_Republican_, January 11, 1900, is responsible for this statement
regarding the first battle: “The outbreak of hostilities was not their
fault, but ours. We fired upon them first. The fire was returned from
their lines. Thereupon it was returned again from us, and several
Filipinos were killed. As soon as Aguinaldo heard of it he sent a
message to General Otis saying that the firing was without his knowledge
and against his will; that he deplored it, and that he desired
hostilities to cease, and would withdraw his troops to any distance
General Otis should desire. To which the American general replied that,
as the firing had begun, it must go on.”
Thus began the War in the Philippine Islands. It has cost thousands of
lives and millions of treasure. It has burned the homes and uprooted the
fields of a frugal, intelligent, and industrious people in whose minds
and hearts have been seared the ringing words of Patrick Henry: “Give me
liberty or give me death!” It has not brought to the United States
either riches or glory, but, on the contrary, lost to us much in taxes
on our people, more in the death of our youth, and most of all in the
sullying of the noble and lofty ideals which animated the Fathers of the
Republic and made their lives sublime. An American soldier writing to
the Minneapolis _Times_, in describing a captured city, thus simply sets
forth the enormity of our national offense:
“Every inhabitant had left Norzagaray, and no article of value remained
behind. The place had probably been the home of fifteen hundred or two
thousand people, and was pleasantly situated on a clear mountain stream
in which a bath was most refreshing. It was not a city of apparent
wealth, but in many houses were found evidences of education. In a
building which probably had been used as a schoolhouse were found a
number of books, and a variety of exercises written by childish hands.
Pinned to a crucifix was a paper upon which was written the following in
Spanish: ‘American soldiers—How can you hope mercy from Him when you are
slaughtering a people fighting for their liberty, and driving us from
the homes which are justly ours?’ On a table was a large globe which did
not give Minneapolis, but had San Pablo (St. Paul) as the capital of
Minnesota. On a rude blackboard were a number of sentences, which
indicated that the teacher had recently been giving lessons in the
history of the American revolution.”
The demoralizing effect of this war against liberty on the American
conscience became early apparent. If it were permissible to make war on
the Filipinos because they would not yield to our government, it was no
far cry to withhold from the Porto Ricans the protecting aegis of the
Constitution, to levy a discriminating tariff against them, and to tax
them without their consent. And it of course became impossible for the
United States to express sympathy for the Boers in their war against
British aggression, or even to maintain neutrality between the two. As a
consequence horses, mules, arms, and ammunition were permitted to be
freely shipped from our ports for the use of British soldiers, while
British ships were permitted to intercept and capture American ships
laden with American breadstuffs, when consigned to the Boers. In fact,
an “Anglo-Saxon alliance” was more than hinted at by John Hay, then
United States Ambassador to Great Britain, and later Secretary of State,
when he said at London, on April 20, 1898, speaking of England and the
United States:
“The good understanding between us is based on something deeper than
mere expediency. All who think can not but see that there is a sanction
like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work
of the world. We are bound by ties we did not forge, and that we can not
break. We are joint ministers in the sacred work of freedom and
progress, charged with duties we can not evade by the imposition of
irresistible hands.”
To this sentiment Joseph Chamberlain, the British Secretary of the
Colonies, replied in kind on May 13, at Birmingham, saying:
“I would go so far as to say that, terrible as war may be, even war
itself would be cheaply purchased if, in a great and noble cause, the
Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack should wave together over an
Anglo-Saxon alliance. At the present time these two great nations
understand each other better than they ever have done, since, over a
century ago, they were separated by the blunder of a British
government.”
So we come to the close of the recital of the most salient events which
gave rise to the greatest issue save that of independence, and later, of
slavery, with which the American people have ever stood face to face.
Contemporaneous with the growth of the question of imperialism, and
allied to it, another great issue arose,—the problem of the trusts.
A “trust” may be defined as an industrial combination of such huge
proportions as to enable it not only arbitrarily to fix the price of the
finished product in which it deals, through the stifling of competition,
but frequently to determine alone the price of the raw material it uses
and to fix the rate of wages of those whom it employs. Of these great
and dangerous combinations there were formed, during the years 1897 to
1900, a number exceeding all those already in existence. That this was
permitted to be done with the Sherman anti-trust law on the Federal
statute books has puzzled many. Its explanation may be found in the
following candid admission made by Dr. Albert Shaw in the _Review of
Reviews_ for February, 1897:
“The great sound-money campaign of 1896 was carried on by money
contributed by corporations—money voted by the directors out of the
funds held by them in trust for the stockholders. Nobody, probably,
would even care to deny that this is literally the truth.”
When the “great sound money campaign” was concluded, it was but fair, of
course, that those who had given so lavishly should be allowed to
replenish their depleted coffers. And so neither anti-trust laws,
supreme court decisions, nor the cry of protest rising from the people
was allowed to stand in the way of those generous corporations to whom
President McKinley owed so much.
In the last six months of 1898 the movement toward centralization that
meant monopoly was most alarmingly pronounced. During this time there
were filed articles of incorporation by more than one hundred companies
of abnormal capitalization. The most important trusts were:
CAPITAL
Gas trusts $ 432,771,000
Steel and iron 347,650,000
Coal combines 161,000,000
Oil trusts 153,000,000
Flour trust 150,000,000
Electrical combinations 139,327,000
Sugar 115,000,000
Cigarettes and tobacco 108,500,000
Alcoholic 67,300,000
Telephone 56,700,000
Miscellaneous 1,349,250,000
———————
$2,717,768,000
Among those classed as “miscellaneous” were trusts in leather, starch,
lumber, rubber, dressed beef, lead, knit goods, window glass, crockery,
furniture, crackers, sheet copper, paper, acids and chemicals, wall
paper, typewriters, axes, bolts and nuts, salt, saws, rope, twine,
thread, stock yards, matches, refrigerators, potteries, marbles, packing
and provisions.
After the formation of each trust the first step was almost invariably
to limit production by shutting down a portion of the mills controlled
by the combination, thus reducing the number of wage earners. And almost
as invariably the next step was to increase prices. By thus reducing
expenses and increasing receipts the result was, though much of the
trust property had been put in at an enormously inflated valuation, the
watered stock yet earned exceedingly large dividends. The evil was not
only that these unnatural dividends were earned at the expense of the
laborer and the consumer, but that concentration of profits was leading
to congestion of capital in certain sections of the country at the
expense of other sections.
The great friend and helper of the trust-promoter was, of course, the
high protective tariff. Without the tariff, to shut out competition from
abroad, it would be impossible for the domestic concerns to form a close
corporation and arbitrarily to fix prices. But Congress, instead of
attempting to remedy the evil by lowering the tariff, deliberately
raised it, being particularly careful to see that the percentage on
trust-controlled goods was made sufficiently high to render foreign
competition impossible. This led the Philadelphia _Ledger_, a Republican
newspaper, to remark:
“If Congress had any genuine regard for the interests of the people, or
if it were sincere of purpose respecting their common welfare, or in
regard to the proper protection of labor, it would promptly transfer to
the free list every product controlled by a conscienceless and predatory
trust which reduces production, cuts off working people from work and
wages, and increases prices to the tens of millions of consumers.” The
correctness of this view was testified to, before the United States
Industrial Commission, in June, 1899, by no less a personage than Henry
O. Havemeyer, president of the sugar trust, who said:
“The existing [tariff] bill and the preceding one have been the occasion
of the formation of all the large trusts with very few exceptions,
inasmuch as they provide for an inordinate protection to all the
interests of the country—sugar refining excepted. All this agitation
against trusts is against merely the business machinery employed to take
from the public what the government in its tariff laws says it is proper
and suitable they should have. It is the government, through its tariff
laws, which plunders the people, and the trusts, etc., are merely the
machinery for doing it.”
The showing regarding trusts made in the “Commercial Year Book” for 1899
was startling. Its salient features may be thus tabulated:
1899 1898
Number of trusts 353 200
Stock $5,118,494,181 $3,283,521,452
Bonded debt 714,388,661 378,720,091
Stock and bonds 5,832,882,842 3,662,241,543
This shows an increase for the year of 76 per cent. in the number of
institutions and of 60 per cent. in stock and bonded debt. But it shows
more than this. According to the census of 1890 the entire capital
employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries was $6,525,000,000.
A comparison of this figure with the stock and bonds of trusts for 1899
shows that the capitalization of these gigantic combines was equal to 90
per cent. of the entire manufacturing investments of 1890.
It was such significant figures as these that woke the country to a
realization of the imminence and great importance of the trust problem.
It was felt that the most stupendous industrial revolution in the
history of the world was on, because it was realized how closely our
industrial system had approached to complete absorption under
monopolistic control. Industry at large was becoming organized into a
system of feudalized corporations. Each was stifling competition,
discouraging enterprise, and padlocking the gates of opportunity.
Together they were in absolute mastery of the industrial field.
The menacing danger of the situation was early realized, and the
“anti-trust” movement progressed side by side with the opposition to
imperialism. The fight was to be one of individualism against a gigantic
and arrogant plutocracy, the forces of individualism contending for the
doctrines of liberty and equal opportunity as against the reactionary
tendencies of which trusts and imperialism were the supremest
manifestations. In this Titanic struggle it was but fitting that the
Jeffersonian hosts should be marshaled under the leadership of the
brave, aggressive, eloquent, and inspired evangel of the doctrines of
the Fathers—William J. Bryan.
[Illustration: DAVID B. HILL]
RENOMINATION
When the result of the great presidential contest of 1896 was made
known, Mr. Bryan’s political enemies, both in and out of the Democratic
party, loudly proclaimed that “Bryanism”—or “Bryanarchy,” as a
green-eyed relict of Mr. Cleveland’s second cabinet terms it—was dead
and buried. Some said it was “too dead to bury.” And Bryan himself, they
gleefully asserted, had died with the death of ideas to which he was
wedded. Doubtless many of them believed this. The fierce and determined
onslaught of the silver men in that memorable campaign had so wrought
upon the fears of the class of Americans of whom Marcus A. Hanna and
Pierpont Morgan are representative, that, in their nervous hysteria
after their narrow escape, they were in a frame of mind where but little
evidence was required to induce great faith. And, moreover, the decisive
defeat which Bryan had suffered, considered in its probable effect on
his disorganized following, was such as naturally gave birth to the hope
that to the outstretched palms of the repudiated and disowned leaders of
the party, such as Mr. Cleveland, might soon be restored in contrition
the insignia of power and authority.
But even those who most sincerely believed and uproariously heralded the
death of Bryanism and of Bryan continued their flagellations of both as
earnestly as of yore. To them the good old Latin rule “_De mortuis nihil
nisi bonum_” was obsolete and cobwebby.
And so, for almost three years succeeding Mr. McKinley’s election, the
funeral notices of Democracy’s leader were daily published and his
requiems daily sung. But, through all this time, the faith of the allied
forces of reform that their leader was still of the living abode with
them, and, firm in the belief, they were neither faltered nor dismayed,
and never a man broke ranks.
And it was not long before faith that was of the spirit gave way to that
certainty which comes of knowledge that is of the brain and senses. The
first evidence was the remarkable sale and popularity of “The First
Battle.” Another was the increasing demand for Mr. Bryan’s services as
lecturer and public speaker, and the rapturous enthusiasm with which he
was received, excelling, if possible that which greeted the Presidential
candidate. Then, when he fearlessly took a stand against imperialism,
which seemed to be sweeping the country like a great forest fire, and at
once, in response to his appeal, the great Democratic party lined up
against that policy, it became clearly evident that the powers of the
great popular leader had not waned; neither had his influence over the
minds and hearts of the people been lost. Finally, just as he was the
first great public man of the United States to raise his voice in
protest against the abandonment of the Republic, so he was the first to
propose a definite and coherent remedy for the overshadowing evil of the
trusts. This again demonstrated his natural fitness for leadership. Mr.
Bryan first outlined his views at the Anti-Trust Conference held in
Chicago in 1899. Because of its importance, as well as because it was
the first tangible remedy proposed, it is here reproduced:
“I believe we ought to have remedies in both state and nation, and that
they should be concurrent remedies. In the first place, every state has,
or should have, the right to create any private corporation, which, in
the judgment of the people of the state, is conducive to the welfare of
the people of that state. I believe we can safely entrust to the people
of a state the settlement of a question which concerns them. If they
create a corporation, and it becomes destructive of their best
interests, they can destroy that corporation, and we can safely trust
them both to create and annihilate, if conditions make annihilation
necessary. In the second place, the state has, or should have, the right
to prohibit any foreign corporation from doing business in the state,
and it has, or should have, the right to impose such restrictions and
limitations as the people of the state may think necessary upon foreign
corporations doing business in the state. In other words, the people of
the state not only should have a right to create the corporations they
want, but they should be permitted to protect themselves against any
outside corporation.
“But I do not think this is sufficient. I believe, in addition to a
state remedy, there must be a Federal remedy, and I believe Congress
has, or should have, the power to place restrictions and limitations,
even to the point of prohibition, upon any corporation organized in any
state that wants to do business outside of the state. I say that
Congress has, or should have, power to place upon the corporation such
limitations and restrictions, even to the point of prohibition, as may
to Congress seem necessary for the protection of the public.
“Now, I believe that these concurrent remedies will prove effective. To
repeat, the people of every state shall first decide whether they want
to create a corporation. They shall also decide whether they want any
outside corporation to do business in the state; and, if so, upon what
conditions; and then Congress shall exercise the right to place upon
every corporation doing business outside of the state in which it is
organized such limitations and restrictions as may be necessary for the
protection of the public.”
The legislation to be enacted by Congress Mr. Bryan roughly outlined as
follows:
“Suppose that Congress should say that whenever a corporation wants to
do business outside of the state, it must apply to and receive from some
body, created by Congress for the purpose, a license to do business.
Suppose the law should provide three conditions upon which the license
could be issued:
“1. That the evidence should show that there was no water in the stock.
“2. That the evidence should show that the corporation has not attempted
in the past and is not now attempting, to monopolize any branch of
industry or any article of merchandise; and
“3. Providing for that publicity which everybody has spoken of and about
which everybody agrees.”
This plan of Mr. Bryan’s for the suppression of monopolistic trusts is
given here, not especially because of the intrinsic merit it may
possess, but as illustrating one of the important phases of his
character.
When the tariff question was under discussion, Mr. Bryan was an
outspoken advocate of a tariff for revenue only. When the silver
question arose Mr. Bryan wrote and stood squarely upon the first
platform that declared for the “free and unlimited coinage of both gold
and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for
the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.” When the dark cloud of
imperialism rose on the horizon his was the first voice to point out the
danger, and he took an unequivocal position in favor of granting
independence to the Filipinos. And now, at the Trust Conference, while
many joined with him in denunciation of the evil, he alone proposed and
ably defended a definite and explicit remedy. So it has been with every
other question with which Mr. Bryan has had to deal, in his career as a
public man; he has never failed to state his exact position and to take
the American people fully and freely into his confidence. And his
frankness and honesty have been appreciated. Of the thousand delegates
chosen during the first six months of the year 1900 to attend the great
Democratic National convention at Kansas City, those from every state
but two were instructed for Bryan for President. When it is remembered
that this was done in spite of the earnest desire of a number of
well-known Democrats who wished it otherwise, but absolutely dared not
make a fight, the full significance of this great popular tribute to the
defeated candidate of four years before may be understood. It was this
unanimity as regarded the candidate, together with the unanimity
regarding the issue, the feeling of enthusiasm aroused by the one, and
of patriotic fervor excited by the other, that made the Kansas City
convention one destined to be memorable in American history. And while
the name on the lips of every Democrat was the same name as was
pronounced at Chicago four years before, the issue which aroused them by
the compelling force of events was entirely different. Then the question
was: What kind of money shall this nation have, and who shall issue it
and control its volume? Now the question was: What form of government
shall this nation have; shall it remain a Republic, as contemplated by
the fathers,—the world’s beacon light of liberty,—or shall it turn its
face to the past, extinguish its light, and on the dark sea of empire,
littered with the flotsam and jetsam of nations that once were great and
free, set forth toward the orient? The issue was worthy of the man, and
the man, with a reunited and virile Democracy behind him, was prepared
to meet it.
No man who was so fortunate as to be present at the Kansas City
convention can live long enough to forget it. It was epoch-marking not
only for its outward appearance, but for its inward significance. To the
onlooker, stirred by its emotional enthusiasm, by the wildness and
frenzy of its patriotic manifestations, these were its memorable and
significant features. But to him who looked beneath the surface, who
knew and saw the strange combat being waged between one man and many
hundreds of men,—a combat one of the strangest in nature and most
remarkable in its outcome ever waged in a parliamentary body,—it was
this that held him entranced to the end, and sent him home marveling at
that one man’s strength and greatness. It came about in this wise: Of
the hundreds of thousands of Gold Democrats who left the Democratic
party in 1896 because of the silver question, ninety per cent. or more
were anxious to come back and aid in Mr. Bryan’s nomination and
election, now that they believed they saw the Republic itself in danger
at the hand of President McKinley and his advisers. They saw, as did the
Silver Democrats, as did Mr. Bryan himself, that imperialism was to be
the dominating, all-important issue of the campaign. In the shadow of
the great danger of the conversion of the Republic into an empire they
were willing to subordinate all minor differences and join to defeat the
President they had themselves helped to elect four years before. It is
true that to these men “free silver” was still a bugaboo. At the same
time they were convinced that, because of the complexion of the Senate,
with its heavy Republican majority, even should Mr. Bryan and a
Democratic House of Representatives be elected on a free silver
platform, it would be impossible for them, in four years, to enact any
legislation along that line. But nevertheless, after the manner of many
a returning prodigal, they demanded a concession. It was a very modest
and moderate concession they wanted. They asked the party only to
reaffirm instead of reiterating the free silver plank of the Chicago
platform.
It can hardly be denied that to reaffirm is, in effect, to reiterate.
The difference is only in seeming,—and, possibly, that it gives
opportunity for “interpretation” and “construction.” At all events, the
Gold Democrats had early gone to work to secure this concession. They
had been successful in enlisting in their behalf scores and hundreds of
sincere friends of bimetallism in the Democratic party. And when the
delegates were gathered at Kansas City it became evident that a large
majority of them were favorable to the policy of a general reaffirmation
of the Chicago platform without a specific repetition of the demand for
free silver at the ratio of sixteen to one. Not only were the most of
the delegates inclined to this course, but it was advocated, before the
convention met, by a large majority of the influential party leaders. It
was, on the part of the leaders, as of most of the delegates, a sincere
and honest advocacy, by men whose fealty to the doctrine of bimetallism
was undoubted. It was their intent, not to abandon the demand for free
silver,—far from it,—for the platform would reaffirm the demand made in
1896,—but to subordinate it in such a way as would do least damage in
the fight for the preservation of the Republic. Such was their honest
position.