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JOHNSON, ANDREW
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See also: Some advocated that those entitled to vote should See also:register, and then policy of refrain from the polls, in See also:order to defeat the See also:con- the south; stitutions made under negro suffrage, for -the See also:law the Ku-required them to be ratified by a majority of the Klux Klan. qualified voters. Others would have the white race See also:bear no part in the See also:process. Societies such as the " Ku-Klux Klan" and the " Knights of the White Camelia " were organized to intimidate or restrain the freedmen. But for the See also:present the Republicans carried all before them in the South. Some of the new See also:state constitutions imposed severe disfranchisement upon the former dominant class, and before the end of See also:July 1868 all of the former Confederate States, except Virginia, Mississippi and Texas, had ratified the.Fourteenth See also:Amendment, which was proclaimed in effect. By the beginning of 187o these three states had also ratified the amendment, as had McCardle See also:Case. Georgia a second time, because of her doubtful status at the time of her first ratification. 294. By the summer of 1868 Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida, having satisfied the requirements of the Reconstruction acts, were entitled to See also:representation in See also:Congress. But Georgia did not choose her senators until after the See also:adjournment of Congress, and, inasmuch as the state excluded the negro members of the legislature in See also:September, Congress on reassembling returned the state to military rule until its submission. Alabama was restored in spite of the fact that her white voters had remained away from the polls in sufficient See also:numbers to prevent a majority of all the voters registered from having ratified the constitution of the state, as the Reconstruction acts had required. The nominating conventions and the See also:campaign of 1868 gave interesting See also:evidence of the trend of See also:political and economic events. Party lines, which had broken down in the North when all united in saving the Union, were once more reasserting themselves. See also:President Johnson, who had been elected by the Union Republican party, had found his most effective support among the Democrats. The Republicans turned to See also:General See also: The significance of this See also:lay in its See also:challenge to the Democratic agitation on the currency question. 296. It was this question which gave the See also:tone to the proceedings of the See also:Democracy at their convention in July 1868. The situation can best be presented by a brief See also:review of the See also:financial See also:history just preceding the convention. Together with the discussion over political Reconstruction in the South, Congress and the See also:administration had been obliged to See also:deal with the reconstruction of debt, See also:taxation and currency in the nation at the See also:close of four years of expensive war. At its maximum point the debt had risen to $2,758,000,000, of a complicated variety of forms, and of the See also:total less than one-See also:half was funded. The problems of funding, readjustment of taxation, and resumption of specie payments proved to be so complicated with the See also:industrial growth of the nation that they led to issues destined to exert a See also:long continued influence. 297. The various war tariffs, passed primarily for the See also:sake of increased See also:revenue, had been shaped for See also:protection under the influence of the manufacturing interests, and they Finance; had been framed also with reference to the need of the See also:Tariff; compensating the heavy See also:internal taxes which were Internal imposed upon the manufacturers. When the war Revenue. ended public sentiment demanded See also:relief from these heavy burdens, and especially from the irksome internal taxes. The rapidly growing See also:grain-raising districts of the See also:Middle See also:West exhibited a lively discontent with the protective tariff, but this did not prevent the passage in 1867 of the See also:Wool and Woollens See also:Act, which discriminated in favour of the woollen manufacturers and raised the ad valorem See also:duty on wool. In spite of several large reductions of internal revenue, the national debt was being extinguished with a rapidity that only a prosperous and growing nation could have endured. 298. The currency question, however, furnished the economic issue which was most debated in the period of Reconstruction. One set of interests aimed at rapidly reducing The the See also:volume of the currency by retiring the legal Currency See also:tender notes, or " See also:greenbacks," issued during the Question; war, on the ground that they had been provided only becks.,°, as a war measure, that the See also:country needed a contraction of this currency, and that specie payments woul be hastened by the withdrawal of the greenbacks. The secretary of the See also:treasury, See also:Hugh McCulloch, pressed this policy to the foreground, and desired authority to issue bonds to retire these notes. Another set of interests demanded the retention of the greenbacks, supporting their views by arguments varying according to the degree of radicalism of the speakers. The more moderate, like Senator See also: In 1868, on the See also:eve of the presidential campaign, Congress, alarmed by the extent of these popular demands, suspended the process of contraction by decisive majorities in both houses, after See also:forty million dollars in greenbacks had been retired by the secretary of the treasury. 299. Ohio was the See also:storm centre of the agitation. The " Ohio See also:idea " that greenbacks should become the accepted currency of the country was championed by See also:George The "ohio H. See also:Pendleton, of that state, and his See also:friends now idea." brought him forward for the Democratic nomination for president on this issue. In the national convention of that party they succeeded in incorporating into the platform their demands that there should be one currency for the government and the people, the bondholder and the producer, and that where the obligations of the government did not expressly provide for payment in coin, they should be paid in lawful money (i.e. greenbacks) of the United States. 300. But another wing of the Democratic party desired to Six Southern States Re-stored to the Union. make prominent the issue against the Reconstruction measures of the Republicans. This wing added to the platform and See also:declaration that these acts were unconstitutional and void, and the demand that the Southern states should be restored to their former rights and given control over their own elective See also:franchise. 301. Although the followers of Pendleton had shaped the financial plank of the platform, they could not nominate their National See also:leader. The opposition was at first divided between Democratk the various candidates. New See also:York, which feared Convention; the effect upon the conservative financial interests See also:Seymour of the East if Pendleton were nominated, attempted Nominated to break the deadlock by proposing an Ohio See also:man, for the Presidency. See also:Chief Justice See also:Chase. But eager as Chase was for the presidency he had flatly refused to abandon some efforts to restore See also:harmony, such as the repeal of the " See also:iron-the views which he held in favour of negro suffrage. Ohio i clad See also:oath " for ex-Confederates, in 1871, and the passage of the was, therefore, able to retaliate by stampeding the convention General See also:Amnesty Act of 1872. The North was becoming restive under the long continued use of the Federal military See also:arm within state See also:borders in time of See also:peace, and especially with the results of negro rule under " carpet-bag" leadership. 305. In any case the cost of rehabilitating the public See also:works and providing See also:education and the political and judicial institutions which should equally apply to the hitherto non-political class of the blacks, would gac See also:game o of f e Re. have been a heavy one. But the legislatures, construction especially of Louisiana, South Carolina, See also:Tennessee, Govern-Arkansas and Alabama, plunged into an extrava- ments. gance made possible by the fact that the legislatures contained but few representatives who paid considerable taxes, and that they were controlled by Northern men who were some-times corrupt, and often indifferent to the burdens laid upon the propertied classes of the South. In 1872 it was estimated that the public debts of the eleven reconstructed states amounted to nearly $132,000,000, two-thirds of which was composed of guarantees to corporations, chiefly railway companies. Legislative expenses were grotesquely extravagant, the coloured members in some states engaging in a saturnalia of corrupt See also:expenditure. Gradually this alienated from the so-called See also:Radical party the support of Southern whites, because they resented the concessions of the carpet-bag leaders to the negro vote, because they suffered from the See also:burden of taxation, and above all because race See also:friction increased, See also:drawing the whites together, in spite of former antagonisms between localities and classes. 306. By 1872 a See also:coalition had been formed under the name of Conservatives. But the control of electoral machinery in the strongly centralized state executives chosen by negro votes, and See also:coercion by the Federal authority, still upheld Republican rule in various Southern states. Virginia and North Carolina were practically bankrupt, the capitals of Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, where See also:rival state See also:officers claimed See also:possession, were occupied by Federal troops, and many of the governments were so corrupt that only the contemporaneous revelations of rottenness in New York See also:City and in certain branches of the Federal government afford a parallel. 307. It was a time of lax public morals after war, which was See also:ill suited to the difficult experiment of transferring political power to a race recently enslaved. Only the strong arm of the Federal authority sufficed to prevent the whites of the South from overthrowing a See also:condition of things which it was impossible under See also:American political ideas permanently to maintain. 308. An important economic reorganization was in progress in the South. White districts were recovering from the war and were becoming the productive See also:cotton areas by Economk the use of fertilizers and by the more intelligent Changes in white labour. Cities were rising, and the mines and the south. manufactures of the southern Appalachians were developing. In the See also:black See also:belt, or region of denser negro See also:settlement, the old centres of cotton See also:production and the citadels of the Southern political aristocracy, the blacks became See also:tenant farmers, or workers on shares, but the white See also:farmer in other areas raised his cotton at less cost than the planter who lived in the See also:rich soils of the former cotton areas. The effective and just direction of negro labour was a difficult problem and was aggravated b' 1866. See also:Jurisdiction was given to the Federal courts to maintain the equality of the races before the law. The underlying See also:doctrine of the acts was that the amendments guaranteed the freedmen against invasion of their rights by the acts of individuals as well as by explicit legislation of the states. In the next two years (1871 and 1872) acts were passed providing for effective Federal supervision of Congressional elections, and the " Ku-Klux Acts" (1871 and 1872) still further in-creased the power of the Federal courts to enforce the amendments and authorized the president to suspend the See also:writ of habeas corpus and use military force to suppress the public disorders occasioned by the attempts to intimidate negro voters. But these stern measures were accompanied by in favour of Horatio Seymour, of New York, chairman of the convention. As the war See also:governor of his state he had been a consistent critic of the extremes to which the Federal administration had carried its See also:interpretation of the war power. For See also:vice-president the convention nominated See also:Francis P. See also:Blair, jun., of See also:Missouri, who had denounced the unconstitutionality of the Reconstruction acts in unmeasured terms. 302. But the popularity of Grant in the North, together with the Republican strength in the states of the South which had been reconstructed under negro suffrage, gave orant Elected. an easy victory to the Republicans in the See also:election of 1868. Seymour carried only See also:Delaware, New See also:Jersey, New York and See also:Oregon, of the North; and See also:Maryland, See also:Kentucky, Georgia and Louisiana of the South. Tennessee, and five of the former Confederate States, upon which negro suffrage had been imposed under military Reconstruction (North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama and Arkansas) voted for Grant. Virginia, Mississippi and Texas had not yet been restored.
303. This decisive victory and the knowledge that it had been won by the See also:advantage of the negro vote in the restored states led the Republican leaders to ignore their See also:recent
e
Amedmndment• platform declaration in regard to negro suffrage.
Shortly after Congress assembled propositions were made to See also:place the freedman's right to vote beyond the power of the states to See also:change. To do this by constitutional enactment it was necessary to make the See also:provision universal, and Congress, therefore, submitted for ratification the Fifteenth Amendment declaring that " the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on See also:account of race, color or previous condition of See also:servitude." Congress was given power to enforce the amendment by appropriate legislation. By the 3oth of See also: The enforcement legislation of 187o provided penalties for violating the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments and re-enacted the See also:Civil Rights Act of
the political agitation which intensified race friction. It became evident that there was a negro problem as well as a slavery question, and that the North was unable to solve it.
309. In the meantime important See also:foreign relations had been dealt with by Secretary See also: Later years revealed it as one of the nation's treasure houses, particularly of gold and See also:coal. 310. With England affairs were even more threatening than with France. Confederate cruisers (notably the " Alabama "), The built in England and permitted by the See also:negligence of "Alabama"the See also:British government to go to See also:sea, had nearly claims. swept the American See also:merchant marine from the ocean. Unsettled questions of boundary and the See also:fisheries aggravated the ill feeling, and England's refusal in 1865 to arbitrate made a serious situation. Prolonged negotiations followed a change of attitude of England with regard to See also:arbitration, and in 187o President Grant recommended to Congress that the United States should pay the claims for See also:damages of the Confederate cruisers, and thus assume them against England. However, in 1871, the treaty of See also:Washington was negotiated under Secretary Fish, by the terms of which England expressed regret for the See also:escape of the cruisers and for their depredations, and provided for arbitration of the fisheries, the north-western boundary, and the " Alabama " claims. Senator See also:Sumner had given fiery expression to demands for indirect damage done by the destruction of our merchant marine and our commerce, and for the expenses of prolonging the war. For a time this so aroused the passions of the two nations as to endanger a solution. But Sumner, who quarrelled with the president, was deposed from the chairmanship of the See also:committee on foreign relations, and Secretary Fish so arranged matters that the See also:Geneva arbitration tribunal ruled these indirect claims out. Thus limited, the case of the United States was victorious, the tribunal awarding damages against See also:Great See also:Britain to the amount of $15,500,000. Two months later the See also:German emperor gave to the United States the dissan /uan See also:Isla puted north-west boundary, including the See also:San Juan nd. See also:island in See also:Puget See also:Sound. The fisheries controversy was not settled until 1877. 311. In the West Indies also important questions were presented. Seward had negotiated a treaty of purchase of the Danish Danish West Indies, but the Senate refused to ratify it, nor West Indies; did Grant's See also:attempt to acquire Santo Domingo meet santo with a different See also:fate at the hands of that See also:body (1870). Domingo. In See also:Cuba another insurrection was in progress. Secretary Fish " See also:pigeon-holed " a See also:proclamation of President Grant recognizing the Cubans as belligerents, and secured a policy of See also:neutrality which endured even the See also:shock of the " Virginius affair " in 1873, when fifty of the men of the filibustering steamer flying the American See also:flag were shot by the Spanishauthorities (see See also:SANTIAGO, CUBA). It was shown that the See also:vessel had no right to the flag. Negotiations about an isthmian See also:canal resulted only in a treaty with The "Vlr-See also:Nicaragua in 1868 giving to the United States a sinius" right of way across the See also:isthmus and in provisions for Affair. a government survey of the See also:Panama route. Foreign relations in this period were chiefly significant in that they were con-ducted in a spirit of See also:restraint and that peace was preserved. 312. It was in the See also: - The See also:judges had divided, four to three. Within a year the court was changed by the See also:appointment of one new See also:judge to fill a vacancy, and the addition of another in accordance with a law enlarging the court. In 1871 the former decision was reversed and the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Acts sustained on loose-construction reasoning. In 1884 the court went to the extent of affirming the right of Congress to pass legal tender acts in time of peace, in accordance with the usage of See also:sovereign governments, as an incident to the right of coinage, and it declared that the power to borrow money includes the power to issue obligations in any appropriate form. In 1871 and 1872 Secretary George S. See also:Boutwell illustrated the power of the administration to change the volume of the currency, by issuing in all over six million dollars of legal tender notes; and, following the practice of his predecessors, he sold gold from the treasury to check speculations in that part of the currency. The most noteworthy instance of this was in 1869, when two See also:Wall See also:Street speculators, See also:Jay See also:Gould and See also: It was officially reported in 1869 that " within five years more cotton spindles had been put in See also:motion, more iron furnaces erected, more iron smelted, more bars rolled, more See also:steel made, more coal and See also:copper See also:mined, more See also:lumber sawn and hewn, more houses and shops constructed, more manufactories of different kinds started, and more See also:petroleum collected, refined and exported, than during any equal period in the history of the country." 315. Between the Civil War and 1872 the See also:extension of the nation's activity to the industrial See also:conquest of the great West, as well as the economic reorganization of the East, had a profound effect upon the development of the United States. Between 1862 and 1872 grants were made to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Pacific companies, and to other connecting corpora-See also:Railways, tions, for railways from the Missouri to the Pacific, amounting to nearly 33,000,000 acres, and in the same period large loans of funds were made by the general government for this enterprise. Construction advanced rapidly after 1866, and by 1869 an all-See also:rail connexion had been established on the See also:line of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways between the East and San Francisco. Various grants were made in these years to other roads, both trans-See also:continental and Middle Western. Between 185o and 1871 Congress granted about 155,000,000 acres for railway construction, but not all these grants were perfected. It is estimated that some $5oo,000,000 were invested in the construction of Western railways between 1868 and the panic of 1873, and about 30.000 M. of railway had been added. 316. The effects of this extraordinary extension of railway transportation were immediately apparent. In the Far West Effects of the railway lines rapidly made possible the ex-Railway tinction of the bison herds which had occupied Extension. the great plains. Divided into the northern and southern herds by the Union Pacific railway in 1869, the southern herds were slaughtered in the period between 1871 and 1879, and the northern herds between 188o and 1883. This opened the way for the great extension of the See also:cattle country, following the See also:retreat of the See also:Indians. Upon the plains Indians the effect was revolutionary. Their domain had been penetrated by the railways, at the same time that their means of subsistence had been withdrawn. During the Civil War most of these Western tribes had engaged in hostilities against the Federal government. In 1866 and 1867 General George Crook was reducing the Indians of the South-West to submission, while other generals trained in the Civil War were fighting the Indians in the northern plains and Kansas, See also:Nebraska and See also:Oklahoma. By the Peace See also:Commission Act of the loth of July 1867 commissioners, including General William T. Sherman, were sent to negotiate treaties. As a result the tribes of the See also:Indian Territory were so concentrated as to permit the See also:transfer of other Western tribes to the same region, while the See also:Sioux of the northern plains were given a See also:reservation embracing the western portions of the Dakotas. Discontent with these treaties resulted, however, in hostilities following 1867. Between the close of the war and 1880 some $22,000,000 were expended in Indian See also:wars, although the act of 1871 inaugurated the change of policy whereby the Indians were no longer dealt with by treaty, but were regarded as wards of the nation, to be concentrated on reservations and fed at the expense of the nation under the supervision of Indian agents. 317. Part of these Indian difficulties were due to the opening up of new See also:mining areas in the Rocky Mountains, some of them mining. within the Indians' choicest See also:hunting grounds. At the beginning of the Civil War a preliminary mining See also:boom struck See also:Colorado; the rich Comstock lode was opened in See also:Nevada; See also:Arizona was the See also:scene of mining rushes; the See also:Idaho mines were entered; and the See also:Montana ores were discovered; so that in the period of the Civil War itself the Territoriesof Nevada, Idaho and Montana had been organized and the mountains provisionally occupied from the northern to the southern limit. The See also:discovery of gold 'in the Black Hills in 1874 continued the same See also:movement. In 1860 the nation produced $156,000 See also:worth of silver, in 1861 over $2,000,000 and in 1893 nearly $36,000,000. In the last-mentioned year the production of gold amounted also to $36,000,000, although in 186o it had been $46,030,000. Capital in mines and quarries of the United States was over $65,000,000 in 1860, over $245,000,000 in 1870, and nearly $1,500,000,000 in r880. 318. This revolution in the See also:life of the great plains and the Rocky Mountains, opening the way to See also:agriculture and to cattle raising, and preparing for the exploitation of the See also:precious metals of that great See also:area, was contemporaneous with the important development of the farming regions of the Middle West. Even during the Civil War the agricultural development of the northern half of the Mississippi Valley had continued. This was aided by the der See also:land for See also:food products to See also:supply the armies and was made possible by the extension of railways, the taking up of the See also:prairie lands through the operation of the See also:Homestead Law of 1862, the marketing of the railway land grants, and the increased use of agricultural machinery in those years. Between 186o and 187o the population of the North Central See also:group of states (engaged chiefly in grain raising) increased over 42%, and in the next See also:decade by 34%, a total addition to the popula- tion in those two decades of 8,000,000. Between of theDevelopment 1870 and 1880 about 200,000 sq. m. were added to the Middle West. See also:farm lands of the United States, an area almost equal in extent to that of France. In the same decade the North Central states increased their improved farms from near 78,500,000 acres to over 136,800,000 acres. The product of Indian See also:corn about doubled between 1860 and 188o, and that of See also:wheat and oats more than doubled. The addition came chiefly from the Middle West. In 186o the North Central states raised 95,000,000 bushels of wheat; in 187o nearly 195,000,000; in 188o 329,000,000. In 287o the same states produced 439,000,000 bushels of corn; in 188o they produced over 1,285,000,000. 319. The pressing need of increased transportation facilities had led, as we have seen, to lavish land grants and to subsidies by nation, states and municipalities to the railways. The rail-ways themselves, tempted by these opportunities, had extended their lines in some cases beyond the immediate needs of the regions entered in advance of settlement. Extravagances in construction and operation, aggravated by " construction rings " of railway officials, who secured the contracts for themselves and their friends, and by See also:rolling stock Railway Abuses. companies who received extravagant prices by favouritism, as well as the watering of stock in the creation of systems by absorption andc onsolidation of railway corporations, brought about a condition where the roads were no longer able to meet the demands of their stockholders for returns on the investment without imposing rates that the Western farmer deemed extortionate. In the competitive development of these roads and in the struggle of business corporations and localities with each other, the roads also discriminated between persons and places. This condition chiefly accounted for the political unrest which manifested itself in the West in the so-called " See also:Granger " movements of the 'seventies. 320. The farmers See also:felt the pressure of the unsettled currency, taxes were very heavy, the protective tariff seemed to them to bear unduly upon the producers of crops which exceeded the See also:home consumption and had to seek the foreign markets. The See also:price of Indian corn, wheat and cotton in the early 'seventies tended to fall as production See also:rose, so that the gold value of the total See also:crop was not greatly increased during the decade after the war, in spite of the extraordinary extension of agricultural settlement and the increase of production. Dissatisfaction with his See also:share in the prosperity of the country, and especially with the charges of middlemen and transportation companies, discontent with the backwardness of rural social conditions, and a See also:desire for larger political influence, all aided in fostering the growth of ar Manufactures. organizations designed to promote the farmers' interests. The most influential of these organizations was the Patrons of Husbandry, which was founded in 1867 and spread chiefly after 1872 by See also:local clubs or "granges," especially in the West and South. 321. The height of the movement was reached in the autumn of 1874. It threatened the disruption of the old political parties The in most of the Middle Western states. By holding •Granger" the See also:balance of power the Grangers secured legislation movement. in many of these states, fixed maximum railway rates, and provided for regulation through commissions to prevent discriminations. In the reaction after the panic of 1873 (when nearly a fifth of the railway mileage of the United States had passed into the hands of receivers) many of the " Granger laws" were repealed, the regulation was rendered nominal and the railways more than regained their political power in the states; yet the agitation had established the important principle, sanctioned by decisions of the Supreme Court, that the railways were See also:common See also:carriers subject fully to public regulation so far as it was not confiscatory. The movement for regulation of interstate commerce by congressional legislation was begun at this time under the leadership of congressmen from the Granger states. Later efforts were more wisely considered and more effective; but the rural democracy showed its opposition to the increasing political influence of capital, to See also:special privileges and to the attempts of corporations to avoid public control periodically thereafter (see FARMERS' MOVEMENT). The attempt to eliminate the middlemen by co-operative stores and grain See also:elevators was another feature of the time which gained a brief strength but soon declined. 322. The presidential election of 1872 took place in the midst of this Western upheaval. At the same time in the South the
reform Republicans and Democrats were uniting
The See also:Tweed under the name of " Conservatives " against the See also:Ring.
carpet-bag rule, and control was passing into their
hands. A reform movement was active against the evident corruption in national and municipal administrations, for Grant's See also:trust in his appointees was grossly violated. The Tweed Ring was systematically looting New York City, and See also:prior to Tweed's See also:indictment in 1871 (See NEW YORK (City) ; TAMMANY See also: It opposed further land grants to railways, but denounced repudiation and demanded specie payments in terms which excluded from its support the See also:advocates of inflation of the currency. This effort to combine the opponents of Grant's administration was wrecked by the nomination of See also:Horace See also:Greeley, a strong protectionist, who did not command the confidence of the masses of the disaffected. Although endorsed by the Democrats, Greeley was defeated by Grant, who ran See also:Ream Re-elected. on the See also:record of the Republican party, which now dropped the word Union from its name. Greeley died before the electoral See also:count; the Democrats won only the states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas, the votes of Louisiana and Arkansas being thrown out. 324. The enormous cost of the war, the excessive railway See also:building, over-trading, and inflated credit and fluctuating currency, the sinking of capital in opening new farming lands and in readjusting manufactures to new conditions brought their results in the panic of 18l3, precipitated by the failure (See also:Sept. 18) of Jay See also:Cooke, the financier of the Northern Pacific railway. For overfive years the nation underwent a drastic purgation; railway building almost ceased, and so See also:late as 1877 over 18% of the railway mileage of the nation was in the hands of receivers. The iron See also:industry was prostrated, and See also:mercantile failures for four years amounted to $775,000,000. At the close of the period there was a replacement of partnerships and individual businesses by corporations, but in the See also:interval political unrest was in the foreground. 325. The charges that congressmen had been bribed by stock in the Credit Mobilier (q.v.), a construction See also:company controlled by Union Pacific stockholders, led to a congressional investigation which damaged the reputations of prominent Republicans, including Vice-president See also:Schuyler See also:Colfax; but the same Congress which investigated this See also:scandal voted itself retroactive increases of See also:salary, and this " back-pay grab " created popular indignation. Evidences of See also:fraud and corruption in revenue collection under the " moiety See also:system," and the general demoralization of the civil service continued. The demand for relief from the stringency of the crisis of 1873 expressed itself in the so-called Inflation See also:Bill (passed See also:April 1874), providing a maximum of four See also:hundred million dollars for greenback issues. This was vetoed by Grant, but he later signed a bill accepting as a maximum the existing greenback circulation of $382,000,000. This See also:compromise was satisfactory neither to contractionists nor See also:green-backers. The latter especially resented the provisions regarding the national banks and their circulation. 326. The " tidal See also:wave " in the Congressional elections of 1874 was the result of these conditions. It marked a political revolution. The House of Representatives, which Republkans exhibited a two-thirds Republican majority in 1872, lose Control showed an opposition majority of about seventy, "congress. and the Senate was soon to be close. Such Republican strong-holds as Pennsylvania, Ohio and See also:Massachusetts went over to the Democrats in the state elections, while in the grain-raising states of the Middle West the Grangers were holding the balance of power, and in the South the Republican radicals remained in force in few states and only by the use of Federal troops. President Grant in his See also:message of See also:December 1874 acknowledged that public opinion was opposed to this use of force, but declared that without it negro suffrage would be worse than a mockery. Thus by the year 1874 the era of triumphant Republicanism and Reconstruction was closing. The leaders perceiving power about to pass from them rapidly enacted a See also:series of party measures before the meeting of the newly elected Congress. Under the leadership of Senator John Sherman an act was passed (See also:Jan. 14, 1875) providing for resumption of specie payments on the 1st of See also:January 1879, gradually contracting greenbacks to three hundred million dollars and compensating this by expanding the circulation of the national banks. Sherman's See also:personal preference was to make the greenbacks exchangeable for 4% bonds and thus to make the general public instead of the banking houses the purchasers of these securities, but he was unable to convince his colleagues. In the field of the tariff a similar policy was followed. The act of 187o had somewhat reduced duties on See also:tea, See also:coffee, See also:sugar and iron; but under Western pressure in 1872 the Republican Congress had consented to a 1o% reduction on most classes of goods in order to See also:save the general system of protection. On the eve of their relinquishment of full power the Republicans The Tariff. (March 3, 1875) repealed the Tariff Act' of 1872, increased the duties on See also:molasses and sugar and increased the revenue tax on See also:tobacco and See also:spirits. Thus the tariff was restored to the war basis, before the incoming Democratic House could See also:block the advance. Similarly on the 1st of March Congress passed a Civil Rights Act, milder than the civil Rights measure for which Sumner had fought so long, Act. guaranteeing equal rights to the negroes in hotels, public conveyances, and places of amusement and forbidding the exclusion of them from juries. But an effort to pass a new force bill levelled against the intimidation of negro voters failed. By these measures the Republicans placed the Panic of 1873. The Credit Moblller. the Salary Grab. important features of their policy where they could be over-turned only by a Democratic See also:capture of presidency and Senate. 327. In the midst of these changes the Supreme Court handed down decisions undoing important portions of the Reconstruction Supreme system by restraining the tendency of the nation to court encroach on the See also:sphere of the state; and restricting Decisions the See also:scope of the recent constitutional amendments. On the 14th of April 1873, in the Slaughter House cases, the courts held that the amendments were primarily restrictions upon the states for the protection of the freedom of the coloured man, rather than extensions of the power of the Federal government under the See also:definition of United States citizenship, and that general fundamental civil rights remained under state protection. In the case of the United States v. Reese, decided on the 27th of March 1876, the court declared parts of the act of 1870 (which provided for the use of Federal force to protect the negro in his right to vote) unconstitutional, on the ground that they did not specify that the denial of suffrage must be on the See also:sole ground of race or See also:colour. A reasonable prerequisite, such as a See also:poll tax, for voting was permissible. The South later took advantage of this decision to restrain negro suffrage indirectly. In United States v. See also:Cruikshank (1876) the court held that the amendments to the Constitution left it still the duty of the state, rather than of the United States, to protect its citizens, even when whites had mobbed the negroes. The right of the nation in the case was held to be limited to taking care that the state governments and laws offered equal protection to whites and blacks. The See also:affirmation of the power of the states over common carriers in the Granger cases (1897) has been mentioned. In 1883 the court declared the See also:conspiracy clause of the Ku-Klux Act unconstitutional and restricted the application of the law to acts of a state through its officers and not to private citizens. In the same year it declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 invalid. 328. In 1875 President Grant refused the appela of the " carpet-bagger " Governor Adelbert See also:Ames of Mississippi to be supported by troops, whereupon Ames resigned his See also:office into the hands of the Conservatives. The Mississippi See also:plan of general intimidation.of negroes to keep them from the polls was followed in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida which alone remained Republican. Thus steadily the radical Reconstruction policy and Republican control of the South were being reversed. It was made clear that negro suffrage could be enforced upon the South only by military rule which could no longer command Northern sympathy or the See also:sanction of the Federal court. Northern interest increasingly turned to other issues, and especially to discontent over administrative corruption. 320. The spoils system had triumphed over the advocates of civil service reform to such an extent that Grant abandoned The the competitive system in 1875 on the ground that See also:Whisky Ring Congress did not support him in the policy. Enor- mous frauds in the collection of the internal revenue by the Whisky Ring with the connivance of Federal officials were revealed in 1875, and about the same time, Secretary of War William W. See also:Belknap resigned to avoid impeachment for corruption in the conduct of Indian affairs. The enforced resignation in 1876 of Secretary of the Treasury See also:Benjamin H. See also:Bristow (q.v.) after he had successfully exposed the Whisky Ring, and of Postmaster-General See also:Marshall Jewell, who had resisted the spoils system in his See also:department, tended to discredit the administration. See also:Blaine, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, See also:fell under suspicion on account of his earlier relations with the Little See also:Rock & Fort See also: A compromise candidate was selected in the See also:person of Governor See also:Rutherford B. See also:Hayes, of Ohio, who had vigorously opposed See also:tile greenback movement in his state, and whose life and See also:character, though little known to the general public, made him acceptable to the reform leaders of the party. The Democrats, demanding reform, See also:economy, a revenue tariff and the repeal of the resumption clause of the act of 1895, chose the reform governor of New York, See also:Samuel J. Tilden, as their candidate. The See also:Independent National, or Greenback, party, which was to develop rapidly in the next two years, nominated See also:Peter See also: The political capacity and moderation of the nation were severely tested; but in the end a characteristic American solution was found by the creation of an Electoral Commission (q.v.) in which five See also:associate justices of the Supreme Court were joined with an equal number of representatives from each of the two houses of Congress. The result was that this commission refused to " go behind the returns," and Hayes was declared elected by one vote. To prevent the threatened danger of a See also:filibuster by Democrats Hayes Elected. of the House of Representatives against the com- pletion of the count until after legal date for the inauguration of the president, Hayes's friends agreed with leading Democrats that he would withdraw the Federal troops from Louisiana. Thus a new era began under a moderate and reforming Republican president, a close Republican Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives. The Southern question was not settled, but other issues of an economic and social nature increasingly forced themselves to the front. They were concealed in a measure by the fact that the following of each of the leading political parties was divided on financial policies, which resulted in attempts to compromise and evade the issue by the party managers. During the dozen years that followed Hayes's inauguration neither party held See also:complete possession of both the executive and the two houses of Congress. His own moderate character, the conditions of his election and 1 There was a conflict with regard to the C1eCtoral vote of Oregon also. (See OREGON: History.) 27 the check imposed during the first two years by a Democratic House of Representatives (and during the second two years by an opposition in both houses) made the period of Hayes's administration a transition from the era of Reconstruction to the era of dominant economic and reform agitation. 332. When he withdrew the troops which sustained the Republican governments in Louisiana and South Carolina, those states returned to the rule of the white Democrats. In the Congress elected in 1878 the former slave states chose soar Democrats to the House of Representatives and only four Republicans. Leading Republicans like Blaine protested vigorously against the policy, declaring that the men who saved the Union should govern it; and on the other See also:hand the Democrats in Congress added " riders " to See also:appropriation bills designed to starve the administration into complete cessation of the use of troops and Federal See also:deputy marshals at Southern elections. Extra sessions had to be summoned in 1877 and 1879 to provide supplies for the government, due to this policy. Hayes assisted his party by vetoing these coercive attempts of the Democrats and it was not until later that Federal attempts to supervise Southern elections entirely ceased. 333• As his early policy toward the South had dissatisfied many of the leaders of his party, his opposition to the spoils system alienated others. In 1877 a Civil Service Civil Service Reform Association was formed in New York, and Reform. under the leadership of reformers like George William See also:Curtis, Carl Schurz, John Jay and Dorman B. See also:Eaton, it extended to other states. In See also:June 1877 President Hayes issued an executive order against the participation of Federal officers in political management, and he furnished evidence of his .sincerity by removing Alonzo B. Cornell, the See also:naval officer of New York, who was also chairman of both state and national Republican committees, and See also:Chester A. See also:Arthur, See also:collector of the See also:port of New York. As both men were friends of Senator See also:Roscoe Conk-ling of that state, the leader of the Grant men, this was a bold challenge. The " Stalwarts " answered it by soon afterward securing the nomination of Cornell as governor of New York and Arthur as vice-president of the United States. 334. The monetary question rose to See also:primary importance at this time. Hayes himself had campaigned in Ohio successfully coinage Act against the Greenback movement, and he chose of 1873. as his secretary of the treasury, John Sherman, former senator from that state, whose long service as chairman of the finance committee had made him See also:familiar with conditions and influential with moderate men of all factions. The per capita circulation of the nation had fallen from $20.57 in 1865 to $15.58 in 1877 and was still declining. The remarkable increase in the production of silver, as the new mining regions were opened, was accompanied by a fall in its ratio to gold from 15 to I in 186o to 17 to 1 in 1877. Congress had, in 1873, passed an act dropping the See also:standard silver dollar from the See also:list of coins; but the significance of this omission of a coin not widely circulated, although it came at a time when See also:European nations were adopting the gold standard, passed almost unnoticed at the moment; but the See also:demonetization of silver was afterward stigmatized as a conspiracy, " the See also:crime of 1873." As the date (January 1, 1879) for the redemption of the green-backs in specie approached, demands were renewed for the replacement of national bank notes by greenbacks, for the postponement, or abandonment of resumption, for the See also:free coinage of silver, and for the use of silver as well as gold in the payment of bonds redeemable in " coin." Sectional grouping of the debtor against the creditor regions, rather than party See also:alignment, showed itself in the votes, for each party had its " soft money " as well as its " hard money " followers. Many who could not support the Greenback party in its theory that currency derived value from purchasing power based on the government's credit and authority rather than on convertibility, would, nevertheless, make larger use of paper money; while men who did not assent to the free coinage reasoning opposed the single gold standard as too narrowand too much under the influence of the speculative and banking interests, and would adopt some system of bi-metallism. 335• A Monetary Commission, appointed in 1876, reported in 1877, but without agreement or real influence upon the country. The president took strong ground against The Bland. free coinage (though he would resume coinage of See also:Allison Act. silver in limited quantities) and against the payment of bonds in silver; but the House of Representatives passed the measure, known as the Bland Bill, for the free coinage of silver, by a vote of 163 to 34. In the Senate this was amended, and as it finally passed both houses it was known as the Bland-Allison Act after the two leaders, the Democratic repre• sentative from Missouri and the Republican senator from See also:Iowa. This compromise was carried over the See also:veto of President Hayes and became a law on the 28th of See also:February 1878. In the vote of the 15th of February, all but one of the senators from New England, New York and New Jersey opposed it, while the states west of the Alleghanies furnished only four opposing votes. The law restored the legal tender character of the silver dollar and authorized the secretary of the treasury to buy silver See also:bullion at the market price, to an amount of not less than $2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 per See also:month, and to coin the bullion into silver dollars. Silver certificates of denominations not less than ten dollars were to be issued upon See also:deposit of silver dollars. As neither the silver nor the certificates circulated freely the denominations of the certificates were reduced in 1886, when they filled the deficiency in the contracting bank-See also:note circulation. 336. Hardly had the Bland-Allison compromise been effected on the silver issue when an act was passed (May 31, 1878) for-bidding the further retirement of greenbacks, which remained at $346,681,000. Substantially the same sectional alignment was followed in the vote on this bill as in the silver votes. Not satisfied with this legislation, nearly a million voters See also:cast their ballots for Greenback party candidates at the Congressional elections in the autumn of 1878. The preparations of Secretary Sherman had been so carefully made, and the turning See also:tide of See also:trade brought coin so freely to the United States, that before the date of resumption of specie payments a gold reserve had been accumulated to the amount of $133,000,000 in excess of matured liabilities and the greenbacks rose to par before the date of redemption. 337. In the campaign of I88o, Hayes and Tilden both declined to stand for renomination. Thus the issue of the " fraud of 1876," which the Democratic platform called the party See also:paramount issue, was subordinated. Nor was it Platforms possible for the Republicans to force the tariff of1880. question into a commanding position, for although the Democratic platform declared for a tariff for revenue only, a considerable wing of that party led by Samuel J. See also:Randall, of Pennsylvania, favoured protection. General See also:Winfield S. See also:Hancock, a distinguished soldier in the Civil War, whose nomination for the presidency by the Democrats was designed to allay Northern distrust, refused to make the tariff a national issue. The recent See also:adjustment of the monetary question and the return of prosperity relegated the discussion of the currency also to a subordinate place, so that the Greenback party was able to poll only a little over 300,000 votes instead of the million which it commanded two years before. It favoured unlimited coinage of silver as well as the replacement of bank-notes by greenbacks. 338. The Republicans, after a heated convention in which the followers of Grant (who had recently returned from a several years' trip See also:round the See also:world), Blaine and Sherman, See also:Garfield fought each other to a deadlock, selected General Elected James A. Garfield (q.v.) of Ohio, who was political President. manager for Sherman in the convention. This was a See also:blow to the Grant, or " Stalwart " wing, which was partly placated by the nomination of Arthur for the vice-presidency. Garfield's popular plurality was only a little over seven thousand out of a total vote of over nine millions; but his electoral vote was 214 to Hancock's 155. The area of the former slave 27 states marked the boundaries between the Republican and the Democratic states, except that Hancock also carried New Jersey, Nevada and See also:California. The Republicans won the elections for the House of Representatives which would meet in 1881, and the Senate was at first nearly evenly divided, two See also:independents holding the balance. In the ensuing four years party lines were badly broken, factions made See also:bitter war upon each other, and the independent reformers or" Mugwumps " (q.v.) See also:grew in numbers. The selection of Blaine as secretary of state committed Garfield to the See also:ant: Grant wing, and the See also:breach was widened by his appointment of the collector of the port of New York against the protests of Roscoe Cenkling and See also: This was an effective beginning in the See also:purification of the civil service; but the evil of See also:assessment of employees was succeeded by the evil of soliciting campaign contributions from corporations interested in legislation. The extension of the competitive See also:Anti-Poly- list proceeded gradually through succeeding adgamyAct; ministrations. The See also:Edmunds Anti-See also:Polygamy Act See also:Chinese (1882) was levelled at the See also:Mormons (q.v.), and the Excursion. Chinese Exclusion Act was passed at the demand of labour, after a long agitation in 1882, the way having been prepared by the Treaty of See also:Peking in 1880. Bills to this effect had been vetoed by Hayes and Arthur as violative of See also:international agreement, but the desire of the politicians to win the California vote, and the compromise by which the exclusion was limited to ten years finally carried the measure, and the Supreme Court 0889) held it constitutional. Later acts modified and extended the exclusion. 340. From 1879 to 1890 the treasury showed a surplus of revenue over expenditure. This furnishes the explanation of much of the legislation of that period. It led to extravagant appropriations, such as the Arrears of See also:Pensions Act of 1879, and the See also:River and Harbor Act of 1882 providing for the expenditure of more than $18,000,000, which was passed over the veto of Arthur. Appropriation bills were merely constructed in various committees of Congress under a system of bargaining between interests and sections with primary reference to the political fortunes of the congressmen. 341. The surplus also strengthened the demand fora reduction of the tariff. A tariff commission, composed of men friendly to protection, appointed in 1882, proposed an See also:average reduction of 20 to 25%. Nevertheless in the act as passed in 1883 duties were increased in general on those protected articles which continued to be imported in large volume, especially on certain woollen goods and about two-thirds ofthe imported cotton goods, and on iron ore and some steel products, while they were lowered on finer grades of wool and cheaper grades of woollen and cotton fabrics, &c. It was unsatisfactory to large portions of both parties and did not materially lower the revenue; but the act of 1883 made extensive reductions in internal taxes. As the Senate had just fallen into the hands of the Republicans, and the House would not become Democratic until the new Congress met, this protective law gave the former the advantage of position. Moreover the Democrats were themselves divided, nineteen Representatives (one-third from Pennsylvania) voting with the Republicans on the act of 1883. In the next Congress (1884), when the leaders made an, attempt to rally the Democrats to show their position by passing a bill for a See also:horizontal reduction of 2o% in general, forty-one Democrats voted against the bill and prevented its passage through the House. 342. Thus the campaign of 1884 found both parties still lacking unity of policy although it seemed possible that the tariff might become the touchstone of the contest. The Republicans challenged the independents by nominating Blaine, whose record was objectionable to many reformers, and who had been chiefly identified with the Reconstruction politics. The Democrats, taking advantage of the situation, nominated Grover See also:Cleveland (q.v.) of New York. He had won approval by his reform administration as See also:mayor of See also:Buffalo and as governor of New York during the past two years, when he had shown an See also:independence of party " bosses " and had convinced the public of his sincerity and strength of character. He represented conceptions and interests which had grown up since the war, and which appealed to a new See also:generation of voters. The platform emphasized the idea that " new issues party are See also:born of time and progress," and made the leading Platforms question that of reform and change in administra- 011884. tion, lest the continued rule of one party should corrupt the government. On the question of tariff the Democrats took a conservative attitude, emphasizing their desire to promote healthy growth; rather than to injure any domestic See also:industries, and recognizing that capital had been invested and manufactures developed in reliance upon the protective system. Subject to these limitations, they demanded correction of the abuses of the tariff and adjustment of it to the needs of the government economically administered. The Greenbackers nominated General Benjamin F. See also: The election was nevertheless recognized as making an See also:epoch. For the first time since victory came to See also:Lincoln and the Republicans on the eve of the Civil War, nearly a quarter of a See also:century earlier, the country had entrusted power to the Democrats, although over two-thirds of their electoral vote came from the former slave states. New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Indiana constituted their Northern territory. Perhaps the most significant thing about the result was the evidence that in the North political and sectional habits and prejudices were giving way among a sufficient number of independent voters, responsive to strong personal leadership on reform issues, to turn the political scale. The transition from war issues which began in 1872, and became marked in 1876, was completed by the election of Cleveland in 1884. Assassins-See also:don of Garfield; Arthur becomes President. Pendleton Act. During the first half of his term President Cleveland had the opposition of a strongly Republican Senate. In the second half Ctvil the Senate remained Republican by a majority of two, service. and the House continued Democratic. His civil service policy naturally met severe See also:criticism not only from his party foes, but also from the spoilsmen among his Democratic followers, who desired a clean sweep of Republican office-holders, and from those of his independent supporters who looked to him to establish the service on a strictly non-See also:partisan basis. The outcome of the first two years of his administration was that, of the entire body of Federal office-holders, two-thirds were changed and the obnoxious See also:Tenure of Office Act was repealed, thus leaving the president the right of removal with-out presenting his reasons. Nevertheless there was a gain, for Cleveland somewhat checked the political activity of office-holders, the criticism by the Republicans placed them on record against the former spoils system, and before leaving the presidency (but after the election of 1888 showed that power was to pass to the Republicans), he transferred the railway See also:mail service to the classified list requiring competitive examination. 344. The transition of executive power for the time to the Democratic party, however 'much it impressed the imaginations of the public as the end of an era, was not so significant as the national growth and expansion in the decade between 1880 and 1890 whereby forces were set loose which determined the characteristics of the succeeding period. Between these years the nation grew from about fifty millions to over sixty-two millions. The Middle West, or North Central group of states, gained nearly five millions and the Western See also:division over a million and a quarter. West of the Alleghanies altogether more than eight million souls had been added, while the old Eastern states gained but four millions. In 1890 the North Central division alone had achieved a population nearly five millions greater than that of the North See also:Atlantic, while the trans-See also:Alleghany region surpassed the whole East by about ten millions, and the numbers of its representatives in House and Senate placed the political destiny of the nation in its hands. 345• One of the most important reasons for the wholesale taking up of Western resources in these and the following years was the burst of railway building subsequent to the Development interruption of the panic of 1893. The eager of the West. pioneers pushed into western Kansas and Nebraska as they had into the northern Ohio Valley a half-century before. Nebraska grew from a population of one hundred and twenty-three thousand in 1870 to nearly half a million in 188o and to over a million in 1890. From about a third of a million in 1870, Kansas rose to almost a million in 1880, and to nearly a million and a half in 1890. The railway had " boomed " the See also:Golden West and a See also:cycle of abundant rains seemed to justify the belief that the " Great American See also:Desert " was a myth. Thus settlers borrowed money to secure farms beyond the region of safe See also:annual rainfall under the agricultural methods of traditional pioneering. See also:Swift disappointment overtook them after 1886, when droughts and grasshoppers ruined the crops and turned back the tide of Middle Western colonists until the western parts of these states were almost depopulated, Kansas alone losing one-seventh of its population; nor did prosperity return for a decade.
346. As the column of settlement along the Ohio Valley had extended its flanks into the old North-West between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, and into the old South-West of the lower Mississippi after the War of 1812, so the later pioneers by railway trains began to take possession of the remoter and vaster North-West and South-West. The" granger roads," centring in See also:Chicago, thrust their lines out to develop wheat farms in interior Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas, where the virgin See also:soil of the prairie farms brought returns that transferred the wheat belt to this new land of promise, and by competition forced the older wheat areas to develop varied agriculture. The introduction of the recently invented steel See also:roller system of making See also:flour into the Minneapolis See also:mills not only built up a great flour industry there but created a demand for the hard wheat suited to the
North-western prairies. The See also:pine forests of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota were exploited in the same era.
347• A more impressive movement was in progress as additional transcontinental railways were extended from the frontier to the Pacific. In 1870 for a thousand See also:miles west of See also:Duluth, at the See also:head of See also:Lake See also:Superior, along the line of the projected Northern Pacific railway there were no cities or little towns. Relying upon its land grant and upon the undeveloped resources of the vast tributary region, the railway, after halting for a few years subsequent to the panic of 1873 at See also:Bismarck on the Missouri rushed its construction to See also:Seattle and was opened in 1883. The Great Northern, a product of the See also:vision and sound judgment of James J. See also: Thus a new industrial See also:zone had been brought into existence. Colorado had become a state in 1876; in 1889 North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Montana were admitted as states and the next year Idaho and See also:Wyoming were added. The Western political forces, especially the friends of silver, were thus given the balance of power in the Senate and additional See also:weight in the electoral See also:college.
348. As a new North-West was opened by the completion of the See also:Canadian Pacific (1883), the Northern Pacific (1883) and the Great Northern (1893), so the new South-West
was entered by the completion of the Southern West outh-Pacific from New See also: In that period cattlemen fought over the possession of the range, controlled vast tracts by seizing the approaches to the See also:water supplies under perversion of the land laws, fenced in the public domain, either defiantly or by leases from land grant roads, and called out proclamations of presidents from Hayes to Cleveland. The steady advance of the farmer, and protective measures against the spread of the cattle diseases known as Texas See also:fever, gradually prevented the continuance of the trail, and ultimately broke down the system of great ranches. The grade of cattle was improved and great packing interests organized the industry on the basis of concentrated large scale production. About 1870 shipment of livestock from Chicago had become significant, and within a decade the refrigerator See also:car revolutionized the packing industry by making possible the shipment of dressed See also:beef not only to the markets of the Eastern United States but even to See also:Europe. The value of slaughtering and packing industries in the United States increased from less than thirty million dollars in 1870, to over three hundred millions in 1880, and to five hundred and sixty-four millions in 1890. 349• Another important revolution in American economic life was effected by the opening of new iron-mines, the growth of the steel and coal industry and the rise of an extraordinary internal commerce along the whole length of the Great Lakes. By 1890 the output of See also:pig-iron in the United States surpassed that of Great Britain, having doubled since 1880. The full meaning of the revolution is seen in the fact that by 1907 the United States produced more pig-iron and steel As a result of the growth of the wheat, lumber and iron-ore production of the North-West, the traffic along the thousand miles of the Great Lakes grew (chiefly after 1890) by leaps, and changed from wooden sailing vessels to steel See also:ships driven by See also:steam. The traffic through the Sault Ste See also:Marie Canal came greatly to exceed that through the See also:Suez Canal. 350. The South shared in these industrial transformations. Not only did white labour produce an increasing proportion of The south. the cotton crop, which was now extended into the cut-over pine lands, but cheap white labour came from the uplands to cotton mills situated at the water-See also:powers. This, with the abundant supply of raw material, enabled the South to develop cotton manufacture between 188o and 1890 on a scale that threatened New England's dominance. The southern Appalachians began to yield their treasures of coal and iron; northern Alabama became one of the great centres of the iron industry and the South produced nearly 400,000 tons of pig iron in 188o and two and a half millions twenty years later. By 1890 the production of coal, iron-ore and pig-iron in this See also:section was as great as that of the United States in 1870. The value of the products of manufacture in the South rose from $338,000,000 in 188o to $1,184,000,000 in 1900. The exploitation of the long See also:leaf pine forests also attracted Northern capital. See also:Fruit and See also:truck gardening grew rapidly, and the South began to exhibit traits of industrial development familiar in the North and West. Protective tariffs and the interests of capital found recruits in the old-time planting states; but the negro problem continued to hold the South as a whole to the Democratic party. 351. The opportunities opened to capital by these forces of growth in the West and South, as well as the general influence industrial of an See also:age of See also:machine production, led to transformaand tions in the East which brought new difficulties for Financial political solution. The East began to exhibit See also:char-Changes. acteristics of other long-settled countries where increasing See also:density of population and highly developed industry are accompanied by labour troubles, and where problems of democratic society and government take the form of forcible See also:action or political revolt, in the See also:absence of ample outlets into adjacent areas of cheap lands and new opportunities. To capital the opening resources of the West, and the general national prosperity after 1879, offered such inducements that large scale production by corporations and vast designs became the order of the day. The forces which had exhibited themselves in increased manufacture and railway development between the Civil War and the panic of 1873 now found expression in a general concentration of industries into fewer See also:plants with vastly greater capital and output, in the See also:combination of partnerships into corporations, and of corporations into agreements, pools and See also:trusts to avoid competition and to secure the needed capital and economies for dealing with the new problems of industrial magnitude. Western farming competition led to the actual abandonment of much inferior land in New England and to agricultural disadvantages in the Middle states. As agriculture became less attractive and as industrial demands grew, the See also:urban population of the East increased at the expense of the rural. The numbers of cities of the United States with more than 8000 people nearly doubled between ,88o and 1890; by 1900 the urban population constituted a third of the total,_ and this phenomenon was especially marked in the North Atlantic division, where by 1900 over half the population was in cities of more than eight thousand inhabitants. 352. In similar See also:fashion concentration of industry in large establishments was in progress. In 188o nearly two thousand mills were engaged in the woollen industry; in 1890 not many more than thirteen hundred. Even more marked was the change in iron and steel, where large-scale production and concentration of mills began to revolutionize this fundamentalindustry, and other lines of production showed the same tendency. The See also:anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, the great resource for the nation, fell into the possession of seven coal-carrying railways which became closeiy allied in interest. In most of the important industries the tendency of large organizations to subject or drive out the small undertakings became significant. Already the railways to avoid " cut-See also:throat competition " had begun to consolidate their systems by absorption of component lines, to form rate agreements and to " See also:pool " their earnings in given districts. Western agitation had led to reports and bills by committees headed by Western congressmen, such as the See also:report of William Windom, of Minnesota, in 1874, where the construction of Federal lines to regulate rates by competition, was suggested; the report of George W. McCrary of Iowa, whose bill for regulation was passed by the House in 1874 under the stimulus of the Granger movement, but failed in the Senate; that of John H. See also:Reagan, of Texas (1878), whose bill forbidding pooling and compelling publicity of rates by the machinery of the Federal courts, was discussed for several years, but failed to become law; and that of See also:Shelby M. Cullom, of See also:Illinois, in 1886. 353. The decision of the Supreme Court in the See also:Wabash case, made in that year, reversed the doctrine followed in the case of Munn v. Illinois, and held that the regulative power The inter. of the state (even in the absence of Federal legis- state Comlation) was limited to traffic wholly within the merceAct. state and not passing from one state to another. The Cullom bill as enacted into the Interstate Commerce Law of the 4th of February 1887, was framed to prevent unjust discriminations by the railroads between persons, places and commodities, the tendency of which was, as the report declared, to See also:foster See also:monopoly. The law forbade discriminations and pooling, made a higher See also:charge for a short haul than for a long haul over the same road illegal (unless permitted after investigation by the commission), required publicity of rates, and provided for a commission to investigate and See also:fine offenders. But the decisions of the commission were reviewable by the Federal courts and the offender could be coerced, if he refused to obey the commission, only by judicial proceedings. The commission was empowered to See also:pro-vide See also:uniform accounting and to exact annual reports from the roads. The principle settled by the law was an important one, and marked the growing reliance of the former individualistic nation upon Federal regulation to check the progress of economic consolidation and monopoly. But the difficulties by no means disappeared; the Federal judiciary refusing to accept the findings of the commission on questions of fact, retried the cases; and the Supreme Court overruled the commission on fundamental questions, and narrowed the scope of the act by interpretation. 354• Labour exhibited the tendency to combination shown by capital. The Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, on the basis of " the individual masses " instead of the trades' unions, and professing the principle that " the injury of one is the concern of all," grew from a membership of about one hundred thousand in 1885 to seven hundred and thirty thousand in 1886. The number of strikes in 1886 was over
twice as many as in any previous year. In one of the strikes on the Gould railway system six thousand miles of railway were held up. In New York, See also: See also:Immigration was immigra- exceptionally large in the decade from 188o to 1890, See also:lion. amounting to about five and a quarter millions as compared with two million eight hundred thousand for the previous decade. But a large number of these new-corners settled on the newly opened lands of the Middle West. By 1890 the persons of German parentage in the Middle West numbered over four millions—more than half the total of persons of German parentage in the nation. Minnesota held 373,000 persons of Scandinavian parentage, and of the whole of this element the Middle West had all but about 300,000. The Irish constituted the largest element among the See also:English-speaking immigrants. The population of foreign parentage amounted to one-third of the whole population of the United States in 189o. In the midst of this national development and turmoil President Cleveland struggled to unite his party on a definite issue. The silver question continued to See also:divide each party, the continued fall of silver leading to renewed agitation for free coinage. In 1886 a bill for this purpose was defeated by a majority of 37 in the House, 98 Democrats favouring it, and 70 opposing, as against 26 Republicans for it and 93 against. The surplus led to extravagant Cleveland's vetoes. appropriation bills, such as special vetoes. See also:pension bills, which Cleveland vetoed by the wholesale, thereby incurring criticism by veterans of the Civil War, and river and See also:harbour improvement measures, particularly the act of 1886, to which the president gave reluctant assent and the bill of 1887 to which he gave a " See also:pocket veto " by refusing his See also:signature. But the retention of the surplus in the treasury would create a monetary stringency, its deposit in banks aroused opposition, and its use to buy bonds was unpopular with the Democrats. Cleveland boldly met the issue and gave purpose to his party by his annual message of December 1887, which he entirely devoted to an exposition of the situation arising from the surplus, and to a demand for a revision of the tariff in order to reduce revenue. He did not profess free trade doctrines: " It is a condition which confronts us, not a theory," he declared. The election of 1886 had reduced the Democratic majority in the House, but the president was able The Mills to induce his party to pass the Mills Bill (1888) Byf through that body as a See also:concrete presentation of policy. The bill put many important raw materials (including wool and unmanufactured lumber) on the free list, substituted ad valorem for specific duties to a large extent, and generally reduced the protective duties. It was believed that the measure would remit over fifty and a-half million dollars of duties, nearly twenty millions of which would result from additions to the free list. The Republican Senate also found party unity on the tariff. issue and its committee on finance, under the leadership of Senator See also:Nelson W. See also:Aldrich of Rhode Island, drafted a See also:counter proposal. They would reduce revenue by repealing the taxes on tobacco, and the taxes on spirits used in the arts and for See also:mechanical purposes, and by revising the tariff so as to check imports of articles produced at home. 355. On the tariff issue the two parties contested the election of 1888, the Republicans denouncing the Mills Bill and the Benjamin Democrats supporting it. Blaine having withdrawn See also:Harrison from the contest, and John Sherman having secured elected but little more than half the votes necessary to President. nominate, the Republicans picked from a multitude of candidates General Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, See also:grandson of President William Henry Harrison, to run against Mr Cleve-land. The popular vote was exceedingly close, but Harrison had an electoral majority of 65, having carried all of the states except the solid South, Connecticut and New Jersey. The increasing use of money to influence the election, and particularly the association of great business interests with such political " bosses " as See also:Matthew S. See also:Quay of Pennsylvania and Thomas C. Platt of New York, were features of the campaign. The Congressional elections ensured to the Republicans the undis-puted control of all branches of the government when the Fifty-first Congress should convene, and it was generally agreed that the party had a See also:mandate to sustain the protective tariff. 356. Lacking a large majority in either house the Republicans were not only exposed to the danger of free silver defections in the Senate, but to " filibustering " by the Democratic Speaker minority in the House as a means of blocking the Thomas victorious party's See also:programme. These obstructive B. See also:Reed. See also:tactics were made possible chiefly by the use of privileged motions and See also:roll calls to delay business, and the refusal to See also:respond on the roll See also:call for a vote, thus preventing a See also:quorum. Speaker Thomas B. Reed of See also:Maine, a virile and keen-witted leader, greatly strengthened the power of the speaker, as well as expediting the business of the House, by ruling that the Constitution required a present, not a voting, quorum; and in spite of disorderly protests he " counted a quorum " of those actually present. By securing rules sanctioning this action and empowering the speaker to refuse to entertain See also:dilatory motions, that officer became the effective See also:agent for carrying on the business of the party majority. As his power through the committee on rules, which he appointed, grew, he came, in the course of time, also to dominate the action of the House, refusing to recognize members except for motions which he approved, and through his lieu-tenants on important committees selecting such measures for consideration as seemed most desirable. This efficiency of action was secured at a loss to the house as a representative and debating body, responsive to minority proposals. 357. But the discipline of party See also:caucus and House rules enabled the Republican leaders to put through with rapidity a number of important laws. One of these was the The measure known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of Sherman the 2nd of July 1890, which declared combinations Anti-Trusi affecting commerce between the several states, or with Act. foreign nations, illegal and punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. This act, the full power of which was not exhibited until later, was a response to the growing unrest of the nation as other corporations emulated the success of the Standard Oil Trust (formed in 1882). The members of a trust combined in an organization managed by boards of trustees whose certificates the former owners accepted instead of their shares of stock in the component companies. Competition was thus eliminated within the combination and the greatly increased capital and economies enabled it not only to deal with the increasing magnitude of business operation, but also to See also:master the smaller concerns which opposed it. State legislation had proved unable to check the process, partly because the trust was an interstate affair. By putting into operation its power under the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce, Congress responded to the popular demand for Federal restraint of these great combinations which threatened the old American ideals of See also:individualism and freedom of competition. The trusts, although embarrassed, soon showed their ability to find other devices to maintain their unified control. Nor was the act used, in this period, to prevent the railways from agreements and combinations which in large measure neutralized the anti-pooling clause of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. 358. Another important law was the so-called Sherman Silver Purchase Act of the 14th of July 189o. By 1889 the ratio of silver to gold had fallen to r to 22. In the Sherman twelve years of the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 silver See also:Pun over 378,000,000 silver dollars had been coined from chase Act. bullion See also:purchased at the market price. This bullion value was falling: it was $.89 in 1877 and $•72 in 1889. The production of gold in the United States in 1878 was about two and one-half million fine ounces, and of silver about thirty-five millions; in 1890 the gold production was 1,588,000 and the silver 54,500,000. The Silver Purchase Act authorized the secretary of the treasury to purchase each month 4,500,000 oz. of silver at its market price and to pay for it in treasury notes redeemable at his discretion, in silver or gold. This law, passed to placate the demands of the free silver men by increasing the use of silver, was insufficient to prevent the Senate from passing a free coinage bill by a combination of Democrats and• the Tariff Message. silver Republicans, chiefly from the newer states of the Far West; but this free coinage bill was lost in the House by a small majority. The explanation of this sudden re-opening of the question was that of party See also:apprehension. In some of the Republican states of the Middle West, long relied upon as safe, the Farmers' See also:Alliance had been spreading, and fomenting a demand for unlimited coinage of silver. A silver convention held at St Louis in the fall of 1889 had been attended by many delegates from this region as well as from the new silver-mining states whose increased power in the Senate was soon to be effective. It was feared, therefore, that a veto of a free coinage measure might See also:array the West and South-West against the East and break up the party. 359. The customs duties upon which the fighting of the campaign of 1888 had turned was promptly taken up, and in The the See also:McKinley Tariff Act of the 1st of See also:October 1890 McKinley the Republicans embodied their conceptions of Tariff. protection to American industry. Some of the main features of this law were: the addition of agricultural products to the protected articles; the extension of the free list, particularly the inclusion therein of raw sugar, which had been bringing in a revenue of $5o,000,000 annually; the granting of compensating bounties to sugar planters to an amount of about $Io,000,000 a year; and the raising of duties to the prohibitory point on many articles of general consumption which could be produced at home. Mr Blaine, then secretary of state, had just been active in promoting closer relations with South See also:America wherein he hoped for an extension of American trade and he severely criticized the bill as it passed the House,because the free list opened wide the doors of American trade, particularly to sugar producing countries, without first exacting compensating advantages for our products in those markets. To meet this criticism a provision was finally added authorizing the president to impose discriminating duties where it was necessary to obtain the advantages of See also:reciprocity. 36o. This tariff, which passed on the eve of the Congressional elections of 189o, was immediately followed by such increases in prices and the cost of living that it was potent in bringing about the political revolution, or " land slide," which swept the Republicans from power in the House of Representatives. The Republicans returned but 88 members as compared with nearly twice that number in the Congress which passed the McKinley Bill. The South sent but four Republicans; New England a' majority of Democrats; and such strongholds of Republicanism as the Middle Western states of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Kansas, hitherto responsive to the traditions of the Civil War, sent Democratic or independent delegations. Looked at broadly, the movement was a rural uprising, strongest in the South and Middle West, the old Granger areas, against forces which seemed to them to threaten their ideals of American democracy. But the movement was recruited by the silver-mining states and discontented labour interests. 361. Farm products had not proportionally shared the general increase in prosperity. This convinced large portions of the Western agricultural West that the currency system had too Discontent. narrow a basis in gold, which was appreciating in value. Much of the Middle Western agricultural development had been made on borrowed Eastern capital, and it seemed to the farmer that the principal of his See also:mortgage was in effect increasing with the rise in the price of gold, at the same time that his crops brought a smaller See also:net profit. He did not give due attention to the effect of greatly increased production, as the new wheat lands were opened on such a See also:grand scale; but he was keenly sensitive to increased See also:freight rates and discriminations, to the influence of Eastern capitalists, banks, bondholders, trusts and railways upon Federal and state legislatures and judiciary, and to the large amount of railway lands, unproductively held by the companies, while the land See also:hunger of the nation was exhibited in the See also:rush to newly opened Indian lands, such as Oklahoma (1889) and parts of the Sioux reservation (1890). After the evidence of the power of this tide of Western discontent in the elections of 189o, those portions of itwhich were ripest for revolt combined in 1892 as the People's party or Populists, soon to prove an important political See also:factor. 362. The Republicans meanwhile had been actively reducing the surplus. In 1892 the excess of revenue over expenditures was ten million dollars; by 1893 only two millions. Pensions. This was effected not only by the Tariff Act but by such measures as the Dependent Pension Act of 1890 (resulting in a list of pensioners of the Civil War which cost the nation $68,000,000 by 1893, over half of these pensioners having been added during Harrison's administration); the rapid construction of the new See also:navy, raising the United States from twelfth to fifth in the list of naval powers; the repayment of the direct war tax to the states (1891) to the amount of fifty-one millions; and other appropriations such as those provided by river and harbour bills. The Democrats stigmatized this Congress as a " billion dollar Congress" from its expenditures, to which Speaker Reed replied that the United States was a billion dollar nation. In fact the Democrats when they regained power were not able greatly to diminish the cost of government. 363. The Democratic House in the Fifty-second Congress repressed obstructive Republican tactics by methods like those adopted by Speaker Reed, and contented itself with passing a series of bills through that body proposing reductions of the tariff in special schedules, including free wool and a reduction of the duty on woollens, free raw material for the cotton planters of the South, free binding twine for the farmers of the North and a reduced duty on See also:tin See also:plate for the fruit raisers. The new industries of the southern Appalachians prevented action on coal and iron. Of course these bills failed in the Republican Senate. A bloody strike on the eve of the election of 1892 in the great steel works at Homestead, Pennsylvania, Homestead where armed See also:guards engaged by the company strike. fired upon the See also:mob which sought higher See also:wages, was not without its adverse effect upon pttblic sentiment in regard to the Republican tariff for the protection of labour. 364. During the campaign of 1892 the Democrats rejected a conservative tariff plank, denounced the McKinley tariff in violent See also:language, and denied the constitutional power to impose tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue only. But Cleve-land, who was renominated in spite of vigorous opposition from leading politicians of his own state, toned down the platform utterances on the tariff in his letter of See also:acceptance. In their declarations upon the currency the Democrats furnished a common See also:standing ground for the different factions by attacking the Silver Purchase Act of 1890 as a cowardly makeshift. 365. The People's party, in its national convention at See also:Omaha (July 1892), drew a gloomy picture of government corrupted in all of its branches, business prostrated, farms covered with mortgages, labour oppressed, lands concen- PaTherty. p eople's trating in the hands of capitalists. Demanding the restoration of government to the " See also:plain people," they proposed an expansion of its powers, to afford an adequate volume of currency and to check the tendency to " breed tramps and millionaires." Among their See also:positive proposals were: the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the legal ratio of sixteen to one; the expansion of a national currency issued directly to the people; the See also:establishment of postal savings banks; government ownership of the railways, See also:telegraph and See also:telephone; restoration to the government of the lands held by railways and other corporations in excess of their needs; and a graduated income tax. In supplementary resolutions the Australian See also:ballot system, which had spread rapidly in the past few years, was commended, as also were the initiative and See also:referendum in law-making. Combining with the Democratic party in various states beyond the Mississippi, and with Republicans in some of the Southern states, they won large masses of voters in the West, and exerted an influence upon public opinion in that section beyond what was indicated in the returns, although General James B. See also:Weaver of Iowa, their candidate for the presidency, received over I,000,000 popular votes and 22 votes in the electoral college. The Republicans renominated President Harrison, though he lacked an enthusiastic personal following. They supported the McKinley Tariff Act in spite of the wave of opposition shown in the elections of 1890. But, fearing party divisions, they, like the Democrats, made an ambiguous declaration on the currency. The result of the election of 1892 was to Cleveland return the Democrats under Cleveland to power re-elected by a plurality of over 380,000 and an electoral President. plurality of 132. Congress in both branches was to be Democratic in 1893, and the way was open for the first time in a generation for that party to carry out a policy unchecked by any legislative or executive See also:branch of government. 366. But before Cleveland was fairly started in his second administration the disastrous panic of 1893 swept the nation, nor did prosperity return during the four years to be traced to the silver purchases, but was the result of various causes, including the agricultural depression, farm mortgages, reckless railway financiering and unsound banking in the United States, as well as to See also:Argentine and European financial troubles. The panic began in the spring with the failure of the See also:Reading railway (which had undertaken the acquisition of coal land and an extension of activity beyond its resources) and the collapse of the National Cordage Company, one of the numerous examples of reckless trust financiering into which large banks had also been See also:drawn. Clearing-house certificates were resorted to by the New York banks in June, followed in See also:August by partial suspension of specie payments. Currency remained at a premium for a month; deposits in national banks shrank enormously; national bank loans contracted more than 14.7%; failures were common; 22,000 M. of railways were under receiverships, and construction almost ceased. The interruption to business is indicated by the decline of iron production by one-See also:fourth. 367. The panic of 1893 was in many ways a turning-point in American history. It focused attention upon monetary questions, prostrated the silver-mining states, embittered the already discontented farming regions of the West, produced an industrial See also:chaos out of which the stronger economic interests emerged with increased power by the absorption of embarrassed companies, and was accompanied by renewed labour troubles. Most noteworthy of these was the See also:Pullman Car Company strike near Chicago in 1894, which led to sympathetic strikes by the American Railway Union, extending over twenty-seven states and Territories from Cincinnati to San Francisco. Mobs of the worst classes of Chicago burned and looted cars. to call out the See also:militia, and the interference with the United States mails, led President Cleveland to order Federal troops to the scene, on the constitutional ground that they were necessary to prevent interference with interstate commerce and the postal service and to enforce the processes of the Federal' courts. The latter issued a sweeping See also:injunction requiring that the members of the American Railway Union or other persons desist from interference with the business of the railways concerned. The president of the striking organization, See also:Eugene V. Debs, was imprisoned for contempt of court and conspiracy. 368. The most immediate political effect of the panic was upon the silver issue. Soon after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the gold reserve, which protected the greenbacks and the treasury notes issued under the Silver Purchase Act, shrank ominously, while foreigners returned their American securities instead of sending gold. To sell bonds in order to replenish the gold reserve, and to repeal the Silver Purchase Act without substituting free coinage, would aggravate western discontent and turn away the promise of recruits to the Democratic party from the Populists of the prairie and silver-mining states; to carry out the Democratic platform by a tariff for revenue only while mills were shutting down would be hazardous in Repeal of the East. The fruits of victory were turning to Silver Put- ashes; but Cleveland summoned a special session chase Act. of Congress for August, while the panic was acute, and asked his party to repeal the Silver Purchase Act without accompanying the repeal with provisions for silver. Not until the last of October 1893 was repeal carried, by a vote in which the friends of repeal in the House were about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and nearly two-thirds of its opponents Democrats. 369. By this time the surplus had disappeared and the gold reserve was drawn upon for See also:ordinary expenses. Early in 1894 the administration, failing to secure legislation from Congress to authorize the sale of gold bonds on favourable terms to protect the reserve, sold under the Resumption Act of 1875 $50,000,000 5% bonds, redeemable in ten years. Part of this very gold, however, was withdrawn from the reserve by the presentation of legal tender notes for redemption, and the " endless See also:chain " continued this operation to the See also:verge of extinguishing the reserve, so that another See also:loan of $5o,000,000 in 1894 was followed in 1895 by a dramatic meeting between Cleveland and some of his See also:cabinet with the important Wall Street banker, J. Pierpont See also:Morgan, who agreed on behalf of his See also:syndicate to sell the government $65,166,000 of gold for $62,315,000 of bonds, equivalent to 4% bonds for thirty years at a price of 104. In return the syndicate agreed to use its influence to protect the withdrawals of gold from the treasury. These securities were over-subscribed when offered to the public at 112k. President Cleveland had protected the treasury and sustained the parity of gold and silver, but at the cost of disrupting his party, which steadfastly refused to authorize gold bonds. Again, in the beginning of 1896, the treasury was forced to sell bonds, but this time it dealt directly with the public and easily placed $See also:ioo,000,000 in bonds at about 111, affording a rate of interest about equal to 3.4%.
370. Before the political See also:harvest of the monetary issue was reaped, the Democrats had also found party ties too weak to bear the See also:strain of an effective redemption of the
e
party pledges on the tariff. The See also: Hill, of New York, the bill was transformed by an alliance between Democratic and Republican senators, on the plea that it would otherwise result in a deficit of $100,000,000. Coal, iron ore and sugar were withdrawn from the free raw materials and specific duties replaced ad valorem in many cases, while many other individual schedules were amended in the direction of protection. The House, given the alternative of allowing the McKinley Act to remain or to accept the Senate's bill, yielded, and the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act became a law without the president's signature, on the 27th of August 1894. He called upon his followers still to fight for free raw materials, and wrote bitterly of the trusts and combinations, the See also:communism of See also:pelf, whose machinations have prevented us from reaching the success we deserved." Even the income tax was soon (1895) held by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional. 371. Toward the close of his administration Cleveland's brusque message on the Venezuelan boundary question (see later) aroused such excitement and so rallied the general public (though not the more conservative) that the war spirit, shown soon afterwards against See also:Spain, might have been a potent factor Panic of that followed. The panic is not, directly at least, 1893. Railway The refusal of Governor John P. Altgeld of Illinois Strike. in the election of 1896 had not England exhibited exceptional moderation and self-restraint in her attitude. The silver question, therefore, became the important issue. The Republicans nominated McKinley and declared for the gold standard in opposition to free coinage, losing thereby an influential following in the silver-mining and prairie states, but gaining the support of multitudes of business men among the Democrats in the East and Middle West, who saw in the free-silver programme a violation of See also:good faith and a menace to returning prosperity. The Democratic convention marked a revolution in the party. Free Silver The old school leaders were deposed by decisive Issue; majorities, and a radical platform was constructed William J. which made " the free and unlimited coinage of See also:Bryan. both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation," the paramount issue. Objecting also to the decision against the income tax, and to " government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression," they incurred the charge of hostility to the Federal judiciary. William J. Bryan made a brilliant speech in behalf of free coinage, and so voiced the See also:passion and thought of the captivated convention that he Gold was nominated by it for the presidency over the Democrats. See also:veteran free-silver leader, See also:Richard P. Bland of Missouri. The Cleveland men, or " gold Democrats," broke with their party after it became committed to free silver, and holding a convention of their own, nominated General John 1VIcA. See also:Palmer of Illinois for the presidency on a platform which extolled Cleveland, attacked free coinage, and favoured the gold standard. Its main influence was to permit many Cleveland men to vote against Bryan without renouncing the name of Democrats. On the other hand the Populist convention also nominated Bryan on a platform more radical than that of the Democrats, since it included government owner-ship of the railways, the initiative and referendum, and a currency issued without the intervention of banks. 372. The contest was marked by great excitement as Bryan travelled across the country addressing great audiences. The endangered business interests found an efficient manager in See also:Marcus A. See also:Hanna of Ohio, McKinley's adviser, and expended large sums in a campaign of education. In the event, the older states of the Middle West, holding the balance between the manufacturing and capitalistic East and the populistic prairie and mining states of the West, gave their decision against free silver. But class appeals and class voting were a marked feature of the campaign, the regions of agricultural depression and farm mortgages favouring Bryan, and those of urban life favouring McKinley. Labour was not convinced that its interests lay in expanding the currency, and Mr Hanna had conducted McKinley's campaign successfully on the plea that he was the advance agent of prosperity under the gold standard and a restoration of confidence. McKinley carried all the Northern William states east of the Missouri, and North Dakota, McKinley Oregon and California of the Farther West, as elected well as Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and President. Kentucky along the borders of the South. His plurality over Bryan in the popular vote was more than 600,000, and his electoral majority 95. All the departments of government were transferred by the election to the Republicans. 373. Having secured power, the administration called a special session of Congress, and enacted the Dingley protective Dingley tariff (July 24, 1897), under which the deficit in the Tariff. treasury was turned into a surplus. The act raised duties to their highest point, and as the protective schedules included some important articles produced by trusts which had" a See also:practical monopoly, such as sugar and petroleum, this was seized upon by the Democrats to stigmatize the tariff as the " See also:mother of trusts." Many articles which had been placed on the free list in the Tariff Act of 1894, including lumber, wool and the raw material for cotton baling, were made dutiable. The high rates were defended, in part, by the provision authorizing the president to negotiate reciprocity treaties under which they might be lowered. Severalsuch treaties were signed, but the Senate refused to ratify them. 374• The Republicans also wrote their See also:triumph into the Gold Standard Act of the 4th of March 1900, which ensured the See also:maintenance of this standard by reserving $150,000,000 of gold coin and bullion to redeem the United States notes and the treasury notes of 1890, and by authorizing the sale of bonds when necessary to maintain the reserve. National banks were authorized in the smaller towns (three thousand or less) with a capital of $25,000, half of that formerly required, and increased circulation was further provided for by permitting the national banks to issue United States bonds up to their par value. 375. The economic policy of the Republicans was facilitated by the prosperity which set in about 1898. The downfall of silver-mining turned the prospectors to seek new gold fields, and they found them, especially in Alaska, about this time; and contemporaneously the chemists discovered cheaper and more efficient methods of extracting the gold from See also:low-grade ores. Within five years after the crisis of 1893 the gold production of the United States nearly doubled. The United States coined $437,500,000 in gold in the five-year period Economic 1897-1902, while the average for five-year periods and since 1873 had been only $224,000,000. Thus gold Industrial instead of silver began to inundate the market, changes. and to diminish the demand for expansion of the currency. Agriculture, prostrated in the years immediately preceding and following the panic of 1893, turned to the scientific study of its problems, developed dry farming, rotation and variety of crops, introduced See also:forage crops like See also:alfalfa, fed its Indian corn to cattle and hogs, and thus converted it into a profitable and condensed form for shipment. Range cattle were brought to the corn belt and fattened, while packing industries moved closer to these western centres of supply. See also:Dairy-farming replaced the unprofitable attempts of older sections of the Middle West and the East to compete with the wheat-fields of the Farther West. Truck and fruit farming increased in the South, and the See also:canning industry added utility to the fruits and vegetables of the West. Following the trend of combination the farmers formed growers' associations and studied the demand of the market to See also:guide their sales. The mortgaged farms were gradually freed from debt. The wheat crop in-creased from less than 400,000,000 bushels valued at $213,000,000 in 1893 to 675,000,000 bushels valued at $392,000,000 in 1898. Prosperity and contentment replaced agitation in the populistic West for the time, and the Republican party gained the advantage of these changed conditions. Land values and the price of farm products rose. The farmers soon found it profitable to sell all or part of their land and re-invest in the cheaper virgin soils of the farther North-West and South-West, and thus began a new movement of colonization into the new West, while the landowners who remained gained an increasingly higher status, though farm labour failed to share proportionally in this advance. 376. In the South also there was greater contentment as the new industries of iron, textiles and forestry grew, and as the cotton crops increased. Unrest was diminished by the new state constitutions, which after 1890 Thesouth. disqualified negro voters by educational and tax requirements so contrived as not to disfranchise the poor whites. 377. In the decade which followed the crisis of 1893 a new industrial structure was made out of the chaos of the panic. " High financiering " was undertaken on a scale ••High hitherto unknown. Combinations absorbed their Financier-weaker rivals; Standard Oil especially gained large See also:ing•" interests in New York banks and in the iron mines and transportation lines about the Great Lakes, while it extended its power over new fields of oil in the South-West. In general, a small group of powerful financial interests acquired holdings in other lines of business, and by absorptions and " community of interest " exerted great influence upon the whole business world. The group of financiers, headed by J. Pierpont Gold Standard Act. Morgan, came to dominate various Southern transportation lines and the anthracite coal roads and mines, and extended their influence to the Northern Pacific railway, while a new See also:genius in railway financiering, See also:Edward H. See also:Harriman, began an avowed plan of controlling the entire railway system of the nation. Backed by an important banking syndicate he rescued the Union Pacific from See also:bankruptcy, and with its profits as a working basis he started in to acquire connecting and competing lines. Labour also shared in the general prosperity after 1898. Relative real wages increased, even allowing for the higher cost of living, and the length of the working day in general decreased except in special industries. 378. By 1900 the continental United States had a population of 76,000,000; an aggregate real and personal See also:wealth of $88,500,000,000; a per capita public debt of $14.52, and per capita money circulation of $26.94 against $21.41 in 1896. In 1901 bank clearings amounted to nearly $115,000,000,000 against $45,000,000,000 in 1894. Imports of merdeneral chandise had fallen in this period, while exports rose Prosperity. from about $847,000,000 in 1893 to $1,394,000,000 in 1900. Of these exports food stuffs and food animals, crude and partly manufactured, aggregated nearly 40% of the total. The production of pig-iron, which was about 7,000,000 long tons in 1893, was nearly twice that in 'goo. This economic prosperity and these far-reaching processes of social change by which the remaining natural resources of the nation were rapidly appropriated, went on contemporaneously with the extension of the activity of the nation over-seas. The first rough conquest of the See also:wilderness accomplished, the long period of internal colonization drawing to a close, the United States turned to consider its position as a world power. 379• To understand this position it is necessary to return to an earlier period and briefly survey the foreign relations since the close of the Reconstruction era. The most significant and persistent influence came from the growing interest of the United States in the Pacific, as its population and economic power extended to that ocean. The problem of an overflow of Chinese See also:migration to the Pacific See also:coast, and the jeopardizing of the American standard of labour by this See also:flood, had been settled by various treaties and laws since 1880. The question of the relation of the United States to an interoceanic canal was not so easily settled. In 1878 See also:Colombia granted a con-
cession to a French company, promoted by See also: 381. As the navy grew and American policy increasingly turned to the Pacific, the need of coaling stations and positions advantageous to its sea power was appreciated. By a tripartite treaty in 1889 the Samoan islands were placed under the joint control of the United States, England and Germany, and, a decade later, they were divided among these powers, Tutuila and the harbour of Pago-Pago falling to the United States. The Hawaiian islands, which had been brought under the influence of See also:civilization by American missionaries, were connected by commercial ties with the United States. Upon the attempt of the ruler to overturn the constitution, the American party, aided by the moral support of the United States, which landed See also:marines, revolted, set up a See also:republic, and asked I/awaaan /stands. See also:annexation to the Union. A treaty, negotiated under President Harrison to this end, was withdrawn by President Cleveland, after investigation, on the ground that the part of the United States in the revolution was improper. He attempted without success to restore the original state of affairs, and on the 7th of July 1898 the islands were annexed. 382. President Cleveland's conservatism in this and other matters of foreign policy had not prepared the people for the sudden See also:exhibition of firmness in foreign policy yenezneian with which he startled the nation in his message Boundary. of December 1895 upon the question of the boundary of See also:Venezuela. That nation and England had a long-standing dispute over the line which separated British See also:Guiana from Venezuela. Great Britain declined to arbitrate, at the See also:suggestion of the United States, and gave an interpretation to the Monroe Doctrine which the administration declined to accept. President Cleveland thereupon brusquely announced to Congress his belief that Great Britain's attitude was in effect an attempt to control Venezuela, and proposed that a commission on the part of the United States should report upon the disputed boundary, and support Venezuela in the possession of what should be ascertained to be her rightful territory. Secretary-of-State Richard See also:Olney declared: " To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this See also:continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its inter-position." Great Britain tactfully accepted arbitration, how-ever, and in the end (1899) was awarded most of the territory regarding which she had been unwilling to arbitrate. The growing activity of the United States in foreign relations next manifested itself against Spain. Cuba in its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the approaches to the proposed isthmian canal, as well as in its commercial relations, and its menace as a breeding spot for yellow fever, had long been regarded by the United States as an important factor in her foreign policy. Successive administrations from the time of Jefferson had declared that it must not fall to another European nation, if Spain relinquished it, and that it was against the policy of the United States to join other nations in guaranteeing it to Spain. Between 1868 and 1878 a harsh war had been in progress between the island See also:tuba; and the mother country, and American intervention Spanish-was imminent. But Spain promised reforms and Americas peace followed; again in 1895 revolt broke out, war. accompanied by severe repressive measures, involving See also:grave commercial injury to the United States. (See SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR.) 383. By the Treaty of See also:Paris, signed on the loth of December 1898, Spain lost the remaining fragments of her See also:ancient American See also:Empire. She relinquished Cuba, which the United States continued temporarily to occupy without Pari Treatsy189ot 8. holding the See also:sovereignty pending the orderly estab- lishment of an independent government for the island. See also:Porto Isthmian Canal. Samoan Islands. Rico, See also:Guam and the Philippines were ceded outright to the United States, which agreed to pay $20,000,000 to Spain, and to satisfy the claims of its citizens against that power. By the treaty Congress was to determine the civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the ceded territory. 384. As a result of the Spanish-American War, the United States found itself in a position of increased importance and prestige among the nations of the world. Especially in the Pacific, it was immediately involved in the diplomatic situation created by the efforts of European states to divide China into See also:spheres of influence or of actual possession. The interests of the United States in the trade with China, as well as her new position in the Philippines, inclined her to oppose this policy, and Secretaryof-State John See also:Hay showed himself one of the great American diplomats in his treatment of this difficult problem. In order to preserve Chinese entity and the " open See also:door " for trade, he drew replies from the nations concerned, the result of which was to compel them to avow and moderate their intentions. When the Boxer insurrection broke out in China in 'goo, and the legations were besieged at Peking, it was largely through the United States that a less rigorous treatment was secured for that disordered nation. 385. The acquisition of Porto Rico and the acceptance of responsibilities in Cuba gave new importance to the isthmian canal and increased the relative weight of the United States in regard to its control. The popular excitement with which the voyage of the " Oregon " was followed, as it took its way 14,000 M. around South America to participate in the destruction of the Spanish See also:fleet in the See also:battle of Santiago, brought home to the American people the need of such communication between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. 386. But the immediate political issues were concerned with problems of the relation of the newly won lands to the United States government. Bryan had persuaded his party to join in ratifying the treaty of Paris, expecting to determine the status of the islands later. But attention soon turned to the insurrection which broke out (Feb. 4, 1899) in the Philippines (q.v.) under Aguinaldo, after it became probable that the administration intended to retain these islands, not under a weak See also:protectorate, but as a possession to be ruled and " assimi- lated." It was not until the spring of 1902 that The PhIUp~ pines this insurrection was completely put down, and in . the interval the question of the destiny of the islands and the harshness of the measures of repression aroused political debate. The Democrats and many Republicans charged the administration with a policy of imperialism. 387. The same issue was involved, in its constitutional and economic aspects, in the treatment of Porto Rico and Cuba. While the insurrection continued in the Philippines the government there was legally a military one, although exercised in part through civil officers and commissions. But in the case of Porto Rico the question was whether the " Constitution follows the flag," that is, whether it extended of its own force without an act of Congress to acquired territory, and covered the inhabitants with all the rights of citizens of the United States, as an integral part of the American people. Not only was it, a Porto Rico question whether the native inhabitants of these and See also:cube. new acquisitions could be wisely entrusted with this degree of political See also:liberty, but the problem of the tariff was involved. The See also:beet sugar producers of the United States feared the effect of the competition of Porto Rican sugar unless a protective tariff excluded this commodity. But if Porto Rico were an integral part of the United States the Dingley tariff could not be applied against its products, since this act imposed duties only on articles from " foreign countries." To meet this difficulty the See also:Foraker Act of 1900 imposed a special tariff for two years upon Porto Rico, the proceeds to go to that island's own treasury. The act further asserted the principle that the inhabitants of the new possessions were not incorporated into the United States or entitled to all the privileges of citizens of the United Slates under the Constitution, by declaring that statutory acts of the United States locally inapplicable should not be in force in Porto Rico. The Supreme Court sustained this act in 1901, holding that Porto Rico was not so strictly a part of the United States that See also:separate customs tariffs could not be imposed upon the territory. The close division of the court and the variety of opinions by which the decision was sustained left it somewhat uncertain whether and how far the Constitution extended of its own force to these annexations. The Foraker Act also provided a government for the island (see PORTO Rico). In Cuba the United States remained in authority until the loth of May 1902, and details of the work of the government there, and the subsequent arrangements whereby the United States secured the substantial advantages of a protectorate without destroying the independence of Cuba, will be found in the See also:article on CUBA. 388. Meantime, in the election of 1900, the Democrats renominated Bryan on a platform which opposed the Republican administration's acts in relation to the newly « Imperi acquired territory and declared that " imperialism " ism.,, al-was the paramount issue. The platform reaffirmed its silver doctrine of the previous campaign and denounced the tariff as a breeder of trusts. The Republicans renominated McKinley and endorsed his administration. While the Democrats declared for publicity in the affairs of interstate corporations and favoured enlargement of the interstate commerce law to prevent discriminations in railway rates, the Republicans were less hostile in their attitude toward the combinations, admitting the See also:necessity of honest co-operation of capital to meet new business conditions. The Populists divided, the " anti-fusionists " supporting a separate ticket, with free silver, government ownership of railways, and anti-imperialism prominent in their demands; the other wing supported Bryan. Marcus A. Hanna, the Republican campaign Re-election manager, who was increasingly influential with.. the andAssasgreat business interests of the country, appealed to slnation.of labour to support the administration and thereby McKinley. retain " a full See also:dinner See also:pail." McKinley received an electoral majority of 137 and a popular plurality of 849,790. Before his second term was fairly begun he was shot by an anarchist while attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died on the 14th of September 1901. His See also:wisdom in choosing able cabinet officers, his sympathetic tact in dealing with men and with sections, as well as the victories of the Spanish-American War, had brought him popularity even among his political opponents. But McKinley, like Cleveland, lacked the See also:imagination to perceive and the desire to See also:voice the aspirations and demands that had been gathering force for many years for legislation and executive action that should deal with the problem of effective regulation of the economic forces that were transforming American society. This gave his opportunity to See also:Theodore See also:Roosevelt (q.v.), who as vice-president now succeeded to office. It was in foreign relations, which Secretary Hay continued to conduct, that continuity with McKinley's administration was most evident. But even here a bolder spirit, Roosevelt. a readiness to break new paths and to take short cuts was shown by the new. president. Venezuela had long delayed the payment of claims of citizens of various nations. In See also:root, the president, having been informed by Germany of its intention to collect the claims of its citizens by force, but with-out acquisition of territory, announced that the United States would not guarantee any state against See also:punishment if it misconducted itself, provided that the punishment did not take the form of acquisition of territory. As a result, a See also:blockade of Venezuela was undertaken by the joint action of Germany, England and See also:Italy at the close of 1902. The diplomatic intervention of the United States early the. next year resulted in Venezuela's agreement to pay the claims in part and to set aside a. portion of her customs receipts to this end. But since the blockading powers demanded preferential treatment, the United States secured a reference of the question to the See also:Hague court, which decided that this demand was justified. San Results of the War. Domingo offered a similar problem, having a debt incurred by revolutionary governments, beyond its power to pay, and being threatened with forcible intervention by san European states. President Roosevelt, in r9o4 Domingo. Domingo. that in case of wrongdoing or impotency requiring intervention in the western hemisphere the United States might be forced " to the exercise of an international See also:police power." In 1905 San Domingo and the United States signed a See also:protocol under which the latter was empowered to take possession of the See also:custom-house, conduct the finances and settle the domestic and foreign debts of San Domingo. In spite of the refusal of the Senate to assent to this protocol, President Roosevelt put the arrangement unofficially into effect, until, in 1907, the Senate consented to a treaty authorizing it with some modifications. 389. In the Far East the Boxer insurrection in China had been followed by the combined military expedition of the powers Polkyln the to the relief of Peking (in which the United States Far East; shared), and the exaction of a huge See also:indemnity, of the Ports- which the United States relinquished nearly half of mouth its share, as in excess of the actual losses. The Treaty. United States protested against See also:Russian demands upon China, and actively participated in the negotiations which resulted in Russia's agreement to evacuate See also:Manchuria. The delays of that power and her policy toward China having led See also:Japan to declare war, Secretary Hay's See also:diplomacy was influential in limiting the zone of hostilities; and the good offices of President Roosevelt brought about the See also:conference between the two powers at See also:Portsmouth, New See also:Hampshire, which terminated hostilities in 1905. In this, and in his efforts to promote peace by extending the power of the various inter-national peace congresses and by making the Hague tribunal an effective See also:instrument for settling disputes, Roosevelt won the approval of Europe as well as of America. The dispute over the boundary between Alaska and Canada was narrowed by diplomatic discussion, and the remaining questions, involving the control of important ports at the head of the great inlets which offered See also:access to the goldfields, were settled by arbitration in 1903 favourably to the American contentions. 390. The Isthmian Canal also received a settlement in this administration by a process which was thoroughly characteristic of the resolution of President Roosevelt. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty was superseded by the Hay-See also:Pauncefote treaty of 19o1, by which Great Britain withdrew her objections to a canal constructed by the United States, and under the sole guarantee of neutralization by the latter power. The treaty also omitted a clause previously insisted on, forbidding the fortification of the canal. Having thus cleared the way, the United States next debated the advantages of the Nicaragua and the Panama routes. Influenced by the cost of acquiring the rights and property of the French company, an American commission reported in 1901 in favour of the Nicara- The See also:guan ama uan route; but upon receiving See also:information that a Canal smaller sum would be accepted, the Spooner Law was enacted (June 28, 1902) authorizing the president to purchase the rights and property of the Panama Company for $40,000,000, to acquire upon reasonable terms the See also:title and jurisdiction to a canal See also:strip at least 6 m. wide from Colombia, and through the Isthmian Canal Commission to construct the canal. But if the president was unable to secure a valid title from the French company and the control from Colombia within " a reasonable time and upon See also:reason-able terms " the Nicaraguan route was to be made the line of the canal. With this means of pressure the president acquired the French rights; but Colombia declined to ratify the treaty negotiated for the purpose of giving the United States the specified control, on the terms offered. In this emergency an insurrection broke out in Panama on the 3rd of See also:November 1903. The naval force of the United States, acting under the'theory that it was obliged to keep open the transit across the isthmus by its treaty obligations, excluded armed forces from the canal strip, and the Republic of Panama, having declared itsindependence of Colombia, was promptly recognized on the 6th of November. Twelve days later a treaty was negotiated with this republic, by which the United States paid Panama $io,000,000, together with an See also:annuity of $250,000 to begin ten years later, and guaranteed the independence of the republic, receiving in See also:exchange the substantial sovereignty and owner-ship of a ten-mile strip for the canal. This treaty was ratified by the Senate on the 23rd of February 1904, and excavation was begun in 1907. (See PANAMA CANAL.) 391. In the Philippines early in 1901 municipal and provincial governments were provided for, and the president had been for a brief time granted full power to govern the See also:archipelago. He appointed Judge See also:Taft civil phThe ilippines. governor, and limited the power of the military governor to regions where insurrection continued. On the 1st of July 1902 Congressional authority was substituted for that of the president, but Taft remained governor. The provisions of the Constitution guaranteeing life, liberty and property were in general extended specifically to the dependency, and a legislative See also:assembly was promised, the lower house elective, and the upper house to consist of the Philippine Commission. By negotiations with See also:Rome Governor Taft secured for the Philippines the " friars' lands " which had been a source of friction. On the 16th of October 1907 the first Philippine assembly was convened in the presence of Taft, then secretary of war. 392. The tariff question complicated American relations with both the Philippines and Cuba. Beet sugar and tobacco interests feared the competition of these products, and opposed freedom of trade between the United States and the new territories. The Philippine tariff of 1902 made a reduction of only 25 % from the Dingley tariff in the case of the products of those islands, instead of the 75% urged by Taft; but the duties were to go to the Philippines. In the case of Cuba a more heated controversy arose over the tariff—Roosevelt strongly urged a substantial reduction in justice to Cuba at several See also:regular and special sessions of Congress; but not until the close of 1903 was a treaty in operation which, under the principle of reciprocity, admitted some products of the United States to Cuba at reduced rates, and allowed Cuban products a reduction of 20% from the Dingley tariff, stipulating at the same time that so long as this arrangement continued no sugar should be admitted at reduced rates from any other country. This See also:sacrifice of the means of reciprocity with sugar countries for the advantage of the beet sugar raisers of the West was quickly followed by the acquisition of preponderant interest in the beet sugar refineries by the Sugar Trust, which was thus able to control the domestic market; but for the time being it was evident that the forces friendly to the protective tariff had increased their following in important agricultural regions. 393• The dominant See also:historical tendencies of the beginning of the 20th century in the United States, however, were characterized by huge combinations of capital and labour, the rapid passing of natural resources into private possession, and the exploitation of these resources on the principle of individualism by aggregations of capital which prevented effective competition by ordinary individuals. See also:Pioneer conceptions of individual industrial achievement free from governmental restraint were adopted by huge monopolies, and the result was a demand for social control of these dangerous forces. 394. After the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 the combinations found in the favourable laws of states like New Jersey opportunity to incorporate under the See also:device of the " holding company," which was supposed to be within the law. A " promotion See also:mania " set in in 1901. The steel industry, after a threatened war between the Standard Oil and See also:Carnegie See also:groups, was united by Pierpont Morgan into the United States Steel See also:Corporation with See also:stocks and bonds aggregating $1,400,000,000. This was only one of the many combinations embrac- Combining public utilities of all kinds. Where open consolida- Lions of tion was not effected, secret agreements, as in the case Capital. of the See also:meat packers, effectively regulated the market. In the field of railway transportation, Harriman used the bonds of the Union Pacific to acquire the Southern Pacific with the Central enlarged its See also:staff and its activity, investigating diseases of plants Pacific, and by 1906 he was See also:dictator of one-third of the total and animals, ascertaining means of checking See also:insect pests, advising mileage of the United States. Meanwhile the Great Northern upon the suitability of soils to crops, seeking new Economic and the Northern Pacific had been brought into friendly and better seeds, and circulating general information. Measures of working arrangements under James J. Hill, and tried to secure The contemporaneous development of agricultural the Fecerai the See also:Burlington railway. A fierce contest followed between the education in the various Western and Southern states Government, Hill, Morgan and Harriman forces, resulting in a compromise by whose agricultural colleges had been subsidized by land grants which the Northern Securities Company, a holding company for and appropriations by the Federal government, and the experithe joint interests of the contestants, was created. It was admitted See also:mental farms conducted by railways, all worked to the same end. by the counsel for this company that the machinery provided Congress passed acts to limit the substitution of oleomargarine The in this organization would permit the consolidation for See also:butter (1902) and provided for the See also:limitation of the spread Northern of all the railways of the country in the hands of of live-stock diseases (1903). The nation began also to awake securities three or four individuals. By using .notes of one to the need of protecting its remaining forests, which were company. railway company, based on its treasury securities, rapidly falling into the hands of corporations by perversion of i it was possible to acquire a controlling interest in others; I homestead and other land laws. President Cleveland had with-and by watering the capital stock to recover the cost of the drawn large See also:forest tracts, and in 1898 See also:Gifford Pinchot was undertaking, while the public paid the added rates to supply made head of a division of forestry in the Department of dividends on the watered stock. Agriculture. In 1901 the work was organized under a separate 395. Following a similar tendency the great Wall Street bureau, and four years later the National Forests were placed banking houses were dominated by the large financial groups 1 under his management. in the interest of speculative undertakings, the See also:directors of banks 399. The increasing demand for lands for agriculture led loaning to themselves, as directors of industrial combinations, also, under Roosevelt, to the real beginning of national irrigathe funds which flowed into New York from all the banks of the tion actively in the vast arid area of the Far West. The interior. By a similar process the great See also:insurance and trust The Reclamation Service was created by the act Reclamation companies of New York became feeders to the same operations. of the 17th of June 1902, which set aside the pro- service. Thus a community of control over the fundamental economic ceeds of the sale of public lands in thirteen states and three interests of the nation was lodged in a few hands. Rebates Territories as a fund for See also:irrigation works. The government and discriminations by the railways gave advantage to the itself reserved See also:timber and coal tracts, water powers and powerful shippers, and worked in the same direction. other requisites for construction, and sold the irrigated lands 396. Such was the situation in domestic affairs which to actual settlers in small farms, while retaining title to the confronted Roosevelt when he became president. In his reservoirs and the works. The income from the reclamation first message he foreshadowed his determination to grapple I fund between 1901 and 1910 aggregated over $6o,000,000. By the with these problems. In 1903 he instructed the See also:attorney-general to bring suit to dissolve the Northern Securities Company as a combination in restraint of trade, and in 1904 the Supreme Court held the See also:merger illegal. But the effect was to increase the tendency to change from incomplete combination of financial interests to consolidated corporations owning the property, and to See also:lead the government, on the other hand, to The Elkins seek to regulate these vast business interests by Law; the legislation. The Elkins Law, passed in 1903, in-Bureau of creased the power of the interstate commerce corpora- commission to prosecute offenders, especially those dons. had a membership by 1905 of approximately 2,000,000. Labour legislation by the states increased under these influences, and political leaders became increasingly aware of the power of the labour vote, while employers began to form counter organizations to check the growth of the movement. In 1902 Pennsylvania members of the United Mine Workers of America, led by John See also:Mitchell, struck. Inasmuch as their dorsed his administration, and made no promise of tariff changes. employers were the owners of the anthracite coal monopoly under the control of an allied group of coal-carrying railways, the contest was one of far-reaching importance, and soon brought about a coal See also:famine felt throughout the nation. So threatening was the situation that President Roosevelt called a conference of the contestants, and succeeded in inducing them to submit their difficulties to an arbitration commission which, by its report, in the spring of 1903, awarded to the miners shorter See also:hours and an increase of wages. 398. Steadily the United States enlarged its economic functions. In 1903 Congress created a Department of Commerce and Labor and made the secretary a member of the cabinet. The reports of this department gave publicity to investigations of the perplexing industrial conditions. The Department of Agriculture
who violated the anti-rebating clauses. In the same year the creation of the Federal Bureau of Corporations provided for increased publicity in the affairs of these organizations.
397. Labour was combining in its turn. Not only did local unions in most of the trades increase in number and power, but combine- workers in separate industries over large areas were
tions of combined for collective bargaining and the national
Labour. organization, the American Federation of Labor,
use of suitable crops and dry farming agricultural occupation was extended into formerly desert lands.
When corruption was discovered in the Land Office and See also:Post Office, Roosevelt, instead of yielding to the effort to conceal the scandal, compelled effective investigation.. Two United States senators were convicted of land frauds. The application to all kinds of lands, whether coal lands, timber tracts, water rights or other natural resources, of the general principle of homesteads governing the acquisition of agricultural lands, had invited fraudulent entries. The Homestead Act of 1862, the Timber Culture Act of 1873, the Desert Land Act of 1877, the See also: His political management exhibited the Efections of 1904. fact that he was trained in the school of the New York politician as well as in the reformer's See also:camp, and he was easily nominated by the Republicans on a platform which en- The Democrats turned to the conservative wing, omitted any reference to silver or the income tax, and nominated Judge See also:Alton B. See also:Parker, of New York. The radicals, who favoured William R. Hearst, the well-known newspaper proprietor, who was influential with the masses of large cities, were largely represented in the convention, but unable to poll a third of its vote. Parker accepted the nomination after telegraphing that he regarded the gold standard as irrevocably established. The issue of imperialism had been largely eliminated by the current of events and the anti-trust issue was professed by both parties. In the outcome Roosevelt won by the unprecedented popular plurality of over 2,500,000, and an electoral majority of 196. 401. The state elections of the same period showed that a wave of reform and of revolt against former political forces was rising. In five states which Roosevelt carried by his popularity the machine Republican candidates for governor were defeated by reforming Democratic candidates, and in cities like Chicago and See also:Philadelphia the issues of reform and radicalism won unexpected though temporary success. Roosevelt had " stolen the See also:thunder " of the parties of social unrest, including the old populistic areas of the Middle West and the labour element of the cities at the same time that he retained control of the Republican party machinery. 402. In his second administration President Roosevelt pressed his policies so hard and with such increasing radicalism The that he lost control of the regular organization President's in Congress before the end of his term. In the Radicalism. House Speaker See also:Joseph G. See also:Cannon, of Illinois, exhibited the full power of his office in concentrating party policies in the hands of the few regular leaders, while in the Senate a directing group of New England men who had served for a long time, chiefly senators Nelson W. Aldrich and Eugene See also:Hale, showed a similar mastery. Against this control a significant revolt, illustrative of revived discontent in the Middle West, was made by the Republican senator See also:Robert M. La Follette, of Wisconsin, who had won his fight in that state against the See also:faction friendly to the railways, and had secured primary elections, railway rate regulation on the basis of See also:expert valuation of the See also:physical property of the railways, and a system of taxation which rested more heavily upon public utilities. In pressing similar policies upon Congress he became isolated from the party leaders, but forced them to go on record by roll calls.
403. In New York a legislative investigation of the insurance companies disclosed such connexions with the high financiering of Wall Street as to create widespread distrust and to lead to reform legislation. The attorney who conducted the investigation, See also: 1862), had shown such ability that he was chosen governor of New York in' 906.1 His administration was marked by independence of the party machine and a progressive policy. Foreign relations were conducted during the second administration of Roosevelt by Secretary Elihu Root from 1905. He fostered friendly relations with the other American nations, allaying their concern lest ambitious designs of their larger See also:neighbour might endanger their independence. In Cuba a See also:signal See also:illustration of the good faith of the United States was exhibited when an insurrection in the summer of 1906 left the republic substantially without a government. Mr Taft, then secretary of war, was sent, under Cuba. the treaty provisions for intervention, to organize a provisional government. During his few days' service as governor-general he set in motion the machinery for restoring order. But President Roosevelt had plainly stated that if the insurrectionary See also:habit became confirmed in Cuba she could not expect to retain continued independence. 404. Attention was again fixed upon the Pacific coast, not only by the See also:earthquake and conflagration which in 1906 See also:Japanese destroyed the business parts and much of the resi-See also:Im.See also:nigra- dence section of San Francisco, but also by municipal don• regulations there against the presence of Japanese in the public See also:schools. The incident seemed to threaten grave con-sequences, which were averted by the popularity of Roosevelt both in California and in Japan. In the Immigration Act of the loth of February 1907 the problem of exclusion of Japanese labour, which underlay the difficulty, was partly solved by preventing the entrance to the continental United States by way of neighbouring countries of persons holding passports issued by a foreign government for going to See also:ether countries or dependencies of the United States. Since Japan discouraged its citizens from migrating directly to the United States this satisfied California. 405. As a demonstration of the naval power of the United States in Pacific See also:waters, the President sent the American fleet on 1 In 1910 Hughes was appointed a justice of the United States Supreme Court.a cruise around the world, in the course of which they were received in a friendly spirit by Japan. The navy was increased to keep See also:pace with the growth of that of other nations, both in numbers and See also:size of vessels, in this period, but not to the extent demanded by the administration. Already a more efficient organization of both army and navy had been effected. While the nation prepared for war, it also engaged prominently in the successive international peace congresses between 1899 and 1907, aiming consistently to increase the use of arbitration. 406. The tendencies of the government to deal with social improvement were exemplified by the laws of 1906 providing for pure food and meat inspection. The Railway Railway Rate Regulation Act of 1906 strengthened previous Rate Regointer-state acts by including See also:pipe lines (except See also:tattoo Act. for See also:gas and water) under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and extending the meaning of "common See also:carrier " to include See also:express and sleeping-car companies. Published rate schedules were required, not to be changed without thirty days' See also:notice, and more stringent provisions were made to prevent rebating. The act provided for review by the Federal courts, and did not permit the commission to investigate an increase of rates until the rates went into operation, nor did it provide fdr a valuation of the railways as a basis of rate-making which the commission had desired. Later acts partly met the demands of railway employes by increasing the liability of common carriers and by providing for shorter hours. 407. Although Roosevelt had made concessions to the rail-ways in the formation of the act of 1906, his utterances showed a tendency alarming to the large business interests and the holders of corporation securities generally. The unsettled business conditions were reflected in the stock market, and began to produce a reaction against the activity of government in this direction. The panic of 1907 started with the downfall of an attempted combination of a chain of banks, copper interests and other enterprises of F. See also:Augustus Heinze and Charles W. See also:Morse, two daring operators in Wall Street, and was followed by the collapse of the See also:Knickerbocker Trust Company (October 21, 1907). Already, in 1903, See also:liquidation had begun in some of the stocks so actively issued in the preceding years. The leading New York banks failed to check speculation, however, and were even contributors to the movement up to the time of the panic. The country was generally prosperous, though much of the banking funds was tied up in New York City at this juncture. Clearing-house certificates were resorted to; by the 1st of November partial suspension was general throughout the nation; and banking facilities were more completely interrupted than at any time since the Civil War. The government greatly increased its deposits, Pinandal and offered Panama 2% bonds to the amount of Panic of $50,000,000, and 3% certificates for $roo,000,000, 19". with the See also:object of providing the national banks a basis for additional note issues. But these were taken only to a small amount, as they proved useful for their moral effect chiefly. An enormous addition to the money supply was made in the course of the panic, both by governmental activity, gold imports and national bank-notes. The crisis was brought to a close before the end of 1907 by the vigour of the government and the activity of the large financial interests under the lead of J. P. Morgan, who finally entered the field to stop the decline, at the same time that his associates in the Steel Trust acquired possession of their last remaining rival of importance, the Tennessee Coal & Iron Company. 408. The reaction after the panic, and the loss of influence resulting from his announcement that he would not permit his renomination for the campaign of rpo8, left Roosevelt unable to exercise the compelling power which he had displayed in previous years. Congress under the control of the conservatives refused him legislation which he asked, Conserve-but before he left the presidency he raised a don. new issue to national importance in his calling of a congress of state See also:governors and experts to consider the need New York Insurance Investigation. of the conservation of natural resources (see IRRIGATION: United States; and the article ROOSEVELT). This congress met in May 1908 and endorsed the proposal for vigorous attention by state and nation to the question. 409. In the campaign of 1908 he succeeded, against the opposition of both the extreme conservative and the radical wings, in procuring the nomination of Secretary Taft by the Republicans on a platform endorsing the Roosevelt policies, promising a revision of the tariff at a special session, on the basis of such protection as would equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad, together with a reasonable profit to American industries, and providing for maximum and minimum rates to be used in furthering American commerce and preventing discriminations by other nations. A postal bank was promised, a more effective regulation of the railways, and a modification of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Labour failed to secure a thoroughgoing See also:pledge to prevent the use of the writ of injunction in labour disputes, but the convention promised legislation to limit its use. The Democrats again selected William J. Bryan as their candidate; demanded the enforcement of criminal law against " trust magnates " and such additional legislation as would prevent private monopoly; opposed the use of injunctions in cases where they would issue if no industrial dispute was involved; impugned the Republicans' good faith in tariff revision, promising for themselves a substantial reduction of duties; favoured an income tax and a guarantee fund by national banks to pay depositors of insolvent banks, or a postal savings bank, if the guaranteed bank could not be secured; demanded election of United States senators by direct vote of the people, legislation to prevent contributions by corporations to campaign funds, and a more efficient regulation of railways. The party also . declared against centralization, favouring the use of both Federal and state control of interstate commerce and private monopoly. 410. The Republicans won a sweeping victory, Taft's popular plurality reaching about 1,270,000 and his electoral William majority 159. But it had been won by some H. Taft, See also:ambiguity of utterance with respect to tariff President. and railway regulation. The result was made See also:manifest early in the new administration, when party contentions over the direction of revision of the tariff, the thoroughness of the regulation of railways and corporations, and the question of where the postal bank fund should be placed, resulted in a movement of " insurgency " among the Republicans of the Middle West. The insurgents termed themselves " Progressive Republicans," and did not hesitate to join forces with the Democrats in order to shape legislation to their wishes. Progressives and Democrats united in over-turning the control of Speaker J. G. Cannon in the House of Representatives by modifying the rules, and a group of senators, chiefly from the Middle Western states, destroyed the control of the regular leaders in the Upper House. President Taft's influence over the revolting wing was further weakened by the charges made against his secretary of the interior, Richard A. Ballinger, on behalf of Gifford Pinchot, the chief forester, who accused the administration of obstructing Mr Roosevelt's " conservation " policy. 411. Mr Pinchot was indeed removed from office, but the " conservation " issue was raised to primary importance by the return of Mr Roosevelt from his See also:African trip. Roosevelt's His influence was revealed even while he was "New enjoying the hospitality of European countries on National- ism." his return. There was a widely extended desire to know his judgment of the administration's policy; but he maintained silence until the close of the summer of 1910, when in a series of public utterances in the West he ranged himself, on the whole, with the progressive wing and announced a " new nationalism " which should enlarge the power of the Federal government and drive the " special interests " out of politics. The " insurgents " achieved remarkable victories in the Middle West, California, New Hampshire and New York in the fall conventions and primaryelections, retiring various leaders of the regular wing of the Republicans. Senators Aldrich and Hale, former regular leaders in the Senate, had already announced their purpose to resign. President Taft's utterances indicated his intention to discontinue the use of patronage against the leaders of the progressive wing and to secure additional tariff revision by separate schedules. The result of the autumn elections was a pronounced victory for the Democratic party. 412. At the close of the first decade of the loth century the United States was actively engaged in settling its social economic questions, with a tendency toward radicalism in its dealings with the great industrial forces of the nation. The " sweat shops " and slums of the great cities were filled with new material for American society to assimilate. To the See also:sister-See also:hood of states had been added Oklahoma (1907), and in 1910 Congress empowered New Mexico and Arizona to form constitutions preparatory to statehood, thus extinguishing the last Territories, except the insular dependencies and Alaska. Al-ready the food supply showed signs of not keeping pace with the growth of population, while the supply of gold flowed in with undiminished volume. High prices became a factor in the political situation. Between 1890 and 1900, in the continental United States, farms were added in area equal to that of France and Italy combined. Even the addition 'of improved farm land in that decade surpassed the whole area of France or of the German Empire in Europe. But intensive cultivation and agricultural returns hardly kept pace with the growth in population or the extension of farms. See also:Bibliographical Guides.—J. N. Larned (ed.), The Literature of American History (See also:Boston, 1902), is useful so far as it extends. The " See also:Critical Essays on Authorities," in vols. xxi.–See also:xxvi. (1907) of the " American Nation Series " (New York, 1903–1907), edited by A. B. See also:Hart, constitute the best bibliographical apparatus for the whole period. W. Wilson, History of the American People, vol. v., has helpful evaluated lists of authorities. The See also:Cambridge See also:Modern History, vol. vii., has a useful unannotated list. Periodical literature, important for this era, can be found through the successive volumes of the See also:Index to Periodical Literature (New York, 1882 sqq.), edited by W. F. See also:Poole and W. J. See also:Fletcher. Public documents are listed in B. P. See also:Poore, Descriptive See also:Catalogue of Government Publications of the United States, 1775–1881 (Washington, 1885) ; J. G. Ames, Comprehensive Index of Publications of the United States Government, 1881–1893 (Washing-ton, 1894) ; Catalogue of Public Documents of Congress and of all Departments of Government of the United States, 1893–1899; Tables of and Annotated Index to Congressional Series of United States Public Documents (Washington, 1902). For economic material see the See also:bibliographies in D. R. See also:Dewey, Financial History of the United States (New York, 1902) ; E. L. Bogart, Economic History of the United States (ibid., 1907) ; F. A. Cleveland and F. W. See also:Powell, Railroad Promotion and Capitalization in the United States (New York, 1909); and See also:Miss A. R. See also:Hasse's Index of Economic Material in the Documents of the United States (Washington, 1907 sqq.). The Library of Congress publishes, under the editorship of N. P. C. See also:Griffin, lists and references to books and articles on special subjects. General Accounts.—Much the most satisfactory treatment is. in the volumes of the " American Nation Series " mentioned above, such as W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865–1877; E. E. See also:Sparks, National Development, 1877–1885; D. R. Dewey, National Problems, 1885–1897; J. H. Latane, America as a World Power, and A. B. Hart, National Ideals Historically Traced. All these were published in 1907. The later volumes of J. F. See also:Rhodes History of the United States since the Compromise of 1850 (7 vols., New York, 1893-1904), See also:cover the period from 1865 to 1876 with solid judgment and accuracy; Woodrow Wilson, History of the American People, vol. v. (New York, 1902), gives an informing presentation with a sympathetic treatment of Southern conditions. See also: Elson, History of the United States, vols. iv and v. (New York, 1905), and J. W. Garner and H. C. See also:Lodge, History of the United States, vol. iv. (Philadelphia, 1906), deal with the period as part of a general history. E. B. See also:Andrews, The United States in our own Time (New York, 1903), and H. T. See also:Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885-1goq (New York, 1906), are popular presentations. Documentary See also:Sources.—The Congressional documents and state public documents afford valuable material. The Congressional debates have become too bulky for the general reader, but in the president's messages, as collected in J. D. See also:Richardson (ed.), Messages and Papers of the Presidents (to 1899), the main questions are presented, and detailed information is in the reports of the heads of departments and bureaus. W. See also:MacDonald, Select Statutes of United States, 1861-1898 (New York, 1903), contains important laws, with brief historical introductions. 4F. J. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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