The Democratic Convention
No doubt the decisive action of the Republican convention helped to consolidate the silver forces in the Democratic party; but even if the Republicans had obscured the silver question by a vague declaration, their opponents would have come out definitely against the gold standard. This was so apparent weeks before the Democratic national assembly met, that conservatives in the party talked of refusing to participate in the party councils, called at Chicago on July 7. They were aware also that other and deeper sources of discontent were bound to manifest themselves when the proceedings got under way.
The storm which broke over the party had long been gathering. The Grange and Greenback movements did not disappear with the disappearance of the outward signs of organization; they only merged into the Populist movement with cumulative effect. The election of 1892 was ominous, for the agrarian party had polled a million votes. It had elected members of Congress and presidential electors; it was organized and determined. It arose from a mass of discontent which was justified, if misdirected. It was no temporary wave, as superficial observers have imagined. It had elements of solidity which neither of the old parties could ignore or cover up. No one was more conscious of this than the western and southern leaders in the Democratic party. They had been near the base of action, and they thought that what the eastern leaders called a riot was in fact the beginning of a revolution. Unwilling to desert their traditional party, they decided to make the party desert its traditions, and they came to the Democratic convention in Chicago prepared for war to the hilt.
From the opening to the close, the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1896 was vibrant with class feeling. Even in the prayer with which the proceedings began, the clergyman pleaded: "May the hearts of all be filled with profound respect and sympathy for our toiling multitudes, oppressed with burdens too heavy for them to bear—heavier than we should allow them to bear,"—a prayer that might have been an echo of some of the speeches made in behalf of the income tax in Congress.
The struggle began immediately after the prayer, when the presiding officer, on behalf of the retiring national committee, reported as temporary chairman of the convention, David B. Hill, of New York, the unrelenting opponent of the income tax and everything that savored of it. Immediately afterward, Mr. Clayton, speaking in behalf of twenty-three members of the national committee as opposed to twenty-seven, presented a minority report which proposed the Honorable John W. Daniel, of Virginia, as chairman. Pleas were made that the traditions of the party ought not to be violated by a refusal to accept the recommendations of the national committee.
After a stormy debate, the minority report of the national committee, proposing Mr. Daniel for chairman, was carried by a vote of 556 to 349. The states which voted solidly or principally for Mr. Hill were Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Alaska—all of the New England and Central seaboard states, which represented the accumulated wealth of the country. The official proceedings of the convention state, "When the result of this vote was announced, there was a period of nearly twenty minutes during which no business could be transacted, on account of the applause, cheers, noise and confusion."
In his opening speech as chairman, Mr. Daniel declared that they were witnessing "an uprising of the people for American emancipation from the conspiracies of European kings led by Great Britain, which seek to destroy one half of the money of the world." He declared in favor of bimetallism and devoted most of his speech to the monetary question and to repeated declarations of financial independence in behalf of the United States. He also attacked, however, the tax system which the Democrats inherited from the Republicans in 1893, and in speaking of the deficit which was incurred under the Democratic tariff act he declared that it would have been met by the income tax incorporated in the tariff bill "had not the Supreme Court of the United States reversed its settled doctrines of a hundred years." On the second day of the convention, while the committees were preparing their reports, Governor Hogg, of Texas, Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, Governor Altgeld, of Illinois, and other gentlemen were invited to address the convention.
The first of these speakers denounced the Republican party as a "great class maker and mass smasher"; he scorned that "farcical practice" which had given governmental protection to the wealthy and left the laborer to protect himself. "This protected class of Republicans," he exclaimed, "proposes now to destroy labor organizations. To that end it has organized syndicates, pools, and trusts, and proposes through the Federal courts, in the exercise of their unconstitutional powers by the issuance of extraordinary unconstitutional writs, to strike down, to suppress, and to overawe those organizations, backed by the Federal bayonet.... Men who lived there in their mansions and rolled in luxuries were the only ones to get the benefit of this Republican [sugar] bounty called protection." Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, exclaimed that "Christ with a lash drove from the temple a better set of men than those who for twenty years have shaped the financial policy of this country." Governor Altgeld declared: "We have seen the streets of our cities filled with idle men, with hungry women, and with ragged children. The country to-day looks to the deliberations of this convention to promise some form of relief." This relief was to be secured by the remonetization of silver and the emancipation of the country from English capitalists and eastern financiers.
On the third day of the convention, Senator Jones, of Arkansas, chairman of the committee on platform, reported the conclusions of the majority of his committee. In the platform, as reported, there were many expressions of class feeling. It declared that the act of 1873 demonetizing silver caused a fall in the price of commodities produced by the people, a heavy increase in the public taxation and in all debts, public and private, the enrichment of the money-lending class at home and abroad, the prostration of industry, and the impoverishment of the people. The McKinley tariff was denounced as "a prolific breeder of trusts and monopolies" which had "enriched the few at the expense of the many."