7: The Public Discontents
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While President and Congress were passing the time in mutual
obstruction, the public discontents were becoming hot and bitter
to a degree unknown before. A marked feature of the situation was
the disturbance of public convenience involving loss, trouble,
and distress which were vast in extent but not easily expressed
in statistical form. The first three months of 1886 saw an
outbreak of labor troubles far beyond any previous record in
their variety and extent. In 1885, the number of strikes reported
was 645 affecting 2284 establishments, a marked increase over
preceding years. In 1886, the number of strikes rose to 1411,
affecting 9861 establishments and directly involving 499,489
persons. The most numerous strikes were in the building trades,
but there were severe struggles in many other industries. There
was, for example, an interruption of business on the New York
elevated railway and on the street railways of New York,
Brooklyn, and other cities.
But the greatest public anxiety was caused by the behavior of the
Knights of Labor, an organization then growing so rapidly that it
gave promise of uniting under one control the active and
energetic elements of the working classes of the country. It
started in a humble way, in December, 1869, among certain garment
cutters in Philadelphia, and for some years spread slowly from
that center. The organization remained strictly secret until
1878, in which year it held a national convention of its fifteen
district assemblies at Reading, Pennsylvania. The object and
principles of the order were now made public and, thereafter, it
spread with startling rapidity, so that in 1886 it pitted its
strength against public authority with a membership estimated at
from, 500,000 to 800,000. Had this body been an army obedient to
its leaders, it would have wielded great power; but it turned out
to be only a mob. Its members took part in demonstrations which
were as much mutinies against the authority of their own
executive board as they were strikes against their employers. The
result of lack of organization soon began to be evident. In
March 1886, the receiver of the Texas Pacific Railroad
discharged an employee prominent in the Knights of Labor and thus
precipitated a strike which was promptly extended to the Missouri
Pacific. There were riots at various points in Missouri and
Kansas, and railroad traffic at St. Louis was completely
suspended for some days, but the strike was eventually broken.
The Knights of Labor, however, had received a blow from which it
never recovered, and as a result its membership declined. The
order has since been almost wholly superseded by the American
Federation of Labor, established in 1886 through shrewd
management by an association of labor unions which had been
maintained since 1881. The Knights had been organized by
localities with the aim of merging all classes of working men
into one body. The Federation, on the other hand, is composed of
trades unions retaining their autonomy—a principle of
organization which has proved to be more solid and durable.
To these signs of popular discontent the Government could not be
blind. A congressional committee investigated the railroad
strikes, and both parties in Congress busied themselves with
labor legislation. But in spite of this apparent willingness to
cope with the situation, there now followed another display of
those cross purposes which occurred so often during the Cleveland
administration. The House had already passed a bill providing
means of submitting to arbitration controversies between
railroads engaged in interstate commerce and their employees.
President Cleveland now sent a special message recommending that
"instead of arbitrators chosen in the heat of conflicting claims
and after each dispute shall arise, there be created a Commission
of Labor, consisting of three members, who shall be regular
officers of the government, charged among other duties with the
consideration and settlement when possible, of all controversies
between labor and capital." In spite of the urgency of the
situation, the Senate seized this occasion for a new display of
party tactics, and it Allowed the bill already passed by the
House to lie without action while it proceeded to consider
various labor measures of its own. For example, by June 1, 1886,
the Senate had passed a bill providing that eight hours should be
a day's work for letter-carriers; soon afterwards, it passed a
bill legalizing the incorporation of national trades unions, to
which the House promptly assented without a division; and the
House then continued its labor record by passing on the 15th of
July a bill against the importation of contract labor. This last
bill was not passed by the Senate until after the fall elections.
It was approved by the President on February 23, 1887.
The Senate also delayed action on the House bill, which proposed
arbitration in labor disputes, until the close of the session;
and then the President, in view of his disregarded suggestion,
withheld his assent. It was not until the following year that the
legislation recommended by the President was enacted. By the Act
of June 13, 1888, the Department of Labor was established, and by
the Act of October 1, 1888, in addition to provision for
voluntary arbitration between railroad corporations and their
employees, the President was authorized to appoint a commission
to investigate labor conflicts, with power to act as a board of
conciliation. During the ten years in which the act remained on
the statute books, it was actually put to use only in 1894, when
a commission was appointed to investigate the Pullman strike at
Chicago, but this body took no action towards settling the
dispute.
Thus far, then, the efforts of the Government to deal with the
labor problem had not been entirely successful. It is true that
the labor conflicts arose over differences which only indirectly
involved constitutional questions. The aims of both the Knights
of Labor and of the American Federation were primarily economic
and both organizations were opposed to agitation of a
distinctively political character. But parallel with the labor
agitation, and in communication with it, there were radical
reform movements of a type unknown before. There was now to arise
a socialistic movement opposed to traditional constitutionalism,
and therefore viewed with alarm in many parts of the country.
Veneration of the Constitution of 1787 was practically a national
sentiment which had lasted from the time the Union was
successfully established until the Cleveland era. However violent
political differences in regard to public policy might be, it was
the invariable rule that proposals must claim a constitutional
sanction. In the Civil War, both sides felt themselves to be
fighting in defense of the traditional Constitution.
The appeal to antiquity—even such a moderate degree of antiquity
as may be claimed for American institutions—has always been the
staple argument in American political controversy. The views and
intentions of the Fathers of the Constitution are exhibited not
so much for instruction as for imitation, and by means of glosses
and interpretations conclusions may be reached which would have
surprised the Fathers to whom they are imputed. Those who examine
the records of the formative period of American institutions, not
to obtain material for a case but simply to ascertain the facts,
will readily observe that what is known as the principle of
strict construction dates only from the organization of national
parties under the Constitution. It was an invention of the
opposition to Federalist rule and was not held by the makers of
the Constitution themselves. The main concern of the framers was
to get power for the National Government, and they went as far as
they could with such success that striking instances may be
culled from the writings of the Fathers showing that the scope
they contemplated has yet to be attained. Strict construction
affords a short and easy way of avoiding troublesome
issues—always involved in unforeseen national developments—by
substituting the question of constitutional power for a question
of public propriety. But this method has the disadvantage, that
it belittles the Constitution by making it an obstacle to
progress. Running through much political controversy in the
United States is the argument that, even granting that a proposal
has all the merit claimed for it, nevertheless it cannot be
adopted because the Constitution is against it. By strict logical
inference the rejoinder then comes that, if so, the Constitution
is no longer an instrument of national advantage. The traditional
attachment of the American people to the Constitution has indeed
been so strong that they have been loath to accept the inference
that the Constitution is out of date, although the quality of
legislation at Washington kept persistently suggesting that view
of the case.
The failures and disappointments resulting from the series of
national elections from 1874 to 1884, at last, made an opening
for party movements voicing the popular discontent and openly
antagonistic to the traditional Constitution. The Socialist Labor
party held its first national convention in 1877. Its membership
was mostly foreign; of twenty-four periodical publications then
carried on in the party interest, only eight were in the English
language; and this polyglot press gave justification to the
remark that the movement was in the hands of people who proposed
to remodel the institutions of the country before they had
acquired its language. The alien origin of the movement was
emphasized by the appearance of two Socialist members of the
German Reichstag, who made a tour of this country in 1881 to stir
up interest in the cause. It was soon apparent that the growth of
the Socialist party organization was hindered by the fact that
its methods were too studious and its discussions too abstract to
suit the energetic temper of the times. Many Socialists broke
away to join revolutionary clubs which were now organized in a
number of cities without any clearly defined principle save to
fight the existing system of government.
At this critical moment in the process of social disorganization,
the influence of foreign destructive thought made itself felt.
The arrival of Johann Most from Europe, in the fall of 1882,
supplied this revolutionary movement with a leader who made
anarchy its principle. Originally a German Socialist aiming to
make the State the sole landlord and capitalist, he had gone over
to anarchism and proposed to dissolve the State altogether,
trusting to voluntary association to supply all genuine social
needs. Driven from Germany, he had taken refuge in England, but
even the habitual British tolerance had given way under his
praise of the assassination of the Czar Alexander in 1881 and his
proposal to treat other rulers in the same way. He had just
completed a term of imprisonment before coming to the United
States. Here, he was received as a hero; a great mass meeting in
his honor was held in Cooper Union, New York, in December, 1882;
and when he toured the country he everywhere addressed large
meetings.
In October 1883, a convention of social revolutionists and
anarchists was held in Chicago, at which a national organization
was formed called the International Working People's Association.
The new organization grew much faster than the Socialist party
itself, which now almost disappeared. Two years later, the
International had a party press consisting of seven German, two
Bohemian, and only two English papers. Like the Socialist party,
it was, therefore, mainly foreign in its membership. It was
strongest in and about Chicago, where it included twenty groups
with three thousand enrolled members. The anarchist papers
exhorted their adherents to provide themselves with arms and even
published instructions for the use of dynamite.
Political and industrial conditions thus supplied material for an
explosion which came with shocking violence. On May 4, 1885,
towards the close of an anarchist meeting held in Chicago, a
dynamite bomb thrown among a force of policemen killed one and
wounded many. Fire was at once opened on both sides, and,
although the battle lasted only a few minutes, seven policemen
were killed and about sixty wounded; while on the side of the
anarchists, four were killed and about fifty were wounded. Ten of
the anarchist leaders were promptly indicted, of whom one made
his escape and another turned State's evidence. The trial of the
remaining eight began on June 21, 1886, and two months later the
death sentence was imposed upon seven and a penitentiary term of
fifteen years upon one. The sentences of two of the seven were
commuted to life imprisonment; one committed suicide in his cell
by exploding a cartridge in his mouth; and four met death on the
scaffold. While awaiting their fate they were to a startling
extent regarded as heroes and bore themselves as martyrs to a
noble cause. Six years later, Illinois elected as governor John
P. Altgeld, one of whose first steps was to issue a pardon to the
three who were serving terms of imprisonment and to criticize
sharply the conduct of the trial which had resulted in the
conviction of the anarchists.
The Chicago outbreak and its result stopped the open spread of
anarchism. Organized labor now withdrew from any sort of
association with it. This cleared the field for a revival of the
Socialist movement as the agency of social and political
reconstruction. So rapidly did it gain in membership and
influence that by 1892 it was able to present itself as an
organized national party appealing to public opinion for
confidence and support, submitting its claims to public
discussion, and stating its case upon reasonable grounds.
Although its membership was small in comparison with that of the
old parties, the disparity was not so great as it seemed,
since the Socialists represented active intelligence while the
other parties represented political inertia. From this time on,
Socialist views spread among college students, artists, and men
of letters, and the academic Socialist became a familiar figure
in American society.
Probably more significant than the Socialist movement, as an
indication of the popular demand for radical reform in the
government of the country, was the New York campaign of Henry
George in 1886. He was a San Francisco printer and journalist
when he published the work on "Progress and Poverty" which made
him famous. Upon the petition of over thirty thousand citizens,
he became the Labor candidate for mayor of New York City. The
movement in support of George developed so much strength that the
regular parties felt compelled to put forward exceptionally
strong candidates. The Democrats nominated Abram S. Hewitt, a man
of the highest type of character, a fact which was not perhaps so
influential in getting him the nomination as that he was the
son-in-law of Peter Cooper, a philanthropist justly beloved by
the working classes. The Republicans nominated Theodore
Roosevelt, who had already distinguished himself by his energy of
character and zeal for reform. Hewitt was elected, but George
received 68,110 votes out of a total of 219,679, and stood second
in the poll. His supporters contended that he had really been
elected but had been counted out, and this belief turned their
attention to the subject of ballot reform. To the agitation which
Henry George began, may be fairly ascribed the general adoption
of the Australian ballot in the United States.
The Socialist propaganda carried on in large cities and in
factory towns hardly touched the great mass of the people of the
United States, who belonged to the farm rather than to the
workshop. The great agricultural class, which had more weight at
the polls than any other class of citizens, was much interested
in the redress of particular grievances and very little in any
general reform of the governmental system. It is a class that is
conservative in disposition but distrustful of authority,
impatient of what is theoretical and abstract, and bent upon the
quick practical solution of problems by the nearest and simplest
means. While the Socialists in the towns were interested in labor
questions, the farmers more than any other class were affected by
the defective system of currency supply. The national banking
system had not been devised to meet industrial needs but as a war
measure to provide a market for government bonds, deposits of
which had to be made as the basis of note issues. As holdings of
government bonds were amassed in the East, financial operations
tended to confine themselves to that part of the country, and
banking facilities seemed to be in danger of becoming a sectional
monopoly, and such, indeed, was the case to a marked extent. This
situation inspired among the farmers, especially in the
agricultural West, a hatred of Wall Street and a belief in the
existence of a malign money power which provided an inexhaustible
fund of sectional feeling for demagogic exploitation.
For lack of proper machinery of credit for carrying on the
process of exchange, there seemed to be an absolute shortage in
the amount of money in circulation, and it was this circumstance
that had given such force to the Greenback Movement. Although
that movement was defeated, its supporters urged that, if the
Government could not supply additional note issues, it should at
least permit an increase in the stock of coined money. This
feeling was so strong that as early as 1877 the House had passed
a bill for the free coinage of silver. For this, the Senate
substituted a measure requiring the purchase and coinage by the
Government of from two to four million dollars' worth of silver
monthly, and this compromise was accepted by the House. As a
result, in February, 1878, it was passed over President Hayes's
veto.
The operation of this act naturally tended to cause the hoarding
of gold as the cheaper silver was equally a legal tender, and
meanwhile the silver dollars did not tend to pass into
circulation. In 1885, in his first annual message to Congress,
President Cleveland mentioned the fact that, although 215,759,431
silver dollars had been coined, only about fifty million had
found their way into circulation, and that "every month two
millions of gold in the public Treasury are paid out for two
millions or more of silver dollars to be added to the idle mass
already accumulated." The process was draining the stock of gold
in the Treasury and forcing the country to a silver basis without
really increasing the amount of money in actual circulation or
removing any of the difficulties in the way of obtaining supplies
of currency for business transactions. President Cleveland
recommended the repeal of the Silver Coinage Act, but he had no
plan to offer by which the genuine complaints of the people
against the existing monetary system could be removed. Free
silver thus was allowed to stand before the people as the only
practical proposal for their relief, and upon this issue a
conflict soon began between Congress and the Administration.
At a convention of the American Bankers' Association in
September, 1885, a New York bank president described the methods
by which the Treasury Department was restricting the operation of
the Silver Coinage Act so as to avoid a displacement of the gold
standard. On February 3, 1886, Chairman Bland of the House
committee on coinage reported a resolution reciting statements
made in that address, and calling upon the Secretary of the
Treasury for a detailed account of his administration of the
Silver Coinage Act. Secretary Manning's reply was a long and
weighty argument against continuing the coinage of silver. He
contended that there was no hope of maintaining a fixed ratio
between gold and silver except by international concert of
action, but "the step is one which no European nation... will
consent to take while the direct or indirect substitution of
European silver for United States gold seems a possibility."
While strong as to what not to do, his reply, like most of the
state papers of this period, was weak as to what to do and how to
do it. The outlook of the Secretary of the Treasury was so narrow
that he was led to remark that "a delusion has spread that the
Government has authority to fix the amount of the people's
currency, and the power, and the duty." The Government certainly
has the power and the duty of providing adequate currency supply
through a sound banking system. The instinct of the people on
that point was sounder than the view of their rulers.
Secretary Manning's plea had so little effect that the House
promptly voted to suspend the rules in order to make a free
coinage bill the special order of business until it was disposed
of. But the influence of the Administration was strong enough to
defeat the bill when it came to a vote. Though for a time, the
legislative advance of the silver movement was successfully
resisted, the Treasury Department was left in a difficult
situation, and the expedients to which it resorted to guard the
gold supply added to the troubles of the people in the matter of
obtaining currency. The quick way of getting gold from the
Treasury was to present legal tender notes for redemption. To
keep this process in check, legal tender notes were impounded as
they came in, and silver certificates were substituted in
disbursements. But under the law of 1878, silver certificates
could not be issued in denominations of less than ten dollars. A
scarcity of small notes resulted, which oppressed retail trade
until, in August, 1886, Congress authorized the issue of silver
certificates in one and two and five dollar bills.
A more difficult problem was presented by the Treasury surplus
which, by old regulations savoring more of barbarism than of
civilized polity, had to be kept idle in the Treasury vaults. The
only apparent means by which the Secretary of the Treasury could
return his surplus funds to the channels of trade was by
redeeming government bonds; but as these were the basis of bank
note issues, the effect of any such action was to produce a sharp
contraction in this class of currency. Between 1882 and 1889,
national bank notes declined in amount from $356,060,348 to
$199,779,011. In the same period, the issue of silver
certificates increased from $63,204,780 to $276,619,715, and the
total amount of currency of all sorts nominally increased from
$1,188,752,363 to $1,405,018,000; but of this, $375,947,715 was
in gold coin which was being hoarded, and national bank notes
were almost equally scarce since they were virtually government
bonds in a liquid form.
As the inefficiency of the monetary system came home to the
people in practical experience, it seemed as if they were being
plagued and inconvenienced in every possible way. The conditions
were just such as would spread disaffection among the farmers,
and their discontent sought an outlet. The growth of political
agitation in the agricultural class, accompanied by a thorough-
going disapproval of existing party leadership, gave rise to
numerous new party movements. Delegates from the Agricultural
Wheel, the Corn-Planters, the Anti-Monopolists, Farmers'
Alliance, and Grangers, attended a convention in February, 1887,
and joined the Knights of Labor and the Greenbackers to form the
United Labor party. In the country, at this time, there were
numerous other labor parties of local origin and composition,
with trade unionists predominating in some places and Socialists
in others. Very early, however, these parties showed a tendency
to division that indicated a clash of incompatible elements.
Single taxers, greenbackers, labor leaders, grangers, and
socialists were agreed only in condemning existing public policy.
When they came to consider the question of what new policy should
be adopted, they immediately manifested irreconcilable
differences. In 1888, rival national conventions were held in
Cincinnati, one designating itself as the Union Labor party, the
other as the United Labor party. One made a schedule of
particular demands; the other insisted on the single tax as the
consummation of their purpose in seeking reform. Both put
presidential tickets in the field, but of the two, the Union
Labor party made by far the better showing at the polls though,
even so, it polled fewer votes than did the National Prohibition
party. Although making no very considerable showing at the polls,
these new movements were very significant as evidences of popular
unrest. The fact that the heaviest vote of the Union Labor party
was polled in the agricultural States of Kansas, Missouri, and
Texas, was a portent of the sweep of the populist movement which
virtually captured the Democratic party organization during
President Cleveland's second term.
The withdrawal of Blaine from the list of presidential candidates
in 1888 left the Republican Convention at Chicago to choose from
a score of "favorite sons." Even his repeated statement that he
would not accept the nomination did not prevent his enthusiastic
followers from hoping that the convention might be "stampeded."
But on the first ballot, Blaine received only thirty-five votes
while John Sherman led with 229. It was anybody's race until the
eighth ballot, when General Benjamin Harrison, grandson of
"Tippecanoe," suddenly forged ahead and received the nomination.
The defeat of the Democratic party at the polls in the
presidential election of 1888 was less emphatic than might have
been expected from its sorry record. Indeed, it is quite possible
that an indiscretion in which Lord Sackville-West, the British
Ambassador, was caught may have turned the scale. An adroitly
worded letter was sent to him, purporting to come from Charles
Murchison, a California voter of English birth, asking
confidential advice which might enable the writer "to assure many
of our countrymen that they would do England a service by voting
for Cleveland and against the Republican system of tariff." With
an astonishing lack of astuteness, the British minister fell into
the trap and sent a reply which, while noncommittal on
particulars, exhibited friendly interest in the reelection of
President Cleveland. This correspondence, when published late in
the campaign, caused the Administration to demand his recall. A
spirited statement of the case was laid before the public by
Thomas Francis Bayard, Secretary of State, a few days before the
election, but this was not enough to undo the harm that had been
done, and the Murchison letter takes rank with the Morey letter
attributed to General Garfield as specimens of the value of the
campaign lie as a weapon in American party politics.
President Cleveland received a slight plurality in the total
popular vote; but by small pluralities Harrison carried the big
States, thus obtaining a heavy majority in the electoral vote. At
the same time, the Republicans obtained nearly as large a
majority in the House as the Democrats had had before.
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