas and Nebraska was mortgaged, and that many other western states were nearly as badly off. The falling prices and their inability to meet their indebtedness they attributed to the demonetization of silver and the steady enhancement of gold.
For the disease, as they diagnosed it, they had a remedy. The government, they said,
had been generous to Wall Street and financial interests at large by selling bonds at
rates which made great fortunes for the narrow group of purchasers, and by distributing
its deposits among the banks in need of assistance. The power of the government could
also be used for the benefit of another class--namely, themselves. Gold should be
brought down and the currency extended by the free coinage of silver on a basis of
sixteen to one. The value of crops, when measured in money, would thus mount upwards,
and it would be easier to pay the interest on mortgages and discharge their
indebtedness. Furthermore, while the government was in the business of accommodating the
public it might loan money to the
IT does not require that distant historical perspective, which is
supposed to be necessary for final judgments, to warrant the assertion that the campaign
of 1896 marks a turning point in the course of American politics. The monetary issue, on
which events ostensibly revolved, was, it is true, an ancient one, but the real conflict
was not over the remonetization of silver or the gold standard. Deep, underlying class
feeling found its expression in the conventions of both parties, and particularly that
of the Democrats, and forced upon the attention of the country, in a dramatic manner, a
conflict between great wealth and the lower middle and working classes, which had
hitherto been recognized only in obscure circles. The sectional or vertical cleavage in
American politics was definitely cut by new lines running horizontally through society,
and was also crossed at right angles by another line running north and south,
representing the western protest against eastern creditors and the objectionable methods
of great corporations which had been rapidly unfolded to public view by merciless
criticism and many legislative investigations.
Even the Republican party, whose convention had been largely prepared in advance by the
vigorous labors
This threat was firmly met by the body of the convention which remained. In nominating
Mr. Thomas B. Reed, Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts, declared: "Against the Republican party
are arrayed not only that organized failure, the Democratic party, but all the wandering
forces of political chaos and social disorder. . . . Such a man we want for our great
office in these bitter times when the forces of disorder are loose and the wreckers
This conciliatory attitude was hardly necessary, for there were no radical elements in
the Republican assembly after the withdrawal of the silver faction. The proceedings of
the convention were in fact then extraordinarily harmonious, brief, and colorless. The
platform, apart from the sound money plank, contained no sign of the social conflict
which was being waged in the world outside. Tariff, pensions, civil service, temperance,
and the usual formalities of party programs were treated after the fashion consecrated
by time. Railway and trust problems were overlooked entirely. Even the money plank was
not put first, and it was not so phrased as to constitute the significant challenge
which it became in the campaign. "The Republican party," it ran, "is unreservedly for
sound money. It caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption of specie
payments in 1879; since then every dollar has been good as gold. 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 inter-
international agreement with the leading commercial nations
This clear declaration on the financial issue was apparently not a part of the drama as Mr. Hanna and Mr. McKinley had staged it. The former was in favor of the gold standard so far as he understood it, but he was not a student of finance, and he was more interested "in getting what we got," to use his phrase, than in any very fine distinctions in the gold plank. Mr. McKinley, on the other hand, was widely known as a bimetallist; but his reputation throughout the country rested principally upon his high protective doctrines. He, therefore, wished to avoid the monetary issue by straddling it in such a way as not to alienate the large silver faction in the West. Mr. Hanna's biographer tells us that Mr. Kohlsaat claims to have spent hours on Sunday, June 7, "trying to convince Mr. McKinley of the necessity of inserting the word 'gold' in the platform. The latter argued in opposition that 90 per cent of his mail and his callers were against such decisive action, and he asserted emphatically that thirty days after the convention was over the currency question would drop out of sight and the tariff would become the sole issue. The currency plank, tentatively drawn by Mr. McKinley and his immediate advisers, embodied his resolution to keep the currency issue subordinate and vague."1 The leaders in the convention, however, refused to accept Mr. McKinley's view and forced him to take the step which he had hoped to avoid.
In his speech of acceptance, McKinley deprecated and sought to smooth over the class lines which had been drawn. "It is a cause for painful regret and solicitude," he said, "that an effort is being made by those high in the counsels of the allied parties to divide the people of this country into classes and create distinctions among us which in fact do not exist and are repugnant to our form of government. . . . Every attempt made to array class against class, 'the classes against the masses,' section against section, labor against capital, 'the poor against the rich,' or interest against interest in the United States is in the highest degree reprehensible." In the Populist features of the Democratic platform he saw a grave menace to our institutions, but he accepted the challenge. "We avoid no issues. We meet the sudden, dangerous, and revolutionary assault upon law and order and upon those to whom is confided by the Constitution and laws the authority to uphold and maintain them, which our opponents have made, with the same courage that we have faced every emergency since our organization as a party more than forty years ago."
No doubt the decisive action of the Republican convention helped to consolidate the
silver forces in the Democratic party; but even if the Republicans had obscured the
silver question by a vague declaration, their opponents would have come out definitely
against the gold standard. This was so apparent weeks before
The storm which broke over the party had long been gathering. The Grange and Greenback movements did not disappear with the disappearance of the outward signs of organization; they only merged into the Populist movement with cumulative effect. The election of 1892 was ominous, for the agrarian party had polled a million votes. It had elected members of Congress and presidential electors; it was organized and determined. It arose from a mass of discontent which was justified, if misdirected. It was no temporary wave, as superficial observers have imagined. It had elements of solidity which neither of the old parties could ignore or cover up. No one was more conscious of this than the western and southern leaders in the Democratic party. They had been near the base of action, and they thought that what the eastern leaders called a riot was in fact the beginning of a revolution. Unwilling to desert their traditional party, they decided to make the party desert its traditions, and they came to the Democratic convention in Chicago prepared for war to the hilt.
From the opening to the close, the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1896 was
vibrant with class feeling. Even in the prayer with which the proceedings began, the
clergyman pleaded : "May the hearts of all
The struggle began immediately after the prayer, when the presiding officer, on behalf of the retiring national committee, reported as temporary chairman of the convention, David B. Hill, of New York, the unrelenting opponent of the income tax and everything that savored of it. Immediately afterward, Mr. Clayton, speaking in behalf of twenty-three members of the national committee as opposed to twenty-seven, presented a minority report which proposed the Honorable John W. Daniel, of Virginia, as chairman. Pleas were made that the traditions of the party ought not to be violated by a refusal to accept the recommendations of the national committee.
After a stormy debate, the minority report of the national committee, proposing Mr.
Daniel for chairman, was carried by a vote of 556 to 349. The states which voted
solidly or principally for Mr. Hill were Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Alaska--all of the New England and Central
seaboard states, which represented the accumulated wealth of the country. The official
proceedings of the convention state, "When the result of this vote was announced,
there was a period of nearly
In his opening speech as chairman, Mr. Daniel declared that they were witnessing "an uprising of the people for American emancipation from the conspiracies of European kings led by Great Britain, which seek to destroy one half of the money of the world." He declared in favor of bimetallism and devoted most of his speech to the monetary question and to repeated declarations of financial independence in behalf of the United States. He also attacked, however, the tax system which the Democrats inherited from the Republicans in 1893, and in speaking of the deficit which was incurred under the Democratic tariff act he declared that it would have been met by the income tax incorporated in the tariff bill "had not the Supreme Court of the United States reversed its settled doctrines of a hundred years." On the second day of the convention, while the committees were preparing their reports, Governor Hogg, of Texas, Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, Governor Altgeld, of Illinois, and other gentlemen were invited to address the convention.
The first of these speakers denounced the Republican party as a "great class maker
and mass smasher"; he scorned that "farcical practice" which had given governmental
protection to the wealthy and left the laborer to protect himself. "This protected
class of Republicans," he exclaimed, "proposes now to destroy labor organizations. To
that end it has organized syndicates, pools, and trusts, and proposes through the
On the third day of the convention, Senator Jones, of Arkansas, chairman of the
committee on platform, reported the conclusions of the majority of his committee. In
the platform, as reported, there were many expressions of class feeling. It declared
that the act of 1873 demonetizing silver caused a fall in the price of commodities
produced by the people, a heavy increase in the public taxation and in all debts,
public and private, the enrichment of the money-lending class at home and abroad, the
prostration of industry, and the impoverishment of the people. The McKinley tariff was
denounced as "a prolific breeder of trusts and monopolies"
The platform made the money question, however, the paramount issue, and declared for "the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation." It stated that, until the monetary question was settled, no changes should be made in the tariff laws except for the purpose of meeting the deficit caused by the adverse decision of the Supreme Court in the income tax cases. The platform at this point turned upon the Court and asserted that the income tax law had been passed "by a Democratic Congress in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of that Court for nearly a hundred years." It then hinted at a reconstruction of the Court, declaring that, "it is the duty of Congress to use all the constitutional power which remains after that decision or which may come from its reversal by the Court, as it may hereafter be constituted, so that the burden of taxation may be equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its due proportion of the expense of the government."
The platform contained many expressions of sympathy with labor. "As labor creates the
wealth of the country," ran one plank, "we demand the passage of such laws as
may be necessary to protect it in all its rights." It favored arbitration for labor
conflicts in interstate commerce. Referring to the recent Pullman strike and the labor
war in Chicago, it denounced "arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local
affairs as a
The platform did not expressly attack the administration of President Cleveland, but the criticism of the intervention by Federal authorities in local affairs was directed particularly to his interference in the Chicago strike. The departure from the ordinary practice of praising the administration of the party's former leader itself revealed the feeling of the majority of the convention.
A minority of the platform committee composed of sixteen delegates presented
objections to the platform as reported by Senator Jones and offered amendments. In
their report the minority asserted that many declarations in the majority report were
"ill-considered and ambiguously phrased, while others are extreme and revolutionary of
the well-recognized principles of the party." The free coinage of silver independently
of other nations, the minority claimed, would place the United States at once "upon a
silver basis, impair contracts, disturb business, diminish the purchasing powers of
the wages of labor, and inflict irreparable evils upon our nation's commerce and
industry." The minority,
After the presentation of the platform and the proposed changes, an exciting and
disorderly debate followed. The discussion was opened by Mr. Tillman, who exclaimed
that the Civil War had emancipated the black slaves and that they were now in
convention to head a fight for the emancipation of the white slaves, even if it
disrupted the Democratic party as the Civil War had disrupted it. Without any
equivocation and amid loud and prolonged hissing, he declared that the new issue like
the old one was sectional--a declaration of political war on the part of the hewers of
wood and the drawers of water in the southern and western states against the East. He
compared the growth of fifteen southern states in wealth and population with the
growth of Pennsylvania; he compared Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri with
Massachusetts; to these five western states he added Kentucky, Tennessee,
Mr. Tillman could scarcely contain his wrath when he came to a consideration of the
proposal to indorse Cleveland's administration. He denounced the Democratic President
as "a tool of Wall Street"; and declared that they could not indorse him without
writing themselves down as "asses and liars." "They ask us to indorse his courage,"
exclaimed Mr. Tillman. "Well, now, no one disputes the man's boldness and obstinacy,
because he had the courage to ignore his oath of office, and redeem, in gold, paper
obligations of the government, which were payable in coin--both gold and silver, and,
furthermore, he had the courage to override the Constitution of the United States and
invaded the state of Illinois with the United States army and undertook to override
the rights and liberties of his fellow citizens. They ask us to indorse his fidelity.
He has been faithful unto death, or rather unto the death of the Democratic party, so
far as he represents it, through the policy of the friends that he had in New York and
ignored the entire balance of the Union." Mr. Tillman was dissatisfied with the
platform because it did not attack Mr. Cleveland's policies, and, amid great confusion
throughout the hall, he proposed that the platform should "denounce the administration
of President Cleveland as undemocratic and tyrannical." He warned the convention
After Senator Jones was given the floor for a few moments to repudiate the charge brought by Mr. Tillman that the fight was sectional in character, Senator Hill, of New York, began the real attack upon the platform proposed by the majority. The Senator opened by saying that he was a Democrat, but not a revolutionist, that the question before them was one of business and finance, not of bravery and loyalty, and that the first step toward monetary reform should be a statement in favor of international bimetallism. He followed this by a special criticism of the declaration in favor of the ratio of sixteen to one which was, in his opinion, not only an unwise and unnecessary thing, but destined to return to plague them in the future.
Senator Hill then turned to the income tax which he had so vigorously denounced on
the floor of the Senate two years before. "What was the necessity," he asked, "for
putting into the platform other questions which
"Why was it wise to assail the Supreme Court of your country? Will some one tell what that clause means in this platform? 'If you meant what you said and said what you meant,' will some one explain that provision? That provision, if it means anything, means that it is the duty of Congress to reconstruct the Supreme Court of the country. It means, and such purpose was openly avowed, it means the adding of additional members to the Court or the turning out of office and reconstructing the whole Court. I said I will not follow any such revolutionary step as that. Whenever before in the history of this country has devotion to an income tax been made the test of Democratic loyalty? Never ! Have you not undertaken enough, my good friends, now without seeking to put in this platform these unnecessary, foolish, and ridiculous things ?"
"What further have you done?" continued the Senator. "In this platform you have
declared, for the first time in the history of this country, that you are opposed to
any life tenure whatever for office. Our fathers before us, our Democratic fathers,
whom we revere, in the establishment of this government, gave our Federal judges a
life tenure of office. What necessity was there for reviving this question? How
foolish and how unnecessary, in my opinion. Democrats, whose
Senator Hill then turned to a defense of President Cleveland's policy, denouncing the attempt to bring in the bond issue as foolish and calculated to put them on the defensive in every school district in the country. He closed by begging the convention not "to drive old Democrats out of the party who have grown gray in the service, to make room for a lot of Republicans and Populists, and political nondescripts."
Senator Hill's protest was supported by Senator Vilas from Wisconsin, who saw in the
proposed free coinage of silver no difference, except in degree, between "the
confiscation of one half of the credits of the nation for the benefit of debtors," and
"a universal distribution of property." In this radical scheme there was nothing short
of "the beginning of the overthrow of all law, of all justice, of all security and
repose in the social order." He warned the convention that the American people would
not tolerate the first steps toward the atrocities of the French Revolution, although
"in the vastness of this country there may be some Marat unknown, some Danton or
Robespierre." He asked the members of the convention when and where robbery by law had
come to be a Democratic doctrine, and with solemn earnestness he pleaded with them not
to launch the old party out
The closing speech for the platform was then made by Mr. William Jennings Bryan, of
Nebraska, who clothed his plea in the armor of righteousness, announcing that he had
come to speak "in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty--the cause of
humanity." The spirit and zeal of a crusader ran through his speech. Indeed, when
speaking of the campaign which the Silver Democrats had made to capture the party, he
referred to that frenzy which inspired the crusaders under the leadership of Peter the
Hermit. He spoke in defense of the wage earner, the lawyer in the country town, the
merchant at the crossroads store, the farmer and the miner,--naming them one after the
other and ranging himself on their side. "We stand here," he said, "representing
people who are the equals before the law of the largest cities in the state of
Massachusetts. When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business
interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We
say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a
business man. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his
employer. The
"We come to speak for this broader class of business men. Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose--those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature's heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds--out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead--are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.
"It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of
conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and
"We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them !"
Mr. Bryan then took up the income tax. He repudiated the idea that the proposed platform contained a criticism of the Supreme Court. He said, "We have simply called attention to what you know. If you want criticisms, read the dissenting opinions of the court." He denied that the income tax law was unconstitutional when it was passed, or even when it went before the Supreme Court for the first time. "It did not become unconstitutional," he exclaimed, "until one judge changed his mind ; and we cannot be expected to know when a judge will change his mind."
The monetary question was the great paramount issue. But Mr. Bryan did not stop to
discuss any of the technical points involved in it. Protection had slain its
thousands, and the gold standard had slain its tens of thousands; the people of the
United States did not surrender their rights of self-government to foreign potentates
and powers. The common people of no land had ever declared in favor of the gold
standard, but bondholders had. If the gold standard was a good thing, international
bimetallism was wrong; if the gold standard was a bad thing, the United States ought
not to wait for the help of other nations in righting a wrong--this was the line of
Mr. Bryan's attack. And he concluded by saying: "Mr. Carlisle said, in 1878, that this
was a
"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.
"You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these 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 this country.
"My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single State in this Union.
"I shall not slander the fair State of Massachusetts, nor the State of New York, by saying that when its citizens are confronted with the proposition, 'Is this nation able to attend to its own business ?'--I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those States will declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3,000,000, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to 70,000,000, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers ? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.
"If they dare to come out and in the open defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the Nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands 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 record of the convention states that "the conclusion of Mr. Bryan's speech was
the signal for a tremendous outburst of noise, cheers, etc. The standards
After some parliamentary skirmishing, Mr. Hill succeeded in securing from the convention a vote on the proposition of the minority in favor of the maintenance of the gold standard, "until international cooperation among the leading nations in the coinage of silver can be secured." For this proposition the eastern states voted almost solidly, with some help from the western states. Connecticut gave her twelve votes for the substitute amendment; Delaware, five of her six votes; Maine, ten out of twelve; Maryland, twelve out of sixteen; Massachusetts, twenty-seven out of thirty; New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont gave their entire vote for the gold standard. The eastern states secured a little support in the West and South. Minnesota gave eleven out of seventeen votes for the amendment; Wisconsin voted solidly for it; Florida gave three out of eight votes; Washington gave three out of eight; Alaska voted solidly for it; the District of Columbia and New Mexico each cast two out of the six votes allotted to them in the convention. Out of a total of 929 votes cast, 303 were for the minority amendment and 626 against it.
The minority proposition to commend "the honesty, economy, courage, and fidelity of
the present Democratic administration" was then put to the convention and
In the evening the convention turned to the selection of candidates. In the nominating speeches, the character of the revolution in American politics came out even more clearly than in the debates on the platform. The enemy had been routed, and the convention was in the hands of the radicals, and they did not have to compromise and pick phrases in the hope of harmony.
Richard Bland, of Missouri, was the first man put before the convention, and he was represented as "the living, breathing embodiment of the silver cause"--a candidate chosen "not from the usurer's den, nor temple of Mammon where the clink of gold drowns the voice of patriotism; but from the farm, the workshop, the mine--from the hearts and homes of the people." Mr. Overmeyer, of Kansas, seconded the nomination of Mr. Bland--"that Tiberius Gracchus"--"in the name of the farmers of the United States; in the name of the homeless wanderers who throng your streets in quest of bread; in the name of that mighty army of the unemployed; in the name of that mightier army which has risen in insurrection against every form of despotism."
Mr. Bryan was presented as that young giant of the West, that friend of the people,
that champion of the
On the first ballot,fourteen candidates were voted for, but Mr. Bland and Mr. Bryan were clearly in the lead. On the fifth ballot, Mr. Bryan was declared nominated by a vote of 652 out of 930. Throughout the balloting, most of the eastern states abstained from voting. Ten delegates from Connecticut, seventeen or eighteen from Massachusetts, a majority from New Jersey, all of the delegates from New York, and a majority of the delegates from Wisconsin refused to take any part at all. Pennsylvania remained loyal throughout to the nominee from that state, Pattison, although it was a forlorn hope. Thus in the balloting for candidates, we discover the same alignment of the East against the West and the South which was evident in the vote on the platform. In the vote on the Vice President which followed, the eastern states refused to participate--from 250 to 260 delegates abstaining during the five ballots which resulted in the nomination of Sewall. New York consistently abstained; so did New Jersey; while a majority of the delegates from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts refused to take part.
In the notification speech delivered by Mr. Stone at Madison Square Garden in New
York on August 12, the Democratic party was represented as the champion of the masses
and their leader as "a plain man of the
Mr. Bryan's speech of acceptance was almost entirely devoted to a discussion of the
silver question. But he could not ignore the charge, which had then become widespread
throughout the country, that his party
In his opinion, the Democratic income tax was not based upon hostility to the rich,
but was simply designed to apportion the burdens of government more equitably among
those who enjoyed its protection. As to the matter of the Supreme Court, there was no
suggestion in the platform of a dispute with that tribunal. For a hundred years the
Court had upheld the underlying principle of the income tax, and twenty years before
"this same Court sustained without a dissenting voice an income tax law almost
identical with the one recently overthrown." The platform did not propose an attack on
the Supreme Court; some future Court had as much right "to return to the judicial
precedents of a century as the present Court had to depart from them. When
Discussing the monetary question, Mr. Bryan confined his argument to a few principles which he deemed fundamental. He disposed of international bimetallism by questioning the good faith of those who advocated it and declaring that there was an impassable gulf between a universal gold standard and bimetallism, whether independent or international. He rejected the proposition that any metal represented an absolutely just standard of value, but he argued that bimetallism was better than monometallism because it made a nearer approach to stability, honesty, and justice than a gold standard possibly could. Any legislation lessening the stock of standard money increased the purchasing power of money and lowered the monetary value of all other forms of property. He endeavored to show the advantages to be derived from bimetallism by farmers, wage earners, and the professional classes, and asked whether the mass of the people did not have the right to use the ballot to protect themselves from the disastrous consequences of a rising standard, particularly in view of the fact that the relatively few whose wealth consisted largely in fixed investments had not hesitated to use the ballot to enhance the value of their investments.
On the question of the ratio, sixteen to one, Mr. Bryan declared that, because gold
and silver were limited in the quantities then in hand and in annual production,
legislation could fix the ratio between them, simply
In a letter of acceptance of September 9, 1896, Mr. Bryan added little to the speeches he had made in the convention and in accepting the nomination. He attacked the bond policy of President Cleveland and declared that to assert that "the government is dependent upon the good will or assistance of any portion of the people other than a constitutional majority is to assert that we have a government in form but without vital force." Capital, he urged, was created by labor, and "since the producers of wealth create the nation's prosperity in time of peace and defend the nation's flag in time of peril, their interests ought at all times to be con- considered by those who stand in official positions." He criticized the abuses in injunction proceedings and favored the principle of trial by jury in such cases. He declared that it was not necessary to discuss the tariff at that time because the money question was the overshadowing issue, and all minor matters must be laid aside in favor of united action on that moot point.
A few of the advocates of the gold standard in the Democratic party, who could not accept the Chicago platform and were yet unwilling to go over to the Republicans, held a convention at Indianapolis in September, and nominated a ticket, headed by John M. Palmer for President, and Simon Buckner for Vice President. This party, through the address of its executive committee calling the convention, declared that Democrats were absolved from all obligations to support the Chicago platform because the convention had departed from the recognized Democratic faith and had announced doctrines which were "destructive of national honor and private obligation and tend to create sectional and class distinctions and engender discord and strife among the people." The address repudiated the doctrine of majority rule in the party, declaring that when a Democratic convention departed from the principles of the party, no Democrat was under any moral obligation to support its action.
The principles of the party which, the address declared, had been adhered to from
Jefferson to Cleveland "without variableness or a shadow of turning" were summed up in
a policy of laissez faire. A true Democrat, ran the address,
"believes, and this is the cardinal doctrine of his political faith, in the ability of
every individual unassisted, if unfettered by law, to achieve his own happiness, and
therefore that to every citizen there should be secured the right and opportunity
peaceably to pursue whatever course of conduct he would, provided such conduct
deprived no other individual of the equal enjoyment of the same right and opportunity.
In the platform adopted at the convention, the "National Democratic party" was pledged to the general principles enunciated in the address and went on record as "opposed to all paternalism and all class legislation." It declared that the Chicago convention had attacked "individual freedom, the right of private contract, the independence of the judiciary, and the authority of the President to enforce Federal laws." It denounced protection and the free coinage of silver as two schemes designed for the personal profit of the few at the expense of the masses; it declared in favor of the gold standard, indorsed President Cleveland's administration, and went to the support of the Supreme Court by condemning "all efforts to degrade that tribunal or to impair the confidence and respect which it has deservedly held."
This platform received the support of President Cleveland, who, in response to an invitation to attend the meeting at which the candidates were to be notified, said : "As a Democrat, devoted to the principles and integrity of my party, I should be delighted to be present on an occasion so significant and to mingle with those who are determined that the voice of true Democracy shall not be smothered and who insist that the glorious standard shall be borne aloft as of old in faithful hands."
In their acceptance speeches, Palmer and Buckner devoted more attention to condemning the Chicago platform than to explaining the principles for which they stood. General Buckner said: "The Chicago Convention would wipe virtually out of existence the Supreme Court which interprets the law, forgetting that our ancestors in England fought for hundreds of years to obtain a tribunal of justice which was free from executive control. They would wipe that out of existence and subject it to the control of party leaders to carry out the dictates of the party--they would paralyze the arm of the general government and forbid the powers to protect the lives and property of its citizens. That convention in terms almost placed a lighted torch in the hands of the incendiary and urged the mob to proceed without restraint to pillage and murder at their discretion."
The campaign which followed the conventions was the most remarkable in the long
history of our quadrennial spectacles. Terror is always a powerful instrument in
politics, and it was never used with greater effect than in the summer and autumn of
1896. Some of Mr. Bryan's utterances, particularly on the income tax, frightened the
rich into believing, or pretending to believe, that his election would be the
beginning of a wholesale confiscation. The Republicans replied to Mr. Bryan's threats
by using the greatest of all terrors, the terror of unemployment, with tremendous
effect. Everywhere they
To this terror from above, the Democrats responded by creating terror below, by stirring deep-seated class feeling against the Republican candidate and his managers. In a letter given out from the Democratic headquarters in Chicago, on September 12, 1896, Mr. Jones, chairman of the Democratic national committee, said: "Against the people in this campaign are arrayed the consolidated forces of wealth and corporate power. The classes which have grown fat by reason of Federal legislation and the single gold standard have combined to fasten their fetters still more firmly upon the people and are organizing every precinct of every county of every state in the Union with this purpose in view. To meet and defeat this corrupt and unholy alliance the people themselves must organize and be organized. . . . It will minimize the effect of the millions of dollars that are being used against us, and defeat those influences which wealth and corporate power are endeavoring to use to override the will of the people and corrupt the integrity of free institutions."
Owing to the nature of the conflict enormous campaign funds were secured. The silver
miners helped to finance Mr. Bryan, but their contributions were trivial compared with
the immense sums raised by Mr. Hanna from protected interests, bankers, and
financiers. With this great fund, speakers were employed by the
Undoubtedly, as was said at the time, most of the leading thinkers in finance and
politics were against Mr. Bryan, and if there is anything in the verdict of history,
the silver issue could not stand the test of logic and understanding. But it must not
be presumed that it was merely a battle of wits, and that demagogic appeals to
passions which were supposed to be associated with Mr. Bryan's campaign were confined
to his partisans. On the contrary, the Republicans employed all of the forms of
personal vituperation. For example, that staid journal of Republicanism, the New York Tribune, attributed the growth of Bryanism to the "assiduous
culture of the basest passions of the least worthy member of the community. . . . Its
nominal head was worthy of the cause. Nominal because the wretched, rattle-pated boy,
posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rottenness, was not the real leader of
that league of hell. He was only a puppet in the blood-imbued hands of Altgeld, the
anarchist, and Debs, the revolutionist, and other desperadoes of that stripe. But he
was a willing puppet, Bryan was,--willing and eager. None of his masters was more apt
than he at lies and forgeries and blasphemies and all the
Argument, party organization and machinery, the lavish use of money, and terror won the day for the Republicans. The solid East and Middle West overwhelmed Mr. Bryan, giving Mr. McKinley 271 electoral votes and 7,111,607 popular votes, as against 176 electoral and 6,509,052 popular votes cast for the Democratic candidate.
The decisive defeat of Mr. Bryan put an end to the silver issue for practical
purposes, although, as we shall see, it was again raised in 1900. The Republicans,
however, delayed action for political reasons, and it was not until almost four years
had elapsed that they made the gold dollar the standard by an act of Congress approved
on March 4, 1900. Thus the war of the standards was closed, but the question of the
currency was not settled, and the old issue of inflation and contraction continued to
haunt the paths of the politicians. From time to time, the prerogatives of the
national banks, organized under the law of 1863 (modified in 1901), were questioned in
political circles, and in 1908 an attempt was made by act of Congress to give the
currency more elasticity by authorizing the banks to form associations and issue notes
on the basis of certain securities. Nevertheless, no serious changes were made in the
financial or banking
THE Republicans triumphed in 1896, but the large vote for Mr. Bryan
and his platform and the passions aroused by the campaign made it clear to the
far-sighted that, whatever might be the fate of free silver, new social elements had
entered American politics. It was fortunate for the conservative interests that the
quarrel with Spain came shortly after Mr. McKinley's election, and they were able to
employ that ancient political device, "a vigorous foreign policy," to divert the public
mind from domestic difficulties. This was particularly acceptable to the populace at the
time, for there had been no war for more than thirty years, and, contrary to their
assertions on formal occasions, the American people enjoy wars beyond measure, if the
plain facts of history are allowed to speak.1
Since 1876 there had been no very spectacular foreign affair to fix the attention of
the public mind, except the furor worked up over the application of the Monroe Doctrine
to Venezuela during President Cleveland's second administration. For a long time that
country and Great Britain had been waging a contest over the western boundary of British
Guiana; and the United States, on the appeal of Venezuela, had taken a slight Four Phases of American Development, p. 195.
This extraordinary document, to put it mildly, failed to arouse the warlike sentiment
in England which its language invited, and Lord Salisbury replied for the British
government that this startling extension of the Monroe Doctrine was not acceptable in
the present controversy and that the arbitration of the question could not be admitted
by his country. This moderate reply brought from President Cleveland a message to
Congress on December 17, 1895, which created in the United States at least all the
outward and visible signs of the preliminaries to a war over the matter. He asked
Congress to
This defiant attitude on the part of President Cleveland, while it aroused a wave of
enthusiasm among those sections of the population moved by bold talk about the
unimpeachable integrity of the United States and its daring defense of right everywhere,
called forth no little criticism in high places. Contrary to expectation, it was not met
by bluster on the part of Great Britain, but it was rather deplored there as threatening
a breach between the two countries over an insignificant matter. Moreover, when the
commission created by Congress set to work on the boundary dispute, the British
government courteously replied favorably to a request for assistance in the search for
evidence. Finally, Great Britain yielded and agreed to the earlier proposition on
The Venezuelan controversy was an echo of the time-honored Monroe Doctrine and was
without any deeper economic significance. There were not wanting, however, signs that
the United States was prepared economically to accept that type of imperialism that had
long been dominant in British politics and had sprung into prominence in Germany,
France, and Italy during the generation following the Franco-Prussian War. This newer
imperialism does not rest primarily upon a desire for more territory, but rather upon
the necessity for markets in which to sell manufactured goods and for opportunities to
invest surplus accumulations of capital. It begins in a search for trade, advances to
intervention on behalf of the interests involved, thence to protectorates, and finally
to annexation. By the inexorable necessity of the present economic system, markets and
safe investment opportunities must be found for surplus products and accumulated
capital. All the older countries being overstocked and also forced into this new form of
international rivalry, the drift is inevitably in the direction of the economically
backward countries: Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. Economic necessity thus
overrides American
Although the United States had not neglected the protection of its interests from the days when it thrashed the Barbary pirates, sent Caleb Cushing to demand an open door in China, and dispatched Commodore Perry to batter down Japanese exclusiveness, the relative importance of its world operations was slight until manufacturing and commerce gained their ascendancy over agriculture.
The pressure of the newer interests on American foreign policy had already been felt
when the demand for the war with Spain came. In 1889, the United States joined with
Great Britain and Germany in a protectorate over the Samoan Islands, thus departing,
according to Secretary Gresham, from our "traditional and well-established policy of
avoiding entangling alliances with foreign powers in relation to objects remote from
this hemisphere."1 Preparations
had been made under Harrison's administration for the annexation of the Hawaiian
Islands, after a revolution, largely fomented by American interests there, had
overthrown the established government; but this movement was blocked for the time being
by President Cleveland, who learned through a special commissioner, sent to investigate
the affair, that the upheaval had been due principally to American disgust for the weak
and vacillating government of the Queen. It was not until the middle of the Spanish War
that Congress, recognizing the importance
It required, however, the Spanish War and the acquisition of the insular dependencies to bring imperialism directly into politics as an overshadowing issue and to secure the frank acknowledgment of the new emphasis on world policy which economic interests demanded. It is true that Cuba had long been an object of solicitude on the part of the United States. Before the Civil War, the slave power was anxious to secure its annexation as a state to help offset the growing predominance of the North; and during the ten years' insurrection from 1868 to 1878, when a cruel guerilla warfare made all life and property in Cuba unsafe, intervention was again suggested. But it was not until the renewal of the insurrection in 1895 that American economic interests in Cuba were strong enough to induce interference. Slavery was gone, but capital, still more dominant, had taken its place.
In 1895, Americans had more than fifty million dollars invested in Cuban business,
and our commerce with the Island had risen to one hundred millions annually. The
effect of the Cuban revolt against Spain was not
The atrocities connected with the insurrection attracted the sympathy of the
American people at once. Sermons were preached against Spanish barbarism; orators
demanded that the Cuban people be "succored in their heroic struggle for the rights of
men and of citizens"; Mr. Hearst's newspapers appealed daily to the people to compel
governmental action at once, and denounced the tedious methods of negotiation, in view
of an inevitable war. Cuban juntas formed in American cities raised money and supplied
arms for the insurrectionists. All the enormous American property interests at stake
in the Island, with their widespread and influential ramifications in the United
States, demanded
Even amid the exciting campaign of 1896, the Democrats found time to express sympathy with the Cubans, and the Republicans significantly remarked that inasmuch as Spain was "unable to protect the property or lives of resident American citizens," the good offices of the United States should be tendered with a view to pacification and independence. Perhaps, not unaware of the impending crisis, the Republicans also favored a continued enlargement of the navy to help maintain the "rightful influence" of the United States among the nations of the earth.
President Cleveland, repudiated by his own party and having no desire to "play the game of politics," assumed an attitude of neutrality in the conflict and denied to the Cubans the rights of belligerents. He offered to Spain the good offices of the United States in mediation with the insurgents--a tender which was rejected by Spain with the suggestion that the United States might more vigorously suppress the unlawful assistance which some of its citizens were lending to the revolutionists. Mr. Cleveland's second administration closed without any positive action on the Cuban question.
Within four months after his inauguration, President McKinley protested strongly to
Spain against her policy in Cuba, and during the summer and autumn and winter he
conducted a running fire of negotiations with Spain. Congress was impatient for armed
intervention and fretted at the tedious methods of diplomacy. New York Journal and
published. This stirred the country and led to the recall of the minister by his home
government. Meanwhile the battleship Maine was sent to Havana,
officially to resume friendly relations at Cuban ports, but not without an ulterior
regard for the necessity of protecting the lives and property of Americans in
jeopardy. The incident of the Spanish minister's letter had hardly been closed before
the Maine was blown up and sunk on the evening of February 15, 1898.
The death of two officers and two hundred and fifty-eight of the crew was a tragedy
which moved the nation beyond measure, and with the cry "Remember the Maine" public opinion was worked up to a point of frenzy.
A commission was appointed at once to inquire into the cause of the disaster, and on
March 21 it reported that the Maine had been destroyed by an
explosion of a submarine mine which set off some of the ship's magazines. Within a
week, negotiations with Spain were resumed, and that country made generous promises to
restore peace in the Island and permit a Cuban parliament to be established in the
interests of local autonomy. None of Spain's promises were regarded as satisfactory by
the administration, and on April 4,
On the day after the receipt of this promise, President McKinley sent his war message to Congress without explaining fully the latest concessions made by Spain. It was claimed by the Spanish government that it had yielded absolutely everything short of independence and that all of the demands of the United States had been met. Some eminent editors and publicists in the United States have since accepted this view of the affair and sharply criticized the President for not making public the full text of Spain's last concession on the day that he sent his war message to Congress. Those who take this view hold that President McKinley believed war to be inevitable and desirable all along, but merely wished to bring public opinion to the breaking point before shifting the responsibility to Congress. The President's defenders, however, claim that no credence could be placed in the good faith of Spain and that the intolerable conditions in Cuba would never have been removed under Spanish administration, no matter what promises might have been made.
In his war message of April 11, 1898, Mr. McKinley brought under review the
conditions in Cuba and the
In the armed conflict which followed, the most striking and effective operations were
on the sea. In anticipation of the war, Commodore Dewey, in command of the Asiatic
station, had been instructed as early as February to keep his squadron at Hongkong,
coaled, and ready, in event of a declaration of hostilities to begin offensive
operations in the Philippine Islands. The battleship Oregon, then
off the coast of Washington, was ordered to make the long voyage around the Horn,
which has now become famous in the annals of the sea. At the outbreak of the war, Rear
Admiral Sampson, in charge of the main squadron at Key West, was instructed to
blockade important stretches of the coast of Cuba and to keep watch for the arrival of
the Spanish fleet, under Admiral Cervera, which was then on the high seas, presumably
bound for Cuba.
The first naval blow was struck by Admiral Dewey,
While celebrating the victory off Manila, the government was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Spanish fleet in American waters which were being carefully patrolled. In spite of the precautions of Admiral Sampson, Cervera was able to slip into the harbor of Santiago on May 19, where he was immediately blockaded by the American naval forces. An attempt was made to stop up the mouth of the harbor by sending Lieutenant Richmond P. Hobson to sink a collier at the narrow entrance, but this spectacular move, carried out under a galling fire, failed to accomplish the purpose of the projectors, and Hobson and his men fell into the hands of the Spaniards.
The time had now come for bringing the land forces into coöperation with the navy for
a combined attack on Santiago, and on June 14 a large body of troops, principally
regulars, embarked from Tampa, where men and supplies had been concentrating for
weeks.
The forces dispatched to Cuba were placed under the command of General Shafter, but owing to his illness the fighting was principally carried on under Generals Lawton and Wheeler. The most serious conflicts in the land campaign occurred at El Caney and San Juan Hill, both strategic points near Santiago. At the second of these places the famous "Rough Riders" under Colonel Roosevelt distinguished themselves by a charge up the hill under heavy fire and by being the first to reach the enemy's intrenchments. In spite of several engagements, in which the fortunes of the day were generally on the side of the Americans, sickness among the soldiers and lack of supplies caused General Shafter to cable, on July 3, that without additional support he could not undertake a successful storming of Santiago.
At this critical juncture, the naval forces once more
The fall of Santiago ended military operations in Cuba, and General Miles, who had come to the front in time to assist General Shafter in arranging the terms of the surrender of Santiago, proceeded at once to Porto Rico. He was rapidly gaining possession of that Island in an almost bloodless campaign when news came of the signing of the peace protocol on August 12. Unfortunately it required longer to convey the information to the Philippines that the war was at an end, and on the day after the signature of the protocol, that is, August 13, General Merritt and Admiral Dewey carried Manila by storm.
As early as July 26, 1898, the Spanish government approached President McKinley
through M. Cambon, the French ambassador at Washington, and asked for
When the commissioners met according to arrangements, the government of the United States apparently had not come to a conclusion as to the final disposition of the Philippines. The administration was anxious not to go too far in advance of public opinion, at least so far as official pronunciamento was concerned, although powerful commercial interests were busy impressing the public mind with the advantages to be derived from the retention of the distant Pacific Islands. In his instructions to the peace commissioners, on the eve of their departure, Mr. McKinley, while denying that there had originally been any intention of conquest in the Pacific, declared that the march of events had imposed new duties upon us, and added: "Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent. It is just to use every legitimate means for the enlargement of American trade." While stating that the possession of territory was less important than an "open door" for trade purposes, he concluded by instructing the commissioners that the United States could not "accept less than the cession in full right and sovereignty of the Island of Luzon."
The peace commissioners were divided among themselves as to the policy to be pursued with regard to the Philippines; but in the latter part of October they received definite instructions from the Secretary of State, Mr. John Hay, that the cession of Luzon alone could not be justified "on political, commercial, or humanitarian grounds," and that the entire archipelago must be surrendered by Spain. The Spanish commissioners protested vigorously against this demand, on the theory that it was outside of the terms of the peace protocol, but they were forced to yield, receiving as a sort of consolation prize the payment of twenty million dollars in compensation for the loss.
The final treaty, as signed on December 10, 1898, embodied the following terms: the independence of Cuba, the cession of Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States, the cancellation of the claims of the citizens of the two countries against each other, the United States undertaking to settle the claims of its citizens against Spain, the payment of twenty million dollars for the Philippines by the United States, and the determination of the civil and political status of the inhabitants of the ceded territories by Congress.
When the treaty of peace was published, the contest over the retention of the
Philippines took on new bitterness--at least in public speeches and editorials. The
contentions on both sides were so vehement that it was almost impossible to secure any
frank discussion of the main issue: "Does the United States want a foothold in the
Pacific in order to secure the trade of the Philippines and afford American capital an
opportunity
The proposal to retain the Philippines, in fact, gave the southern statesmen just the opportunity they had long wanted to taunt the Republicans with insincerity on the race question. "Republican leaders," said Senator Tillman, "do not longer dare to call into question the justice or necessity of limiting negro suffrage in the South." And on another occasion he exclaimed in querulous accents: "I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans. Your slogans of the past--brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God--have gone glimmering down through the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer." To such assertions, Republicans of the old school, like Senator Hoar, opposed to imperialism, replied sadly, "The statements of Mr. Tillman have never been challenged and never can be." But Republicans of the new school, unvexed by charges of inconsistency, replied that high talk about the rights of man and of self-government came with poor grace from southern Democrats who had disfranchised millions of negroes that were just as capable of self-government as the bulk of the natives in the Philippines.
Senator Vest, on December 6, introduced in the Senate
At length on February 6, 1899, the treaty was ratified by the Senate, but it must not be assumed that all of the Senators who voted for the ratification of the treaty favored embarking upon a policy of "imperialism." Indeed, at the time of the approval of the treaty, a resolution was passed by the Senate to the effect that the policy to be adopted in the Philippines was still an open question; but the outbreak of an insurrection there led to an immediate employment of military rule in the Islands and criticism was silenced by the cry that our national honor was at stake.
The revolt against American dominion might have been foreseen, for the conduct of Generals Anderson and Merritt at Manila had invited trouble. For a long time before the War, native Filipinos had openly resisted Spanish rule, and particularly the dominance of the monks and priests, who held an enormous amount of land and managed civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs. Just before the outbreak of the Spanish War, there had been a revolt under the leadership of Aguinaldo which had been brought to an end by the promise to pay a large sum to the revolutionary leaders and to introduce extensive administrative reforms. The promises, however, had not been carried out, and Admiral Dewey had invited the cooperation of Aguinaldo and his insurgents in the attack on Manila. When the land assault was made on the city, in August, Aguinaldo joined with a large insurgent army under the banner of the Filipino republic which had been proclaimed in July, but he was compelled to take a subordinate position, and received scant respect from the American commanders, who gave him to understand that he had no status in the war or the settlement of the terms of capitulation.
As may be imagined, Aguinaldo was in no happy frame of mind when the news came in
January, 1899, that the United States had assumed sovereignty over the islands; but it
is not clear that some satisfactory adjustment might not have been made then, if the
United States had been willing to accept a sort of protectorate and allow the
revolutionaries to establish a local government of their own. However, little or
nothing was done to reach a peaceful adjustment, and on February 4,
The acquisition of the insular dependencies raised again the old problem as to the
power of Congress over territories, which had been so extensively debated during the
slavery conflict. The question now took the form: "Does the Constitution restrict
Congress in the government of the Islands as if they were physically and politically a
part of the United States, and particularly, do the limitations in behalf of private
rights, freedom of press, trial by jury, and the like, embodied in the first ten
Amendments, control the power of Congress?" Strict constitutionalists answered this
question in the affirmative without hesitation, citing the long line of constitutional
decisions which had repeatedly affirmed the doctrine that Congress is limited
everywhere, even in the territories by the Amendments
The abstract question was given concrete form in several decisions by the Supreme
Court, known as "the Insular Cases." The question was speedily raised whether
importers of commodities from Porto Rico should be compelled to pay the duties
prescribed by the Dingley act, and the Court answered in the case of De Lima v. Bidwell in 1901 that the Island was "domestic" within the meaning
of the tariff act and that the duties could not be collected. In the course of his
remarks, the Justice, who wrote the opinion, said that territory was either domestic
or foreign, and that the Constitution did not recognize any halfway position. Four
Justices dissented, however; and American interests, fearing this new competition, had
dissented in advance,--so vigorously, in fact, that Congress during the previous year
had passed the Foraker act imposing a tariff on goods coming into the United States
from Porto Rico and vice versa.
This concession to the protected interests placed the Supreme Court in a dilemma. If
Porto Rico was domestic territory,--a part of the United States,--was not the
Foraker act a violation of the constitutional provision that duties, imposts, and
excises shall be uniform throughout the United States? This question v. Bidwell, decided on May 27, 1901, which upheld the Foraker
act on grounds so various that the only real point made by the Court was that the law
was constitutional. None of the four justices who concurred with Justice Brown in the
opinion agreed with his reasoning, and the four judges, who dissented entirely from
the decision and the opinion, vigorously denied that there could be any territory
under the flag of the United States which was not subject to the limitations of the
Constitution.
In other cases involving freedom of the press in the Philippines and trial by jury in
the Hawaiian Islands, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine that Congress, in
legislating for the new dependencies, was not bound by all those constitutional
limitations which had been hitherto applied in the continental territories of the
United States. The upshot of all these insular decisions is that the Constitution may
be divided into two parts, "fundamental" and "formal"; that only the fundamental parts
control the Federal authorities in the government of the dependencies; and that the
Supreme Court will decide, from time to time as specific cases arise, what parts of
the Federal Constitution are "fundamental" and what parts are merely "formal." In two
cases, the Court has gone so far as to hold that indictment by grand jury and trial by
petit jury with unanimous verdict are not "fundamental" parts of the Constitution,
"but merely concern a method of procedure." In other words, the practical necessities
of governing subject races of different origins and legal traditions
In the settlement which followed the Spanish War, three general problems were presented. In the first place, our relations to Cuba required definition. It is true that in the declaration of war on Spain Congress had disclaimed "any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the Island to its people"; but American economic interests in the Island were too great to admit of the actual fulfillment of this promise. Consequently, Cuba was forced to accept, as a part of her constitution, several provisions, known as the Platt amendment, adopted by the Congress of the United States on March 2, 1901, restricting her relations with foreign countries, limiting her debt-creating power, securing the right of the United States to intervene whenever necessary to protect life and property, and reserving to the United States the right to acquire coaling stations at certain points on the Island to be agreed upon.
Under the constitution, to which the Platt reservations on behalf of the United
States were attached, the Cubans held a general election in December, 1901, choosing a
president and legislature; and in the spring of the following year American troops
were withdrawn, leaving the administration in the hands of the natives.
The second problem was presented by Porto Rico, where military rule was put into
force after the occupation in 1898. At length, on May 1, 1900, an "organic act,"
instituting civil government in that Island, was approved by the President. This law
did not confer citizenship on the Porto Ricans, but assured them of the protection of
the United States. It set up a government embracing a governor, appointed by the
President and Senate of the United States, six executive secretaries appointed in the
same manner as the governor, and a legislature of two houses--one composed of the six
secretaries and five other persons selected by the President and Senate, acting as the
upper house, and a lower house elected by popular vote. Under this act, the practice
of appointing Americans to the chief executive offices took the final control of
legislative matters out of the hands of the natives, leaving them only an initiatory
power. This produced a friction between
The problem of governing the Philippines was infinitely more complicated than that of governing Porto Rico, because the archipelago embraced more than three thousand islands and about thirty different tribes and dialects. The evolution of American control there falls into three stages. At first, they were governed by the President of the United States under his military authority. In 1901, a civil commission, with Mr. W. H. Taft at the head, took over the civil administration of all the pacified provinces. In 1902, Congress passed an "organic act" for the Islands, providing that, after their pacification, a legislative assembly should be erected. At length, in 1907, this assembly was duly instituted, and the government now consists of the governor, a commission appointed by the President and Senate, and a legislature composed of the commission and a lower house of representatives elected by popular vote.
Important as are the problems of governing dependencies, they are not the sole or
even the most significant aspects of imperialism. The possession of territories gives
a larger control over the development of their trade and resources; but capital and
enterprise
It was those interests which led the United States to send Caleb Cushing to China in 1844 to negotiate a treaty with that country securing for Americans rights of trade in the ports which had recently been blown open by British guns in the famous "Opium War." It was those interests which induced the United States government to send Commodore Perry to Japan in 1853 and led to the opening of that nation--long closed to the outside world--to American trade and enterprise. After 1844 in China, and 1854 in Japan, American trade steadily increased, and American capital seeking investments soon began to flow into Chinese business and railway undertakings. Although the United States did not attempt to follow the example of Great Britain, Russia, France, and Germany in seizing Chinese territory, it did obtain a sufficient economic interest in that Empire to warrant the employment of American soldiers in coöperation with Russian, English, French, Japanese, and other contingents at the time of the Boxer insurrection at Peking in the summer of 1900.
The policy of the United States at the time won no little praise from the Chinese
government. Having no territorial ambitions in the Empire, the administration at
Washington, through Mr. John Hay, Secretary of State, was able to announce that the
United States
While thus developing American interests in the Orient, the United States government was much embarrassed by the legislation of some of the western states against Orientals. Chinese and Japanese laborers were excluded from the country by law or agreements, but in spite of this fact there were large numbers of Orientals on the coast. This was resented by many whites, particularly trade unionists with whom the cheap labor came into competition, and from time to time laws were enacted by state legislatures that were alleged to violate the rights which the United States had guaranteed to the Chinese or Japanese by treaties with their respective countries.
Such a dispute occurred a few years ago over an
It was inevitable that the new issues, raised by the Spanish War, the acquisition of
the insular possessions, and the insurrection against American rule in the
Philippines, should find their way almost immediately into national politics. By the
logic of their situation, the Republicans were compelled to defend their imperialist
policy, although it was distasteful to many of the old leaders ; and at their national
convention, at Philadelphia in June, 1900, they renominated President McKinley by
acclamation, justified their methods in the dependencies, approved the new commercial
advances in the Orient, advocated government aid to the merchant
The Democrats took up the challenge on "imperialism"; but Mr. Bryan was determined
not to allow the silver question to sink into an early grave, and he accordingly
forced the adoption of a free silver plank, as the price of his accepting the
nomination. The platform was strong in its denunciation of Republican "imperialist"
policy, in general and in detail. It favored promising the Filipinos stable
government, independence, and, finally, protection from outside interference. It was
also more positive on the trust question, and it advocated an increase in the powers
of the interstate commerce commission, enabling it "to protect individuals and
communities from discriminations and the people from unjust and unfair transportation
rates." An effort was made to placate the conservative section of the party by
offering the nomination to the Vice Presidency to David B. Hill, of New York, and on
his Life of Marcus Hanna, p. 307.
Although many Republicans supported Mr. Bryan on account of their dislike of imperialism and its works, the result of the campaign was a second victory for Mr. McKinley, even greater than that of 1896. He received a larger popular vote and Mr. Bryan a smaller vote than in that year. Of the 447 electors, Mr. McKinley received 292. This happy outcome he naturally regarded as a vindication of his policies, and he was evidently turning toward the future with renewed confidence (as his Buffalo speech on reciprocity indicated) when on September 6, 1901, he was shot by an anarchist at the Buffalo exposition and died eight days later.
Mr. Roosevelt immediately took the oath of office, and promised to continue "absolutely unbroken" the policy of his predecessor.
THE years immediately following the War with Spain were marked by
extraordinary prosperity in business. The country recovered from the collapse of the
nineties and entered with full swing into another era of inflation and promotion. The
Dingley tariff law, enacted July 24, 1897, had incidentally aided in the process by
raising the protection principle to its highest point since the Civil War, but the
causes of the upward movement lay deeper. The Spanish War, of course, stimulated trade,
for destruction on such a large scale always creates a heavy demand for commodities and
capital--a demand which was partially met, as usual, by huge drafts on the future in the
form of an increased national debt. But the real cause lay in the nature of the economic
processes which had produced the periodical cycles of inflation and collapse during the
nineteenth century. Having recovered from a collapse previous to the War, inflation and
capitalization on a gigantic scale set in and did not run their course until a débâcle
in 1907.
The formation of trusts and the consolidation of older combinations in this period were
commensurate in scale with the gigantic financial power created by capitalist
accumulations. The period of the later seventies and eighties, as has been shown, was a
period of hot competition followed by pools, combinations, and trusts. The
A few examples will serve to illustrate the process. In 1900, the National Sugar Refining Company of New Jersey was formed with a capital of $90,000,000, and "from its inception it adopted the policy of issuing no public statements to its stockholders regarding earnings or financial conditions. The only statement . . . is simply an annual balance sheet, showing the assets and liabilities of the corporation in a greatly condensed form." In 1904, the total capital of parent and affiliated concerns was approximately $145,000,000. The Copper Trust was incorporated under New Jersey laws in 1899, and in 1904 its par value capital was $175,000,000. In 1899, the Smelters' Trust with an authorized capital of about $65,000,000 was formed. In the same year the Standard Oil Company, as the successor to the Trust, was organized with $102,233,700 capital.
The process of consolidation may best be shown by turning from generalities to a brief
study of the United States Steel Corporation, a great portion of whose
In the consolidation of the several concerns an increase of more than $400,000,000 was
made in the total capital; and a stock commission of the cash value of $62,500,000 was
given to the Morgan underwriting syndicate for financing the enterprise. It is, of
course, impossible to discover now the physical value of the properties consolidated,
many of which were already heavily "watered." Of the Carnegie concern, a Federal report
says, "The evidence on the whole tends to show
All of the leading trusts and railways were, even at their inception, intimately connected through cross investments and interlocking directorates. Writing in 1904, Mr. Moody, an eminent financial authority, said : "Around these two groups [the Morgan-Rockefeller interests], or what must ultimately become one greater group, all other smaller groups of capitalists congregate. They are all allied and intertwined by their various mutual interests. For instance, the Pennsylvania Railroad interests are on the one hand allied with the Vanderbilts and on the other with the Rockefellers. The Vanderbilts are closely allied with the Morgan group, and both the Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt interests have recently become the dominating factors in the Reading system, a former Morgan road and the most important part of the anthracite coal combine which has always been dominated by the Morgan people. . . . Viewed as a whole, we find the dominating influences in the trusts to be made up of an intricate network of large and small capitalists, many allied to another by ties of more or less importance, but all being appendages to or parts of the greater groups which are themselves dependent on and allied with the two mammoth, or Rockefeller and Morgan, groups. These two mammoth groups jointly ... constitute the heart of the business and commercial life of the nation."2
How tremendous is this corporate control over business, output, and wage earners is indicated by the census of 1909. Of the total number of establishments reported as engaged in manufacturing in 1904, 23.6 per cent were under corporate ownership, while in 1909 the percentage had increased to 25.9. Although they controlled only about one fourth of the total number of establishments, corporations employed 70.6 per cent of all the wage earners reported in 1904 and 75.6 per cent in 1909. Still more significant are the figures relative to the output of corporations. Of the total value of the product of all establishments, 73.7 per cent was turned out by corporations in 1904 and 79 per cent in 1909. "In most of the states," runs the Census Report, "between three fifths and nine tenths of the total value of manufactured products in 1909 was reported by establishments under corporate ownership." Of the 268,491 establishments reported in 1909, there were 3061 which produced 43.8 per cent of the total value of all products and employed 30.5 per cent of the wage earners. It is, in fact, this absorption of business by a small number of concerns which marks the great concentration of modern industry. The mere number of corporations is not of much significance, for most of them are petty.
In addition to gaining control of the leading manufacturing concerns and the chief
natural resources of the country, the great capitalist interests seized upon social
values to the amount of billions of dollars through stock watering and manipulations of
one kind or another. "Between 1868 and 1872, for example, the share
It is not necessary to cite further evidence to show that billions of dollars of
fictitious values were saddled upon the country between the end of the Civil War and the
close of the century. A considerable portion of the amount of stocks and bonds issued
was doubtless based on the dividend-paying power of the concerns in question. In many
instances the stock was not purchased in large quantities by the investing public, but
was simply issued to promoters, and when values collapsed they only lost so much
worthless paper. It is apparent, therefore, that all the stock watering is not of the
same character or effect; but nevertheless it remains a fact that the buying public and
the working class are paying millions in annual tribute to the holders of paper which
represents no economic service whatever. If the water were all squeezed out of railway,
franchise, and industrial stocks and bonds and the mineral and other resources which
have been actually secured at a nominal value, or fraudulently were returned to the
government, there Political Science Quarterly, March,
1911.
Those who followed the literature of political economy during this period of gigantic consolidation and high finance could not help discovering a decided change in the views of leading men about the nature of industrial evolution. The old practice of indiscriminate abuse of all trusts began to undergo a decided modification; only persons from the backward industrial regions of the West and South continued the inordinate clamor for the immediate and unconditional dissolution of all of them, on the theory that they were "artificial" products, brought forth and nourished by malicious men bent solely upon enhancing their personal fortunes. The socialist contention (set forth by Marx and Engels in 1848) that competition destroyed itself, and that the whole movement of industry was inevitably toward consolidation, began to receive attention, although the socialist solution of the problem was not accepted.
This change in attitude was the result partly of the testimony of practical business
men before the Industrial Commission in 1900, which was summarized in the following
manner by the Commission: "Among the causes which have led to the formation of
industrial combinations, most of the witnesses were of the opinion that competition, so
vigorous that profits of nearly all competing establishments were destroyed, is to be
given the first place. Even Mr. Havemeyer said this, though, as he believed that in many
cases competition was brought about by the fact that the too high protective tariff had
In a careful and thoughtful analysis of the problem, published in 1900 by Professor J. W. Jenks, then of Cornell University, the wastes of competition and the economies of combination (within limits) were pointed out with clarity and precision. The Industrial Commission had reported that rebates and discriminations by railways had been declared to be a leading cause of combination by several witnesses appearing before it; but Professor Jenks at the close of his survey came to the positive conclusion "that, whenever the nature of the industry is one which is peculiarly adapted for organization on a large scale, these peculiarities will so strengthen the tendency toward a virtual monopoly that, without legal aid and special discriminations or advantages being granted by either the State or any other influence, a combination will be made, and if shrewdly managed can and, after more experience in this line has been gained, probably will practically control permanently the market, unless special legal efforts better directed than any so far attempted shall prevent."1 The logical result of this conclusion is at least government supervision, and this Mr. Jenks advocated.
Whether some special privileges beyond the ownership The Trust Problem (1900 ed.),
p. 210.
The statesman of the new capitalism was Mr. Marcus A. Hanna. Mr. Hanna was born in 1837
of pioneer stock of the second or third generation, after the roughness of the earlier
days was somewhat smoothed away without injury to the virility of the fiber. He entered
business in Cleveland in 1858 at a time when a remarkable group of business men,
including Mr. John D.
Mr. Hanna, like most of the new generation of northern business men, was an ardent Republican. "He went into politics as a citizen," remarks his biographer. "The motive, in so far as it was conscious, was undoubtedly patriotic. That he should wish to serve his country as well as himself and his family was rooted in his make-up. If he proposed to serve his country, a man of his disposition and training could only do so by active work in party politics. Patriotism meant to him Republicanism. Good government meant chiefly Republican government. Hence the extreme necessity of getting good Republicans elected and the absolute identity in his mind and in the minds of most of his generation between public and party service."2 In his early days, therefore, he participated in politics in a small way, but it was not until 1891, during the candidacy of Mr. McKinley for governor of Ohio, and Mr. Sherman for the Senate, that he began to serve his party in a large way by raising campaign funds.3
In 1895 Mr. Hanna retired from active business and >Marcus A. Hanna, p. 44.Ibid.,
p. 160.
Mr. Hanna firmly believed, and quite naturally too, that the large business concerns which had prospered under the policies of the Republican party should contribute generously to its support. As early as 1888, when the tariff scare seized certain sections of the country, he was selected as financial auxiliary to the Republican national committee, and raised about $100,000 in Cleveland, Toledo, Mahoning Valley, and adjacent territory.2
But Mr. Hanna's greatest exploits in financing politics were in connection with Mr.
McKinley's campaigns. In 1896 he at first encountered some difficulties because of his
middle western connections and the predilection of Wall Street for Mr. Levi P. Morton in
preference to Mr. McKinley. "Mr. James J. Hill states that on Ibid., p. 149.
Many grave charges were brought against Mr. Hanna to the effect that he had no scruples
in the use of money for corrupt purposes, but such charges have never been substantiated
to the satisfaction of his friends. That in earlier days he employed the methods which
were common among public service corporations, is admitted by his biographer, but
condoned on the ground that practically every other street railway company in the
country was confronted with the alternative of buying votes or influence. Mr. Hanna's
Cleveland company "the West Side Street Railway Company and its successors were no
exception to this rule. It was confronted by its competitors, who had no scruples about
employing customary methods, and if it had been more scrupulous
Grave charges were also made at the time of Mr. Hanna's candidacy for the United States Senate that he employed the methods which he had found so advantageous in public-service-corporation politics, but his biographer, Mr. Croly, indignantly denies the allegation, showing very conclusively that Mr. Hanna won his nomination squarely on the issue put before the Republican voters and was under the rules of politics entitled to the election by the legislature. Mr. Hanna's career, says Mr. Croly, "demanded an honorable victory. Like every honest man he had conscientious scruples about buying votes for his own political benefit, and his conscience when aroused was dictatorial. . . . It does not follow that no money was corruptly used for Mr. Hanna's benefit. Columbus [Ohio] was full of rich friends less scrupulous than he. . . . They may have been willing to spend money in Mr. Hanna's interest and without his knowledge. Whether as a matter of fact any such money was spent I do not know, but under the circumstances the possibility thereof should be frankly admitted."2
In his political science as well as his business of politics, Mr. Hanna looked to the instant need of things. He does not seem to have been a student of history or of the experience of his own or other countries in the field of social legislation. As United States Senator he made practically no speeches, if we except his remarks in favor of ship subsidies and liberal treatment of armor plate manufacturers. On the stump, for in later years he developed some facility in popular addresses, he confined his reflections to the customary generalizations about prosperity and his chief contribution to political phraseology was the slogan, "Stand pat."1 When not engaged in actual labor of partisan contests, Mr. Hanna seems to have enjoyed the pleasure of the table and good company rather than the arduous researches of the student of politics. He had an immense amount of shrewd practical sense, and he divined a good deal more by his native powers of quick perception than many a statesman of the old school, celebrated for his profundity as a "constitutional lawyer and jurist."
The complete clew to Mr. Hanna's philosophy of politics is thus summed up by his
penetrating and sympathetic biographer, Mr. Croly: "We must bear in mind that (1) he was
an industrial pioneer and instinctively took to politics as well as to business; (2)
that in politics as in business he wanted to accomplish results; (3) that politics meant
to him active party service; (4) that successful party service meant to him the
acceptance of prevailing political methods and abuses;
An illustration of Mr. Hanna's theory of governmental impotence in the presence of the
dominant private interests was afforded in the debate in the Senate over the price to be
paid for armor plate, in the summer of 1900. The Senate proposed that not more than a
stipulated price should be paid to the two steel companies, Carnegie and Bethlehem,
which were not competing with each other; and that, in case they failed to accept, a
government manufacturing plant should be erected. Mr. Hanna's proposition was that the
price of steel should be left, as the House had proposed, with the Secretary of the
Navy, and he warmly resisted all government interference. When it was brought out in
debate that the steel companies had refused the government officers the data upon which
to determine whether the price laissez faire and capitalism in
their simplest form.
Mr. Hanna, however, had none of the arts of the demagogue, not even the minor and least objectional arts. His bluntness and directness in labor conflicts won for him the respect of large numbers of his employees. His frank and open advocacy of ship subsidies and similar devices commanded the regard, if not the esteem, of his political enemies. His chief faults, as viewed by his colleagues as well as his enemies, were in many instances his leading virtues. If some of the policies and tactics which he resorted to are now discredited in politics, it must be admitted that he did not invent them, and that it was his open and clean-cut advocacy of them that first made them clearly intelligible to the public. When all the minor and incidental details and personalities of the conflicts in which he was engaged are forgotten, Mr. Hanna will stand out in history as the most resourceful and typical representative of the new capitalism which closed the nineteenth century and opened the new.
The rapid advance of business enterprise which followed the Spanish War made more striking than ever the social results of the industrial revolution.1 In the first place, there was a notable growth in the urban as contrasted with the rural population. At the close of the century more than one third of the population had become city dwellers. The census of 1910 classified as urban all thickly populated areas of more than 2500 inhabitants, including New England towns which are in part rural in character, and on this basis reported 46.3 per cent of the population of the United States as urban and 53.7 rural. On this basis, 92.8 per cent of the population of Massachusetts was reported as urban, 78.8 per cent in New York, and 60.4 per cent in Pennsylvania. That census also reported that "the rate of increase for the population of urban areas was over three times that for the population living in rural territory."
The industrial section of this urban population was largely composed of non-home
owners. The census of 1900 reported "that the largest proportion of hired homes, 87.9
per cent, is found in New York City. In Manhattan and Bronx boroughs the proportion is
even higher, 94.1 per cent, as compared with 82 per cent for Brooklyn. . . . There is
also a very large proportion of hired homes in Boston, Fall River, Jersey City, and
Memphis, constituting in each of them four fifths of all the homes in 1900." Of the
great cities having a large proportion of home owners, Detroit stood at the
Another feature of the evolution of the working class was the influx of foreign labor, and the change in its racial character. The total alien immigration between 1880 and 1900 amounted to about 9,000,000; and in 1905 the immigration for the fiscal year reached 1,026,449. For the fiscal year 1910 it reached 1,198,037. During this period the racial composition of the immigration changed decidedly. Before 1880 Celtic and Teutonic nations furnished three fourths of the immigrants; but in 1905 the proportions were reversed and Slavic and Iberian nations, Italy leading, sent three fourths of the immigrants.
This alien population drifted naturally to the industrial cities, and the census of 1910 reported that of the 229 cities having 25,000 inhabitants and more, the native whites of native parentage furnished only 35.6 per cent, and that the foreign-born whites constituted 44.5 per cent in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 40.4 per cent in New York City, and 35.7 per cent in Chicago. From the standpoint of politics, a significant feature of this development is the manning of American industries largely by foreign laborers who as aliens possess no share in the government.
A third important aspect of this transformation in the mass of the population is the
extensive employment of women in industries. The census of 1910 reported that 19.5 per
cent of the industrial wage earners were women, and that the proportion of women
breadwinners was steadily increasing. The proportion of females who
The centralization of capital and the development of the new statesmen of Mr. Hanna's school were accompanied by a consolidation of the laboring classes and the evolution of a more definite political program for labor. As has been pointed out above, the economic revolution which followed the Civil War was attended by the formation of unions in certain trades and by the establishment of the Knights of Labor. This national organization was based on the principle that all of the working class could be brought together in a great society, equipped for waging strikes in the field of industry and advancing a program of labor legislation at the same time. This society, like a similar one promoted by Robert Owen in England half a century before, fell to pieces on account of its inherent weaknesses, particularly the inability of the leaders to overcome the indifference of the workingmen in prosperous trades to the struggles of their less fortunate brethren.
Following the experience of England also, the labor leaders began to build on a more
secure foundation;
Unlike German and English trade-unionists, the American Federation of Labor steadily
refused to go into politics as a separate party contesting at the polls for the
election of "labor" representatives. This abstention from direct political action was
a matter of expediency, it seems, rather than of set principle. Mr. John Mitchell, the
eminent former leader of the miners, declared that "wage earners should in proportion
to their strength secure the nomination and election of a number of representatives to
the governing bodies of city, state, and nation"; but he added that "a third Labor
Party is not for the present desirable, because it could not obtain a majority and
could not therefore force its will upon the community at large." This view, Mr.
Mitchell
But it is not to be supposed that the American Federation of Labor refused to consider the question of labor in politics. Its prominent leaders were affiliated with the American Civic Federation, composed largely of employers of labor, professional men, and philanthropists, and known as one of the most powerful anti-socialist organizations in the United States. Not only were Mr. Gompers and other labor leaders associated with this society which strongly opposed the formation of a class party in the United States, but they steadily waged war on the socialists who were attempting to organize the working class politically. The leaders in the American Federation, with a few exceptions, were thus definitely anti-socialist and were on record on this political issue. Moreover, while warning workingmen against political action, Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell openly identified themselves with the Democratic party and endeavored to swing the working class vote to that party. Mr. Gompers was especially active in the support of Mr. Bryan in 1908, and boasted that 80 per cent of the voting members of the Federation cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate.
In fact, a study of the writings and speeches of the laissez faire. This apparent anomaly is
explained by the fact that state socialism does not imply the political triumph of the
working class, but rather the strengthening of the petty bourgeoisie against great
capitalists.
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the American Federation of Labor was
solidly in support of Mr. Gompers' program. On the contrary, at each national
convention of the Federation the socialist members attempted to carry the organization
over into direct political action. These attempts were defeated each year, but close
observers of the labor movement
THE administrations of Mr. Roosevelt cannot be characterized by a
general phrase, although they will doubtless be regarded by historians as marking an
epoch in the political history of the United States. If we search for great and
significant social and economic legislation during that period, we shall hardly find it,
nor can we discover in his numerous and voluminous messages much that is concrete in
spite of their immense suggestiveness. The adoption of the income tax amendment, the
passage of the amendment for popular election of Senators, the establishment of parcel
post and postal savings banks, and the successful prosecution of trusts and
combinations,--all these achievements belong in time to the administration of Mr. Taft,
although it will be claimed by some that they were but a fruition of plans laid or
policies advocated by Mr. Roosevelt.
One who attempts to estimate and evaluate those eight years of multifarious activity
will find it difficult to separate the transient and spectacular from the permanent and
fundamental. In the foreground stand the interference in the coal strike, the
acquisition of the Panama Canal strip, voluminous messages discussing every aspect of
our complex social and political life, vigorous and spirited interference with state
elections, as
During those years the country was much torn with the scandals arising from investigations, such as the life insurance inquest in New York, which revealed grave lapses from the paths of rectitude on the part of men high in public esteem, and gross and vulgar use of money in campaigns. No little of the discredit connected with these affairs fell upon the Republican party, not because its methods were shown to be worse in general than those of the Democrats, but because it happened to be in power. The great task of counteracting this discontent fell upon Mr. Roosevelt, who smote with many a message the money changers in the temple of his own party, and convinced a large portion of the country that he had not only driven them out but had refused all association with them.
Mr. Roosevelt was thus quick to catch the prevailing public temper. "It makes not a
particle of difference," he said in 1907, "whether these crimes are committed by a
capitalist or by a laborer, by a leading banker or
Any one who takes the trouble to examine with care Mr. Roosevelt's messages and other public utterances during the period of his administration will discover the elements of many of his policies which later took more precise form.
In his first message to Congress, on December 3, 1901, Mr. Roosevelt gave
considerable attention to trusts and collateral economic problems. He refused to
concede the oft-repeated claim that great fortunes were the product of special legal
privileges. "The creation of these great corporate fortunes," he said, "has not been
due to the tariff nor to any other governmental action, but to natural causes in the
business world, operating in other countries as they operate in our own. The process
has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly without warrant. It is
not true that as the rich have grown richer, the poor have grown poorer. On the
contrary, never before has the average man, the wage worker, the farmer, the small
trader, been so well off as in this country at the present time. There have been
While thus contending that large fortunes in the main were the product of "natural
economic forces," Mr. Roosevelt admitted that some grave evils had arisen in
connection with combinations and trusts, and foreshadowed in his proposed remedial
legislation the policy of regulation and new nationalism. "When the Constitution was
adopted, at the end of the eighteenth century, no human wisdom could foretell the
sweeping changes, alike in industrial and political conditions, which were to take
place by the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a
matter of course that the several states were the proper authorities to regulate . . .
the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day.
The conditions are now wholly different, and a wholly different action is called for."
The remedy he proposed was publicity for corporate affairs, the regulation, not the
prohibition, of great combinations, the elimination of specific abuses such as
overcapitalization, and government supervision. If the powers of Congress, under the
Constitution, were inadequate, then a constitutional amendment should be submitted
conferring the proper power. The Interstate Commerce Act should likewise be amended.
"The railway is a public servant. Its rates should be just to and open to all shippers
alike. The Government should see to it that within its
In this message, nearly all of Mr. Roosevelt's later policies as President are presaged, and in it also are marked the spirit and phraseology which have done so much to make him the idol of the American middle class, and particularly of the social reformer. There are, for instance, many little aphorisms which appeal to the moral sentiments. "When all is said and done," he says, "the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we are to strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that, while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else, yet each at times stumbles or halts, each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him." The "reckless agitator" and anarchist are dealt with in a summary fashion, and emphasis is laid on the primitive virtues of honesty, sobriety, industry, and self-restraint. The new phrases of the social reformer also appear side by side with the exclamations of virtuous indignation: "social betterment," "sociological law," "rule of brotherhood," "high aims," "foolish visionary," "equity between man and man"--in fact the whole range of the terminology of social "uplift."
None of Mr. Roosevelt's later messages added
As to the trusts, Mr. Roosevelt consistently maintained the position which he had
taken as governor of New York and had stated in his first message; namely, that most
of the legislation against trusts was futile and that publicity and governmental
supervision were the only methods of approaching the question which the logic of
events admitted. In his message of December, 1907, he said: "The anti-trust law should
not be repealed; but it should be made more efficient and more in harmony with actual
conditions. It should be so amended as to forbid only the kind of combination which
does harm to the general public, such amendment to be accompanied by, or to be an
incident of, a grant of supervisory power to the Government over these big concerns
engaged in interstate business. This should be accompanied by provision for the
compulsory publication of accounts and the subjection of books and papers to the
inspection of the Government officials. . .. The
With that prescience which characterized his political career from his entrance into
politics, Mr. Roosevelt
As has been pointed out above, Mr. Roosevelt, in all of his recommendations, took the
ground that the prevailing system of production and distribution of wealth was
essentially sound, that substantial justice was now being worked out between man and
man, and that only a few painful excrescences needed to be lopped off. Only on one
occasion, it seems, did he advise the adoption of any measures affecting directly the
distribution of acquired wealth. In his message of December 3, 1907, he declared that
when our tax laws were revised, the question of inheritance and income taxes should be
carefully considered. He spoke with diffidence of the
While advocating social reforms and castigating wrongdoers at home, Mr. Roosevelt was
equally severe in dealing with Latin-American states which failed to discharge their
obligations to other countries faithfully. In his message of December, 1905, he said:
"We must make it evident that we do not intend to permit the Monroe doctrine to be
used by any nation on this continent as a shield to protect it from the consequences
of its own misdeeds against foreign nations. If a republic to the south of us commits
a tort against a foreign nation, such as an outrage against a citizen of that nation,
then the Monroe doctrine does not force us to interfere to prevent the punishment of
the tort, save to see that the punishment does not assume the form of territorial
occupation in any shape. The case is more difficult when it refers to a contractual
obligation. . . . The country would certainly decline to go to war to
Mr. Roosevelt's messages and various activities while he was serving the unexpired
term of President McKinley upset all of the conservative traditions of the executive
office. He intervened, without power, in the anthracite coal strike of 1902, and had
the satisfaction of seeing the miners make substantial gains at the hands of a
commission appointed by himself, to which the contestants had agreed to submit the
issues. He began a prosecution of the Northern Securities Company at a time when such
actions against great combinations of capital were unfashionable. He forced an
investigation of the post-office administration in 1903, which revealed frauds of
huge dimensions; and he gave the administration of public lands a turning over which
led to the successful criminal prosecution of two United States Senators. Citizens
acquired the habit of looking to the headlines of the morning paper for some new and
startling activity on the part of the President. Politicians of the old school in both
parties, who had been used to settling difficulties by quiet conferences within the
Nevertheless the rumor was vigorously circulated that Mr. Roosevelt was violently opposed by "Wall Street and the Trusts." Whatever may have been the source of this rumor it only enhanced the President's popularity. In December, 1903, Senator O. H. Platt wrote: "I do not know how much importance to attach to the current opposition to Roosevelt by what are called the 'corporate and money influences' in New York. . . . There is a great deal said about it, as if it were widespread and violent. I know that it does not include the whole of that class of people, because I know many bankers and capitalists, railroad and business men who are his strong, good friends, and they are not among the smaller and weaker parties, either. . . . Now it is a great mistake for capitalistic interests to oppose Roosevelt. . . . I think he will be nominated by acclamation, so what is to be gained by the Wall Street contingent and the railroad interests in this seeming opposition to him? . . . There is no Republican in the United States who can be elected except Roosevelt. . . . He is going to be the people's candidate, not the candidate of the trusts or of the hoodlums, but of the conservative elements."
The Republican convention in 1904 was uneventful beyond measure. Though Mr. Roosevelt was disliked by many members of his party, his nomination was unavoidable, and even his opponents abstained from any word or deed that might have disturbed the concord of the occasion. The management of the convention was principally in the hands of the men from whom Mr. Roosevelt afterward broke and stigmatized as "reactionary." Mr. Elihu Root was temporary chairman, Mr. Joseph G. Cannon was permanent chairman, Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge was chairman of the committee on resolutions which reported the platform, Mr. W. M. Crane and Mr. Boies Penrose were selected as members of the national committee from their respective states, and Mr. Frank S. Black, of New York, made the speech nominating Mr. Roosevelt. Throughout, the proceedings were harmonious; the platform and the nomination were accepted vociferously without a dissenting vote.
The Republican platform of 1904 gave no recognition of any of the newer social and
economic problems which were soon to rend that party in twain. After the fashion of
announcements made by parties already in power, it laid great emphasis upon Republican
achievements since the great victory of 1896. A protective tariff under which all
industries had revived and prospered had been enacted; public credit was now restored,
Cuban independence established, peace, freedom, order, and prosperity given to Porto
Rico, the Philippine Islands endowed with the largest civil liberty ever enjoyed
there, the laws against unjust discriminations by
In their campaign book for 1904, the Republican leaders exhibited Mr. Roosevelt as
the ideal American in a superlative degree. "Theodore Roosevelt's character," runs the
eulogy, "is no topic for difference of opinion or for party controversy. It is without
mystery or concealment. It has the primary qualities that in all ages have been
admired and respected: physical prowess, great energy and vitality,
straightforwardness and moral courage, promptness in action, talent for leadership. .
. . Theodore Roosevelt, as a typical personality, has won the hearty confidence of the
American people; and he has not shrunk from recognizing and using his influence as an
advocate of the best standards of personal, domestic, and civic life in the country.
He has made these things relating to life and conduct a favorite theme in speech and
essay and he has diligently
The Democratic nominee, Mr. Alton B. Parker, failed to elicit any enthusiasm in the rank and file of the party. He had supported the Democratic candidate at a time when many of his conservative friends had repudiated Mr. Bryan altogether, and thus he could not be branded as a "bolter." But Mr. Parker's long term of service as judge of the highest court of New York, his remoteness from actual partisan controversies, his refusal to plunge into a whirlwind stumping campaign, and his dignified reserve, all combined to prevent his getting a grip upon the popular imagination. His weakness was further increased by the half-hearted support given by Mr. Bryan who openly declared the party to be under the control of the "Wall Street element," but confessed that he intended to give his vote to Mr. Parker, although the latter, in a telegram to the nominating convention at St. Louis, had announced his unflinching adherence to the gold standard.
The Democratic platform, except in its denunciation of the Republican administration,
was as indefinite as the occasion demanded. Independence should be promised to the
Filipinos at the proper time and under proper circumstances; there should be a
revision and gradual reduction of the tariff by "the friends of the masses"; United
States Senators should be elected by popular vote; combinations and trusts which
restrict competition, control production, or fix prices and wages
The only extraordinary incident in the campaign of 1904 occurred toward the closing
days, when Mr. Parker repeatedly charged that the Republican party was being financed
by contributions from corporations and trust magnates. The Democratic candidate also
declared that Mr. Cortelyou, as Secretary of Commerce and Labor, had acquired through
the use of official inquisitorial powers inside information as to the practices of
trusts, and that as chairman of the Republican national committee, he had used his
special knowledge to extort contributions from corporations. These corrupt and
debasing methods had, in the opinion of Mr. Parker, threatened the integrity of the
republic and transformed the government of the people into "a government whose
officers are practically chosen by a handful of corporate managers, who levy upon the
assets of the stockholders whom they represent such sums of money as they deem
requisite to place the conduct of the Government in
These grave charges were made as early as October 24, and it was expected that Mr. Cortelyou would reply immediately, particularly as Mr. Parker was repeating and amplifying them. However, no formal answer came until November 5, three days before the election, when a countercharge was impossible. On that date Mr. Roosevelt issued a signed statement, analyzing the charges of his opponent, and closing with the positive declaration that "the statements made by Mr. Parker are unqualifiedly and atrociously false."
No doubt it would have been difficult for Mr. Parker to have substantiated many of the details in his charges, but the general truth of his contention that the Republican campaign was financed by railway and trust magnates was later established by the life insurance investigation in New York in 1905, by the exposures of trust methods by Mr. Hearst in the publication of Standard Oil Letters, and by the revelations made before the Clapp committee of the Senate in 1912. It is true, Mr. Roosevelt asserted that he knew nothing personally about the corporation contributions, particularly the Standard Oil gifts, and although he convinced his friends of his entire innocence in the matter, seasoned politicians could hardly understand a naïveté so far outside the range of their experience.
The Democratic candidate and his friends took open pleasure in the discomfiture
produced in Republican ranks by these unpleasant revelations, but no little bitterness
was added to their cup of joy by the other side
That the conservative interests looked to the Republican party, if not to Mr.
Roosevelt, for the preservation of good order in politics and the prevention of
radical legislation, is shown by the campaign contributions on the part of those who
had earlier financed Mr. Hanna. In 1907 a letter from the railroad magnate, Mr. E. H.
Harriman, was made public, in which the writer declared that Mr. Roosevelt had invited
him to Washington in the autumn of 1904, just before the election, that at the
President's request he had raised $250,000 to help carry New York state, and that he
had paid the money over to the Republican treasurer, Mr. Bliss. Mr. Roosevelt
indignantly denied that he had requested Mr. Harriman to raise a dollar for "the
Presidential campaign of 1904." It will be noted that Mr. Roosevelt here made a
distinction between the state and national campaign.
The election returns in 1904 showed that the Democratic candidate had failed to engage the enthusiasm of his party, for the vote cast for him was more than a million and a quarter short of that cast for Mr. Bryan in 1900. The personal popularity of Mr. Roosevelt was fully evidenced in the electoral and popular votes. Of the former he secured 336 against 140 cast for his opponent, and of the latter he polled nearly 400,000 more than Mr. McKinley. Nevertheless the total vote throughout the country was nearly half a million under that of 1900, showing an undoubted apathy or a dissatisfaction with the two old parties. This dissatisfaction was further demonstrated in a startling way by the heavy increase in the socialist ranks, a jump from about 95,000 in 1900 to more than 400,000.
Doubtless the most significant of all the laws enacted during Mr. Roosevelt's
administrations was the Hepburn Act passed in 1906. This law increased the number of
The Hepburn bill, however, did not confer upon the Interstate Commerce Commission
that power over rates which the Commission had long been urging as necessary to give
shippers the relief they expected. Senator La Follette, fresh from a fight with the
railways in Wisconsin, proposed several radical amendments in the Senate, and
endeavored without avail to secure the open support of President Roosevelt.2 The Senator insisted that it
would be possible under the Hepburn bill "for the commission to determine whether
rates were relatively reasonable, but not that they were reasonable per se; that one rate could be compared with another, but
that the Commission had no means of determining whether either rate so compared was
itself a reasonable rate." No one can tell, urged the Senator, whether a rate is
reasonable until the railway in question has been evaluated. This point he pressed
with great insistence, and though defeated at the time, he had the consolation of
having the Autobiography, 399 ff.
Two laws relative to foodstuffs, the meat inspection act and the pure food act, were passed in 1906 in response to the popular demand for protection against diseased meats and deleterious foods and drugs--a demand created largely by the revelation of shocking conditions in the Chicago stockyards and of nefarious practices on the part of a large number of manufacturers. The first of the measures was intended to guarantee that the meat shipped in interstate commerce should be derived from animals which were sound at the time of slaughter, prepared under sanitary conditions in the packing houses, and adequately inspected by Federal employees. The second measure covered foods and drugs, and provided that such articles "must not contain any injurious or deleterious drug, chemical or preservative, and that the label on each package must state the exact facts and not be misleading or false in any particular." The effect of the last of these measures was felt in the extinction of a large number of patent medicine and other quasi-fraudulent concerns engaged in interstate trade.
The social legislation enacted during Mr. Roosevelt's administrations is not very
extensive, although it was accompanied by much discussion at the time. The most
A second piece of Federal legislation which is commonly called a labor measure was the law which went into effect on March 4, 1908, limiting the hours of railway employees engaged as trainmen or telegraph operators. As a matter of fact, however, it was not so much the long hours of trainmen which disturbed Congress as the appalling number of railway disasters from which the traveling public suffered. At least it was so stated by the Republican leaders in their campaign of 1908, for they then declared that "although the great object of the Act is to promote the safety of travellers upon railroads, by limiting the hours of service of employees within reasonable bounds, it is none the less true that in actual operation it enforces humane and considerate treatment to employees as well as greater safety to the public."1
That public policy with which Mr. Roosevelt's administrations will be most closely
associated is Campaign Textbook, 1908, p. 45.
Among the proudest achievements of Mr. Roosevelt's administration was the beginning
of the actual construction of the Panama Canal. A short route between the two oceans
had long been considered by the leading commercial nations of the world. In 1850, by
the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, the United States and Great Britain had agreed upon the
construction of a canal by a private corporation, under the supervision of the two
countries and other states, which might join the combination, on a basis of
neutralization. The complete failure of the French company organized by De Lesseps,
Oregon made her historical voyage around the Horn.1
After the Spanish War was over, Mr. John Hay, Secretary of State, began the negotiation of a new treaty with Great Britain, which, after many hitches in the process of coming to terms, was finally ratified by the Senate in December, 1901. This agreement, known as the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, set aside the old Clayton-Bulwer convention, and provided that a canal might be constructed under the supervision of the United States, either at its own cost or by private enterprise subject to the stipulated provisions. The United States agreed to adopt certain rules as the basis of the neutralization of the canal, and expressly declared that "the canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations, observing these Rules, on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of traffic or otherwise."2 A proposal to forbid the fortification of the canal was omitted from the final draft, and provision was made for "policing" the district by the United States. The canal was thus neutralized under a guarantee of the United States, and certain promises were made in behalf of that country.
The exact effect of this treaty was a subject of dispute from the outset. On the one side, it was said by Mr. Latané that "a unilateral guarantee amounts to nothing; the effect of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, therefore, is to place the canal politically as well as commercially under the absolute control of the United States."1 On the other hand, it was contended that this treaty superseded a mutually binding convention, and that, although it was unilateral in character, the rules provided in it were solemn obligations binding upon the conscience of the American nation. Whatever may be the merits of this controversy, it is certain that the Hay-Pauncefote agreement cleared the way for speedy and positive action on the part of the United States with regard to the canal.
The great question then confronting the country was where and how should the canal be
built. One party favored cutting the channel through Nicaragua, and in fact two
national commissions had reported in favor of this route. Another party advocated
taking over the old French concern and the construction of the waterway through
Panama, a district then forming a part of Colombia. As many influential Americans had
become interested in the rights of the French company, they began a campaign in the
lobbies of Congress to secure the adoption of that route. At length in June, 1902, the
merits of the Panama case or the persistency of the lobby, or both, carried through a
law providing for the purchase of the French company's claims at a cost of not more
than $40,000,000 and the acquisition America as a World Power, p. 207.
On the basis of this law, which was signed June 28, 1902, negotiations were begun with Colombia, but they ended in failure because that country expected to secure better terms than those offered by the United States. The Americans who were interested in the French concern and expected to make millions out of the purchase of property that was substantially worthless, were greatly distressed by the refusal of Colombia to ratify the treaty which had been negotiated. Residents of Panama were likewise disturbed at this delay in an enterprise which meant great prosperity for them, and with the sympathy if not the support of the American administration, a revolt was instigated at the Isthmus and carried out under the protection of American arms on November 3, 1903. Three days later, President Roosevelt recognized the independence of the new revolutionary government. In his message in December, Mr. Roosevelt explained the great necessity under which he labored, and convinced his friends of the wisdom and justice of his course.
By a treaty proclaimed on February 26, 1904, between Panama and the United States,
provision was made for the construction of the canal. The independence of the former
country was guaranteed, and the latter obtained "in perpetuity the use, occupation,
and control" of a canal zone, and the right to construct, maintain, and operate the
canal and other means of transportation through the strip. Panama was paid $10,000,000
for her concession and promised $250,000 a
The country had not settled down after the Panama affair before popular interest was again engaged in a diplomatic tangle with Santo Domingo. That petty republic, on account of its many revolutions, had become deeply involved in debt, and European creditors, through their diplomatic agents, had practically threatened the use of armed force in collecting arrears, unless the United States would undertake the supervision of the Dominican customs and divide the revenues in a suitable manner. In an agreement signed in February, 1905, between the United States and Santo Domingo, provisions were made for carrying such an arrangement into effect. The Senate, having failed to sanction the treaty, Mr. Roosevelt practically carried out the program unofficially and gave it substantial support in the form of American battleships.
Against this independent executive action there was a strong protest in the Senate.
The spirit of this opposition was fully expressed by Mr. Rayner in a speech in that
chamber, in which he said: "This policy may be all right--perhaps the American people
are in favor of this new doctrine; it may be a wonderful accomplishment
Notwithstanding such attacks on his authority, the President had not in fact exceeded
his constitutional rights, and the boldness and directness of his policy found plenty
of popular support. The Senate was forced to accept the situation with as good grace
as possible, and a compromise was arranged in a revised treaty in February, 1907, in
which Mr. Roosevelt's action on material points received official sanction from that
authority. The wisdom of the policy of using the American navy to assist European and
other creditors in collecting their debts in Latin-American countries was thoroughly
thrashed out, as well as the constitutional points; and a new stage in the development
of the Monroe Doctrine
Another very dramatic feature of Mr. Roosevelt's administration was his action in bringing Russia and Japan together in 1905 and thus helping to terminate the terrible war between these two powers. Among the achievements of the Hague conference, called by the Tsar in 1899, was the adoption of "A Convention for the Peaceful Adjustment of International Differences" which provided for a permanent Court of Arbitration, for international commissions of inquiry in disputes arising from differences of opinion on facts, and for the tendering of good offices and mediation. "The right to offer good offices or mediation," runs the convention, "belongs to Powers who are strangers to the dispute, even during the course of hostilities. The exercise of this right shall never be considered by one or the other parties to the contest as an unfriendly act."
It was under this last provision that President Roosevelt dispatched on June 8, 1905,
after making proper inquiries, identical notes to Russia and Japan, urging them to
open direct negotiations for peace with each other. The fact that the great European
financiers had already substantially agreed that the war must end and that both
combatants were in sore straits for money, clearly facilitated the rapidity with which
the America as a World Power, pp. 282 ff.
ON the morning of March 4, 1901, when Mr. McKinley took the oath of
office to succeed himself as President, it appeared to the superficial observer that the
Populist movement had spent its strength and disappeared. Such was the common remark of
the time. To discredit a new proposition it was only necessary to observe that it was as
dead as Populism. Twice had the country repudiated Mr. Bryan and his works, the second
time even more emphatically than the first; and the radical ideas which had been
associated with his name, often quite erroneously, seemed to be permanently laid to
rest. The country was prosperous; it congratulated itself on the successful outcome of
the war with Spain and accepted the imperialist policies which followed with evident
satisfaction. Industries under the protection of the Dingley Act and undisturbed by
threats of legislative interference went forward with renewed vigor. Capital began to
reach out for foreign markets and investments as never before. Statesmen of Mr. Hanna's
school looked upon their work and pronounced it good.
But Populism was not dead. Defeated in the field of national politics, it began to work
from the ground upward, attacking one piece of political machinery after
The first victory of "direct democracy" came in the very year of Mr. Bryan's memorable
defeat. In 1896, the legislature of South Dakota was captured by a Democratic-Populist
majority, and at the session beginning in the following January, it passed an amendment
to the state constitution, establishing a system of initiative and referendum. Some
leaders of the old Knights of Labor and the president of the Farmers' Alliance were
prominently identified with the campaign for this innovation. The resolution was "passed
by a strict party vote, and to the Populists is due the credit of passing it," reported
"The Direct Legislation Record" in June, 1897. In the contest over ratification at the
polls a party Direct Legislation, Senate
Document No. 340, 55th Cong., 2d Sess. (1898); and in "The Direct Legislation Record,"
founded in May, 1894; and in the "Equity Series," now published at Philadelphia. See
also Oberholtzer, The Initiative, Referendum, and Recall in America,
ed. 1911.
A cloud no bigger than a man's hand had appeared on the horizon of representative
government. East, West, North, and South, advocates of direct government were busy with
their propaganda, Populists and Democrats taking the lead, with Republican politicians
not far in the rear. The year following the adoption of the South Dakota amendment a
combination of Democrats and Populists carried a similar provision through the state
legislature of Utah and obtained its ratification in 1900. This victory was a
short-lived triumph, for the Republicans soon regained their ascendancy and stopped the
progress of direct legislation by refusing to enact the enabling law putting the
amendment into force. But this check in Utah did not dampen the ardor of reformers in
other commonwealths. In 1902, Oregon adopted the new system; four years later Montana
followed; in 1907, Oklahoma came into the Union with the device embodied in the
Constitution; and then the progress of the movement became remarkably rapid. It was
adopted by Missouri and Maine in 1908, Arkansas and Colorado in 1910, Arizona and The Initiative,
Referendum, and Recall, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, September, 1912, pp. 84 ff.
It should be pointed out, however, that there is a conservative and a radical system of initiative and referendum: one which fixes the percentage necessary to initiate and adopt a measure at a point so high as to prevent its actual operation, and another which places it so low as to make its frequent use feasible. The older and more radical group of propagandists, finding their general scheme so widely taken up in practical politics, soon began to devote their attention rather to attacking the stricter safeguards thrown up by those who gave their support to direct government in theory only.
In its simple form of initiation by five per cent of the voters and adoption by a
majority of those voting on the measure submitted, this new device was undoubtedly a
revolutionary change from the American system of government as conceived by the framers
of the Constitution of the United States--with its checks and balances, indirect
elections, and judicial control over legislation. The more radical of the advocates of
direct government frankly admitted that this was true, and they sought to strengthen
this very feature of their system by the addition of another device, known as the
recall, which, when applied to judges as well as other elective officers, reduced
judicial control over legislation to a practical nullity. Where judges are elected for
short terms by popular vote and made subject to the recall,
The recall, like direct democracy, was not new to American politics. Both were understood, at least in principle, by the framers of the Federal Constitution and rejected decisively. The recall seems to have made its appearance first in local form,--in the charter of Los Angeles, adopted in 1903. From there it went to the Seattle charter of 1906, and two years later it was adopted as a state-wide system applicable to all elective officers by Oregon. Its progress was swiftest in municipal affairs, for it quite generally accompanied "the commission form" of city government as a check on the commissioners in their exercise of enlarged powers.
The state-wide recall, however, received a remarkable impetus in 1911 from the
controversy over the admission of Arizona, which attracted the attention of the nation.
That territory had framed a constitution containing a radical form of the recall based
on the Oregon plan, and in August, 1911, Congress passed a resolution admitting the
applicant, on condition that the provision relating to the recall should be specifically
submitted to the voters for their approval or rejection. President Taft was at once
stirred to action, and on August 15 he sent Congress a ringing message, displaying
unwonted vigor and determination, vetoing the resolution and denouncing the recall of
judges in unmeasured terms. "Constitutions," he said, "are checks upon the hasty action
of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon
Acting upon the recommendation of President Taft, Congress passed a substitute resolution for admitting Arizona only on condition that the obnoxious recall of judges be stricken from the constitution of the state.1 The debates in Congress over the admission of Arizona covered the whole subject of direct government in all its aspects, and these, coupled with the President's veto message, brought the issue prominently to the front throughout the country. Voters to whom it had previously been an obscure western device now began to take a deep interest in it; the press took it up; and one more test for "progressive" and "reactionary" was put in the popular program.
The movement for direct popular participation in state and local government was
inevitably accompanied by a demand for more direct government within the political
party; in other words, by a demand for the abandonment of the representative
convention in favor of
It was not, however, until the opening of the new century that primary legislation
began to engross a large share of legislative activities. In 1903, "the first state-wide
primary law with fairly complete provisions for legal supervision was enacted by the
state of Wisconsin"; Oregon, making use of the new initiative system, enacted a
thoroughgoing primary law in 1904; and the following year Illinois adopted a state-wide
measure. Other states, hesitating at such an extensive application of the principle,
contented themselves at first with laws instituting local primaries, such, for example,
as the Nebraska law of 1905 covering cities of over 125,000, or the earlier law of
Minnesota covering only Hennepin county. "So rapid was the progress of public opinion
and legislation," says Mr. Merriam, "that in many instances a compromise law of one
session
The vogue of the direct primary was confined largely to the West at first, but it steadily gained in favor in the East. Governor Hughes, of New York, in his contest with the old organization of the Republican party, became a stanch advocate of the system, recommended it to the legislature in his messages, campaigned through the state to create public sentiment in favor of the reform, and labored unsuccessfully to secure the passage of a primary law, until he closed his term to accept an appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1911, the Democratic party, which had carried New York state at the preceding election, enacted a primary law applicable to local, but not to state, offices. About the same time Massachusetts, Maine, and New Jersey joined the long list of direct primary states. Within almost ten years the principle in its state-wide form had been accepted in two thirds of the states, and in some local form in nearly all of the other commonwealths.
Meanwhile, the theory and practice of direct government made their way upward into
the Federal government. As early as 1826, Mr. Storrs, a representative from New York,
introduced in the House a constitutional amendment providing for the popular election of
United States Senators, and from time to time thereafter the proposal was urged upon
Congress. President Johnson,
In the Senate itself were found occasional champions of popular election, principally from the West and South. Mitchell, of Oregon, Turpie, of Indiana, Perkins, of California, Berry, of Arkansas, and Bailey, of Texas, took the leadership in this contest for reform. Chandler, of New Hampshire, Depew, of New York, Penrose, of Pennsylvania, Hoar, of Massachusetts, Foraker, of Ohio, and Spooner, of Wisconsin, leveled their batteries against it. State after state legislature passed resolutions demanding the change, until at length three fourths had signified their demand for popular election.
The Senate as a whole remained obdurate. When in the Fifty-third Congress the
resolution of the House came before that body, Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts, made, on
April 6 and 7, 1893, one of his most eloquent and impassioned pleas for resisting this
new proposal to the uttermost. He declared that it would transfer the seat of power to
the "great cities and masses of
Having failed to make an impression on the Senate by a frontal attack, the advocates of
popular election set to work to capture that citadel by a rear assault. They began to
apply the principle of the direct primary in the nomination of candidates for the
Senate, and this development at length culminated in the Oregon scheme for binding the
legislature to accept the "people's choice." This movement gained rapid headway in the
South, where the real contest was over nomination, not election, on account of the
absence of party divisions. As early as 1875, the Nebraska constitution had provided for
taking a popular preferential vote on candidates for
It was not until 1911 that the Senate yielded to the overwhelming popular demand for a
change in the methods of election provided in the Constitution. In December, 1909,
Senator Bristow, of Kansas, introduced a resolution designed to effect this reform, and
after a hot debate it was defeated on February 28, 1911, by a vote of 54 to 33, four
short of the requisite two thirds. In the next Congress, which convened on April 4, ten
Senators who had voted against the amendment had been retired, and the champions of the
measure, taking it up again with renewed energy, were able to force it through the upper
house on June 12, 1911, by a margin of five more than the two thirds. The resolution
went to the House and a deadlock arose between the two chambers for a time over Federal
control of elections, provided in the Senate resolution, which was obnoxious to many
southern representatives. At length, however, on May 13, 1912, the opponents in the
House gave way, and the resolution passed by an overwhelming vote. Within a year, the
resolution was ratified by the requisite
The advance of direct democracy in the West was accompanied by a revival of the question of woman suffrage. That subject had been earnestly agitated about the time of the Civil War; and under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and others it made considerable headway among those sections of the population which had favored the emancipation of the slaves. Indeed, it was inevitably linked with the discussion of "natural rights," extensively carried on during the days when attempts were being made to give political rights to the newly emancipated bondmen. Woman suffrage was warmly urged before the New York state constitutional convention in 1867 by Mr. George William Curtis, in a speech which has become a classic among the arguments for that cause. During the seventies suffrage petitions bearing the signatures of thousands of men and women were laid before Congress, and an attempt was made to secure from the Supreme Court an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment which would force the states to grant the ballot to women.
At length the movement began to subside, and writers who passed for keen observers
declared it to be at an end. The nineteenth century closed with victories for the women
in only four states, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. The first of these states had
granted the vote to women while yet a territory, and on its admission to the Union in
1890, it became the
Of course, the agitation continued, but in somewhat obscure circles, under a running
fire of ridicule whenever it appeared in public. At length it broke out with
unprecedented vigor, shortly after the tactics adopted by militant English women
startled the world. Within a short time new and substantial victories gave the movement
a standing which could not be ignored either by its positive opponents or the
indifferent politicians. In 1910, the suffragists carried the state of Washington; in
1911, they carried California; in 1912, they won in Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon; but
lost Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. These victories gave them nine states and of course
a considerable influence in the House of Representatives and the right to participate in
the election of eighteen out of ninety-six Senators. But the defeat in the three middle
states led the opponents of woman suffrage to believe that the movement could be
confined to the far West. This hope was, however, dashed in 1913 when the legislature of
Illinois gave women the right to vote for all statutory officers, including electors for
President of the United States. Determined to
With the spread of direct elections and the initiative and referendum, and the adoption of the two amendments to the Federal Constitution authorizing an income tax1 and the popular election of Senators, the milder demands of Populism were secured. At the same time, the prosperity of the farmers and the enormous rise in ground values which accompanied the economic advance of the country removed some of the most potent causes of the discontent on which Populism thrived. Organized Populism died a natural death. Those Populists who advocated only political reforms went over to the Republican and Democratic parties; the advocates of radical economic changes, on the other hand, entered the Socialist ranks.
Socialism, as an organized movement in the United States, runs back to the foundation
of the Social-Democratic Workingmen's party in New York City, in 1874, which was
changed into the Socialist Labor party three years later,--a party that still
survives. This group did not enter into national politics until 1892, although its
branches occasionally made nominations for local offices or fused with other labor
groups, as in the New
The growth of interest in socialism, however, was by no means confined to the
membership of the Socialist Labor party. External events were stirring a consciousness
that grave labor problems had arisen within the American Commonwealth. The bloody
strikes at Homestead, Coeur d'Alene, Buffalo, and Pullman in the eighties and early
nineties moved the country as no preachments of abstract socialist philosophy could
ever have done. That such social conflicts were full of serious portent was recognized
even by such a remote and conservative thinker as President Cleveland in Looking Backward, published in 1887. The decline of the Populist
party, which had indorsed most of the socialistic proposals that appealed to Americans
tinged with radicalism, the formation of local labor and socialist societies of one
kind or another, and the creation of dissatisfaction with the methods and program of
the Socialist Labor party finally led to the establishment of a new national political
organization.
This was effected in 1900 when a general fusion was attempted under the name of the
Social Democratic party, which nominated Mr. Eugene V. Debs for President at a
convention held in Indianapolis. The Socialist Labor party, however, declined to join
the organization and went on its own way. The vote of the new party, ninety-six
thousand, induced the leaders in the movement to believe that they were on the right
track, for this was considerably larger than the rival group had ever secured. Steps
were immediately taken to put the party on a permanent basis; the name Socialist party
was assumed in 1901; local branches were established in all sections of the country
with astonishing rapidity; and a vigorous propaganda was undertaken. In the national
election of 1904 over four hundred thousand votes were polled; in 1908, when Mr. Bryan
and Mr. Roosevelt gave a radical tinge to the older parties, a
While there was no little difference of opinion among the Socialists as to the
precise character of their principles and tactics,--a condition not peculiar to that
party,--there were certain general ideas running through their propaganda and
platforms. Modern industry, they all held, creates necessarily a division of society
into a relatively few capitalists, on the one hand, who own, control, and manipulate
the machinery of production National Municipal Review for July,
1912.
At the present time, runs the Socialist platform of 1912, "the capitalist class,
though few in numbers, absolutely controls the government--legislative, executive, and
judicial. This class owns the machinery of gathering and disseminating news through
its organized press. It subsidizes seats of learning,--the colleges and the
schools,--even religious and moral agencies. It has also the added prestige which
established customs give to any order of society, right or wrong." But the working
class is becoming more and more discontented with its lot; it is becoming consolidated
by coöperation, political and economic, and in the future it will become the ruling
class of the country, taking possession, through the machinery of the government, of
the great instrumentalities of production and distribution. This final
The Socialist party had scarcely got under way before it was attacked from an unexpected quarter by revolutionary trade-unionists, known as the Industrial Workers of the World, who revived in part the old principle of class solidarity (as opposed to trade solidarity) which lay at the basis of the Knights of Labor. The leaders of this new unionism, among whom Mr. W. D. Haywood was prominent, did not repudiate altogether the Socialist labors to secure control of the organs of government by the ballot, but they minimized their importance and pressed to the front the doctrine that by vigorous and uncompromising mass strikes a revolutionary spirit might be roused in the working class and the actual control of business wrested from the capitalists, perhaps without the intervention of the government at all.
This new unionism was launched at a conference of radical labor leaders in 1904, at
which the following
This new society made a disturbance in labor circles entirely out of proportion to
its numerical strength. Its leaders managed strikes at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, at
Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, and at other points, laying emphasis on the united
action of all the working people of all the trades involved in the particular
industry. The "new unionism" appealed particularly to the great mass of foreign
laborers who had no vote and therefore perhaps turned with more
Just as the Protestant Revolt during the sixteenth century was followed by a
counter-reformation in the Catholic Church which swept away many abuses, while
retaining and fortifying the essential principles of the faith, so the widespread and
radical discontent of the working classes with the capitalist system hitherto
obtaining produced a counter-reformation on the part of those who wish to preserve its
essentials while curtailing some of its excesses. This counter-reformation made a deep
impress upon American political thinking and legislation at the turning of the new
century. More than once during his presidency Mr. Roosevelt warned the capitalists
that a reform of abuses was the price which laissez faire to
consider some of the grievances of the working class, and many abandoned the
time-honored discussions of "economic theories," in favor of legislative programs
embracing the principles of state socialism, to which countries like Germany and Great
Britain were already committed.
Charity workers whose function had been hitherto to gather up the wrecks of civilization and smooth their dying days began to talk of "a war for the prevention of poverty," and an examination of their concrete legislation proposals revealed the acceptance of some of the principles of state socialism. Unrestricted competition and private property had produced a mass of poverty and wretchedness in the great cities which constituted a growing menace to society, and furnished themes for socialist orators. Social workers of every kind began the detailed analysis of the causes of specific cases of poverty and arrived at the conclusion that elaborate programs of "social legislation" were necessary to the elimination of a vast mass of undeserved poverty.
Under the stimulus of these and other forces, state legislatures in the more
industrially advanced commonwealths began to pour out a stream of laws dealing with
social problems. These measures included employers liability and workmen's
compensation laws, the prohibition of child labor, minimum hours for dangerous trades
like mining and railroading, minimum wages for women and girls, employment bureaus,
and pensions for widows with children to support. While none of the states
All this unsettlement in economics and politics could not fail to bring about a reconsideration of the fundamentals in the American constitutional system-- particularly the distribution of powers between the Federal and state governments, which is made by a constitution drafted when economic conditions were totally different from what they are to-day. In fact, during the closing years of the nineteenth century there appeared, here and there in American political literature, evidence of a discontent with the Federal system scarcely less keen and critical than that which was manifested with the Articles of Confederation during those years of our history which John Fiske has denominated "The Critical Period."
Manufacturing interests which, at the time the Federal Constitution was framed, were
so local in character as to be excluded entirely from the control of the Federal
government had now become national or at all events sectional, having absolutely no
relation to state lines. As Professor Leacock remarks, "The central fact of the
situation is that economically and industrially the United States is one country or at
best one country with four or five great subdivisions, while politically it is
The tendency of manufacturers to centralize was accompanied, as has been pointed out
above, by a similar centralization in railways. At the close of the nineteenth
century, the Vanderbilt system operated "some 20,000 miles reaching from New York City
to Casper, Wyoming, and covering the lake states and the area of the upper
Mississippi; the Pennsylvania system with 14,000 miles covers a portion of the same
territory, centering particularly in Ohio and Indiana; the Morgan Proceedings of the American Political Science Association, 1908,
Vol. V, p. 42.
Corresponding to this centralization in industries and railways there was, as we have pointed out, a centralization in the control of capital, particularly in two large groups, the Standard Oil and the Morgan interests. As an expert financier, Mr. Moody wrote in 1904: "Viewed as a whole, we find the dominating influences in the trusts to be made up of an intricate network of large and small groups of capitalists, many allied to one another by ties of more or less importance, but all being appendages to, or parties of the greater groups which are themselves dependent on and allied with the two mammoth or Rockefeller and Morgan groups."
Facing this centralized national economy was a Federal system made for wholly
different conditions--a national system of manufacturing, transportation, capital,
and organized labor, with a national government empowered, expressly, at least, to
regulate only
A few concrete illustrations2
will show the lack of correspondence between the political system and the economic
system. Each state bids against the others to increase the number of factories which
adds to its wealth and increases the value of property within its borders, although it
makes no difference to the total wealth of the nation and the happiness of the whole
people whether a particular concern is located in New Jersey or in Pennsylvania. As
the national government enjoys no power to regulate industries--even those which are
national in character--the states use their respective powers under the pressure which
comes from those who are interested in increasing the industry of the commonwealth.
For example, it is stated "the glass workers of New Jersey oppose any attempt to
prohibit Proceedings of the American Political Science
Association, 1908, pp. 37 ff.
The situation may be described in the language of the chief factory inspector of Ohio: "Industrially as well as geographically we of the Ohio Valley are one people and our laws should be uniform, not only that they may be the easier enforced, but in justice to the manufacturers who pursue the same industry in the several states and therefore come into close competition with one another." Moreover, if a state enacts an important industrial law, it may find its work in vain as the result of a decision of the national Supreme Court, or of the state courts, interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.
Another example of a national interest which is wholly beyond the reach of the
Federal government, under a judicial decision reached in the case of Paul v. Virginia in 1868, is that of insurance. Although Hamilton and earlier
writers on the Constitution believed that the insurance business was a branch of
interstate commerce whose regulation was vested in Congress, the Supreme
As a result of this narrow interpretation of the commerce clause, the vast insurance
business of the country, national in character, was put beyond the reach of Congress,
and at the mercy of the legislatures of the several commonwealths. Under these
circumstances, the insurance laws of the United States were in splendid chaos. "If a
compilation of these laws were attempted," says Mr. Huebner, "a most curious spectacle
would result. It would be found that fifty-two states and territories are all acting
along independent lines and that each, as has been correctly said, possessed its own
schedule of taxations, fees, fines, penalties, obligations and prohibitions, and a
retaliatory or reciprocal
A still better example of confusion in our system is offered by the corporation laws of the several states. Great industrial corporations are formed under state laws. While many contend that Congress has the power to compel the Federal incorporation of all concerns doing an interstate business and thus to occupy the whole domain of corporation law involving interstate commerce, this radical step has not yet been taken. Congress has confined itself to the more or less fruitless task of forbidding combinations in restraint of interstate trade.
Under these circumstances, there appeared the anomalous condition of states actually advertising in the newspapers and bidding against each other in offering the corporations special opportunities and low fees for the privilege of incorporating. If the conscience of one state became enlightened and a strict corporation law was enacted, the result was simply to drive the irregular concerns into some other state which was willing to sell its privileges for the small fee of incorporation, and ask no questions. As might have been expected, every variety of practice existed in the forty-eight jurisdictions in which corporations might be located.
Not only was there the greatest diversity in these practices, but special
discriminations were often made in particular states against concerns incorporated in
other states; and on top of all this there was a vast mass of antitrust legislation,
frequently drastic in character or loose and futile. Often it was the product of a
popular clamor against large business undertakings,
The position of railway corporations, if possible, was more anomalous still. Their
interstate business was subject to the regulations of Congress and their intrastate
business to the control of the state legislatures. Although there existed, in theory,
a dividing line between these two classes of business, there were always arising
concrete cases where it was difficult to say on which side of the line they would fall
in the opinion of the Supreme Court. States were constantly being enjoined on the
application of the railways for their "interference with interstate commerce"; and
when far-reaching legislation was proposed in Congress, the cry went up that the
rights of states were being trampled upon. If X shipped a carload of goods to Y within
the borders of his state, he paid one rate; if he shipped it to Z, two miles farther
on in another state, he paid a different rate, perhaps less than in the first
instance. In a number of states companies owning parallel lines might consolidate; in
others, consolidation was forbidden. According to a report of the Interstate Commerce
Commission in 1902, the states were equally
A further element of confusion was added by the intervention of the Federal judiciary in declaring state laws invalid, not merely when they conflicted clearly with the execution of Federal law, but on constitutional grounds which meant, for practical purposes, whenever the said laws were not in harmony with the ideas of public policy entertained by the courts at the time. The Federal judiciary in regard to state legislation relative to corporations was, therefore, a destructive, not a constructive, body. To use the language of the street, state legislation was simply "shot to pieces" by judicial decisions. That which was chaotic, disjointed, and founded upon no uniformity of purpose or policy to begin with was riddled and torn by a body which had no power for positive action.
As the Interstate Commerce Commission declared in 1903, "One of the chief
embarrassments in the exercise of adequate government control over the organization,
the construction, and the administration of railways in
This was the situation that called forth the demand for the national regulation of
large corporate enterprises, and brought about the demand for a strengthening of the
Federal government, either by a constitutional amendment or judicial interpretation,
which received the name of "New Nationalism." Wide currency was given to this term by
Mr. Roosevelt, in his speech delivered at Ossawatomie on August 31, 1910. After
outlining a legislative policy which he deemed to be demanded by the changed economic
conditions of our time, Mr. Roosevelt attacked the idea of "a neutral zone between the
national and state legislatures," guarded only by the Federal judiciary; and pleaded
for
"There must remain no neutral ground," he said, "to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid both jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the national legislature fails to do its duty in providing a national remedy so that the only national activity is the purely negative activity of the judiciary in forbidding the state to exercise the power in the premises.
"I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike. The national government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the national government. The betterment which we seek must be accomplished, I believe, mainly through the national government.
"The American people are right in demanding that New Nationalism without which we
cannot hope to deal with new problems. The New Nationalism puts the national need
before sectional or personal advantages. It is impatient of the utter confusion that
results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues.
It is still more impatient of the impotence
IN spite of the stirring of new economic and political forces which
marked Mr. Roosevelt's administration and his somewhat radical utterances upon occasion,
there was no prominent leader in the Republican party in 1908, except Mr. La Follette of
Wisconsin, who was identified with policies which later came to be known as
"progressive." Although Mr. Hughes, as governor of New York, had enlisted national
interest in his "fight with the bosses," he was, by temperament, conservative rather
than radical, and his doctrines were not primarily economic in character. Other
Republican aspirants were also of a conservative cast of mind, Mr. Fairbanks, of
Indiana, Mr. Knox, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Cannon, of Illinois, all of whom were indorsed
for the presidency by their respective states. The radical element among the Republicans
hoped that Mr. Roosevelt would consent to accept a "second elective term"; but his flat
refusal put an end to their plans for renomination.
Very early in his second administration, Mr. Roosevelt made it clear that he wanted to
see Mr. W. H. Taft, then Secretary of War, designated as his successor; and by the
judicious employment of publicity and the proper management of the Federal patronage and
the
The nomination of Mr. Bryan by the Democrats was a foregone conclusion. The débâcle of 1904 had demonstrated that the breach of 1896 could not be healed by what the western contingent called "the Wall Street crowd" ; and Mr. Bryan had secured complete control of the party organization. The convention at Denver was a personal triumph from beginning to end. Mr. Bryan mastered the proceedings and wrote the platform, and received the most telling ovation ever given to a party leader by a national convention.
Having complete control, Mr. Bryan attempted what the politicians who talked most
aggressively about the trusts had consistently refused to do--he attempted to define and
precisely state the remedies for objectionable
In dealing with railway corporations, the Democratic platform proposed concretely the
valuation of railways, taking into consideration the physical as well as other elements;
an increase in the power of the Interstate
Mr. Bryan's proposals, particularly with regard to trusts, were greeted with no little derision on the part of many practical men of affairs, but they had, at least, the merit of being more definite in character than any statement of anti-trust policy which had been made hitherto, except by the Socialists in advocating public ownership. The Republicans, for example, contented themselves with simply proposing the amendment of the Sherman law in such a manner as to "give to the federal government greater supervision and control over and secure greater publicity in the management of that class of corporations engaged in interstate commerce having power and opportunity to effect monopolies."
The campaign of 1908 was without any specially dramatic incidents. The long stumping
tours by all candidates did not seem to elicit the old-time enthusiasm. The corporation
interests that had long financed the Republican party once more poured out treasure like
water (as the Clapp investigation afterward revealed in 1912); and Mr. Bryan attempted a
counter-movement by asking for small contributions from each member of his party, but he
was sadly disappointed by the results. The Democratic national committee announced that
it would receive no contributions from corporations, that it would accept no more than
$10,000 from any
In the election which followed, Mr. Bryan was defeated for the third time. His vote was somewhat larger than it was in 1900, and nearly a million and a half above that cast for Mr. Parker in 1904. But Mr. Taft more than held the strength of his predecessor as measured by the popular vote, and he received 321 electoral votes against 162 cast for his opponent. Once more, the conservative press announced, the country had repudiated Populism and demonstrated its sound, conservative instincts.
When Mr. Taft took the oath of office on March 4, 1909, he fell heir, on his own
admission, to more troublesome problems than had been the lot of any President since
Lincoln's day. His predecessor had kept the country interested and entertained by the
variety of his speeches and recommendations and by his versatility in dealing with all
the social questions which were
The first task which confronted him was the thorny problem of the tariff. His
predecessor had given the matter little attention during his administration,
apparently for the reason that it was, in his opinion, of little consequence as
compared with the questions of railways, trusts, great riches, and labor. But action
could not be indefinitely postponed. Undoubtedly there was a demand in many parts of
the country for a tariff revision. How widespread it was, how much it was the creation
of the politicians, how intelligent and deep-seated it was, no one could tell.
Nevertheless, more than ten years had elapsed since the enactment of the Dingley law
of 1897, and many who did not entertain radical views on the subject at all joined in
demanding a revision on the ground that conditions had materially changed. The
Republican platform had promised revision on the basis that the true principle of
protection
In accordance with party pledges Mr. Taft called Congress in a special session on March 11, 1909, and after a hotly contested battle the Payne-Aldrich tariff act was passed. The President made no considerable effort to force the hand of Congress one way or the other, and he accepted the measure on the theory that it was the best tariff law that could be got at the time. Indeed, it was pointed out by members of his party that the bill contained "654 decreases in duty, 220 increases, and 1150 items of the dutiable list in which the rates were unchanged." It was also stated that the bill was framed in accordance with the spirit of the party platform which had made no promise of a general sweeping reduction. It was admitted, however, that precise information upon the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad could not have been obtained in time for this revision, but a tariff board was created by law for the purpose of obtaining the desired information, on the basis of which readjustments in schedules could be made from time to time.
On April 9, 1909, the Payne tariff act passed the House, one Republican voting
against it and four 323
There were several features of the transaction which deserve special notice. Very
early in the Senate proceedings on the bill, an income tax provision was introduced by
Senators Cummins and Bailey, and it looked as if enough support could be secured from
the two parties to enact it into law. Although President Taft, in his acceptance
speech, had expressed an opinion to the effect that an income tax could be
constitutionally enacted notwithstanding the decision of the Supreme Court in the
Income Tax cases, he blocked the proposal to couple an income tax measure with the
tariff bill,
Revision of the tariff had always been a thankless task for any party. The Democrats
had found it such in 1894 when their bill had failed to please any one, including
President Cleveland, and when for collateral or independent reasons a period of
industrial depression had set in. The McKinley bill of 1890 had aroused a storm of
protest which had swept the Republicans out of power, and it is probable that the
Dingley tariff of 1897 would have created similar opposition if it could have been
disentangled from the other overshadowing issues growing out of the Spanish War. The
Payne-Aldrich tariff likewise failed to please; but its failure was all the more
significant because its passage was opposed by such a large number of prominent party
members. The Democrats, as was naturally to be expected, made all they could out of
the situation, and
Notwithstanding the dissensions within his party, Mr. Taft continued steadily to press a legislative policy which he had marked out. In a special message on January 7, 1910, he recommended the creation of a court of commerce to have jurisdiction, among other things, over appeals from the Interstate Commerce Commission. This proposal was enacted into law on June 18, 1910; and the appointments were duly made by the President. The career of the tribunal was not, however, particularly happy. Some of its decisions against the rulings of the Commission were popularly regarded as too favorable to railway interests; one of the judges, Mr. Archbald, of Pennsylvania, was impeached and removed on the ground that his private relations with certain railway corporations were highly questionable; and at length Congress in 1913 terminated its short life.
Acting upon a recommendation of the President, Congress, in June, 1910, passed a law
providing for the establishment of a postal savings system in connection with the post
offices. The law authorized the payment of two per cent interest on money deposited at
the designated post offices and the distribution of all such
The postal savings system was shortly supplemented by a system of parcels post. Mr. Taft strongly advocated the establishment of such a system, and it had been urged in Congress for many years, but had been blocked by the opposition of the express companies, for obvious reasons, and by country merchants who feared that they would be injured by the increased competition of the mail order departments of city stores. Finally, by a law approved on August 24, 1912, Congress made provision for the establishment of this long-delayed service, and it was put into effect on January 1, 1913, thus enabling the United States to catch up with the postal systems of other enlightened nations. Although the measure was sharply criticized for its rates and classifications, it was generally approved and regarded as the promising beginning of an institution long desired.
While helping to add these new burdens to the post-office administration, Mr. Taft
directed his attention to
Although he was sharply attacked by the advocates of conservation for appointing and
supporting as Secretary of the Interior, Mr. R. A. Ballinger, who was charged with
favoring certain large corporations seeking public land grants, Mr. Taft devoted no
little attention to the problem of conserving the natural resources. In 1910, Congress
enacted two important laws bearing on the subject. By a measure approved June 22, it
provided for agricultural entries on coal lands and the
From the opening of his administration Mr. Taft used his influence in every legitimate way to assist in the development of the movement for international peace. In his acceptance speech, at the opening of his campaign for election, he had remarked upon the significance and importance of the arbitration treaties which had been signed between nations and upon the contribution of Mr. Roosevelt's administration to the cause of world peace. Following out his principles, Mr. Taft signed with France and England in August, 1911, general arbitration treaties expanding the range of the older agreements so as to include all controversies which were "justiciable" in character, even though they might involve questions of "vital interest and national honor." The treaties, which were hailed by the peace advocates with great acclaim, met a cold reception in the Senate which ratified them on March 7, 1912, only after making important amendments that led to their abandonment.
Among the most significant of Mr. Taft's acts were his appointments of the Supreme
Court judges. On the death of Chief Justice Fuller, in 1910, he selected for that
It was hardly to be expected that the exercise of such a significant power would
escape criticism, particularly in view of the nature of the cases which are passed
upon by that Court. Mr. Bryan was particularly severe in his attacks, charging the
President with deliberately packing the Court. "You appointed to the Chief Justiceship
of the Supreme Court," he said, "Justice White who thirteen years ago took the trusts'
side of the trust question1 . .
You appointed Governor Hughes to the Supreme Court bench after he had interpreted your
platform to suit the trusts." Mr. Bryan also demanded that Mr. Taft let the people
know "the influences" that dictated his appointments. Mr. Bryan attacked particularly
the selection of Mr. Van Devanter, declaring that the latter, by his decisions in the
lower court, was a notorious favorite of corporation interests. Mr. Taft looked upon
these attacks as insults to himself and the judges, and treated them with the scant
courtesy which, in his opinion, they deserved. The episode, however, was of no little
significance in stirring up
Mr. Taft approached the trust problem with the preconceptions of the lawyer who believes that the indefinite dissolution of combinations is possible under the law. His predecessor had, it is true, instituted many proceedings against trusts, but there was a certain lack of sharpness in his tone, which was doubtless due to the fact that he believed and openly declared that indiscriminate prosecutions under the Sherman law (which was, in his opinion, unsound in many features) were highly undesirable. Mr. Taft, on the other hand, apparently looked at the law and not the economics of the problem. During Harrison's administration there had been four bills in equity and three indictments under the Sherman law; during Cleveland's administration, four bills in equity, two indictments, two informations for contempt; during McKinley's administration, three bills in equity. Mr. Roosevelt had to his record, eighteen bills in equity, twenty-five indictments, and one forfeiture proceeding. Within three years, Mr. Taft had twenty-two bills in equity and forty-five indictments to his credit.
The very vigor with which Mr. Taft pressed the cases against the trusts did more,
perhaps, to force a consideration of the whole question by the public than did Mr.
Roosevelt's extended messages. As has been pointed out, the members of Congress who
enacted the Sherman
This was not done by the Court inadvertently. Mr. Justice Peckham, speaking for the
majority of the Court, distinctly marked the fact that arguments had been directed to
that tribunal, "against the inclusion of all contracts in restraint of trade, as
provided for by the language of the act . . . upon the alleged presumption that
Congress, notwithstanding the language of the act, could not have intended to embrace
all contracts, but only such as were in unreasonable restraint of trade. Under these
circumstances we are, therefore, asked to hold that the act of Congress excepts
contracts which are not in unreasonable restraint of trade, and which only keep rates
up to a reasonable price, notwithstanding the language of the act makes no such
exception. In other words, we are asked to read into the act by way of judicial
legislation an exception that is not placed there by the lawmaking branch of the
government. . . . It may be that the policy evidenced by the passage of the act itself
will, if carried out, result in disaster to the v. Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U.S. 290.
It was no doubt fortunate for the business interests of the country that no earlier administration undertook a searching and drastic prosecution of combinations under the Sherman law; for in the view of the language of the Court it is difficult to imagine any kind of important interconcern agreement which would not be illegal. This very delay in the vigorous enforcement of the law enabled the country at large to take a new view of the trusts and to throw aside much of the prejudice which had characterized politics in the eighties and early nineties. The lawless practices of the great combinations and their corrupting influence were extensively discovered and understood; but it became increasingly difficult for demagogues to convince the public that any good could accrue to anybody from the ruthless attempts to disintegrate all large combinations in business. The more radical sections, which had formerly applauded the platform orator in his tirades against trusts, were turning away from indiscriminate abuse and listening more attentively than ever to the Socialists who held, and had held for half a century, to the doctrine that the trusts were a natural product of economic evolution and were merely paving the way to national ownership on a large scale.
Consequently, between the two forces, the representatives
In response to this demand, Mr. Taft pushed through the cases against the Standard
Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company; and in May, 1911, the Supreme Court
handed down decisions dissolving these combinations. In the course of his opinions,
Chief Justice White, who had dissented in the Trans-Missouri case mentioned above,
gave an interpretation of the Sherman Act which was regarded quite generally as an
abandonment of the principles enunciated by the Court in that case. He said: "The
statute, under this unduly restrain interstate and foreign
commerce, but to protect the commerce from being restrained by methods, whether new or
old, which would constitute an interference that is an undue
restraint." Thus the Chief Justice restated the doctrine of "reasonableness" which he
had formulated in his dissenting opinion in the earlier case, but this time as the
spokesman of the Court. It is true, he attempted with great dialectic skill to
reconcile the old and the new opinions, and make it appear that there had been no
change in the theories of the Court; but his attempt was not convincing to every one,
for many shared the view expressed by Justice Harlan, to the effect that the attempt
at reconciliation partook of the nature of a statement that black is white and white
is black.
The effect of these decisions was the dissolution of the two concerns into certain
constituent parts which were supposed to reëstablish competition; but no marvelously
beneficial economic results seem to have accrued. The inner circles of the two
combinations made huge sums from the appreciation of stocks; the prices of gasoline
and some other oil products mounted with astonishing speed to a higher rate than ever
before; and smaller would-be competitors declared that the constituent companies were
so large that competition with them was next to impossible. No one showed any great
enthusiasm about the results of the prosecution and decisions, except perhaps some
eminent leaders in the business world, who shared the opinion of Mr. J. P.
From the beginning of his administration, it was apparent that Mr. Taft's party in Congress was not in that state of harmony which presaged an uneventful legislative career. The vote on the tariff bill, both in the Senate and the House, showed no little dissatisfaction with the way in which the affairs of the party were being managed. The acrimony in the tariff debate had been disturbing, and the attacks on Speaker Cannon from his own party colleagues increased in frequency and virulence inside and outside of Congress.
Under this astute politician and keen parliamentary manager, a system of legislative
procedure had grown up in the House, which concentrated the management of
In addition, there had been created a powerful engine, known as the "rules committee" which could, substantially at any time, set aside the regular operations of the House, fix the limits of debate, and force the consideration of any particular bill. This committee was composed of the Speaker and two colleagues selected by himself, for, although there were two Democratic representatives on the committee, they did not enjoy any influence in its deliberations. The outward signs of propriety were given to this enginery by the election of the Speaker by the party caucus, but the older members and shrewd managers had turned the caucus into a mere ratifying machine.
Under this system, which was perfected through the long tenure of power enjoyed by
the Republicans, a small group of managers, including Mr. Cannon, came to a
substantial control over all the business of the House. A member could not secure
recognition for a measure without "seeing" the Speaker in advance; the older members
monopolized the important committees;
If anything went wrong, it soon became popular to attribute the evil to "Cannon and
his system." Attacks upon them became especially bitter in the campaign of 1908 and
particularly venomous after the passage of the Aldrich-Payne tariff act. At length, in
March, 1910, by a clever piece of parliamentary manipulation, some "insurgent"
Republicans were able to present an amendment to the rules ousting the Speaker from
membership in the rules committee, increasing the number, and providing for election
by the House. Mr. Cannon was forced to rule on the regularity of this amendment, and
he decided against it. On appeal from the decision of the chair, the Speaker was
defeated by a combination of Democrats and insurgent Republicans, and the committee on
rules was reconstructed. A motion to declare the Speakership vacant was defeated,
however, because only eight insurgents supported it, and accordingly Mr. Cannon was
permitted to serve
The second half of Mr. Taft's administration was marked by the failure to accomplish many results on which he had set his mind. The election of 1910 showed that the country was swinging back to the Democratic party once more. In that year, the Democrats elected governors in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and some other states which had long been regarded as Republican. The Democrats also carried the House of Representatives, securing 227 members to 163 Republicans and I Socialist, Mr. Berger, of Wisconsin. Although many conservative Republican leaders, like Mr. Cannon, Mr. Payne, and Mr. Dalzell, were returned, their position in the minority was seriously impaired by the election of many "insurgent" Republicans from the West, who were out of harmony with the old methods of the party.
In view of this Democratic victory, it was inevitable that Mr. Taft should have
trouble over the tariff. In accordance with the declarations of the Republican
platform, he had recommended and secured the creation, in 1909, of a tariff board
designed to obtain precise information on the relation of the tariff to production and
labor at home and abroad. The work of this board fell
If there was to be any protection at all, it was obvious that an immense amount of
precise information was necessary to the adjustment of schedules in such a manner as
not to give undue advantages to American manufacturers and thus encourage sloth and
obsolete methods on their part. Such was the view taken by Mr. Taft and the friends of
the tariff board; but the Democratic Congress elected in 1910 gave the outward signs
of a determination to undertake a speedy and considerable "downward revision,"
regardless of any "scientific" information that might be collected by the
administration. There was doubtless some demand in the country for such a revision,
and furthermore it was "good politics" for the leaders of the new House to embarrass
the Republican President as much as
Consequently, the House, in 1911, passed three important tariff measures: a farmers' free list bill placing agricultural implements, boots and shoes, wire fence, meat, flour, lumber, and other commodities on the free list; a measure revising the famous "Schedule K," embracing wool and woolen manufactures; and a law reducing the duties on cotton manufactures; chemicals, paints, metals, and other commodities. With the support of the "insurgent" Republicans in the Senate these measures were passed with more speed than was expected by their sponsors, and Mr. Taft promptly vetoed them on the ground that some of them were loosely drawn and all of them were based upon inadequate information. The following year, an iron and steel measure and a woolens bill were again presented to the President and as decisively vetoed. In his veto messages, Mr. Taft pointed out that the concise information collected by the tariff board was now at the disposal of Congress and that it was possible to undertake a revision of many schedules which would allow a considerable reduction without "destroying any established industry or throwing any wage earners out of employment." These last veto messages, sent in August, 1912, received scant consideration from members of Congress already engaged in a hot political campaign.
Mr. Taft was equally unfortunate in his attempt to secure reciprocity with Canada. In
January, 1911, through the Secretary of State, he concluded a reciprocity
During the closing days of his administration, Mr. Taft was seriously beset by
troubles with Mexico. Under the long and severe rule of General Porfirio Diaz in that
country, order had been set up there (at whatever cost to humanity) and American
capital had streamed into Mexican mines, railways, plantations, and other enterprises.
In 1911, Diaz was overthrown by Francisco Madero and the latter was hardly installed
in power before he was assassinated and a dictatorship set up under General Huerta, in
February, 1913. After the overthrow of Diaz in 1911, Mexico was filled with
LONG before the opening of the campaign of 1912, the dissenters in
the Republican party who had added the prefix of "Progressive" to the old title, began
to draw together for the purpose of resisting the renomination of Mr. Taft and putting
forward a candidate more nearly in accord with their principles. As early as January 21,
1911, a National Progressive Republican League was formed at the residence of Senator La
Follette in Washington and a program set forth embracing the indorsement of direct
primaries, direct elections, and direct government generally and a criticism of the
recent failures to secure satisfactory legislation on the tariff, trusts, banking, and
conservation. Only on the changes in our machinery of government did the League take a
definite stand; on the deeper issues of political economy it was silent, at least as to
positive proposals. Mr. Roosevelt was invited to join the new organization, but he
declined to identify himself with it.
For a time the Progressives centered their attacks upon Mr. Taft's administration.
Their bill of indictment may be best stated in the language of Senator La Follette: "In
his campaign for election, he [Mr. Taft] had interpreted the platform as a pledge for
tariff
A second positive step in the organization of the Progressive Republicans was taken in
April, 1911, at a conference held in the committee room of Senator Bourne, of Oregon, at
the Capitol. At this meeting a number of Republican Senators, Representatives, newspaper
men, and private citizens were present, and it was there agreed that the Progressives
must unite upon some candidate Autobiography, p. 476.
In July, 1911, Senator La Follette began his active campaign for nomination as an
avowed Progressive Republican, and within a few months he had developed an unexpected
strength, particularly in the Middle West, which indicated the depth of the popular
dissatisfaction with Mr. Taft's administration. In October of that year a national
conference of Progressive Republicans assembled at Chicago, on the call of Mr. La
Follette's campaign manager, and indorsed the Senator in unmistakable language,
declaring him to be "the logical Republican candidate for President of the United
States," and urging the formation of organizations in all states to promote his
nomination. In spite of these outward signs of prosperity, however, Mr. La Follette
Autobiography, pp. 516 ff.
Indeed, Senator La Follette came to believe that many of his supporters, who afterward
went over to Mr. Roosevelt, never intended to push his own candidacy to the end, but
employed him as a sort of "stalking horse" to interest and measure progressive sentiment
for the purpose of putting the ex-President into the field at the opportune moment, if
the signs proved auspicious. This was regarded by Mr. La Follette not merely as
treachery to himself, but also as treason to genuine progressive principles. In his
opinion, Mr. Roosevelt's long administration of seven years had failed to produce many
material results. He admitted that the ex-President had done something to promote
conservation of natural resources, but called attention to the fact that the movement
for conservation had been begun even as early as Harrison's administration.1 He pointed out that Mr. Roosevelt
had vigorously indorsed the Payne-Aldrich tariff in the New York state campaign of 1910;
and that during his administration the formation and overcapitalization of gigantic
combinations had gone forward with unprecedented speed, in spite of the denunciation of
"bad trusts" in executive messages. Furthermore, the Senator directly charged Mr.
Roosevelt with having used the power of the Federal Autobiography, pp. 480 ff.,
543 f., 551, 700, 740.
So decided was Senator La Follette's distrust of Mr. Roosevelt's new "progressivism,"
that nothing short of a lengthy quotation can convey the spirit of it. "While Mr.
Roosevelt was President," says the Senator, "his public utterances through state papers,
addresses, and the press were highly colored with rhetorical radicalism. His
administrative policies as set forth in his recommendations to Congress were vigorously
and picturesquely presented, but characterized by an absence of definite economic
conception. One trait was always pronounced. His most savage assault upon special
interests was invariably offset with an equally drastic attack upon those who were
seeking to reform abuses. These were indiscriminately classed as demagogues and
dangerous persons. In this way he sought to win approval, both from the radicals and the
conservatives. This cannonading, first in one direction and then in another, filled the
air with noise and smoke, which confused and obscured the line of action, but when the
battle cloud drifted by and quiet was restored, it was always a matter of surprise that
so little had really been accomplished .... He smeared the issue, but caught the
imagination of the younger men of the country by his dash and mock heroics. Taft
coöperated with Cannon and Aldrich on legislation. Roosevelt coöperated with Aldrich and
Cannon on legislation. Neither President took issue with the reactionary bosses of the
Senate upon any legislation of national importance. Taft's talk was generally in line
with his
Nevertheless, at the opening of the presidential year, 1912, all speculations turned
upon the movements of Mr. Roosevelt. His long trip to Africa and Europe and his brief
abstention from politics on his return in June, 1910, led many, who did not know him, to
suppose that he might emulate the example set by Mr. Cleveland in retiring from active
affairs. If he entertained any such notions, it was obvious that the exigencies of
affairs in his party were different from those in the Democratic party after 1897.
Indeed, during the very summer after his return, the cleavage between the reformist
Hughes wing of the Republicans in New York and the "regular" group headed by Mr. William
Barnes had developed into an open breach; and at the earnest entreaty of the
representatives of the former faction, Mr. Roosevelt plunged into the state contest,
defeated Vice President
They had not, however, counted on their man. During the New York gubernatorial
campaign, he made a tour of the West, and in a series of remarkable speeches, he stirred
that region by the enunciation of radical doctrines which were listened to gladly by the
multitude. In an address at Ossawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, he expounded his
principles under the title of "the New Nationalism." He there advocated Federal
regulation of trusts, a graduated income tax, tariff revision schedule by schedule,
conservation, labor legislation, the direct primary, recall of elective officers, and
the adjustment of state and Federal relations in such a form that there might be no
neutral ground to serve as the refuge for lawbreakers.1 In editorials in the Outlook, of which he
was the contributing editor, and in his speeches, Mr. Roosevelt continued to discuss Mr.
Taft's policies and the current issues of popular government. At length, in February,
1912, in an address before the constitutional convention of Ohio, he came out for a
complete program of "direct" government, the
Notwithstanding his extensive discussion of current issues and his great popularity
with a large section of the Progressive group, Mr. Roosevelt steadily put away all
suggestions that he should become a candidate in 1912. In a letter to the Pittsburgh Leader, of August 22, 1911, he said: "I must ask not only you, but every
friend I have, to see to it that no movement whatever is made to bring me forward for
nomination in 1912. . . . I should esteem it a genuine calamity if such a movement were
undertaken." Nevertheless, all along, men who were very close to him believed that he
would not refuse the nomination if it were offered to him under proper circumstances. As
time went on his utterances became more pronounced, particularly in his western
speeches, and friendly as well as unfriendly newspapers insisted on viewing his conduct
as a distinct appeal for popular support for the Republican nomination.
The climax came in February, 1912, when seven Republican Governors, Glasscock, of West
Virginia, Aldrich, of Nebraska, Bass, of New Hampshire, Carey, of Wyoming, Stubbs, of
Kansas, Osborn, of Michigan, and Hadley, of Missouri, issued a statement that the
requirements of good government demanded his candidature, that the great majority
of Republican voters desired it, that he stood for the principles and policies most
conducive to public happiness and prosperity, and Autobiography,
p. 616.
A new and unexpected turn was given to the campaign for nomination by the adoption of
the preferential primary in a number of states, East as well as West. As we have
seen, the direct primary1 was
brought into action by men who found themselves outside of the old party
intrenchments. La Follette, in Wisconsin, Stubbs, in Kansas, Hughes, in New York, and
the other advocates of the system, having failed to capture the old strongholds,
determined to blow them up; the time had now come for an attack on the national
convention. President Taft and the regular Republican organization were in possession
of the enormous Federal patronage, and they knew how to use it just as well as had Mr.
Roosevelt in 1908 when he forced the nomination of Mr. Taft. True to their ancient
traditions, the Republican provinces in the South began, early in 1912, to return
"representatives" instructed to vote for a second term for President Taft. But the
Progressives were forearmed as well as forewarned.
As early as February 27, 1912, Senator Bourne had warned the country that the overthrow of "the good old ways" of nominating presidential candidates was at hand. In a speech on that date, he roundly denounced the convention and described the new Oregon system. He declared that nominations in national conventions were made by the politicians, and that the "electorate of the whole United States is permitted only to witness in gaping expectancy, and to ratify at the polls in the succeeding November." The flagrancy of this abuse, however, paled into insignificance, added Mr. Bourne, "in the presence of that other abuse against partisan conscience and outrage upon the representative system which is wrought by the Republican politician in hopelessly Democratic states and by the Democratic politician in hopelessly Republican states in dominating the national conventions with the presence of these unrepresentative delegations that represent neither party, people, nor principle."
The speaker then elaborated these generalities by reference to details. He pointed
out that the southern states and territories which (except Maryland) gave no electoral
votes to Mr. Taft had 338 delegates in the convention, only 153 less than a majority
of the entire party assembly, four more than the combined votes of New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Iowa with 334 delegates.
Moreover, equal representation of states and territories on the national committee and
on the committee on credentials--the two bodies which, in the first instance, pass
upon the rights of delegates to their seats--gave undue weight
To the anomalous southern delegates were added the delegates selected in northern states by the power of patronage. Mr. Bourne was specific: "Three years ago," he said, "we had a convincing exhibition of the power of a President to dictate the selection of his successor. At that time, three fourths of the Republican voters of my state were in favor of the renomination of Mr. Roosevelt, and believing that their wishes should be observed, I endeavored to secure a delegation from that state favorable to his nomination for a second elective term. But through the tremendous power of the Chief Executive and of the Federal machine the delegates selected by our state convention were instructed for Mr. Taft. After all the delegates were elected and instructed, a poll was taken by one of the leading newspapers in Portland, which city contains nearly one third of the entire population of the state. The result indicated that the preference of the people of the state was 11 to 1 in favor of Mr. Roosevelt as against Mr. Taft." It was this personal experience with the power of Federal patronage that induced Mr. Bourne to draft the Oregon presidential primary law which was enacted by the use of the initiative and referendum in 1910.
The provisions of the Oregon law follow:
(1) At the regular primary held on the forty-fifth day before the first Monday in
June of the presidential year, each voter is given an opportunity to express his
(2) The names of candidates for the two offices are placed on the ballot without their consent, if necessary, by petitions filed by their supporters, just as in the case of candidates for governor and United States Senator.
(3) The committee or organization which places a presidential aspirant on the primary ballot is provided, on payment therefor, four pages in the campaign book issued by the state, and electors who oppose or approve of any such aspirant for nomination are likewise given space in the campaign book.
(4) Delegates to national conventions and presidential electors must be nominated at large at the primary.
(5) Every delegate is paid his expenses to the national convention; in no case, however, more than $200.
(6) Every delegate must take an oath to the effect that he will "to the best of his judgment and ability faithfully carry out the wishes of his political party as expressed by its voters at the time of his election." The initial move of Oregon to secure a preferential vote on candidates and the instruction of delegates was followed in 1911 by New Jersey, Nebraska, California, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, and in 1912 by Massachusetts, Illinois, and Maryland.
The other presidential primary laws show some
The Illinois law does not attempt to bind the delegates to a strict observance of the
results of the primary. On the contrary it expressly states "that the vote for
President of the United States as herein provided for shall be for the sole purpose of
securing an expression of the sentiment and will of the party voters with respect to
the candidate for nomination for said office, and the vote of the state at large shall
be taken and considered as advisory to the delegates and alternates at large to the
national conventions of the respective political parties; and the vote of the
respective congressional districts shall be taken and considered as advisory to the
delegates and alternates of the said congressional
The existence of these laws in several strategic states made it necessary for the Republican and Democratic candidates to go directly before the voters to discuss party issues. The country witnessed the unhappy spectacle of two former friends, Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt, waging bitter war upon each other on the hustings. The former denounced the Progressives as "political emotionalists or neurotics." The latter referred to his candidacy in the words, "My hat is in the ring"; and during his campaign fiercely turned upon Mr. Taft. He gave to the public a private letter in which Mr. Taft acknowledged that Mr. Roosevelt had voluntarily transferred to him the presidential office, and added the comment, "It is a bad trait to bite the hand that feeds you."
Mr. Roosevelt's candidature was lavishly supported by Mr. G. W. Perkins, of the Steel
and Harvester Trusts, and by other gentlemen of great wealth who had formerly indorsed
Mr. Hanna's methods; and all of the old engines of politics were brought into play.
While making the popular appeal in the North, Mr. Roosevelt's managers succeeded in
securing a large quota of "representatives" from the southern Republican provinces to
contest those already secured by Mr. Taft. As the matter was put by the Washington Times, a paper owned by Mr. Munsey, one of Mr. Roosevelt's ardent
supporters: "For psychological effect, as a move in practical politics, it was
necessary for the Roosevelt people to start contests on these early Taft selections,
in order
The results of the Republican presidential primaries were astounding. Mr. Roosevelt carried Illinois by a majority of 100,000; he obtained 67 of the 76 delegates from Pennsylvania; the state convention in Michigan broke up in a riot; he carried California by a vote of two to one as against Mr. Taft; he swept New Jersey and South Dakota; and he secured the eight delegates at large in Massachusetts, although Mr. Taft carried the preferential vote by a small majority. Connecticut and New York were strongly for Mr. Taft, and Mr. La Follette carried Wisconsin and North Dakota. Mr. Taft's supporters called attention to the fact that a very large number of Republicans had failed to vote at all in the preferential primaries, but they were speedily informed by the opposition that they would see the shallowness of this contention if they inquired into the number who voted for delegates to the conventions which indorsed Mr. Taft.
When the Republican convention assembled in Chicago, 252 of the 1078 seats were
contested; 238 of these were held by Mr. Taft's delegates and 14 by Mr. Roosevelt's
supporters. The national committee, after the usual hearings, decided the contests in
such a manner as to give Mr. Taft a safe majority. No little ingenuity was expended on
both sides to show the legality or the
The struggle over the contested seats was carried into the convention, and after a
hot fight, Mr. Taft's forces were victorious. When at length, as Mr. Bryan put it,
"the credentials committee made its last report and the committee-made majority had
voted itself the convention," Mr. Roosevelt's supporters on Saturday, June 22,
after a week's desperate maneuvering, broke with the Republican assembly. A statement
prepared by Mr. Roosevelt was read as a parting shot. "The convention," he said, "has
now declined to purge the roll of the fraudulent delegates placed thereon by the
defunct national committee, and the majority which has thus
Mr. Roosevelt's severe arraignment of men who had been his bosom friends and chief
political advisers and supporters filled with astonishment many thoughtful observers
in all parties who found it difficult to account for his conduct. In Mr. Roosevelt's
bitter speech at the Auditorium mass meeting on the evening of June 17, 1912, a sharp
line was drawn between the "treason" of the Republican "Old Guard" and the "purity" of
his supporters. Of this, Mr. Bryan said, with much irony: "He carried me back to the
day when I first learned of this world-wide, never-ending contest between the
beneficiaries of privilege and the unorganized masses; and I can appreciate the
amazement which he must feel that so many honest and well-meaning people seem blind or
indifferent to what is going on. I passed through the same period of amazement when I
first began to run for President. My only regret is that we have not had the benefit
of his powerful assistance during the campaigns
When Mr. Roosevelt definitely broke with the Republican convention, most of his followers left that assembly, and the few that stayed behind there refused to vote on roll call. The substantial "rump" which remained proceeded with the business as if nothing had happened, and renominated Mr. Taft and Mr. Sherman as the candidates of the Republican party. The regulars retained the battle field, but they could not fail to recognize how forlorn was the hope that led them on.
On examining the vote on Mr. Root and Mr. McGovern, as candidates for temporary
chairman, it becomes apparent that the real strength of the party was with Mr.
Roosevelt. The former candidate, representing the conservative wing, received the
overwhelming majority of the votes of the southern states, like Alabama, Georgia,
A Tale of
Two Conventions, p. 27.
If the supporters of Mr. Taft in the convention had any doubts as to the character of
the methods employed to secure his nomination or the conduct of the convention itself,
they were more than repaid for their labors by what they believed to be the salvation
of the party in the hour of a great crisis. To them, the attacks on the judiciary,
representative institutions, and the established order generally were so serious and
so menacing that if high-handed measures were ever justified they were on that
occasion. The instruments which they employed were precisely those which had been
developed in party usage and had been wielded with kindred results in 1908
The Republican platform was not prolix or very specific, but on general principles it took a positive stand. It adhered to the traditional American doctrine of individual liberty, protected by constitutional safeguards and enforced by the courts; and it declared the recall of judges to be "unnecessary and unwise." It announced the purpose of the party to go forward with a program of social legislation, but it did not go into great detail on this point. President Taft's policy of submitting justiciable controversies between nations to arbitration was indorsed. The amendment of the Sherman law in such a manner as to make the illegal practices of trusts and corporations more specific was favored, and the creation of a Federal trade commission to deal with interstate business affected with public use was recommended. The historic views of the party on the tariff were restated and sound currency and banking legislation promised. The insinuation that the party was reactionary was repudiated by a declaration that it had always been a genuinely progressive party, never stationary or reactionary, but always going from the fulfillment of one pledge to another in response to public need and popular will.
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Taft took issue with all the radical tendencies of the
time and expressed his
The Democrats looked upon the Republican dissensions with evident satisfaction. When
the time for sifting candidates for 1912 arrived, there was unwonted bustle in their
ranks, for they now saw a greater
In the primaries at which delegates to the convention were chosen a great division of opinion was manifested, although there was a considerable drift toward Mr. Clark. No one had anything like a majority of the delegates, but the Speaker's popular vote in such significant states as Illinois showed him to be a formidable contestant. But Mr. Clark soon alienated Mr. Bryan by refusing to join him in a movement to prevent the nomination of a conservative Democrat, Mr. Alton B. Parker, as temporary chairman of the convention which met at Baltimore on June 25. Although at one time Mr. Clark received more than one half of the votes (two thirds being necessary to nominate) his doom was sealed by Mr. Bryan's potent opposition.
Mr. Wilson, on the other hand, gained immensely by
The Democratic platform adopted at Baltimore naturally opened with a consideration of the tariff question, reiterating the ancient principle that the government "under the Constitution has no right or power to impose or collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue." President Taft's action in vetoing the tariff bills was denounced, and an immediate, downward revision was demanded. Recognizing the intimate connection between the tariff and business, the Democrats proposed to reach their ultimate ideal by "legislation that will not injure or destroy legitimate industry." On the trust question, the platform took a positive stand, demanding the enforcement of the criminal provisions of the law against trust officials and the enactment of additional legislation to make it "impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United States." The action of the Republican administration in "compromising with the Standard Oil Company and the Tobacco Trust" was condemned, and the judicial construction of the Sherman law criticized. The valuation of railways was favored; likewise a single term for the President of the United States, anti-injunction laws, currency legislation, presidential primaries, and the declaration of the nation's purpose to establish Philippine independence at the earliest practicable moment.
Mr. Wilson's speech of acceptance partook of the character of an essay in political
science rather than of a precise definition of party policies. He spoke of an awakened
nation, impatient of partisan make-believe, hindered in its development by
circumstances of privilege and private advantage, and determined to undertake great
Indeed, Mr. Wilson refused to commit himself to the old concept of unrestricted
competition and petty business. "I am not," he said, "one of those who think that
competition can be established by law against the drift of a world-wide economic
tendency. .... I am not afraid of anything that is normal. I dare say we shall never
return to the old order of individual competition and that the organization of
business upon a great scale of cooperation is, up to a certain point, itself normal
and inevitable." Nevertheless, he hoped to see "our old free, cooperative life
restored," and individual opportunity widened. To the working class he addressed a
word of assurance and confidence: "The working people of America ... are of course the
backbone of the Nation. No law that safeguards their lives, that improves the physical
and moral conditions under which
Mr. Wilson's speech had that delightful quality of pleasing all sections of his
party. The New York Times saw in it a remarkable address, in spite
of what seemed to be a certain remoteness from concrete issues, and congratulated the
country that its tone and argument indicated a determination on the part of the
candidate to ignore the Baltimore platform. Mr. Bryan, on the other hand, appeared to
be immensely pleased with it. "Governor Wilson's speech accepting the Democratic
nomination," he said, "is original in its method of dealing with the issues of the
campaign. Instead of taking up the platform plank by plank, he takes the central idea
of the Denver platform [of 1908, Mr. Bryan's own, more radical still]--an idea
repeated and emphasized in the Baltimore platform--and elaborates it, using the
various questions under consideration to illustrate the application of the principle.
. . . Without assuming to formulate a detailed plan for dealing with every condition
While the Republicans and Democrats were bringing their machinery into action, the
supporters of Mr. Roosevelt were busy forming the organization of a new party. At a
conference held shortly after the break with the Republican convention, a provisional
committee had been appointed, and on July 8, a call was issued for the "Progressive"
convention, which duly assembled on August 5 at Chicago. This party assembly was
sharply marked by the prominence assigned to women for the first time in a political
convention. Eighteen of the delegates were women, and Miss Jane Addams, of the Hull
House, made one of the "keynote" speeches of the occasion. Even hostile newspapers
were forced to admit that no other convention in our history, except possibly the
first Republican convention of 1856, rivaled it in the enthusiasm and devotion of the
delegates. The typical politician was conspicuous by his absence, and a spirit of
religious fervor rather than of manipulation characterized the proceedings. Mr.
Roosevelt made a long address, his "Confession of Faith," in which he took a positive
stand on many questions which he had hitherto met in evasive language, and a platform
was adopted which marked a departure from the old party pronouncements, in that it
stated the principles with clarity and in great detail. A Tale of Two Conventions, p.
228.
The Progressive platform fell into three parts: political reforms, labor and social measures, and control of trusts and combinations. The first embraced declarations in favor of direct primaries, including preferential presidential primaries, popular election of United States Senators, the short ballot, the initiative, referendum, and recall, an easier method of amending the Federal Constitution, woman suffrage, limitation and publicity of campaign expenditures, and the recall of judicial decisions in the form of a popular review of any decision annulling a law passed under the police power of the state. The program of labor and social legislation included the limitation of the use of the injunction in labor disputes, prohibition of child labor, minimum wage standards for women, the establishment of minimum standards as to health and safety of employees and conditions of labor generally, the creation of a labor department at Washington, and the improvement of country life.
The Progressives took a decided stand against indiscriminate trust dissolutions,
declaring that great combinations were in some degree inevitable and necessary for
national and international efficiency. The evils of stock watering and unfair
competitive methods should be eliminated and the advantages and economies of
concentration conserved. To this end, they urged the establishment of a Federal
commission to maintain a supervision over corporations engaged in interstate commerce,
analogous to that exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission. As to railway
corporations, they favored physical valuation. They demanded the
In spite of the exciting contests over nomination in both of the old parties, the
campaign which followed was extraordinarily quiet.1 The popular vote shows that the issues failed to enlist
confidence or enthusiasm. Mr. Roosevelt polled about 700,000 more votes than Mr. Taft,
but their combined vote was less than that polled by the latter in 1908, and slightly
less than that received by the former in 1904. Mr. Wilson's vote was more than 100,000
less than that received by Mr. Bryan in 1896 or 1908. The combined Progressive and
Republican vote was 1,300,000 greater than the Democratic vote. If we add the votes
cast for Mr. Debs, the Socialist candidate, and .the vote received by the other minor
candidates to the Progressive and Republican vote we have a majority of nearly two and
one half millions against Mr. Wilson. Yet Mr. Wilson, owing to the division of the
opposition, secured 435 of the 531 electoral votes. The Democrats retained possession
of the House of Representatives and secured control of the Senate. The surprise of the
election was the large increase in the Socialist vote, from 420,000 in 1908 to
898,000, and this in spite of the
These figures should not be taken to imply that had either Mr. Taft or Mr. Roosevelt been eliminated the Democrats would have been defeated. On the contrary, Mr. Wilson would have doubtless been elected if the Republicans had nominated Mr. Roosevelt or if the Progressives had remained out of the field. Nevertheless, the vote would seem to indicate that the Democratic party had no very clear and positive majority mandate on any great issue. However that may be, the policy of the party as outlined by its leader and victorious candidate deserves the most careful analysis.
In the course of the campaign, Mr. Wilson discussed in general terms all of the
larger issues of the hour, emphasizing particularly the fact that an economic
revolution had changed the questions of earlier years, but always speaking of
"restoration" and a "recurrence" to older liberties.1 "Our life has broken away from the past. The life of
America is not the life that it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was
ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to
bottom; and with our economic society, the organization of our life. The old political
formulas do not fit present problems; they read like documents taken out of a
forgotten age. The older cries sound as if they The New Freedom after the election.
One of the most significant of the many changes which constituted this new order was, in Mr. Wilson's opinion, the mastery of the government by the great business interests. "Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government. You will always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really consulted are the men who have the biggest stake--the big bankers, the big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad corporations and of steamship corporations. . . . The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the special interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own. . . . The government of the United States in recent years has not been administered by the common people of the United States."
Nevertheless, while deploring the control of the government by "big business," Mr.
Wilson made no assault on that type of economic enterprise as such. On the contrary,
he differentiated between big business and the trust very sharply in general terms. "A
trust is an arrangement to get rid of competition, and a big business is a business
that has survived competition
On this distinction between big business and trusts Mr. Wilson built up his theory of governmental policy. The trust, he said, was not a product of competition at all, but of the unwillingness of business men to meet it--a distinction which some were inclined to regard as academic. Because the formation of no great trusts had been unaccompanied by unfair practices, Mr. Wilson seemed to hold that no such concern would have been built up had unfair practices been prohibited. Obviously, therefore, the problem is a simple one--dissolve the trusts and prevent their being reestablished by prohibiting unfair practices and the arts of high finance.
Indeed, such was Mr. Wilson's program. "Our purpose," he says, "is the restoration of
freedom. We purpose to prevent private monopoly by law, to see to
"Absolutely free enterprise" was Mr. Wilson's leading phrase. "We design that the limitations on private enterprise shall be removed, so that the next generation of youngsters, as they come along, will not have to become protégés of benevolent trusts, but will be free to go about making their own lives what they will; so that we shall taste again the full cup, not of charity, but of liberty." The restoration of freedom for every person to go into business for himself was the burden of his appeal: "Are you not eager for the time when the genius and initiative of all the people shall be called into the service of business? . . . when your sons shall be able to look forward to becoming not employees, but heads of some small, it may be, but hopeful business, where their best energies shall be inspired by the knowledge that they are their own masters with the paths of the world before them . . . and every avenue of commercial and industrial activity leveled for the feet of all who would tread it?"
Mr. Wilson's economic system seems to be susceptible of the following summary. The
great trusts are
Mr. Wilson's opponents saw in this simple industrial program nothing more than the
old gospel of Adam Smith and Ricardo--the gospel of laissez faire
and individualism. They asked him to specify, for example, into how many concerns the
Steel Trust should be dissolved in order to permit the man with brains and a few
thousand dollars capital to get into the steel business. They asked him to name a
catalogue of "unfair practices" which were to be prohibited in order to put
competition on a "free and natural" basis. They asked him to state just how, with the
present accumulation of great capitals in the hands of a relatively few, the poor but
industrious person with small capital could meet the advantages afforded by large
capitals. They inquired whether England in the middle of the nineteenth
To this demand for more particulars, Mr. Wilson replied that he was not discussing "measures or programs," but was merely attempting "to express the new spirit of our politics and to set forth, in large terms, which may stick in the imagination, what it is that must be done if we are to restore our politics to their full spiritual vigor again, and our national life whether in trade, in industry, or in what concerns us only as families and individuals, to its purity, its self-respect, and its pristine strength and freedom."
For the concrete manifestation of his general principles Mr. Wilson referred to his
practical achievements in New Jersey, although at the time of the campaign he had not
yet put through his program of trust legislation--a fact which was not overlooked by
his opponents. He referred to his public service commission law, modeled on that which
had been in effect for some time in Wisconsin. "A year or two ago we got our ideas on
the subject enacted into legislation. The corporations involved opposed the
legislation with all their might. They talked about ruin,--and I really believe they
did think they would be somewhat injured. But they have not been. And I hear I cannot
tell you how many men in New Jersey say : 'Governor, we were opposed to you ; we did
not believe in the things you wanted to do, but now that you have done them, we take
off our hats. That was the thing to do, it did not hurt us a bit; it just put us on a
normal footing; it took away
In another place, Mr. Wilson summed up his program of redemption in New Jersey: a workman's compensation act, a public service corporations law, and a corrupt practices act. This program of legislation was viewed by Mr. Wilson as an extraordinary achievement. "What was accomplished?" he asked. "Mere justice to classes that had not been treated justly before. . . . When the people had taken over the control of the government, a curious change was wrought in the souls of a great many men; a sudden moral awakening took place, and we simply could not find culprits against whom to bring indictments; it was like a Sunday School, the way they obeyed the laws."
It was on his theory of the trusts that Mr. Wilson based his opposition to all
attempts at government regulation. Under the plan of regulation, put forward by the
Progressives, said Mr. Wilson, "there will be an avowed partnership between the
government and the trusts. I take it the firm will be ostensibly controlled by the
senior member. For I take it that the government of the United States is at least the
senior member, though the younger member has all along been running the business. . .
. There is no hope to be seen for the people of the United States until the
partnership is dissolved. And the business of the party now intrusted with power is to
dissolve it." In other words, the government was, in his opinion, too weak to force
the trusts to obey certain rules and regulations, but it was strong
Mr. Wilson's political program was more definite. His short experience in New Jersey politics had evidently wrought great changes in his earlier academic views. In 1907, he thought that the United States Senate, "represents the country as distinct from the accumulated populations of the country, much more fully and much more truly than the House of Representatives does." In the presidential campaign, he advocated popular election of United States Senators, principally on the ground "that a little group of Senators holding the balance of power has again and again been able to defeat programs of reform upon which the whole country has set its heart." He did not attack the Senate as a body, but he thought sinister influences had often been at work there. However, Mr. Wilson declared that the popular election of Senators was not inconsistent with "either the spirit or the essential form of the American government."
As to those other devices of direct democracy, the initiative, referendum, and
recall, Mr. Wilson admitted that there were some states where it was premature to
discuss them, and added that in some states it might never be necessary to discuss
them. The initiative and referendum, he approved as a sort of "gun behind the door,"
to be used rarely when representative
Such was the economic and political philosophy of the new Democratic President inaugurated on March 4, 1913.
THE best general bibliography for handy use is Channing, Hart, and
Turner, Guide to the Study and Reading of American History (new ed.
1912).
G. E. Howard, Present Political Questions (1913)--a valuable syllabus
of current questions with discriminating and full bibliographies (published by the
University of Nebraska).
The Library of Congress publishes useful bibliographies on special topics of current political and historical interest. A list may be obtained by addressing the Librarian, Washington, D.C.
An important annual review of the current literature of American history is to be found
in Writings on American History; published by Macmillan, 1906-1908; by
the American Historical Association, 1909-1911; and now by the Yale University
Press.
Excellent topical bibliographies are to be found in each of the volumes in Hart, American Nation Series. The four volumes by Dunning, Sparks, Dewey, and Latané should be consulted for the period here covered.
The best general treatment of the period from 1877 to 1907 is to be found in the four
volumes of the American Nation Series edited by A. B. Hart: W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction : Political and Economic; E. E. Sparks, National
Development, 1877-1885; D. R. Dewey, National Problems;
1885-1897; J. H. Latané, America as a World Power, 1897-1907.
Each of these volumes contains an excellent bibliography of political and economic
materials.
H. T. Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic (1906)--readable work
covering the period from Cleveland's first administration to 1905.
Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency (1896 ed.). A second
volume (1912) brings the work down to 1909 and contains the platforms of 1912--useful
for political sketches and the platforms and election statistics.
The American Year Book, published since 1910, contains an annual
survey of American political history and constitutional and social development.
For political and economic matters see the current publications and proceedings of the American Political Science Association, the American Economic Association, and the American Sociological Society.
J. P. Altgeld, Live Questions (1890)--valuable for the radical
movement within the Democratic party.
F. Bancroft, Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl
Schurz (1913), 6 vols.
John Bigelow, Life of Samuel J. Tilden (1896).
G. S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years (1902).
Grover Cleveland, The Independence of the Executive (1900); Presidential Problems (1904)--particularly valuable for the Chicago
strike and the bond issues; G. F. Parker, Writings and Speeches of Grover
Cleveland (1892) ; A. E. Bergh, Addresses, State Papers, and Letters
of Grover Cleveland (1909).
J. A. Garfield, Currency Speeches in the House, 1868-1870; B. A.
Hinsdale, Works of J. A. Garfield (1882-1883) 2 vols.; Great Speeches of J. A. Garfield (1881).
Benjamin Harrison, Public Papers and Addresses (Govt. Printing
Office, 1893); This Country of Ours (1897)--a popular view of the
national government; J. S. Shriver, Speeches of Benjamin Harrison
(1891); M. L. Harrison, Views of an Ex-President [Harrison]
(1901).
G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903).
R. M. La Follette, Autobiography (1913)--particularly valuable for
the history of the radical movement within the Republican party and the origin of the
Progressive party.
Wm. McKinley, Speeches and Addresses from Election to Congress to the
Present Time (1893); Speeches and Addresses, 1897-1900 (1900);
The Tariff--a Review of Its Legislation from 1812 to 1896 (1904) ;
J. S. Ogilvie, Life and Speeches of McKinley (1896) ;
L. A. Coolidge An Old-Fashioned Senator [O. H. Platt] (1910).
Thomas C. Platt, Autobiography (1910).
Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism (1910) contains the famous
speech on that subject and other essays; An Autobiography (1913)--an
intimate view of his political career.
John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years (1897).
Edward Stanwood, James G. Blaine (1905).
W. H. Taft, Political Issues and Outlooks (1909); Presidential Addresses and State Papers (1910).
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913). An edited collection of
President Wilson's campaign speeches arranged to exhibit in systematic form his
political and economic doctrines.
THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION:
Coman, Economic History of the United States (1911 ed.)--several
useful chapters on the period since the Civil War; R. T. Ely, Evolution of
Industrial Society (1906).
TARIFF: Edward Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies
in the Nineteenth Century (1903) ; F. W. Taussig, Tariff History of
the United States (1910 ed.).
FINANCE: See the annual review in the American Year
Book; D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States
(1903) ; A. B. Hepburn, History of Coinage and Currency in the United
States (1903) ; J. L. Laughlin, History of Bimetallism in the United
States (1897); W. H. Harvey, Coin's Financial School
(1894)--the famous work which did so much to stir up popular sentiment in The First
Battle (1897)--invaluable for the political aspects of the question.
TRUSTS: I. M. Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil
Company (1904) ; G. H. Montague, The Rise and Progress of the
Standard Oil Company (1903)--more favorable to trusts than the preceding work; H.
D. Lloyd, Wealth against Commonwealth (1894)--a critical attack on the
evil practices of trusts; J. W. Jenks, The Trust Problem (1905
ed.)--study of the methods and causes of trusts; John Moody, The Truth
about the Trusts (1904)--full of valuable historical and statistical data; W. Z.
Ripley, Trusts, Pools, and Corporations (1905)--a useful collection of
historical and descriptive materials.
RAILWAYS: W. Z. Ripley, Railroads: Rates and
Regulation (1913)--a monumental and scholarly treatise; E. R. Johnson, American Railway Transportation (1903); H. S. Haines, Restrictive Railway Legislation in the United States (1905) ; B. H. Meyer, Railway Legislation in the United States (1903).
CIVIL SERVICE: C. R. Fish, Civil
Service and the Patronage (1905, Harvard Studies); L. G. Tyler, Parties and Patronage (1888).
POPULISM : S. J. Buck, The Granger Movement . . . 1870-
1880 (1913, Harvard Studies)--important for all aspects of agrarianism for the
period; F. L. McVey, The Populist Movement (1896).
LABOR: R. T. Ely, The Labor Movement in America
(1902); T. V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor (1889); John Mitchell,
Organized Labor (1903); T. S. Adams and H. Sumner, Labor Problems (1906).
IMMIGRATION: Frank Warne, The Immigrant Invasion
(1913); Peter Roberts, The New Immigration (1912)--a study of the
social and industrial life of Southeastern Europeans in America; H. P. Fairchild, Greek Immigration (1911), and Immigration: a World Movement
and its American Significance (1913); P. F. Hall, Immigration and
Its Effects on the United States (1908); I. A. Hourwich, Immigration
and Labor (1912)--a study of the economic aspects of immigration and favorable to
a liberal The Immigration Problem (1912)--particularly valuable for the
data presented.
SOCIALISM: Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the
United States (1910) ; W. J. Ghent, Mass and Class (1904) ; J.
W. Hughan, American Socialism of To-day (1912); W. E. Walling, Socialism as It Is (1912). On the newer aspects of socialism and trades-
unionism: John Spargo, Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism, and Socialism
(1913); A. Tridon, The New Unionism (1913); J. G. Brooks, American Syndicalism (1913); W. H. Haywood and F. Bohn, Industrial
Socialism (1911); James O'Neal, Militant Socialism (1912).
WOMEN: Edith Abbott, Women in Industry (1909); E.
D. Bullock, Selected Articles on the Employment of Women (1911); E. B.
Butler, Women in the Trades (1909) ; R. C. Dorr, What
Eight Million Women Want (1910); I. H. Harper, Life and Work of
Susan B. Anthony (1899-1908), History of the Movement for Woman
Suffrage in the United States (1907) ; E. R. Hecker, Short History
of Woman's Rights (1910) ; G. E. Howard, A History of Matrimonial
Institutions (1904); Helen Sumner, Equal Suffrage (1909)--a
study of woman suffrage in Colorado; C. P. Gilman, Woman and Economics
(1900).
CONTROVERSY OVER THE JUDICIARY : Gilbert Roe, Our Judicial Oligarchy
(1912)--a criticism of recent tendencies in the American judicial system ; B. F. Moore,
The Supreme Court and Unconstitutional Legislation (1913)--a
historical survey; W. L. Ransom Majority Rule and the Judiciary (1912)
; F. R. Coudert, Certainty and Justice (1913); G. G. Groat, Attitude of American Courts in Labor Cases (1911); C. G. Haines, The American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy (1914).
POPULAR GOVERNMENT : G. H. Haynes, The Election of Senators (1906)--valuable for the question of popular election;
C. A. Beard and Birl Shultz,Documents on the Initiative, Referendum and
Recall (1912); E. P. Oberholtzer, Initiative, Referendum, and Recall
in America (1911); Walter Weyl, The New Democracy (1912) ; H.
Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909).
THE SOUTH: A. B. Hart, The Southern South (1910);
E. G.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM : The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for September, 1913, is devoted
to articles on the progress of the negro race during the last fifty years. A. P. C.
Griffin, Select List of References on the Negro Question (1906,
Library of Congress); R. S. Baker, Following the Color Line
(1908)--valuable for the handicaps imposed on the negro in the South; J. M. Mathews, Legislative and Judicial History of the Fifteenth Amendment (1909) ; M.
W. Ovington, Half a Man (1911)--status of the negro in New York; T. N.
Page, The Negro (1904)--viewed as a Southern problem; A. H. Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem (1908)--discouraging view of the
economic capacities of the negro; B. T. Washington, The Negro in the
South (1907)--useful for economic matters; and The Future of the
Negro (1900); A. B. Hart, Realities of Negro Suffrage (1905);
G. T. Stephenson, Race Distinctions in American Law (1910).
THE GROWTH OF THE WEST: H. H.
Bancroft, Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth (1891-1892),
7 vols.; J. C. Birge, The Awakening of the Desert (1912) ; C. C.
Coffin, The Seat of Empire (1871); Katharine Coman, Economic Beginnings of the Far West (1912), 2 vols.--exploration and settlement;
J. H. Eckels, The Financial Power of the New West (1905) ; F. V.
Hayden, The Great West (1880)--resources, climate, Mormons, and
Indians; J. S. Hittell, The Commerce and Industries of the Pacific
Coast (1882); R. P. Porter and others, The West (1882)--review
of social and economic development from the census of 1880; L. E. Quigg, New Empires in the Northwest (1889)--Dakotas, Montana, and Washington; Julian
Ralph, Our Great West (1893)--survey of conditions; Joseph Schafer,
A History of the Pacific Northwest (1905); W. E. Smyth, The Conquest of Arid Arizona (1900).
MONROE DOCTRINE: J. B. Moore, History of American Diplomacy (1905) ; J. W. Foster, A Century of
American Diplomacy (1901); J. H. Latané, Diplomatic Relations of the
United States and Spanish America (1900) ; A. B. Hart, Foundations
of American Diplomacy (1901) ; Hiram Bingham,
THE SPANISH WAR : F. E. Chadwick, Relations of the United States and Spain--excellent for diplomatic affairs; H.
C. Lodge, The War with Spain (1899)--an interesting popular account;
H. D. Flack, Spanish-American Diplomatic Relations Preceding the War of
1898 (1906)--a careful analysis of the causes of intervention; George Dewey, Autobiography (1913).
IMPERIALISM: D. C. Worcester, The Philippines: Past and
Present (1914), 2 vols.--a great and authoritative work by the former Secretary
of the Interior in the Philippines; H. P. Willis, Our Philippine
Problem (1905)--a study of American Colonial policy; J. A. Leroy, The Americans in the Philippines (1914)--a large and authoritative work on the
early stages of American occupation; F. C. Chamberlin, The Philippine
Problem (1913); J. G. Schurman, Philippine Fundamentals (1901);
Elihu Root, Collection of Documents Relating to the United States and Porto
Rico (1898-1905, Washington); L. S. Rowe, The United States and Porto Rico
(1904); E. S. Wilson, Political Development of Porto Rico (1906); W.
F. Willoughby, Territories and Dependencies of the United States
(1905)--a general work on the government of the territories.
THE PANAMA CANAL: J. B.
Bishop, The Panama Gateway (1913)--an authoritative general account;
W. F. Johnson, Four Centuries of the Panama Canal (1906).
THE PEACE CONFERENCES: Joseph
Choate, The Two Hague Conferences (1913); J. B. Scott, The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 (1909).
AMERICAN INTERESTS IN THE ORIENT: F. F. Millard, The New Far East (1906)--special
reference to American interests in China; P. S. Reinsch, World
Politics (1900).