The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

Now, upon this occasion, Grover Cleveland, after a vacation of four years, has been called once again by the “Common People” to command the Ship of State. Both mates and the whole crew have been placed under his command. They believe of him what the New York World, November 13th, here gives us:—

THE “STUFFED PROPHET.”

“The ‘Stuffed Prophet’—that is the nickname bestowed upon Mr. Cleveland by the newspaper organ of plutocracy, which has for years professed Democracy for the purpose of betraying it.

“The name was bestowed in derision. It was the favorite invention of a malice which mistakes insolence for wit. It was intended for ridicule, but, rightly viewed, it is a title to be worn as an honor.

“It is an honor to Mr. Cleveland that he has never had or merited the approval of the New York Sun. It is a credit to him that that journal is chief among those to whom General Bragg referred when he said, ‘We love him for the enemies he has made.’

“And there is fitness in the nickname, too.

“Mr. Cleveland was a true prophet when he set the face of Democracy towards reform, foreseeing that the country would in due time demand it. He had the gift of the seer, when at the Washington Centennial banquet, he avowed his unfaltering confidence in the wisdom of the people who had so recently overthrown his cause, and his assurance that they would soon come to a juster view, and vote down the policy of monopoly and class privilege and oppressive taxation. They have done it this year.

“And this prophet is stuffed.

“He is stuffed with the virtue which accepts public office only as a public trust;

“Stuffed with the honor which refuses to ‘palter in a double sense’ with words, or even to keep silence when—as at the time of the silver craze—frank utterance seems to promise only destruction for his own and his party’s ambitions;

“Stuffed with sturdy common-sense which ‘sees clear and thinks straight,’ and so commends itself to the ‘plain people’ who love the right and seek justice;

“Stuffed with a foresight unsurpassed by that of any statesman of our time;

“Stuffed with a purity of patriotism which views place and power merely as opportunities to render service to the country;

“Stuffed with unprecedented majorities, the eager tributes of the people in testimony of their approval;

“Stuffed with the confidence of his countrymen, who have called him again into their service in order that wrongs may be righted, oppressions overthrown, errant tendencies checked, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people may not perish from the land;

“Stuffed with the Democracy that means all this, for truly—

“The next President is a Democrat.”

If, as we hope, “Grover Cleveland is stuffed with the virtue which accepts public office only as a public trust,” then he will accept his office as President of the United States as a trust from the “Common People” of our country, and not from the political party who nominated him,—i. e., the Democratic party; he will accept the trust confided in him by the Democracy in its broadest sense—the “Common People” of the land.

If he be “stuffed with honor,” in accepting that trust, he will do so with full cognizance of the fact that in honor bound he is to acquit himself in his high office to which he has been called by the “Common People” of America, as will best satisfy them, and remove those crying evils which call aloud from the hearthstone of every Common Man in America. The most objectionable of all the evils, and the one most prominently considered by the voter last November, was the existence of an attempted class distinction in our country.

If he is “stuffed,” as God grant he is, “with sturdy common-sense, which sees clearly and thinks straight, and so commends itself to the plain people who love the right and seek justice,” his sturdy common-sense will teach him that he has been elected by the “plain people,” and he will “think straight,” that the “plain people” want such legislation and the execution of such legislation as may relieve them—not in pocketbook, but in feeling—from the assumption of a superiority upon the part of the wealthy worshipers at the throne of “caste,” and to that end a graded income tax will be productive of more good and be more efficacious in the accomplishment of an object so near to the “plain people who love right and seek justice,” that it made the plain “Common People” forget old affiliations last November—old ties and associations—and vote for the President-elect and the political party by which he was nominated.

If he be “stuffed with a purity of patriotism which views place and power merely as opportunities to render service to the country,” then when his term of office shall have expired, having rendered that service to the country, and the “Common People” of the country, to do which he was elected President by the “plain people,” he will have endeared himself so to the patriotic “plain people” of the land, having faithfully kept the trust reposed in him by the people, that his name shall go down in the records of the nation associated with the names of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln.

Grover Cleveland is certainly “stuffed” with the confidence of his countrymen, who have called him again into their service, in order that wrongs may be righted, oppression overthrown, arrant tendencies checked, and that “the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, may not perish from the land.” Let us hope that this confidence is well placed, and that now, when he may call to his assistance both branches of the national legislature, he will right those wrongs, and overthrow the oppression of which the people complain; and the chiefest of these is the accumulation of vast sums of money in the hands of families and persons, which creates a danger to “the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The people do believe that he is “stuffed with true democracy, in its broadest sense,” else they never would have elected him. And how can that true democracy be exhibited better than by suggesting such legislation as will cast the burden of taxation upon that class who can so easily bear it—that class which have rendered themselves so entirely obnoxious to the “Common People” of America, those “plain people, who love the right and seek justice,” and who, loving the right, have sought justice by calling him to the position of Executive of the nation? How can Grover Cleveland better right the wrongs of the “Common People” than by urging, as chief of the party in power, the passage of a graded income tax, which would certainly meet with the approval of the “Common People,” by whom he was elected, that thereby funds might be furnished for defraying the expenses of the nation, and thus relieving the burden cast upon the “Common People,” at the same time preventing a continuation of this much-to-be-feared accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few in our country.

A double object would be thus accomplished: First, the primary consideration for which they voted, the abolition of “caste,” sham aristocracy, would be brought about by preventing vast incomes being enjoyed by individuals or families, and the consequent idleness, luxury, selfishness, sensuality, and snobbishness attendant upon the enjoyment of vast incomes, where the recipient remains in idleness. Second, it would afford a cure and relief for the present excessive system of taxation which falls so heavily upon the general mass of the people. Thus, at one time, and by one measure (perfectly consistent with the will of the people by whom he was elected), Grover Cleveland could right most of the wrongs, and give relief to the “Common People,” the “plain people” (so called by the New York World), by whom he has been chosen as chief.