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Bryan or McKinley? The Present Duty of American Citizens.
III. Support of Mr. Bryan by Sound-Money Democrats.
by North American Review, The
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The greater number - I believe much the greater number - of
citizens who before 1896 had acted with the Democratic party,
but in that year opposed its Presidential candidate, will this year
support him. They will do this, though he has not recanted his
silver heresy, and though now, no less than in 1896, they condemn
his error. Their course in 1900 is not only right in itself - and
that is the principal thing - but it consists with the whole frame
of their political belief. Any other course would be inconsistent
with that belief, and with the principle which determined their
vote in 1896.
The Indianapolis platform upon which in that year some of the
Sound-Money Democrats nominated Senator Palmer was a fine
declaration of faith in democratic self-government. It demanded
a gold standard of value. But to those who wrote or supported
that platform, and to the far greater number who believed in it,
the gold standard was no more than one practical result or
illustration of a creed broader and deeper than any rule of coinage.
They did not make of it a political deity; that would have been
no better than its personification as a tyrant. The gold standard
was for the time critically important; but it was important,
nevertheless, as a detail or result, not as a principle. Its temporary
rank in the politics of 1896 was due to a condition then, but not
now, existing. Although modern business had then moved
steadily and irresistibly towards the gold standard, and
although modern industrial welfare clearly required it,
nevertheless it was not yet clearly founded in our
legislation, but was the subject of immediate and practical
political difference, made acute by the fall in the price of silver.
During the four years since 1896, financial changes the world over
have, even more firmly and more plainly, established the gold
standard; it has been adopted in American statute; and
political opposition to it in the United States has died away into
subordinate and tepid statements which are no longer practical, but
are, though never so sincere, made chiefly out of regard for the
jewel of consistency so much preached and so often forgotten by
statesmen. The Gold Democrats were, in 1896, neither more nor
less than men of generally Democratic faith dealing with a
specific and temporary question, upon the basis of their general
hostility to interference with economic laws by governmental fiat.
In 1900 they remain Democrats, having little practical call to
deal with that question, but having every call to deal with one
vastly larger and deeper. Tn 1900, they are concerned, not with a
detail or illustration of the principl0s enunciated at Indianapolis
in 1896, but with their very foundation. Shall this people
reverse their supreme rule of government with the consent of the
governed, that rule in assertion of which they have, during a
century and a third, struggled to a greater and greater result of
world-reforming beneficence and domestic prosperity? Shall we
substitute military and Mohammedan ideals for those of
industrial righteousness and peace, which we have thus far kept
steadfastly before our eyessweeping away one by one obstructions
and exceptions which have tormented or disgraced our nation,
and from decade to decade more and more nearly reaching full
realization? Sound Money Democrats, if their faith in self-
government remain - and without that faith they were never
Democrats - are bound in 1900 to vote with a regard to the
Philippine policy of the President as controlling as was their regard
in 1896 to the fallacious and dangerous silver proposal.
Is not this clear? Sound Money Democrats in 1896 did not
abate hostility to the system of special privilege for small and
rich interest, the greater wealth of a few at the cost of the many,
for which the Republican party then stood and now stands. Nor
did they permanently abandon their own party because it had
once and lamentably adopted, and then defended, an economic
illusion which the Republican party had adopted, and which in
itself was not as widely or permanently corrupting as the
Republicans belief in a paternal government. Indeed, every political
party, at one time or another, preaches some illusion, economic
or social; probably no great political party is ever free from such
illusion. Hardly a political platform can be quoted which has
on every article commanded the support of the majority of a
great party, or escaped the condemnation of an important
minority. When questions of slavery were uppermost, very many
Democrats acted with the Republican party, although hostile to
a protective tariff and to much else for which the majority of the
Republican party seemed to stand. Precisely the same happened
in 1896, when free coinage was uppermost. Surely illusion about
coinage was in itself no worse than illusion about protective
tariffs, nor as bad. The illusions were equally venerable and
lamentable, but the corruption of the latter far deeper and wider
and more difficult of treatment. The silver illusion had before
1896 found its most dangerous support among Republicans and
its most resolute opposition among Democrats. During the
concern of our politics with the money question for twenty years
before 1896, President McKinley had dedicated his gift of
pleasing eloquence to the cause of free coinage at the ratio of 16 to 1;
that cause then seemed to be popular. From President
Clevelands entrance into national politics in 1884 until he last left the
Presidency, he dedicated his gift of resolute and courageous
honesty to the cause of sound money; that cause then seemed to he
unpopular. Each of the statesmen found much support and
much opposition within his own party. It is only ten years ago
that a Republican President and Congress (Mr. McKinley voting
for the bill) enacted the Sherman Silver Law - the most
dangerous of the victories of the free silver forces. The same
administration admitted to the Union territories which,
though their populations were then meagre for statehood, were at
least ready to contribute to the Senate several and perhaps
decisive votes for free silver.
In 1896, the business depression created exceptional
temptation to political vagary. The Republican administration of 1889-
1893 not only surrendered to silver, but increased the protective
advantage to favored interests beyond the extremest point of
former Republican legislation, and enormously increased pensions for
a war which had ended almost thirty years before. No doubt in l893
other conditions of business distress had long been gathering; but
these acts of national improvidence and unwisdom helped to
prepare for that year its widespread financial disaster and industrial
distress. To others belonged the causes; but President Cleveland
had to meet the result, and he did meet it as befitted leadership
of a democracy. He used no smooth words; he did not pretend
that laws could take the place of harvests, or industry or thrift.
He offered no nostrum or panacea. Instead, he applied all the
powers which, for a few months, are the property of a newly
inaugurated President, to something really within the power of law
makers - a reversal of the free silver victory accomplished by
Messrs. Allison and McKinley and their associates. It was a
fine display of civic courage and unselfish skill, and like that of
the earlier Democratic President who, in 1837, in spite of the
outcry of business distress, refused to add new folly to follies which
had already produced the distress, and instead drove through
the Sub-Treasury a bill which brought to an end - at least for a
time - the corrupting partnership between the government and
the banks. The fundamental proposition of both Presidents was,
that all the people should support the government rather than
that the government should support some of the people at the cost
of the rest. But post hoc propter hoc is the easiest, as it is
the shallowest, of reasoning in politics. If business depression
followed President Clevelands inauguration, did he not, therefore,
produce it? The last thing which had happened was sufficient
for careless or untrained minds, whether of Democrats or
Republicans. The real cause, however, was something further back and
more truly dynamic than a change of Presidents. If for nothing
else, the Republican party deserves defeat for the shallow
demagogy with which in 1900 it refers the business distresses of 1893-
1896 to the slight reductions of tariff made by the Wilson bill,
and to the incoming of President Cleveland. For this
proposition the Philadelphia Convention and its chief supporters have
declared that every vote for President McKinley shall be counted.
It was wrong for Republicans to ascribe hard times to trifling
tariff reductions, which were made a year after the hard times
began, and the business effect of which had hardly begun when
the hard times ended. So it was wrong, but no more wrong, for
the Democratic Convention of 1896 to ascribe hard times to the
sound money policy in which President Cleveland had been
steadfast, whether when, during his first term, he prevented
legislation such as his Republican successor approved, or when, in his
second term, he procured the repeal of that legislation. There
was, in truth, less folly in the belief that the sound money policy
had produced hard times, than in the belief that Democratic tariff
reductions had produced them. For it needs no Adam Smith to
perceive that hard times must have been caused by a serious and
long continuing cause; and the sound money policy was - as the
Wilson tariff bill clearly was not - a serious and long
continuing cause, which had doubtless produced economic
results real, though different from, and more wholesome than, those
ascribed to it by the silver advocates. If Republicans do not
desert Mr. McKinley and their party for his and its long coquetry
with silver, and for their immoral and shallow charge of hard
times upon the Cleveland administration and the Wilson bill,
surely Democrats need not feel bound, after the silver issue is
practically past, to desert their party because of their candidates
devotion to the same policy, and the declaration of the Chicago
Convention of 1896 that hard times had been due to the success
of the sound money cause.
In 1896, Republicans demanded more protection to favored
and special interests as the true cure for hard times; and a
majority of Democrats as their cure demanded free silver coinage
at the old ratio. With the Republican party controlled by this
chronic belief in making men rich by legislation, and with
another form of the same belief in temporary control of the
Democratic organization, the Sound Money Democrats had to
determine their duty. They could not then support Mr. Bryan
without stultification. He had, with a courageous frankness which
shone in comparison with the neutral platitudes about money
and the glorification of protection by the statesman of Canton,
declared free coinage to be the first issue. The people, ignoring
all other issues, declared it to be the all-paramount and present
issue. The Sound Money Democrats came out of the campaign
of 1896 with no spoils of office, but with the entire moral victory.
For they had not, like President McKinley and his party,
opposed Mr. Bryan with vague and insincere promises of
bi-metallism. They meant gold and they said gold. To them, whether
those who voted for Senator Palmer, or those who, not daring of
two evils to choose neither, voted for President McKinley, more
than to any equal body of citizens, was due the character, the
emphasis and the final decisiveness of the result.
The Democratic party remains. Like the Republican party
and all other parties, it has, from time to time, made its
mistakes and had its vagaries. But they are less deeply seated in its
essential philosophy, and, therefore, less chronic, than those of
the Republican party. And surely if, four years ago, good
citizens adhered to the latter when they believed it to be right on a
present and paramount issue, they need not scruple to adhere to
the Democratic party when in 1900 it is right on that other and
greater issue, which for 1900 has become present and paramount.
The American people are to-day little concerned with what
the Republican administration has done willingly about the
tariff, or has done unwillingly about the currency. They are
seriously concerned with its policy in the Philippines and Porto
Rico. They may praise, or they may condemn. But whether
they praise or condemn, their concern is deep and vital. Some
admire the Presidents policy as an inspiring departure from a
career hitherto parochial, or piously see in it a surrender to
Gods own leading. Others condemn it as a betrayal of
democracy. But all alike, including both candidates, recognize that
policy as the chief and controlling feature of his administration.
If the sound political rule for a country governed, like ours, by
two great parties, is to be followed, the campaign should turn on
that policy. If the programme invented and carried on by the
President or by those who act through him, be right, then he
should be re-elected that he may carry it to a conclusion. If it be
wrong, then he should be defeated, and a President should be
chosen who will reverse that policy. This would and should be
tbe rule, if the question were no more important than the tariff
or silver coinage or the Isthmian canal. The rule is rigorously
imperative when the question concerns the fundamental
proposition of American government and civilization.
Is such a question, then, practically presented? It is
President McKinleys expressly declared policy to complete the
military conquest of the Philippines, and thereafter, and for such
time as we think fit, to hold in military subjugation the eight
million Filipinos. For this purpose the President maintains and,
if re-elected, he will continue to maintain, an army of 75,000
men, in addition to those otherwise needed. For this purpose he
has inflicted and, if re-elected, he will continue to inflict, death,
disease and desolation upon thousands of Americans and tens of
thousands of Filipinos. For this purpose he compels the
peaceful labor of his countrymen to contribute annually not less than
$100,000,000, with a return in profit to a score of American
traders of less than two per cent. of this cost. Here is the
practical side of the question; and it is sufficiently serious. But it
is the lesser part of the issue. Dollars and lives, no doubt, may
be justly spent for a great cause of humanity. The President
proposes (nor can his fair phrases or audacious references to
Abraham Lincoln, without daring to quote him, conceal
his intention, or that of the strong men behind him), as
the result of our final military success in the Orient, that the
American people shall adopt the policy of holding alien and
distant races in permanent and military subjection, without share
in their own government except as the American people choose
to accord it, and also without share, as matter of right, in the
American Constitution. We now call this policy Imperialism.
The name is not of moment; but it fits the thing. Disraeli chose
the title "Empress" for the Queen when exercising that arbitrary
dominion of Great Britain over India which we are to emulate.
It is for this Imperialism that the dollars are to be spent and the
death, disease and desolation to be inflicted, and all the long
hatreds and corruptions of war to be incurred. Nor is it a new
topic for Americans. Again and again and again, from the
outcry against the Stamp Act in 1776 to the adoption, more than a
century later, of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, has
the whole scheme been deliberately considered and condemned
by the American people. In that condemnation, we have found
our supreme and characteristic political glory. Every solemn,
responsible and undiscredited declaration of our statesmen, all the
teaching of our town meetings, our churches and our schools
have joined in the condemnation. If our practice have not
equalled our preaching - if in the treatment of Indians or of
Negroes within our borders our principle has been violated, - we
have not, therefore, denied the principle, but have profoundly
regretted that calamitous and inconsistent exceptions should have
been imposed upon us by the presence of these inferior races in
the midst of our population before the Declaration of
Independence. These we have declared an evil to be escaped or ended
where practicable, never a good to be preserved and extended. We
have opposed and dreaded the addition of any like difficulty.
Never before - unless in Ostend manifestoes rejected by the
people with disgust - has it been proposed that our Republic should
conquer another land or another race, or acquire any land or
people unless to dower them with the civil rights of Americans.
One by one, and sometimes at cruel cost, we have reduced the
exceptions within our domain to the universality of the
American principle. We have, until now, moved steadily nearer and
nearer - though God knows we may still be distant - to the ideal
of that Declaration, which extorts from even President McKinley
a formal and reluctant reverence. The issue, therefore, is not
only of blood and treasure and Imperialism, but of reversal of
what we have made the fundamental proposition of our New
World civilization. And more. There is in the issue this,
whether we shall reverse this proposition at the very time when its
fruits are more splendid than ever before, and its success, moral
and material, are known of all men to be vastly greater than any
achieved by empire. Out of the buoyancy, energy, courage which
are born of that orderly liberty, in which every one is jealous of
the rights of others, as involving for the future the safeguard of
his own rights, has come the marvellous productiveness of
American labor. The wealth of the rich, never before so great, the
order and safety of life and property, never so great throughout so
extended a field, the well-being of labor, the wonderful reach and
growth of all these in our land are due, so far as human effort or
wisdom has produced them, to our translation into politics of the
sacred rule of Christianity - to our supreme dedication to the
doctrine that, in their rights as citizens, all men are created free and
equal, and that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men
for to dwell on all the face of the earth."
President McKinley and his supporters will not and dare not
directly argue the question. They evade its merits by collateral
and subordinate objections, criticisms, defenses. But it will not
down. They threaten a panic, as if their Secretary of the
Treasury before campaign necessities constrained him, and Mr.
Russell Sage, who, perhaps, of all Mr. McKinleys supporters,
may be deemed most expert in panics, have not pointed out that
there can be none, as if the threat were not a silly imputation upon
nearly if not quite one-half of the American people. They tell
us that Mr. Bryan, if President, would set up the silver standard,
as if the gold law, according to the Republican platform itself,
did not make this impossible without violation of his oath of
office, or as if he had not made clear that he is no perjurer, but
courageous, honest, law-abiding. They tell us the gold law itself
will be in danger, when they know that neither a Senate nor a
House can be found during the next Presidency to pass a
free-coinage bill, and that a large, and perhaps the larger, part of the
Democratic party are to-day hostile to free coinage. President
McKinley cynically points out that, in the suppression of the
negro vote, the South is doing what he is trying to do in the
Philippines, as if that were a reason for, rather than a telling reason
against, his course; or as if the enormous difficulties inflicted
upon us by the crime committed centuries ago against the negro
race ought to be matched by like difficulties assumed in Asia;
or as if wise Southerners, like wise Northerners, do not hate the
new departure, because it will bring upon us more of the
inconsistency-breeding difficulties from which the South suffers. They
point out the Chicago heresies of four years ago and their
nominal re-adoption at Kansas City, as if there were no paramount
issue overshadowing them all, or as if citizens voting for a
candidate must vote for the entire platform, or as if they did not
know that President McKinley himself can be elected only by
inducing a sufficient number of his countrymen to forget
assertions in the Philadelphia platform which are to them false and
unrighteous. They give us garbled accounts of how the
President got into his difficulties, as if the question were how we
came to the Philippines, rather than what we have done and
shall do with them and their people. They tell us that England
has had both liberty and Imperialism, as if the American
Declaration and the American Constitution or their splendid fruits
belonged to her, or as if her prosperity and glory had arisen from
her arbitrary extensions of power by the sword rather than from
her vigorous extirpation of everything imperial at home, and
from her self-governing and non-imperial colonies across the
seas.
I cannot here argue these or other objections. Not one
touches or begins to touch the question, whether or not, on the
Asiatic coast, eight thousand miles from our nearest shores, the
Republic shall pursue a career of conquest of foreign peoples,
to hold them, not as citizens or with rights under our
Constitution, but as subjects. Nor does President McKinley dare to
argue or even explicitly to mention the question. To promote
the wrong of it naturally assemble all who believe that might
makes right, that the stronger should crowd the weaker, and
that, as Senator Hanna argued, the American should find his
sole creed and his sole glory in his "dinner pail."
It is a true battle for the dignity of American manhood and
for the everlasting rights of the masses of men. Surely, no
Democrat ought to doubt on which side he will stand.
EDWARD M. SHEPARD.
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