§ 756]

THE POPULISTS

627 division seriously delayed the reform of fundamental troubles in American life.

755. Both Republicans and Democrats shirked a positive position as to silver. Accordingly, in the West and South there sprang up the new Populist party, with a platform calling for the unlimited coinage of silver at 16 to 1, for a graduated income tax (§ 745),' postal savings banks, the "Australian ballot" (§ 824), direct election of United States Senators, an eight-hour day, and government ownership of railroads and of other natural monopolies. To the East all this seemed wildeyed anarchism. But in the Presidential election of 1892, General Weaver, the Populist candidate, secured 22 electors, with more than a million votes, to about five and a half millions to each of the main parties. Two years earlier, the party had captured several State governments in the West and South, and had sent forty representatives to Congress.

This Populist success induced Congress, in 1890, to pass "the Sherman Act," ordering a slight increase in silver coinage. The increase in demand raised silver for a time; but in 1893 the British government demonetized that metal in India, and it shrank to a lower point than ever before. Gold now was exported with a rush, and that remaining in the country was hoarded.

756. A periodic crisis, due once more to over-investment on credit, seems to have been about due; and it was hastened by widespread distrust of the currency and by uncertainty as to future action by Congress. In 1893 the crash came. Creditors began to insist on payments in gold. Nearly six hundred banks closed their doors, and more than fifteen thousand firms went to the wall, with losses amounting to a third of a billion. President Cleveland had to increase the national debt by selling bonds, or the gold reserve in the treasury would have vanished. Industry was prostrated as at no previous

1 The student should see that this chapter and the preceding one give two strands of one story.

2 See American History and Government, § 429.

panic. Farmers lost their homes, and the improvements of years, on small mortgages. Cities were thronged with hundreds of thousands of unemployed and desperate men. Every large place had its free" soup kitchen," and many towns, for the first time in America, opened "relief works," to provide the starving with employment.

The

757. The Campaign of 1896 was a crisis in American history. President Cleveland alienated the radical wing of the Democratic party by uncompromising hostility to silver legislation,1 and the party split on that issue. The National Convention afforded a dramatic scene. William J. Bryan of Nebraska, a young man hardly known in the East, swept the great assembly resistlessly by an impassioned speech of splendid oratory and deep sincerity. The contest between silver and gold he pictured as a contest of wealth against industry. gold men had made much of what they called the business interests. But, said Bryan, "the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, and, by applying brain and muscle to natural resources, creates wealth, is as much a business man as is the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets on the price of grain." Turning to the "gold" delegates, he exclaimed, "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon this cross of gold."

With tremendous enthusiasm, the Convention declared, two

1 It is, perhaps, fairer to say that this attitude seemed to the Radicals one more proof of Cleveland's alliance with the "Money Power," seen also, as it appeared to them, in his policy in the Chicago strike (§ 809). Cleveland was a plodding, patient man of rugged honesty, and, for his day, he was a progressive statesman, deserving of more recognition from radical reformers than he received. In his final message to Congress, after his defeat had put him "out of politics," he warned the nation that great fortunes were no longer the result solely of sturdy industry and enlightened foresight, but largely of the “discriminating favor of the government" and of "undue exactions from the masses of our people." After leaving the Presidency, his services as a lawyer were sought by great corporations, but he always refused their retainers. No other president from Lincoln to Roosevelt did so much to arouse a progressive movement in this nation.

§ 757]

BRYAN AND MARK HANNA

629

to one, for the "unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the ratio of sixteen to one," and nominated Bryan for the presidency. A strong faction of the party, however, took the name of "Gold Demo

William McKinley on a "sound money" platform. The Democratic campaign was hampered by lack of money; but the most was made of Mr. Bryan's oratory. Candidates had previously taken small part in campaigning. Mr. Bryan traveled eighteen thousand miles and spoke to vast numbers of people. The Republican coffers were supplied lavishly by the moneyed interests of the country; and the campaign was managed by Mark Hanna, a typical representative of the "big business" interests, a virile and very likeable character, who honestly believed that the government ought to be "an adjunct of

1 To men of conservative tendencies and associations, the new leader seemed a demagogue. The Louisville Courier-Journal denounced him as a "dishonest dodger," a "daring adventurer," a "political faker"; and the New York Tribune reviled him as "a willing puppet in the blood-imbrued hands of revolutionists, - apt at lies and forgeries and blasphemies, the rival of Benedict Arnold and Jefferson Davis in treason to the Republic." Later, such Eastern organs tried strenuously to regard him as a jest. But a new force had come into American life. William J. Bryan, defeated three times for the Presidency, still molded public opinion during the coming years as only

business," and who, his admirers confessed, got what he went after in politics without scrupulous regard to means. Workingmen were intimidated by posted notices that the factories would close if the Democrats won; and many great business concerns placed orders with manufacturers with a provision for cancellation if Bryan were elected. This fear of business catastrophe (a fear largely manufactured) was a chief factor in the Republican success. But as Cleveland had committed the Democratic party to tariff reform, so Bryan had now committed it to the cause of the masses against the "special interests" and "privileged" capital.

At this point came an interruption to normal development, the Spanish War and the question of imperialism.

FOR FURTHER READING.-Dewey's National Problems; Paxson's New Nation; Haworth's Reconstruction and Union.

one or two Presidents have ever done, until by 1912 his principles, outside the free silver heresy, had become the common property of every political platform. Cf. § 842 ff.

CHAPTER LXIV

AMERICA A WORLD POWER

758. Our growing commercial interests inspired a more aggressive foreign policy. Three notable incidents in this line preceded the war with Spain.

a. In Harrison's administration the energetic Blaine was Secretary of State. A cardinal point in his policy was to extend the influence of the United States over Spanish America. In 1889 he brought together at Washington a notable PanAmerican Congress which furthered commercial reciprocity (§ 743) and expressed a desire for standing treaties of arbitration between all American nations.

b. For fifty years, the United States had held close relations with Hawaii. The islands had accepted Christianity from. American missionaries; and American planters and merchants were the chief element in a considerable White population. American capital, too, was largely interested in sugar raising in the islands.

The native government, under the influence of English and American ideas, had been brought to the form of a constitutional monarchy. In January, 1893, a revolution deposed the native queen and set up a provisional republic. The leading spirits of the new government were Americans, and they asked for annexation to the United States. The United States minister to the old government ran up the United States flag, virtually declared a protectorate, and secured a force of marines from an American vessel in the harbor to overawe the natives. In his remaining weeks of office, President Harrison tried to hurry through a treaty of annexation; but Cleveland, on his accession, withdrew the treaty from the Senate, and sent a special commissioner to the islands to investigate. The report