The railway issue emerged in 1880 when the Republicans, boasting that under their administration railways had increased "from thirty-two thousand miles in 1860 to eighty-two thousand miles in 1879," pronounced against any further grants of public domain to railway corporations. The Democrats went on record against discriminations in favor of transportation lines, but left the subject with that pronouncement. Four years later the subject had taken on more precision. The Republicans favored the public regulation of railway corporations and indorsed legislation preventing unjust discriminations and excessive charges for transportation, but in the campaign of 1888 the overshadowing tariff issue enabled them to omit references to railway regulation. The Democrats likewise ignored the subject in 1884 and 1888. In 1892 the question was overlooked by the platforms of both parties, although the minor parties were loudly demanding action on the part of the Federal Government. The old parties agreed, however, on the necessity of legislation protecting the life and limb of employees engaged in interstate transportation.
Even before the Civil War, the labor vote had become a factor that could not be ignored, and both old parties consistently conciliated it by many references. The Republicans in 1860 commended that "policy of national exchanges which secures to the workingmen liberal wages." The defense of the protective system was gradually shifted by the Republicans, until, judging from the platforms, its continuation was justifiable principally on account of their anxiety to safeguard the American workingman against "the pauper labor of Europe." The Democrats could not overlook the force of this appeal, and in their repeated demands for the reduction of the tariff they announced that no devotion to free trade principles would allow them to pass legislation which might put American labor "in competition with the underpaid millions of the Old World." In 1880, the Democratic party openly professed itself the friend of labor and the laboring man and pledged itself to "protect him against the cormorant and the commune." In their platform of 1888, the Democrats promised to make "due allowance for the difference between the wages of American and foreign labor" in their tariff revisions; and in 1892 they deplored the fact that under the McKinley tariff there had been ten reductions in the wages of the workingmen to one increase. In the latter year, the Republicans urged that on articles competing with American products the duties should "equal the difference between wages abroad and at home."
Among the more concrete offerings to labor were the promises of homesteads in the West by the Republicans—promises which the Democrats reiterated; protection against Chinese and coolie labor, particularly in the West, safety-appliance laws applicable to interstate carriers, the establishment of a labor bureau at Washington, the prohibition of the importation of alien laborers under contract, and the abolition of prison contract labor. On these matters there was no marked division between the two old parties; each advocated measures of its own in general terms and denounced the propositions of the other in equally general terms.
The money question bulked large in the platforms, but until 1896 there was nothing like a clean-cut division.[27] Both parties hedged and remained consistently vague. The Republicans in 1888 declared in favor of "the use of both gold and silver as money," and condemned "the policy of the Democratic administration in its efforts to demonetize silver." Again, in 1892, the Republicans declared: "The American people, from tradition and interest, favor bimetallism, and the Republican party demands the use of both gold and silver as standard money, with such restriction and under such provisions, to be determined by legislation, as will secure the maintenance of the parity of values of the two metals, so that the purchasing and debt-paying power of the dollar, whether of silver, gold, or paper, shall be at all times equal." The Democrats likewise hedged their profession of faith about with limitations and provisions. They declared in favor of both metals and no discrimination for mintage; but the unit of coinage of both metals "must be of equal intrinsic or exchangeable value, or be adjusted through international agreement or by such safeguards of legislation as shall insure the maintenance of the parity of the two metals." Thus both of the platforms of 1892 are paragons of ambiguity.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] See below, p. 130.
[25] Below, p. 133. The tenure of office law was repealed in 1887. The presidential succession act was passed in 1886.
[26] A judicial order to all and sundry forbidding them to interfere with the movement of the trains.
[27] See below, p. 119.