The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

The people accepted the result, as did the people of Homestead starvation and distress, because its presence at every hearth became a matter of trifling consequence; each hearth of the poor “Common People” of America is illuminated and warmed by the patriotic fires lighted thereon by our forefathers in 1776. The law must be obeyed! As long as that law exists, unrepealed, unmodified, or unamended, it must be obeyed! And the might of the people, the “Common People,” the Abraham Lincoln party, the Andrew Jackson party, the Thomas Jefferson party, and the Grover Cleveland party, all guarantee the enforcement of every law upon our statute-books. And the chiefest of these is the Constitution of the United States of America, wherein is guaranteed the franchise of every citizen; wherein is declared that the “majority shall rule in America.” The poor, the “Common People,” have suffered defeat in their strikes and attempted resistance to the claim of social difference existing in our country. They have borne the arrogance, insults, and wrongs inflicted by a sham aristocracy. All attempts at correction of the evil have proved abortive.

On November 8, 1892, the “Common People” resorted to that most efficacious of remedies in this great Republic, the ballot-box; and their victory was as great and pronounced as their suffering had been severe in the past. As the fruit of their victory, as in 1860, they will place in the Presidential chair at Washington a MAN OF THE PEOPLE—Grover Cleveland—whom they believe to be honest, as they believed that Abraham Lincoln was honest, in 1860. They have elected the men of their choice, men representing the “Common People,” to both branches of the Legislature of the National Government. They have selected those who will express the sentiments of the “Common People” in the legislative halls of the nation. They, the “Common People,” will be heard through their representatives in the Congress of the Union.

From the sad picture of unsuccessful strikes, starvation, and destitution, let us turn to the more pleasing picture of the possibilities offered by this exhibition of the POWER OF THE PEOPLE.

Carnegie, Frick, Webb, and others, have enjoyed a transient, delusive dream in which the delights of victory were enjoyed for the moment. Now comes the time of the people! They have learned that their power does not lie in associations, amalgamations, and organization. It lies in the selection by the majority, at the ballot-box, of representatives who will express the will of the people in making the laws of the land, such laws as will enforce and insure equality, the extinction of “caste,” and the protection of the poor men, who constitute the larger portion of the population of our country, and are therefore greater, being the majority on election day, than the rich, sham aristocrats, who have insulted, jeered, and snubbed the poor during the past twenty-five years.

Now will come the crucial test of the honesty and fidelity reposed, by the people, in the administration and legislative bodies elected by them. Should they prove recreant and traitors to the trust reposed in them, it would be the first time in the history of the nation (with possibly the single exception of John Tyler, who became President by the death of William Henry Harrison). Then, should the will of the people become manifest through the agency of their representatives, in Congress assembled, whereby the present laws be repealed; if it become evident that it was the will of the people that the Constitution of the United States should be amended, so as to be in accordance with the laws the enactment of which the people demanded, the legislators would be obliged to so amend and change the Constitution of the United States to make it consistent with the will of the people. Rock and foundation of the edifice of the Federal Government, the Constitution as it is, that which is more powerful than even the Constitution is the will of the people, the majority of the citizens of the Union, irrespective of wealth or assumed social position. It has been demonstrated that by some peculiar kind of method the wealth of the nation is becoming centralized in the hands of a few families and persons who render possible the construction of an oligarchy similar to that existing in the Republic of Venice.

Suppose that the people should demand and insist upon the passage of an income tax for the support of the Federal Government, which would relieve them, the “Common People,” from paying for the privileges enjoyed by the rich, of living in a Republic and the security which their property there enjoys.

And, suppose that the sham aristocracy should cry, “Inherent Rights,” as they would; the people might respond that it is not a question as to the Inherent Right of Mr. Astor, Mr. Vanderbilt, Mr. Rockefeller, et al., to possess, under the present system of laws, any amount of property. It is a mere question of the Will of the People. Many good, learned, and great Constitutional lawyers have argued, and with much apparent truth, that the federation of States prior to 1865 was but a mutual copartnership entered into by the sovereign States, springing from the original thirteen colonies, constituting but a copartnership, surrendering no right to the firm or copartnership except such rights as had been specifically named in the Federal Constitution.

Without entering into the legal aspects of the case, as to whether these claims be just or not; without assuming to know whether the nullification proposed by John C. Calhoun was legally sound; without discussing the question whether South Carolina and the other States of the South had a right to secede and disintegrate the Union; assuming that they had the right, inherently, and to draw a parallel to the assumed Inherent Right of the rich of America under the laws and the Constitution as they now exist, their attention might be attracted profitably to the lesson that was taught the minority in the South when they assumed to exercise Inherent Rights contrary to the wishes of the majority. 2,800,000 bayonets, with the flag of the Union floating over them, was conclusive argument that the Inherent Rights claimed by the Southern States were actually Wrongs in a Republic.

“Vox populi, vox Dei.” The voice of the people, the majority, is the voice of God in a Republic, from which there is no appeal. Seek it, as the South did in 1861, and the result will be the same. The Majority will rule.

Suppose that the Common People should demand a repeal of all the revenue laws, a repeal of all tariff duties and protection which did not result in direct benefit to them; suppose that they should insist that, except so far as protection benefited them (the “Common People”) by an increase of wages, which should be arrived at by a fair adjustment of the conflicting interests of capital and labor, adjusted by a board of arbitration selected by them, the Common People; suppose that the people should demand that these tremendous incomes enjoyed by the Vanderbilts, Astors, Goulds, Carnegies, Fricks, and others, should pay the pensions of the Federal soldiers who fought for the preservation of the Union; suppose the people should demand that the expenses of the Federal Government, instead of being levied upon them, should be levied upon the incomes of those who remained at home in safety during the four years of the Civil War; who, while far away from the field of battle, have speculated upon the necessities and needs of the nation, who have utilized that protection, born in a spirit of patriotic desire to furnish means for the support of the defenders of the Union, emanating from patriotic principles of the Abraham Lincoln Republican party; suppose that the people should demand that they—not out of the accumulated mass, but out of the interest upon the amount accumulated under existing laws—which said laws the people, through their representatives, shall deem wise to change—requiring that in the future these masters of immense wealth shall contribute a share to the defraying of the expenses of the Government commensurate with the advantages they have derived, from the load of debt, in the shape of pensions and otherwise, occasioned by the Civil War, wherein the Union was preserved.