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The Agrarian Crusade, A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics

S >> Solon J. Buck >> The Agrarian Crusade, A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics




The congressional and state elections of 1894 revealed the
unstable equilibrium of parties, and at the same time the total
Populist vote of nearly a million and a half reflected the
increasing popular unrest. In the West, however, the new party
was not so successful in winning elections as it had been in 1892
because the hostile attitude, sometimes of the Populists and
sometimes of the Democrats, made fusion impossible in most cases.
A few victories were won, to be sure: Nebraska elected a
free-silver Democrat-Populist governor, while Nevada was carried
by the silver party; but Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and
North Dakota. returned to the Republican fold. In the South, the
fusion between Populists and Republicans against the dominant
Democrats was more successful. From several States, Congressmen
were elected, who, whether under the name of Populist or
Republican, represented the radical element. In South Carolina
the Democratic party adopted the Farmers' Alliance platform,
swept the State in the elections, and sent "Pitchfork" Tillman to
the United States Senate as an anti-administration Democrat.
Tillman admitted that he was not one of those infatuated persons
who believed that "all the financial wisdom in the country is
monopolized by the East," and who said, "'Me, too,' every time
Cleveland grunts." "Send me to Washington," was his advice to
cheering crowds, "and I'll stick my pitchfork into his old ribs!"

Every political move in 1895 was calculated with reference to the
presidential election of 1896. Both old parties were inoculated
with the free-silver virus; silver men could have passed a free
coinage bill in both houses of Congress at any moment but were
restrained chiefly by the knowledge that such a measure would be
vetoed by President Cleveland. The free coinage of silver, which
was the chief demand of Populism, was also the ardent desire of a
majority of the people west of the Alleghanies, irrespective of
their political affiliations. Nothing seemed more logical, then,
than the union of all silver men to enforce the adoption of their
program. There was great diversity of opinion, however, as to the
best means of accomplishing this union. General Weaver started a
movement to add the forces of the American Bimetallic League and
the silver Democrats to the ranks of the People's Party. But the
silver Democrats, believing that they comprised a majority of the
party, proceeded to organize themselves for the purpose of
controlling that party at its coming national conventions; and
most of the Populist leaders felt that, should this movement be
victorious, the greatest prospect of success for their program
lay in a fusion of the two parties. Some there were, indeed, who
opposed fusion under any conditions, foreseeing that it would
mean the eventual extinction of the People's Party. . Prominent
among these were Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota, "General" J. S.
Coxey of Ohio, and Senator Peffer of Kansas. In the South the
"middle-of-the-road" element, as the opponents of fusion were
called, was especially strong, for there the Populists had been
cooperating with the Republicans since 1892, and not even
agreement on the silver issue could break down the barrier of
antagonism between them and the old-line Democrats.

It remained, then, for the political events of 1896 to decide
which way the current of Populism would flow--whether it would
maintain an independent course, receiving tributaries from every
political source, eventually becoming a mighty river, and, like
the Republican party of 1856 and 1860, sweeping away an older
party; or whether it would turn aside and mingle with the stream
of Democracy, there to lose its identity forever.



CHAPTER XII. THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS

When the Republicans met in convention at St. Louis in the middle
of June, 1896, the monetary issue had already dwarfed all other
political questions. It was indeed the rock on which the party
might have crashed in utter shipwreck but for the precautions of
one man who had charted the angry waters and the dangerous shoals
and who now had a firm grasp on the helm. Marcus A. Hanna, or
"Uncle Mark," was the genial owner of more mines, oil wells,
street railways, aldermen, and legislators than any other man in
Ohio. Hanna was an almost perfect example of what the Populists
denounced as the capitalist in politics. Cynically declaring that
"no man in public life owes the public anything," he had gone his
unscrupulous way, getting control of the political machine of
Cleveland, acquiring influence in the state legislature, and now
even assuming dictatorship over the national Republican party.
Because he had found that political power was helpful in the
prosecution of his vast business enterprises, he went forth to
accumulate political power, just as frankly as he would have gone
to buy the machinery for pumping oil from one of his wells. Hanna
was a stanch friend of the gold standard, but he was too clever
to alienate the sympathies of the Republican silverites by
supporting the nomination of a man known to be an uncompromising
advocate of gold. He chose a safer candidate, a man whose
character he sincerely admired and whose opinions he might
reasonably expect to sway--his personal friend, Major William
McKinley. This was a clever choice: McKinley was known to the
public largely as the author of the McKinley tariff bill; his
protectionism pleased the East; and what was known of his
attitude on the currency question did not offend the West. In
Congress he had voted for the Bland-Allison bill and had
advocated the freer use of silver. McKinley was, indeed, an
ideally "safe" candidate, an upright, affable gentleman whose
aquiline features conferred on him the semblance of commanding
power and masked the essential weakness and indecision which
would make him, from Mark Hanna's point of view, a desirable
President. McKinley would always swim with the tide.

In his friend's behalf Hanna carried on a shrewd campaign in the
newspapers, keeping the question of currency in the background as
far as possible, playing up McKinley's sound tariff policy, and
repeating often the slogan--welcome after the recent lean
years--"McKinley and the full dinner pail." McKinley prudently
refused to take any stand on the currency question, protesting
that he could not anticipate the party platform and that he would
be bound by whatever declarations the party might see fit to
make. Even after the convention had opened, McKinley and Hanna
were reticent on the silver question. Finally, fearing that some
kind of compromise would be made, the advocates of the gold
standard went to Mr. Hanna and demanded that a gold plank be
incorporated in the platform. Hanna gracefully acceded to their
demands and thus put them under obligation to repay him by
supporting McKinley for the nomination. The platform which was
forthwith reported to the convention contained the unequivocal
gold plank, as Hanna had long before planned. Immediately
thereafter a minority of thirty-four delegates, led by Senator
Teller of Colorado, left the convention, later to send out an
address advising all Republicans who believed in free coinage of
silver to support the Democratic ticket. The nomination of
William McKinley and Garret A. Hobart followed with very little
opposition.

There was nothing cut and dried about the Democratic convention
which assembled three weeks later in Chicago. The Northeastern
States and a few others sent delegations in favor of the gold
standard, but free silver and the West were in the saddle. This
was demonstrated when, in the face of all precedent, the nominee
of the national committee for temporary chairman was rejected in
favor of Senator John W. Daniel of Virginia, a strong silver man.
The second day of the convention saw the advantage pushed
further: each Territory had its representation increased
threefold; of contesting delegations those who represented the
gold element in their respective States were unseated to make way
for silverites; and Stephen M. White, one of the California
senators, was made permanent chairman.

On the third day of the convention the platform, devoted largely
to the money question, was the subject of bitter debate. "We are
unalterably opposed to monometallism, which has locked fast
the prosperity of an industrial people in the paralysis of hard
times," proclaimed the report of the committee on resolutions.
"Gold monometallism is a British policy, and its adoption has
brought other nations into financial servitude to London . . . .
We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver
at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for
the aid or consent of any other nation." A minority of the
committee on resolutions proposed two amendments to the report,
one pronouncing in favor of a gold standard, and the other
commending the record of Grover Cleveland, a courtesy always
extended to a presidential incumbent of the same party. At the
name of Cleveland, Senator Tillman leaped to his feet and
delivered himself of characteristic invective against the
President, the "tool of Wall Street," the abject slave of gold.
Senator David B. Hill of New York, who had been rejected for
temporary chairman, defended the gold plank in a logical analysis
of monetary principles. But logical analysis could not prevail
against emotion; that clamorous mass of men was past reasoning
now, borne they hardly knew whither on the current of their own
excitement. He might as well have tried to dam Niagara.

Others tried to stem the onrushing tide but with no better
success. It seemed to be impossible for any one to command the
attention and respect of that tumultuous gathering. Even Senator
James K. Jones of Arkansas, a member of the majority group of the
committee on resolutions, failed equally with Tillman to give
satisfactory expression to the sentiments of that convention,
which felt inchoately what it desired but which still needed a
leader to voice its aspirations. This spokesman the convention
now found in William Jennings Bryan, to whom after a few
sentences Senator Jones yielded the floor.

Bryan appeared in Chicago as a member of the contesting silver
delegation from Nebraska. A young man, barely thirty-six years
old, he had already become a well-known figure in the West, where
for years he had been expounding the doctrine of free silver. A
native of Illinois, whither his father had come from Culpeper
County, Virginia, Bryan had grown up on a farm. His father's
means had been ample to afford him a good education, which he
completed, so far as schooling was concerned, at Illinois
College, Jacksonville, and at the Union College of Law in
Chicago. While in Chicago Bryan was employed in the law office of
Lyman Trumbull, one of the stanchest representatives of
independence in politics--an independence which had caused him to
break with the Democratic party over the slavery issue, and
which, as expressed in his vote against the impeachment of
President Johnson, had resulted in his retirement to private
life. To the young law student Trumbull took a particular fancy,
and his dominating personality exerted an abiding influence over
the character and career of his protege.

After a brief period of law practice in Jacksonville, Illinois,
Bryan removed with his family to Lincoln, Nebraska. The legal
profession never held great attraction for him, despite the
encouragement and assistance of his wife, who herself took up the
study of law after her marriage and was admitted to the bar.
Public questions and politics held greater interest for the young
man, who had already, in his college career, shown his ability as
an orator. Nebraska offered the opportunity he craved. At the
Democratic state convention in Omaha in 1888 he made a speech on
the tariff which gave him immediately a state-wide reputation as
an orator and expounder of public issues. He took an active part
in the campaign of that year, and in 1889 was offered, but
declined, the nomination for lieutenant governor on the
Democratic ticket. In 1890 he won election to Congress by a
majority of seven thousand in a district which two years before
had returned a Republican, and this he accomplished in spite of
the neglect of party managers who regarded the district as
hopeless. In Congress he became a member of the Committee on Ways
and Means. On the floor of the House his formal speeches on the
tariff, a topic to which nothing new could be brought, commanded
the attention of one of the most critical and blase audiences of
the world. The silver question, which was the principal topic
before Congress at the following session, afforded a fresher
field for his oratory; indeed, Bryan was the principal aid to
Bland both as speaker and parliamentarian in the old leader's
monetary campaign. When Bryan sat down after a three-hour speech
in which he attacked the gold standard, a colleague remarked, "It
exhausts the subject." In 1894 a tidal wave of Republicanism
destroyed Bryan's chances of being elected United States Senator,
a consummation for which he had been laboring on the stump and,
for a brief period, as editor of the Omaha World-Herald. He
continued, however, to urge the silver cause in preparation for
the presidential campaign of 1896.

Taller and broader than most men and of more commanding presence,
Bryan was a striking figure in the convention hall. He wore the
inevitable black suit of the professional man of the nineties,
but his dress did not seem conventional: his black tie sat at too
careless an angle; his black hair was a little too long. These
eccentricities the cartoonists seized on and exaggerated so that
most people who have not seen the man picture Bryan, not as a
determined looking man with a piercing eye and tightset mouth,
but as a grotesque frock-coated figure with the sombrero of a
cow-puncher and the hair of a poet. If the delegates at the
convention noticed any of these peculiarities as Bryan arose to
speak, they soon forgot them. His undoubted power to carry an
audience with him was never better demonstrated than on that
sweltering July day in Chicago when he stilled the tumult of a
seething mass of 15,000 people with his announcement that he came
to speak "in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of
liberty--the cause of humanity," and when he stirred the same
audience to frenzy with his closing defiance of the opponents of
free silver:

"If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it
until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a
gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism,
and then let England have bimetallism because the United States
has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the
gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the
uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation
and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the
laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer
their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not
press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall
not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."


Meeting Senator Hill's careful arguments with a clever retort,
blunting the keenness of his logic with a well-turned period,
polished to perfection by numerous repetitions before all sorts
of audiences during the previous three or four years, Bryan held
the convention in the hollow of his hand. The leadership which
had hitherto been lacking was now found. The platform as reported
by the committee was adopted by a vote of more than two to one;
and the convention, but for the opposition of Bryan himself,
would have nominated him on the spot. The next day it took but
five ballots to set aside all the favorite sons, including the
"Father of Free Silver"himself, Richard P. Bland, and to make
Bryan the standard bearer of the party. Far different in
character and appearance from the Republican group which had
assembled in the same building a few weeks before, was the
Populist convention which met in St. Louis late in July. Many of
the 1300 delegates were white-haired and had grown old in the
service of reform in the various independent movements of
preceding years; some of them had walked long distances to save
railroad fare, while others were so poor that, having exhausted
their small store of money before the long-drawn-out convention
adjourned, they suffered from want of regular sleeping places and
adequate food. All were impressed with the significance of the
decision they must make.

Gone were the hopes of the past months; the Populist party would
not sweep into its ranks all anti-monopolists and all
silverites--for one of the old parties had stolen its loudest
thunder! It was an error of political strategy to place the
convention after those of the two great parties in the
expectation that both would stand on a gold platform. Now it was
for these delegates to decide whether they would put their
organization behind the Democratic nominee with a substantial
prospect of victory, or preserve intact the identity of the
Populist party, split the silver vote, and deliver over the
election to a gold Republican.

The majority of the delegates, believing that the Democratic
party had been inoculated with the serum of reform, were ready
for the sake of a principle to risk the destruction of the party
they had labored so hard to build. Senator William V. Allen of
Nebraska summed up the situation when he said:

"If by putting a third ticket in the field you would defeat free
coinage; defeat a withdrawal of the issue power of national
banks; defeat Government ownership of railroads, telephones and
telegraphs; defeat an income tax and foist gold monometallism and
high taxation upon the people for a generation to come, which
would you do? . . . When I shall go back to the splendid
commonwealth that has so signally honored me beyond my merits, I
want to be able to say to the people that all the great doctrines
we have advocated for years, have been made possible by your
action. I do not want them to say that the Populists have been
advocates of reforms when they could not be accomplished, but
when the first ray of light appeared and the people were looking
with expectancy and with anxiety for relief, the party was not
equal to the occasion; that it was stupid; it was blind; it kept
"the middle of the road," and missed the golden opportunity."


Although most of the members of the convention were ready to
cooperate with the Democrats, there was a very strong feeling
that something should be done, if possible, to preserve the
identity of the Populist party and to safeguard its future. An
active minority, moreover, was opposed to any sort of fusion or
cooperation. This "middle-of-the-road" group included some
Western leaders of prominence, such as Peffer and Donnelly, but
its main support came from the Southern delegates. To them an
alliance with the Democratic party meant a surrender to the
enemy, to an enemy with whom they had been struggling for four
years for the control of their state and local governments.
Passionately they pleaded with the convention to save them from
such a calamity. Well they knew that small consideration would be
given to those who had dared stand up and oppose the ruling
aristocracy of the South, who had even shaken the Democratic grip
upon the governments of some of the States. Further, a negro
delegate from Georgia portrayed the disaster which would
overwhelm the political aspirations of his people if the Populist
party, which alone had given them full fellowship, should
surrender to the Democrats.

The advocates of fusion won their first victory in the election
of Senator Allen as permanent chairman, by a vote of 758 to 564.
As the nomination of Bryan for President was practically a
foregone conclusion, the "middle-of-the-road" element
concentrated its energies on preventing the nomination of Arthur
Sewall of Maine, the choice of the Democracy, for Vice-President.
The convention was persuaded, by a narrow margin, to take the
unusual step of selecting the candidate for Vice-President before
the head of the ticket was chosen. On the first ballot Sewall
received only 257 votes, while 469 were cast for Thomas Watson of
Georgia. Watson, who was then nominated by acclamation, was a
country editor who had made himself a force in the politics of
his own State and had served the Populist cause conspicuously in
Congress. Two motives influenced the convention in this
procedure. As a bank president, a railroad director, and an
employer of labor on a large scale, Sewall was felt to be utterly
unsuited to carry the standard of the People's Party. More
effective than this feeling, however, was the desire to do
something to preserve the identity of the party, to show that it
had not wholly surrendered to the Democrats. It was a compromise,
moreover, which was probably necessary to prevent a bolt of the
"middle-of-the-road" element and the nomination of an entirely
independent ticket.

Even with this concession the Southern delegates continued their
opposition to fusion. Bryan was placed in nomination, quite
appropriately, by General Weaver, who again expressed the sense
of the convention: "After due consideration, in which I have
fully canvassed every possible phase of the subject, I have
failed to find a single good reason to justify us in placing a
third ticket in the field . . . . I would not endorse the
distinguished gentleman named at Chicago. I would nominate him
outright, and make him our own, and then share justly and
rightfully in his election." The irreconcilables, nearly all from
the South and including a hundred delegates from Texas, voted for
S. F. Norton of Chicago, who received 321 votes as against 1042
for Bryan.

Because of the electoral system, the agreement of two parties to
support the same candidate for President could have no effect,
unless arrangements were made for fusion within the States. An
address issued by the executive committee of the national
committee of the People's Party during the course of the campaign
outlined the method of uniting "the voters of the country against
McKinley," and of overcoming the "obstacles and embarrassments
which, if the Democratic party had put the cause first and party
second," would not have been encountered: "This could be
accomplished only by arranging for a division of the electoral
votes in every State possible, securing so many electors for
Bryan and Watson and conceding so many to Bryan and Sewall. At
the opening of the campaign this, under the circumstances, seemed
the wisest course for your committee, and it is clearer today
than ever that it was the only safe and wise course if your votes
were to be cast and made effective for the relief of an oppressed
and outraged people. Following this line of policy your committee
has arranged electoral tickets in three-fourths of the States and
will do all in its power to make the same arrangements in all of
the States."

The committee felt it necessary to warn the people of the danger
of "a certain portion of the rank and file of the People's Party
being misled by so-called leaders, who, for reasons best known to
themselves, or for want of reason, are advising voters to rebel
against the joint electoral tickets and put up separate electoral
tickets, or to withhold their support from the joint electoral
tickets." Such so-called leaders were said to be aided and
abetted by "Democrats of the revenue stripe, who are not yet
weaned from the flesh-pots of Egypt," and by Republican
"goldbugs" who in desperation were seizing upon every straw to
prevent fusion and so to promote their own chances of success.

In the North and West, where the Populist had been fusing with
the Democrats off and on for several years, the combinations were
arranged with little difficulty. In apportioning the places on
the electoral tickets the strength of the respective parties was
roughly represented by the number of places assigned to each.
Usually it was understood that all the electors, if victorious,
would vote for Bryan, while the Democrats would cast their second
place ballots for Sewall and the Populists for Watson.

In the South much more difficulty was experienced in arranging
fusion tickets, and the spectacle of Populists cooperating with
Republicans in state elections and with Democrats in the national
election illustrated the truth of the adage that "politics makes
strange bedfellows." Only in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Missouri, and North Carolina, of the Southern States, were joint
electoral tickets finally agreed upon. In Tennessee the Populists
offered to support the Democratic electors if they would all
promise to vote for Watson, a proposal which was naturally
declined. In Florida the chairman of the state committee of the
People's Party, went so far on the eve of the election as to
advise all members of the party to vote for McKinley; and in
Texas there was an organized bolt of a large part of the
Populists to the Republican party, notwithstanding its gold
standard and protective tariff platform.

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