The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

It was night, yet the streets were not deserted. Suddenly a window of the Ebbitt House was raised, a man stepped on to the balcony out of the window, and in clear, vigorous, and manly tones began to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Windows were raised; the crowd collected around the Ebbitt House. It was the signal for the breaking of a dam. A flood of patriotism burst from the hearts of the hearers; it was the bugle note, calling upon Americans to save their country. Where there had been silence, were now outspoken vows of fidelity and loyalty to the Union. The battle was won that night; not at Gettysburg and Vicksburg[1].

Just so with the people of America in 1892; for years they have endured in silence, murmuring and thinking, heart to heart speaking by responsive heart throbs; not by word. The rich, who had accumulated their wealth by reason of monopolies which were the necessary consequence of the Civil War, men who had laid the foundation of their fortunes by speculating upon the necessities of the government while contending for the very existence of the Union, had, year by year, by a stealthy, yet ever-increasing presumption, begun to assume the possibility of a class distinction, presuming that the possession of wealth entitled them to privileges, and arrogating to themselves mannerisms of the titled classes of Europe, adopting crests, coats of arms, claiming descent from titled foreigners, an exclusiveness in their social relations, disregarding the laws of morality. The women of this would-be aristocratic class, flaunting their jewels and laces in the faces of their poorer sisters, with elevated noses, and garments drawn aside, feared to touch or gaze at the poor but honest mothers and wives of America.

It was not much: it was rank presumption; it was nonsense, absurd. “There’s no such thing possible in America as class distinction; in fact, it does not exist, cannot exist; the ‘Four Hundred’ of New York is a joke, a by-word, a stupendous folly.”

But, good people of the said “Four Hundred,” remember that while the American is neither a Socialist nor an Anarchist, when you presume to make a distinction, socially, between the poor man, his wife, children, and mother, you touch him in the most sensitive part of his being. You may have your villas at Newport, you may ape the English fashionable season in London by a similar one in New York; you may have your steam yachts; you may ride to hounds; your women may marry divorced dukes and puppified sons of lords; but, mark you, claim no privilege, attempt no distinction between yourselves and the poorest honest man and woman in the land. Equality is the jewel that every true American holds most dear. No free son of our Republic will sell this treasure for gold, whether it be offered directly as a bribe or shrewdly tendered under the guise of “protected” wages.

It did not do for the Republican press of the country to demonstrate that Protection brought higher wages to the workingman. They might have proved that by voting the Republican ticket the workingman’s pay would have been a hundred dollars a day; they might have shown him that in point of pocket he would be eternally blest by supporting the party which he deemed identified with those who attempted to force “caste” upon our country. It is not a question of money; the equality of man is the American’s birthright. For it, our fathers sought these shores, contending with privation, enduring untold labor, dangers, and death. For it, our forefathers fought the most powerful nation on earth, when they were but a scattered handful of colonists, scattered from Massachusetts to Georgia. When the attempt was made—that it was attempted, there can be no doubt—to buy the American’s birthright by preaching to him “increased wages,” it failed.

Take every speech of every Republican orator, every bit of Republican literature, every editorial in the Republican papers, all speak from but one text, viz.: “Workmen, farmers, in fact, all ye good people of America, you can make more money under Protection;” which plainly means, “Let Protection and the Republican party (which you designate in your hearts as The Rich Man’s party) continue in power, accumulating wealth, creating class distinctions, and you can have better wages.”

In other words, “Sell us the right to create a Republic like that of Venice, wherein the rich became the privileged class, and we will give you better pay.”

The Democratic press, orators, and literary bureau were no better. They no more understood the feeling of the people, for their continual cry was, “Free Trade, and you will be better off in pocket.” They excoriated trusts, monopolies; they talked of corruption and what would be done to benefit, IN POCKET, the poor man, if the Democratic party came in power; just as blind as their brothers of the Republican party, they appealed to the American pocketbook.

While every Democratic orator knew that he felt the sting of the venomous and growing reptile, “caste,” in no place in the literature of the Democratic party, in no paper, can be found one single reference to the pride of the American in his citizenship, in his equality. It seemed as if each man thought that he alone endured a pang upon the subject of “caste” and social distinction; for, bear in mind, the man with one million will feel the slight and attempted distinction between his family and the family with ten millions, just as keenly as the cashier of a bank will feel the distinction that the president attempts to make between their social positions; the farmer with ten acres feels towards the farmer with a hundred acres, exactly the same as the farmer with a hundred does towards the farmer possessed of a thousand acres.