While President Cleveland was struggling with the difficult situation
in the Treasury, popular unrest was increasing in violence. Certain
startling political developments now gave fresh incitement to the
insurgent temper which was spreading among the masses. The relief
measure at the forefront of President Cleveland's policy was tariff
reform, and upon this the legislative influence of the Administration
was concentrated as soon as the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act had
been accomplished.
The House leader in tariff legislation at that time was a man of
exceptionally high character and ability. William L. Wilson was
President of the University of West Virginia when he was elected to
Congress in 1882, and he had subsequently retained his seat more by the
personal respect he inspired than through the normal strength of his
party in his district. The ordinary rule of seniority was by consent set
aside to make him chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He aimed
to produce a measure which would treat existing interests with some
consideration for their needs. In the opinion of F. W. Taussig, an
expert economist, the bill as passed by the House on February 1,
1894, "was simply a moderation of the protective duties" with the one
exception of the removal of the duty on wool. Ever since 1887, it had
been a settled Democratic policy to put wool on the free list, in order
to give American manufacturers the same advantage in the way of raw
material which those of every other country enjoyed, even in quarters
where a protective tariff was stiffly applied.
The scenes that now ensued in the Senate showed that arbitrary rule
may be readily exercised under the forms of popular government. Senator
Matthew S. Quay of Pennsylvania, a genial, scholarly cynic who
sought his ends by any available means and who disdained hypocritical
pretenses, made it known that he was in a position to block all
legislation unless his demands were conceded. He prepared an everlasting
speech, which he proceeded to deliver by installments in an effort to
consume the time of the Senate until it would become necessary to yield
to him in order to proceed with the consideration of the bill. His
method was to read matter to the Senate until he was tired and then
to have some friend act for him while he rested. According to the
"Washington Star," Senator Gallinger was "his favorite helper in this,
for he has a good round voice that never tires, and he likes to read
aloud." The thousands of pages of material which Senator Quay had
collected for use, and the apparently inexhaustible stores upon which
he was drawing, were the subject of numerous descriptive articles in
the newspapers of the day. Senator Quay's tactics were so successful,
indeed, that he received numerous congratulatory telegrams from those
whose interests he was championing. They had been defeated at the polls
in their attempt to control legislation, and defeated in the House of
Representatives, but now they were victorious in the Senate.
The methods of Senator Quay were tried by other Senators on both sides,
though they were less frank in their avowal. After the struggle was
over, Senator Vest of Missouri, who had been in charge of the bill,
declared:
"I have not an enemy in the world whom I would place in the position
that I have occupied as a member of the Finance Committee under the
rules of the Senate. I would put no man where I have been, to be
blackmailed and driven in order to pass a bill that I believe is
necessary to the welfare of the country, by Senators who desired to
force amendments upon me against my better judgment and compel me to
decide the question whether I will take any bill at all or a bill which
had been distorted by their views and objects. Sir, the Senate 'lags
superfluous on the stage' today with the American people, because in an
age of progress, advance, and aggressive reform, we sit here day after
day and week after week, while copies of the census reports, almanacs,
and even novels are read to us, and under our rules there is no help for
the majority except to listen or leave the chamber."
The passage of the bill in anything like the form in which it reached
the Senate was plainly impossible without a radical change in the rules,
and on neither side of the chamber was there any real desire for an
amendment of procedure. A number of the Democratic Senators who believed
that it was desirable to keep on good terms with business interests
were, in reality, opposed to the House bill. Their efforts to control
the situation were favored by the habitual disposition of the Senate,
when dealing with business interests, to decide questions by private
conference and personal agreements, while maintaining a surface show of
party controversy. Hence, Senator Gorman of Maryland was able to
make arrangements for the passage of what became known as the Gorman
Compromise Bill, which radically altered the character of the original
measure by the adoption of 634 amendments. It passed the Senate on the
3rd of July by a vote of thirty-nine to thirty-four.
The next step was the appointment of a committee of conference between
the two Houses, but the members for the House showed an unusual
determination to resist the will of the Senate, and on the 19th of July,
the conferees reported that they had failed to reach an agreement. When
President Cleveland permitted the publication of a letter which he had
written to Chairman Wilson condemning the Senate bill, the fact was
disclosed that the influence of the Administration had been used to
stiffen the opposition of the House. Senator Gorman and other Democratic
Senators made sharp replies, and the party quarrel became so bitter that
it was soon evident that no sort of tariff bill could pass the Senate.
The House leaders now reaped a great advantage from the Reed rules
to the adoption of which they had been so bitterly opposed. Availing
themselves of the effective means of crushing obstruction provided by
the powers of the Rules Committee, in one day they passed the Tariff
Bill as amended by the Senate, which eventually became law, and then
passed separate bills putting on the free list coal, barbed wire, and
sugar. These bills had no effect other than to put on record the opinion
of the House, as they were of course subsequently held up in the Senate.
This unwonted insubordination on the part of the House excited much
angry comment from dissatisfied Senators. President Cleveland was
accused of unconstitutional interference in the proceedings of Congress;
and the House was blamed for submitting to the Senate and passing the
amended bill without going through the usual form of conference and
adjustment of differences. Senator Sherman of Ohio remarked that "there
are many cases in the bill where enactment was not intended by the
Senate. For instance, innumerable amendments were put on by Senators
on both sides of the chamber... to give the Committee of Conference a
chance to think of the matter, and they are all adopted, whatever may be
their language or the incongruity with other parts of the bill."
The bitter feeling, excited by the summary mode of enactment on the part
of the House, was intensified by President Cleveland's treatment of the
measure. While he did not veto it, he would not sign it but allowed it
to become law by expiration of the ten days in which he could reject
it. He set forth his reasons in a letter on August 27, 1894, to
Representative Catchings of Missouri, in which he sharply commented
upon the incidents accompanying the passage of the bill and in which he
declared:
"I take my place with the rank and file of the Democratic party who
believe in tariff reform, and who know what it is; who refuse to accept
the result embodied in this bill as the close of the war; who are not
blinded to the fact that the livery of Democratic tariff reform has been
stolen and used in the service of Republican protection; and who have
marked the places where the deadly blight of treason has blasted the
counsels of the brave in their hour of might."
The letter was written throughout with a fervor rare in President
Cleveland's papers, and it had a scorching effect. Senator Gorman and
some other Democratic Senators lost their seats as soon as the people
had a chance to express their will.
The circumstances of the tariff struggle greatly increased popular
discontent with the way in which the government of the country was
being conducted at Washington. It became a common belief that the actual
system of government was that the trusts paid the campaign expenses
of the politicians and in return the politicians allowed the trusts
to frame the tariff schedules. Evidence in support of this view was
furnished by testimony taken in the investigation of the sugar scandal
in the summer of 1894. Charges had been made in the newspapers that some
Senators had speculated in sugar stocks during the time when they were
engaged in legislation affecting the value of those stocks. Some of them
admitted the fact of stock purchases, but denied that their legislative
action had been guided by their investments. In the course of the
investigation, H. O. Havemeyer, the head of the Sugar Trust, admitted
that it was the practice to subsidize party management. "It is my
impression," he said, "that whenever there is a dominant party, wherever
the majority is large, that is the party that gets the contribution
because that is the party which controls the local matters." He
explained that this system was carried on because the company had large
interests which needed protection, and he declared "every individual and
corporation and firm, trust, or whatever you call it, does these things
and we do them."
During the tariff struggle, a movement took place which was an evidence
of popular discontent of another sort. At first it caused great
uneasiness, but eventually the manifestation became more grotesque than
alarming. Jacob S. Coxey of Massillon, Ohio, a smart specimen of the
American type of handy business man, announced that he intended to
send a petition to Washington wearing boots so that it could not be
conveniently shelved by being stuck away in a pigeonhole. He thereupon
proceeded to lead a march of the unemployed, which started from
Massillon on March 25, 1894, with about one hundred men in the ranks.
These crusaders Coxey described as the "Army of the Commonweal of
Christ," and their purpose was to proclaim the wants of the people on
the steps of the Capitol on the 1st of May. The leader of this band
called upon the honest working classes to join him, and he gained
recruits as he advanced. Similar movements started in the Western
States. "The United States Industrial Army," headed by one Frye, started
from Los Angeles and at one time numbered from six to eight hundred men;
they reached St. Louis by swarming on the freight trains of the Southern
Pacific road and thereafter continued on foot. A band under a leader
named Kelly started from San Francisco on the 4th of April and by
commandeering freight trains reached Council Bluffs, Iowa, whence they
marched to Des Moines. There, they went into camp with at one time as
many as twelve hundred men. They eventually obtained flatboats, on which
they floated down the Mississippi and then pushed up the Ohio to a point
in Kentucky whence they proceeded on foot. Attempts on the part of such
bands to seize trains brought them into conflict with the authorities
at some points. For instance, a detachment of regular troops in Montana
captured a band coming East on a stolen Northern Pacific train, and
militia had to be called out to rescue a train from a band at Mount
Sterling, Ohio.
Coxey's own army never amounted to more than a few hundred, but it
was more in the public eye. It had a large escort of newspaper
correspondents who gave picturesque accounts of the march to Washington;
and Coxey himself took advantage of this gratuitous publicity to express
his views. Among other measures, he urged that since good roads and
money were both greatly needed by the country at large, the Government
should issue $500,000,000 in "non-interest bearing bonds" to be used
in employing workers in the improvement of the roads. After an orderly
march through parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, in the course
of which his men received many donations of supplies from places through
which they passed, Coxey and his army arrived at Washington on the 1st
of May and were allowed to parade to the Capitol under police escort
along a designated route. When Coxey left the ranks, however, to cut
across the grass to the Capitol, he was arrested on the technical charge
of trespassing. The army went into camp, but on the 12th of May the
authorities forced the men to move out of the District. They thereupon
took up quarters in Maryland and shifted about from time to time.
Detachments from the Western bands arrived during June and July, but
the total number encamped about Washington probably never exceeded a
thousand. Difficulties in obtaining supplies and inevitable collisions
with the authorities caused the band gradually to disperse. Coxey, after
his short term in jail, traveled about the country trying to stir
up interest in his aims and to obtain supplies. The novelty of his
movement, however, had worn off, and results were so poor that on the
26th of July he issued a statement saying he could do no more and that
what was left of the army would have to shift for itself. In Maryland,
the authorities arrested a number of Coxey's "soldiers" as vagrants. On
the 11th of August, a detachment of Virginia militia drove across the
Potomac the remnants of the Kelly and Frye armies, which were then taken
in charge by the district authorities. They were eventually supplied by
the Government with free transportation to their homes.
Of more serious import than these marchings and campings, as evidence of
popular unrest, were the activities of organized labor which now began
to attract public attention. The Knights of Labor were declining in
numbers and influence. The attempt, which their national officers made
in January, 1894, to get out an injunction to restrain the Secretary of
the Treasury from making bond sales really facilitated Carlisle's effort
by obtaining judicial sanction for the issue. Labor disturbances now
followed in quick succession. In April, there was a strike on the Great
Northern Railroad, which for a long time almost stopped traffic between
St. Paul and Seattle. Local strikes in the mining regions of West
Virginia and Colorado, and in the coke fields of Western Pennsylvania,
were attended by conflicts with the authorities and some loss of life.
A general strike of the bituminous coal miners of the whole country was
ordered by the United Mine Workers on the 21st of April, and called out
numbers variously estimated at from one hundred and twenty-five thousand
to two hundred thousand; but by the end of July the strike had ended in
a total failure.
All the disturbances that abounded throughout the country were
overshadowed, however, by a tremendous struggle which centered in
Chicago and which brought about new and most impressive developments
of national authority. In June, 1893, Eugene V. Debs, the
secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, resigned
his office and set about organizing a new general union of railroad
employees in antagonism to the Brotherhoods, which were separate unions
of particular classes of workers. He formed the American Railway Union
and succeeded in instituting 465 local lodges which claimed a membership
of one hundred and fifty thousand. In March, 1894, Pullman Company
employees joined the new union. On the 11th of May, a class of workers
in this company's shops at Pullman, Illinois, struck for an increase
of wages, and on the 21st of June the officers of the American Railway
Union ordered its members to refuse to handle trains containing Pullman
cars unless the demands of the strikers were granted. Although neither
the American Federation of Labor nor the Brotherhoods endorsed this
sympathetic strike, it soon spread over a vast territory and was
accompanied by savage rioting and bloody conflicts. In the suburbs
of Chicago the mobs burned numerous cars and did much damage to other
property. The losses inflicted on property throughout the country by
this strike have been estimated at $80,000,000.
The strikers were undoubtedly encouraged in resorting to force by the
sympathetic attitude which Governor Altgeld of Illinois showed towards
the cause of labor. The Knights of Labor and other organizations of
workingmen had passed resolutions complimenting the Governor on his
pardon of the Chicago anarchists, and the American Railway Union counted
unduly upon his support in obtaining their ends. The situation was such
as to cause the greatest consternation throughout the country, as there
was a widespread though erroneous belief that there was no way in which
national Government could take action to suppress disorder unless it was
called upon by the Legislature, if it happened to be in session, or by
the Governor. But at this critical moment, the Illinois Legislature
was not in session, and Governor Altgeld refused to call for aid. For
a time, it therefore seemed that the strikers were masters of the
situation and that law and order were powerless before the mob.
There was an unusual feeling of relief throughout the country when word
came from Washington on the 1st of July that President Cleveland had
called out the regular troops. Governor Altgeld sent a long telegram
protesting against sending federal troops into Illinois without any
request from the authority of the State. But President Cleveland replied
briefly that the troops were not sent to interfere with state authority
but to enforce the laws of the United States, upon the demand of the
Post Office Department that obstruction to the mails be removed, and
upon the representations of judicial officers of the United States that
processes of federal courts could not be executed through the ordinary
means. In the face of what was regarded as federal interference, riot
for the moment blazed out more fiercely than ever, but the firm stand
taken by the President soon had its effect. On the 6th of July, Governor
Altgeld ordered out the state militia which soon engaged in some sharp
encounters with the strikers. On the next day, a force of regular troops
dispersed a mob at Hammond, Indiana, with some loss of life. On the
8th of July, President Cleveland issued a proclamation to the people of
Illinois and of Chicago in particular, notifying them that those "taking
part with a riotous mob in forcibly resisting and obstructing the
execution of the laws of the United States... cannot be regarded
otherwise than as public enemies," and that "while there will be no
hesitation or vacillation in the decisive treatment of the guilty, this
warning is especially intended to protect and save the innocent."
The next day, he issued as energetic a proclamation against "unlawful
obstructions, combinations and assemblages of persons" in North Dakota,
Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, Colorado, California, Utah, and New
Mexico.
At the request of the American Railway Union, delegates from twenty-five
unions connected with the American Federation of Labor met in Chicago
on the 12th of July, and Debs made an ardent appeal to them to call a
general strike of all labor organizations. But the conference decided
that "it would be unwise and disastrous to the interests of labor to
extend the strike any further than it had already gone" and advised the
strikers to return to work. Thereafter, the strike rapidly collapsed,
although martial law had to be proclaimed and, before quiet was
restored, some sharp conflicts still took place between federal troops
and mobs at Sacramento and other points in California. On the 3rd of
August, the American Railway Union acknowledged its defeat and called
off the strike. Meanwhile, Debs and other leaders had been under
arrest for disobedience to injunctions issued by the federal courts.
Eventually, Debs was sentenced to jail for six months,* and the others
for three months. The cases were the occasion of much litigation in
which the authority of the courts to intervene in labor disputes by
issuing injunctions was on the whole sustained. The failure and collapse
of the American Railway Union appears to have ended the career of Debs
as a labor organizer, but he has since been active and prominent as a
Socialist party leader.
* Under Section IV of the Anti-Trust Law of 1890.
Public approval of the energy and decision which President Cleveland
displayed in handling the situation was so strong and general that it
momentarily quelled the factional spirit in Congress. Judge Thomas M.
Cooley, then, probably the most eminent authority on constitutional law,
wrote a letter expressing "unqualified satisfaction with every step"
taken by the President "in vindication of the national authority." Both
the Senate and the House adopted resolutions endorsing the prompt and
vigorous measures of the Administration. The newspapers, too, joined in
the chorus of approval. A newspaper ditty which was widely circulated
and was read by the President with pleasure and amusement ended a string
of verses with the lines:
The railroad strike played merry hob, The land was set aflame; Could
Grover order out the troops To block the striker's game? One Altgeld
yelled excitedly, "Such tactics I forbid; You can't trot out those
soldiers," yet That's just what Grover did.
In after years when people talk Of present stirring times, And of
the action needful to Sit down on public crimes, They'll all of them
acknowledge then (The fact cannot be hid) That whatever was the best to
do Is just what Grover did.
This brief period of acclamation was, however, only a gleam of sunshine
through the clouds before the night set in with utter darkness.
Relations between President Cleveland and his party in the Senate had
long been disturbed by his refusal to submit to the Senate rule that
nominations to office should be subject to the approval of the Senators
from the State to which the nominees belonged. On January 15, 1894,
eleven Democrats voted with Senator David B. Hill to defeat a New York
nominee for justice of the Supreme Court. President Cleveland then
nominated another New York jurist against whom no objection could be
urged regarding reputation or experience; but as this candidate was not
Senator Hill's choice, the nomination was rejected, fourteen Democrats
voting with him against it. President Cleveland now availed himself of
a common Senate practice to discomfit Senator Hill. He nominated Senator
White of Louisiana, who was immediately confirmed as is the custom of
the Senate when one of its own members is nominated to office. Senator
Hill was thus left with the doubtful credit of having prevented the
appointment of a New Yorker to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court.
But this incident did not seriously affect his control of the Democratic
party organization in New York. His adherents extolled him as a New York
candidate for the Presidency who would restore and maintain the regular
party system without which, it was contended, no administration could be
successful in framing and carrying out a definite policy. Hill's action,
in again presenting himself as a candidate for Governor in the fall of
1894, is intelligible only in the light of this ambition. He had already
served two terms as Governor and was now only midway in his senatorial
term; but if he again showed that he could carry New York he would
have demonstrated, so it was thought, that he was the most eligible
Democratic candidate for the Presidency. But he was defeated by a
plurality of about 156,000.
The fall elections of 1894, indeed, made havoc in the Democratic party.
In twenty-four States, the Democrats failed to return a single member,
and in each of six others, only a single district failed to elect
a Republican. The Republican majority in the House was 140, and the
Republican party also gained control of the Senate. The Democrats who
had swept the country two years before were now completely routed.
Under the peculiar American system which allows a defeated party to
carry on its work for another session of Congress as if nothing had
happened, the Democratic party remained in actual possession of Congress
for some months but could do nothing to better its record. The leading
occupation of its members now seemed to be the advocacy of free silver
and the denunciation of President Cleveland. William J. Bryan of
Nebraska was then displaying in the House the oratorical accomplishments
and dauntless energy of character which soon thereafter gained him the
party leadership. With prolific rhetoric, he likened President Cleveland
to a guardian who had squandered the estate of a confiding ward and to
a trainman who opened a switch and caused a wreck, and he declared
that the President in trying to inoculate the Democratic party with
Republican virus had poisoned its blood.
Shortly after the last Democratic Congress--the last for many years--the
Supreme Court undid one of the few successful achievements of this party
when it was in power. The Tariff Bill contained a section imposing a
tax of two per cent on incomes in excess of $4000. A case was framed
attacking the constitutionality of the tax,* the parties on both sides
aiming to defeat the law and framing the issues with that purpose in
view. On April 8, 1895, the Supreme Court rendered a judgment which
showed that the Court was evenly divided on some points. A rehearing was
ordered and a final decision was rendered on the 20th of May. By a vote
of five to four it was held that the income tax was a direct tax, that
as such it could be imposed only by apportionment among the States
according to population, and that as the law made no such provision the
tax was therefore invalid. This reversed the previous position of the
Court** that an income tax was not a direct tax within the meaning
of the Constitution, but that it was an excise. This decision was the
subject of much bitter comment which, however, scarcely exceeded in
severity the expressions used by members of the Supreme Court who filed
dissenting opinions. Justice White was of the opinion that the effect of
this judgment was "to overthrow a long and consistent line of decisions
and to deny to the legislative department of the Government the
possession of a power conceded to it by universal consensus for one
hundred years." Justice Harlan declared that it struck "at the very
foundation of national authority" and that it gave "to certain kinds of
property a position of favoritism and advantage inconsistent with the
fundamental principles of our social organization." Justice Brown hoped
that "it may not prove the first step towards the submergence of the
liberties of the people in a sordid despotism of wealth." Justice
Jackson said it was "such as no free and enlightened people can ever
possibly sanction or approve." The comments of law journals were also
severe, and on the whole, the criticism of legal experts was more
outspoken than that of the politicians.
* Pollock vs. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429.
* * Springer vs. United States, 102 U.S. 586.
Public distrust of legislative procedure in the United States is so
great that powers of judicial interference are valued to a degree not
usual in any other country. The Democratic platform of 1896 did not
venture to go farther in the way of censure than to declare that "it is
the duty of Congress to use all the constitutional power which remains
after that decision, or which may come from its reversal by the court as
it may hereafter be constituted, so that the burdens of taxation may be
equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its due
proportion of the expenses of the government." Even this suggestion of
possible future interference with the court turned out to be a heavy
party load in the campaign.
With the elimination of the income tax, the revenues of the country
became insufficient to meet the demands upon the Treasury, and Carlisle
was obliged to report a deficit of $42,805,223 for 1895. The change of
party control in Congress brought no relief. The House, under the able
direction of Speaker Reed, passed a bill to augment the revenue by
increasing customs duties and also a bill authorizing the Secretary of
the Treasury to sell bonds or issue certificates of indebtedness bearing
interest at three per cent. Both measures, however, were held up in
the Senate, in which the silver faction held the balance of power.*
On February 1, 1896, a free silver substitute for the House bond
bill passed the Senate by a vote of forty-two to thirty-five, but the
minority represented over eight million more people than the majority.
The House refused, by 215 to 90, to concur in the Senate's amendment,
and the whole subject was then dropped.
* The distribution of party strength in the Senate was:
Republicans, 43; Democrats, 39; Populists, 6. Republicans made
concessions to the Populists which caused them to refrain from voting
when the question of organisation was pending, and the Republicans were
thus able to elect the officers and rearrange the committees, which
they did in such a way as to put the free silver men in control of the
committee on finance. The bills passed by the house were referred to
this committee, which thereupon substituted bills providing for free
coinage of silver.
President Cleveland had to carry on the battle to maintain the gold
standard and to sustain the public credit without any aid from Congress.
The one thing he did accomplish by his efforts, and it was at that
moment the thing of chief importance, was to put an end to party
duplicity on the silver question. On that point, at least, national
party platforms abandoned their customary practice of trickery and
deceit. Compelled to choose between the support of the commercial
centers and that of the mining camps, the Republican convention came
out squarely for the gold standard and nominated William McKinley for
President. Thirty-four members of the convention, including four United
States Senators and two Representatives, bolted. It was a year of bolts,
the only party convention that escaped being that of the Socialist Labor
party, which ignored the monetary issue save for a vague declaration
that "the United States have the exclusive right to issue money." The
silver men swept the Democratic convention, which then nominated William
Jennings Bryan for President. Later on, the Gold Democrats held a
convention and nominated John M. Palmer of Illinois. The Populists and
the National Silver party also nominated Bryan for President, but
each made its own separate nomination for Vice-President. Even the
Prohibitionists split on the issue, and a seceding faction organized the
National party and inserted a free silver plank in their platform.
In the canvass which followed, calumny and misrepresentation were for
once discarded in favor of genuine discussion. This new attitude was
largely due to organizations for spreading information quite apart from
regular party management. In this way, many able pamphlets were issued
and widely circulated. The Republicans had ample campaign funds; but
though the Democrats were poorly supplied, this deficiency did not
abate the energy of Bryan's campaign. He traveled over eighteen thousand
miles, speaking at nearly every stopping place to great assemblages.
McKinley, on the contrary, stayed at home, although he delivered an
effective series of speeches to visiting delegations. The outcome seemed
doubtful, but the intense anxiety which was prevalent was promptly
dispelled when the election returns began to arrive. By going over to
free silver, the Democrats wrested from the Republicans all the mining
States, except California, together with Kansas and Nebraska, but the
electoral votes which they thus secured were a poor compensation for
losses elsewhere. Such old Democratic strongholds as Delaware, Maryland,
and West Virginia gave McKinley substantial majorities, and Kentucky
gave him twelve of her thirteen electoral votes. McKinley's popular
plurality was over six hundred thousand, and he had a majority of
ninety-five in the electoral college.
The nation approved the position which Cleveland had maintained, but the
Republican party reaped the benefit by going over to that position while
the Democratic party was ruined by forsaking it. Party experience during
the Cleveland era contained many lessons, but none clearer than that
presidential leadership is essential both to legislative achievement and
to party success.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Among general histories dealing with this period, the leading authority
is D. R. Dewey, "National Problems," 1885-97 (1907) in "The American
Nation"; but suggestive accounts may be found in E. B. Andrews, "History
of the Last Quarter of a Century in the United States" (1896); in H.
T. Peck, "Twenty Years of the Republic" (1913); and in C. A. Beard,
"Contemporary American History" (1914).
The following works dealing especially with party management and
congressional procedure will be found serviceable: E. Stanwood, "History
of the Presidency" (1898); M. P. Follett, "The Speaker of the House of
Representatives" (1896); H. J. Ford, "The Rise and Growth of American
Politics" (1898); H. J. Ford, "The Cost of our National Government"
(1910); S. W. McCall, "The Business of Congress" (1911); D. S.
Alexander, "History and Procedure of the House of Representatives"
(1916); C. R. Atkinson, "The Committee on Rules and the Overthrow of
Speaker" Cannon (1911). The debate of 1885-86 on revision of the rules
is contained in the "Congressional Record," 49th Congress, 1st session,
vol. 17, part I, pp. 39, 71, 87, 102 129, 182, 9,16, 216, 239, 304.
Of special importance from the light they throw upon the springs
of action are the following works: Grover Cleveland, "Presidential
Problems" (1904); F. E. Goodrich, "The Life and Public Services of
Grover Cleveland" (1884); G. F. Parker, "The Writings and Speeches of
Grover Cleveland" (1890); J. L. Whittle, "Grover Cleveland" (1896); J.
G. Blaine, "Political Discussions" (1887); E. Stanwood, "James Gillespie
Blaine" (1905); A. R. Conkling, "Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling"
(1889); John Sherman, "Recollections of Forty Years in the House,
Senate, and Cabinet" (1895); G. F. Hoar, "Autobiography of Seventy
Years" (1903); S. M. Cullom, "Fifty Years of Public Service" (1911); L.
A. Coolidge, "An Old-fashioned Senator: Orville H. Platt of Connecticut"
(1910); S. W. McCall, "The Life of Thomas Brackett Reed" (1914); A. E.
Stevenson, "Something of Men I Have Known" (1909).
For the financial history of the period, see J. L. Laughlin, "The
History of Bimetallism in the United States" (1897); A. D. Noyes, "Forty
Years of American Finance" (1909); Horace White, "Money and Banking,
Illustrated by American History" (1904).
The history of tariff legislation is recorded by F. W. Taussig, "The
Tariff History of the United States" (1914), and E. Stanwood, "American
Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Century" (1903).
On the trust problem there is much valuable information in W. Z. Ripley,
"Trusts, Pools, and Corporations" (1905); K. Coman, "Industrial History
of the United States" (1905); J. W. Jenks, "The Trust Problem" (1905).
The conditions which prompted the creation of the Interstate Commerce
Commission are exhibited in the report of the Senate Select Committee
on Interstate Commerce, "Senate Reports," No. 46, 49th Congress, 1st
session.
Useful special treatises on the railroad problem are E. R. Johnson,
"American Railway Transportation" (1903); B. H. Meyer, "Railway
Legislation in the United States" (1903); and W. Z. Ripley, "Railway
Problems" (1907).
The history of labor movements may be followed in J. R. Commons,
"History of Labor in the United States" (1918); M. Hillquit, "History
of Socialism in the United States" (1903); "Report of the Industrial
Commission," vol. XVII (1901); and in the Annual Reports of the United
States Commissioner of Labor. Congressional investigations of particular
disturbances produced the House Reports No. 4174, 49th Congress, 2d
session, 1887, on the Southwestern Railway Strike, and No. 2447, 52d
Congress, 2d session, 1893, on the Homestead Strike.
On the subject of pensions the most comprehensive study is that by W. H.
Glasson, "History of Military Pension Legislation in the United States,
Columbia University Studies," vol. XII, No. 3 (1900). Of special
interest is the speech by J. H. Gallinger, "Congressional Record," 65th
Congress, 2d session, vol. 56, No. 42, p. 1937.
Other public documents of special importance are "Senate Report," No.
606, 53d Congress, concerning the sugar scandal, and "Senate Documents,"
No. 187, 54th Congress, 2d session, concerning the bond sales. "The
Congressional Record" is at all times a mine of information. Valuable
historical material is contained in the "New Princeton Review," vols.
I-VI (1886-88), the New York "Nation," the "Political Science Quarterly,"
and other contemporary periodicals.
A vivid picture of political conditions on the personal side is given in
Slason Thompson, "Eugene Field" (1901), vol. I, chap. 10; vol. II, chap.
8.