The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

In his work on “The American Commonwealth,” James Bryce put the matter in terse and brilliant language, as follows:—

“The parties are not the ultimate force in the conduct of affairs. Public opinion—that is, the mind and conduct of the whole nation—is the opinion of the persons who are included in the parties, for the parties taken together are the nation, and the parties, each claiming to be its true exponent, seek to use it for their purposes. Yet, it stands above the parties, being cooler and larger-minded than they are. It awes party leaders, and holds in check party organization. No one openly ventures to resist it. It is the product of a greater number of minds than in any other country, and it is more indisputably sovereign. It is the central point in the whole American policy.”

The people have spoken. Democracy is triumphant. Democratic principles have prevailed. They are rooted in the hearts of the common people. The voice of God has spoken. To you, Mr. Cleveland, is entrusted a great task. You took the enemy in flank, you invaded his own territory; you put him upon the defensive, and the defence was unsuccessful, while his offensive operations against the Democratic stronghold crippled and embarrassed. You have the love of the American people. Nourish it; cherish it as the apple of your eye, and your name will go down into history, linked with the name of Jackson, Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Thomas Dolan, a well-known manufacturer, of Philadelphia, told some plain truths in an impromptu speech at the Clover Club banquet in that city, shortly after the election. Some parts of it have become public. Mr. Dolan was asked, jokingly, why “it snowed the next day.” His answer had the pungent, incisive, trenchant quality characteristic of the man. “You ask me,” he said, “why it snowed the next day. If you want an answer, I will give it to you; but I must give it in plain terms, for I can speak in no other way. It ‘snowed the next day’ because there was the most stupendous lying in this campaign of any that I have ever known. It has been said here this evening, that this was a campaign without personality and without mud-flinging. That may have been so in the treatment of candidates, but in reference to others, it was a campaign of shameless lying, vituperation, and calumny. The manufacturers of the country, some of those here to-night, were held up as thieves and robbers who are stealing what belongs to labor. The very men who are giving labor its employment, and are seeking to assure it good wages, were assailed and denounced as its worst enemies. The Democratic press was full of abuse of those who have done their best to build up the prosperity of the country. There never was more unscrupulous lying than there has been in the dishonest and demagogic attempt to array class against class, and it is because of this persistent lying, imposed upon the people for the time being, that ‘it snowed the next day.’” This is, of course, an explanation by a representative Republican, of Republican defeat.

The New York World, of November 20th, gives a better explanation, though not a true one:—

Republican politicians are searching in all manner of out-of-the-way corners for the causes of their party’s defeat. They are carefully overlooking the actual cause which lies open to less prejudiced view. The Republican party was defeated because its politicians have strayed away from honest and patriotic courses. They have worshiped strange gods; they have allied themselves and their party with the plutocratic interests of the country; they have betrayed the people to the monopolists; they have sought to substitute money for manhood as the controlling power; they have tried to buy elections; they have squandered the substance of the country, in order that there might be no reduction in oppressive taxes, which indirectly, but enormously, benefit a favored class. The party is punished for its sins. It has forfeited popular confidence by its misconduct. It has ceased to deserve power, and the people have taken power from it.

Murat Halstead, a deep thinker, wielding a forceful pen, writing about the recent mistakes of the Republican party, says:—

“There was too much ‘Tariff Reform’ and too little attention to practical politics in the conduct of the recent Republican campaign. The mistakes of the Republican party were many. They attempted too much tariff reform and too much ballot reform and too much civil service reform, and strangely mingled too little and too great attention to practical politics. The high character of the Harrison administration was not of the ‘fetching’ sort. There were strong and distinguished Republicans sharply opposed to another Harrison administration, in California, Nevada, Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, and several of the Southern States. In some States, there was grief because he did too much for Senators and too little for Representatives, and in others, the Senators suffered because the Representatives were especially recognized; and there were scores of personal irritations that were nothing in themselves, but in the aggregate, became an element of mischief that was magnified into disaster. The ranks seemed solid toward the close of the campaign, but there were weaknesses, here and there, known to those whose information was from the interior. There were three things that seemed to give assurances of Republican success: First, the country was prosperous, and the economic value of protection seemed to be demonstrated, and nowhere more clearly than in the Homestead strike. Second, it was the testimony of home statistics and foreign news that the McKinley tariff was helping our workingmen, and had a powerful tendency to the transfer of industries to our shores, while the reciprocity treaties were aiding our manufacturers and food producers alike to new markets. Two of the grandest steamships on the Atlantic, one the swiftest ever built, were to hoist the stars and stripes and be transferred from the British navy to our own, and this was understood to be the dawn of an era of restoration of our lost strength on the seas. Third, President Harrison was revealed to the nation in his administration as a man of the highest order of ability, of industry that never wavered, and will that was unflinching and executive, while he was the readiest, most varied, and striking public speaker of his time. We have had no President with more influence with his own administration than he wielded. The Republicans have so long been accustomed to holding at least a veto on the Democratic party, that they could not be aroused to the full appreciation of the danger of giving that party the whole power of Government. The masses of men declined, in this fast age and rapidly-developing country, to be warned by the events of more than thirty years ago. The first surprise was public apathy. There were few displays. It was not a great summer and autumn for brass bands and torches. It was not a great year for newspapers. Those that largely increased their circulation did it outside of presidential excitements and political attractions. The second surprise was the immense registration. Then it was seen that comparative public quietude did not mean lack of interest. Everybody knew something was going to happen. Republicans were cheered, and said: ‘This means the quiet vote. The secret ballot is with us. Times are good. There’ll be a big vote, on the quiet, to let well enough alone. Harrison is a great President, and it is the will of the people that he shall continue his good works.’ The Democrats said: ‘The secret ballot is with us this time. The workingman is dissatisfied. He gets more wages than he does abroad, but he holds that he is robbed of his share of the riches of the land, and the quiet vote is with us. The workshops are for a change.’ There was much in what they said. The workingmen gave the Democrats New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, and the election; but was there ever such a combination of antagonisms gathered into an opposition force, to carry the Government by storm, as that which the Democracy was enabled to make? Contrast the Democratic platforms of Connecticut and Kentucky. They are more flagrantly opposed to each other than the Minneapolis and Chicago papers. Connecticut is rankly Protection, and Kentucky rabidly Free Trade. Both are for freedom. The Democrats joined with the Populists in several States to give Weaver votes, and in other States terrorized, threatened, assaulted, and cheated his opponents.

“Take the money matters; we find the Democracy are red dog, wild cat, rag baby, silver pig, or gold bug, according to the local demands. They are all for Cleveland, however. The very ferocity of the personal factions of the Democratic party in New York was converted into steam power to drive the Cleveland machine. There was emulation in his service, between his old friends and enemies; and the enemies of other days exceeded the friends in the competitive struggle. The Democrats who hoped he would be defeated, and there were many thousands of them, were the most particular of men to vote for him because they felt their future in the party depended upon their ‘record.’ What they wanted was to be beaten in the ‘give-a-way game,’ and they trusted to the last to be able to say: ‘There, you see how it is; we told you he was impossible. We’ve done all we could, and it is just as we said.’

“When the shriekers of calamity are able to harness the prosperity of the country and turn it against the Government; when the beneficiaries of a great policy turn against it and vote it down; when those who lick the cream of good times, hunger and thirst for experimental changes; when opposing interests and factions, principles and purposes, personalities and all the potencies of all the fads, can be united for a common purpose, there are surprises for citizens who have held in a commonplace way, but the unreasonable and inconsistent, the unwarrantable and the illogical, must also be the impracticable.

“It has been remarked of St. Petersburg, that in case of the occurrence of, first, a great flood in the Neva; second, extraordinary high tide; third, a long, strong blow from the gulf, the city must be overwhelmed. The years, the decades, and the centuries come and go without the disaster. It was long understood in the Ohio valley that there would be a flood beating all in history, and competing with Indian tradition, if there happened, in the order set down, these events: (1) during a wintry night, a sudden general rain, followed quickly by a freeze, covering Western New York and Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, West North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, and Indiana with a sheet of ice; (2) if, upon this vast glassy surface, there should fall a series of heavy snows; (3) if, upon the snow, there should come rain, beginning near the Mississippi, which should be full and filling all the streams, locking them from the mouths against speedy discharge; (4) and if there followed rain-storms for a week, so distributed as to boom all the rivers in order from west to east; (5) culminating with three tremendous downpours over all the mountain regions, sweeping from the glazed earth the whole accumulation of snows, and so timed as to tumble all the floods at once into the Ohio, whose channel has been obstructed by the piers of many bridges, and a habit of encroaching upon it, then the river would make a demonstration memorable and marvelous. All this took place, just as we have set it down, five winters ago, and the high-water-mark at Cincinnati is seventy feet above low-water-mark. Up to this, the boast of the old folks in the valley was, that they had seen ‘the flood of ’32,’ and there could never be anything like it. The world did not now-a-days afford such spectacles as they had beheld in ’32! A few dingy old houses had incredible high-water ’32 marks upon it. If the river looked angry, and rushed through a few low streets, the veterans would say: ‘You should have seen the flood of ’32. ’Twas the biggest thing we ever had, or ever will have. But they do say the Indians said, they once hitched canoes to walnut trees away above the ’32 mark; but them Indians was such liars.’ The flood of 1885 beat that of 1832 two feet, and the flood of 1887 was nearly seven feet above the old high-water-mark. Averaging the chances, it will not happen again for one hundred years. The river Rhine has a way of rising at the same time with the Ohio, and was higher in 1885 than it had been in two hundred years. There was favoring the Democratic party this year, such a combination of circumstances as that which made an Ohio flood seem a prodigy. The high-water-mark is astounding. The country is still here. There is something to eat, and even to drink. Such a Democratic disaster will not be due again for a generation.”

John Russell Young, the brilliant journalist, writing in the Philadelphia Evening Star, quoted by the New York Press, of November 19th, has his explanation for the defeat ready: “Communities are like men, like women, like children, like dogs. Why do they do it? Why does a man buy wildcat stocks? Why does a woman rave over a bonnet, or marry a student of divinity? Why? Because we are more or less fools, even as the good Lord made us fools, and if we were not fools, it would be a teasing, tiresome world. Why does a boy go to bed as cross as the roaring forties after his Christmas dinner? He has had too much mince pie. The country has had too much mince pie. It kicks. It kicked after Quincy Adams, the best of all Presidents. It kicked after Van Buren, who was as downy as an Angora cat. It kicked after Arthur, whose administration was sunshine. It kicks after Harrison, the radiant, prosperous Government. Too much mince pie! Cleveland comes in because of his medicinal properties. We must take to our herbs now and then.”

The practical politicians of the Republican party feel it incumbent upon them to give their version of the great defeat. James S. Clarkson, who, for many years, has been a guiding spirit among Republican leaders, of the late verdict says: “It is an order from the American people for a change in the industrial economic policy of the Government.” He charges that the Republican party has lost strength and votes among the rich and among the people of independent means, who now want cheap labor; also among the workingmen, who have come to believe that free trade will cheapen the expense of living, while the Trades-Unions will still keep up their wages. He says: “The result is not a personal defeat of President Harrison, nor really a defeat of the party. It was a Protection defeat, a repudiation of high tariff, a Republican reverse in a field where it put aside all the nobler issues, and staked everything on economic and mercenary issues.”