The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Crime of Caste in Our Country, by Benjamin Rush Davenport

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
A Man of the People, who Loved and Served the People.

The Crime of Caste

IN OUR COUNTRY

AMERICANS ENFORCE EQUALITY

No Sham Aristocracy of Wealth Permitted by the People

Lesson of 1892 Taught Imitators of
English Aristocracy

HISTORY OF THE POWER OF PEOPLE RE-TOLD

Records for Three Thousand Years Searched
for Examples

Bullets, 1861—Ballots, 1892

By BENJAMIN R. DAVENPORT

PHILADELPHIA:
KEYSTONE PUBLISHING CO.
1893

Copyright by
JOSEPH W. MORTON, Jr.
1892

This Book is Dedicated to All American Citizens,
who believe
That Patriotism, Honesty, Virtue, and Merit
ALONE CONSTITUTE INEQUALITY IN MANKIND;
WHO OBJECT TO AND RESENT ARROGANCE AND PRESUMPTION
UPON THE PART OF
THE POSSESSORS OF WEALTH
AND TO THOSE TO WHOM
“Caste” and Foreign Mannerisms are Obnoxious.

The Author.

DEFINITION OF “CASTE.”

The word “Caste,” we derive from a Portuguese word, which means “a race;” the Portuguese being the early voyagers to the East Indies, where they found the distinction of classes of society established under the Brahminical regime of India. Thence it came to be applied as a term of distinction of society in other countries. There were four castes in India: 1, the Priests; 2, military; 3, merchants; 4, the servile classes.

Members of the lowest caste were forbidden to marry those of the upper. Children of such unions were outcasts and irredeemably base; they could not accumulate property, nor change or improve their conditions. Along with many other senseless and inconvenient rules for the conduct of the different castes, were such as those forbidding members of different castes from using the same springs or running streams, sitting at the same table, eating with the same utensils, or preparing food in the same vessels. It was contamination for those of the first class to even mingle in the public highway with those who were of the lower castes. For convenience, and in the interest of the commercial prosperity of India, the British, after much exertion, have been able to eradicate many of these absurd distinctions, and the habits that resulted therefrom.

The attempt to create class distinctions in Free America, upon the basis of wealth or assumed social superiority, is a crime, and as such will be punished by the Common People.

INDEX.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.

Had a Johnstown flood, a Charleston earthquake, a war with Chili, or a Homestead strike occurred on November 8, 1892, instead of an election, those Napoleons of journalism, James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, and Whitelaw Reid, of the Tribune, would have had a score of representatives on the scene at once, without thought of expense; would have had every detail in its most minute particular investigated, and reproduced every statement, embellished by the pencils of a host of artists, utterly regardless of expense, keeping, as these magnificent journals ever have, good faith with the public and their readers, making lasting monuments of their wonderful papers for coming generations of journalists to gaze upon.

But a revolution occurred on November 8, 1892, a revolution of the American people, so overwhelming, so decisive, and so pronounced as to absolutely stupefy even the genius of the press. Instead of corps of reporters, artists, special correspondents, speeding over the land to ascertain the cause—not the result; the cause, the origin,—of this stupendous surprise, all the great journals of the country, having each nailed to its flag-staff some theory or text utterly inconsistent with the result, utterly disproportioned to the overwhelming revolution, that they have sought by vain endeavor to make an overwhelming result compatible with and agreeable to some one part or portion of the cause thereof.

To loudly proclaim, as did the New York Sun, that an exhibition of the will of the people, so pronounced as that of November the 8th, was occasioned by the Force Bill, is as utterly unreasonable as to ascribe the magnificent volume within the banks of the Mississippi to some little trickling rivulet flowing from the plains of Nebraska. To say, with the Tribune, that the grand result pronounced in the mighty voice of the people was produced by the misunderstanding of the McKinley Bill, is as groundless as to ascribe the echoing thunder tones of heaven to the swelling throat of a canary bird. To herald over the land, “Pauper emigration did it,” with the New York Herald, is about as pregnant with truth as would be the assumption that the foundation and everlasting strength of Christianity has for its basis the misguided vaporings of a negro preacher in Richmond, who proclaims, “The sun do move.” To announce, as did the World, that “Tariff reform and WE, the Democrats, achieved this victory,” is entitled to as much respect as would be given the utterances of a drummer boy of the Federal Army at Gettysburg.

It was not any one nor all of these causes that moved the people. Each newspaper, Democratic or Republican, has selected some nail upon which it hangs the laurel wreath of victory, inscribed with its own puny text for which it has fought its little battle, and each newspaper of the Republican press has covered, with the tattered garments of defeat, its little text wherein it had proclaimed that the Republican party would be victorious, and labeled its tattered garment of lack of judgment with some phrase like, “Disloyalty of Platt,” “Incapacity of Carter,” “Want of Organization,” “Lack of Popularity and Magnetism of our Candidate,” “The Voters didn’t come out.” Had the press no part of its own reputation at stake, they would have searched and delved into the bosoms of men; yes, neither space nor distance, time nor expense, would have been spared by the magnates of the newspaper world to ascertain the true cause. But in ascertaining that true cause, it would have been necessary, in announcing the same, to stultify themselves in what they had been predicting, proclaiming, foretelling, and advising, for months and years.

The truth is in the air; was in the air before the election. ’Twas breathed; it was thought; yea, better, it was felt, by the great throbbing, aching heart of the men and women of the Union. From the hovel to the palace, the insidious, poisonous vapor of a supposed affected, sham aristocracy, with the noxious slime of a half-proclaimed doctrine of the inequality of man and woman, by reason of non-possession of wealth, had crept. The air of freedom was polluted by the emanations arising from the imported English decaying corpse of aristocracy. It was everywhere. In blindness and self-delusion, the press made its battle; in the very air of it, howling against Protection and for Protection, against Force Bill and for Force Bill, while the wretched, cankerous ulcer was eating into the pride of every free-born man and woman in the land. The very silence of the people, the general apathy, was evidence of but one of the symptoms of the insidious disease with which the body politic was being consumed.

A scene that has been described in Washington just prior to the late Civil War best illustrates the condition of the people. The city of Washington was filled with silent, sullen, suspicious men. A sombre air pervaded the Capital. South Carolina had seceded; the Union was disintegrating. All that had been, was being forgotten. Old ties were breaking; old friendships becoming strange. Each man viewed his neighbor and his friend of yesterday, with a doubt in his mind as to whether they would fight side by side, or beat each other’s throats to-morrow. Men paced their rooms in the various hotels, anxious and careworn, sleepless and fearful. Yet, the surface was still, a dangerous state of general apathy obtained, if silence and murmuring, without action, can be called apathy.

It was night, yet the streets were not deserted. Suddenly a window of the Ebbitt House was raised, a man stepped on to the balcony out of the window, and in clear, vigorous, and manly tones began to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Windows were raised; the crowd collected around the Ebbitt House. It was the signal for the breaking of a dam. A flood of patriotism burst from the hearts of the hearers; it was the bugle note, calling upon Americans to save their country. Where there had been silence, were now outspoken vows of fidelity and loyalty to the Union. The battle was won that night; not at Gettysburg and Vicksburg[1].

Just so with the people of America in 1892; for years they have endured in silence, murmuring and thinking, heart to heart speaking by responsive heart throbs; not by word. The rich, who had accumulated their wealth by reason of monopolies which were the necessary consequence of the Civil War, men who had laid the foundation of their fortunes by speculating upon the necessities of the government while contending for the very existence of the Union, had, year by year, by a stealthy, yet ever-increasing presumption, begun to assume the possibility of a class distinction, presuming that the possession of wealth entitled them to privileges, and arrogating to themselves mannerisms of the titled classes of Europe, adopting crests, coats of arms, claiming descent from titled foreigners, an exclusiveness in their social relations, disregarding the laws of morality. The women of this would-be aristocratic class, flaunting their jewels and laces in the faces of their poorer sisters, with elevated noses, and garments drawn aside, feared to touch or gaze at the poor but honest mothers and wives of America.

It was not much: it was rank presumption; it was nonsense, absurd. “There’s no such thing possible in America as class distinction; in fact, it does not exist, cannot exist; the ‘Four Hundred’ of New York is a joke, a by-word, a stupendous folly.”

But, good people of the said “Four Hundred,” remember that while the American is neither a Socialist nor an Anarchist, when you presume to make a distinction, socially, between the poor man, his wife, children, and mother, you touch him in the most sensitive part of his being. You may have your villas at Newport, you may ape the English fashionable season in London by a similar one in New York; you may have your steam yachts; you may ride to hounds; your women may marry divorced dukes and puppified sons of lords; but, mark you, claim no privilege, attempt no distinction between yourselves and the poorest honest man and woman in the land. Equality is the jewel that every true American holds most dear. No free son of our Republic will sell this treasure for gold, whether it be offered directly as a bribe or shrewdly tendered under the guise of “protected” wages.

It did not do for the Republican press of the country to demonstrate that Protection brought higher wages to the workingman. They might have proved that by voting the Republican ticket the workingman’s pay would have been a hundred dollars a day; they might have shown him that in point of pocket he would be eternally blest by supporting the party which he deemed identified with those who attempted to force “caste” upon our country. It is not a question of money; the equality of man is the American’s birthright. For it, our fathers sought these shores, contending with privation, enduring untold labor, dangers, and death. For it, our forefathers fought the most powerful nation on earth, when they were but a scattered handful of colonists, scattered from Massachusetts to Georgia. When the attempt was made—that it was attempted, there can be no doubt—to buy the American’s birthright by preaching to him “increased wages,” it failed.

Take every speech of every Republican orator, every bit of Republican literature, every editorial in the Republican papers, all speak from but one text, viz.: “Workmen, farmers, in fact, all ye good people of America, you can make more money under Protection;” which plainly means, “Let Protection and the Republican party (which you designate in your hearts as The Rich Man’s party) continue in power, accumulating wealth, creating class distinctions, and you can have better wages.”

In other words, “Sell us the right to create a Republic like that of Venice, wherein the rich became the privileged class, and we will give you better pay.”

The Democratic press, orators, and literary bureau were no better. They no more understood the feeling of the people, for their continual cry was, “Free Trade, and you will be better off in pocket.” They excoriated trusts, monopolies; they talked of corruption and what would be done to benefit, IN POCKET, the poor man, if the Democratic party came in power; just as blind as their brothers of the Republican party, they appealed to the American pocketbook.

While every Democratic orator knew that he felt the sting of the venomous and growing reptile, “caste,” in no place in the literature of the Democratic party, in no paper, can be found one single reference to the pride of the American in his citizenship, in his equality. It seemed as if each man thought that he alone endured a pang upon the subject of “caste” and social distinction; for, bear in mind, the man with one million will feel the slight and attempted distinction between his family and the family with ten millions, just as keenly as the cashier of a bank will feel the distinction that the president attempts to make between their social positions; the farmer with ten acres feels towards the farmer with a hundred acres, exactly the same as the farmer with a hundred does towards the farmer possessed of a thousand acres.

This disease was not confined to the horny-handed sons of toil; the heart in the hovel was not the only one that ached. It was not confined to the follower of the plow; but its pestilential breath pervaded every home in the land, leaving everyone below the multi-millionaire unhappy. The clerk of the dry-goods store was hurt because the floor walker assumed a superiority; the floor walker, because the proprietor assumed it; the proprietor, because the importer from whom he purchased goods assumed a distinction; and so it continued, from the longshoreman up, until it reached our millionaire would-be princes, who ape and mimic English life and manners, leaving, as it arose, a sting of increasing bitterness; but each man felt too proud to give utterance to what he thought it shamed him even to recognize as a sensation.

Hence the apathy on the surface, the sentiment confessed only to themselves and in the closet of the voting booth. Because the people had identified the Republican party with the class of men who were striving to create this class distinction, and because of the very charm of the word Democracy to their aching hearts, they voted the Democratic ticket—not Democrats alone in a political sense, but men who believe in democracy in the broad sense that St. Paul preached on Mars Hill at Athens, in the broad sense that Christ’s life demonstrated.

It was useless, against this first overmastering, powerful emotion in the American breast, to call upon the old veterans of the Civil War, to whom the Republican party had given increased pensions. It was useless to cry even to the negro, to whom the Republican party had given freedom. He, too, had become imbued with the spirit of equality. The wealthy could not purchase the birthright of the veteran by appealing to his pocketbook, any more than they could that of the laborer. He had shed his blood in the cause of equality, resisting then the assumed superiority of blood and birth so often flaunted in his face by gentlemen from the South.

In 1861, the “mudsills” of the North and West, the tillers of the soil, had shouldered their muskets at the call of that great man of the people, Abraham Lincoln, leaving home and loved ones to face unknown dangers and diseases in the cause of EQUALITY. Down in their hearts then was a sentiment which is revived in 1892. That thing which had been the hardest to bear, for the laboring settler of the West and the workman of the North, was the existence of “caste” in the South, and the supposed superiority of the Southerners in the halls of Congress. Love of the Union was the outspoken, pronounced cause of their coming at Lincoln’s call; but there was something behind and beneath all of that, that had been growing for years; it was resentment, because of the South’s assumption of “caste” in our country.

The question was settled, by these very veterans, from 1861 to ’65 with bullets, and it was utterly unavailing to call upon them for ballots in 1892 against the cause for which they fought in 1861.

The very negro said to himself: “You gave us freedom, the Republican party, but the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln was purely a Democratic party, in a broader sense.” To the negro’s mind, no three Presidents of the past will more thoroughly represent a picture pleasing to the eye of the enslaved or the lower classes, than Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln. All were Democrats—men who believed in the people and labored for the people, leading lives of pure simplicity, affecting no superiority of rank or position. It was useless to attempt to hold the negro vote.

The very name of the “People’s Party,” so strongly did it indicate and describe this sentiment of the people; enabled that party, with all its incongruous doctrines, to carry the electoral votes of some States of the Union.

How frivolous seemed the claim of the Democratic papers and politicians, that the popularity of Grover Cleveland, and the confidence that people had in his rectitude and honesty, caused this revolution. How it appears to be trifling with truth to ascribe the victory of the people, the true Democracy, to the “masterly manner in which Mr. Harrity managed the campaign.” Mr. Whitney’s diplomacy, Mr. Dickinson’s energy and ability, Mr. Sheehan’s shrewdness, sink into utter insignificance, and become as a grain of sand upon the seashore, where they have happened to be tossed by the mighty wave of the ocean of feeling, full of resentment, that filled the hearts of the people. Their little all was but the piping of a penny whistle in a gale of wind. W. H. Vanderbilt’s four words, “The public be damned,” uttered from the pedestal of $150,000,000, made a greater impression, and became more indelibly impressed upon the minds of the whole people, ranging in wealth from $10,000,000 to less than a cent, than all the management of Harrity, the diplomacy of Whitney, the skill of Sheehan, or the energy of Dickinson. The reported expression of Mr. Russell Harrison, when asked, while in London, what his position was in America, as son of the President,—“Oh, about what the Prince of Wales is here,”—was thought of and resented to greater purpose than was produced by all the speeches of the eloquent Cockran.

The women of the land made more speeches, and effective speeches, to the voters of the land when they thought of the much-advertised American Duchess. They had felt most keenly—for woman’s life is social much more than man’s—the attempted social distinction; and, strange as it may appear to some of the skillful politicians that they had never recognized it, the women of America had become largely Democratic, and in them the Democratic party had its most powerful orators; for even the most brutal, neglectful, and unloving husband resents in a vigorous manner the least slight or insult offered to his wife. Upon every occasion, gathering, entertainment, charitable undertaking, some wife had been slighted. Because of the attempted creation of “caste,” she became a powerful factor, at once, in the campaign of the people. It mattered not whether her husband was a millionaire or not, no matter in what portion of society,—the clerk in a dry-goods store, the farmer, the banker, the millionaire,—the same result would follow. Some would attempt to arrogate to themselves a better position, and claim certain superiority over her. The banker’s wife feels as keenly the slight of the wife of a railroad president, as the wife of a longshoreman does any assumed difference in social position on the part of the wife of the retail grocer.

This all-prevailing crime of “caste” does not, like most crimes are supposed to do, originate in the gutter, but it permeates the mass of the population, like the source of a great river, starting at the very top of the mountain, and dripping constantly downward.

The example of the rich in imitating the immoralities of the privileged classes of Europe, presents a spectacle of presumed immunity from the consequences of their crimes which would be as detrimental to the continuation of the purity of American homes, as the increase of the feeling of “caste” would be to the happiness of the people. A most beautiful illustration of corruption in high places was presented in the disgusting and nauseating Drayton-Borrowe affair, wherein the daughter of an Astor, a multi-millionaire, one of the members of the supposed upper “caste,” is paraded before the public as imitating the vices and immoralities of the Court of Charles II. Yet these same Astors would claim, by reason of their assumed position, some exemption from the result of the crime, which would not be accorded to the wife of a farmer, clerk, or a bank cashier, to say nothing of the fact that, had this beautiful sample of America’s sham aristocracy been a laborer’s wife, she would, by the peculiar ethics adopted by the corrupt English aristocracy, have been a fit subject for the police court.

Another of the disgusting apings of foreign vices, along with the foolish claim of “caste,” is exhibited in the delightful Deacon assassination in France. Another representative of American aristocracy, so-called, would play the part of a French Countess. Fortunately for the world, the man Deacon had left remaining a few drops of American blood in his veins, and rid the world of a brute, as any honest American laboring man would have done. The class which the shameless imitators pretend to represent in America assumed the privilege abroad (in Europe) to indulge in drunkenness, debauchery, gambling, and general immorality; leaving the virtues, sobriety, honesty, and purity to the lower classes. In America, there being but one class, those who assume to imitate the manners of the immoral, to carouse and debauch, render themselves obnoxious to the mass of the people, and that political party which becomes identified in the minds of the people with any set, or “caste,” possessing such distorted principles, becomes correspondingly objectionable. There can be but one law of morals in America. Debauchery, drunkenness, and dishonesty, though sheltered by a palace, are as odoriferous to the senses of the people as the polluted air from a sewer.

There are many able and learned men of America who think seriously and have thought intently for years upon this subject, but hesitated to utter sentiments that falsely and absurdly are called socialistic and anarchical. There is no desire upon the part of Americans to deprive any citizen of his property and his freedom to enjoy the same as he will, so long as he has due appreciation of and respect for the rights of others. No man in the Republic can possess any right, by reason of his wealth, greater than the poorest in the land. Each citizen of a republic, in consideration of the liberty that he enjoys, surrenders all claim to be anything except one of the people, and any assumed immunity from the consequences of his acts is objectionable, and will be visited upon his head. The roistering sons of millionaires, though clad in evening dress and drunk with champagne, are no less disgusting rowdies than the sons of the laborer, hilarious as the result of gin drunk in a groggery. Unfortunately for the Republican party, in looking over the row of America’s money princes (?), we find “Republican” written behind almost every name. The villa at Newport, the castle in Scotland, the Tally Ho coach, is generally owned by a Republican. In fact, our would-be aristocrats began to assume that it was almost a disgrace to be anything else than a Republican; one would lose “caste” thereby.

The Republican party, of course, is not responsible for this. The Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison, than whom there is no better example of a patriotic, earnest, honest American, Christian, father, husband, son, gentleman, and soldier, is worthy to be an example to the young men of our country. He was not responsible for the impression made by this excrescence that has grown like some hideous and poisonous fungus upon the stalwart oak planted by Abraham Lincoln. The decay has arisen from this polluting attachment. The McKinley Bill and Protection, while possessing many points of excellence it behooves the country to examine with care before erasing from the statute-books, are not responsible for the natural animosity of the people toward this child, deformed, misshapen, Sham Aristocracy, clinging to the skirts of the Republican party. The attack was upon this hideous tumor, and, by its amputation by the people, the life-blood of the Republican party has become exhausted; for the operation necessarily was made painful, deep-felt, and severe. The Democratic party derived all the benefit from the defeat of the Republican party, at the hands of the people, without having contributed thereto to any amazing extent.

The result of the election of 1892 should be as the warning written on the wall was to Belshazzar. The rich must understand, and learn now in time, that they hold their lives, their liberty, and their property in this Republic only by the will of the people; that the people, Democratic always in the broad sense of democracy, are long-suffering; but retribution, as surely as night doth follow day, may come, if this warning be not heeded, in some more terrible shape than an overwhelming defeat, at the polls, of that party to which the rich attach themselves. It is not well to flaunt riches or claim privileges or “caste” before the face of a free people.

It would be well for the rich to learn this lesson. It was taught by the people under the name of the Republican party when they elected Lincoln; under the name of the Democratic party when they elected Andrew Jackson; under the name of the Democratic party when they elected Thomas Jefferson. It was taught to rich and powerful England when she lost a continent in 1776; it was taught to Anglo-Saxon England when Charles I. lost his head; it was taught to France when the long-suffering peasantry and poor broke down the barriers of “caste,” and flooded her fair fields with the tide of blood.

It has been taught in every nation—Rome, Greece, Egypt. The people will suffer long and much, but the resentment occasioned by “caste” and social distinction far outweighs any advantages that money can buy them.

November 8, 1892, showed that the workmen couldn’t be bought, the farmer couldn’t be bought, the veteran couldn’t be bought, the negro couldn’t be bought, by all the fair promises held out by the party of Protection, because this cup of nectar was poisoned by the deadly essence of “caste,” which means extinction of all that the people hold dear. Should the Democratic party create, cause, or have arise under its administration, and become attached to that party, any set, or “caste,” claiming any superiority over their fellow-citizens, the Democratic party would be killed, though the eternal sun might never shine again upon America should that party be defeated.

The purpose and object for which this book is written is not for the instruction of the people as to how they are to do, but it is, if possible, to put notes to the music that has been singing in the hearts of the Common People,—for we are all Common People. That song which echoes our own sentiments, even though we cannot sing the song, is always the sweetest. The man who tells the story we have thought and felt, is the greatest writer to us. Dickens is dear to the hearts of us all because he echoes and puts in words the sentiments of our own souls. If this book tell, in words, that which has been throbbing in the breasts of the people, it but articulates that which they have spoken silently for themselves. The author is one of the people, but he has felt what he believes others have felt. The book is not intended to aid or to harm either the Democratic or the Republican party. The writer is a supporter of ANY party, call it what you will, that represents the BEST INTERESTS, THE HONOR, DIGNITY, VIRTUE, of Americans and American homes.

“Is there, for honest poverty

That hangs his head, and a’ that;

The coward-slave, we pass him by.

We dare be poor, for a’ that;

For a’ that, and a’ that,

Our toil’s obscure, and a’ that,

The rank is but the guinea’s stamp;

The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

“What though on homely fare we dine,

A prince can make a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, and a’ that;

But an honest man’s aboon his might

Guid faith he manna fa’ that,

For a’ that, and a’ that,

The pith o’ sense and pride o’ worth

Are higher ranks than a’ that.

“Then let us pray that come it may,

As come it will for a’ that,

That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,

May hear the gree, and a’ that,

That man to man, the world o’er,

Shall brothers be for a’ that.”

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This story has frequently been related, verbally, but the Author has never seen it in print. Its authenticity, however, is fully established.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

Selected by the “Common People,” November 8, 1892,
to Represent the Interests of the Masses
against the Classes.

CHAPTER I. VOX POPULI, VOX DEI.

The voice of the people, is indeed, the voice of God, and in grand and tremendous tones has that voice resounded through the land. The 8th of November, 1892, will long be remembered in the history of our country as one which stands in the annals of time as a monument to the might of the people, upon which might be carved in letters of everlasting durability, “Do not tread on me.” The tidal wave, so often referred to by the newspapers, has come with unexpected momentum, washing aside the puny politicians as thistledown on the mighty stream of the Mississippi.

That mirror of public opinion, so generally correct, so apt to be accurate, is absolutely stupefied by the tremendous character of the uprising of the people. Even those who fondly hoped for victory, among the Democratic journalists, stand in reverential awe before the stupendous results so noiselessly and irresistibly effected by the masses. They vainly seek, like one bereft of sight, for the delusive cause of this great outpouring of Democratic sentiment.

That most preëminent and respectable organ of mugwump principles, the New York Times, of November 9, 1892, sounds the praises of Cleveland and his popularity as the cause; which is pardonable, as the Times has consistently closed its eyes before the blinding light of Cleveland’s preëminence and brilliancy, and refused to see anything else or any other issue in the campaign, arguing that by the magic of the one word, “Cleveland,” victory could be attained. Its leader on the result of the people’s resentment to the crime of “caste” in our country, is a sounding eulogy upon Cleveland, with here and there a glimmer of light breaking upon the vision.

“Meanwhile the victory of Mr. Cleveland is the most signal since the re-election of Lincoln in the last year of the war for the Union.”

It is noticeable in this paragraph that Cleveland’s preëminence so overshadowed, in the mind of the Times, Lincoln, that the prefix of “Mr.” is used before Cleveland’s name, while just plain “Lincoln” is good enough for the man who preserved the Union. One would hardly expect, therefore, that the Times would do more than shout the praises of Cleveland, and give no credit to the sense of the people for their victory. Quoting from their article:—

“The nomination of Mr. Cleveland was dictated by the general sentiment of the party, inspired wholly by confidence in his integrity, purity, firmness, and sound sense. It was unaided by any organization, promoted by no machine, advocated by no literary bureau, appealed to no base passion. * * * * * * His election is due to the recognition by hundreds of thousands of sound-hearted American citizens, who had not before acted with the Democratic party, that under his guidance, with its avowed policy, that party was a fit depository of the powers of the Government. It is, moreover, preëminently a victory of courage and fidelity to principle. The Chicago Convention, in taking Mr. Cleveland as its candidate, planted itself firmly on the ground of principle.”

It is perfectly plain to be seen that, from a source where the wreath of victory dangles, inscribed with but one word, and that “Cleveland,” one could hardly expect to find information as to the cause that brought about this revolution in the minds of the people. Not that there is any objection to the praises of Cleveland, because all that they say of him is believed by thousands throughout the country, and the same thing is believed to be true of thousands of other men whom the Democratic party might have nominated. Horace Greeley, could he have been taken from his tomb and reanimated, would just as surely have been elected upon the Democratic ticket, had the people believed, as they did, that that ticket represented that “caste,” moneyed aristocracy, to which they were bitterly in their heart of hearts opposed.

The New York World, controlled by one of the brightest, keenest, and shrewdest of men in the journalistic field, in an excellent editorial of November 10, 1892, proceeds to tell what the victory means. And one sentence particularly would be significant, if followed by a little definition of “plutocracy.” Were this word significant enough to cover the objectionable features of the peculiar kind of “caste” which had become identified with the Republican party, it would be sufficient, but such is not the understanding of the word.

New York World, November 10th: “The President elect is the very embodiment of conscientious caution. He is preëminently conservative. His administration will mean economy, reform, retrenchment in every branch of the Government. The victory does mean putting a stop to riot, extravagance, profligacy, and corruption.”

Few, very few, men who voted the Democratic ticket believe that there had been corruption, profligacy, under the Republican administration. The people were not directly affected by the aforesaid charges. The victory did not mean that.

The people are no longer political drones; they are thinking men, moved by sentiments and forces which have not as yet been explained by the most laborious newspaper articles written in the heat of the campaign, actuated in many cases by partisan interests, party journalists, aristocratic tendencies, and political affiliations. Each would see only his side of the party shield, and that was sure to be golden.

Mr. Cleveland, in his speech at the Manhattan Club, New York, commenting on this fact, states: “The American people have become political, and more thoughtful, and more watchful than they were ten years ago. They are considering now, vastly more than they were then, political principles and party policies, in distinction from party manipulation and distribution of rewards for political services and activities.”

The reason for this is obvious. The country has been flooded of late years with newspapers, brought down to a nominal price; the people have read them thoughtfully; have written to them for explanations of difficulties and doubts arising in their minds, and have profited by these explanations. They have seen paraded in the newspapers the exhibitions of the pride of “caste”; they have seen chronicled the doings of the American Duchess with her divorced duke; they have learned to hate that which the Republican party would have preached to them as the source of all their happiness and prosperity. The Republican party, viewing it only as a means whereby fortunes were accumulated, espoused the principles which created a desire in the minds of divorced dukes, puppified lords, and degenerate descendants of English nobility, from cupidity, to marry America’s fair daughters. The cheapness of the newspapers placed within the reach of the poorest the information upon which he based his faith. The penny paper is the great leveler of the land.

The New York Herald, of November 13th, commenting on the recent election, takes a biblical text as its theme: “Then were the people of Israel divided into two parts. Half of the people followed Tibni and half followed Omri; but the people that followed Omri prevailed against the people that followed Tibni: so Tibni died and Omri reigned,” and says:—

“In those days, questions in dispute were settled by pitched battles. In these modern times, the arbitrament of war has become wellnigh obsolete, and national policies are decided by ballots instead of bayonets. We doubt if the history of the world records a spectacle as inspiring or instructive as that presented by the American people on Tuesday last, when by an orderly revolution they sent one class of political ideas to the rear, and another class to the front. The party leaders on both sides may have gone into the conflict for personal emolument, or some advantage for their followers, which is scarcely concealed under the words, ‘Patronage and Purposes,’ but the body of the people were the rank and file—the merchant, mechanic, artisan, and farmer; they cast their votes for the greatest good to the greatest number, because the prosperity of the whole means the prosperity of each.”

In other words, 65,000,000 people have made themselves acquainted with the principles which underlie their government; have learned, through innumerable newspapers, which fall on hill and prairie as thick as snowflakes in December, the value and effect of the differing national policies, and on election day, expressed an intelligent and honest opinion.

In his work on “The American Commonwealth,” James Bryce put the matter in terse and brilliant language, as follows:—

“The parties are not the ultimate force in the conduct of affairs. Public opinion—that is, the mind and conduct of the whole nation—is the opinion of the persons who are included in the parties, for the parties taken together are the nation, and the parties, each claiming to be its true exponent, seek to use it for their purposes. Yet, it stands above the parties, being cooler and larger-minded than they are. It awes party leaders, and holds in check party organization. No one openly ventures to resist it. It is the product of a greater number of minds than in any other country, and it is more indisputably sovereign. It is the central point in the whole American policy.”

The people have spoken. Democracy is triumphant. Democratic principles have prevailed. They are rooted in the hearts of the common people. The voice of God has spoken. To you, Mr. Cleveland, is entrusted a great task. You took the enemy in flank, you invaded his own territory; you put him upon the defensive, and the defence was unsuccessful, while his offensive operations against the Democratic stronghold crippled and embarrassed. You have the love of the American people. Nourish it; cherish it as the apple of your eye, and your name will go down into history, linked with the name of Jackson, Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Thomas Dolan, a well-known manufacturer, of Philadelphia, told some plain truths in an impromptu speech at the Clover Club banquet in that city, shortly after the election. Some parts of it have become public. Mr. Dolan was asked, jokingly, why “it snowed the next day.” His answer had the pungent, incisive, trenchant quality characteristic of the man. “You ask me,” he said, “why it snowed the next day. If you want an answer, I will give it to you; but I must give it in plain terms, for I can speak in no other way. It ‘snowed the next day’ because there was the most stupendous lying in this campaign of any that I have ever known. It has been said here this evening, that this was a campaign without personality and without mud-flinging. That may have been so in the treatment of candidates, but in reference to others, it was a campaign of shameless lying, vituperation, and calumny. The manufacturers of the country, some of those here to-night, were held up as thieves and robbers who are stealing what belongs to labor. The very men who are giving labor its employment, and are seeking to assure it good wages, were assailed and denounced as its worst enemies. The Democratic press was full of abuse of those who have done their best to build up the prosperity of the country. There never was more unscrupulous lying than there has been in the dishonest and demagogic attempt to array class against class, and it is because of this persistent lying, imposed upon the people for the time being, that ‘it snowed the next day.’” This is, of course, an explanation by a representative Republican, of Republican defeat.

The New York World, of November 20th, gives a better explanation, though not a true one:—

Republican politicians are searching in all manner of out-of-the-way corners for the causes of their party’s defeat. They are carefully overlooking the actual cause which lies open to less prejudiced view. The Republican party was defeated because its politicians have strayed away from honest and patriotic courses. They have worshiped strange gods; they have allied themselves and their party with the plutocratic interests of the country; they have betrayed the people to the monopolists; they have sought to substitute money for manhood as the controlling power; they have tried to buy elections; they have squandered the substance of the country, in order that there might be no reduction in oppressive taxes, which indirectly, but enormously, benefit a favored class. The party is punished for its sins. It has forfeited popular confidence by its misconduct. It has ceased to deserve power, and the people have taken power from it.

Murat Halstead, a deep thinker, wielding a forceful pen, writing about the recent mistakes of the Republican party, says:—

“There was too much ‘Tariff Reform’ and too little attention to practical politics in the conduct of the recent Republican campaign. The mistakes of the Republican party were many. They attempted too much tariff reform and too much ballot reform and too much civil service reform, and strangely mingled too little and too great attention to practical politics. The high character of the Harrison administration was not of the ‘fetching’ sort. There were strong and distinguished Republicans sharply opposed to another Harrison administration, in California, Nevada, Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, and several of the Southern States. In some States, there was grief because he did too much for Senators and too little for Representatives, and in others, the Senators suffered because the Representatives were especially recognized; and there were scores of personal irritations that were nothing in themselves, but in the aggregate, became an element of mischief that was magnified into disaster. The ranks seemed solid toward the close of the campaign, but there were weaknesses, here and there, known to those whose information was from the interior. There were three things that seemed to give assurances of Republican success: First, the country was prosperous, and the economic value of protection seemed to be demonstrated, and nowhere more clearly than in the Homestead strike. Second, it was the testimony of home statistics and foreign news that the McKinley tariff was helping our workingmen, and had a powerful tendency to the transfer of industries to our shores, while the reciprocity treaties were aiding our manufacturers and food producers alike to new markets. Two of the grandest steamships on the Atlantic, one the swiftest ever built, were to hoist the stars and stripes and be transferred from the British navy to our own, and this was understood to be the dawn of an era of restoration of our lost strength on the seas. Third, President Harrison was revealed to the nation in his administration as a man of the highest order of ability, of industry that never wavered, and will that was unflinching and executive, while he was the readiest, most varied, and striking public speaker of his time. We have had no President with more influence with his own administration than he wielded. The Republicans have so long been accustomed to holding at least a veto on the Democratic party, that they could not be aroused to the full appreciation of the danger of giving that party the whole power of Government. The masses of men declined, in this fast age and rapidly-developing country, to be warned by the events of more than thirty years ago. The first surprise was public apathy. There were few displays. It was not a great summer and autumn for brass bands and torches. It was not a great year for newspapers. Those that largely increased their circulation did it outside of presidential excitements and political attractions. The second surprise was the immense registration. Then it was seen that comparative public quietude did not mean lack of interest. Everybody knew something was going to happen. Republicans were cheered, and said: ‘This means the quiet vote. The secret ballot is with us. Times are good. There’ll be a big vote, on the quiet, to let well enough alone. Harrison is a great President, and it is the will of the people that he shall continue his good works.’ The Democrats said: ‘The secret ballot is with us this time. The workingman is dissatisfied. He gets more wages than he does abroad, but he holds that he is robbed of his share of the riches of the land, and the quiet vote is with us. The workshops are for a change.’ There was much in what they said. The workingmen gave the Democrats New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, and the election; but was there ever such a combination of antagonisms gathered into an opposition force, to carry the Government by storm, as that which the Democracy was enabled to make? Contrast the Democratic platforms of Connecticut and Kentucky. They are more flagrantly opposed to each other than the Minneapolis and Chicago papers. Connecticut is rankly Protection, and Kentucky rabidly Free Trade. Both are for freedom. The Democrats joined with the Populists in several States to give Weaver votes, and in other States terrorized, threatened, assaulted, and cheated his opponents.

“Take the money matters; we find the Democracy are red dog, wild cat, rag baby, silver pig, or gold bug, according to the local demands. They are all for Cleveland, however. The very ferocity of the personal factions of the Democratic party in New York was converted into steam power to drive the Cleveland machine. There was emulation in his service, between his old friends and enemies; and the enemies of other days exceeded the friends in the competitive struggle. The Democrats who hoped he would be defeated, and there were many thousands of them, were the most particular of men to vote for him because they felt their future in the party depended upon their ‘record.’ What they wanted was to be beaten in the ‘give-a-way game,’ and they trusted to the last to be able to say: ‘There, you see how it is; we told you he was impossible. We’ve done all we could, and it is just as we said.’

“When the shriekers of calamity are able to harness the prosperity of the country and turn it against the Government; when the beneficiaries of a great policy turn against it and vote it down; when those who lick the cream of good times, hunger and thirst for experimental changes; when opposing interests and factions, principles and purposes, personalities and all the potencies of all the fads, can be united for a common purpose, there are surprises for citizens who have held in a commonplace way, but the unreasonable and inconsistent, the unwarrantable and the illogical, must also be the impracticable.

“It has been remarked of St. Petersburg, that in case of the occurrence of, first, a great flood in the Neva; second, extraordinary high tide; third, a long, strong blow from the gulf, the city must be overwhelmed. The years, the decades, and the centuries come and go without the disaster. It was long understood in the Ohio valley that there would be a flood beating all in history, and competing with Indian tradition, if there happened, in the order set down, these events: (1) during a wintry night, a sudden general rain, followed quickly by a freeze, covering Western New York and Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, West North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, and Indiana with a sheet of ice; (2) if, upon this vast glassy surface, there should fall a series of heavy snows; (3) if, upon the snow, there should come rain, beginning near the Mississippi, which should be full and filling all the streams, locking them from the mouths against speedy discharge; (4) and if there followed rain-storms for a week, so distributed as to boom all the rivers in order from west to east; (5) culminating with three tremendous downpours over all the mountain regions, sweeping from the glazed earth the whole accumulation of snows, and so timed as to tumble all the floods at once into the Ohio, whose channel has been obstructed by the piers of many bridges, and a habit of encroaching upon it, then the river would make a demonstration memorable and marvelous. All this took place, just as we have set it down, five winters ago, and the high-water-mark at Cincinnati is seventy feet above low-water-mark. Up to this, the boast of the old folks in the valley was, that they had seen ‘the flood of ’32,’ and there could never be anything like it. The world did not now-a-days afford such spectacles as they had beheld in ’32! A few dingy old houses had incredible high-water ’32 marks upon it. If the river looked angry, and rushed through a few low streets, the veterans would say: ‘You should have seen the flood of ’32. ’Twas the biggest thing we ever had, or ever will have. But they do say the Indians said, they once hitched canoes to walnut trees away above the ’32 mark; but them Indians was such liars.’ The flood of 1885 beat that of 1832 two feet, and the flood of 1887 was nearly seven feet above the old high-water-mark. Averaging the chances, it will not happen again for one hundred years. The river Rhine has a way of rising at the same time with the Ohio, and was higher in 1885 than it had been in two hundred years. There was favoring the Democratic party this year, such a combination of circumstances as that which made an Ohio flood seem a prodigy. The high-water-mark is astounding. The country is still here. There is something to eat, and even to drink. Such a Democratic disaster will not be due again for a generation.”

John Russell Young, the brilliant journalist, writing in the Philadelphia Evening Star, quoted by the New York Press, of November 19th, has his explanation for the defeat ready: “Communities are like men, like women, like children, like dogs. Why do they do it? Why does a man buy wildcat stocks? Why does a woman rave over a bonnet, or marry a student of divinity? Why? Because we are more or less fools, even as the good Lord made us fools, and if we were not fools, it would be a teasing, tiresome world. Why does a boy go to bed as cross as the roaring forties after his Christmas dinner? He has had too much mince pie. The country has had too much mince pie. It kicks. It kicked after Quincy Adams, the best of all Presidents. It kicked after Van Buren, who was as downy as an Angora cat. It kicked after Arthur, whose administration was sunshine. It kicks after Harrison, the radiant, prosperous Government. Too much mince pie! Cleveland comes in because of his medicinal properties. We must take to our herbs now and then.”

The practical politicians of the Republican party feel it incumbent upon them to give their version of the great defeat. James S. Clarkson, who, for many years, has been a guiding spirit among Republican leaders, of the late verdict says: “It is an order from the American people for a change in the industrial economic policy of the Government.” He charges that the Republican party has lost strength and votes among the rich and among the people of independent means, who now want cheap labor; also among the workingmen, who have come to believe that free trade will cheapen the expense of living, while the Trades-Unions will still keep up their wages. He says: “The result is not a personal defeat of President Harrison, nor really a defeat of the party. It was a Protection defeat, a repudiation of high tariff, a Republican reverse in a field where it put aside all the nobler issues, and staked everything on economic and mercenary issues.”

The surprising overturn of affairs in the distinctly Republican State of Illinois is accounted for by Senator Cullom by distinctive issues other than the McKinley and Force Bills: “Our losses in this State are mainly due to the school question, but in the nation at large they are due, in my judgment, to the passage of the McKinley law, and the impression in the minds of the masses in regard to it. When it was passed, the people expected us to revise the tariff, and revise it in the direction of reducing duties, and, while we did make reductions, they were dissatisfied because so many increases were made. When the bill came to the Senate from the House, we cut many of these in pieces, but, when it went back to the House and got into the Conference Committee, enough of them were restored to put us on the defensive and at a great disadvantage. Yes, I think our defeat can fairly be attributed to the McKinley Bill,” and Senator Cullom represents the State of Abraham Lincoln. The prairies that gave breath to the typical champion of the people, produced this statesman, who, representing the State of a man who stands first in the minds of the people as their representative, sees only the indications of the mercenary spirit of the people. How Abraham Lincoln would have gauged correctly, instinctively, the heart-throbs of the people whom he assumed to represent in the councils of the nation!

Senator Cullom, in his opinion, mirrors only the reflection, cast upon the surface of his mind, by the aristocratic and multi-millionaired Senate of the Union, in which he occupies a seat. He sees only the cold, hard dollars and cents at issue.

He does not appreciate, as Abraham Lincoln would have done, the feeling of the people whom he pretends to represent. In every prairie home of Illinois there was an insulted wife or mother by the assumed distinctions made by the would-be aristocrats of the Republican party. Stevenson’s speeches awakened no echo in their hearts, except that it gave an opportunity for the exhibition of the old, old story, written by the swords of the Anglo-Saxon people, “Caste is a crime.” That the State of all States, Illinois, which gave to the Federal Union Abraham Lincoln, should be presented in the sedate Senate of the Union, by a man whose views are so narrowed by the horizon of his own thoughts as to express a sentiment like the foregoing; namely, that the people were governed in their selection of their representative, the Chief Magistrate, by the power of the pocketbook; to be so unresponsive to the throbbing hearts of his constituency, is most disappointing.

Editors can be at times epigrammatic, and this election has brought forth some keen and trenchant opinions on the causes of defeat. Here are a few of them. All of them seek, as a child playing blind-man’s-buff, in darkness, for that which, had the bandage which blinds them been removed from their eyes, would have been made plain, and which was occasioned by their own presumption in assuming to measure the depths and power of the people’s feelings and impulses:—

Clark Howell, in the Atlanta Constitution, says: “Now, after thirty-one years, since Buchanan’s Democratic administration, another political revolution has taken place, and, as a result, the election of 1852, which destroyed the Whig party, is repeated in the Waterloo defeat of the Republican party, and the question is, will this defeat finish the career of that party? The probability is that it will.”

The Atlanta Constitution, of November 17th, in a brisk editorial, states that “Colonel J. B. McCullagh, the esteemed editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, is not very happy. Naturally, he has his regrets and his hours of gloom, but he is not so miserable that he is unable to appreciate a mystery that crosses and recrosses his path in broad daylight. He cannot, for instance, understand the post-mortem talk of his party leaders. ‘Curiously enough,’ he says, ‘they are now claiming that Harrison was defeated by the very things which they then said must insure his success.’ Of course, these statements have a humorous twang, but it seems to us that a Republican as prominent as Colonel McCullagh would be willing to drop a veil over these gibbering evidences of human frailty. After all is said, there is but one trouble with the Republicans. They have but one regret. Editor Grubb, of Darien, outlined the situation very aptly when he said that the only thing that the Republicans desired, was the opportunity to steal a State. They are perfectly willing to see Harrison defeated; they are perfectly willing to retire from the control of the government; the only bitterness they feel is the realization of the fact that they failed to steal a State. They stole three Southern States in 1876. They stole two Northern States in 1890, and they stole a Western State last year, but they have failed to steal a single one in 1892. It is no wonder they are going about talking wildly and rolling their eyes. These are the symptoms of paresis, and, under the circumstances, Senator McCullagh ought to forgive them. The grief and disappointment of the Republican leaders are natural; a general election, and not a State stolen! Surely, their hands have lost their cunning. They made a tremendous effort to keep up their record. They tried to steal Delaware and West Virginia and Connecticut, but everywhere the Democrats met them and exposed their plans. The result was, that they failed to steal even one State. Under the circumstances, we think editor McCullagh should treat his brethren gently; he should not make satellite allusions to their troubles. Let them gibber.”

Thank God, with our Australian Ballot system, each free-born American citizen carries with him into the voter’s booth, if he be at all sensitive, and clothed with an enlightened conscience, the same awful sense of responsibility with which the enlightened and tender-conscienced Catholic enters the sacred realm of the confessional-box. Tremendous issues are at stake. He feels their force, and arises to the occasion, as he ever has done when the exercise of worth, virtue, or virility has been required upon his part, and of the great mass of the common people, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, furnish fair samples of the people’s worth, virtue, and virility.

The Buffalo Commercial, than which there is no paper in the State of New York in possession of more perspicacity and political common-sense, in speaking of Senator Allison, a Republican leader of the Senate, states that just before leaving for Europe he intimated that the McKinley Bill was too strong a specific for the Republican party. “You remember,” he said, “that epitaph on the tombstone of the young man who died before his time: ‘I was well; medicine made me ill, and here I lie.’”

The Illinois State Journal remarks: “Until the post-mortem is held, it is, perhaps, just as well not to be certain what it was that hit the G. O. P. last Tuesday. It may have been the McKinley Bill, or the Homestead matter, or the Lutheran business, or the naturalized vote, or several other things, and then it may have been a complication of all these diseases.” Thou wise physician, who would lose sight of the most important evidence of the disease, the discontent of the people, the artificial class distinction created by the sham aristocracy of America, the diagnosis of the disease, called discontent, as made by the press generally, is as faulty and erroneous as would be the opinion of the quack who would call measles, smallpox. Every symptom of the displeasure of the people at the prevalence of the crime of “caste” in our country was evident; yet, apparently, the most learned failed to discern it.

The Toledo Bee says: “The Republican party is dead. The step backward has been taken, and it was a step back that led the party over the precipice of power into the depths of oblivion. The Democratic party has relegated the boodlers, the spoilsmen, and the factional leaders to the rear. What is there left for us to live for?”

Says the Louisville Courier-Journal: “The people will have none of its high tariffs, and none of its Force Bills; but without its high tariffs and its Force Bills, it is only an organized hunt for official plunder. The people will not support it in its old course, and will not believe its brittle promises of reform.”

“‘High tariff did it,’ said Mr. Harrison; but in taking satisfaction for his defeat out of the Napoleonic McKinley, the President is less than just to the magnetic Blaine; for, if high tariff caused the explosion, despite the ‘reciprocity attachment,’ what might it not have done without that little Pan-American vent-hole?” This from the Philadelphia Record.

The President, had he combined the magnetism of Blaine, the Napoleonic ability of McKinley,—yea, had he, in fact, borne the magical name of Lincoln,—could not possibly have been re-elected, for the people were opposed to the ideas of “caste,” fostered with such care by the members of the Republican party, in whom, in some mystical manner, have become concentrated the wealth and objectionable characteristics which tended to make the Southern cavalier so unpopular in 1860. The people, in their wrath, would have risen against any party so besmeared with the slime of that noxious crime.

The Atlanta Constitution, of November 17th, claims that “the leaders of the two great parties have had a good deal to say during the past few months about ‘the campaign of education.’ In the main, this phrase very correctly describes the work of both parties. Republican speakers and journalists work night and day to convince the people of the benefits of high Protection. On the other hand, the Democrats are equally active in exposing the true inwardness of McKinleyism and class legislation. This educational literature covered the country, and the average voter got a clearer insight of the questions at issue than he ever had before. One effort of this campaign of education was to eliminate personalities; principles and measures were discussed, and the candidates escaped the usual mudslinging. Another result is seen in the sweeping and decisive nature of the vote. The revolution was so complete that the defeated side realized the utter absurdity of indulging in any bitter complaints, with the great mass of American people arrayed against them. Our victory was so crushing, that it absolutely restored something like good feeling; and we find Whitelaw Reid and Chauncey Depew saying pleasant things to Mr. Cleveland at a banquet, and speaking of their defeat in a humorous fashion. This would not have been the case, had the election been close and only a bare majority of electoral votes for the successful ticket. Altogether, the country has good reason to be satisfied with its campaign of education. It has purified our politics, wiped out sectional lines, and made our people more thoroughly American than ever.”

And for the erasure of sectionalism, God be thanked! but that a man of Mr. Clark Howell’s preëminent ability should have wandered around so near to the object of his search, the cause of the Republican party’s defeat, and not found it, is astonishing. In his own home, the State of Georgia, the Empire State of the South, and as editor of the leading paper in the State, that he should be so oblivious to the fact that the election, by the votes of the people, was a protest upon the part of the people against the assumption by the rich, that such a thing as “caste” could be possible in America.

Georgia, of all the Southern States, is preëminently industrial. Oglethorpe, when he first settled on the banks of the Savannah river, was himself surrounded by the poor debtors of England. The Salzburgers, who sought the shores of the uninhabited, uncivilized, new colony, were poor, uncultured people. Georgia never possessed, as a colony or as a State, the aristocratic tendencies of its neighbor, South Carolina. The foremost men have ever been essentially of the people; her settlers largely of the Democratic masses; the names preëminent in her history are the names of industrial New England. So Democratic is and was the State of Georgia, that her most eminent son, Alexander H. Stevens, had to be weaned away reluctantly from the doctrine of which Abraham Lincoln was the personification. Since the war, the State of Georgia more readily adapted herself to the new condition created by the result of the struggle. It was never a State of tremendous landed proprietors. The influx of emigration from the crowded Northern States found readier assimilation in the State of Georgia than in any other Southern State. In that State, the negro sooner realized his responsibilities as a citizen of the South, sooner became convinced that his best and wisest course was to merge himself into the large class of toilers and laborers in the commonwealth. That a man with the opportunity, ability, and brilliancy of Clark Howell, should become so utterly befogged by the mists arising from the marsh of old party cries and principles, should fail to recognize that the tremendous majority accorded the Democratic candidate, was but an exhibition of that spirit which has pervaded the State of Georgia from its embryonic existence on the Savannah river; that Mr. Howell should have forgotten the lesson taught by the forefathers of the Georgians of to-day, that Democracy was one of the essential elements to the happiness of the citizens, settlement, colony, commonwealth, and State, is passing strange. The very negro, upon becoming a Georgian and a citizen, became a Democrat, almost as a matter resulting from the atmosphere he breathed. Georgia’s vast majority for the Democratic nominee was not rolled up except by the aid of the negro, who, in his heart of hearts, is a Democrat, and the appeals of the Republican party to his gratitude, claiming that they were the emancipators of his race, were as futile as was the waving of the bloody shirt in the face of the veterans of the North. The negroes of the State of Georgia joined with their fellow-laborers of the Anglo-Saxon race, to give added weight to the opposition of the masses against “caste” in our country.

The Mail and Express, in an editorial of November 9th, says: “If Benjamin Harrison is defeated, the people of this country, by their ballots yesterday, decided again to try the experiment of the Democratic administration. It is most extraordinary and unusual for the American people to seek a change in administration at a time of unwonted prosperity; to render a verdict in favor of a change, while the working masses are everywhere busily employed, while farmers are reaping their richest harvests, factories running day and night, and building extensions and our foreign trade growing with rapid strides, all under the beneficent influences of Republican policy, wisely and faithfully administered by a President whose conduct of affairs has been conspicuously conservative, successful, acceptable, and clean. If Grover Cleveland has been elected, a change in administration has been ordered. What shall we get in return? We shall see! The triumph of Democracy would mean a radical change in our economical policy. It would mean the selection for Vice-President of a man whose political record has stamped him as unsafe, untrustworthy, and conspicuously unfit for the high office to which he has been called. An ardent advocate of the unlimited issue of greenbacks and fraudulent silver; a bitter opponent of National Banks, and the advocate of State Banks issue; outspoken in his demand for the imposition of the abandoned and inquisitorial income tax, Mr. Stevenson would, after the 4th of March, occupy a place separated from the Executive head of this Government by the frail tenure of a single life. In the Senate, the highest legislative body in the land, over which Mr. Stevenson, as Vice-President, would preside, a Senate which may possibly have a Democratic majority, his influence in favor of economic and financial heresies would be potential. Let the people bear in mind the peace, the happiness, and the prosperity they now enjoy. When anxiety and unrest come, as they speedily would, with the renewed agitation in the next Congress, of an attack upon our protective tariff; when the spindles of our mills are silent, the forges black with ashes, our looms yellow with rust, and unemployed men clamor here as they are clamoring to-day in the streets of London and Lancashire against the reduction of wages, let them listen to the plausible excuses and fine-spun prevarications of the Free Trade tariff reformers, who will be responsible. And if, as Vice-President, he should do the evil he can do by aiding the meddlers with our financial and taxation systems, the honest money men of New York and New England, of Illinois and Indiana, who voted for him because he was associated with their idolized free trade candidate, would have only themselves to thank for the prospect of disaster and panic they might face. They would then pay the penalty of their reckless inconsideration. Protection for American homes, for American workingmen and American farmers, an honest dollar for honest men, and a policy of free trade extension by the beneficent influences of reciprocity, may all suffer assaults in the four years to come, but we can trust the sober, second judgment of the American people, in the light of another but recent experience with the free trade and fraudulent silver Democracy, to do again in 1896 what it did with that party at the close of the first Cleveland experiment, and turn the incompetents out.”

It is most extraordinary and unusual for the American people to seek a change in the administration at a time of unwonted prosperity, but the inward agitation of soul at the thought of great wrongs committed by a pretended beneficent party led to the revolution of ’92, in very much the same manner as inward agitation on another subject brought about that which placed Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential Chair. The American workman is above the American dollar!

The New York World, in an editorial of November 16th, says: “The Iron Trade Review is putting the manufacturers up to a dodge in order to make the people sorry that they voted for Mr. Cleveland. Its advice is that the manufacturers reduce the wages of their workingmen ‘to fortify themselves in advance in view of the increasing probabilities of destructive foreign competition.’ Is this an indication of the kindly feeling entertained by the Protectionists for their workingmen? They have professed that their tax policy was maintained for the purpose of increasing wages. They have been charged with misrepresentation; and they are now advised by one of their organs to prove that the charge is true, by making the wage-earners suffer in order that revenue reform may become unpopular. Nothing could better show the dishonesty of the Protection claim that the tariff exists for the workingman. If that claim were true, the manufacturers would resist every tendency toward downward wages, instead of pushing them down in order to gain an advantage for themselves in a political controversy. The wages of labor are regulated by the supply and demand of the labor market, and the people who would cut down wages, not because they must, but because they want to revenge themselves for a Democratic victory by making the workingman suffer, are the people who have been insisting that the McKinley law repealed the law of supply and demand, and that they are the true and unselfish benefactors of the workingmen. Happily, the next President is a Democrat.”

General JAMES B. WEAVER.

Presidential Candidate of the People’s Party, 1892.

CHAPTER II. THE ALLEGED GENERAL DISCONTENT.

The workmen of our country, it is true, want better times, cheaper clothing, the doing away with trusts, and many other desirable changes; but far more than this, they feel the need of the absolute crushing out of the last vestige of “caste.” They at last realize that “caste” is a crime; and the common people have, at heart, no sympathy with criminals, and especially criminals of that class. The common people stay at home, work hard, and very seldom have need to “go to Canada,” or take a flying trip to Southern Europe. Their sins are mainly those of passion. At their best, they are kindly disposed to their fellows; but they are human. They feel a snub from their employer or employer’s son as keenly as their honest, hard-working wives and daughters feel the haughty stare and condescending patronage of Madame Crœsus and her bejewelled daughters. Here we offer our readers some explanations, given by the common, average American citizen, for the defeat of the Republican party at the polls on November 5th. The article is taken from the pages of the New York Tribune, November 21, 1892, the official organ of the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, and therefore entitled to more than ordinary consideration. The article is headed “The General Discontent.”

It consists of talks with the people about the recent election in New York State and Vermont. It is, largely, the observations of a correspondent who has walked through the State, asking farmers and workingmen why they voted for Cleveland. Let it not be forgotten that Whitelaw Reid is the editor of this paper.

“The politician who attempts to explain defeat is ‘crying over spilt milk.’ The newspaper which tells ‘how it was done’ is ‘whining.’ The writer of a political obituary has hardly an enviable task. A defeated party is supposed to accept with philosophical resignation the rejection of pet policies, and with the calmness of the fatalist, tell itself that it ‘was to have been.’ The reasons given for the result of the recent election are as numerous as there are differences in the minds of the two parties. Some say that the desire for free trade is the cause of the Republican overthrow. Others, that the thing that did it is the McKinley bill; others again, that the people want the ‘repeal of the Bank Tax law’; but to him that looks beneath the surface, there is ample evidence that the defeat of the Republican party is not mainly due to the ‘unpopularity’ of its candidates, nor to the love which the people are said to bear for Grover Cleveland; not to the McKinley bill, nor to any ‘desire on the part of the people for free trade;’ not because free silver is or is not wanted. Not through the ‘superb generalship’ of the Democratic National Committee was a victory gained, nor was the battle lost through the ‘lamentable incompetency’ of the Republican leaders. The chief cause of Republican defeat and Democratic victory is the modern tendency toward socialism.

“This statement by no means implies that the socialistic propaganda has taken a firm hold upon the citizen of the United States, or that its tenets have but to be sowed in American soil to bear an abundant harvest. The people have not subscribed to the mild doctrines of Henry George, nor to the more radical and incendiary plans of John Burns, nor do they place confidence in the ability or stability of the leaders of the ‘New Order of Things.’ They have not the slightest desire to overturn existing government; the ravings of the Anarchists they repudiate altogether.

“But since 1873, on Black Friday, political and social conditions in the United States have been those of unquiet and discontent among certain thousands. The Greenback party then had its origin. It is within the last decade, however, that social discontent has manifested itself more markedly in the formation of political parties, all of which, according to the leaders of them, were destined to glorious futures, when the Democratic and Republican parties should be wiped out of existence.

“This unsettled state of affairs showed itself in the formation of the Greenback party, the Labor party, the Socialistic party, the Farmers’ Alliance, and, finally in the People’s party.

THE RISE OF THE PEOPLE’S PARTY.

“The true reason for the formation of the Alliance, or People’s party, in the North, West, and South, is not difficult to find. When the tide of immigration and settlement turned toward the great wheat and corn fields of Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, every natural condition was favorable to the growing of abundant crops, which brought the farmer a golden return for his labor. But beginning with 1884 the crops in many sections of the Northwest were failures. This unfavorable condition lasted until 1890, when a great demand for cereals from Europe, and enormous crops harvested in America, turned the flood of prosperity back again to the farmer, who had for six years suffered because of poor crops. During these years of hard times the farmer had encumbered himself with numerous and necessary debts, so that the profits of the prosperous years of 1890 and 1891, as well as those of this year, have gone in payment of accrued interest and the liquidation, in part, of a vast mortgage indebtedness. After having been obliged to stint himself for several years, it is but natural that when a chance presented itself he should desire to surfeit upon the plenty, rather than be obliged because of his indebtedness to pay out the first money which had come to him from several years of toil to those whom he owed. It is but natural, too, under such conditions, that he should have embraced a project which, as he understood it, was to lift the burden from his shoulders and put it upon the back of the Government, to make money ‘easy,’ and to render indebtedness not a hardship, but rather something which might be wiped out as easily as it could be incurred.

THE DISCONTENT IN THE EAST.

“The result in Wisconsin shows clearly that the wounds received in the battle over the Bennet law had not yet healed, and the agitation over the repeal of the Edwards law is the cause of Republican disaster in Illinois; but no such issues as perverted the minds of Republicans in the Northwest, and in Wisconsin and Illinois, were matters of controversy in the old line Republican States of Ohio and New Hampshire.

“The political veteran who has battled in these States for many campaigns is puzzled where to seek the cause of such overwhelming disaster. To cry ‘boodle’ is to bring ridicule upon the party, but to give the McKinley bill as the only or main cause is to show only a superficial knowledge of the existing condition of affairs.

“To find out why the people voted as they did, one must ask them. It is they that have piled up these great majorities, and, seemingly, have repudiated Republican doctrines, and put the seal of disapproval upon what the Republican party believes has given this country unexampled prosperity. Let any man who believes that the ‘popularity’ of Grover Cleveland, the demand for free trade, or any policy which is shown in the Democratic platform, other than that which embodies the general statement that the Democrats will give the country better times, is the cause of Republican defeat, ask the people why they voted as they did, and he will find that it is this tendency, unconscious and entirely undeveloped, toward socialism which has given the Democrats victory. It is not permanent nor lasting, so far as it exists in seeming antagonism to Republican policies. In 1896 a cyclone of disapproving votes is just as likely to sweep over the Democratic camp as it has this year devastated the Republican stronghold.

“But it is one thing to make a statement, and another to prove it. In order to ascertain what it was that brought defeat to the Republican party, I took a trip through the States of New York and Vermont, and in five days interviewed several hundred laboring people and men who are in business in a small way in various mercantile pursuits, and who voice the opinion and sentiments of thousands in similar walks of life. Talk with many was profitless. They had nothing against President Harrison, nothing in particular that they knew of against Protection. They did not vote the Democratic ticket because they were impressed with the greatness of Mr. Cleveland, or with the soundness of his views, or with the policy of the party as presented in the Chicago platform. They said they wanted better times and more money. They wanted cheaper clothing, cheaper fuel, cheaper everything; but they wanted to sell what they had to sell, whether it be labor or goods, at the highest possible price. They did not, because they could not, deny that the country as a whole had grown vastly prosperous under Republican administrations.

“They were not sure that the McKinley bill or previous tariffs had had anything to do with the hard times which they declared exist. The laborer could not say but what the cost of store articles had decreased largely in the last quarter of a century. In fact, many of them could remember when articles of common consumption and use cost much more than they do to-day; while the products of the farmer and the stocks of the shopkeeper, so the farmer and the tradesman were obliged to affirm, were sold not many years ago at a lower price and with less profit than to-day.

“The farmers acknowledge that perhaps the elements may have had something to do with poor crops, that the opening of the vast farming territory of the Northwest, and the inexorable enforcement of the law of supply and demand, may have had something of a disastrous effect upon the farmers of the East. But these were not looking for reasons. They did not want reasons. They did not wish to consider causes. They did not think that they and their affairs have anything to do with causes, effects, policies, or platforms. All they know is that times are bad—with them. All they want is better times. ‘Figures don’t prove anything,’ they say. ‘We are hard up, and have been for years; we do not know what causes hard times, nor do we care, if the future only brings prosperity. The Republicans are in power, and have been since 1862, with the exception of four years; therefore, if they have not given and cannot give us better times, who can but the Democrats? We are going to try them.’

“This is what a part of that vote which gave the Democratic majority in New York thought. They would have voted just as readily for Populist, Prohibition, or Socialist candidates had they thought that any of these parties had the power to better their condition. But this element was not large enough alone to give Mr. Cleveland a majority in New York State. It was the smaller tradesman, the farmer, and the laborer. These are the ones, and such the element whose vote gave success to the Democratic party, and in voting thus they had no intention of rejecting any particular Republican, or of approving any particular Democratic policy.

AN EXAMPLE OF POPULAR REASONING.

“A tailor who lives in a little town not far from Albany, and whose entire stock in trade does not amount in value to the cost of one bolt of goods owned by his more fashionable brother who does business in Broadway, voted on November 8th his first Democratic ticket. I asked him why he did so, after having voted for four Republican candidates, and having all his life approved the Republican policy of Protection. He said: ‘I voted for Mr. Cleveland, not for anything Mr. Cleveland or the Democratic party have done, but rather for what he and his party have said they would do. Nor did I vote against Mr. Harrison because I do not like him, nor against the Republican party because it has always stood for Protection, but more with a view of making an experiment than anything else. I do not believe that times are good with a majority of people; I know they are not with me. This does not seem to be the day for the man who is in business in a small way. I don’t know anything about the condition of affairs in free-trade England, but I know that here we have Standard Oil trusts, a sugar trust, a rubber trust, and a trust in almost every line, and if a small dealer attempts to compete with a large dealer, the weaker man is crushed. The great clothing company, with its millions of capital, undersells me, and I am compelled to meet its prices or go out of business and get into something else.

“‘All the business of the country seems to be getting into the hands of a few people and a few big corporations. I don’t like such a state of affairs. I don’t want to be crushed out of existence for attempting to compete with the millionaire clothing dealer. In order to live and conduct my business I must make a profit on my goods. I do not say that the tariff or that any Republican legislation is responsible for this condition of affairs. It may be that no legislation can eradicate the evil, but legislation certainly can prohibit trusts.

“‘What I do know is that I, and such men as I am, cannot do business in competition with these combinations of capital. What I want is a living. In this I am not unreasonable; the world owes me a living, but I am willing to work and work hard to get it. All that I want is a fair chance. Maybe I made a mistake when I voted the Democratic ticket. Perhaps Protection is just what we have needed and yet need. Perhaps Free-Trade will make things better. I don’t know how this is, but when I voted I was willing to run my chances in order to find out. I am a Republican still, and if the Democrats cannot make things better I shall try to take life as it comes and do the best I can.’

“This is, in a measure, the reasoning of most of the smaller tradesmen. They want better times; they want centralization of capital done away with; they want trusts prohibited, and combinations of all kinds destroyed. They want more money, money more easily obtained, with a less rate of interest.

“The intelligent laborer is giving much thought to the condition of himself and his fellows. He is as yet not enough of a student to dive into theories, to analyze policies; nor is he able, at the present, to plan for himself any legislation which shall better his condition. A group of laborers, some of whom worked on the railroad and some in the quarries, in Washington County, acknowledged to me that they voted on the 8th of November, for the first time, the Democratic ticket. I was not able, after exhaustive questioning, to get from any one of them a reason why he had voted as he had done. The answer one gave me is the answer all gave: He wanted less hours of work, better pay, cheaper necessities. A boss of one of the gangs of quarrymen, a man who in his time had been a day laborer himself, a person of good, hard common sense, an out-and-out Republican, told me that, although the men under him had always before voted the Republican ticket, so far as he knew, yet at this election they had voted for Cleveland, more because they were dissatisfied with their condition, to a certain extent, and the Republicans were in power, and because the Democrats had repeatedly made the general statement that their policies would bring good times, when the laborer should work few hours for large pay, the necessities of life be much cheaper than they are to-day, and the luxuries of the rich taxed to support the general government.

“‘I tried to reason with them,’ said the boss; ‘but you might as well have tried to reason with a drove of mules, they are so stubborn. I told them they might better leave well enough alone; that the country had never been so prosperous as it was to-day; that wages were good, and that the cost of store articles had been steadily decreasing for years, and had never been so low as they were to-day. But no, they did not believe that; they did not want to believe it; they said they were overworked; that they were not getting good pay—although their wages have never been larger—and they want, well, I don’t believe any one of them can tell what he does want. They said the Republican party was in power and times were not good, and if the Democrats were able to make good times, why, they wanted them in power and would vote the Democratic ticket.’

OBSERVATIONS OF ONE WHO VOTED THE REPUBLICAN TICKET.

“A shoemaker in the town of Granville, Washington County, a good deal of a philosopher in his way, with plenty of good horse-sense showing in his rugged face, a man whose language was refined, and whose conversation showed him to be a reader as well as a reasoner, gave me the best exposition of the causes of the Republican defeat that I have yet heard anyone make. ‘I am a Republican,’ said he; ‘I always have been and I always shall be. I hoped the party would win, but yet when I talked with the people around this place, and in other towns which I sometimes visit, those people who do a great deal of thinking, and who vote as their reason, wrong or right, tells them to vote, I was mightily afraid the fight would go against us. I do not think very much of Anarchistic ideas, or of the theories of the Socialist, nor of the golden promises made by Weaver and the People’s party. No human being can ever make a paradise out of this world, and at no one time will everyone in it be satisfied and happy. This nation of ours has grown so rapidly, and there are so many foreigners here who have become citizens, and we print so many cheap and silly books, that I am not surprised that the Republican party was defeated. If a party of angels had made up the Government, the result would have been just the same. The same causes that led to Republican defeat in 1892 will overthrow the Democratic Government in 1896. Ever since the Greenback party was started, and ever since the Socialistic and the hundred other ’istic’ agitators have been telling the people how they are abused, how they are robbed, that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, everything has been in such an unsettled condition that I do not wonder at the result of the election. It could not have been otherwise.

“‘I believe the Administration has been everything it should be; that General Harrison has been a splendid President; that his policy has been for the good of the people; but I don’t believe that the best man that ever lived, if he had been a Republican and in power, could have been elected to the Presidency of the United States this year. Up in all this section of the country, and throughout the State, for that matter, the man who had always before voted the Republican ticket in an independent way cast a Democratic ballot, more because he wanted to make an experiment than anything else. It is funny how unreasonable people are. They don’t sit down and calmly figure for themselves, but they jump at conclusions, and because with some of us times are hard, they don’t stop to think who or what is responsible. I was talking with just such a man only the other day. He was hard up, so he claimed, but I know he has been doing business here ever since I can remember, and has always lived and looked and acted just about the same as he does now. He keeps a store. As near as I could get at it, he wanted to sell everything he had to sell at a good deal better price than it is fetching now, but he wanted everybody else to sell to him what stuff he wanted to buy a good deal cheaper than what he is paying for it now. He would not listen to me when I told him that that is what everybody else wants to do; to buy everything cheap and sell everything dear; but I told him that if people did not buy until they could get things at their own price, or sell until they could sell things at their own figure, it would take but a mighty little while for everybody to starve to death. He said he was going to vote the Democratic ticket just to see what would happen in the next four years.

“‘Many of the quarrymen bring their boots here to be mended. They tell me they want more money and fewer work hours. They have not much of an idea how they are going to get them, other than that the Democrats have told them that if Cleveland was elected they would get what they wanted and everybody would be happy.

“‘Therefore, they voted the Democratic ticket. But, I believe,’ continued the shoemaker, ‘that after all this election will turn out mighty well for the Republican party. In the end, the new way of voting is going to help us. Before this the boss or the politician could take his men or his gang and vote them as he wished. Now this is, to a certain extent, changed. The half-way independent man who before was led to the polls and voted, goes to the polls and votes for himself. Before this he was part of the machine, gave election matters but little thought, and was enthusiastic only because others were so. Now, he must either vote blindly or he must think for himself, and in the end he is going to think it out and is going to do the right thing. He will then see that the Republican policy has been and is for his benefit; that it has contributed more than any other one thing to make this country great and prosperous, and the people happy and contented.’

“One of the head workmen in a Troy factory possesses similar ideas. He is a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and says that many of his acquaintances voted the Democratic ticket more because they were uneasy and wanted something, they did not know what, than because they had any particular liking for Cleveland and the Democracy, or dislike for Harrison and the Republican party. This opinion is held by many of the skilled workmen of the factories in both Albany and Troy, and in the smaller towns between New York and Plattsburg.

A FARMER’S REASONS FOR HIS VOTE.

“It was a more difficult matter to get any Republican farmer to acknowledge that he voted the Democratic ticket. One was finally found who admitted that he had.

“‘What were your reasons?’ I asked.

“‘Well, I don’t know as I can exactly tell you,’ he answered; ‘we have not had a very easy time of it, we farmers, for the last eight or ten years.’

“‘But don’t you think,’ said I, ‘that the opening of the farming lands in the West has a great deal to do with the decrease of farm values in the East?’

“‘Well, perhaps so,’ he replied. ‘It is hard for a man who is not a political economist and who doesn’t make a business of keeping track of such things to give any reason for the hard times, or to choose between the reasons given by Democrats and Republicans. So far as I know, the Republican party has always kept its promises made to the farmers. Since the McKinley tariff we have been getting better prices for our potatoes and other produce in Northern New York, for before, we had not been able to compete with Canada. Yet, we don’t make much of a living, even at this. You say that statistics prove that this country, as a Nation, is vastly more prosperous than any other, and that we are a good deal richer than we were ten years ago; yet I am not any better off, and most of the farmers around here are not any better off, and I made up my mind that if, as the Democrats promise, a change of Administration would make good times, why, I wanted a change; if Free Trade will make things better, I want Free Trade; if State banks will give us money, and more of it, I want State banks put on equal terms with National banks. If these changes are brought about, it may make things a good deal worse than they are now. At any rate, I am willing to try it. If I find that the Democrats have deceived me, in 1896 I shall vote the Republican ticket again.’

“These interviews show the state of mind among people who are enough in number to turn overwhelmingly a majority for either the Republican or the Democratic party. In them is ample evidence that the people whose votes defeated the Republican party are not dissatisfied with Republican administration of affairs. They do not charge that the McKinley bill, or that the financial or any other Republican policy is responsible for hard times, nor is there any testimony which can be taken as evidence that the ‘unbounded popularity’ of Grover Cleveland or the (by the Democrats so called) broad financial and economic policy of that party, has brought about this sweeping victory. A talk with the independent voter shows, first, that there exists among the smaller tradesmen, among those whose votes turn the tide toward victory or toward defeat, dissatisfaction because, as they claim, they are unable to compete with combinations of capital; they want decentralization of capital, and trusts prohibited by law and the law enforced.

“A condition of affairs exists, the dissatisfied tradesman claims, in which he cannot earn a living. The Republican party was in power, and had been, with the exception of four years, for a quarter of a century, and while it possibly may not be responsible for trusts and for the centralization of wealth and capital, yet the tradesmen says, ‘I cast my vote for Cleveland and Democracy to make an experiment, the result of which I am willing to take the consequences of.’

“The workingman was influenced to vote for Democracy more because he had been repeatedly told that all rich men and manufacturers are Republicans than for anything else. Capital, of late years, has been denounced so severely, and strikes, the cause of many of which are hard to determine, have of late been so frequent (fortunately for the Democratic party, because by these strikes Democratic speakers were able falsely to claim that they were caused by the attempt of the rich Republicans to crush the workingman, and because by the shortness of the campaign the Republicans were unable effectively to disprove these Democratic statements) that the Republican party, although its policy of protection was approved by the labor union leaders, has been in a measure handicapped.

“The independent farmer voted the Democratic ticket because the prices of farm products are not up to the figure he thinks they should be, and because the Democrats have told him that their financial and economic policies, if carried out, will enhance the value of his farm products, give him the markets of the world, and greatly decrease the cost of the necessities of life, although he cannot disprove that this state of affairs does not exist to-day, almost wholly because of a protective tariff.

GREAT NUMBERS OF NEW CITIZENS.

“But there is another element, and one which always has and always will contribute to Democratic success. Naturalization was unusually large this year; the citizen of foreign birth is a power in the land and the Democratic party was felicitously named. There is something in the word ‘Democracy’ which appeals strongly to the citizen of foreign birth. In this country ‘Democracy,’ as applied to the Democratic party, signifies to them that have left their homes in Europe, a party of the people in contradistinction to plutocracy and to aristocracy, the party of wealth and the party of people of noble birth. That this has weight with a certain foreign element is conclusively shown in the statement made by several foreign laborers in Washington County. Their knowledge of things American is not sufficient for them to grasp the import of the policies advocated by either party, and hence it is that they vote for the party whose name means the most to them. From a talk with many of them I am convinced that it is a natural antagonism toward the party in power, a love for the word ‘Democracy’ that caused not a few newly made citizens to vote for Mr. Cleveland. One of them told me that the Republican party was made up of bankers, of great manufacturers, of men who had formed combinations for the purpose of advancing the cost of necessities of life—the party, in fact, to which every one who has money belongs. In other words, that to be a Republican is to be a capitalist, and to be a Democrat is to be a man of the people: that by voting the Democratic ticket the power could be taken from the capitalist and put into the hands of the people, and that the people ruling the people would mean legislation which would give the greatest good to the greatest number.

“A talk with the people shows further that the Republican party is still very much in existence; that its defeat in this election does not mean a rebuke for anything that it has ever done, nor for any policy which it advocates, but it means that unless the Democratic party makes good the promise which it has given to bring about better times, it will meet with a defeat more overwhelming than that which overturned and shattered Republican hopes in 1892, and that the Democrats will not only lose the States which have gone from the Republican ranks this year, but that West Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana will turn from their allegiance to Democracy, cast their vote either for a third party, for fusion, or for the Republicans, and for future years make what is now known as the Solid South nothing but a mournful Democratic memory.”

Through the whole of these interviews, when attention is directed to the subject, it becomes perfectly apparent that the thread of the story is the people’s objection to the prevalence of social distinction among them. It is half expressed in nearly every one of these interviews, while they hesitate to put it in words; possibly because they highly appreciate that as the motive that so powerfully moved them on November the 8th. And then again, because of their hesitancy in expressing their recognition, even, of the attempt on the part of those possessed of greater wealth, to assume social superiority of those less fortunate.

CHAPTER III. NOVEMBER 8, 1892.

November the 8th, 1892, will be noted, by the historian of the future, as a date constituting a milestone to mark the road and journey of struggling humanity. What July the 14th is to the French, July the 4th is, and November the 8th will be, to the American people.

The surface of the waters of public opinion presented a peaceful appearance at the dawning of that autumn day, but beneath the tranquil surface there raged subterranean and powerful forces, moving the deep waters of public sentiment. The much-discussed “general apathy” was the silent, sullen wrath, dangerous in individuals as it is in the masses. The silent fighter is tireless and terrible. The people had ceased to be moved by oratorical effort, brass bands, and torchlight processions. They had become surfeited with argument upon the subject of Protection. The changes had been rung upon the effect of the passage of a Force Bill, until the people had become as accustomed to the beating of the flanges of the newspapers upon the rails of this somewhat attenuated subject, as a slumbering passenger on a railway train. In fact, the cessation of the clangor would have attracted more attention than the continuation of the monotonous drumming.

The leading journal in the Force Bill camp had been that preëminently vigorous newspaper, the New York Sun. Under the guidance of the genius of the Hon. Charles A. Dana, the New York Sun had seized the most attractive, because the most novel, instrument of noise presented in this campaign of education. It had blown such vigorous blasts, that a large portion of newspaperdom, who regarded the opinions expressed by Mr. Dana as apt to be eminently reasonable, had joined in the chorus of the Force Bill farce, and created discordance and noise enough to have nauseated the masses with weariness of the subject. The pot-house politician, as well as his more exalted brother of the Fifth Avenue palatial political headquarters, was abashed and confused, by the fact that his efforts to arouse enthusiasm among the masses were utterly fruitless. They neither agreed with him nor disagreed with him. There was no room for argument. It was like the professional pugilist descanting on the beauties of the bruiser’s art to a Whittier, Holmes, or Longfellow; the subjects, upon which the politicians of all degrees and kinds had exhausted themselves, were not interesting.

The issue before the people was sentimental. The detestation of the prevalence and growth of a pretended and sham aristocracy, became the important and all-absorbing theme within their hearts. They heard the talk; they read the dissertations of learned editors, and while it was all, doubtless, the product of powerful brains, it was not the most important matter in the struggle to be decided that November morning, between the masses and an assumption of “caste” in free America. Mr. Thomas Dolan, at the Clover Club, in Philadelphia, in referring to the result of the election, had at least the candor to admit the cause of the Republican party’s defeat. Had he, and gentlemen of his doubtless aristocratic tendencies, realized the impression that their course of conduct was making upon the minds of the mass of the Common People prior to that eventful day, November the 8th, and had they taken warning by the signs of the times, had they believed less in the Burchard theory of Blaine’s defeat in ’84, and more in the efficacy of the impression, prejudicing the minds of the people against Mr. Blaine and his party by that banquet,—which has been dubbed in political parlance, “the Belshazzar feast,”—they might have been forewarned. But those who have been, for the last thirty years, attempting to create an artificial order to govern society, “caste,” have become so puffed up by wealth, and blinded by the ever-narrowing view they are able to obtain from their assumed exalted position, that they have lost sight of every other consideration; becoming absorbed in their own one overmastering emotion—love of money. Before this god of Mammon they had performed such obsequious service, that they imagined the only appeal necessary to make to the people, was the one so much paraded by the Republican press, i. e., the advantage of Protection to the pocket of the poor man. Upon this day, November 8th, which was to decide, in no doubtful manner, the destiny of the nation with regard to its social life, in the silence, communing only with their outraged sense of the rights of man and the equality of all mankind, the voters sought the confessional-like closets in the booths, established by the introduction of the Australian system of voting. There was no hurrah, no noise, no violence, but a tremendous outpouring of men, filling every voting precinct in the land, creating a larger percentage of voters who exercise their right of franchise than on any former election ever held in America.

As the hours of the day passed, some of the keen observers and astute party leaders began to realize that the existence of a general “feeling of apathy” had been more apparent than real; else what was the meaning of this outpouring of voters, who, silently and with determined, fixed certainty of purpose, sought to exercise their right as citizens? Even in those sections of the large cities where the wealthy reside, and in the back country, where it is difficult for the voter, often, to find the time, opportunity, and the means of getting to the polls on election day, it was the same story. The nation had been aroused in some magical and mysterious manner, which was beyond the expectation and prognostication of the politicians and party leaders. The people had taken the matter out of their hands. They had simply taken the ship of State into their own keeping, and the professional politician had to cling to the life-line in the wake thereof.

Wonderment seized these gentlemen of supposed miraculous political perspicacity. They asked one another, by their silent and inquiring glances: “What does this mean? Is our occupation, like Othello’s, gone?”

The people, regardless of their mistaken mouthing, like some massive Percheron horse, had taken the bit; and, regardless of all attempts at guidance, were exerting the strength which, when aroused, they possess, contrary to the expectations of the learned gentlemen of the political profession. When the sun went down, November 8, 1892, none were less able to predict the result of this tremendous uprising of the people than those who by their diplomacy had arrived at that position, so enviable in the minds of petty politicians, Chairmen of various Campaign Committees. Chairman Carter might have exclaimed, with the drowning people at Johnstown, as he sank beneath the flood of indignant “Common People,” “Whence comes this water?” Chairman Harrity might well have been drunk and delirious, as the result of his own good fortune, for as surprising to him as to Chairman Carter was the existence of this slumbering volcano of indignation which had brought about the overwhelming success of the candidate who represented, in the minds of the people, the opposition to the growing aristocracy which had become engrafted upon the Republican party. Chairman Harrity might well have been dazed by the remarkable results of his own endeavors, had he not realized that his efforts had been incidental to, and not the cause of, the success of Cleveland.

It is not presumed to criticise the conduct of the campaign as managed by the campaign committees of both sides. Their duties, without doubt, were performed in a most masterly manner. The organizations with which both committees worked with tireless energy to achieve success for their respective sides, cannot fail to impress even a very tyro in politics. It was, however, like two learned physicians, disputing over the disease of a patient, and both being in error; each applying established remedies that experience had taught him were efficacious in the disease he had imagined it to be; both equally in error because they had mistaken the complaint of the patient. To the average politician of the present day, Tariff Reform and Protection constitute the sum of all evils and diseases of the body politic. Like Dr. Sangrado’s instruction to Gil Blas, they have only two remedies: phlebotomy and plenty of hot water. And the astonishment expressed by them at the possible existence of some other disease and some other remedy, was productive of as much consternation as that in the breast of Gil Blas, at the result of the treatment of his patients at Valladolid. As the returns from the different States began to arrive at the headquarters of the different committees; as the result of the opinion of the people upon this momentous occasion (so fraught with disappointment to the aristocratic believers in “caste”) became apparent, surprise and astonishment were depicted upon every countenance; while, mingled with unalloyed delight in the breasts of the Democrats, and with mortification in the hearts of the Republicans, the same surprise and astonishment existed. That Illinois, a State that had sent over 200,000 men to fight under the Federal flag, and in which such large sums of pension money had been annually distributed to the disabled veterans for many years, should have been so unmindful and heedless of the display of the time-honored and ensanguined garment, the “Bloody Shirt,” and the howling of the Republican press about Cleveland’s vetoes of pension bills, was simply outrageous to the minds of the stupefied Republican leaders.

Could it be possible that their so often victorious shout of sectionalism, and constant address to the pocketbook of the veteran, had been relegated to the shadowy shelf of “innocuous desuetude”?

They looked aghast at the result of the counting of votes in Indiana. That much-talked-of, recently-discovered Gas belt, in which had sprung up innumerable manufactories, whose workshops were filled with “Common People,” had failed to find an all-obscuring attraction in the glittering gold that the magnates of wealth had held out to them as an inducement to perpetuate the power of the rich and to increase those privileges and class distinctions that they fondly hoped would be accorded to them by the American people. Verily, like DeFarge, in Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” the workman of the manufacturers in Indiana had presumed to hurl the magical Louis piece back into the carriages of the wealthy, rejecting with indignation the attempt to bribe their honor, and their sense of the equality of man.

The negro of Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia, upon whom these bondholders thought they had a mortgage, by their claimed procurement of his emancipation, had, even in spite of his color, previous condition, and gratitude, joined with his fellow-citizens, the “Common People,” taking as the representative of those who had most benefited him and his race, the immortal Abraham Lincoln, a man of the “Common People”; and, by the negro’s vote, was added strength to the blow, struck by the white Democracy of the Union, at this arrogant assumption of that thing which the negro, along with the white man, had learned to hate and resent—the assumption of “caste” upon the part of any set of citizens in the United States of America.

The wool-grower of Ohio, the home of the popular McKinley, added sorrow to the cup held to the lips of the would-be aristocrats. He no longer felt bound to bow his head before the advantages held out by the party of wealth. He preferred to take a little less for his wool, and a little more respect for himself, his wife, and children in the social world, where every landmark of equality was being washed away by the tide of aristocratic tendencies. The bewildered Republican leaders gazed with terror upon the transmogrified weapons with which they had waged war. The sword of steel, when held by the hand clad in a golden gauntlet, had become a weapon of straw. They murmured to one another: “If these weapons have failed us, in what shall we seek safety?”

Consternation was in the council of the great of that party who, for more than a quarter of a century, had controlled the legislation of the Republic, and by whom was created, in the minds of the people, the errors of social distinction and “caste” that have crept into the country. The Republicans, assembled at their headquarters, became more bewildered at each new piece of evidence of the disapprobation and rejection of those doctrines, the understanding of which they deemed such conclusive argument to the minds of the people. The oncoming storm had no centre. It was blowing in all directions of the Union. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, even manufacturing Pennsylvania, were sending a horrible howling of destructive wind, which would sweep away all their carefully-prepared barriers. At the Democratic headquarters, no less was the degree of wonder stamped, though with joyous imprint, upon the faces of the party leaders. Could it be possible that Illinois had cast the majority of its vote for the leaders of the Democratic party, those standard-bearers against whom so much had been said to prejudice the mind of that great Soldier State, the home of Lincoln, the birthplace of the Republican party and of the Grand Army of the Republic?

It was hard for the most hopeful to realize. Had the vaunted undoing of the Democratic party in the State of Indiana, the increase of the manufactures, and the personal popularity of a President, one of Indiana’s chosen sons, been proved false and groundless? Had the negroes in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia joined the Democratic “Common People,” in spite of the promised covenant of their salvation, The Force Bill, and added to the majorities in those Southern States? Connecticut—much-protected Connecticut; could it be possible that she would increase the few hundred majority accorded to the Democratic candidate four years ago?

All seemed so utterly out of keeping with the fondest hopes and expectations of the sagacious chieftains of Democracy, that incredulity was stamped upon every countenance. It seemed to be utterly beyond the comprehension of the wisest of the political world of both parties, that, possibly, they had been treating an unknown and unappreciated disease, the nature whereof they had failed to recognize. The result was not compatible with any established theory of either party. The people had evinced such utter disregard for all the old arguments and well-tried remedies, that it dumbfounded the physicians who pretend to minister to the wants of the nation. From such unsuspected quarters, and in such ridiculous proportions, had come the disapproval of the people, that all were at sea; some wrapping themselves in their own glory, proclaiming, like Cock Robin, “I did it, with my little bow and arrow;” others, seeking to shield themselves behind the transparent, fragile shield of another’s fault: “He did it, his unpopularity;” “Protection did it; it was his policy;” each trying to escape the general stampede, occasioned by the long-suppressed indignation of the people who objected, not so much to the economic doctrines of the Republican party (not that they had become converted to the tenets of the Democratic faith), but to that crime of “caste” which, with its many ramifications in the whole mass of society, was causing them unhappiness.

It is not well for the Democratic party to lay the flattering unction to its soul, that the mass of the people had become converted to the principles enunciated by that party in Chicago, at the Convention where Mr. Cleveland was nominated. It would be as delusive and disappointing to them, in some future election, as it has proved to the Republican party upon the occasion of their late discomfiture. On the other hand, the Republican party should be well convinced, by its downfall, that the people will not endure the wrapping up, in silken garments, of the progeny of the deformed and diseased state of European society, palming the enshrouded babe off as an offspring of that land that lit the torch of freedom for the world.

CHAPTER IV. SOCIETY AS THE PEOPLE FOUND IT, NOVEMBER 8, 1892.

Society, as the people found it, on last election day, was certainly not as attractive as that autocratic gentleman, the distinguished Ward McAllister found it, and has helped to make it, as related by him in a book which has been published with much flourish of trumpets, entitled “Society as I Have Found It.”

While the volume itself hardly rises to the dignity of a dime novel, it still, doubtless, is a true statement and record of the doings and pretensions of the very class of people who, by their presumption, have aroused the silent and sullen indignation of America. The book referred to, and its writer, Ward McAllister, of course, received a large share of criticism and ridicule. The absurdities of the book impressed the critics of the newspapers all over the land. It was made a butt for the squibs, sarcasm, and ridicule of some man on every newspaper throughout the country. Passages were selected from the book wherein Mr. McAllister poses himself in the position of a first-class cook, and where he recounts how he has been playing the millinery maid for some lady of fashion. Of course, it struck every one as ridiculous that any manly man who claimed to be an American should be impressed by the criticism made upon the “cut of the tails of his dress-coat,” or to pay any attention to the advice of “a well-dressed Englishman, well up in all matters pertaining to society,” as to the peculiar fashion to be adopted concerning a man’s hat; how he should wear his watch-chain, etc. All such things were so extremely amusing and so utterly farcical to the brainworkers attached to the newspapers, that they held up the book and McAllister as objects to create merriment. That was the only possible view that could be taken by them of anything so absurdly funny as a man’s highest ambition, his idea of dignity, his aim in life being so small as that evidenced in McAllister’s autobiography.

There was another side to that question. A creature like McAllister is not a spontaneous or instantaneous creation of our great Republic. There must have existed a congenial atmosphere in his “smart set” to produce an exotic of such rare and unattractive perfume. Had it not been perfectly apparent that Ward McAllister was not the only person who imitated and aped foreign manners, and desired to create a social distinction in America, the book would have been a roaring farce. Had the people at large supposed that he was the single individual in America who approved of and earnestly desired to create a collection of idiots who should claim that “caste” could exist in our country, then the people would have regarded him much in the manner they would a buffoon on the stage of a theatre, or some idiot who, from a desire to attract attention, paints his face sky-blue. But the very advertising that this blooming flower of sham aristocracy received at the hands of the newspapers—which was done by the newspaper men in a spirit of levity, possessing, as they do, sufficient brains to find McAllister and his subject utterly absurd, in conjunction with many other well-advertised and extravagantly absurd assumptions on the part of the wealthy, made a much deeper impression upon the minds of the “Common People” than it was supposed that it would or could do. McAllister’s “smart set” in this country—and his “smart set” is not confined to New York City, but exists in some form or manner in every city, town, village, and county in the Union—this McAllister-like “smart set” in each little community, as well as in the large cities, has managed by its arrogance and assumed superiority to arouse a spirit of resentment among the “Common People” of the Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson stamp, because the masses have seen an attempt to establish something which would create an inequality between the citizens of the Republic.

It was a monstrous joke that the Knights of the Pencil saw in McAllister and his “Society as I Have Found It,” and, like the keen-witted men that they are, they proceeded to hurl the javelins of their wit and sarcasm at this balloon of idiocy and impudence; but in piercing the balloon, the nauseating odor arising from its explosion pervaded the nostrils of the “Common People” with more than ordinary unsavoriness.

In every little village and town, and even through the farming sections, there is some would-be Ward McAllister and “smart set;” some little circle who from some imagined cause or reason, in their own conceit are a little better than the typical old settlers of our country, who brought the Republic into existence. They try to impress, and sometimes most insultingly, this supposed superiority upon the minds of the “Common People.” In one little village it will be, for example, the owner of some protected little factory, which, in the wisdom of the legislators, has been protected to encourage and increase the industries of our country. In the solicitude of the legislators for the welfare of the people (acting honestly and in the best interests of the country), they have created the possibility for this man, this small manufacturer in the little village referred to, to accumulate a few thousand dollars more than his fellow citizens of the little village. The money has not been earned either by his sagacity, business ability, superior education, nor his intrinsic merit as a commercial genius. It is the result of accidents and the necessity that the legislators honestly felt existed, to create manufactories in our own country, to furnish the articles consumed by the people, rather than to buy the same from England and other foreign countries, sending our gold abroad out of the country in payment therefor.

The honesty of purpose and the wisdom of the action of the legislative part of the Government, it is not the province of this book to question. It is to record the result of the action upon the social relations of the different members of that little community, or village, in which the small factory was established, and the attendant unhappiness arising from the accumulation of a disproportioned amount of money in the hands of one of the citizens of the community. The manufacturer, becoming prosperous, began to assume an air of social superiority. He was enabled to take a trip every now and again to some near-by city. He there saw his model McAllister. He returned to his village with un-American affectations, aping the manner of his model—the McAllister of his near-by city. He began to draw around him (in much the same manner as McAllister describes the creation of the “Patriarchs” of New York) those whom he deemed suitable for that superior social position which he, modelling the machinery after the manner of the city McAllister, deemed so desirable.

Before proceeding to describe the birth of this superior social class, and the method of its organization, for which information we are indebted to this Prince of Cooks and Coats—McAllister—it is desirable to regard in a political way this local would-be aristocrat, the manufacturer. He imagines that Protection, the tariff, by which he has been enabled to amass the wealth, as the foundation upon which he bases his claim to a more exalted position, socially, than his fellow citizens, is entirely due to the doctrines of the Republican party. He loses sight of the fact that the Republican party did not owe its origin to Protection. The Abraham Lincoln Republican party did not owe its victory and popularity in the hearts of the people to Protection. There were other causes which operated powerfully in producing the result of the election in 1860; but the manufacturer of that little village, before mentioned, absorbed by the one idea that Protection has been the one cause of his success, and that it was due to the Republican party, becomes oblivious to the fact that the necessities of the Government, during a war to preserve the Federal Union, became so great that revenue had to be derived from some source, and that many of the duties imposed upon foreign importations by the Republican party had for their cause the stern necessity of the soldiers in the field, fighting to preserve the Union; that the war was not a battle for Protection. It had for its origin other and very different causes.

The war, which had been the outgrowth of the election of the candidate of the Republican party, created expenses which the Republican administration had to meet, and as a means to that end it became necessary to increase the existing duty and to place new duties upon imported manufactured articles. And by so doing they carried to a successful termination the great struggle for the preservation of the Union, to which the Republican party had pledged itself; which, together with the inclination and desire of some of the prominent members of the Republican party to increase the manufacturing industries of the country, has brought about that Protection and tariff by which he, the village manufacturer, has profited. He never stops to consider whether the tariff was a means to the end so profoundly desired, the preservation of the Union, a means of furnishing sinews of war by which the stars were retained upon our flag. He regards the tariff and Protection only in its personal aspect. The Republican party, to him, means his benefactor, to whom he owes an eternal debt of gratitude for enabling him to acquire that which, without Protection and tariff, he never could have obtained in the open field of the commercial battle wherein the world at large may contend. The position held by great thinkers of the Abraham Lincoln period is utterly unappreciated by him. That this tariff and Protection, which has been such a boon to him, was not created for his especial benefit, never suggests itself to his mind; that men of the Lincoln day and stamp should have had in view only the preservation of the Union and creating a fund to pay the expenses of those engaged to accomplish that end, does not occur to the village manufacturer.

In fact, many of the Republican politicians have made too much of the Protection doctrine and not enough of the cause that created it. This village, protected, small manufacturer, communing with himself, concludes that without Protection he could never have amassed that wealth which he is endeavoring to make elevate him above the social status of his fellow citizens. He acknowledges, possibly, to himself, that without Protection he might still be struggling for existence upon an equal plane with the “Common People,” above whose heads he hopes to elevate himself socially. He regards only the Republican party of to-day, utterly oblivious to the fact that he and men of the McAllister and the “smart set” type have no just appreciation and no great admiration for the father of the Republican party, Abraham Lincoln, and his doctrines, which are the doctrines and sentiments of the “Common People.” He merely knows that Protection helped him, and he cares nothing for what it was that brought about Protection and compelled the Republican party to advocate a high tariff during the Civil War.

Hence, this village manufacturer, this would-be social leader, the imitator of the city Ward McAllister, is a most ardent Republican. The little set of satellites which he gathers round him, glad to imitate the examples and opinions of one who has attained success and who is a recognized leader of this social movement to create “Caste” in our communities, become also ardent Republicans. In other words, it becomes almost a mark of respectability (so called) in the little community wherein resides the small protected manufacturer, to be a Republican.

The very word “Democrat” smacks so much of the “Common People.” A man of intelligence, education, or wealth, who is a Democrat, becomes a social anomaly in that little community. A few prominent men through the land, who have become associated with the Democratic party, are spoken of merely as the result of inherited opinions through a long line of ancestry, similar to an inherited religion, or a motto on a coat-of-arms. A man who believes in Democracy, in its broad sense, is regarded in these little communities, when he is possessed of education, intelligence, and money, as a kind of firebrand. His every action is viewed with suspicion. So firmly has it become fixed in the minds of this little set of satellites, who surround the local manufacturing magnate, that “Republicanism” and “respectability” are synonymous, that they find it utterly incompatible with reason and refinement for a man to be respectable, according to their definition of the term, and not at the same time be a Republican.

The “Common People” in these little communities, many of whom have been Republicans with Abraham Lincoln, many of whom were veteran soldiers of the Union, became more incensed by the impression created by this local “smart set,” than convinced by argument, during the campaign of 1892.

Before proceeding to more fully dissect the sentiment created by this kind of nonsense, and by its almost invariable association with the Republican party throughout the land, we will return to the admirable, unabashed Ward McAllister, and quote something from his text-book of snobbery, as to the methods adopted in the creation of the “smart set” in New York, which has furnished a model for similar creations through the length and breadth of the land.

“As a child,” writes this scion of a race of nobles(?), “I had often listened with great interest to my father’s account of his visit to London, with Dominick Lynch, the greatest swell and beau that New York had ever known. He would describe his going with this friend to Almack’s, finding themselves in a brilliant assemblage of people, knowing no one and no one deigning to notice them; Lynch, turning to my father, exclaimed: ‘Well, my friend, geese, indeed, were we, to thrust ourselves in here, where we are evidently not wanted.’ He had hardly finished the sentence when the Duke of Wellington (to whom they had brought letters, and who had sent them tickets to Almack’s) entered, looked around, and seeing them, at once approached them, took each by the arm and walked them twice up and down the room; then, pleading an engagement, said ‘Good-night’ and left. Their countenances fell as he rapidly left the room, but the door had barely closed on him when all crowded around them, and in a few minutes they were presented to everyone of note, and had a charming evening. He described to us how Almack’s originated—all by the banding together of powerful women of influence for the purpose of getting up these balls, and in this way making them the greatest social events of London society.

“Remembering all this, I resolved, in 1872, to establish in New York an American Almack’s, taking men instead of women, being careful to select only the leading representative men of the city, who had the right to create and lead society. I knew all would depend upon our making a proper selection. I made up an Executive Committee of three gentlemen, who daily met at my house, and we went to work in earnest to make a list of those we should ask to join in the undertaking. One of this committee, a very bright, clever man, hit upon the name of ‘Patriarchs’ for the Association, which was at once adopted, and then, after some discussion, we limited the number of Patriarchs to twenty-five, and that each Patriarch, for his subscription, should have the right of inviting to each ball four ladies and five gentlemen, including himself and family; that all distinguished strangers, up to fifty, should be asked; and then established the rules governing the giving of these balls—all of which, with some slight modifications, have been carried out to the letter to this day. The following gentlemen were then asked to become ‘Patriarchs,’ and at once joined the little band:

These proud patriots, constituting a tribunal upon whose decision a man’s claim to social equality with any other citizen in New York must rest, could find much in the conduct of their descendants to question with regard to their title to social superiority. The ventilation given to the Drayton-Borrowe-Millbank affair reflected no great credit upon the great name Astor—the first on the list of the “Patriarchs.” The asinine utterances of a descendant of another of the “Patriarchs,” which is here given, gives little evidence of inherited wisdom or common sense.

In the curious case recently tried in New York relative to the right of a women’s association to erect a statue to a lady who, though counted among the metropolitan “Four Hundred,” was possessed of much public spirit and philanthropic energy, one of the witnesses—a member of the same family—testified that her grandfather “never invited such people as Horace Greeley” to his house. A correspondent of the New York World enquires:

“Is it possible that we have an aristocratic society in this republican country of ours to which the great founder of the Tribune could not be admitted? Horace Greeley was born in New Hampshire, the native State of Gen. John Stark, Levi Woodbury, Daniel Webster, and a long line of soldiers, statesmen, and men famous in literature. If it is a title to aristocracy to belong to a family who were original settlers of the country, the Hamiltons are comparatively a new people, the great founder of the family being an emigrant from the West Indian island of Nevis about the year 1770. The Schuylers derive their distinction from Major-General Philip Schuyler, who was a distinguished officer of the Revolution, but whose services could not compare with those of that sterling old hero of Bennington—John Stark.

“Why, Mr. Editor, there are thousands of good Democratic citizens who can trace back their descent to the Pilgrim Fathers, more than a hundred years before Alexander Hamilton landed from the West Indies. Is it not a relic of feudal times and barbarism to claim distinction above our fellows and superiority of birth on account of the deeds of an ancestor a hundred or more years ago?

“‘Honor and fame from no condition rise.

Act well your part; there all the honor lies.’”

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER,

A Magnate of the Standard Oil Company.

Shades of the great dead of journalism, the Bennetts, Raymonds, and others who have left the stamp of their genius upon newspaperdom in America, look down and pity the inane idiot who gives utterance to sentiments concerning Horace Greeley like those of the descendant of one of the “Patriarchs!” And men who occupy positions in the world of journalism, like Halstead, Cockerill, Clark Howell, how like you such utterances?

Really, had Horace Greeley been alive and known of such an utterly meaningless assertion, doubtless the old genius would have smiled; but here is the query: Would it not have made a Democrat of every female member of his family, who regarded him as the epitome of worth, virtue, and merit? That a man like Horace Greeley, who had arrived at a position so pre-eminent as to disregard the snarls of puppies, should be amused at such a statement, would not be astonishing; but it would be none the less disagreeable for the women of his family. A woman’s life is essentially social.

This illustration, and it would be impossible to find a better, of this nauseating attempt to establish “caste” in our country, will demonstrate the assertion that attempted class distinction has not been confined to the laboring man, the workman, or the poor man, but has been attempted, and made obnoxious, in every degree of wealth, learning, and position. The little country or village manufacturing magnate, whose Republicanism is not the Republicanism of principles nor the Republicanism advocated by Abraham Lincoln, has adopted the scheme set forth by Ward McAllister as a successful one, to be imitated in his little community, in establishing his own little “smart set”—his own local “Patriarchs.” Proceeding upon that basis, he and his little band of innovators have attempted an improvement upon the social system of each little community, which has become associated in the minds of the “Common People” of these little communities with Republicanism; and, therefore, the Republican party, in November last, was forced to bear the opprobrium that attached itself, in the minds of the “Common People,” to the “smart set” in their little communities.

Never was a greater mistake made than in supposing that the influence of this attempted social distinction shall only influence the laborers and working classes of a community. In proportion as a man, by increase of wealth and reputation, acquires in the work-a-day world a higher position with regard to the influence that he wields in the business or professional world, just so much more bitterly does he resent the arrogance of the few, who, like the Patriarchs, would establish a tribunal to try their fellow citizens concerning their social positions, at which those outside of the charmed circle have no opportunity to appear and offer proofs and evidence of their worth and merit. The banker who finds that his wife has been neglected when the invitations to the Patriarchs’ ball are distributed, feels as keenly and resentfully the insult as does the longshoreman upon finding that his wife has not been invited to the butchers’ ball.

Be honest with yourselves, and you will find, down in your hearts, a very ocean of bitterness occasioned by some slight or insult inflicted upon your family; and these are the things to which men do not give words, but which are silently felt, and to change which men silently voted.

American men bestow upon the women of their families a degree of devotion and admiration greater than that given by foreigners generally to their families. The Americans have exalted the women of our land, irrespective of wealth or condition, to a position of so much pre-eminence in our social affairs, that in that department of our lives our women are permitted to have absolute sway and control.

A man who dawdles around society, permitting it to absorb his time and attention, loses in a certain degree the respect of the large mass of American men. He is considered rather effeminate. Our social lives are controlled by the woman. Our opinions are moulded by her; hence, we feel that, on subjects of a social nature, her judgment, opinions, and thoughts are entitled to the greatest respect—in fact, controlling largely our own. Hence the mighty influence of the women who had become resentfully Democratic because of social snubs. One woman had not been invited to the Patriarch’s ball; another to the railroad magnate’s ball; another to the Standard Oil Company king’s entertainment; and, so on, it runs all down through the different stages created by this attempted crime of “caste,” leaving behind it a sting in the hearts of each home as it passes, until it reaches the laborer and strikes him and his with telling force and effect. The Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Astors, become names as hateful to him as Tarquin’s ever was to the Roman “Common People.”

WARD MacALLISTER.

Self-Appointed Leader of the “Four Hundred”
of New York.
“A Prince of Cooks and Coats.”

CHAPTER V. SOME REASONS FOR WRATH.

Had the spurious article, “American aristocracy,” confined its vaporings and exhibitions to secluded spots, it would have been tolerated by the American people, exactly like many other “isms,” shams, frauds, and delusions. Had the worshipers at the shrine of “caste,” and supposed social superiority, reserved their devotions to some secluded chapel, they might have worshiped in peace at the feet of the tinseled god whom they adore—“caste.” The American people tolerate almost any kind of “ism” for a time, provided the “ism” be not paraded before them, and flaunted in their faces in an insulting manner; but a determined people are the citizens of this nation, and when once aroused to a sense of outrage, they throw to the winds all consideration of law, danger, and consequence. The people of Chicago heard the howling of the anarchists with patience and amusement, Sunday after Sunday, along the lake front, but when the anarchists at Haymarket hurled one bomb among the citizens of the Republic, the day of anarchism was ended in Chicago. Innocent or guilty, the leaders of the movement must be punished. And they were!

Had the sham aristocrats of America been contented to reserve their exhibition of arrogance and presumption to those dervishes who worshiped at their own shrine—“caste”—and not to the general public, it is possible that their absurd “ism” might have been tolerated in a good-natured way for some time longer. It had certainly the advantage of anarchism, inasmuch as, when reserved to a few dervishes, it was excessively amusing. But, unfortunately for the champions of “caste,” their followers, possessing neither a great amount of brains nor courage (and in these particulars, even the anarchists have an advantage over the sham aristocrats), have absolutely delighted in trifling with and imposing upon the good-nature of the public. In little, mean, spiteful ways, they have exhibited a smallness of soul, and an attempt, in a cowardly manner, to impose upon those who, poor in pocket, or dependent in some way, were unable to resent it. Take the evidence of the clerks, employés, servants, of the sham imitators of English aristocracy, and, almost without an exception, you will find their bosoms filled with resentment and hatred for that class; born, not with any desire to possess the property of their employers, nor from any socialistic tendency, but entirely the result of mean, spiteful, scornful snubbing. They have been wounded in pride, for, God knows! they are entitled, as free American citizens, to the possession of self-respect and pride.

Do you ask, Madame, why it is so hard for you to secure and retain servants? The reason is given above.

An explanation of the cause for the dearth of good domestic servants was sought by a great New York daily newspaper. It opened its columns and asked for communications explaining why a young woman preferred to work in a shop ten or twelve hours a day, and receive therefor three dollars a week, rather than accept a position as a domestic servant, in your house, Madame, where she would have greater comfort in the way of food and lodging, and receive more dollars.

Read the answers received by the Recorder, of New York. In almost every instance, the writer of the communication would say that it was not a matter of food, lodging, and dollars, but a matter of self-respect. They were snubbed and sat upon when engaged in serving the rich.

Go to any fashionable restaurant, or saloon, where the would-be swells swill champagne. Ask the attendants their opinion of those who, with a supercilious air, throw them a dollar to fee them for their services. You will hear expressed, in reply to your question, opinions like this: “I feel like knocking their heads off. I am ready to work. I don’t want their money for nothing; but I am a man, and as good as they are.”

The workman was content, nor did it interest him if the rich should drive their Tally-hos. He had no desire to divide the money of the purse-proud devotee of “caste”; but when, weary from his day of labor, trudging along the road to his humble home, with tooting horn and flourish of whip the Tally-ho sweeps by him, and he has to scurry out of the road, he long remembers the derisive smile of the insolent, purse-proud occupants of the coach, and he objects—not to the coach—but to the manner and the smile of the occupants.

The heart of the shop-girl or the seamstress is not filled with envy because the fine lady (?) of fashion possesses garments of silk and laces; but the insolence and supercilious manner, when the fine lady (?) brought in contact with her, fills her soul with a sense of injured dignity. She knows she’s quite as good as a lady of fashion. Possibly her father is not a protected, petty manufacturer; and she goes to her home, resenting the assumed superiority in the manner of the fine lady, and preaches to father, brother, and lover equality and broad democracy. The fine ladies (?) of fashion have ever been most potential causes for victories by the people. No orator so eloquent as the wife, daughter, sister, or sweetheart; and her wrongs were resented November 8th.

“THE PUBLIC BE D——D!”

The New York World, of November 20th, 1892, publishes an article in connection with New York society, that, having received a place in that great Democratic journal, because of its undoubted truth, is worthy of a place in this volume. In speaking of the death of Mrs. Belmont, the World makes use of the occasion to express some remarkably forcible facts with regard to New York society. It says:—

“In the social history of New York it will be a lasting distinction to Mrs. Belmont that she was a conspicuous figure in good society before good society had been vulgarized. I have no quarrel with the society of to-day, which has merely followed the law of its evolution. I merely insist that the New York society of thirty years ago had all the good features of to-day, and was conspicuously free from certain faults which are now conspicuously prominent. The society which accepted the leadership of Mrs. Belmont had birth, and breeding, and culture, ample means and true refinement, and it had also that last test of a genuine aristocracy, that it held its rank by unquestioned title. It had so little fear of the security of its position that it freely admitted strangers of equal social rank.

“It was possible for a rich merchant to permit a clerk to visit at his house, and even scholars and educated people were not considered detrimental. While it had the respect of ingenuous youth for the older aristocracies of Europe, it did not abase itself in comparison with them, and was incapable of servility before them or before anything human. It was singularly free from scandals.”

Then, thirty years ago,—that is, at the time of Abraham Lincoln’s great popularity, succeeding by two years the great uprising of the Common People, the “mudsills,” of the North and West,—a wealthy merchant of the North would receive his clerk, as a social equal, in his house. Then times have changed, and manners with them, within the last thirty years! The rich merchant of to-day has forgotten the force of the argument which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln,—“Americans enforce Equality.” Two years was not enough, thirty years ago, to enable the rich merchant to forget that the first man of the nation, the President of the Union, had been a laborer, rail-splitter, clerk in a grocery store, and was, while chief of the nation, still a man of the “Common People.” No, two years was not enough to bring about forgetfulness of these facts; but thirty-two years was.

Hence, the overturning of the aristocratic party (or that party to which the aristocrats belong) cost what it might in dollars to the “Common People.” It is not a new economic doctrine that they demand; it is a new social system. While the assumed aristocracy of thirty years ago may have had respect for the older aristocracies of Europe, it most certainly did not abase itself, and was not as servile to them, as is the sham aristocracy of to-day.

Quoting from the Koran of that high priest of the “smart set,” McAllister, who utters the sentiments of the most exalted in the holy of holies in swelldom:—

“It is well to be in with the nobs who are born to their position, but the support of the swells is more advantageous—for society is sustained and carried on by the swells, the nobs looking quietly on and accepting the position, feeling that they are there by divine right; but they do not make fashionable society, nor carry it on.”

The “nobs,” then, of this temple of “caste,” feel that they occupy the high places by “divine right.” The phrase, “divine right,” sounds queer to Anglo-Saxon ears, to us, the descendants of a race who elevated Charles Stuart to the scaffold as a result of a “divine right.” It sounds strangely in the ears of a nation that furnished the example of Liberty and Equality to the world, and which, when followed by the Frenchmen, caused Louis XVI. to kiss the guillotine by reason of his “divine right.”

The meaningless, senseless sentences in “Society as I Have Found It,” would be entitled to not the slightest attention, were it not for the fact that they give words to the sentiments of the “smart set,” who have allied themselves—or rather stuck themselves on, as a piece of mud on a marble column—to the Republican party, and, hence, in the minds of equality-loving Americans, the Republican party became besmirched by that mud.

Quoting further from the New York World, and believing that the writer of the article knew whereof he wrote, the following is inserted:—

“I am writing about a period now thirty years gone by, and, consequently, beyond the personal knowledge of the great majority of my readers. But New York society of to-day is known to all readers of Sunday papers. They know it as an institution in which the prevalence of gigantic fortunes has made its atmosphere uncongenial for all who are not conspicuously rich. And while the valid claims of birth and breeding and culture have thus been crowded out at one gate of the social arena, the influences which have forced an entry at the other end in company with the mere millions, have all been vulgarizing influences. Society is no longer certain that it is the genuine article. If it were, it would not swagger so much, nor give so much thought to the effect it produces on the outer world. It is insolent, but not courageous; ostentatious, but not brilliant; it splurges, but does not shine; no glimmer of intelligence relieves the dullness of its boredom. It abases itself before the peerage of Great Britain, and the taint of corrupt living is unpleasantly frequent on its gilded exterior. Measured by the tests of a true aristocracy, it is below the standard of thirty years ago.”

The readers of the papers, who are the people, know that society is an institution, as organized to-day, created by gigantic fortunes, which have been accumulated within the last thirty years, and, in many instances, by men of low and vulgar instincts, of mean origin, poor ability, who have become rich as the result of accident, and the result of the necessities of the nation while engaged in the war for the preservation of the Union. These very men, who had not the courage nor patriotism of the commonest soldier who shouldered his musket at Abraham Lincoln’s call, and vindicated on the field of battle the right of the people, in a republic, to equality, and to the control of the government by the majority, who are beneficiaries of Protection and the exigencies of the nation, would assume a superiority over that common soldier whose courage and patriotism led him to risk his life in preserving the Union—for the fighting soldiers of “’61” were of the “Common People.”

Society is not only no longer uncertain that it is a genuine article, but it knows it is a sham and a fraud, and seeks to make up by impertinence, insolence, and arrogance what it lacks of the genuine article. It does swagger; it does produce an effect upon the outer world, and that effect was evident by the overwhelming vote of the people, who said to it and to its successors in office, November 8th, last: “Thus far and no farther thou shalt go.” It abases itself in such a disgusting manner before that peerage of Great Britain, as to cause feelings of indignation and contempt to arise in the bosoms of the descendants of those old Continental soldiers, who, more than a hundred years ago, said to Great Britain and her aristocracy: “We have had enough of you. This shall be a land of freedom, equality, and liberty; though it should cost the last drop of blood in our veins.” And how effectively they demonstrated their determination to produce such a result, many a lord and lordling now mouldering in his grave, who sought these shores to impose the yoke of “caste” upon the colonies, could attest.

The tuft-hunting, and absolute courting of English titled adventurers, by the inheritors of the wealth taken from the people, has filled with disgust the breast of every manly and womanly citizen of this country. The people are not Socialists. Mrs. Hammersley is entitled to all that she inherited. Her right to it would be protected and defended by every good citizen of the Union, and there are few, very few, who are not good citizens, among the people. She may marry whomsoever she will. It was her privilege to select (or be selected by) the Duke of Marlborough, descendant of—not the over-honest, but original—soldier of fortune. She had a perfect right to prefer the position as wife of a divorced duke. She could take the money amassed in America and refurnish Blenheim, for the benefit (after the death of her divorced duke) of his first wife, who was still living, and will now be enabled to enjoy the fruits produced by the waters of American dollars poured upon the somewhat decayed and degenerate house of Churchill.

Mrs. Hammersley has the right to utilize the fortune of her deceased American husband under the wise provisions of his will (clever American he must have been!) as she chooses; but when she and her acquired (by purchase or otherwise) title is flaunted in the faces of American men and women, as something which entitles her to a more eminent position than she possessed as an American woman, the “Common People” object. Every time that the lady was spoken of, or written of, as “the American Duchess,” as “Our Duchess,” it aroused resentment. We have no American Duchess.

As an American wife, Mrs. Hammersley was a queen; as a duchess, by the exertion of great pressure and influence, she gained the privilege of kissing the hand of another, called Queen, because of the accident of birth.

Doubtless, Mrs. Hammersley was not responsible for being dubbed “the American Duchess” by the newspapers; but men of the Ward McAllister stamp, and the “smart set,” indicated so plainly the kind of desire that seems to pervade the members of the sham aristocracy, to acquire by some method, and at any price, a title, that it was pardonable that the newspaper men assigned the peculiarly objectionable title of “the American Duchess” to one of America’s daughters. The columns of our papers, day by day mirroring, as they do, the prevalence of this servile abasement of the dignity of the American woman in the “smart set” seeking alliances with a degenerate and unworthy offspring of a decayed and odoriferous aristocracy existing in Europe, have brought the subject to the attention of the people all over the land.

What a relief it is to manly Americans to turn from a picture like that presented by the coroneted “Duchess,” whose title and coronet have been purchased by the wealth of a common American citizen, an account of which is here printed, taken from the New York World of November the 13th:—

“A fine old illustration of the Duke’s financial ability was shown in the way he obtained a dot of $500,000 with his wife. He made the Duchess borrow this sum in England and, to secure it, insure her life to that amount. She then returned with him to this country and here confessed judgment to her London creditors for the amount mentioned. They took the matter into the court, which directed that the trustees set aside annually from the Duchess’ income $50,000 a year to pay the interest on the debt she had incurred in England and the principal. This money the Duchess gave to her husband. She also bought and gave him a house in London.”

And then to gaze with admiring glances upon that model of the American wife and mother, the late Mrs. Benjamin Harrison. To read of her, in the columns of a paper like the New York Herald, politically opposed to the party represented by President Harrison, that this good woman, Mrs. Harrison, representing that which is most queenly to the minds of the “Common People” of America, “was a model wife and mother;” that “during her husband’s early struggles she helped him in many ways, and her wise counsel was often a great service to him.” “She reared and educated her children thoroughly and sensibly, and made their home always attractive to them. * * * * She was also a skillful housekeeper, and few women were more adept in the art of domestic economy. * * * To do good works was her delight, and she was for many years one of the managers of the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum. * * * * At no time a woman of fashion. * * * In all the honors that came to her husband, she remained just the same consistent, helpful woman that she was the first day they were married. * * * * The domestic life at the White House has been something that all the world might be better for knowing of. Mrs. Harrison was the queen and centre of it all.”

Of this good wife and mother, endeared to the hearts of the “Common People,” by the possession of those same qualities and virtues that make the helpmates of the poor and lowly so dear to them, was said, in the editorial columns of the New York Herald, October 25th, the following:—

“In this hour of his affliction, the sympathy of the entire nation will go out to President Harrison and his household.

“The people of the country had only to learn of her worth to recognize and appreciate in Mrs. Harrison the virtues and graces of a noble womanhood. As mistress of the White House, she won the affection of all, as she endeared herself to her home circle by her qualities as wife and mother.

“Her brave and serene spirit through long suffering, and the President’s tender devotion, have touched the heart of the country. Her death will be mourned as the loss of a good, lovable woman.”

MRS. BENJAMIN HARRISON.

The sorrow occasioned by her death inspired even poets to place a wreath woven by their art, upon her tomb. It is well for the country that the President’s wife should have been one furnishing such a noble example to the women of America, that of her could be written what James Whitcomb Riley wrote of Mrs. Harrison:—

Now utter calm and rest,

Hands folded o’er the breast,

In peace the placidest,

All trials past,

All fever soothed; all pain

Annulled in heart and brain,

Never to vex again,

She sleeps at last.

She sleeps, but, oh, most dear

And best beloved of her,

Ye sleep not, nay, nor stir,

Save but to bow

The closer each to each,

With sobs and broken speech

That all in vain beseech