BUSINESS AND POLITICS
A great commercial revival, affecting the whole United States, began
during the Administration of Hayes. Ingersoll had predicted it, in
defining his candidate in 1876, when he declared: "The Republicans of
the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption,
when they come, must come together; that when they come, they will come
hand in hand through the golden harvest-fields; hand in hand by the
whirling spindles and the turning wheels; hand in hand past the open
furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming forges; hand in hand by the
chimneys filled with eager fire, greeted and grasped by the countless
sons of toil." In every section and in every occupation commerce revived
during 1878 and 1879. Manufactures began to invade the South;
mining-booms gave new life to the camps of the Far West; the wheat-lands
of the Northwest, reached by the "Granger" railroads and cultivated by
great power machines, produced a new type of bonanza farming; in the
Southwest and on the plains great droves of cattle produced a new type
of cattle king; and the factory towns of the East began again to grow.
Connecting the various sections, the railroads played a new part, and
built more miles of track in the next ten years than in any decade
before or since. The whole country awoke as from an anaesthetic, tested
its muscles to find that they were stronger than ever, and set to work
again.
The silent evidence of the United States Treasury testifies to the
prosperity of the next ten years. The average expenditures of the United
States from 1850 to 1860 were under $60,000,000; they ranged between
1880 to 1890 from $244,000,000 to $297,000,000 without exhausting the
supply. Yearly, despite the heavy drains upon it, a surplus accumulated
to the embarrassment of the Government and the demoralization of
Congress. The aggregate accumulation for ten years was over
$1,000,000,000.
The disbursements of the United States were growing at a higher rate
than its population, though this was keeping up the traditions of a new
country. From 31,443,321 inhabitants, with which the nation faced the
Civil War in 1860, it had grown to 38,558,371 in 1870, and it was now,
in 1880, 50,155,783. In mobility and activity it had increased even more
rapidly than this, for it was served by nearly three times as many miles
of railway (87,000) in 1880 as when the war broke out. Along the old
frontier the percentage figures for population and railway mileage were
highest, but everywhere a larger population was moving more actively,
and studying itself more intently than ever before. It was also
generating more internal friction than ever. In the silver mines at
Leadville in 1878 had occurred one of the great forerunners of economic
clash. This had been preceded in 1877 by the railway strikes of
Pennsylvania and the East. In California, Dennis Kearney and the Irish
were driving the Chinese from society in the interest of "America for
Americans." The murders by the "Molly Maguires" had brought condign
punishment upon the lawless in the anthracite region; and throughout the
East men were vaguely conscious of a secret society that called itself
the Knights of Labor.
Complexity, class interest, and the problems at once of labor and of
capital, thrust themselves upon a society that had occupied its
continent and used most of its free land. The Centennial had revived the
study of American history from patriotic reasons. An intense interest in
self-analysis now kept this alive, as Henry Adams, James Schouler, and
John Bach McMaster devoted themselves to a scrutiny of historic facts,
as colleges began to create chairs of American history, as James Ford
Rhodes retired from his office to his study to write the history of his
own times. In the next few years associations for the study of political
economy, political science, sociology, and history multiplied the
testimonies to the existence of a new nation.
It was many years before the study of history and institutions reached
the eighties and began to place events in their true proportion. Then it
appeared that there was in fact a fundamental economic problem and that
the political issues of the decade faced it from various angles.
The United States had nearly reached its greatest capacity in production
by 1880, and was no longer able to consume its output. Through its first
century there had been a rough plenty everywhere,--enough food, enough
work, and free land,--so that the industrious citizen need never go
hungry, although he was rarely able to acquire great wealth. Men had
worked with their own hands and with the labor of their beasts of
burden, as men had ever worked. Their land had appeared, indeed, to be
the land of opportunity. Population had doubled itself in a short
generation, and America had called upon the oppressed of Europe to aid
in reclaiming the plains and forests. With all the labor and
opportunity, there had rarely been either an overproduction or a lack of
work.
The industrial revolution changed the nature of American society in many
directions. Through an improved system of communication, whose results
were first visible between 1857 and 1873, it had broadened the realm to
be exploited, brought the rich plains of the West into agricultural
competition with the Middle West and the East, and enabled an increased
production of staples by lessening freights and widening the area of
choice. As the result of rapid communication grain, cotton, and food
animals increased more rapidly than population. The use of manures and a
more careful agriculture on the smaller farms--and all the farms were
growing smaller--further swelled the productivity of the individual
farmer.
Machinery increased the capacity of the laborer as transportation
widened his choice of home. The factories, as they were reorganized in
the new period of prosperity, found that invention had lessened the need
for labor and increased the product. Machine tools in agriculture, in
iron and steel, in textiles, in shoemaking, rendered the course of
manufacture nearly automatic, and when steam neared its limit in
dexterity active minds could see electricity holding out a new promise.
In 1880 population and the capacity to consume American products were
growing less rapidly than the power to produce. The United States was
finding every year greater difficulty in selling all its output. It was
possible to foresee the day when overproduction might be a menace unless
there should be some reorganization of society to meet the new problem.
Pending the arrival of that reorganization, prices fell.
A study of the prices of standard commodities shows that there was a
constant, moderate decline after the Civil War. During the war nominal
prices, expressed in depreciated greenbacks, rose far above the normal,
but when corrected to a gold basis they show little change. At the end
of the war, however, the steady decline set in; by 1880 it was
perceptible, and by 1890 it had come to be generally admitted. It
continued until 1900, when the larger production of gold and an extended
use of bank credits and checks, increased the volume and mobility of
currency and started a general rise in prices. Inflationists believed,
in the eighties, that the falling prices were due to an appreciation of
gold, and demanded more money because they so believed; but
overproduction appears to give a better explanation of the decline than
gold appreciation. In the falling prices may be seen a proof of the
enlarged production and a justification of serious study of remedial
measures.
Solutions, intended to restore good prices and to correct social evils,
became numerous as the eighties advanced. Tariff reformers claimed that
the tariff was a vexatious interference with proper freedom of trade,
without which a foreign market for American surplus could not be
obtained. The protected manufacturers retorted that only through a
higher tariff could manufactures be developed and an enlarged consuming
population of factory workers be created at home. A Western economist
brushed both these aside and found the key to the situation in the
disappearance of free land, and urged a single tax upon land as a
panacea. United labor found the cause to be unrestricted immigration.
Too much government, with its extravagance and corruption, was a cause
in the mind of extreme theoretical democrats. Too little government was
equally responsible for the discords, in the eyes of growing groups of
socialists and communists.
Before 1890 the United States was involved in an elaborate discussion of
its troubles and their causes, but in 1880 the period had only just
begun and its trend was not clear to the political leaders who were yet
quarreling over the spoils of office. Hayes was ending his term in
disfavor, and was passing into the jurisdiction of the historians, which
was much more kindly disposed toward him than was that of his
contemporaries. He had gone into office without being the leader of his
party and without having a single definitive issue. He had alienated one
faction after another; while in Congress, in which both houses were
never Republican, it was never possible to pass constructive laws. The
fight for the next nomination began soon after his inauguration.
Grant and Blaine were the most probable candidates for the Republican
nomination as the spring of 1880 advanced. For the former there was a
feeling of affection among the senatorial crowd, headed by Roscoe
Conkling, who had been so severely disciplined by Hayes. The refusal of
the President to allow the officials of the United States to engage too
actively in politics had brought about the dismissal of Arthur and
Cornell from their posts, and a prolonged quarrel with the Senate. Hayes
had won here, but the defeated leaders turned upon his Southern policy,
demanded a "strong" candidate who would really keep the South in check,
and called for Grant as the only strong man who could lead his party.
Grant was willing in 1880 as he would have been in 1876. Upon his return
from his trip around the world his candidacy was pressed and had strong
support among Civil War veterans and men who were displeased with Hayes.
Blaine, too, was still a candidate, drawing his strength from men of the
same type as those who stood for Grant. He might have secured the
nomination had he not been opposed by the Secretary of the Treasury,
John Sherman, whose friends thought his distinguished service in the
cause of hard money entitled him to a reward. A special element in
Sherman's strength was a group of pliant negro delegates, from the
Southern wing of the party, which was brought to Chicago under close
guard, fed and entertained in a suite at the Palmer House, and voted in
a block as Sherman's managers directed. None of these three, Grant,
Blaine, and Sherman, could please the reform element, that found its
choice in Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont.
The convention at Chicago was marked by the fight of Conkling to secure
unity and the nomination for Grant, and by the stubbornness with which
the opposing delegates held out against a third term and for their own
candidates. In the end the deadlock was broken when the followers of
Blaine and Sherman shifted to the latter's floor manager, James A.
Garfield, and gave him the nomination on the thirty-sixth ballot. The
Vice-Presidency was thrown to the Conkling men, falling upon Chester A.
Arthur, who accepted it against the desires of his leader. The platform
was a "code of memories" as it had been in 1876 and 1872, congratulating
the party on its successes of the past and having no clear vision of the
future.
The Democratic party in 1880 was without leader or issue, as it had been
since 1860. Tilden, who might have been renominated and run on the
charge that he was counted out in 1876, was sick. He was unwilling to
run unless the demand were more spontaneous than it appeared to be. In
its perplexity the party turned to a military hero who called himself a
Democrat and had been passed over in 1876. General Winfield Scott
Hancock had never been in active politics, but was now nominated over a
long list of local candidates. William H. English, of Indiana, who was
known to have money, and was believed to be ready to use it in the
campaign, was the vice-presidential candidate.
The canvass of 1880 was fought during a prosperous summer on issues that
were largely personal. As Sherman said of Ohio in 1879, so he might have
said of the country in 1880, that "the revival of industries and peace
and happiness was a shrewd political trick of the Republicans to carry"
the United States. Following their practice for three campaigns, the old
line speakers dwelt upon the conditions in the South. An Indiana rhyme
"for young Democrats" ran:--
"Sing a song of shotguns,
Pocket full of knives,
Four-and-twenty black men,
Running for their lives;
When the polls are open
Shut the nigger's mouth,
Isn't that a bully way
To make a solid South?"
But the audiences were unresponsive. An old political reporter remembers
being in the national headquarters late in the campaign, and hearing
Blaine, who had been stumping for Garfield, say, "You want to fold up
the bloody shirt and lay it away. It's of no use to us. You want to
shift the main issue to protection." Not until the campaign was nearly
over did a real issue emerge.
The protective tariff had not played a large part in any campaign since
1860. In 1868 and 1872 both parties had looked forward to the reduction
of revenue to a peace basis, adopting mild planks to that effect. In
1876 the topic had been more prominent in the platforms, but not in the
canvass. In 1880 Hancock was questioned on the tariff during one of his
speeches. The question was probably unpremeditated, but it took the
candidate unaware, for as an officer in the regular army he had never
given the matter thought. His evasive answer, that the tariff was a
local issue only, gave an opening to his opponents, who forced the
tariff to a prominent place in the few remaining days before election.
They made much of Hancock's ignorance, and perhaps by this maneuver
offset the disadvantage done to Garfield by a forged letter, which
purported to show him as a friend of cheap labor and Chinese
immigration. Garfield and Arthur were elected by a small plurality over
Hancock. No one received a popular majority, for a third candidate,
named Weaver, headed a Greenback-Labor ticket and polled 308,000 votes.
General James A. Garfield would have become Senator from Ohio in 1881
had not his election transferred him to the Presidency. The fifty years
of his life covered a career that was typically American. The son of a
New England emigrant, he was born in the Connecticut Reserve in Ohio. He
worked his way from the farm through the log school to college. His
service on the towpath of the Ohio Canal, in the course of his
education, became a strong adjunct to his popularity among the common
people. He taught Latin and Greek after leaving college, studied law,
worked into politics, and went to the front upon the call for troops. He
left the war a major-general to enter Congress, in 1863, where he sat
until his election to the Senate in 1880. He was the friend of John
Sherman and had been the manager of his campaign. Like his friend, and
like most Ohio Republicans, he believed that the tariff was one of the
bases of prosperity in his State. In his campaign a young Cleveland
merchant named Hanna raised funds among the local manufacturers on the
plea that Republican success and their interests would go hand in hand.
In his inaugural address, however, Garfield said nothing of the new
issue which was threatening to enter politics, but dwelt upon the
supremacy of law, the status of the South, hard money, religious
freedom, and the civil service.
The Republican party had been left broken and in hostile camps by
President Hayes; Garfield tried in his Cabinet to change this and "to
have a party behind him." The State Department went to his rival and
ally, Blaine, whose personal following was larger than that of any other
American politician. The independent Republicans, who had seceded in
1872 and had muttered ever since, were pleased by the elevation of Wayne
MacVeagh, a Pennsylvania lawyer, to the post of Attorney-General. A
friend of Conkling, who had made a striking record in the New York
Post-Office through two terms, Thomas L. James, became Postmaster-General.
The sensibilities of the West, always jealous of the East in matters of
finance, were appeased by the selection of William L. Windom, of
Minnesota, as Secretary of the Treasury, for "any Eastern man
would be accused of being an agent or tool of the 'money kings' and
'gold-bugs' of New York and Europe." The Cabinet as a whole was received
with favor, but the harmony which its members promised was soon
disturbed.
The appointment of Blaine as Secretary of State, which Garfield had
determined upon a few days after his election, was a blow to Roscoe
Conkling. Hayes had struck at Conkling in removing Arthur and Cornell.
Now when Garfield decided to please himself in the New York
collectorship, Conkling saw in the act the hand of Blaine. He fell back
upon the practice of senatorial courtesy, and held up the confirmation
of the appointment. When he found himself unable to coerce the
President, he broke with him as he had broken with Hayes, and this time
he and his colleague from New York, Thomas Collier Platt, resigned their
seats and appealed to the New York Legislature, then in session. The
move was not without promise. Cornell was now Governor of New York.
Arthur, with the prestige of the Vice-Presidency, left his chair in the
Senate to work for the reelection and triumphant return of Conkling and
Platt, on the doctrine that the appointments of a President must be
personally acceptable to the Senators from the State concerned. But the
New York Legislature failed to give the martyrs their vindication, and
permitted them to remain in private life. Their friends, the
"Stalwarts," ceased to support Garfield.
James, who was not enough a follower of Conkling to emulate him,
remained in the Post-Office, where he had already found wholesale
corruption. It had been the practice of the Post-Office to classify the
mail routes according to their method of transportation, and to mark
those running by stage or rider by a star on the general list. These had
come to be known as the "star routes." The contracts for the star routes
were flexible in order to meet the shifting needs of the Western
population that lived away from railways and depended upon the
stage-coach. When the business of any route justified a better service
than it was receiving, the Department was at liberty to increase the
service, hasten speed, and raise the pay without a re-letting of the
contract. During the latter seventies the growth of settlement
throughout the remoter West had justified a large increase in star-route
costs, but James discovered not only legitimate increase but collusive
fraud. The official in charge, in collusion with former Congressmen who
"knew the ropes," and with the mail contractors, had awarded original
contracts to low bidders who had no intention of fulfilling their bids.
After the letting of contracts the compensation had been increased
without investigation or reference to actual needs.
The unearned profits had been shared by the promoters and the dishonest
officials, and some of it had gone into the Republican campaign fund. A
former Senator, Dorsey by name, who was indicted for fraud in 1882, had
been Secretary of the Republican National Committee in 1880, and had
been hurried to Indiana to save that State. He did this so effectively
that his friends gave him a dinner, which Arthur attended, and at which
the allusions to his methods in Indiana were but loosely veiled. Brady,
the official in the Post-Office, had collected the usual assessments on
federal office-holders for Garfield's campaign fund. When he and others
were threatened with criminal prosecution they produced letters by which
they hoped to prove that Garfield was cognizant of and had approved
their financial methods. How far they might have succeeded in blackening
the President and stopping his prosecutions must remain unknown, for he
was shot on July 2, 1881, while on his way to a college celebration, and
died on September 19.
The murderer of Garfield declared to the policeman who arrested him, "I
am a Stalwart and want Arthur for President." It was soon learned that
he was a disappointed candidate for office, and irresponsible Washington
gossip soon had it that Garfield's friends wanted him to hang, while
Arthur's thought he was only insane. The murderer's sister, in an
incoherent book based on his story, asserted, "Yes, the 'Star-Route'
business killed Garfield! The claim, 'The Stalwarts are my friends,'
hung Guiteau!" He was perhaps insane, and was certainly irresponsible,
but his crime, coming simultaneously with the notoriety of the
star-route frauds and the demands of Conkling, emphasized the pettiness
of factions and the need for a reform in the civil service.
The illness of Garfield dragged on through eleven weeks in the summer of
1881, with bulletins one day up and the next down. The strain told on
every one in the Administration. The prospect of Arthur's succession
called attention to the fact that the Vice-President is rarely nominated
for fitness, but is chosen at the end of a hot convention, in
carelessness, or to placate a losing side. It led soon to the passage of
an adequate Presidential Succession Act. The death of Garfield threw the
control to the Republican faction that disliked him most.
Blaine, the head of Garfield's Cabinet, was most directly affected by
the catastrophe. He had stepped from the Senate into the State
Department at Garfield's request. While he was a receptive candidate for
the Presidency this post suited his needs and gratified his taste. He
loved business and liked to associate with men. He had a diplomatic
vision that led him to formulate a more constructive policy than most
Secretaries have had.
With England, Blaine found negotiations upon the Isthmian Canal pending,
having been taken up by Hayes. His attitude in his notes of 1881 failed
to meet the approval of Great Britain, and ignored obligations that the
United States had long before accepted. But it pointed to an American
canal and was part of his larger scheme. His America was inclusive of
both continents, and drew him to hope for larger trade relations in the
Western Hemisphere. With the approval of Garfield he had started to
mediate in South America, in a destructive war between Chile and Peru.
He had on foot, when Garfield died, a scheme for a congress of the
American States in the interest of a greater friendliness among them.
The invitations for this gathering had just been issued when Arthur
reorganized his Cabinet, brought F.T. Frelinghuysen in as Secretary of
State, and let Blaine out. There was no public office ready for him at
this time, so he retired to private life and the historical research
upon which his _Twenty Years of Congress_ was founded. Jefferson Davis
had just brought out his _Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government_,
while the Yorktown centenary, like the centennial of independence, had
stimulated the market for historical works.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The United States Census of 1880 is more elaborate and reliable than its
predecessor of 1870, and may be supplemented to advantage by H.V. Poor,
_Manual of the Railroads of the United States for 1880_, which contains
a good sketch of railroad construction, and by R.P. Porter, _The West
from the Census of 1880_ (1882). E.E. Sparks, _National Development_ (in
_The American Nation_, vol. 23, 1907), is a useful survey of the years
1877 to 1885, and contains a good bibliographical chapter. The
bibliographies in Channing, Hart, and Turner's _Guide to the Study and
Reading of American History_ (1912) are specially valuable for the years
1876 to 1912. E.B. Andrews, _The United States in Our Own Time_ (1903),
is discursive and entertaining. Special phases of material development
may be reached through D.R. Dewey, _Financial History of the United
States_; T.V. Powderly, _Thirty Years of Labor_ (1889); H. George,
_Progress and Poverty_ (1879; and often reprinted), and the Aldrich
Report on Prices (52d Congress, 2d session, Senate Report, No. 1394).
Many interesting details are to be found in W.C. Hudson, _Random
Recollections of an Old Political Reporter_ (1911); and J.F. Rhodes has
touched upon this period in his essays, among which are "A Review of
President Hayes's Administration in the Light of Thirty Years" (_Century
Magazine_, October, 1909); "The Railroad Riots of 1877" (_Scribner's
Magazine_, July, 1911); and "The National Republican Conventions of 1880
and 1884" (_Scribner's Magazine_, September, 1911). Among the economic
journals started in the eighties, and containing a wealth of scholarly
detail for contemporary history, are the _Quarterly Journal of
Economics_ and the _Political Science Quarterly_.