Every Trade Has Its Tricks—I Play One on William McKinley—Far Away
Party Politics and Political Issues
I
There are tricks in every trade. The tariff being the paramount issue
of the day, I received a tempting money offer from Philadelphia to
present my side of the question, but when the time fixed was about to
arrive I found myself billed for a debate with no less an adversary
than William McKinley, protectionist leader in the Lower House of
Congress. We were the best of friends and I much objected to a joint
meeting. The parties, however, would take no denial, and it was
arranged that we should be given alternate dates. Then it appeared that
the designated thesis read: “Which political party offers for the
workingman the best solution of the tariff problem?”
Here was a poser. It required special preparation, for which I had not
the leisure. I wanted the stipend, but was not willing—scarcely able—to
pay so much for it. I was about to throw the engagement over when a
lucky thought struck me. I had a cast-off lecture entitled Money and
Morals. It had been rather popular. Why might I not put a head and tail
to this—a foreword and a few words in conclusion—and make it meet the
purpose and serve the occasion?
When the evening arrived there was a great audience. Half of the people
had come to applaud, the other half to antagonize. I was received,
however, with what seemed a united acclaim. When the cheering had
ceased, with the blandest air I began:
“In that chapter of the history of Ireland which was reserved for the
consideration of snakes, the historian, true to the solecism as well as
the brevity of Irish wit, informs us that ‘there are no snakes in
Ireland.’
“I am afraid that on the present occasion I shall have to emulate this
flight of the Celtic imagination. I find myself billed to speak from a
Democratic standpoint as to which party offers the best practical means
for the benefit of the workingmen of the country. If I am to discharge
with fidelity the duty thus assigned me, I must begin by repudiating
the text in toto, because the Democratic Party recognizes no political
agency for one class which is not equally open to all classes. The
bulwark and belltower of its faith, the source and resource of its
strength are laid in the declaration, ‘Freedom for all, special
privileges to none,’ which applied to practical affairs would deny to
self-styled workingmen, organized into a coöperative society, any
political means not enjoyed by every other organized coöperative
society, and by each and every citizen, individually, to himself and
his heirs and assigns, forever.
“But in a country like ours, what right has any body of men to get
together and, labelling themselves workingmen, to talk about political
means and practical ends exclusive to themselves? Who among us has the
single right to claim for himself, and the likes of him, the divine
title of a workingman? We are all workingmen, the earnest plodding
scholar in his library, surrounded by the luxury and comfort which his
learning and his labor have earned for him, no less than the poor
collier in the mine, with darkness and squalor closing him round about,
and want maybe staring him in the face, yet—if he be a true man—with a
little bird singing ever in his heart the song of hope and cheer which
cradled the genius of Stephenson and Arkwright and the long procession
of inventors, lowly born, to whom the world owes the glorious
achievements of this, the greatest of the centuries. We are all
workingmen—the banker, the minister, the lawyer, the doctor—toiling
from day to day, and it may be we are well paid for our toil, to
represent and to minister to the wants of the time no less than the
farmer and the farmer’s boy, rising with the lark to drive the team
afield, and to dally with land so rich it needs to be but tickled with
a hoe to laugh a harvest.
“Having somewhat of an audacious fancy, I have sometimes in moments of
exuberance ventured upon the conceit that our Jupiter Tonans, the
American editor, seated upon his three-legged throne and enveloped by
the majesty and the mystery of his pretentious ‘we,’ is a workingman no
less than the poor reporter, who year in and year out braves the perils
of the midnight rounds through the slums of the city, yea in the more
perilous temptations of the town, yet carries with him into the darkest
dens the love of work, the hope of reward and the fear only of
dishonor.
“Why, the poor officeseeker at Washington begging a bit of that pie,
which, having got his own slice, a cruel, hard-hearted President would
eliminate from the bill of fare, he likewise is a workingman, and I can
tell you a very hard-working man with a tough job of work, and were
better breaking rock upon a turnpike in Dixie or splitting rails on a
quarter section out in the wild and woolly West.
“It is true that, as stated on the program, I am a Democrat—as Artemus
Ward once said of the horses in his panorama, I can conceal it no
longer—at least I am as good a Democrat as they have nowadays. But
first of all, I am an American, and in America every man who is not a
policeman or a dude is a workingman. So, by your leave, my friends,
instead of sticking very closely to the text, and treating it from a
purely party point of view, I propose to take a ramble through the
highways and byways of life and thought in our beloved country and to
cast a balance if I can from an American point of view.
“I want to say in the beginning that no party can save any man or any
set of men from the daily toil by which all of us live and move and
have our being.”
Then I worked in my old lecture.
It went like hot cakes. When next I met William McKinley he said
jocosely: “You are a mean man, Henry Watterson!”
“How so?” I asked.
“I accepted the invitation to answer you because I wanted and needed
the money. Of course I had no time to prepare a special address. My
idea was to make my fee by ripping you up the back. But when I read the
verbatim report which had been prepared for me there was not a word
with which I could take issue, and that completely threw me out.”
Then I told him how it had happened and we had a hearty laugh. He was
the most lovable of men. That such a man should have fallen a victim to
the blow of an assassin defies explanation, as did the murders of
Lincoln and Garfield, like McKinley, amiable, kindly men giving never
cause of personal offense.