The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

The Toledo Bee says: “The Republican party is dead. The step backward has been taken, and it was a step back that led the party over the precipice of power into the depths of oblivion. The Democratic party has relegated the boodlers, the spoilsmen, and the factional leaders to the rear. What is there left for us to live for?”

Says the Louisville Courier-Journal: “The people will have none of its high tariffs, and none of its Force Bills; but without its high tariffs and its Force Bills, it is only an organized hunt for official plunder. The people will not support it in its old course, and will not believe its brittle promises of reform.”

“‘High tariff did it,’ said Mr. Harrison; but in taking satisfaction for his defeat out of the Napoleonic McKinley, the President is less than just to the magnetic Blaine; for, if high tariff caused the explosion, despite the ‘reciprocity attachment,’ what might it not have done without that little Pan-American vent-hole?” This from the Philadelphia Record.

The President, had he combined the magnetism of Blaine, the Napoleonic ability of McKinley,—yea, had he, in fact, borne the magical name of Lincoln,—could not possibly have been re-elected, for the people were opposed to the ideas of “caste,” fostered with such care by the members of the Republican party, in whom, in some mystical manner, have become concentrated the wealth and objectionable characteristics which tended to make the Southern cavalier so unpopular in 1860. The people, in their wrath, would have risen against any party so besmeared with the slime of that noxious crime.

The Atlanta Constitution, of November 17th, claims that “the leaders of the two great parties have had a good deal to say during the past few months about ‘the campaign of education.’ In the main, this phrase very correctly describes the work of both parties. Republican speakers and journalists work night and day to convince the people of the benefits of high Protection. On the other hand, the Democrats are equally active in exposing the true inwardness of McKinleyism and class legislation. This educational literature covered the country, and the average voter got a clearer insight of the questions at issue than he ever had before. One effort of this campaign of education was to eliminate personalities; principles and measures were discussed, and the candidates escaped the usual mudslinging. Another result is seen in the sweeping and decisive nature of the vote. The revolution was so complete that the defeated side realized the utter absurdity of indulging in any bitter complaints, with the great mass of American people arrayed against them. Our victory was so crushing, that it absolutely restored something like good feeling; and we find Whitelaw Reid and Chauncey Depew saying pleasant things to Mr. Cleveland at a banquet, and speaking of their defeat in a humorous fashion. This would not have been the case, had the election been close and only a bare majority of electoral votes for the successful ticket. Altogether, the country has good reason to be satisfied with its campaign of education. It has purified our politics, wiped out sectional lines, and made our people more thoroughly American than ever.”

And for the erasure of sectionalism, God be thanked! but that a man of Mr. Clark Howell’s preëminent ability should have wandered around so near to the object of his search, the cause of the Republican party’s defeat, and not found it, is astonishing. In his own home, the State of Georgia, the Empire State of the South, and as editor of the leading paper in the State, that he should be so oblivious to the fact that the election, by the votes of the people, was a protest upon the part of the people against the assumption by the rich, that such a thing as “caste” could be possible in America.

Georgia, of all the Southern States, is preëminently industrial. Oglethorpe, when he first settled on the banks of the Savannah river, was himself surrounded by the poor debtors of England. The Salzburgers, who sought the shores of the uninhabited, uncivilized, new colony, were poor, uncultured people. Georgia never possessed, as a colony or as a State, the aristocratic tendencies of its neighbor, South Carolina. The foremost men have ever been essentially of the people; her settlers largely of the Democratic masses; the names preëminent in her history are the names of industrial New England. So Democratic is and was the State of Georgia, that her most eminent son, Alexander H. Stevens, had to be weaned away reluctantly from the doctrine of which Abraham Lincoln was the personification. Since the war, the State of Georgia more readily adapted herself to the new condition created by the result of the struggle. It was never a State of tremendous landed proprietors. The influx of emigration from the crowded Northern States found readier assimilation in the State of Georgia than in any other Southern State. In that State, the negro sooner realized his responsibilities as a citizen of the South, sooner became convinced that his best and wisest course was to merge himself into the large class of toilers and laborers in the commonwealth. That a man with the opportunity, ability, and brilliancy of Clark Howell, should become so utterly befogged by the mists arising from the marsh of old party cries and principles, should fail to recognize that the tremendous majority accorded the Democratic candidate, was but an exhibition of that spirit which has pervaded the State of Georgia from its embryonic existence on the Savannah river; that Mr. Howell should have forgotten the lesson taught by the forefathers of the Georgians of to-day, that Democracy was one of the essential elements to the happiness of the citizens, settlement, colony, commonwealth, and State, is passing strange. The very negro, upon becoming a Georgian and a citizen, became a Democrat, almost as a matter resulting from the atmosphere he breathed. Georgia’s vast majority for the Democratic nominee was not rolled up except by the aid of the negro, who, in his heart of hearts, is a Democrat, and the appeals of the Republican party to his gratitude, claiming that they were the emancipators of his race, were as futile as was the waving of the bloody shirt in the face of the veterans of the North. The negroes of the State of Georgia joined with their fellow-laborers of the Anglo-Saxon race, to give added weight to the opposition of the masses against “caste” in our country.

The Mail and Express, in an editorial of November 9th, says: “If Benjamin Harrison is defeated, the people of this country, by their ballots yesterday, decided again to try the experiment of the Democratic administration. It is most extraordinary and unusual for the American people to seek a change in administration at a time of unwonted prosperity; to render a verdict in favor of a change, while the working masses are everywhere busily employed, while farmers are reaping their richest harvests, factories running day and night, and building extensions and our foreign trade growing with rapid strides, all under the beneficent influences of Republican policy, wisely and faithfully administered by a President whose conduct of affairs has been conspicuously conservative, successful, acceptable, and clean. If Grover Cleveland has been elected, a change in administration has been ordered. What shall we get in return? We shall see! The triumph of Democracy would mean a radical change in our economical policy. It would mean the selection for Vice-President of a man whose political record has stamped him as unsafe, untrustworthy, and conspicuously unfit for the high office to which he has been called. An ardent advocate of the unlimited issue of greenbacks and fraudulent silver; a bitter opponent of National Banks, and the advocate of State Banks issue; outspoken in his demand for the imposition of the abandoned and inquisitorial income tax, Mr. Stevenson would, after the 4th of March, occupy a place separated from the Executive head of this Government by the frail tenure of a single life. In the Senate, the highest legislative body in the land, over which Mr. Stevenson, as Vice-President, would preside, a Senate which may possibly have a Democratic majority, his influence in favor of economic and financial heresies would be potential. Let the people bear in mind the peace, the happiness, and the prosperity they now enjoy. When anxiety and unrest come, as they speedily would, with the renewed agitation in the next Congress, of an attack upon our protective tariff; when the spindles of our mills are silent, the forges black with ashes, our looms yellow with rust, and unemployed men clamor here as they are clamoring to-day in the streets of London and Lancashire against the reduction of wages, let them listen to the plausible excuses and fine-spun prevarications of the Free Trade tariff reformers, who will be responsible. And if, as Vice-President, he should do the evil he can do by aiding the meddlers with our financial and taxation systems, the honest money men of New York and New England, of Illinois and Indiana, who voted for him because he was associated with their idolized free trade candidate, would have only themselves to thank for the prospect of disaster and panic they might face. They would then pay the penalty of their reckless inconsideration. Protection for American homes, for American workingmen and American farmers, an honest dollar for honest men, and a policy of free trade extension by the beneficent influences of reciprocity, may all suffer assaults in the four years to come, but we can trust the sober, second judgment of the American people, in the light of another but recent experience with the free trade and fraudulent silver Democracy, to do again in 1896 what it did with that party at the close of the first Cleveland experiment, and turn the incompetents out.”

It is most extraordinary and unusual for the American people to seek a change in the administration at a time of unwonted prosperity, but the inward agitation of soul at the thought of great wrongs committed by a pretended beneficent party led to the revolution of ’92, in very much the same manner as inward agitation on another subject brought about that which placed Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential Chair. The American workman is above the American dollar!

The New York World, in an editorial of November 16th, says: “The Iron Trade Review is putting the manufacturers up to a dodge in order to make the people sorry that they voted for Mr. Cleveland. Its advice is that the manufacturers reduce the wages of their workingmen ‘to fortify themselves in advance in view of the increasing probabilities of destructive foreign competition.’ Is this an indication of the kindly feeling entertained by the Protectionists for their workingmen? They have professed that their tax policy was maintained for the purpose of increasing wages. They have been charged with misrepresentation; and they are now advised by one of their organs to prove that the charge is true, by making the wage-earners suffer in order that revenue reform may become unpopular. Nothing could better show the dishonesty of the Protection claim that the tariff exists for the workingman. If that claim were true, the manufacturers would resist every tendency toward downward wages, instead of pushing them down in order to gain an advantage for themselves in a political controversy. The wages of labor are regulated by the supply and demand of the labor market, and the people who would cut down wages, not because they must, but because they want to revenge themselves for a Democratic victory by making the workingman suffer, are the people who have been insisting that the McKinley law repealed the law of supply and demand, and that they are the true and unselfish benefactors of the workingmen. Happily, the next President is a Democrat.”