Contemporary American History, 1877-1913

by Charles A. Beard

The platform made the money question, however, the paramount issue, and declared for "the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation." It stated that, until the monetary question was settled, no changes should be made in the tariff laws except for the purpose of meeting the deficit caused by the adverse decision of the Supreme Court in the income tax cases. The platform at this point turned upon the Court and asserted that the income tax law had been passed "by a Democratic Congress in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of that Court for nearly a hundred years." It then hinted at a reconstruction of the Court, declaring that, "it is the duty of Congress to use all the constitutional power which remains after that decision or which may come from its reversal by the Court, as it may hereafter be constituted, so that the burden of taxation may be equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its due proportion of the expense of the government."

The platform contained many expressions of sympathy with labor. "As labor creates the wealth of the country," ran one plank, "we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights." It favored arbitration for labor conflicts in interstate commerce. Referring to the recent Pullman strike and the labor war in Chicago, it denounced "arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States and a crime against free institutions, and we specially object to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression by which Federal judges, in contempt of the laws of the states and rights of citizens, become at once legislators, judges, and executioners; and we approve the bill passed by the last session of the United States Senate, and now pending in the House of Representatives, relative to contempt in Federal courts and providing for trials by jury in certain cases of contempt."

The platform did not expressly attack the administration of President Cleveland, but the criticism of the intervention by Federal authorities in local affairs was directed particularly to his interference in the Chicago strike. The departure from the ordinary practice of praising the administration of the party's former leader itself revealed the feeling of the majority of the convention.

A minority of the platform committee composed of sixteen delegates presented objections to the platform as reported by Senator Jones and offered amendments. In their report the minority asserted that many declarations in the majority report were "ill-considered and ambiguously phrased, while others are extreme and revolutionary of the well-recognized principles of the party." The free coinage of silver independently of other nations, the minority claimed, would place the United States at once "upon a silver basis, impair contracts, disturb business, diminish the purchasing powers of the wages of labor, and inflict irreparable evils upon our nation's commerce and industry." The minority, therefore, proposed the maintenance of the existing gold standard; and concluded by criticizing the report of the majority as "defective in failing to make any recognition of the honesty, economy, courage, and fidelity of the present Democratic administration." This minority report was supplemented by two amendments proposed by Senator Hill, one to the effect that any change in the monetary standard should not apply to existing contracts and the other pledging the party to suspend, within one year from its enactment, the law providing for the independent free coinage of silver, in case that coinage did not realize the expectation of the party to secure a parity between gold and silver at the ratio of sixteen to one.

After the presentation of the platform and the proposed changes, an exciting and disorderly debate followed. The discussion was opened by Mr. Tillman, who exclaimed that the Civil War had emancipated the black slaves and that they were now in convention to head a fight for the emancipation of the white slaves, even if it disrupted the Democratic party as the Civil War had disrupted it. Without any equivocation and amid loud and prolonged hissing, he declared that the new issue like the old one was sectional—a declaration of political war on the part of the hewers of wood and the drawers of water in the southern and western states against the East. He compared the growth of fifteen southern states in wealth and population with the growth of Pennsylvania; he compared Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri with Massachusetts; to these five western states he added Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas, and Nebraska, and compared them all with the state of New York. The upshot of his comparison was that the twenty-five southern and western states were in economic bondage to the East and that we now had a money oligarchy more insolent than the slave oligarchy which the Civil War had overthrown.

Mr. Tillman could scarcely contain his wrath when he came to a consideration of the proposal to indorse Cleveland's administration. He denounced the Democratic President as "a tool of Wall Street"; and declared that they could not indorse him without writing themselves down as "asses and liars." "They ask us to indorse his courage," exclaimed Mr. Tillman. "Well, now, no one disputes the man's boldness and obstinacy, because he had the courage to ignore his oath of office, and redeem, in gold, paper obligations of the government, which were payable in coin—both gold and silver, and, furthermore, he had the courage to override the Constitution of the United States and invaded the state of Illinois with the United States army and undertook to override the rights and liberties of his fellow citizens. They ask us to indorse his fidelity. He has been faithful unto death, or rather unto the death of the Democratic party, so far as he represents it, through the policy of the friends that he had in New York and ignored the entire balance of the Union." Mr. Tillman was dissatisfied with the platform because it did not attack Mr. Cleveland's policies, and, amid great confusion throughout the hall, he proposed that the platform should "denounce the administration of President Cleveland as undemocratic and tyrannical." He warned the convention that, "If this Democratic ship goes to sea on storm-tossed waves without fumigating itself, without express repudiation of this man who has sought to destroy his party, then the Republican ship goes into port and you go down in disgrace, defeated in November." In his proposed amendment to the platform, he asserted that Cleveland had used the veto power to thwart the will of the people, and the appointive power to subsidize the press and debauch Congress. The issue of bonds to purchase gold, to discharge obligations payable in coin at the option of the government, and the use of the proceeds for ordinary expenses, he denounced as "unlawful and usurpations of authority deserving of impeachment."

After Senator Jones was given the floor for a few moments to repudiate the charge brought by Mr. Tillman that the fight was sectional in character, Senator Hill, of New York, began the real attack upon the platform proposed by the majority. The Senator opened by saying that he was a Democrat, but not a revolutionist, that the question before them was one of business and finance, not of bravery and loyalty, and that the first step toward monetary reform should be a statement in favor of international bimetallism. He followed this by a special criticism of the declaration in favor of the ratio of sixteen to one which was, in his opinion, not only an unwise and unnecessary thing, but destined to return to plague them in the future.

Senator Hill then turned to the income tax which he had so vigorously denounced on the floor of the Senate two years before. "What was the necessity," he asked, "for putting into the platform other questions which have never been made the tests of Democratic loyalty before? Why revive the disputed question of the policy and constitutionality of an income tax?... Why, I say, should it be left to this convention to make as a tenet of Democratic faith belief in the propriety and constitutionality of an income tax law?

"Why was it wise to assail the Supreme Court of your country? Will some one tell what that clause means in this platform? 'If you meant what you said and said what you meant,' will some one explain that provision? That provision, if it means anything, means that it is the duty of Congress to reconstruct the Supreme Court of the country. It means, and such purpose was openly avowed, it means the adding of additional members to the Court or the turning out of office and reconstructing the whole Court. I said I will not follow any such revolutionary step as that. Whenever before in the history of this country has devotion to an income tax been made the test of Democratic loyalty? Never! Have you not undertaken enough, my good friends, now without seeking to put in this platform these unnecessary, foolish, and ridiculous things?"

"What further have you done?" continued the Senator. "In this platform you have declared, for the first time in the history of this country, that you are opposed to any life tenure whatever for office. Our fathers before us, our Democratic fathers, whom we revere, in the establishment of this government, gave our Federal judges a life tenure of office. What necessity was there for reviving this question? How foolish and how unnecessary, in my opinion. Democrats, whose whole lives have been devoted to the service of the party, men whose hopes, whose ambitions, whose aspirations, all lie within party lines, are to be driven out of the party upon this new question of life tenure for the great judges of our Federal courts. No, no; this is a revolutionary step, this is an unwise step, this is an unprecedented step in our party history."