The New Nation

by Frederic L. Paxson

The trust was believed to have an evil influence in politics, and to obtain special favors through bribery or pressure. The United States was used to the influence of money in politics, and distrusted public officials. The state constitutions framed in this period were being expanded into codes of specific law in the hope of safeguarding public interests. There was little belief that corrupt overtures, if made by the trusts, would be resisted.

Lloyd, and men of his type, believed in regulation and control. Some of them became socialists. Others hoped to restore a competitive basis by law. The greatest impression on the public was made by one of their literary allies, Edward Bellamy.

Early in 1888 Edward Bellamy published a romance entitled Looking Backward, in which his hero, Mr. Julian West, went to sleep in 1887, with labor controversy and trust denunciation sounding in his ears, to awake in the year 2000 A.D. The socialized state into which the hero was reborn was a picture of an end to which industry was perhaps drifting. It caught public attention. Clubs of enthusiasts tried to hasten the day of nationalization by forming Bellamistic societies. Those who were repelled by a future in which the trusts and the State were merged became more active in their demand for regulation.

The legislative side of trust regulation, like that of railway regulation, was made more difficult because of the division of powers between Congress and the States. It was an interesting question whether one State could control a monopoly as large as the nation. But the States passed anti-trust laws by the score, as they had passed the railway laws. As in the earlier case they found their model in the common law, which had long prohibited conspiracies in restraint of trade. One of the States, Ohio, with only the common law to go upon, brought suit against the Standard Oil Trust and secured a prohibition against it in 1892. It was relatively easy to attack the formal organization of the trust, but in spite of such attacks concentration continued to produce ever greater combinations, as though it were fulfilling some fundamental economic law.

Those of the anti-monopolists who were also tariff reformers had a weapon to urge besides that of regulation. They maintained that part of the power of the corporations was due to the needless favors of protection, which deprived the United States of the aid that competition from European manufacturers might have given. They insisted that a revision of the tariff would do much to remove the burden of the trusts. The House ordered an investigation of the trusts while it was engaged on the futile Mills Bill in 1888, but it was the latter that furnished the text for the ensuing presidential campaign.

So far as the parties were concerned the Republicans took the aggressive in 1888. Cleveland's emphasis upon tariff reduction was personal and never had the cheerful support of the whole party. The manufacturers, however, were thoroughly scared by the continued threats of revision. As they had come, by supporting the party in power, to support the Republicans, so they now organized within that party to save themselves. Their leaders sang a new note in 1888, no longer apologizing for the tariff or urging reduction, but defending it on principle,—on Clay's old principle of an American system,—and asking that it be made more comprehensive. From Florence, and then from Paris, Blaine replied to Cleveland's Message of 1887, and his friends continued to urge his nomination for the Presidency. Only after his positive refusal to be a candidate did the Republican Convention at Chicago make its choice from a list of candidates including Sherman, Gresham, Depew, Alger, Harrison, and Allison. The ticket finally nominated consisted of Benjamin Harrison, a Senator from Indiana, and Levi P. Morton, a New York banker. The platform was "uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of protection." It denounced Cleveland and the revisionists as serving "the interests of Europe," and condemned "the Mills Bill as destructive to the general business, the labor, and the farming interests of the country."

The Democrats, as is usual for the party in power, had already held their convention before the Republicans met. They had renominated Grover Cleveland by acclamation, and Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, as Vice-President, and had indorsed, not the Mills Bill by name, but the views of Cleveland and the efforts of the President and Representatives in Congress to secure a reduction. For many of the Democrats the need to defend tariff reform was so distasteful that they left the party, blaming Cleveland as the cause of their defection.

The canvass of 1888 was not marred by the personalities of 1884. The issue of protection was discussed earnestly by both parties, Blaine, who returned from Europe, leading the Republican attack. The only exciting incidents of the campaign had to do with the "Murchison Letter" and the campaign fund.

Matthew S. Quay, whose career as Treasurer of Pennsylvania had not been above reproach, was chairman of the Republican campaign committee. During the contest it was asserted that he was assessing the protected manufacturers and guaranteeing them immunity in case of a Republican victory. He was at least able to play upon their fears and bring a vigorous support to the protective promises of his party. His committee circulated stories of the un-Americanism of Cleveland, charging that free-trade was pro-British, and making capital out of the pension vetoes. Toward the end of the canvass Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British Minister, fell into a Republican trap and wrote to a pretended naturalized Englishman, who called himself Murchison, that a vote for Cleveland would best serve Great Britain. His tactless blunder caused his summary dismissal from Washington and aided the Republican cause much as the Burchard affair had injured it four years before.

Harrison was elected in November as a minority President, Cleveland actually receiving more popular though fewer electoral votes. He came into office with a Republican Senate and a Republican House, able to carry out party intentions for the first time since 1883.