Logging
Timber Resources.—The forests of the great West, unlike those of the Ohio Valley, proved a boon to the pioneers rather than a foe to be attacked. In Ohio and Indiana, for example, the frontier line of homemakers had to cut, roll, and burn thousands of trees before they could put out a crop of any size. Beyond the Mississippi, however, there were all ready for the breaking plow great reaches of almost treeless prairie, where every stick of timber was precious. In the other parts, often rough and mountainous, where stood primeval forests of the finest woods, the railroads made good use of the timber. They consumed acres of forests themselves in making ties, bridge timbers, and telegraph poles, and they laid a heavy tribute upon the forests for their annual upkeep. The surplus trees, such as had burdened the pioneers of the Northwest Territory a hundred years before, they carried off to markets on the east and west coasts.
Western Industries.—The peculiar conditions of the Far West stimulated a rise of industries more rapid than is usual in new country. The mining activities which in many sections preceded agriculture called for sawmills to furnish timber for the mines and smelters to reduce and refine ores. The ranches supplied sheep and cattle for the packing houses of Kansas City as well as Chicago. The waters of the Northwest afforded salmon for 4000 cases in 1866 and for 1,400,000 cases in 1916. The fruits and vegetables of California brought into existence innumerable canneries. The lumber industry, starting with crude sawmills to furnish rough timbers for railways and mines, ended in specialized factories for paper, boxes, and furniture. As the railways preceded settlement and furnished a ready outlet for local manufactures, so they encouraged the early establishment of varied industries, thus creating a state of affairs quite unlike that which obtained in the Ohio Valley in the early days before the opening of the Erie Canal.
Social Effects of Economic Activities.—In many respects the social life of the Far West also differed from that of the Ohio Valley. The treeless prairies, though open to homesteads, favored the great estate tilled in part by tenant labor and in part by migratory seasonal labor, summoned from all sections of the country for the harvests. The mineral resources created hundreds of huge fortunes which made the accumulations of eastern mercantile families look trivial by comparison. Other millionaires won their fortunes in the railway business and still more from the cattle and sheep ranges. In many sections the "cattle king," as he was called, was as dominant as the planter had been in the old South. Everywhere in the grazing country he was a conspicuous and important person. He "sometimes invested money in banks, in railroad stocks, or in city property.... He had his rating in the commercial reviews and could hobnob with bankers, railroad presidents, and metropolitan merchants.... He attended party caucuses and conventions, ran for the state legislature, and sometimes defeated a lawyer or metropolitan 'business man' in the race for a seat in Congress. In proportion to their numbers, the ranchers ... have constituted a highly impressive class."
Although many of the early capitalists of the great West, especially from Nevada, spent their money principally in the East, others took leadership in promoting the sections in which they had made their fortunes. A railroad pioneer, General Palmer, built his home at Colorado Springs, founded the town, and encouraged local improvements. Denver owed its first impressive buildings to the civic patriotism of Horace Tabor, a wealthy mine owner. Leland Stanford paid his tribute to California in the endowment of a large university. Colonel W.F. Cody, better known as "Buffalo Bill," started his career by building a "boom town" which collapsed, and made a large sum of money supplying buffalo meat to construction hands (hence his popular name). By his famous Wild West Show, he increased it to a fortune which he devoted mainly to the promotion of a western reclamation scheme.
While the Far West was developing this vigorous, aggressive leadership in business, a considerable industrial population was springing up. Even the cattle ranges and hundreds of farms were conducted like factories in that they were managed through overseers who hired plowmen, harvesters, and cattlemen at regular wages. At the same time there appeared other peculiar features which made a lasting impression on western economic life. Mining, lumbering, and fruit growing, for instance, employed thousands of workers during the rush months and turned them out at other times. The inevitable result was an army of migratory laborers wandering from camp to camp, from town to town, and from ranch to ranch, without fixed homes or established habits of life. From this extraordinary condition there issued many a long and lawless conflict between capital and labor, giving a distinct color to the labor movement in whole sections of the mountain and coast states.
The Admission of New States
The Spirit of Self-Government.—The instinct of self-government was strong in the western communities. In the very beginning, it led to the organization of volunteer committees, known as "vigilantes," to suppress crime and punish criminals. As soon as enough people were settled permanently in a region, they took care to form a more stable kind of government. An illustration of this process is found in the Oregon compact made by the pioneers in 1843, the spirit of which is reflected in an editorial in an old copy of the Rocky Mountain News: "We claim that any body or community of American citizens which from any cause or under any circumstances is cut off from or from isolation is so situated as not to be under any active and protecting branch of the central government, have a right, if on American soil, to frame a government and enact such laws and regulations as may be necessary for their own safety, protection, and happiness, always with the condition precedent, that they shall, at the earliest moment when the central government shall extend an effective organization and laws over them, give it their unqualified support and obedience."
People who turned so naturally to the organization of local administration were equally eager for admission to the union as soon as any shadow of a claim to statehood could be advanced. As long as a region was merely one of the territories of the United States, the appointment of the governor and other officers was controlled by politics at Washington. Moreover the disposition of land, mineral rights, forests, and water power was also in the hands of national leaders. Thus practical considerations were united with the spirit of independence in the quest for local autonomy.
Nebraska and Colorado.—Two states, Nebraska and Colorado, had little difficulty in securing admission to the union. The first, Nebraska, had been organized as a territory by the famous Kansas-Nebraska bill which did so much to precipitate the Civil War. Lying to the north of Kansas, which had been admitted in 1861, it escaped the invasion of slave owners from Missouri and was settled mainly by farmers from the North. Though it claimed a population of only 67,000, it was regarded with kindly interest by the Republican Congress at Washington and, reduced to its present boundaries, it received the coveted statehood in 1867.
This was hardly accomplished before the people of Colorado to the southwest began to make known their demands. They had been organized under territorial government in 1861 when they numbered only a handful; but within ten years the aspect of their affairs had completely changed. The silver and gold deposits of the Leadville and Cripple Creek regions had attracted an army of miners and prospectors. The city of Denver, founded in 1858 and named after the governor of Kansas whence came many of the early settlers, had grown from a straggling camp of log huts into a prosperous center of trade. By 1875 it was reckoned that the population of the territory was not less than one hundred thousand; the following year Congress, yielding to the popular appeal, made Colorado a member of the American union.
Six New States (1889-1890).—For many years there was a deadlock in Congress over the admission of new states. The spell was broken in 1889 under the leadership of the Dakotas. For a long time the Dakota territory, organized in 1861, had been looked upon as the home of the powerful Sioux Indians whose enormous reservation blocked the advance of the frontier. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills, however, marked their doom. Even before Congress could open their lands to prospectors, pioneers were swarming over the country. Farmers from the adjoining Minnesota and the Eastern states, Scandinavians, Germans, and Canadians, came in swelling waves to occupy the fertile Dakota lands, now famous even as far away as the fjords of Norway. Seldom had the plow of man cut through richer soil than was found in the bottoms of the Red River Valley, and it became all the more precious when the opening of the Northern Pacific in 1883 afforded a means of transportation east and west. The population, which had numbered 135,000 in 1880, passed the half million mark before ten years had elapsed.
Remembering that Nebraska had been admitted with only 67,000 inhabitants, the Dakotans could not see why they should be kept under federal tutelage. At the same time Washington, far away on the Pacific Coast, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, boasting of their populations and their riches, put in their own eloquent pleas. But the members of Congress were busy with politics. The Democrats saw no good reason for admitting new Republican states until after their defeat in 1888. Near the end of their term the next year they opened the door for North and South Dakota, Washington, and Montana. In 1890, a Republican Congress brought Idaho and Wyoming into the union, the latter with woman suffrage, which had been granted twenty-one years before.
Utah.—Although Utah had long presented all the elements of a well-settled and industrious community, its admission to the union was delayed on account of popular hostility to the practice of polygamy. The custom, it is true, had been prohibited by act of Congress in 1862; but the law had been systematically evaded. In 1882 Congress made another and more effective effort to stamp out polygamy. Five years later it even went so far as to authorize the confiscation of the property of the Mormon Church in case the practice of plural marriages was not stopped. Meanwhile the Gentile or non-Mormon population was steadily increasing and the leaders in the Church became convinced that the battle against the sentiment of the country was futile. At last in 1896 Utah was admitted as a state under a constitution which forbade plural marriages absolutely and forever. Horace Greeley, who visited Utah in 1859, had prophesied that the Pacific Railroad would work a revolution in the land of Brigham Young. His prophecy had come true.
Rounding out the Continent.—Three more territories now remained out of the Union. Oklahoma, long an Indian reservation, had been opened for settlement to white men in 1889. The rush upon the fertile lands of this region, the last in the history of America, was marked by all the frenzy of the final, desperate chance. At a signal from a bugle an army of men with families in wagons, men and women on horseback and on foot, burst into the territory. During the first night a city of tents was raised at Guthrie and Oklahoma City. In ten days wooden houses rose on the plains. In a single year there were schools, churches, business blocks, and newspapers. Within fifteen years there was a population of more than half a million. To the west, Arizona with a population of about 125,000 and New Mexico with 200,000 inhabitants joined Oklahoma in asking for statehood. Congress, then Republican, looked with reluctance upon the addition of more Democratic states; but in 1907 it was literally compelled by public sentiment and a sense of justice to admit Oklahoma. In 1910 the House of Representatives went to the Democrats and within two years Arizona and New Mexico were "under the roof." So the continental domain was rounded out.
The Influence of the Far West on National Life
The Last of the Frontier.—When Horace Greeley made his trip west in 1859 he thus recorded the progress of civilization in his journal:
"May 12th, Chicago.—Chocolate and morning journals last seen on the hotel breakfast table.
23rd, Leavenworth (Kansas).—Room bells and bath tubs make their final appearance.
26th, Manhattan.—Potatoes and eggs last recognized among the blessings that 'brighten as they take their flight.'
27th, Junction City.—Last visitation of a boot-black, with dissolving views of a board bedroom. Beds bid us good-by."
The Canadian Building at the Panama-California International Exposition, San Diego, 1915
Within thirty years travelers were riding across that country in Pullman cars and enjoying at the hotels all the comforts of a standardized civilization. The "wild west" was gone, and with it that frontier of pioneers and settlers who had long given such a bent and tone to American life and had "poured in upon the floor of Congress" such a long line of "backwoods politicians," as they were scornfully styled.
Free Land and Eastern Labor.—It was not only the picturesque features of the frontier that were gone. Of far more consequence was the disappearance of free lands with all that meant for American labor. For more than a hundred years, any man of even moderate means had been able to secure a homestead of his own and an independent livelihood. For a hundred years America had been able to supply farms to as many immigrants as cared to till the soil. Every new pair of strong arms meant more farms and more wealth. Workmen in Eastern factories, mines, or mills who did not like their hours, wages, or conditions of labor, could readily find an outlet to the land. Now all that was over. By about 1890 most of the desirable land available under the Homestead act had disappeared. American industrial workers confronted a new situation.
Grain Supplants King Cotton.—In the meantime a revolution was taking place in agriculture. Until 1860 the chief staples sold by America were cotton and tobacco. With the advance of the frontier, corn and wheat supplanted them both in agrarian economy. The West became the granary of the East and of Western Europe. The scoop shovel once used to handle grain was superseded by the towering elevator, loading and unloading thousands of bushels every hour. The refrigerator car and ship made the packing industry as stable as the production of cotton or corn, and gave an immense impetus to cattle raising and sheep farming. So the meat of the West took its place on the English dinner table by the side of bread baked from Dakotan wheat.
Aid in American Economic Independence.—The effects of this economic movement were manifold and striking. Billions of dollars' worth of American grain, dairy produce, and meat were poured into European markets where they paid off debts due money lenders and acquired capital to develop American resources. Thus they accelerated the progress of American financiers toward national independence. The country, which had timidly turned to the Old World for capital in Hamilton's day and had borrowed at high rates of interest in London in Lincoln's day, moved swiftly toward the time when it would be among the world's first bankers and money lenders itself. Every grain of wheat and corn pulled the balance down on the American side of the scale.
Eastern Agriculture Affected.—In the East as well as abroad the opening of the western granary produced momentous results. The agricultural economy of that part of the country was changed in many respects. Whole sections of the poorest land went almost out of cultivation, the abandoned farms of the New England hills bearing solemn witness to the competing power of western wheat fields. Sheep and cattle raising, as well as wheat and corn production, suffered at least a relative decline. Thousands of farmers cultivating land of the lower grade were forced to go West or were driven to the margin of subsistence. Even the herds that supplied Eastern cities with milk were fed upon grain brought halfway across the continent.
The Expansion of the American Market.—Upon industry as well as agriculture, the opening of vast food-producing regions told in a thousand ways. The demand for farm machinery, clothing, boots, shoes, and other manufactures gave to American industries such a market as even Hamilton had never foreseen. Moreover it helped to expand far into the Mississippi Valley the industrial area once confined to the Northern seaboard states and to transform the region of the Great Lakes into an industrial empire. Herein lies the explanation of the growth of mid-western cities after 1865. Chicago, with its thirty-five railways, tapped every locality of the West and South. To the railways were added the water routes of the Lakes, thus creating a strategic center for industries. Long foresight carried the McCormick reaper works to Chicago before 1860. From Troy, New York, went a large stove plant. That was followed by a shoe factory from Massachusetts. The packing industry rose as a matter of course at a point so advantageous for cattle raisers and shippers and so well connected with Eastern markets.
To the opening of the Far West also the Lake region was indebted for a large part of that water-borne traffic which made it "the Mediterranean basin of North America." The produce of the West and the manufactures of the East poured through it in an endless stream. The swift growth of shipbuilding on the Great Lakes helped to compensate for the decline of the American marine on the high seas. In response to this stimulus Detroit could boast that her shipwrights were able to turn out a ten thousand ton Leviathan for ore or grain about "as quickly as carpenters could put up an eight-room house." Thus in relation to the Far West the old Northwest territory—the wilderness of Jefferson's time—had taken the position formerly occupied by New England alone. It was supplying capital and manufactures for a vast agricultural empire West and South.
America on the Pacific.—It has been said that the Mediterranean Sea was the center of ancient civilization; that modern civilization has developed on the shores of the Atlantic; and that the future belongs to the Pacific. At any rate, the sweep of the United States to the shores of the Pacific quickly exercised a powerful influence on world affairs and it undoubtedly has a still greater significance for the future.
Very early regular traffic sprang up between the Pacific ports and the Hawaiian Islands, China, and Japan. Two years before the adjustment of the Oregon controversy with England, namely in 1844, the United States had established official and trading relations with China. Ten years later, four years after the admission of California to the union, the barred door of Japan was forced open by Commodore Perry. The commerce which had long before developed between the Pacific ports and Hawaii, China, and Japan now flourished under official care. In 1865 a ship from Honolulu carried sugar, molasses, and fruits from Hawaii to the Oregon port of Astoria. The next year a vessel from Hongkong brought rice, mats, and tea from China. An era of lucrative trade was opened. The annexation of Hawaii in 1898, the addition of the Philippines at the same time, and the participation of American troops in the suppression of the Boxer rebellion in Peking in 1900, were but signs and symbols of American power on the Pacific.
Commodore Perry's Men Making Presents to the Japanese
Conservation and the Land Problem.—The disappearance of the frontier also brought new and serious problems to the governments of the states and the nation. The people of the whole United States suddenly were forced to realize that there was a limit to the rich, new land to exploit and to the forests and minerals awaiting the ax and the pick. Then arose in America the questions which had long perplexed the countries of the Old World—the scientific use of the soils and conservation of natural resources. Hitherto the government had followed the easy path of giving away arable land and selling forest and mineral lands at low prices. Now it had to face far more difficult and complex problems. It also had to consider questions of land tenure again, especially if the ideal of a nation of home-owning farmers was to be maintained. While there was plenty of land for every man or woman who wanted a home on the soil, it made little difference if single landlords or companies got possession of millions of acres, if a hundred men in one western river valley owned 17,000,000 acres; but when the good land for small homesteads was all gone, then was raised the real issue. At the opening of the twentieth century the nation, which a hundred years before had land and natural resources apparently without limit, was compelled to enact law after law conserving its forests and minerals. Then it was that the great state of California, on the very border of the continent, felt constrained to enact a land settlement measure providing government assistance in an effort to break up large holdings into small lots and to make it easy for actual settlers to acquire small farms. America was passing into a new epoch.
References
Henry Inman, The Old Santa Fé Trail.
R.I. Dodge, The Plains of the Great West (1877).
C.H. Shinn, The Story of the Mine.
Cy Warman, The Story of the Railroad.
Emerson Hough, The Story of the Cowboy.
H.H. Bancroft is the author of many works on the West but his writings will be found only in the larger libraries.
Joseph Schafer, History of the Pacific Northwest (ed. 1918).
T.H. Hittel, History of California (4 vols.).
W.H. Olin, American Irrigation Farming.
W.E. Smythe, The Conquest of Arid America.
H.A. Millis, The American-Japanese Problem.
E.S. Meany, History of the State of Washington.
H.K. Norton, The Story of California.
Questions
1. Name the states west of the Mississippi in 1865.
2. In what manner was the rest of the western region governed?
3. How far had settlement been carried?
4. What were the striking physical features of the West?
5. How was settlement promoted after 1865?
6. Why was admission to the union so eagerly sought?
7. Explain how politics became involved in the creation of new states.
8. Did the West rapidly become like the older sections of the country?
9. What economic peculiarities did it retain or develop?
10. How did the federal government aid in western agriculture?
11. How did the development of the West affect the East? The South?
12. What relation did the opening of the great grain areas of the West bear to the growth of America's commercial and financial power?
13. State some of the new problems of the West.
14. Discuss the significance of American expansion to the Pacific Ocean.
Research Topics
The Passing of the Wild West.—Haworth, The United States in Our Own Times, pp. 100-124.
The Indian Question.—Sparks, National Development (American Nation Series), pp. 265-281.
The Chinese Question.—Sparks, National Development, pp. 229-250; Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. VIII, pp. 180-196.
The Railway Age.—Schafer, History of the Pacific Northwest, pp. 230-245; E.V. Smalley, The Northern Pacific Railroad; Paxson, The New Nation (Riverside Series), pp. 20-26, especially the map on p. 23, and pp. 142-148.
Agriculture and Business.—Schafer, Pacific Northwest, pp. 246-289.
Ranching in the Northwest.—Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life, and Autobiography, pp. 103-143.
The Conquest of the Desert.—W.E. Smythe, The Conquest of Arid America.
Studies of Individual Western States.—Consult any good encyclopedia.
CHAPTER XIX
DOMESTIC ISSUES BEFORE THE COUNTRY (1865-1897)
For thirty years after the Civil War the leading political parties, although they engaged in heated presidential campaigns, were not sharply and clearly opposed on many matters of vital significance. During none of that time was there a clash of opinion over specific issues such as rent the country in 1800 when Jefferson rode a popular wave to victory, or again in 1828 when Jackson's western hordes came sweeping into power. The Democrats, who before 1860 definitely opposed protective tariffs, federal banking, internal improvements, and heavy taxes, now spoke cautiously on all these points. The Republicans, conscious of the fact that they had been a minority of the voters in 1860 and warned by the early loss of the House of Representatives in 1874, also moved with considerable prudence among the perplexing problems of the day. Again and again the votes in Congress showed that no clear line separated all the Democrats from all the Republicans. There were Republicans who favored tariff reductions and "cheap money." There were Democrats who looked with partiality upon high protection or with indulgence upon the contraction of the currency. Only on matters relating to the coercion of the South was the division between the parties fairly definite; this could be readily accounted for on practical as well as sentimental grounds.
After all, the vague criticisms and proposals that found their way into the political platforms did but reflect the confusion of mind prevailing in the country. The fact that, out of the eighteen years between 1875 and 1893, the Democrats held the House of Representatives for fourteen years while the Republicans had every President but one showed that the voters, like the politicians, were in a state of indecision. Hayes had a Democratic House during his entire term and a Democratic Senate for two years of the four. Cleveland was confronted by a belligerent Republican majority in the Senate during his first administration; and at the same time was supported by a Democratic majority in the House. Harrison was sustained by continuous Republican successes in Senatorial elections; but in the House he had the barest majority from 1889 to 1891 and lost that altogether at the election held in the middle of his term. The opinion of the country was evidently unsettled and fluctuating. It was still distracted by memories of the dead past and uncertain as to the trend of the future.
The Currency Question
Nevertheless these years of muddled politics and nebulous issues proved to be a period in which social forces were gathering for the great campaign of 1896. Except for three new features—the railways, the trusts, and the trade unions—the subjects of debate among the people were the same as those that had engaged their attention since the foundation of the republic: the currency, the national debt, banking, the tariff, and taxation.
Debtors and the Fall in Prices.—For many reasons the currency question occupied the center of interest. As of old, the farmers and planters of the West and South were heavily in debt to the East for borrowed money secured by farm mortgages; and they counted upon the sale of cotton, corn, wheat, and hogs to meet interest and principal when due. During the war, the Western farmers had been able to dispose of their produce at high prices and thus discharge their debts with comparative ease; but after the war prices declined. Wheat that sold at two dollars a bushel in 1865 brought sixty-four cents twenty years later. The meaning of this for the farmers in debt—and nearly three-fourths of them were in that class—can be shown by a single illustration. A thousand-dollar mortgage on a Western farm could be paid off by five hundred bushels of wheat when prices were high; whereas it took about fifteen hundred bushels to pay the same debt when wheat was at the bottom of the scale. For the farmer, it must be remembered, wheat was the measure of his labor, the product of his toil under the summer sun; and in its price he found the test of his prosperity.
Creditors and Falling Prices.—To the bondholders or creditors, on the other hand, falling prices were clear gain. If a fifty-dollar coupon on a bond bought seventy or eighty bushels of wheat instead of twenty or thirty, the advantage to the owner of the coupon was obvious. Moreover the advantage seemed to him entirely just. Creditors had suffered heavy losses when the Civil War carried prices skyward while the interest rates on their old bonds remained stationary. For example, if a man had a $1000 bond issued before 1860 and paying interest at five per cent, he received fifty dollars a year from it. Before the war each dollar would buy a bushel of wheat; in 1865 it would only buy half a bushel. When prices—that is, the cost of living—began to go down, creditors therefore generally regarded the change with satisfaction as a return to normal conditions.
The Cause of Falling Prices.—The fall in prices was due, no doubt, to many factors. Among them must be reckoned the discontinuance of government buying for war purposes, labor-saving farm machinery, immigration, and the opening of new wheat-growing regions. The currency, too, was an element in the situation. Whatever the cause, the discontented farmers believed that the way to raise prices was to issue more money. They viewed it as a case of supply and demand. If there was a small volume of currency in circulation, prices would be low; if there was a large volume, prices would be high. Hence they looked with favor upon all plans to increase the amount of money in circulation. First they advocated more paper notes—greenbacks—and then they turned to silver as the remedy. The creditors, on the other hand, naturally approved the reduction of the volume of currency. They wished to see the greenbacks withdrawn from circulation and gold—a metal more limited in volume than silver—made the sole basis of the national monetary system.
The Battle over the Greenbacks.—The contest between these factions began as early as 1866. In that year, Congress enacted a law authorizing the Treasury to withdraw the greenbacks from circulation. The paper money party set up a shrill cry of protest, and kept up the fight until, in 1878, it forced Congress to provide for the continuous re-issue of the legal tender notes as they came into the Treasury in payment of taxes and other dues. Then could the friends of easy money rejoice:
"Thou, Greenback, 'tis of thee Fair money of the free, Of thee we sing." |
Resumption of Specie Payment.—There was, however, another side to this victory. The opponents of the greenbacks, unable to stop the circulation of paper, induced Congress to pass a law in 1875 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 at the office of the Assistant Treasurer of the United States in the City of New York in sums of not less than fifty dollars." "The way to resume," John Sherman had said, "is to resume." When the hour for redemption arrived, the Treasury was prepared with a large hoard of gold. "On the appointed day," wrote the assistant secretary, "anxiety reigned in the office of the Treasury. Hour after hour passed; no news from New York. Inquiry by wire showed that all was quiet. At the close of the day this message came: '$135,000 of notes presented for coin—$400,000 of gold for notes.' That was all. Resumption was accomplished with no disturbance. By five o'clock the news was all over the land, and the New York bankers were sipping their tea in absolute safety."
The Specie Problem—the Parity of Gold and Silver.—Defeated in their efforts to stop "the present suicidal and destructive policy of contraction," the advocates of an abundant currency demanded an increase in the volume of silver in circulation. This precipitated one of the sharpest political battles in American history. The issue turned on legal as well as economic points. The Constitution gave Congress the power to coin money and it forbade the states to make anything but gold and silver legal tender in the payment of debts. It evidently contemplated the use of both metals in the currency system. Such, at least, was the view of many eminent statesmen, including no less a personage than James G. Blaine. The difficulty, however, lay in maintaining gold and silver coins on a level which would permit them to circulate with equal facility. Obviously, if the gold in a gold dollar exceeds the value of the silver in a silver dollar on the open market, men will hoard gold money and leave silver money in circulation. When, for example, Congress in 1792 fixed the ratio of the two metals at one to fifteen—one ounce of gold declared worth fifteen of silver—it was soon found that gold had been undervalued. When again in 1834 the ratio was put at one to sixteen, it was found that silver was undervalued. Consequently the latter metal was not brought in for coinage and silver almost dropped out of circulation. Many a silver dollar was melted down by silverware factories.
Silver Demonetized in 1873.—So things stood in 1873. At that time, Congress, in enacting a mintage law, discontinued the coinage of the standard silver dollar, then practically out of circulation. This act was denounced later by the friends of silver as "the crime of '73," a conspiracy devised by the money power and secretly carried out. This contention the debates in Congress do not seem to sustain. In the course of the argument on the mint law it was distinctly said by one speaker at least: "This bill provides for the making of changes in the legal tender coin of the country and for substituting as legal tender, coin of only one metal instead of two as heretofore."
The Decline in the Value of Silver.—Absorbed in the greenback controversy, the people apparently did not appreciate, at the time, the significance of the "demonetization" of silver; but within a few years several events united in making it the center of a political storm. Germany, having abandoned silver in 1871, steadily increased her demand for gold. Three years later, the countries of the Latin Union followed this example, thus helping to enhance the price of the yellow metal. All the while, new silver lodes, discovered in the Far West, were pouring into the market great streams of the white metal, bearing down the price. Then came the resumption of specie payment, which, in effect, placed the paper money on a gold basis. Within twenty years silver was worth in gold only about half the price of 1870.
That there had been a real decline in silver was denied by the friends of that metal. They alleged that gold had gone up because it had been given a monopoly in the coinage markets of civilized governments. This monopoly, they continued, was the fruit of a conspiracy against the people conceived by the bankers of the world. Moreover, they went on, the placing of the greenbacks on a gold basis had itself worked a contraction of the currency; it lowered the prices of labor and produce to the advantage of the holders of long-term investments bearing a fixed rate of interest. When wheat sold at sixty-four cents a bushel, their search for relief became desperate, and they at last concentrated their efforts on opening the mints of the government for the free coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one.
Republicans and Democrats Divided.—On this question both Republicans and Democrats were divided, the line being drawn between the East on the one hand and the South and West on the other, rather than between the two leading parties. So trusted a leader as James G. Blaine avowed, in a speech delivered in the Senate in 1878, that, as the Constitution required Congress to make both gold and silver the money of the land, the only question left was that of fixing the ratio between them. He affirmed, moreover, the main contention of the silver faction that a reopening of the government mints of the world to silver would bring it up to its old relation with gold. He admitted also that their most ominous warnings were well founded, saying: "I believe the struggle now going on in this country and in other countries for a single gold standard would, if successful, produce widespread disaster throughout the commercial world. The destruction of silver as money and the establishment of gold as the sole unit of value must have a ruinous effect on all forms of property, except those investments which yield a fixed return."
This was exactly the concession that the silver party wanted. "Three-fourths of the business enterprises of this country are conducted on borrowed capital," said Senator Jones, of Nevada. "Three-fourths of the homes and farms that stand in the names 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 greater than they received—more in equity than they contracted to pay.... In all discussions of the subject the creditors attempt to brush aside the equities involved by sneering at the debtors."
The Silver Purchase Act (1878).—Even before the actual resumption of specie payment, the advocates of free silver were a power to be reckoned with, particularly in the Democratic party. They had a majority in the House of Representatives in 1878 and they carried a silver bill through that chamber. Blocked by the Republican Senate they accepted a compromise in the Bland-Allison bill, which provided for huge monthly purchases of silver by the government for coinage into dollars. So strong was the sentiment that a two-thirds majority was mustered after President Hayes vetoed the measure.
The effect of this act, as some had anticipated, was disappointing. It did not stay silver on its downward course. Thereupon the silver faction pressed through Congress in 1886 a bill providing for the issue of paper certificates based on the silver accumulated in the Treasury. Still silver continued to fall. Then the advocates of inflation declared that they would be content with nothing short of free coinage at the ratio of sixteen to one. If the issue had been squarely presented in 1890, there is good reason for believing that free silver would have received a majority in both houses of Congress; but it was not presented.
The Sherman Silver Purchase Act and the Bond Sales.—Republican leaders, particularly from the East, stemmed the silver tide by a diversion of forces. They passed the Sherman Act of 1890 providing for large monthly purchases of silver and for the issue of notes redeemable in gold or silver at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury. In a clause of superb ambiguity they announced that it was "the established policy of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio or such other ratio as may be provided by law." For a while silver was buoyed up. Then it turned once more on its downward course. In the meantime the Treasury was in a sad plight. To maintain the gold reserve, President Cleveland felt compelled to sell government bonds; and to his dismay he found that as soon as the gold was brought in at the front door of the Treasury, notes were presented for redemption and the gold was quickly carried out at the back door. Alarmed at the vicious circle thus created, he urged upon Congress the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. For this he was roundly condemned by many of his own followers who branded his conduct as "treason to the party"; but the Republicans, especially from the East, came to his rescue and in 1893 swept the troublesome sections of the law from the statute book. The anger of the silver faction knew no bounds, and the leaders made ready for the approaching presidential campaign.
The Protective Tariff and Taxation
Fluctuation in Tariff Policy.—As each of the old parties was divided on the currency question, it is not surprising that there was some confusion in their ranks over the tariff. Like the silver issue, the tariff tended to align the manufacturing East against the agricultural West and South rather than to cut directly between the two parties. Still the Republicans on the whole stood firmly by the rates imposed during the Civil War. If we except the reductions of 1872 which were soon offset by increases, we may say that those rates were substantially unchanged for nearly twenty years. When a revision was brought about, however, it was initiated by Republican leaders. Seeing a huge surplus of revenue in the Treasury in 1883, they anticipated popular clamor by revising the tariff on the theory that it ought to be reformed by its friends rather than by its enemies. On the other hand, it was the Republicans also who enacted the McKinley tariff bill of 1890, which carried protection to its highest point up to that time.
The Democrats on their part were not all confirmed free traders or even advocates of tariff for revenue only. In Cleveland's first administration they did attack the protective system in the House, where they had a majority, and in this they were vigorously supported by the President. The assault, however, proved to be a futile gesture for it was blocked by the Republicans in the Senate. When, after the sweeping victory of 1892, the Democrats in the House again attempted to bring down the tariff by the Wilson bill of 1894, they were checkmated by their own party colleagues in the upper chamber. In the end they were driven into a compromise that looked more like a McKinley than a Calhoun tariff. The Republicans taunted them with being "babes in the woods." President Cleveland was so dissatisfied with the bill that he refused to sign it, allowing it to become a law, on the lapse of ten days, without his approval.
The Income Tax of 1894.—The advocates of tariff reduction usually associated with their proposal a tax on incomes. The argument which they advanced in support of their program was simple. Most of the industries, they said, are in the East and the protective tariff which taxes consumers for the benefit of manufacturers is, in effect, a tribute laid upon the rest of the country. As an offset they offered a tax on large incomes; this owing to the heavy concentration of rich people in the East, would fall mainly upon the beneficiaries of protection. "We propose," said one of them, "to place a part of the burden upon the accumulated wealth of the country instead of placing it all upon the consumption of the people." In this spirit the sponsors of the Wilson tariff bill laid a tax upon all incomes of $4000 a year or more.
In taking this step, the Democrats encountered opposition in their own party. Senator Hill, of New York, turned fiercely upon them, exclaiming: "The professors with their books, the socialists with their schemes, the anarchists with their bombs are all instructing the people in the ... principles of taxation." Even the Eastern Republicans were hardly as savage in their denunciation of the tax. But all this labor was wasted. The next year the Supreme Court of the United States declared the income tax to be a direct tax, and therefore null and void because it was laid on incomes wherever found and not apportioned among the states according to population. The fact that four of the nine judges dissented from this decision was also an index to the diversity of opinion that divided both parties.
The Railways and Trusts
The Grangers and State Regulation.—The same uncertainty about the railways and trusts pervaded the ranks of the Republicans and Democrats. As to the railways, the first firm and consistent demand for their regulation came from the West. There the farmers, in the early seventies, having got control in state legislatures, particularly in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, enacted drastic laws prescribing the maximum charges which companies could make for carrying freight and passengers. The application of these measures, however, was limited because the state could not fix the rates for transporting goods and passengers beyond its own borders. The power of regulating interstate commerce, under the Constitution, belonged to Congress.
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.—Within a few years, the movement which had been so effective in western legislatures appeared at Washington in the form of demands for the federal regulation of interstate rates. In 1887, the pressure became so strong that Congress created the interstate commerce commission and forbade many abuses on the part of railways; such as discriminating in charges between one shipper and another and granting secret rebates to favored persons. This law was a significant beginning; but it left the main question of rate-fixing untouched, much to the discontent of farmers and shippers.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890.—As in the case of the railways, attacks upon the trusts were first made in state legislatures, where it became the fashion to provide severe penalties for those who formed monopolies and "conspired to enhance prices." Republicans and Democrats united in the promotion of measures of this kind. As in the case of the railways also, the movement to curb the trusts soon had spokesmen at Washington. Though Blaine had declared that "trusts were largely a private affair with which neither the President nor any private citizen had any particular right to interfere," it was a Republican Congress that enacted in 1890 the first measure—the Sherman Anti-Trust Law—directed against great combinations in business. This act declared illegal "every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade and commerce among the several states or with foreign nations."
The Futility of the Anti-Trust Law.—Whether the Sherman law was directed against all combinations or merely those which placed an "unreasonable restraint" on trade and competition was not apparent. Senator Platt of Connecticut, a careful statesman of the old school, averred: "The questions of whether the bill would be operative, of how it would operate, or whether it was within the power of Congress to enact it, have been whistled down the wind in this Senate as idle talk and the whole effort has been to get some bill headed: 'A bill to punish trusts,' with which to go to the country." Whatever its purpose, its effect upon existing trusts and upon the formation of new combinations was negligible. It was practically unenforced by President Harrison and President Cleveland, in spite of the constant demand for harsh action against "monopolies." It was patent that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats were prepared for a war on the trusts to the bitter end.
The Minor Parties and Unrest
The Demands of Dissenting Parties.—From the election of 1872, when Horace Greeley made his ill-fated excursion into politics, onward, there appeared in each presidential campaign one, and sometimes two or more parties, stressing issues that appealed mainly to wage-earners and farmers. Whether they chose to call themselves Labor Reformers, Greenbackers, or Anti-monopolists, their slogans and their platforms all pointed in one direction. Even the Prohibitionists, who in 1872 started on their career with a single issue, the abolition of the liquor traffic, found themselves making declarations of faith on other matters and hopelessly split over the money question in 1896.
A composite view of the platforms put forth by the dissenting parties from the administration of Grant to the close of Cleveland's second term reveals certain notions common to them all. These included among many others: the earliest possible payment of the national debt; regulation of the rates of railways and telegraph companies; repeal of the specie resumption act of 1875; the issue of legal tender notes by the government convertible into interest-bearing obligations on demand; unlimited coinage of silver as well as gold; a graduated inheritance tax; legislation to take from "land, railroad, money, and other gigantic corporate monopolies ... the powers they have so corruptly and unjustly usurped"; popular or direct election of United States Senators; woman suffrage; and a graduated income tax, "placing the burden of government on those who can best afford to pay instead of laying it on the farmers and producers."
Criticism of the Old Parties.—To this long program of measures the reformers added harsh and acrid criticism of the old parties and sometimes, it must be said, of established institutions of government. "We denounce," exclaimed the Labor party in 1888, "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 United States Senate," insisted the Greenbackers, "is a body composed largely of aristocratic millionaires who according to their own party papers generally purchased their elections in order to protect the great monopolies which they represent." Indeed, if their platforms are to be accepted at face value, the Greenbackers believed that the entire government had passed out of the hands of the people.
The Grangers.—This unsparing, not to say revolutionary, criticism of American political life, appealed, it seems, mainly to farmers in the Middle West. Always active in politics, they had, before the Civil War, cast their lot as a rule with one or the other of the leading parties. In 1867, however, there grew up among them an association known as the "Patrons of Husbandry," which was destined to play a large rôle in the partisan contests of the succeeding decades. This society, which organized local lodges or "granges" on principles of secrecy and fraternity, was originally designed to promote in a general way the interests of the farmers. Its political bearings were apparently not grasped at first by its promoters. Yet, appealing as it did to the most active and independent spirits among the farmers and gathering to itself the strength that always comes from organization, it soon found itself in the hands of leaders more or less involved in politics. Where a few votes are marshaled together in a democracy, there is power.
The Greenback Party.—The first extensive activity of the Grangers was connected with the attack on the railways in the Middle West which forced several state legislatures to reduce freight and passenger rates by law. At the same time, some leaders in the movement, no doubt emboldened by this success, launched in 1876 a new political party, popularly known as the Greenbackers, favoring a continued re-issue of the legal tenders. The beginnings were disappointing; but two years later, in the congressional elections, the Greenbackers swept whole sections of the country. Their candidates polled more than a million votes and fourteen of them were returned to the House of Representatives. To all outward signs a new and formidable party had entered the lists.
The sanguine hopes of the leaders proved to be illusory. The quiet operations of the resumption act the following year, a revival of industry from a severe panic which had set in during 1873, the Silver Purchase Act, and the re-issue of Greenbacks cut away some of the grounds of agitation. There was also a diversion of forces to the silver faction which had a substantial support in the silver mine owners of the West. At all events the Greenback vote fell to about 300,000 in the election of 1880. A still greater drop came four years later and the party gave up the ghost, its sponsors returning to their former allegiance or sulking in their tents.
The Rise of the Populist Party.—Those leaders of the old parties who now looked for a happy future unvexed by new factions were doomed to disappointment. The funeral of the Greenback party was hardly over before there arose two other political specters in the agrarian sections: the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, particularly strong in the South and West; and the Farmers' Alliance, operating in the North. By 1890 the two orders claimed over three million members. As in the case of the Grangers many years before, the leaders among them found an easy way into politics. In 1892 they held a convention, nominated a candidate for President, and adopted the name of "People's Party," from which they were known as Populists. Their platform, in every line, breathed a spirit of radicalism. They declared that "the newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrate; our homes covered with mortgages; and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists.... The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few." Having delivered this sweeping indictment, the Populists put forward their remedies: the free coinage of silver, a graduated income tax, postal savings banks, and government ownership of railways and telegraphs. At the same time they approved the initiative, referendum, and popular election of Senators, and condemned the use of federal troops in labor disputes. On this platform, the Populists polled over a million votes, captured twenty-two presidential electors, and sent a powerful delegation to Congress.
Industrial Distress Augments Unrest.—The four years intervening between the campaign of 1892 and the next presidential election brought forth many events which aggravated the ill-feeling expressed in the portentous platform of Populism. Cleveland, a consistent enemy of free silver, gave his powerful support to the gold standard and insisted on the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act, thus alienating an increasing number of his own party. In 1893 a grave industrial crisis fell upon the land: banks and business houses went into bankruptcy with startling rapidity; factories were closed; idle men thronged the streets hunting for work; and the prices of wheat and corn dropped to a ruinous level. Labor disputes also filled the crowded record. A strike at the Pullman car works in Chicago spread to the railways. Disorders ensued. President Cleveland, against the protests of the governor of Illinois, John P. Altgeld, dispatched troops to the scene of action. The United States district court at Chicago issued an injunction forbidding the president of the Railway Union, Eugene V. Debs, or his assistants to interfere with the transmission of the mails or interstate commerce in any form. For refusing to obey the order, Debs was arrested and imprisoned. With federal troops in possession of the field, with their leader in jail, the strikers gave up the battle, defeated but not subdued. To cap the climax the Supreme Court of the United States, the following year (1895) declared null and void the income tax law just enacted by Congress, thus fanning the flames of Populist discontent all over the West and South.
The Sound Money Battle of 1896
Conservative Men Alarmed.—Men of conservative thought and leaning in both parties were by this time thoroughly disturbed. They looked upon the rise of Populism and the growth of labor disputes as the signs of a revolutionary spirit, indeed nothing short of a menace to American institutions and ideals. The income tax law of 1894, exclaimed the distinguished New York advocate, Joseph H. Choate, in an impassioned speech before the Supreme Court, "is communistic in its purposes and tendencies and is defended here upon principles as communistic, socialistic—what shall I call them—populistic as ever have been addressed to any political assembly in the world." Mr. Justice Field in the name of the Court replied: "The present assault upon capital 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 rich." In declaring the income tax unconstitutional, he believed that he was but averting greater evils lurking under its guise. As for free silver, nearly all conservative men were united in calling it a measure of confiscation and repudiation; an effort of the debtors to pay their obligations with money worth fifty cents on the dollar; the climax of villainies openly defended; a challenge to law, order, and honor.
The Republicans Come Out for the Gold Standard.—It was among the Republicans that this opinion was most widely shared and firmly held. It was they who picked up the gauge thrown down by the Populists, though a host of Democrats, like Cleveland and Hill of New York, also battled against the growing Populist defection in Democratic ranks. When the Republican national convention assembled in 1896, the die was soon cast; a declaration of opposition to free silver save by international agreement was carried by a vote of eight to one. The Republican party, to use the vigorous language of Mr. Lodge, arrayed itself against "not only that organized failure, the Democratic party, but all the wandering forces of political chaos and social disorder ... in these bitter times when the forces of disorder are loose and the wreckers with their false lights gather at the shore to lure the ship of state upon the rocks." Yet it is due to historic truth to state that McKinley, whom the Republicans nominated, had voted in Congress for the free coinage of silver, was widely known as a bimetallist, and was only with difficulty persuaded to accept the unequivocal indorsement of the gold standard which was pressed upon him by his counselors. Having accepted it, however, he proved to be a valiant champion, though his major interest was undoubtedly in the protective tariff. To him nothing was more reprehensible than attempts "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." Such was the language of his acceptance speech. The whole program of Populism he now viewed as a "sudden, dangerous, and revolutionary assault upon law and order."
The Democratic Convention at Chicago.—Never, save at the great disruption on the eve of the Civil War, did a Democratic national convention display more feeling than at Chicago in 1896. From the opening prayer to the last motion before the house, every act, every speech, every scene, every resolution evoked passions and sowed dissensions. Departing from long party custom, it voted down in anger a proposal to praise the administration of the Democratic President, Cleveland. When the platform with its radical planks, including free silver, was reported, a veritable storm broke. Senator Hill, trembling with emotion, protested against the departure from old tests of Democratic allegiance; against principles that must drive out of the party men who had grown gray in its service; against revolutionary, unwise, and unprecedented steps in the history of the party. Senator Vilas of Wisconsin, in great fervor, avowed that there was no difference in principle between the free coinage of silver—"the confiscation of one-half of the credits of the nation for the benefit of debtors"—and communism itself—"a universal distribution of property." In the triumph of that cause he saw the beginning of "the overthrow of all law, all justice, all security and repose in the social order."