In 1880 population and the capacity to consume American products were growing less rapidly than the power to produce. The United States was finding every year greater difficulty in selling all its output. It was possible to foresee the day when overproduction might be a menace unless there should be some reorganization of society to meet the new problem. Pending the arrival of that reorganization, prices fell.
A study of the prices of standard commodities shows that there was a constant, moderate decline after the Civil War. During the war nominal prices, expressed in depreciated greenbacks, rose far above the normal, but when corrected to a gold basis they show little change. At the end of the war, however, the steady decline set in; by 1880 it was perceptible, and by 1890 it had come to be generally admitted. It continued until 1900, when the larger production of gold and an extended use of bank credits and checks, increased the volume and mobility of currency and started a general rise in prices. Inflationists believed, in the eighties, that the falling prices were due to an appreciation of gold, and demanded more money because they so believed; but overproduction appears to give a better explanation of the decline than gold appreciation. In the falling prices may be seen a proof of the enlarged production and a justification of serious study of remedial measures.
Solutions, intended to restore good prices and to correct social evils, became numerous as the eighties advanced. Tariff reformers claimed that the tariff was a vexatious interference with proper freedom of trade, without which a foreign market for American surplus could not be obtained. The protected manufacturers retorted that only through a higher tariff could manufactures be developed and an enlarged consuming population of factory workers be created at home. A Western economist brushed both these aside and found the key to the situation in the disappearance of free land, and urged a single tax upon land as a panacea. United labor found the cause to be unrestricted immigration. Too much government, with its extravagance and corruption, was a cause in the mind of extreme theoretical democrats. Too little government was equally responsible for the discords, in the eyes of growing groups of socialists and communists.
Before 1890 the United States was involved in an elaborate discussion of its troubles and their causes, but in 1880 the period had only just begun and its trend was not clear to the political leaders who were yet quarreling over the spoils of office. Hayes was ending his term in disfavor, and was passing into the jurisdiction of the historians, which was much more kindly disposed toward him than was that of his contemporaries. He had gone into office without being the leader of his party and without having a single definitive issue. He had alienated one faction after another; while in Congress, in which both houses were never Republican, it was never possible to pass constructive laws. The fight for the next nomination began soon after his inauguration.
Grant and Blaine were the most probable candidates for the Republican nomination as the spring of 1880 advanced. For the former there was a feeling of affection among the senatorial crowd, headed by Roscoe Conkling, who had been so severely disciplined by Hayes. The refusal of the President to allow the officials of the United States to engage too actively in politics had brought about the dismissal of Arthur and Cornell from their posts, and a prolonged quarrel with the Senate. Hayes had won here, but the defeated leaders turned upon his Southern policy, demanded a "strong" candidate who would really keep the South in check, and called for Grant as the only strong man who could lead his party. Grant was willing in 1880 as he would have been in 1876. Upon his return from his trip around the world his candidacy was pressed and had strong support among Civil War veterans and men who were displeased with Hayes.
Blaine, too, was still a candidate, drawing his strength from men of the same type as those who stood for Grant. He might have secured the nomination had he not been opposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, whose friends thought his distinguished service in the cause of hard money entitled him to a reward. A special element in Sherman's strength was a group of pliant negro delegates, from the Southern wing of the party, which was brought to Chicago under close guard, fed and entertained in a suite at the Palmer House, and voted in a block as Sherman's managers directed. None of these three, Grant, Blaine, and Sherman, could please the reform element, that found its choice in Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont.
The convention at Chicago was marked by the fight of Conkling to secure unity and the nomination for Grant, and by the stubbornness with which the opposing delegates held out against a third term and for their own candidates. In the end the deadlock was broken when the followers of Blaine and Sherman shifted to the latter's floor manager, James A. Garfield, and gave him the nomination on the thirty-sixth ballot. The Vice-Presidency was thrown to the Conkling men, falling upon Chester A. Arthur, who accepted it against the desires of his leader. The platform was a "code of memories" as it had been in 1876 and 1872, congratulating the party on its successes of the past and having no clear vision of the future.
The Democratic party in 1880 was without leader or issue, as it had been since 1860. Tilden, who might have been renominated and run on the charge that he was counted out in 1876, was sick. He was unwilling to run unless the demand were more spontaneous than it appeared to be. In its perplexity the party turned to a military hero who called himself a Democrat and had been passed over in 1876. General Winfield Scott Hancock had never been in active politics, but was now nominated over a long list of local candidates. William H. English, of Indiana, who was known to have money, and was believed to be ready to use it in the campaign, was the vice-presidential candidate.
The canvass of 1880 was fought during a prosperous summer on issues that were largely personal. As Sherman said of Ohio in 1879, so he might have said of the country in 1880, that "the revival of industries and peace and happiness was a shrewd political trick of the Republicans to carry" the United States. Following their practice for three campaigns, the old line speakers dwelt upon the conditions in the South. An Indiana rhyme "for young Democrats" ran:—
"Sing a song of shotguns,
Pocket full of knives,
Four-and-twenty black men,
Running for their lives;
When the polls are open
Shut the nigger's mouth,
Isn't that a bully way
To make a solid South?"