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RICHARD PARKS BLAND. 
 
U AN AMERICAN COMMONER" 
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 RICHARD PARKS BLAND 
 
 A STUDY OF THE LAST QUARTER OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BEYAN AND 
 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY MRS. RICHARD PARKS BLAND 
 
 WILLIAM VINCENT BYARS 
 
 EDITOB 
 
 ;. W. STEPHEN'S, I'UBLISHER 
 
 COLUMBIA, MISSOTJRI 
 
 1000 
 
Copyright 1900, by 
 
 E. W. STEPHENS, 
 
 Columbia, Mo. 
 
 Press of 
 
 E. W. STEPHENS, 
 Columbia, Mo. 
 
HON. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN. 
 
MR. BRYAN'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ICHARD P. BLAND combined, in a rare degree, those quali 
 ties which are essential in the successful public servant. He 
 was, in fact, an ideal representative of the people. He was hon 
 est with himself and with his fellows; he was industrious and 
 devoted himself conscientiously to his work; his habits, his tastes and his 
 ambitions were such as to protect him from the temptations which hover 
 about those who are conspicuous in public life; he had convictions deep 
 and controlling; his ideas were high and pure; he had the ability to pre 
 sent and defend his views with clearness and force his eloquence being 
 the eloquence of one who knew what he was talking about and meant 
 what he said ; and he had the courage to express his opinion and stand by 
 it, regardless of the consequences which might follow to himself. 
 
 Measuring all questions by the fundamental principles which underlie 
 our government, his career was remarkably free from the inconsistencies 
 which have so often marred the lives of great men. He was reared 
 among the plain people and was their faithful friend and champion; he 
 never partook of the lotus fruit which makes the recipient of a public 
 trust forgetful of those who confer it. 
 
 He was democratic in the broadest sense of the term ; he had implicit 
 confidence in the capacity of the people for self government and an abiding 
 faith that they would, in the end, solve aright every social and political 
 problem. 
 
 He was a pioneer in the great struggle for the restoration of bimetal 
 lism and for two decades led the silver fight in the House of Representa 
 tives. That he was correct in the position he took on the money question 
 is evident from the fact that for twenty years after he gave his name to 
 
 iii 
 
iv MR. BRYAN'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the coinage law of i878 all political parties in the United States continued 
 to promise the restoration of bimetallism, differing only as to the means 
 of securing the desired result; and when the gold standard was openly 
 espoused by the republican party, it was defended, not upon the ground 
 that the original demonetization of silver was wise, but upon the ground 
 that new conditions had arisen. 
 
 Mr. Bland was with his party on every public question and was 
 prominent in the fight within the party which resulted in the adoption of 
 the Chicago platform. If the nomination had been given merely as a 
 reward for public service he would have had no competitor for the honor. 
 Whether his nomination would have brought victory to the party in 1896 
 is a question which can not now be determined, but certain it is that no 
 aspirant for a public office ever manifested less disappointment over the 
 result or gave to his successful rival more earnest and sincere support. 
 
 Mr. Eland's life was a success. He did not amass a fortune. But 
 he measures life by a low standard who estimates success by the dollars 
 either received or saved. Many, without possessing real merit, have 
 secured great wealth by inheritance or by accident ; while many have saved 
 by dwarfing themselves, stinting those dependent upon them, and with 
 holding from society that contribution which is due from the more 
 favored to the less fortunate. 
 
 He left his impress upon the age in which he lived and gave back 
 to society full compensation for all the honors he received. To the mem 
 bers of his party his life was an inspiration; to his immediate family it is 
 an inheritance more valuable and more permanent than lands or bonds. 
 
 "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches; and loving 
 favor rather than silver and gold." 
 
 WM. J. BRYAN. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 1872, when Mr. Bland entered politics, and 1899, 
 when he made his last speech in Congress, a revolution had 
 taken place in American politics as great as that which fol 
 lowed the candidacy of Andrew Jackson as the first representa 
 tive of the states west of the Alleghenies. To force this revolution Mr. 
 Bland contributed, no doubt, more than any other single man in the public 
 life of his generation. As a result of it the Civil War combination in politics, 
 under which the control of the country frequently depended on buying 
 enough "floaters" to constitute the balance of power in a few city wards 
 in one or two "pivotal states," was broken forever ; Civil War sectionalism 
 ceased to be the decisive factor in national elections; the Northwestern 
 states which had been admitted to assure the continued supremacy of the 
 Republican party, turned upon it and defeated it, and the narrow issues of 
 local and sectional animosity were superseded by issues of enduring and 
 fundamental principles, involving the progress of the United States as a 
 whole and of the world at large. 
 
 No history of this movement has been written. Its results have 
 scarcely been suggested and its ultimate meaning has hardly been sus 
 pected. Mr. Bland, who most fully represented the forces which are 
 still at work to complete perhaps in wholly unexpected ways a work 
 which seems to have reached its first great climax in his lifetime, has 
 been looked upon by some as a mere specialist and by others as a narrow 
 
 sectionalist and partisan. The object of this book is to study and make 
 
 > 
 
 more generally intelligible the great forces he represented by virtue of 
 which, without attempting to grasp power, he made the ballots which 
 elected him to represent an agricultural district in Missouri, more formid- 
 
vi EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 able to European and other opponents of republican institutions than the 
 whole military power of North America could have been made in the past 
 or than it is ever likely to be made in the future. 
 
 No one man and no combination of men, however great in states 
 manship, could have produced the revolution in the West which showed 
 itself first in what was called derisively the "Rainbow-Chasing Move 
 ment" to change the political attitude which Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, 
 Iowa, Kansas, and other northwestern states had occupied since the Civil 
 War. It is only through the slow processes of evolution that such great 
 changes come. It is a fact, however, that the possibility and immanency 
 of this change became apparent in advance to a few men who worked with 
 Mr. Bland to force it, expecting that its final result would necessarily be 
 a division of the "Solid South" as well as of the "Solid West," and hence 
 a complete re-alignment of both parties. Whatever charges prejudice 
 may prefer against men who are governed in politics by such motives, 
 that of being "narrow partisans," "sectionalists" or "mere specialists" will 
 not be entertained against them at the bar of history. 
 
 Taking Mr. Bland as the strongest and most effective representative 
 among public men of the great forces, compelling the world-wide move 
 ment in which the United States are a factor at the opening of the twen 
 tieth century, it is the duty of every American to understand him and the 
 popular impulses back of him. 
 
 Especially is it the duty of his opponents, for if in their advocacy 
 of their own political and economic ideas they misunderstand and 
 underestimate his meaning, it will be at their own risk. All the forces of 
 steam and electricity which made the vast region west of the Mississippi 
 a factor in the civilization of the world, were factors in the work to which 
 Mr. Bland devoted himself as the representative of the rights and of the 
 power of the "direct producer." When in the United States, the party 
 of "property rights" and that of "manhood rights" are opposed with no more 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. Vli 
 
 evidence of mere sectionalism than appeared in the struggle between 
 Henry Clay of Kentucky and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee as party 
 leaders, it will be understood by those who take the trouble to understand 
 politics at all, that this was the consummation of Mr. Eland's life work and 
 the necessary result of his economic principles. 
 
 To study the conditions under which he worked, the forces he rep 
 resented, the people for whom he strove, the struggle for mastery be 
 tween class and class, the slow development of the high purposes, by which 
 individual purposes, if they be antagonistic to progress, are overruled 
 this and not eulogy or mere partisanship is the governing motive of the 
 present volume. Mr. Bland will speak for himself in his public speeches 
 and in the history of his connection with coinage legislation prepared by 
 himself and found among his papers. The material for the study of his 
 private life has been contributed chiefly by his widow, Mrs. Virginia E. 
 Bland, and by his intimate friends and associates, but I wish to express 
 my obligation to public men in all parties who have responded to my re 
 quest for reminiscences of his connection with the great events in which 
 some of them were his opponents. I hoped in undertaking the work of 
 preparing this volume to make such a study of the governing realities of 
 the history of the last quarter of the nineteenth century as might be valu 
 able to students of public affairs for at least the first quarter of the 
 twentieth. If this were too bold a hope for any one working under my 
 limitations, I can feel at least that the idea itself has in it too much inher 
 ent worth to be discredited by even the most inadequate attempt to realize 
 its possibilities. 
 
 W. V. B. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Western Leadership in the First and Last Quarters of the Nineteenth Century. 
 The Flux and Reflux of Civilization. The Individualism of the Plain American 
 and the Spirit of Progress. Culture and Degeneracy in Reactionary or Station 
 ary Communities. The Impulses of Progress as they Operate Through Repre 
 sentative Men Upward from the Undegenerate Mass. Western Conditions and 
 Impulses as Benton Represented Them. European Atavism and Degeneracy in 
 the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Jackson and Benton as Factors 
 in Political Revolution and Advance. Sensual Neurosis and Political Con 
 vulsion. The Moral Advance Represented by the Individual Character and Life 
 of Bland. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "There is the East there is India." Benton's Prevision of the Results of Opening 
 the Trans-Mississippi West. Benton and Bland as Vehicles of World-Moving 
 Ideas. The Constructive Impulses of the People Greater than the Destructive 
 forces of Civil War. Bland as a representative of the Meaning of the Last 
 Quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Western America and Europe. American 
 Plowmen and American Railroads against Malthus. The Nineteenth Century 
 and the Future. Bland as a Transmitter of Popular Impulses. The Feudalism 
 of Land and of Corporations. The New England Village and The Virginia Es 
 tate in Sociology. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Aristocracy of Land and the Oligarchy of Trade Against the Liberty and De 
 velopment of the Individual. John Randolph on Manhood Suffrage. The 
 American Ideal of Decentralization. Its Precedents in Athens, Venice and in 
 England under Elizabeth. New England and Virginia of the Eighteenth Cen 
 tury. Government Under the Highest Possible Civilization. Government for 
 the Control of the Producer by Distributers or Non-Producers. Its Operations 
 During a Century of American Politics. The Tu Quoque Struggle Between 
 Holders of Corporation Privilege and Agricultural Producers Using Slave 
 Labor. From Benton and Jackson to General Benjamin F. Butler. Diversion 
 and Change of Subject in Politics. 
 
 viii 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Moral Insanity and Intellectual Disturbance on the Battle Field and in Politics. 
 The Spirit of Civilization and the Theory that Trade is War. The American 
 Idea of the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century as it Inspired Europe in 
 1848. The Rally of Toryism and the Coup d'Etat. The Crimean War and the 
 Growth of Reaction D'Israeli and the Dealers in War Debts. Growth of Im 
 perialism From the Coup d'Etat to the End of the Century. Hedonism of the 
 Militant and Speculative Classes. Eland's Higher Education. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Expansion and Imperialism under the First Grant Administration. A Strong Gov 
 ernment with Imperial Power to Annex and Govern Weaker Peoples Proposed 
 for the United States by International Financiers. Their Objective Point the 
 Perpetuation and Increase of the War Debt and the Control of a Currency of 
 Corporation Paper Based On It. The Moral and Intellectual Habits of General 
 Grant. Weaknesses Which He Struggled to Master. His Heroism at Mount 
 MacGregor Not Developed by the Politics of His Administration. General 
 Taylor on the Depraved Morals Created by Civil War. The Constitution as a 
 Bit of Old Parchment. Abandoned Men and Lost Women as Factors in Gov 
 ernment. General Benjamin F. Butler as a Representative of the Power to 
 Control Men Through Their Own Evil. Worship of the "Anglo-Saxon Race" 
 as a Moloch. The Inferno of Which the First Expansion Movement was a 
 Symptom. The Demonetization of Silver Effected as a Result of It. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Gold Conspiracy and Black Friday. Banker Henry Clews Describes the Means 
 Used to Control General Grant. Champagne and a Pleasure Party. The Treas 
 ury as a Factor in Speculation. The Rothschilds in American Politics. The 
 Belmonts as their Agents and Representatives. Capitalizing a Revolution. The 
 Isthmian Canal Speculation Under Grant and its Connection with Coercive 
 Expansion. The Imperialistic Plot Against Puerto Rico, San Domingo and 
 C u ba. Orville Babcock as an Envoy Extraordinary. History Which Repeated 
 Itself Under the McKinley Administration. The Liberty of the Innocent 
 Against the Safety of the Guilty. The Governing Motive of Civilization. 
 Blaine on Civil Rights. Plutocracy as an Insanity. The Law of Perfect Lib 
 erty. Thurman, Bland, Greeley and Sumner. Government by Garrison. Lord 
 Kitchener and His College at Khartoum. The Civilization of Southern Negroes 
 and the Anglo-Saxonism of Fraudulent Bondholders. International Plutocracy 
 and Murder as a Fine Art. 
 
X TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Thurman and Sumner Against "The Man on Horseback." The Attempt to Align 
 the South for Imperialism Fails. The Ideas Represented by Greeley and Bland 
 Against the Forces Behind Grant and Longstreet. The Work of Thurman and 
 Black in Checking Imperial Centralization of Power Prepares the way for Bland. 
 The Liberal Republican and Democratic Fusion Movement of 1872 Against 
 Militarism Draws Bland into Politics. How he came to be Nominated for Con 
 gress. The Influence of a Missouri Fence Corner in Shaping the Course of 
 International Politics. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Superiority of "Business" to Party. Plutocratic Attempts to Provide Issues 
 for Both Parties. The Object of "Expansion" Under Grant Accomplished in 
 the Demonetization of Silver and the Control of the Currency. Sumner De 
 nounces Imperialism and Forces an Open Debate on the Annexation of the 
 West Indies. "A Dance of Blood" Proposed by the Speculative and Non-Pro- 
 ductive Classes. How History Repeated Itself in 1898. General Grant's Argu 
 ments for Imperialism Used Against Bland by Imperialists in Missouri. Thur 
 man' s Speech Against "Expansion." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Republican Party Revolutionized under Grant. Sumner is Driven out of it. 
 Seward, Greeley and Sumner Die Heart-Broken. Elaine's Tribute to Sumner. 
 The use of Subconscious Memory in Politics. Militant Commercialism Called 
 to Account for the Fall of Seward, Sumner and Greeley. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Issue and Control of the Currency a Vital Prerogative of Sovereignty. Benton 
 Fails to Secure a Direct Issue with the Non-Productive Classes. Abuses of the 
 Control of the Currency by State Banks Flagrant. Bland Renews Benton's 
 Interrupted Work Against Corporation Sovereignty in the Issue of the Cur 
 rency. The Party of Commercial Imperialism in the United States and the 
 Policies of Warren Hastings. The Threat of the Fusillade as a Factor In 
 Economic Discussion. "Bluffing" as a Political Method in America. States 
 manship and the Poker Habit. The Realities of Hate and Passion Behind the 
 Theatrical Threats of Professional Politicians. Stirring the South to Resist 
 ance. Bland and Alexander H. Stephens Consult on Means of Preventing an 
 Outbreak. Butler's Attack Answered at the South by Deep Disturbance. Im- 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 morality in all Parties and in all Sections. The Radicalism of Demagogues 
 in the Black Belt. International Commercialism and the Trade for the Con 
 trol of the American Treasury. Bland on Cox and Randall. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Mr. Bland Describes the Struggle of the Democratic Minority Against the Force 
 Bill and the Civil Rights Bill. The Roll Call on a Motion to Adjourn as the 
 Last Resort of Constitutional Government. The Fight of 1875 in Congress to 
 Control the Presidential Election of 1876. The Scott Subsidy and the Attempt 
 to Control Distribution through an Increase of Tariff Taxation. The Senate 
 allows the Force Bill to Fail. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Mr. Bland Reviews his Own Connection with the Struggle for American Popular 
 Control of American Mints and the American Treasury. Currency Legislation 
 from the Demonetization Act of 1873 to the Bankers' Panic and the Renewed 
 Struggle for Demonetization in the Last Decade of the Century. How "the 
 Crime of 1873" was Perpetrated. Mr. Bland Appointed to the Committee on 
 Mines and Mining. The Banks Bill and the First Sixteen-to-One Free Coinage 
 Bill. The Silver Commission of the Forty-Fourth Congress. The Bland Free 
 Coinage Bill and the Allison Amendment. The Hayes Veto and the Votes of 
 Messrs. McKinley, Carlisle and Others to pass the Bill over it. The Demand of 
 the Bondholders for the Privilege of Issuing and Controlling the Currency. 
 The London Bankers and their New York and Western Agents Raid the Treas 
 ury, Contract Credits and Compel Panic as a means of Securing a Currency of 
 Corporation Notes for the Public and the Payment of their own Bonds in Gold. 
 England Demonetizes Silver in India to aid Them. At the Parting of the 
 Ways with Wall Street. Mr. Bland Forces the Issues Which Compelled the 
 Chicago Platform and the Campaign of 1896. He Points out the only Possible 
 Course for the Democratic Party in the Future. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The "Whirling Dervish of the Market" as a Factor in Public Affairs. Henry Dem- 
 arest Lloyd and Richard Brinsley Sheridan on the Speculative Use of the Co 
 ercive Power of Government. ' 'The Meanness of the Pedlar and the Profligacy of 
 the Pirate." Trade as War. Commercial Use of the War-Making, Debt-Making 
 and Tax-Levying Power of the People. Can Selfishness be "Enlightened?" 
 The Question of Forcing Unselfishness by Law. Socialism or Coerced Co-op 
 eration. Bland as a Representative of Free Co-operation and Unrestricted De 
 velopment. Increasing Honesty and Liberality in Trade. "Laissez Faire" as a 
 
Xli TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Policy of Unsurrendering Resistance to Restriction, Obstruction and Oppression. 
 The Foundation Principle of all True Political and Social Economy the Ob 
 servance of the Right of Individual Growth and of Fuller Expansion for the Con 
 structive Powers of Common Humanity. Liberty Impossible for the Unjust. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Speculative Plutocracy from 1873 to 1893. The "Whirling Dervish" as a Promoter 
 of Panics. The Gold Corner and "Black Friday" Panic Under Grant not an 
 Isolated Incident. Emotional Insanity as a Result of Moral Disturbance Due to 
 the Speculative Habit. Beginning of Trusts Under Grant. The Standard Oil 
 Trust. Conservatism in Administration Under Hayes no Check to the Growth 
 of Plutocracy. The Attempt to Regulate the "Commune of Capital." Use of 
 the Law-Making Power by "Practical" Politicians to Blackmail Law-Breaking 
 Corporations. The Land Grabbing Spirit in its Relations to Speculative 
 Monopoly. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Fundamental Principle of Plutocracy Manifested in Debt Inflation Accom 
 panied by a Demand for a Contraction of the Supply of Cash Issued by Govern 
 ment. Mr. Eland's Consistency. Debt Inflation Described by Henry Clews. 
 Speculative Banks as Holders of Inflated Stocks and Bonds. The Character of 
 Fiske as Described by William Walter Phelps. The Imperialistic Movement 
 and the Demonetization of Silver in 1900 a Part of the Logic of What Fiske 
 Represented. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Superiority of Plutocracy to Party Illustrated by Mr. Jay Gould. He Demonstrates 
 His "Soundness" by Opening His Safe. Influence of New York Safe Deposit 
 Vaults in Missouri Politics. The Growth of Corporate Inflation Accompanied 
 by an Increase of Irresponsibility in Politics. Banks, Railroads and Boards of 
 Trade as Necessary Agencies of Civilization. Production and Distribution the 
 Legitimate Ends of all Business Activity. Result of the Speculative Spirit 
 in Missouri Politics. The Attempt of Gambling and Railroad Rings to get 
 Something for Nothing. Regulation of Railroad Rates Accompanied by a Com 
 plete Absence of Regulation for the Power to Issue Stocks and Bonds Against 
 the Credit of General Business. Rings and the Ruthlessness of Speculative 
 Politics. Abuse of the Courts Against the People. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlli 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Democratic Party in Missouri as Bland Represented it. The Idea Which Has 
 Given it Coherence and Efficiency. The Only Motive Which Can Justify Men 
 of Higher Intelligence in Taking Part in Politics. Bland and the Courage of 
 Leadership. Frank P. Blair and His Pistols. Eland's Steadfast Patience. The 
 Supreme Test of Fitness for Success. Bland as the Type of the Highest Possi 
 bilities of Missouri Character. The Military Idea in Missouri Politics. Growth 
 of Plutocratic Combinations. Bland and the Transmississippi West Overthrow 
 Malthusianism. The Struggle for the Largest Possible Production and the 
 Freest Possible Distribution. Attempts of the Speculative Element to Control 
 in Missouri. Marmaduke's Epoch-making Stand for Principle. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 "Who Owns the West?" The Beginnings of a Great Political Revolution. Western 
 Mortgages and the "Bloody Shirt." How Hon. John James Ingalls Retired 
 From Public Life. A Ten Dollar Fac-Simile and its Far-Reaching Sequences. 
 The Law of Maximum Production Against Oligarchic Restriction. The Work 
 of D. M. Grissom in Journalism Complementing that of Mr. Bland in Congress. 
 Non-Resident Ownership of Productive Bases. The Centralization of Values 
 and the Demand of Non-Residents for Political Control. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The Balance of Power in the Electoral College Passes to the Northwest. Modifica 
 tions of the Sectional Issue Which Had Been Forced by the Mexican Conquest. 
 Robert Toombs on the Domestic Consequences of Aggression Abroad. The 
 Sword as a Title to Territory. Toombs and Stephens of Georgia Isolated Under 
 Folk's Administration in their Attempt to Prevent Civil War. Their Opposi 
 tion to the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. Toombs Accepts War as an 
 Inevitable Result of the Annexation of Mexican Territory and Becomes a 
 Radical Secessionist in 1850. The South Changes Front in 1889 and Abandons 
 the Struggle for Sectional Equality in the Electoral College. President 
 Cleveland's First Administration as it Provoked Political Revolution. "Ex 
 pansion," the Nicaragua Canal, the Annexation of the West Indies, and the 
 Nullification of the Constitution as Discussed by Mr. E. V. Smalley in 1880. 
 Effect of the Civil War on Constitutional Interpretation. The Republican 
 Reaction Against Grant. Mr. Cleveland as a Representative of the "Better 
 Element." 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Fundamental Reality of American Politics. International Combinations of 
 Corporations and Maximum Coercion in America. The Demand for Bonds as 
 a Means of Endowing Families, Suspending the Natural Laws of Redistribu 
 tion and Creating Hereditary Oligarchy. Restraint of Trade by Tariff Laws not 
 Earnestly Opposed Under the First Cleveland Administration. No Vital Reform 
 of Any Kind Possible While the Electoral College Represented Civil War Sec 
 tionalism. President Harrison as a More Extreme Federalist than Mr. Cleve 
 land. His Mistake of Judgment in Proposing New Measures of Coercion 
 Against Southern Planters W T hile Western Farmers Were Using Unmarketable 
 Breadstuffs for Fuel. ''Cheap Money," Dear Collateral, and Wasted Wealth. 
 Speculation in Money at the Expense of Agricultural Exports. Enormous 
 Interest Rates on Call Loans During the "Crop Moving Season." The 
 "Calamity Howl," Its Causes and Its Results. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 "The Rainbow Chasing Movement" Begins. Its Object the Restoration of Con 
 stitutional Government Based on the Principles of 1788. "Winning Without 
 New York," an Incident of It. Mr. Cleveland's Whig Policies Revive the 
 "Fierce Democracy" of the Jackson Epoch. Revolt Against Wade Hampton 
 in South Carolina and Ingalls in Kansas. The Northwest as the Hope of 
 America Against "Floaters in Blocks of Five." Illinois as a Keystone State. 
 The Surrender of the Presidency to New York the Only means of Breaking the 
 New York and Indiana Combination. "The Coat and the Cloak" Both Given 
 up Successfully In Practical Politics. Results of Forcing Issues for Principle. 
 Henry George and His Supporters Reinforce Mr. Bland on the "Farm Mortgage 
 Census." The Issue in Illinois. "Rainbow Chasers" Not Prejudiced Against 
 Mr. Cleveland or New York. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland's Second Term. His Attempt to "Restore the Hegemony of New 
 York" Forces His Party to Repudiate Him. He Defeats Tariff Reform by 
 Supplanting it With a Manufactured Issue Against Bimetallic Coinage. Mr. 
 Cleveland's Thoroughgoing Whiggery and His Dislike of the Vulgus. He 
 Attempts to Isolate Mr. Bland in Missouri. How a National Combination Was 
 Broken by the Assault of a Single Newspaper. Mr. Bland Boomed for Presi 
 dent in Missouri. Mr. Cleveland's Missouri Supporters in Congress Driven to 
 Cover. Bland Defeats the Gates Bankruptcy Bill. The Real Meaning of 
 "Tariff Reform" as Mr. Cleveland Represented It. He and His Friends 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Dictate the Protectionist Plank in the Report of the Platform Committee at 
 Chicago in 1892. It is Rejected by the Convention. The Standard Oil Com 
 pany, the Sugar Trust and the Banks as a Political Combination. Federalism 
 and the Illinois Strike. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The Financial Policies of Plutocracy and John Law as Their Prophet. Turgot and 
 Quesnay as Representatives of Sanity and the Principles of Progress. Mr. 
 Eland's Work Justified by the Strictest Standard of Turgot. "Hands Off! Let 
 the World Move!" The Bankers' Panic and Its Causes. The Tendency to 
 Maximum Production as a Law of Nature and the Fact of Minimum Distribu 
 tion as a Result of Plutocratic Oligarchy. Political Economy in Its Last 
 Analysis. Ve-st on the Sherman Anti-Trust Law as Humbug. "Frying Out 
 the Fat" of Lawbreaking Combinations. Trusts in no Danger From the 
 Collectors of Campaign Funds. Mills and Factories Closed by Restriction and 
 Under-Distribution. Necessary Collapse of Restrictive Systems in the Pres 
 ence of Natural Maximum Production. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 'The Right Thing from the Eight Man at the Right Time" as the Decisive Factor 
 in History Making. Mr. Bland Writes a Letter and Sees a Reporter. Who 
 Shall Bolt: Bland or Cleveland? Why and How Mr. Cleveland Was Induced 
 to Bolt. He Himself Forces 16 to i Coinage as an Unavoidable Issue. 
 His Objections to Being "Elected Without New York" in 1892. His View of 
 "Rainbow Chasing" as Sectional and Dangerous. Mr. Bland Consummates 
 the Work of the Rainbow Chasers With an Interview Defining the Vital Issues 
 of the Chicago Platform. The Stand Made Against International Control of 
 the American Treasury Forces the Republican Party to a Change of Base in 
 1896 and to Open Alliance With English Imperialists in 1898. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Bland as a Leader of a Forlorn Hope. Forced into the Presidential Contest as the 
 Only Man on Whom the Democratic Party Could Reorganize. His Candidacy a 
 Matter of Duty. His Nomination not Expected on Account of His Residence 
 in a Former Slave State. Popular Demonstrations During His Lecturing Tour. 
 Missouri Conventions at Pertle Springs and at Sedalia. Formation of Bland 
 Clubs in Missouri. His Attitude Towards the Presidency. Falsity of Asser 
 tions that He Was "the Victim of Treachery" at Chicago. 
 
Xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 The Chicago Platform Against a Corporation Currency and Federal Invasion of the 
 Province of the States. These Sections Forced by Mr. Cleveland's Attempt to 
 Undo the Results of the Campaign of 1892 so as to Restore the New York-Indiana 
 Balance of Power. Great Determination Shown by Mr. Cleveland in This 
 Attempt. Cleveland and Bayard Compared. Bayard an Anti-Federalist. The 
 Democratic Party at its Last Gasp When Restored by the Chicago Platform. 
 The Balloting for President at Chicago. Mr. Sewall as a Compromise on the 
 Platform. The Action of the Convention Deliberate. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Charles A. Dana on Bland as the Only Statesman in the American Public Life of 
 the Last Quarter of the Century. Contrast Between Eland's Manners and Those 
 of Fashionable New York. He Visits New York with Mr. Bryan in 1896. Con 
 ditions Existing in New York at That Time. Great Intellectual and Defective 
 Moral Force in the New York Governing Class. Solidarity of Wealth in 1896. 
 Starvation in the Presence of Undistributed Fruit and Breadstuffs. Foreign 
 Dictation in New York Politics. Will the City be Forced to the Second Place? 
 Its Possibilities of Progress. Its System of Free Co-Operation Probably the 
 Best in the World. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Mr. Eland's Years of Greatest Achievement. The Climax of a Great Career Comes 
 in 1898. His Stand Against Imperialism. The Spanish War Used to Turn the 
 Flank of Chicago Platform Democracy so as to Demonetize Silver. Issues 
 Precipitated by the Teller Resolution. Sanford B. Dole as the Agent of the 
 Imperialistic Movement. The Hawaiian Government Employs Sub-Agents to 
 Attack Mr. Eland's Rear. Hawaii and Cuba Discussed Before the Spanish War. 
 Far-Reaching Influence of the Standard Oil Company and the "Sugar Trust." 
 The Attempt to Shape the Policies of Both Parties so as to Prevent an Issue 
 Against Imperialism. Mr. Bland Forces Open Fighting. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 The Spanish War as a War for the Suppression of the Cuban Republic. Mr. Bland 
 Forces Issues With President McKinley and Compels Him to go on Record. 
 Recognition of the Cuban Republic Openly Opposed by the Administration. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xvii 
 
 Its Anxiety to Begin War Leads it to Fire on Merchant Vessels Before War is 
 Declared. "A War for Humanity" Converted into a Movement for Imperial 
 ism. Failure of an Attempt to Turn Missouri Democrats Against Mr. Bland. 
 The Flag of the Cuban Republic Torn Down at San Luis. Open Declaration of 
 the Plan to Suppress the Cuban Republic by Garrison Government. Benevolent 
 Assimilation in the Philippines. What the Flag Meant for Mr, Bland. His 
 Work for Higher Civilization Finished. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Mr. Bland's Early Home in Kentucky. The Stock From Which He Sprang. His 
 Life as an Orphan Boy on a Farm. At the Plow in Summer and at School in 
 Winter. He Emigrates to Missouri and to California. His Life in the Mines. 
 Cooking and Washing for Orphan Children. He Studies Law and Returns to 
 Missouri. His Characteristics as a Lawyer. His Work Before Election Boards 
 Under the Drake Constitution. Judge C. C. Bland's Reminiscences of His 
 Mother. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Mr. Bland's Boyhood in Kentucky. Mrs. Bland Investigates and Interviews His 
 Kinsfolk and Old Neighbors. Shorthand Report of an Interview Between Mrs. 
 Bland and Mr. Bland's Uncle, Mr. Frank Nail, of Ohio County, Kentucky. 
 How Mr. Bland Got His Characteristics. His Truthfulness as a Boy. The Fights 
 He Was Forced Into. He is Tempted to Become a Preacher. Stops Driving 
 Oxen and Decides to use His Intellect. The Use of Beech Limbs by His School- 
 Master. The Questions He Debated as a Boy. His First Speech and the Repu 
 tation it Made Him. Life on No Creek in the Days of Henry Clay. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 MRS. BLAND'S REMINISCENCES I. 
 
 Mrs. Bland Writes Her Reminiscences of Mr. Bland's Home Life. Their First 
 Meeting When She Was a Schoolgirl. Mr. Bland as a Confirmed Old Bach 
 elor in Love for the Second Time. He Tells Mrs. Bland of His Romance at 
 Nineteen. The Girl in White Apron aud Sun Bonnet Who Died After Marry 
 ing to Please Her Parents. Mr. Bland Corresponds With Mrs. B.'s Father. 
 The Story of a Threatened Elopement. At Washington Under Grant. South 
 ern Pianos as Presents. Mr. Bland's Love of Children. His Domestic Habits. 
 Sitting up all Night on His Last Night in Congress. His Last Illness and 
 Death. 
 c 
 
XV111 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 MRS. ELAND'S REMINISCENCES. II. 
 
 Mr. Eland's First Speech in Congress and the Piute War. He Favors Impeaching 
 Grant. Disappointed at Cleveland's Defeat in 1888. Crisp's Defection From 
 Bimetallism. "Those Whom They Can't Bribe They Get Drunk." Mills Begs 
 Support and Sheds Tears. Cleveland's Second Administration. Alarm Over 
 the Coxey Army. Closets Filled With Loaded Rifles. Clubs and Government 
 Grass. Mr. Eland's Indignation. Mr. Eland's Lecture Tour in the West. His 
 Acquaintance With Mark Twain. The Chicago Convention. What He Said 
 During its Progress. His Trip to the East and His Visit to Mr. McKinley. His 
 Logical Mind and His Faculty of Foresight. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE FINAL WORD. 
 
 This Volume as a Prophecy of Progress. Evolution a Slow Growth. Intellectual 
 Development Dependent on Moral. The Sense of Justice Mr. Bland Repre 
 sented. No Justice Without Freedom, No Freedom Without Justice. The 
 Sympathy of Genius for Universal Aspiration. Political Economy and the 
 Law of Kindness. The Greatest Development of Civilization Still in the 
 Future. 
 
SPEECHES 
 
 COLONIAL IMPERIALISM AND THE SPANISH WARS. 
 
 (Complete Text from the Official Report of the Speech Delivered in the House of 
 Representatives, June 13, 1898, the House Having Under Consideration the Joint 
 Resolution H. Res. 259 to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the 
 United States.) 
 
 ENGLISH PLUTOCRACY AND THE LIBERTIES OF 
 THE WORLD 
 
 (Mr. Eland's Last Speech in Congress, Delivered in the House of Representatives 
 on the Army Reorganization Bill, January 30, 1899). 
 
 IN FAVOR OF LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN. 
 
 (Peroration of a Fourth of July Address, Delivered at Lebanon, Missouri, in 1873). 
 
 "THE PARTING OF THE WAYS." 
 
 (Delivered in the House of Representatives Saturday, August 12, 1893, in Protest 
 Against the Bill H. R. i to Repeal a Part of an Act Approved July 4, 1890, en 
 titled "An Act Directing the Purchase of Silver Bullion and the Issue of Treas 
 ury Notes Thereon and for Other Purposes.") 
 
 GOVERNMENT BY INJUNCTION AS A MODE OF 
 IMPERIALISM. 
 
 (Delivered in the House of Representatives, July 16, 1894, Against a Resolution En 
 dorsing the Cleveland Administration.) 
 
 xix 
 
XX TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 A STAND IN TIME OF PANIC. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives Supporting a Motion to Strike out 
 the Enacting Clause of the Gates Bankruptcy Bill. Dec. 8, 1893.) 
 
 EUROPEAN CONTROL AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, March 31, 1897.) 
 
 ADMINISTRATIVE CORRUPTION DUE TO ARBITRARY 
 POWER AND CIVIL WAR. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, June 25, 1882.) 
 
 AGAINST BUREAUCRATIC PRIVILEGE. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, June 25, 1882, Opposing a Civil 
 
 Pension Bill.) 
 
 FRAUD AND FORCE IN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Kepresentatives, January 26, 1877.) 
 
 AGAINST CERNUSCHI AND INTERNATIONAL INTERVEN 
 TION IN AMERICA. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, April 7, 1886.) 
 
 MAKESHIFTS AND COMPROMISES. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, January 8, 1895.) 
 
 LAWS TO PROTECT THE STRONG AGAINST THE WEAK. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, January 25, 1883. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxi 
 
 STOCK JOBBING CONTROL OF THE TREASURY. 
 
 (From a Speech Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 25, 1893.) 
 
 AGAINST BANK NOTES AND FIAT PAPER. 
 
 (From a Speech Delivered in the House of Representatives, June 22, 1882.) 
 
 BIMETALLISM AND BONDED DEBT. 
 
 (Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 31, 1898, in Support of a Reso 
 lution (Concurrent Resolution No. 22) Declaring all bonds of the United States 
 Payable in Gold or Silver at the Government's Option and that to Restore the 
 Coinage of Silver is not in Derogation of the Rights of Public Creditors.) 
 
 EVILS OF USING CORPORATION NOTES AS MONEY. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, May 13, 1882, on the Bill to En 
 able National Banks to Extend their Corporate Existence.) 
 
 THE DEBT PAYING POWER OF WESTERN PRODUCTS. 
 
 (An Address to the Senate Committee on Finance, Delivered in 1897, to a Delega 
 tion of New York Bankers.) 
 
 MASONRY AND ITS SECRET CHARITIES. 
 
 (From an Address on Masonry Delivered at Lebanon, Mo., June 24, 1870.) 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Western Leadership in the First and Last Quarters of the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 The Flux and Reflux of Civilization. The Individualism of the Plain American 
 and the Spirit of Progress. Culture and Degeneracy in Reactionary or Station 
 ary Communities. The Impulses of Progress as they Operate Through Repre 
 sentative Men Upward from the Undegenerate Mass. Western Conditions and 
 Impulses as Benton Represented Them. European Atavism and Degeneracy in 
 the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Jackson and Benton as Factors 
 in Political Revolution and Advance. Sensual Neurosis and Political Con 
 vulsion. The Moral Advance Represented by the Individual Character and Life 
 of Bland. 
 
 N THE first quarter of the nineteenth century, as in the last, the 
 west asserted its power in the union unexpectedly and deci 
 sively. In each case the disturbance of existing commercial and 
 economic conditions resulting was followed by temporary polit 
 ical reaction, but study of the forces which make disturbance unavoidable 
 will leave no room for doubt that in its effects both of flux and reflux the 
 change was a necessary incident of progress. 
 
 From the admission of Missouri in 1821, until Mr. Eland's death in 
 1899, the strong individuality with which its people supported their own 
 governing principles, gave the state a decisive influence in the gravest 
 crises of American history. 
 
 To be able to see how closely this individuality approximated in its 
 manifestations the civilizing forces of the world at large and, even at the 
 expense of self-satisfaction, to understand clearly its lines of divergence, is 
 to be better able to understand the Americanism of the nineteenth century 
 than has been possible while the spirit which resulted in and emanated from 
 the Civil war has hampered the logical processes of the American intellect. 
 
2 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 Nothing is so valuable as knowledge of reality. No other knowledge 
 is permanently valuable without it. The extent to which the human mind 
 is capable of deceiving itself or satisfying itself with knowledge of phenom 
 ena, the better to avoid the temporary discomfort of recognizing the vital 
 truths of progress, is only less remarkable than the extent of the power it is 
 capable of exerting when once inspired by the consciousness that it has 
 become the vehicle of some truth necessary for the world's advancement. 
 
 All that is heroic in the character of the typical American has been the 
 result of such a consciousness. The motto on the great seal of the United 
 States: "Novus Ordo Saeclorum" was inspired by the sublime hope 
 which made the first quarter of the nineteenth century in America one of 
 the most memorable periods in the history of the world. The most illit 
 erate axeman of western pioneer civilization had in him the consciousness 
 that he was a part of a force which he believed was to regenerate the world. 
 Samuel Houston, reading Homer by the firelight in a Tennessee cabin and 
 so preparing himself for leadership at San Jacinto, had in him at once the 
 sublimity of the American ideal and its incongruity with existing facts. 
 Bred among the Cherokees, skilled in the craft both of their savagery and 
 of Caucasian civilization, proud, violent, revengeful, capable of the utmost 
 degradation of alcoholic intoxication, he was capable nevertheless of be 
 coming the vehicle of that great exterior force of progress through which 
 humanity in the individual is ennobled and strengthened for the uplifting of 
 humanity in the mass. Ideas, slowly gathering strength from century to 
 century ; having in them the cumulative power of the divine self-sacrifices 
 of the martyrs of progress ; made potent by the blood of the Rumbolds, the 
 Vanes, the Sidneys of the vanguard of liberty, entered the souls of rude and 
 common men, governed in their previous lives by the common impulses of 
 merely animal humanity, and uplifted them to heights of self-sacrifice, 
 of heroism, of leadership to which in their own right and by virtue of their 
 own individualistic forces they were incapable even of aspiring. 
 
 It is a fact too vital to be left out of consideration, that in a most impor- 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 3 
 
 tant sense, civilization is an individual affair. It can come in the mass only 
 as it comes in the individuals composing the mass. In individuals, it can 
 come only as an evolution of that which is inherent in each of them 
 which is indeed the vital and essential part of individual existence. What 
 ever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is heroic in the character of any 
 man, whom we may study as the type of a family, a clan, a people or a race, 
 is potentially a part of his nature and, as it is educated and evolved, it 
 asserts itself as the potency of his nature. But from the beginning of 
 recorded history, the evidence it offers is overwhelming that the brutal, the 
 merely negative forces of human nature will tend always with cumulative 
 power to prevent the development of the potential good in individual lives 
 unless the individual desire to express it is vitalized by an extraneous force, 
 which can be most conveniently characterized here as the spirit of civiliza 
 tion. Individuals, families, clans and peoples become permanently effective 
 only as they are capable of responding in action to the impulses which this 
 spirit gives them. It is not always most effective in communities where 
 literature, art and science seem most advanced. Indeed it happens period 
 ically that in such communities, the machinery of progress falls into the 
 hands of a class of well-meaning people, who derive large revenues from 
 modes of social organization they fear to have changed. This form of 
 conservatism from which no section in the United States, and no part of the 
 world has been free in the past, explains why in the beginning of the nine 
 teenth century, the forces of progress can be seen operating with full energy 
 only in those parts of America where social organization was as yet incho 
 ate. Men who were incapable of appreciating the niceties of the art, the 
 literature, the philosophy of the European civilization of the time of 
 Madame de Maintenon or Madame Pompadour men who spelled inac 
 curately, whose literary education had depended on the Bible and Plu 
 tarch's Lives, men born in cabins and swaddled in homespun, were yet cap 
 able of advancing the guidons of civilization and of holding the van of 
 progress under the hottest fire of reaction. 
 
4 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 It is the law of progress in all times and countries that it must depend 
 on such men in every supreme crisis. Every considerable advance in cul 
 ture is necessarily accompanied by an increase in the means of gratifying 
 luxurious intellectual and animal appetites. With every high develop 
 ment of the merely intellectual and esthetic side of human nature, we must 
 have also its concomitant of moral and intellectual degeneracy, which must 
 finally vitiate the governing motives of social organization in every com 
 munity in which material progress and esthetic development are reckoned 
 on the one hand or the other, as the highest good. 
 
 When this point has been reached, the hope of higher civilization lies 
 in the common humanity of the race, which, if rude and undeveloped, is 
 unspoiled by the customs of those who have committed what for communi 
 ties, peoples and races is the unpardonable sin of so abusing the opportu 
 nities given by the highest development as to impel themselves backward 
 towards the moral plane of primitive brutality. 
 
 It would be misleading to assert and unscientific to suppose that even 
 in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the west was free from indi 
 vidual degeneracy. It was frequently and strikingly illustrated, as in the 
 case of men of high esthetic development who left civilization in disgust, 
 to lead the life of trappers on the frontier, or even of "renegades" and 
 "squaw-men" among the Indians. This seemingly hopeless reaction oper 
 ated in such cases as the final test of ability to survive under the only condi 
 tions for which such natures had become morally fit. We see everywhere 
 in history, this process of regeneration for the individual degenerates of 
 stationary or reactionary communities. In every great period of disturb 
 ance which impels men to abandon levels, either higher or lower than that 
 for which they are fit, the same mercifully beneficent law operates inflexibly 
 to save all who, in spite of degeneracy, have in them elements of fitness 
 for survival. 
 
 The primitive west necessarily . attracted individuals of this class and 
 necessarily regenerated to a greater or less extent such of them as it did not 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 5 
 
 obliterate. But they were never typical of its pioneer class ; nor, either in 
 their sins or their still surviving virtues, did they stand at any time for 
 what the west has stood for in the history of the nineteenth century the 
 irresistible evolutionary forces of development in a people, moved con 
 sciously by the animating power of an ideal higher than the highest civili 
 zation the world has ever attained. 
 
 Taking Benton's work as the prophecy of Bland's, we can find sugges 
 tions in Benton himself of all the great strength of the popular ideal he 
 represented and all the inevitable incongruity, individual and popular, 
 between that ideal and the reality of the times. 
 
 Believing theoretically in the right of manhood to absolute freedom, 
 hating aristocracy with all the force of his intellect, Benton was in actual 
 life as much an aristocrat of the militant type as any German grand-duke 
 of the period of the hundred years war or as any sachem among the Indian 
 tribes of New England and Virginia in the eighteenth century. Himself, 
 indeed, as it has been said of him, "lofty and sour to those who loved him 
 not," he rejected absolutely in set terms as emphatic as he could make them 
 and in the fullest good faith the theory that superior intellect 
 superior birth, superior wealth, superior goodness, superior advan 
 tages of any kind whatever, can give any man, any community, any people 
 the right to dominate any other. Holding this through life, he not only 
 defended slavery as an existing institution but held himself ready to chal 
 lenge and shoot in a duel any one who with an approximation to his own 
 overbearing habits of intellect, should assert against him opposing opinions 
 on any subject whatever. 
 
 In this he was not singular, but typical. We find exactly the same 
 habits of mind illustrated in the most notable and characteristic acts of 
 Andrew Jackson's public career as they were in his private life. It was 
 because he and Benton were men of strong individuality and at the same 
 time fully representative of the best popular impulses of their times that 
 they could feel no sense of inconsistency between professions which repre- 
 
6 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 sented their deepest beliefs, their highest hopes, and practices which 
 expressed the effect on their individual lives of the temporary conditions 
 through which their world was passing. Whether they were shooting at 
 each other in Nashville or working together in complete harmony at Wash 
 ington for the overthrow of the United States bank, Benton and Jackson 
 were equally sincere and equally representative of the popular spirit of the 
 west of their times. 
 
 Convinced that all men ought to be free at any cost and hating despots 
 with all the force of his strenuous nature, Jackson's confirmed habit of 
 attempting to punish patriotically as enemies of America and of mankind 
 all who ventured to oppose him, laid him constantly open to attacks from 
 Clay, Webster and Calhoun as being himself a despot of the most aggres 
 sive type. He could never have realized the possibility of truth in such 
 attacks, if for no other reason than that he was debarred from doing so by 
 the completeness of his realization that the power he exercised was not used 
 in his own right but as the representative of the masses of the people who 
 loved him because they saw in him not only their strength but the faults 
 which condemned them individually to social and political inferiority 
 permanent always, in America as elsewhere, except as those who can not 
 themselves overcome it, can create some leader strong enough to represent 
 their cumulative force. 
 
 Such leaders were Jackson and Benton in the west of the first half of 
 the century. Such a leader was Bland under the less primitive conditions 
 of its last quarter. 
 
 Between the moral character of Benton and Bland there is neither 
 occasion nor room for comparison. Bland represented not only in his the 
 ories, but in the actual average of his private and public life a civilization 
 higher than his times. By virtue of his individual moral force, he will fin 
 ally become a factor in civilization more energizing than Benton ever has 
 been or ever can be. But it is with the study of the times rather than of the 
 men created by them, that we must first concern ourselves in order to be 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 7 
 
 able to understand the work of leaders or the generations which produce 
 them. 
 
 We ought not to shrink from the fact that in Benton's time'the "upper 
 classes" in the west were characterized by both the militancy and the land- 
 hunger of the sixteenth century. Great bodies of western land had been dis 
 tributed on what was identical in principle with the feudal system of 
 rewarding military service with land titles. The legal difference con 
 sisted chiefly in the fact that such titles in the nineteenth century were 
 forfeitable to the sovereign power only for non-payment of taxes and not 
 as in the middle ages for failure to respond when called on for militia ser 
 vice. No able-bodied landholder of military age could have lived an 
 endurable life in the west, however, had he refused to respond to such a call 
 in 1812 without an obviously sufficient disability. Threatened both by the 
 savagery of primitive America and the forces of the higher social organi 
 zation of Europe, the west of that day was intensely militant. Democratic 
 in theories and social customs, the states of the west, at the time when 
 Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri constituted it, 
 were dominated politically by a military aristocracy consisting chiefly of 
 intensely democratic militia colonels. The impulses of the merely civil 
 order were represented politically, as far as they were represented at all, 
 by lawyers, who found themselves, unable to keep standing room in poli 
 tics except as they were able to reenforce their civilianism by military titles. 
 Jefferson who hated snakes and professional soldiers with impartiality was 
 the idol of the Seviers, the Bentons and Jacksons who thought no more of 
 exchanging shots in political rivalry than the Launcelots of the mediaeval 
 phase of the same social condition did of breaking a spear for honor and 
 amusement on meeting at the cross roads. From such social conditions 
 we must expect all the inconsistencies of incomplete self-consciousness. 
 Sometimes such inconsistencies will be ludicrous and often they will be 
 painful as they force themselves on the notice of those who have shared 
 them. But with them, and often operative through them, we have the 
 
8 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 greatest force of civilization always at work the courage which comes 
 from the inspiration of some great world-idea, capable of overcoming 
 individual inertia and of supplanting individual selfishness with devotion, 
 not merely to country but to humanity. 
 
 This courage in America saved the modern world from reaction to 
 worse than mediaeval conditions. The Puritan revolution in England, 
 although in the minds of such men as Pym, Vane, and Hampden it stood 
 for the beneficence of high and constructive ideas, became a mere negation, 
 and when Richard Cromwell succeeded to the protectorate, its negative 
 quality was fully apparent. The reaction which followed influenced the civ 
 ilization of the world indescribably for the worse. The "better elements" of 
 English society, including the ecclesiastical machinery of the political 
 church became not merely corrupt but depraved. The virtue of women 
 and the honor of men was equally vendible and equally cheap. Sensuality, 
 complete and bestial, in the typical individual of the governing class, was 
 accompanied, as it invariably is, by increasing readiness to resort to vio 
 lence as a mode of government and by insensibility to the sufferings of its 
 victims. The morals which degenerate Rome had borrowed from fallen 
 Greece which Greece in its turn had assimilated for its ruin from the 
 ninth circle of the hell of Asiatic vice, appeared in England and worked 
 beneath the surface of aristocratic society until it was putrid. Bestial 
 drunkenness, habitual even among typical representatives of the political 
 ecclesiasticism of the period, was one of the least shameful of the vices 
 which characterized the degeneracy of the times. Aristocratic England, 
 and the aristocratic Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 prepared the way thus for the French Revolution and the Napoleonic 
 wars which except for such a preparation would have been impossible 
 and too completely illogical to be conceivable. 
 
 As a result of the chaos in Europe, growing out of the Napoleonic 
 wars, Louisiana, a territory including Missouri, was added to the domain 
 of the United States. An immediate revolution was thus effected in Amer- 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 9 
 
 lean political conditions, but in spite of one more inconsistency added to 
 those which already impeded the intellectual operations of American 
 thinkers and idealists, the high and noble theory of liberty which saved 
 the nineteenth century world from the atavism of the second half of the 
 seventeenth was not abandoned. The degeneracy of the aristocratic 
 classes of England and of Continental Europe, emboldened American Dem 
 ocrats to declare the hopelessness of improving the world through govern 
 ment by "the better element/' and nowhere was this declaration made with 
 greater faith in its inherent truth than in the Missouri of the third decade 
 of the nineteenth century. This was the beginning of the "Jacksonian" 
 epoch in American history a period of revolutionary change not less far- 
 reaching than that which has followed the Civil war. 
 
 Except for the Louisiana purchase and the admission of Missouri, 
 the Jacksonian epoch might have been impossible, but it is probable that it 
 would have been long postponed and the country might have passed 
 through it as a period of slow and imperceptible change. The admission of 
 Missouri forced an immediate revolution in existing politics by giving 
 the west a balance of power which until then had been exercised by the 
 middle states of the Atlantic seaboard. 
 
 Under John Adams the west consisted only of Kentucky, admitted 
 to the Electoral College in 1792, and Tennessee, admitted in 1796. 
 Through Jefferson the Northwest Territory was added to the national 
 domain, but on Jefferson's motion slavery was abolished in it and when 
 Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were admitted as "free states," the existing 
 equilibrium though obviously threatened was not disturbed. In 1824, 
 however, when Jackson joined issues with John Quincy Adams, the west 
 consisted of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois arid Missouri, 
 lying together so as to form a solid block on the map of the new Union, 
 which for more than two generations they were destined to control, for 
 better or worse. 
 
 Drawn together by the community of interest incident to their situa- 
 
10 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 tion, they were kept apart not only by the accidental persistence of slavery 
 in Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, but still more by the divergence of 
 habit between colonial New England and colonial Virginia; between hab 
 its derived by heredity from rural and village life in England, between the 
 strong individualistic tendencies of the yeoman's life and the communal 
 trend of the society shaped by town and village life. The Northwest Terri 
 tory, settled in its southern counties from Virginia and further to the 
 northward from New England, still shows as it must long show, the line 
 of demarcation between the two civilizations. As an incident of the sec 
 tionalism of slavery at the south and of the extension of corporate privilege 
 at the north, they ceased to be complementary the one to the other as it 
 is natural that they should be, and became for the time being fiercely an 
 tagonistic. Had it been otherwise, the influence of this great block of 
 states might have been sufficient to decide without struggle much of that 
 which has been decided at a cost too great to be thought of without poign 
 ant ard lasting regret. It is useless to regret, ho-.vever, except as it 
 enables us to understand, and the matter of greatest importance in the poli 
 tics of our present and future, is to understand the governing forces by 
 which the existing Union began to be controlled when it first came into 
 existence. That as it now exists, it dates not from i776, but from the 
 Louisiana purchase, the conquest of California, the consequent repeal of 
 the Missouri Compromise and the resulting surrender at Appomattox, 
 needs only to be stated to be self-evident to every one whose attention to 
 the isolated facts of American history has been sufficient to enable him to 
 make a correct generalization. 
 
 Jefferson's idea that Missouri entered into the Union as a sovereign 
 state, free to withdraw from it under the constitution as interpreted by the 
 Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, was comfortable to him intellectually 
 and morally. It enabled him to rid himself of the repulsive thought that in 
 buying the territory he was buying the people also. He could reassure 
 himself against fears for his ideal by the thought that he had merely 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 1 
 
 purchased the liberty of the people of the territory from European despot 
 ism and that at their own discretion they were to form republics absolutely 
 free, independent, self-governing and sovereign in the Union or out of it. 
 It was great comfort to him, no doubt, to denounce as "enemies of the 
 human race" those who sought to "limit the sovereignty" of Missouri as 
 those whom Mr. Bland opposed after the Spanish war sought to limit the 
 sovereignty of Hawaii, Cuba and Puerto Rico. In his own mind Jefferson 
 remained consistent with the theories of the Declaration of Independence 
 to the end, but when the issue he foresaw in 1820 came on the admission 
 of California and Kansas, it was evident that the logic of the facts was 
 against the Union of sovereign states in which he believed and it was de 
 cided at Appomattox that such a Union never existed that it never shall 
 exist! The belief in it, however, was a factor in the history which was 
 made when Missouri was admitted to the Union and it is too important to 
 history to be overlooked especially by those who wish to understand the 
 intellectual attitude Mr. Bland retained through his political life from the 
 time he opposed Grant in i872 to the end when the same issues had 
 recurred in 1898 with added emphasis. 
 
 Under Jackson when Calhoun, radically opposed to Jefferson on the 
 fundamental principle of government by consent and denying openly that 
 law, in order to be just must be representative, attempted to enforce the 
 Jeffersonian hypothesis that the states were self-governing and sovereign, 
 Jackson threatened to hang him as a traitor and by doing so, really decided 
 that in 1 86 1 the seceding states should be coerced back into the Union, that 
 slavery should be abolished in 1863 without regard to its recognition by 
 the constitution and that in 1866 the Union, north and south, should be 
 reconstructed on the new basis which General Butler represented in i8?2 
 not so much by what he advocated as legislation as by the realities of the 
 political forces back of his almost unimaginable and frequently unintelli 
 gible astuteness. 
 
 The greatest crises in the history of the United States can not be fixed 
 
12 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 by an exact date, but as far as it is possible to limit them so, they may be 
 considered as reached (i) in i776, when the Declaration of Independence 
 was adopted; (2) in 1800, when the federalists were defeated by Jefferson 
 on the issues of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions against the Alien 
 and Sedition Laws; (3) in 1828, when the west, represented by Jackson, 
 with Benton as the premier of his policies, asserted its balance of power as a 
 controlling force; (4) in i872, when "original abolitionists" who actually 
 believed in the principles of individual liberty through which the republi 
 can party had been first organized, rallied to defeat republican candidates 
 who in their view represented the threat of imperialism and military gov 
 ernment; and finally in the decade between 1890 and 1900 when the 
 western states reasserted themselves more strongly than they had done 
 since Jackson thus preparing the way for the campaign of 1896, for the 
 Spanish war and that new movement for imperialism and a closer assimila 
 tion of American and European institutions against which Bland contended 
 when he opposed the coercion of Puerto Rico and military control in Cuba, 
 with a view to its annexation. 
 
 These crises must be kept in mind and their relation to each other 
 must be understood, if the work done by Mr. Bland and the times in which 
 he did it are to be understood. In i776, in 1800, in 1828, in 1860, in i872 
 and again from 1890 to 1900, the real issue of politics was the control of 
 the police power of the government as a means of controlling the supply 
 of money and commodities. As the survival of the actual slave-ownership 
 in America was incidental merely, and as it has been disposed of as a fact, it 
 should be set aside except as it belongs to the merely phenomenal politics 
 of the periods considered. From the time Wilberforce made his first speech 
 against the Liverpool merchants who indorsed and eulogized the slave trade 
 slavery was so obviously an anachronism in Europe and America that it 
 can not now deserve to be treated as an actual economic condition. The 
 permanent realities of our politics remained throughout the struggle over 
 slavery exactly what they are still, what they always will be the issue of 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 13 
 
 the extent to which the coercive power of the government through legis 
 lation enforceable by police and soldiery, should be used in controlling the 
 supply of commodities and money. 
 
 Mr. Bland believed at all times in minimizing this coercive control and 
 he so far represented the governing idea of a developing civilization in this 
 belief that were the "Tu Quoque" argument not always available in politics, 
 the twentieth century would have been inaugurated as was the nineteenth 
 by some splendid and world-compelling triumph for the idea that civiliza 
 tion means the least possible coercion that "the government is best which 
 governs least" that kindness, forbearance, reason, persuasion should be 
 the mode of civilization rather than the cannon of the navy and the bayo 
 nets of the standing army. 
 
 What the "Tu Quoque" argument means, history shows when Mis 
 souri, with Benton in the Senate, asserted the demand of the west for popu 
 lar control of the currency; for the issue of money only by government 
 and for the least possible restriction by government of the supply of com 
 modities. 
 
 The demand for the abolition of slavery became so pressing that under 
 James K. Polk, issues were wholly changed and by the conquest of Mex 
 ican territory to be organized as slave states, the west was alienated from 
 the support of the south in all that for which Benton and Jackson had 
 stood. Considered merely as a piece of "practical politics," the "expan 
 sion" by the invasion of Mexico and the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo was 
 the worst blunder of modern times. It cost the ruin of the south, the disor 
 ganization of the Democratic party, and, for the direct producer of the 
 south and west, the loss of the control of the economic policies of the federal 
 government which means everything. The nomination of Lewis Cass 
 involved no recession from policies which necessitated disaster. Though 
 it seemed to put the agricultural northwest at the front, giving it the bal 
 ance of power which the west assumed under Jackson, it really did nothing 
 more than make a false pretense at a time when hypocrisy was not only 
 
14 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 futile but absurd. Cass was thrust aside, the issue on slavery recurred 
 between north and south and the permanent realities of American politics 
 did not reappear until, largely as a result of what Mr. Bland achieved and 
 represented, the northwest took the lead against European policies in the 
 last decade of the century. 
 
 That in the time of Bland as in that of Benton, the influence of the 
 west was exerted to save the civilization of the world from reaction, 
 becomes clear whenever an impartial and sufficiently thorough examination 
 of the facts is made. But it does not follow that there is occasion either 
 for boasting of the past or presumption in the future because of it. The 
 western social life Benton represented had the supreme merit of being 
 evolutionary, but the merciless extermination of the Indians, the immense 
 quantities of alcohol used in trading and consumed by Caucasians during 
 the pioneer period, and the habit of imperiousness which belongs to indi 
 vidualism educated through militancy, had on the class which controls con 
 ventions and decides what is or is not "practical politics" all the effects 
 of a neurosis, subjecting them to the influence of sudden impulses of pas 
 sion or appetite and operating as a disease of the will to cripple them in 
 their usefulness as representatives of popular ideals and aspirations. 
 
 When we recall the fact that many of the speeches which did most to 
 force the Civil war, were made by habitual drunkards or by men incapable 
 at important crises of resisting the temptation to incapacitate their brains 
 by overstimulation ; when we look into the private life of men reverenced 
 north and south almost as demigods, and see how their lack of self-con 
 trol made them and the country which condoned their self-indulgence a 
 victim of the wild and erratic gusts of disordered passion which belong to 
 
 
 
 the pathology of nervous lesion from alcoholization, we need not be fanat 
 ical opponents of intemperance to appreciate how great has been the 
 moral advance shown in the contrast between such lives and the even more 
 completely representative life of Bland a man who, though he had 
 through life the unspoiled sensitive nerves of childhood, could work 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 15 
 
 waist-deep in water in the mines of the far west, live among desperadoes 
 and Indians and finally spend a quarter of a century in the public life of a 
 period of demoralized politics, retaining always the balance, the self-poise, 
 the sobriety, the simplicity, the good judgment and the courage which are 
 natural traits of undegenerate manhood. 
 
 Considering some periods of history, it is hard to escape the false con 
 clusion that human life itself under its most favorable conditions is a dis 
 ease. The latter half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eight 
 eenth centuries was such a period in England and in Western Europe. 
 The widespread habits of neurotic sensuality, showing itself most openly 
 in an epidemic of alcoholism, had not exhausted its force in the first quar 
 ter of the nineteenth. The nervous stress incident to such crimes of vio 
 lence as the Napoleonic wars inevitably perpetuated as an epidemic the 
 habitual and diseased resort to alcoholic stimulation, and in America, re 
 lated tendencies postponed the return to natural habits. 
 
 In the west, however, as early as the first decade of the nineteenth 
 century, there was a strong reaction against the results of heredity from 
 the degeneracy of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. The "plain 
 people" of the entire west, under the eloquence of preachers who scarcely 
 less fiercely than Whitefield himself, warned them of the destructive effects 
 of indulging reactionary impulses, were stirred to the depths of their na 
 tures by the desire for individual progress and for the uplifting of human 
 ity. Moral purpose, always present as a latent force, developed in them un 
 til it called into play that for which the west has been most admirable even 
 when its detractors have held it least admirable in everything else the 
 courage of individual initiative. For the people, for the race which develops 
 this quality, and with it the rectitude of purpose which alone can make it 
 effective, such individual initiative is the supreme virtue through which 
 salvation comes in every great crisis where without it, reaction would be 
 certain. This courage, this moral force, this heroic ability to advance singly 
 and to stand unsupported for an ideal, higher than that of contemporary 
 
1 6 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 moral and intellectual inertia, has always characterized the really represen 
 tative American of all sections, but it has especially characterized the plain 
 American of the unpretentious, unspoiled, unartificial type Bland so well 
 represented in his public and private life. 
 
 The effect of such initiative, acting now with and now against the 
 logic of events, we are about to study in attempting to get at the realities 
 of the last quarter of the nineteenth century that we may be the better able 
 to adapt our intellectual processes to the necessities of the twentieth. 
 
WILLIAM McKINLEY. 
 
 GROVER CLEVELAND. 
 
 THOMAS A. HENDRICKS. 
 
 THOMAS B. REED. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 "There is the East there is India." Benton's Prevision of the Results of Opening 
 the Trans-Mississippi West. Benton and Bland as Vehicles of World-Moving 
 Ideas. The Constructive Impulses of the People Greater than the Destructive 
 forces of Civil War. Bland as a representative of the Meaning of the Last 
 Quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Western America and Europe. American 
 Plowmen and American Railroads against Malthus. The Nineteenth Century 
 and the Future. Bland as a Transmitter of Popular Impulses. The Feudalism 
 of Land and of Corporations. The New England Village and The Virginia Es 
 tate in Sociology. 
 
 I HE history of progress is a history of great ideas, taking hold 
 on the minds of men and compelling them to action. In sci 
 ence, in art, in literature, in religion, in politics, the efficient 
 man is always the man who has assimilated intellectually and 
 morally, some great, slowly-developing truth which has grown from mind 
 to mind and from century to century, compelling one generation after an 
 other to a more nearly complete consciousness of itself and of its relation to 
 the world's future. 
 
 Such an idea, taking hold on the mind of Thomas H. Benton, com 
 pelled him to become one of the master forces of his generation, a prophet 
 of the future of the Trans-Mississippi west and of its influence on civiliza 
 tion. In 1849, when the actual conditions of 1900 would have seemed in 
 credible, had they been imaginable, Benton his intellect quickened by his 
 faith in the capacity of the masses for progress pointed westward to the 
 Rocky Mountains and exclaimed : "There is the East ! There is India !" 
 This sentence, which has been inscribed on the pedestal of his statue in 
 St. Louis, was the most notable utterance of his life, and its importance ap 
 pears when it is considered in its connection. Anticipating the results of 
 opening the country west of the Mississippi River by railroads connecting 
 the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Benton said : 
 
 "We live in extraordinary times and are called upon to elevate our- 
 
 2 17 
 
1 8 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 selves to the grandeur of the occasion. Three and a half centuries ago the 
 great Columbus, the man who was afterwards carried home in chains from 
 the new world he had discovered this great Columbus in the year 1492 
 departed from Europe to arrive at the east by going to the west. It was 
 a sublime conception ! He was in the line of success when the intervention 
 of two continents, not dreamed of before, stopped his progress. Now in 
 the nineteenth century, mechanical genius enables his great design to be 
 fulfilled. In the beginning and in barbarous ages, the sea was a barrier to 
 the intercourse of nations. It separated nations until mechanical genius 
 invented the ship which converted the barrier into a facility. Then land 
 and continents became an obstruction. The two Americas intervening 
 have prevented Europe and Asia from communicating in a straight line. 
 For three centuries and a half this obstacle has frustrated the grand de 
 sign of Columbus. Now in our day mechanical genius has again tri 
 umphed over the obstacles of nature and converted into a facility what had 
 
 long been an impassable obstacle A conveyance being invented 
 
 which annihilates both time and space, we hold the intervening land ! We 
 hold the obstacle which stopped Columbus. We are in line between Eu 
 rope and Asia. We have it in our power to remove that obstacle to con 
 vert it into a facility for carrying him to his land of promise and of hope 
 with a rapidity, a precision and a safety unknown to all ocean navigation. 
 A king and queen started him upon this grand enterprise. It lies in the 
 hands of a republic to complete it. It is in our hands in the hands of the 
 people of the United States of the first half of the nineteenth century. 
 Let us raise ourselves up ! Let us rise to the grandeur of the occasion ! 
 Let us complete the grand design of Columbus by putting Europe and 
 Asia into communication and that to our advantage, through the heart 
 of our country ! Let us give to his ships a continued course unknown to all 
 former times! Let us make an iron road and make it from sea to sea, 
 states and individuals making it east of the Mississippi and the nation mak 
 ing it west ! Let us now in this convention rise above everything sectional, 
 personal, local! Let us beseech the national legislature to build a great 
 road upon the great line which unites Europe and Asia the line which 
 will find on our continent the Bay of San Francisco on one end, St. Louis 
 in the middle and the great national metropolis and emporium on the 
 other a line which shall be adorned with its crowning honor the colossal 
 statue of the great Columbus whose design it accomplishes, hewn from the 
 granite mass of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, the mountain itself the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 19 
 
 pedestal and the statue a part of the mountain, pointing with outstretched 
 arms to the western horizon and saying to the flying passengers : There 
 is the East ! There is India !" 
 
 This is a definite and valid expression of the greatest and most benefi 
 cent thought that moved the American mind during the generation in 
 which Benton was so conspicuous a figure. Since the beginning of the 
 Republic, the American idea of peaceful progress, operating through 
 justice and helpfulness to elevate the world, had moved no one more deeply 
 than Benton must have been moved before it could have been possible for 
 his mind to take such hold upon the deepest reality of his generation the 
 constructive thought which, in spite of the selfishness and spitefulness of 
 merely negative politics, forced the world forward and gave the United 
 States a far more compelling influence at the end of the century than could 
 have been imaginable at the beginning. 
 
 To examine adequately the operations of this constructive thought, 
 greater in itself than the mind of any man, of any people, of any race, is to 
 become capable of ridding ourselves of the spirit of self-glorification on the 
 one hand and antagonism and negation on the other. It is essentially the 
 spirit of civilization and it operates through the intellect of individuals and 
 of peoples; but no race, no people, no individual can represent it except 
 through a governing sympathy with its essence of justice. 
 
 To learn from the consideration of our past how far as a people and as 
 individuals we have been capable of representing the impulse of construc 
 tive justice is to have the clearest possible insight into the realities of our 
 present and the possibilities of our future. This knowledge, inspiring and 
 potent as it must be always to those who are willing to make a right use of 
 it, can be attained in no other way so well as by an adequate understanding 
 of the life of some really representative man who at the expense of all other 
 qualities has been governed by a sense of justice, essentially inherent but 
 evoked and made efficient by sympathy. 
 
 By the simplicity of his character ; by his freedom from the feeling of 
 
20 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 superiority which so hampered Benton; by his plainness and directness- 
 above all by his personal goodness, Richard P. Bland became in his genera 
 tion more thoroughly than any man had been in the generation which pro 
 duced Benton, a representative of the power latent in such unspoiled man 
 hood as that of the "embattled farmers" of Lexington and Concord, who 
 in their day were workers of a revolution great enough to make possible 
 the yet greater revolution in the economy of the world produced by the 
 American workers of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The plowmen of the Trans-Mississippi west exerted in the year of 
 Mr. Eland's death an influence in the affairs of the world greater than that 
 of all its standing armies and navies. Benton thought only of the influ 
 ence of the west in realizing the idea of Columbus by bringing east and 
 west together through a paradox by which the distance between them 
 would be made a figure of speech. Bland as he represented the construc 
 tive impulses of the west, stood for the power which, through its own pro 
 ductiveness of food supplies had made possible in England the continu 
 ous increase in population which has demonstrated the falsity of the repul 
 sive theory of Malthus that without war, plague, and famine to decimate 
 the unfavored, the "favored classes" can not exist in comfort. 
 
 This increasing productiveness of the west, accompanied by similar 
 results of development in South America, Australia, and Russia, is by far 
 the most important fact of the nineteenth century. It forced to the de 
 fensive, not merely the aristocratic landholders of England, but the still 
 more powerful class which controls the financial and commercial policies 
 of the British Empire, of Europe, and finally of North and South America 
 as far as it is possible for North and South America to be controlled by 
 the intelligence and skill of militant commercialism in Europe. 
 
 So great has been the ignorance of the realities of American politics 
 necessarily produced by the passions of such a civil war as ours, that we 
 have only begun to suspect the meaning of the constructive forces which 
 have worked below the surface of our base and corrupting politics, to make 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 21 
 
 possible for the people of the United States and of the world, a fuller real 
 ization of their always limitless possibilities of efficiency and happiness. 
 
 The study of the conditions, and popular impulses which made Mr. 
 Bland a force in national and international politics is so well worth while 
 for the twentieth century that it may justly be called a fundamental requi 
 site for the comprehension of whatever is comprehensible in the nineteenth. 
 It ought to convince us that the origin of world-forces is in the people and 
 that only through the utmost possible freedom of development for all the 
 peoples of the world, can the world's highest possible civilization be at 
 tained. This was the idea which made Mr. Bland a representative man. If 
 in studying its development we become capable of being moved as he was 
 by a compelling sympathy for the weak in their longing for intellectual and 
 moral strength; in their struggling; in their aspirations for calmness; in 
 their hope of justice and their anxious expectation of liberty, then we may 
 learn not merely to understand his actual significance in his generation, but 
 to see the impulse which produced him clearly at work in the present as the 
 controlling force of the future ! 
 
 The middle ages produced in Europe generally and in England espec 
 ially, two parallel developments of feudalism that of privilege in land 
 granted by the sovereign power and that of corporate organization employ 
 ing certain delegated powers of the sovereign. 
 
 Both developments were a result of natural causes and both have oper 
 ated as modes of progress. It is not possible here to define the limits be 
 yond which they become reactionary, but dealing with them both as exist 
 ing facts of the colonial civilization of the eighteenth century out of which 
 grew the American conditions of the nineteenth, we can understand them 
 as the causes which first defined the issues of division in our politics. 
 
 In New England during the eighteenth century, the village life of 
 England gave its organizing impulse to society and shaped both political 
 and commercial systems. In remote New England villages of the present 
 day, we can still see the effects of this impulse in their almost communal 
 
22 AN AMERICAN COMMONER, 
 
 method of life. Individual ownership is rigidly established and main 
 tained, but the dwelling houses are often built directly on the village street 
 so that their front doors open on the outside world and establish with it the 
 most direct and permanent connection possible. The training developed 
 from such conditions favored organization as strongly as conditions in 
 Virginia and the states settled from Virginia favored individual initiative 
 sometimes through organization, but often at the expense of it. 
 
 Virginia in the eighteenth century represented the landholding im 
 pulses which had governed the militant classes of England since the Nor 
 man conquest. Social standing was based on land and the desire for 
 "broad acres" so dominated society that it was one of the controlling factors 
 in the movement which settled the southwest and opened to civilization the 
 vast territory acquired by the Louisiana purchase. The system, tending 
 always to separate families by such distances between homesteads as neces 
 sarily minimize communal life, fostered the individual intellect at the ex 
 pense of compact social organization. The result was the production of 
 individual intellects superior to system and to circumstance such intel 
 lects as that of Jefferson, who seeing in the desire for extensive holdings of 
 land an obstacle to progress struck at the roots of the existing social order 
 in Virginia by laws enacted to make effective his declaration that "the earth 
 belongs in usufruct to the living." 
 
 He intended thus to prevent one generation from transmitting as a 
 hereditary privilege the advantages conceded to its more efficient workers 
 in order to make their efficiency possible. As far as landholding in Vir 
 ginia and the states settled from it was concerned, he succeeded. Land- 
 holding under the conditions he forced was no longer a reliable vehicle for 
 the transmission of class privilege or for conserving clan advantage. The 
 feudal system of land tenure was destroyed in the house of its friends. 
 Virginia sacrificed the possibilities of organizing the Union in the only way 
 which could have perpetuated its peculiar social order. The colonial land- 
 holding class as the "estates of the realm" ceased to exist as a result of 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 23 
 
 Virginia leadership and ' little by little, privilege sought perpetuation 
 through grants of the sovereign power, delegated for the purposes of cor 
 porate organization. 
 
 The Bland family in Virginia represented during colonial times the 
 landholding idea and they developed under it the same marked individual 
 character which showed itself in Washington, Jefferson and Edmund Ran 
 dolph. Elands of the second generation after the revolution in social and 
 economic conditions of Virginia produced by the Jeffersonian idea, found 
 themselves in Kentucky no longer with "baronial possessions" but with 
 an approximation to such a farm as in the third generation Mr. Bland him 
 self owned and tilled in Missouri. The Civil war having destroyed the 
 last vestiges in America of the feudal system of agricultural production, 
 Mr. Bland found himself a representative of the producer's right to exist 
 and to develop under conditions created by the vast, the unprecedented, 
 the world-wide growth of co-operative organization through feudal grants 
 perpetuated under the system which produced first the guilds of the middle 
 ages, then the free cities of Flanders and Germany and finally the Hanse 
 league as a prophecy of the modern East India and South African com 
 panies and of the contemporaneous use of the police and war-making pow~ 
 ers of government for commercial purposes. 
 
 Fully realizing the odds against all he stood for in such a contest, Mr. 
 Bland did his work with the unostentatious strength of the man who feels 
 the ineffectiveness of his own forces and appeals to the omnipotent power 
 which operates through the sense of duty in the individual and in the mass. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Aristocracy of Land and the Oligarchy of Trade Against the Liberty and De 
 velopment of the Individual. John Randolph on Manhood Suffrage. The 
 American Ideal of Decentralization. Its Precedents in Athens, Venice and in 
 England under Elizabeth. New England and Virginia of the Eighteenth Cen 
 tury. Government Under the Highest Possible Civilization. Government for 
 the Control of the Producer by Distributers or Non-Producers. Its Operations 
 During a Century of American Politics. The Tu Quoque Struggle Between 
 Holders of Corporation Privilege and Agricultural Producers Using Slave 
 Labor. From Benton and Jackson to General Benjamin F. Butler. Diversion 
 and Change of Subject in Politics. 
 
 r |HEN Mr. Bland entered national politics in i872, the issues 
 were essentially the same as in 1856 when Benton was forced 
 out of public life by his defeat for the governorship of Mis 
 souri. Civil war was an episode involving no actual change of 
 the enduring conditions of evolution and offering no real check to the 
 always inherent and imminent tendency towards reaction. 
 
 The Democracy of individual liberty overthrew in Virginia the 
 colonial aristocracy for which John Randolph stood during the third decade 
 of the century when he unsuccessfully opposed changes of the state con 
 stitution intended to base government on manhood rights rather than on 
 property. 
 
 Randolph declared that with the right of suffrage extended to all males 
 of voting age, statesmanship would become impossible and the science of 
 government would be reduced to keeping a tally. To this, those who held 
 with Jefferson replied that the people of any country must govern them 
 selves in order to be justly governed and that it is always safer to trust 
 them at their worst than it is to trust at their best those who allege their 
 
 own superiority as a title to rule others. This declaration of principle nec- 
 
 24 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 25 
 
 essarily abolished slavery in the United States by its own force and from 
 the Missouri Compromise of 1821 to the campaign in which the leaders of 
 the Abolition agitation turned on and denounced Grant, events as they were 
 developed by the action and reaction of the great forces of politics, merely 
 declared and demonstrated what is now obvious as from the first a tore- 
 gone conclusion. 
 
 The Jeffersonian ideal was one of the largest possible individual lib 
 erty, developing civilization through such "local self-government" as that 
 of Athens in the time of Pericles, Venice under the Doges and England in 
 the time of Shakespeare. Those who held the ideal represented by Jeffer 
 son wished to see in the world the largest possible number of independent 
 and sovereign states, living together in peace, trading together without 
 restriction, developing through gradual improvement, each its own remedy 
 for its own abuses, and evolving each its own literature, its own art, its 
 own science, controlled only by the moral and intellectual unities of the 
 highest possible freedom under the highest possible civilization. They 
 dreamed of leagues between such sovereign states for common defense and 
 only for common convenience. Standing armies were to be abolished and 
 all the machinery of coercive militarism was to be made obsolete by the 
 increasing willingness of men, themselves free, to concede to all others the 
 full measure of self-government they claimed for themselves. Individual 
 evolution, local development, non-intervention, the least possible force at 
 home, the closest possible approach to the absolute zero of violence abroad 
 all this was hoped for as a result of the American civilization which was 
 to be developed by individual liberty, local self-government and a federal 
 government acting only as a "department of foreign affairs." The incom 
 patibility between such a theory and the fact of slavery was probably 
 clearer to Jefferson himself than to almost any one else in his generation, 
 but he hoped that under liberty, the slow growth of intellectual and moral 
 self-consciousness would be the sufficient as he believed it to be the only 
 effectual. remedy for wrongs due to a lack of development. 
 
26 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 From the presidential campaign of 1800, when the Federalist party 
 was disorganized by Jefferson's impetuous attack, until 1899, when Bland 
 made his last protest against the same Federalism as it was evoked and 
 made potent by the military ardor resulting from the war with Spain, the 
 modes of merely negative politics in the United States have been charac 
 terized by the utmost simplicity, strictly parallel with the simplicity which 
 underlies the apparent complexity of political economy. 
 
 The producer can be controlled (i) by the control of his person; (2) 
 by the direct control of his product; (3) by the control of the medium used 
 in exchanging his product. The first method is that of primitive and 
 savage times. It has never been economically efficient nor reliably re 
 munerative. The second belongs to advancing civilization and the third 
 is most effectively operative only where the intelligence of selfishness has 
 received its highest possible training. 
 
 In American politics from 1800 to 1860, every attack from the south 
 ern states on the rapid development of northern corporations, seeking 
 grants of sovereignty or landowning privilege from state or federal gov 
 ernments, was answered by a counter attack on slavery. From 1866, when 
 Andrew Johnson was impeached, until the closing year of the nineteenth 
 century, the presence of the lately enfranchised slaves and their descend 
 ants at the south made inevitable the perpetuation of the same methods. 
 
 The first issues were joined when Jefferson attacked the advocates of 
 a permanent national debt and denounced the issue and control of currency 
 in any form by private corporations. He himself foresaw the Civil war 
 only in 1820, when the issues were defined unmistakably by the struggle 
 over the admission of Missouri, but he had long ago made such results 
 inevitable when, supported in his theories of absolute liberty and justice 
 chiefly by the hereditary landowners and slaveholders of the south, whom 
 he himself had crippled politically, he forced a radical issue with the banks 
 and manufacturing corporations of the northeast. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 27 
 
 Conservative as he was in his methods ; anxious as he was to postpone 
 every crisis; clearly as he saw that the success of every attempt at liberty 
 must depend on the slow development of a more nearly perfect popular ap 
 preciation of justice, he could hardly have done less than he did in chal 
 lenging with the banks of issue the bitter and prolonged contest which did 
 not end, but simply developed a new phase when Benton was defeated for 
 governor of Missouri in 1856 which, indeed, was as far as ever from 
 ending in 1898 when Bland gathered together the slight remaining forces 
 of his fast waning vitality to protest against the leadership of those who 
 wished to initiate "occupation by force of arms" as a mode of government 
 abroad, the better to perpetuate at home that system of exercising dele 
 gated sovereignty through corporation boards, against which Jefferson had 
 planned and Jackson had fulminated. 
 
 When in a letter to Robert Morris, Hamilton had declared that "a 
 national debt if not excessive will be to us a national blessing," he had sug 
 gested the corner-stone of the magnificent structure of commercial and 
 financial organization which in the nineteenth century was to exercise a 
 power in centralizing wealth and perpetuating it in the control of family 
 and class, greater than primogeniture and entail had even approximated 
 through class and clan ownership in the middle ages. 
 
 Politically an evolutionist before Herbert Spencer, a non-intervention 
 ist before Bright, a free-trader before Cobden, Jefferson himself invoked 
 the forces which were to defeat, at least in the politics of phenomenon 
 during the nineteenth century, the brilliant promise of the Republicanism 
 of the eighteenth. Ready at all times to make practical compromises in 
 mere detail, and working methodically to postpone every threatening crisis, 
 Jefferson, before his own election to the presidency, made no compromises 
 of principle. He attacked the intrenched commercial feudalism which 
 characterized Pennsylvania, New York and New England as strongly as 
 he did the baronial agricultural system of colonial Virginia. The result 
 was far-reaching. 
 
28 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 With the abolition of entail and of primogeniture as principles in the 
 transmission of land from one generation to another, slavery in the agri 
 cultural system of the southern states remained as the only obvious mani 
 festation of incompatibility between existing conditions and Jeffersonian 
 ideals. But for America, as for any other country of the world, such a 
 standard is only to be realized even approximately by the slow and painful 
 processes of repeated failure to be justified when measured against it. At 
 tacking landed feudalism at the south and securing the general acceptance 
 of his theories of landholding, Jefferson overthrew the decadent system of 
 agricultural feudalism chiefly through the force of the reaction of his un 
 successful attack on what under the influence of steam, was to become the 
 characteristic mode through which nineteenth century resistance to his 
 ideals expressed itself. 
 
 It must have been as obvious to Jefferson as it is now that govern 
 ment or corporation securities representing permanent interest-bearing 
 debts are a means of transmitting wealth, and of founding and perpetuat 
 ing governing families and classes, compared to which the power to entail 
 land and to transmit it only to the eldest son was a mere clumsy device of 
 semi-civilization. 
 
 Not willing that the sacrifice of the colonial aristocracy of Virginia 
 should be made in vain, Jefferson attacked the extension of corporation 
 privilege at all points. In a letter to Albert Gallatin in 1803, he declared 
 the Bank of the United States as a bank of issue an institution "of the most 
 deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our constitu 
 tion." Instead of the notes of the bank, he proposed, so long as paper 
 money was necessary and unavoidable, "letting the treasurer give his draft 
 or note for payment at any particular place, which in a well conducted gov 
 ernment, ought to have as much credit as any private draft or bank note." 
 
 Writing to Gallatin again in 1809, he declared that the success of the 
 attempt to increase the national debt to its former size would "commit the 
 country to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing 
 with revolution." 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 29 
 
 In such expressions as these, he defines the essential issues of the 
 politics of a century. From time to time the issue shifted until the privi 
 leges of manufacturing corporations, claiming protection under a tariff 
 levied to prevent competition, were the chief point of attack, but politics in 
 America have only become desperate and full of the threat of revolution 
 when there has been a really radical issue on the question of issuing and 
 controlling the money supply. 
 
 As Jefferson defined the issue against the control of the .producing 
 classes by banks of issue and holders of certificates of national and other 
 indebtedness, the agricultural producers of the country, especially of the 
 southern states, responded with enthusiasm, while the already great and 
 rapidly growing financial and commercial organizations of the northeast 
 retaliated by formidable attacks on slavery. Wilberforce had already de 
 fined the issue in England as Jefferson himself had defined it in America. 
 The attempt at emancipation and colonization, made by the followers of 
 Jefferson at the south, might have succeeded but for the hostility incident 
 to growing sectionalism and the widely divergent institutions of the north 
 and south. As it was, every attack made by southern idealists and phi 
 lanthropists on the growing abuses of the corporation system at the north, 
 increased the facilities of expression for philanthropic zeal in behalf of the 
 immediate abolition of slavery. It is impossible to conceive that any one 
 impelled by the forces of sectionalism governing our politics from 1800 
 to 1860, should have been fully conscious of their realities. On each side 
 earnest and intelligent men followed the line of least resistance in attempt 
 ing to make effective their hope of improving the world. In 1820, when 
 Missouri applied for admission to the Union, it was as easy for Tennes- 
 seeans to oppose the evils of corporation control in Massachusetts as it was 
 for Massachusetts reformers to see the evils of slavery in Tennessee. But 
 even at a period so remote as that at which Benton and Jackson had their 
 street duel, it was one thing to recognize the crying nature of an evil at 
 home and quite another thing to find means of protesting easily and effect 
 ively. The deepest secret of the practical politics of sectionalism in America 
 
30 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 has lain in giving or withholding from disinterested philanthropy the facili 
 ties it must have before it can nationalize its influence. Thus for twenty 
 years after the Civil war, the managers of the republican party whose 
 principles tended strongly to favor the suppression of the sale of intoxi 
 cants, used their utmost skill in attempting to deny adequate expression to 
 prohibition sentiment, while democratic managers, bound by party principle 
 to oppose prohibition, really did everything possible to keep the sentiment 
 alive and to give it effectiveness in republican states especially in New 
 York and Indiana where the presidential elections of more than a decade 
 appeared to depend on it. 
 
 By the same rule when Benton began his attack on the United States 
 bank, northern philanthropy began to find more adequate and convenient 
 means of expressing what was essentially a just objection to the perpetua 
 tion of slavery; and as issues were more sharply defined against oligarchic 
 control of money and supply through the abuse of the corporation system, 
 the demand for the abolition of slavery, without regard to the convenience 
 of the slave-owner became more insistent and more fierce. 
 
 Conditions had not changed in 1873, when Mr. Bland first took his 
 seat in Congress. The visible issue in national politics was about to shift 
 to the control of money and commodity supply, with the certainty that ag 
 ricultural producers in the western as well as in the southern states, would 
 again unite as they had done under the leadership of Jackson and Benton. 
 With a skill and persistence, impossible for a man of less acute, active and 
 unrestrained intellect, General Benjamin F. Butler, on behalf of the or 
 ganized capital of the country, parried by forcing issues on the Civil Rights 
 bill and Federal control of southern elections. 
 
 It is said that a blacksmith once, when asked why he had tied a small 
 cord on the upper lip of a horse he was about to shoe, replied that he wished 
 to "give him something else to think about," 
 
 The history of all that is most hostile to American progress has been 
 made through the application of not wholly dissimilar devices for creating 
 a diversion or changing the subject. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Moral Insanity and Intellectual Disturbance on the Battle Field and in Politics. 
 The Spirit of Civilization and the Theory that Trade is War. The American 
 Idea of the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century as it Inspired Europe in 
 1848. The Rally of Toryism and the Coup d'Etat. The Crimean War and the 
 Growth of Reaction D'Israeli and the Dealers in War Debts. Growth of Im 
 perialism From the Coup d'Etat to the End of the Century. Hedonism of the 
 Militant and Speculative Classes. Eland's Higher Education. 
 
 HE CIVIL war was a moral insanity manifesting itself through 
 deep-seated intellectual disturbance and perpetuating it. Act 
 ual and organized violence ceased with, the surrender at Appo- 
 mattox, but the moral and intellectual realities of Civil war 
 conditions did not. The politics of the generation which fought the war 
 were inspired by the same spirit and directed by the same intellectual 
 processes which kept the armies in the field and governed their operations. 
 The spirit of civilization consists fundamentally in a desire to extend 
 to all others the advantages we ourselves enjoy. The spirit of reaction to 
 wards primitive racial conditions shows itself in a determination to take 
 and keep every possible advantage. Wherever this spirit gains sufficient 
 strength to control the intellectual modes of an individual or national in 
 tellect, we have in political economy, the practical application of the theory 
 that "trade is war" and, as it is presumed to mean taking the largest 
 possible advantage of everyone else, that the largest possible armies and 
 navies are necessary for its extension. 
 
 The reaction towards this crude and undeveloped mode of thought 
 manifested itself strongly among the hereditary aristocracy and financiers 
 of Europe immediately after the failure of the German revolution of 1848. 
 That hopeful movement for constitutional government deeply influenced 
 France, Spain, Italy and Hungary. One immediate and notable result was 
 the great increase in the population of the United States, due to the emigra- 
 
32 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 tion of European constitutionalists. Our period of greatest national 
 growth dates from the temporary failure of European admirers of our 
 eighteenth century institutions to establish them in Europe at a time when 
 this country itself was about to undergo its strongest reaction from them. 
 This movement in Europe the direct result of the American spirit of the 
 eighteenth century, was destined to be one of the decisive factors in per 
 petuating our possibilities of progress, in spite of the destructiveness of the 
 spirit which governed our national life during the Civil war generation. 
 Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour, Hecker, Castelar, and Kossuth were intellect 
 ually as truly Americans of the last quarter of the eighteenth century the 
 golden age of Americanism as were Washington, Franklin, Samuel Ad 
 ams, Madison and Jefferson. It was most fitting that America should be 
 come the heir of all they had failed to do for Europe and that their work, 
 in a generation when the hand of every American was against every other, 
 should have done so much to perpetuate those high results of civilizing 
 ideals which might otherwise have been lost to us during the dominance of 
 the idea that the greatest man is he who in war, politics, or business can 
 take the largest possible advantage of the largest possible number of people. 
 
 This idea which moves the primitive statesman and financier of Poly 
 nesia to insert a fishbone in the gristle of his nose and to tattoo the star of 
 an order of merit on his breast to indicate the number of his fellows he has 
 killed and eaten, gained such strength among European military and aristo 
 cratic orders, as well as among the financial and speculative classes in 
 1848-49, that the Coup d'Etat of Louis Napoleon was welcomed as the 
 presage of a new millennium of world-wide reaction. It was followed by 
 the Crimean war of 1853- 56, forced by the same class in order to revive 
 the spirit through which alone it is possible for any class to perpetuate 
 itself without giving a fair and full return for all it receives from co-oper 
 ative society. 
 
 Our own Civil war and the political period which followed it were a 
 part of the same reaction which reached its apparent climax in Europe in 
 
THE CAPITOL. 
 
 CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY. 
 
 THE HALL OF REPRESENTATIVES. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 33 
 
 1888, when Bismarck carried through the Army bill and made permanent 
 for the rest of the nineteenth century the condition of the Coup d'Etat, the 
 Crimean war, the Civil war in America and the Franco-Prussian war in 
 Europe. 
 
 All these apparently disconnected events were a part of the same move 
 ment. As a result of it the hereditary aristocratic "whig" or liberal ele 
 ment of England, represented in the eighteenth century by such men as 
 Chatham and Burke, gave place in the control of English politics to men 
 representing the new feudalism of the financial and commercial corpora 
 tion chiefly to the holders of British and other war debts. The shrewd 
 ness, the indirection and the unrestrained desire to take all possible advant 
 age of everyone, represented by the statesmanship of D'Israeli and his 
 principals, became thus the governing factor in the international move 
 ment of the last quarter of the nineteenth century and, as a result of it, the 
 century closed with a period of world-wide, if necessarily transitory reac 
 tion. 
 
 That this spirit with its results was the governing spirit of the world 
 in the last half of the nineteenth century is not to be believed. It was 
 merely the dominating spirit of politics; and even in politics which is 
 nothing more nor less than the struggle to gain possession of the police 
 and military power of organized society it was stoutly resisted and 
 measurably held in check. If at every forward step of its advance, plu 
 tocratic Toryism found a hundred traitors ready to sell the ideals they pro 
 fessed, it never failed to find, guarding the Thermopylae passes of the 
 world's future, men of simple lives and steady purpose, who if they were 
 only partly conscious of the sublimity of the contest and of their own 
 part in it, were accustomed to do their duty first and to think of the conse 
 quences to themselves afterwards. Such a man was Mazzini in Europe 
 Such a man was Bland in America. 
 
 We are now about to examine into the processes of growth by which 
 such men become fitted for work which few in their generations under- 
 
 3 
 
34 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 stand of which they themselves are conscious rather in the rectitude of 
 their purposes than in the adequate conception of the results necessarily 
 proceeding from it. 
 
 Civilization in the United States and in the world at large is indebted 
 to Mr. Bland chiefly for his work in forcing a complete revolution in the 
 "practical politics" of the United States involving the abandonment of the 
 issues of Civil war and such a realignment of American parties as will 
 finally result in checking the Tory reaction in Europe forced by Louis 
 Napoleon, Disraeli and Bismarck as representatives of universal coercion. 
 
 Representing in political economy the fundamental rectitude of the 
 idea that coercive government should interfere as little as possible with 
 trade (exchange and the medium of exchange) Mr. Bland was inspired in 
 all his work as a political economist by a governing belief that all men 
 ought to be free and that the largest possible liberty necessarily involves 
 and produces the highest possible civilization. 
 
 The saying of Sterne that a bad life and a good belief are troublesome 
 neighbors which must finally part company if only for quietness' sake, ap 
 plies in politics as fully as it does in religion. The man whose political 
 principles are not inherently a part of his own nature, will repudiate them 
 with that facile unscrupulousness, which but for the simplicity and direct 
 ness of such uncorrupted Americanism as was represented by Mr. Bland, 
 would be the most striking characteristic of American politics. 
 
 It is because Mr. Eland's public life was so completely a product of 
 evolution ; because he was so thoroughly what he professed to be ; so char 
 acteristically and essentially a representative of the American life which at 
 last will control the future, that he has an importance to the student of 
 history not surpassed by that of any representative man of his generation 
 in Europe or America. 
 
 During the last quarter of the century the new name of "Hedonism" 
 came to be applied to an old mode of life and intellectual sensation using 
 that awkward phrase as more accurate in such a connection than "thought." 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 35 
 
 The worship of comfort as the supreme good, whether it be professed or 
 merely practiced without profession, produces in political and social life 
 the conditions against which Mr. Eland's life was a persistent struggle. 
 For this struggle which made him one of the chief factors in the progress 
 of the twentieth century, he was fitted by an education, moral and intel 
 lectual, which made him in everything the simple reality of what he ap 
 peared to be. He was born on a Kentucky farm which after his father's 
 death sold for only a few hundred dollars. But seven years old when his 
 father died, he soon took his place at the plow, helping to till the farm for 
 his widowed mother and working on neighboring farms for six and seven 
 dollars a month, schooling himself, undergoing all possible hardships of life 
 and taking them as a matter of course, without complaint and without dis 
 couragement. If he had by heredity the traits of the colonial aristocracy 
 from which he was descended, he had by assimilation the simpler, stronger, 
 sublimer life of the everyday American who, in a country where it is in 
 tended that it shall never be more than "three generations from shirt 
 sleeves to shirt-sleeves/' is finally to possess the earth by virtue of the same 
 fitness into which Bland was thus educated. Some idea of what his educa 
 tion meant in detail, may be gained from incidents of his life in the mining 
 regions of California and Nevada, where he went when not quite twenty- 
 one years of age.* 
 
 *As the study of Mr. Eland's relations to his times and to the meaning of the present and future 
 will take precedence of further consideration of his private life, the reader will find useful for reference 
 in ensuing chapters, the following chronological summary, revised from a published sketch prepared 
 from facts supplied by Mr. Eland's family during his lifetime. 
 
 1835-72 Richard Parks Bland was born in Ohio county, Kentucky, August 19, 1835. His father 
 was Stouten Edward Bland, a native Kentuckian; his mother was Margaret, a daughter of Richard 
 Parks Nail, of Kentucky. The Elands were among the earliest settlers in Kentucky. The family mostly 
 sprung from Col. Theodoric Bland, who was on Washington's Staff in the Revolutionary war. 
 Mr. -Eland's father was educated for a Presbyterian minister, but owing to poor health, became a far 
 mer, and was a farmer when he died in 1842. His mother died seven years later in Kentucky. There was 
 no patrimony left to the family, and young Bland worked during the summer for six and seven dollars a 
 month to procure the means to school himself during the winter. At the age of eighteen he attended the 
 Hartford, Kentucky, Academy and took a teacher's course one year. He taught two terms of school in Ohio 
 county, Kentucky, one term in Wayne county, Missouri, and in 1855 went to California. He remained in 
 California, Nevada and Colorado ten years, teaching school and studying and practicing law, and serving 
 
36 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 "While out west, Mr. Bland had many tips and downs," Mrs. Bland 
 writes in her reminiscences of him. "At one time he was very ill at the 
 mines and after using all his money before recovery, was obliged to return 
 to San Francisco. He walked all the way from the mines and had a re 
 lapse as a result of going out too soon. He once told me that the reason 
 he never learned to play cards was because he got so disgusted with card- 
 playing out west. He said there was so much fighting and killing over 
 cards that he never wanted to learn. He also said that a man was obliged 
 f o defend himself or he would be thought cowardly and killed. He added 
 that when the bullies at the mines found out he would not drink and play 
 cards, they tried to whip him but could not, as he could pick up and haul out 
 heavier loads from the shafts than any other man in the mines. He worked 
 in the shaft, taking shifts and often working all day or night standing in 
 water up to his waist. He often talked of his skill in cooking gained at the 
 mines, saying he could boil potatoes and make bean soup better than any 
 of us." 
 
 Before going to California, Mr. Bland had taught school in Wayne 
 county, Missouri, where he went from Kentucky in 1854. In Wayne 
 county he made his home with his aunt, the wife of Robert Fulton with 
 
 one term as treasurer of Carson county, Utah, now the state of Colorado, While teaching school he pur 
 sued and completed his law studies in the law office of R. B. Mayes, in Nevada county, California, now 
 the state of Nevada. In 1860 he was admitted in the United States District Court in Utah territory. Re 
 turning to Missouri, in 1867, he resumed the practice of law at Rolla, Missouri, where he remained three 
 years. Then he moved to Lebanon, Missouri. In 1873 he married Miss Virginia Elizabeth Mitchell, daugh 
 ter of General E. Y. Mitchell, of Rolla, Missouri. He left six living children, four boys and two girls. 
 
 1872-76 In 1872 Mr. Bland, nominated by the Democrats for Congress in the Fifth Missouri Dis 
 trict during the Grant-Greeley campaign, was elected to the Forty-third Congress by 800 majority over 
 Col. A. J. Seay, Republican. Mr. Blaine was Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Forty- 
 third Congress. During the discussion of the currency question'at this time Mr. Bland spoke in advocacy 
 of the bill to increase the greenback circulation, and in opposition to the system of national banks. It 
 was during this (the Forty-third Congress) that the historic filibustering scene occurred, led by Randall, 
 for the purpose of defeating the "Force Bill." In this Mr. Bland took an active part, and with his demo 
 cratic colleagues remained in the House in continuous session for more than sixty hours. He was re- 
 elected to the Forty-fourth Congress. It was during this Congress that the discovery was made of the 
 act demonetizing silver. Mr. Bland was chairman of the Committee of Mines and Mining, and re 
 ported from that committee the first bill lor the free coinage of silver that had been reported after its de 
 monetization. This bill was "filibustered" in the House of Representatives for nearly three months, and 
 in that way its consideration was prevented in the first session. On the re-assembling of the Forty- 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 37 
 
 whose family and Mr. Fulton's nephew, Mr. John R. Patterson, now of 
 Pattersonville, Missouri, he went to California, where he gained so much 
 of the experience which was to identify him with the developing life of his 
 country. Of this period of his life Mr. Patterson writes : 
 
 "On November 14, 1855, Robert Fulton with his family, Mr. Bland 
 and myself, left Wayne county for California, via New Orleans and the 
 Nicaragua route, landing in California about the middle of December fol 
 lowing. Mr. Bland and myself went to what were known as "the middle 
 mines," camping there together through the winter, doing our own cooking, 
 washing and mending. We used prepared flour, branded on the sack 
 "Self-rising," and after emptying the sacks, we used them for patching our 
 mining clothes always turning the lettered side with the words "Self- 
 rising" outward so that it would show on the patch. In the spring of 1856 
 Mr. Bland went to the northern mines and remained there for some time. 
 When the silver excitement broke out in Nevada, he went to that country, 
 locating at Virginia City. While working in the mines, he studied law 
 and began practice while in Nevada, chiefly in Virginia and Carson Cities. 
 As the result of severe sickness, he was obliged to go to California for his 
 health and though he returned to Nevada after recuperating, it was not 
 long afterwards that he left the Pacific coast for Missouri. I write hoping 
 these facts of his life in the west may help towards a better understanding 
 of a man who was surely "self-rising" the Commoner who as he climbed 
 
 fourth Congress he again brought up the bill, and it passed the House by a two-thirds majority, but 
 was never considered in the Senate. During this Congress (the Forty-fourth) the Silver Commission was 
 authorized by an act of Congress. On the part of the Senate there were appointed on this commission 
 Senators Jones of Nevada, Boutweil of Massachusetts, and Bogy of Missouri; on the part of the House 
 Gibson of Louisiana, Willard of Michigan, and Mr. Bland. This committee made the "Silver Commis 
 sion Report." 
 
 18T7-9 Mr. Bland was re-elected to the forty-fifth Congress. Mr. Hayes was inaugurated Presi 
 dent, and called an extra session of the Forty-fifth Congress, which met November 18, 1877. Some two 
 weeks after the meeting of this Congress, Mr. Bland introduced a bill which, amended in the Republi 
 can Senate and passed, is known as the Bland-Allison act. 
 
 1879-81 During the Forty-sixth Congress the questions relating to "Troops at the Polls and Re 
 duction of the Tariff" were most prominent. Mr. Bland took an active part in opposition to interference 
 with local self-government; and in advocacy of reduction of tariff taxation. 
 
 1881-3 In the Forty-seventh Congress (Republican) the tariff question and the question of re- 
 chartering the National banks were most prominent. Mr. Bland spoke in favor of immediate tariff re 
 form and against the bill providing for the re-charter of National banks. 
 
 1883-5 In the Forty-eighth Congress Mr. Carlisle was Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
 and had been elected as such upon the tariff issue against Mr. Randall. Mr. Bland took an an active 
 part in the support of the Morrison bill, reducing tariff taxation. 
 
38 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the hill of life gained steadfast footing at every advance." 
 
 It is worth while to emphasize here the fact that the quiet humor which 
 governed Mr. Bland when as a very young man, he patched his mining 
 overalls with the "self-rising" brand of the flour sack outwards, never left 
 him. Fanaticism and humor are incompatible. The man who can work 
 all night, standing in water up to his waist in the accomplishment of his 
 life-purposes, may appear fanatical to those who believe that their own 
 special comfort is the special object of the universe, but the steadiness of 
 purpose which comes of such high education may be accompanied by the 
 utmost reasonableness and gentleness. When in Nevada in 1860, the Piute 
 Indians raided the settlements and carried off a number of prisoners, Mr. 
 Bland was one of the rescuing party. As they pursued they were shocked 
 and exasperated to find along the trail the mangled remains of prisoners, 
 butchered by the Indians. In the skirmish which followed when the 
 Piutes were overtaken, Mr. Bland "fired at an Indian and saw him fall," 
 but this experience was so far from giving him the militant spirit 
 that it remained in his mind only as material for amusing children 
 of whom he was always very fond. He taught his own children and his 
 favorites among other children in the neighborhood of his home the Piute 
 
 1885-9 In the Forty-ninth Congress an effort was made to repeal the act of 1878, providing for 
 the coinage of silver. Mr. Bland as chairman of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures 
 in opposition to this repeal bill, reported a bill for free coinage and defeated the proposition to suspend 
 the Bland Law of 1878 by more than a two-thirds vote. In the Fiftieth Congress Mr. Bland took an ac 
 tive part in the advocacy of the Mills tariff bill. 
 
 1889-98 In the Fifty-first Congress, the first held after Mr. Harrison became President, the 
 principal questions related to the McKinley tariff and the Sherman law. Mr. Bland opposed the McKin- 
 ley bill, and probably made more speeches against it than any other member of the House during its con 
 sideration. He offered a free coinage amendment to the Sherman bill. Regarding the bill as a make 
 shift and not in harmony with the true theory of bimetallism, he voted against it. 
 
 In 1893 he made the "Parting of the Ways" speech which was decisive in shaping the issues of 
 the campaign of 1896. In 1898 he led the fight against imperialism, subsidies, a permanent national 
 debt and corporation control of the currency. 
 
 The principal contests in which Mr. Bland engaged during his Congressional career were against 
 imperialism in 1872-6; in favor of the restoration of bimetallism; in favor of the freedom and equality of 
 the states and of the principles of individual liberty; in opposition to protective tariffs and to all forms 
 of protective taxation; in favor of facilitating and cheapening distribution through the improvement of 
 interstate waterways and by checking railroad monopolies; in opposition to the control of the currency 
 by national bank corporations, and in opposition to military garrisons to annex Hawaii, Puerto Rico, 
 Cuba and the Philippines. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 39 
 
 war dance and war whoop to their great delight. "The Indian war dance 
 was a favorite pastime with the children," writes Mrs. Bland. "In the 
 evening after dinner Mr. Bland would stamp and sing a kind of war whoop, 
 and the children would dance as he sang. He used to say that when we 
 were in rented rooms in Washington, he could not have the war dance for 
 fear people would think we were crazy. We rented houses for about ten 
 years, however, and he got so he would not live in rented rooms. We lived 
 in some very stuffy, small houses as rents were high in Washington, but 
 in them he could play with the children as he pleased. He used to get out 
 and run races with them and he was never happier than when on the floor 
 with three or four children climbing over him. They often made so much 
 noise that I would have to go out and leave them to themselves. He was 
 as gentle, kind and affectionate as any woman and his love for home was 
 so great that except to get his mail and attend to absolutely necessary busi 
 ness he hardly went to town at all." 
 
 In illustration of the practical operations of his natural kindness, it 
 is pertinent to mention in this connection that shortly after they reached 
 California, Mr. and Mrs. Fulton both died, leaving their three small chil 
 dren orphaned, with no friend except Mr. Bland, himself a friendless and 
 almost penniless youth. He did with all simplicity what it was natural for 
 him to do under the circumstances, caring for the orphans, cooking for 
 them and washing their clothing with his own hands. Some desirable lit 
 erary accomplishments Mr. Bland sacrificed to the insistent demands of 
 education of this kind, but the orphan boy of twenty-one washing the clouts 
 of orphan children in a western mining town which had no universities, no 
 literary societies, no libraries, got nevertheless that very highest education 
 which is the essence of all that is great in literature and in civilization. 
 
 It ought not to remain possible for anyone to misunderstand Mr. 
 Eland's methods and purposes when to such suggestions of what he really 
 was it is added that in the first great struggle against corporation control 
 of the currency he showed the same steadiness of purpose he did in 
 
4 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 working in water waist-deep in western mines and at greater cost to 
 himself, as in spite of his robust constitution, the struggle which followed 
 the Bland-Allison act cost him a hemorrhage and a period of subsequent 
 prostration from which he never recovered. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Expansion and Imperialism under the First Grant Administration. A Strong Gov 
 ernment with Imperial Power to Annex and Govern Weaker Peoples Proposed 
 for the United States by International Financiers. Their Objective Point the 
 Perpetuation and Increase of the War Debt and the Control of a Currency of 
 Corporation Paper Based On It. The Moral and Intellectual Habits of General 
 Grant. Weaknesses Which He Struggled to Master. His Heroism at Mount 
 MacGregor Not Developed by the Politics of His Administration. General 
 Taylor on the Depraved Morals Created by Civil War. The Constitution as a 
 Bit of Old Parchment. Abandoned Men and Lost Women as Factors in Gov 
 ernment. General Benjamin F. Butler as a Representative of the Power to 
 Control Men Through Their Own Evil. Worship of the ' 'Anglo-Saxon Race" 
 as a Moloch. The Inferno of Which the First Expansion Movement was a 
 Symptom. The Demonetization of Silver Effected as a Result of It. 
 
 JHILE the Civil war was powerless to check the evolutionary 
 work of the positive forces of civilization, it demoralized the 
 country not less in the northern states than in the states actually 
 fought over at the south. The political and social conditions 
 at Washington which followed it were indescribably bad. In suggesting 
 them, General Richard Taylor, an uncompromising whig, paraphrases 
 Bunyan: "The things seen by the Pilgrims in a dream were at this 
 Vanity Fair visible in the flesh: 'all such merchandises sold as houses, 
 lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, states, lusts, pleasures and 
 delights of all sorts, as bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, 
 servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, precious stones and what not/ 
 The eyes of the inspired tinker had pierced the darkness of two 
 hundred years and seen what was to come. The martial tread of 
 hundreds of volunteer generals, just disbanded, resounded in the street. 
 Gorged with loot, they spent it as lavishly as Morgan's buccaneers after the 
 sack of Panama. Their women sat at meat or walked the highways, 
 resplendent in jewels, spoil of southern matrons. The camp-followers of 
 the army were here in high carnival, and in character and numbers rivalled 
 
42 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the attendants of Xerxes. Courtesans swarmed everywhere, about the 
 inns, around the capitol, in the antechambers of the White House and were 
 
 brokers for the transaction of all business Others, too numerous and 
 
 too insignificant to particularize, were seen. These were the cuttle-fish of 
 the party whose appointed duty it was to obscure popular vision by clouds 
 of loyal declamation. As Sicilian banditti prepare for robberies and mur 
 ders by pious offerings on shrines of favorite saints, these brought out the 
 altar of the 'Nation' and devoted themselves afresh whenever Credits 
 Mobiliers and kindred enormities were afoot, sharpening every question of 
 administration, finance, law or taxation on the grindstone of sectional 
 hate." 
 
 Coming as this does from an educated whig of the school of Clay 
 and Webster, a member of the "gentleman's party," a son of the whig 
 president who was elected as a result of the Mexican conquest which 
 forced the Civil war, it has a high value as an illustration not only of 
 conditions actually existing but of the spirit which produced them. 
 
 In judging such conditions, we can escape radical injustice only by 
 keeping in mind the radical infirmities of human nature. When General 
 Taylor had occasion to call on Thaddeus Stevens, Mr. Stevens told him 
 with the utmost frankness that he "wanted no restoration of the Union un 
 der the Constitution," which he called "a worthless bit of old parchment." 
 The white people of the south, he said, "ought never again to be trusted 
 with power for they would inevitably unite with northern copperheads and 
 control the government." 
 
 To prevent the "government" that is the power to control the supply 
 of commodities and money from being administered by "southern rebels 
 and northern copperheads," the negroes at the south, acting under the 
 supervision of white managers, were put in charge of a sufficient number 
 of state governments to control the Senate and the Electoral College. 
 
 It must have been expected by those who did this that the negroes 
 would be greatly the sufferers by it and these sufferings were made the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 43 
 
 means of distracting attention at the north from vital questions of reform. 
 "Earnest, credulous women/' writes General Taylor, "had their feelings 
 lacerated by stories in which they as fondly believed as their foremothers 
 in Salem witches. As crocodiles conceal their prey until it becomes savory 
 and tender and ripe for eating so the radicals kept these dark corpses to 
 serve up to the public when important elections approached or some special 
 
 villainy was to be enacted by the Congress Doubtless there were 
 
 many acts of violence. When ignorant negroes, instigated by pestilent 
 emissaries, went beyond endurance, the whites killed them and this was to 
 be expected. The breed to which these whites belong has for eight cen 
 turies been the master of the earth wherever it has planted its foot. A 
 handful conquered and holds in subjection the crowded millions of India. 
 Another and smaller bridles the fierce Caffre tribes of South Africa. Place 
 but a score of them on the middle course of the Congo and they will rule 
 unless exterminated. And all the armies and all the humanitarians can 
 not change this until the appointed time arrives for Ham to denominate 
 Japhet." 
 
 In order to understand the politics of i8?2 and Mr. Eland's subse 
 quent action as it developed the politics of 1900,, it is necessary to read this 
 comprehensive statement of conditions not as those conditions impressed 
 General Taylor on the one hand or "earnest and credulous ladies" on the 
 other, but as they appealed to General Benjamin F. Butler, as the author 
 of the Civil Rights bill and as the representative of the economic and 
 political realities back of that measure. At about this time and for two 
 decades afterward, there traveled through the country from newspaper 
 office to newspaper office one of those enthusiastic philanthropists whose 
 intellects in time of some great public insanity fail to recover after the 
 worst strain of passion is over. The wreck of his intellect, however, had 
 not deprived him of the use of his moral faculties and in every newspaper 
 office he visited, he was accustomed to leave a communication signed 
 "J. N.," demonstrating that, in the war and after it, both sides were really 
 
44 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 right if they could only be induced to see it. On such a point as this he 
 might have said that General Taylor was right in objecting to the way 
 southern negroes were used by financiers in London and New York as a 
 means of controlling the currency and managing the war debt while the 
 "credulous ladies" of New England were right in being shocked at the 
 killing of negroes or any one else in the supposed interest of Caucasian or 
 any other putative civilization. The intellect of this moralist and phil 
 osopher was unequal to the task of deciding why no one else could under 
 stand this. It seemed so clear to him that both sides were right and 
 neither wrong that he traveled backwards and forwards from the Atlantic 
 to the Pacific, proclaiming it and announcing the coming of the time when 
 "the veil would be lifted" and every one would see as he did. 
 
 If, after having considered the intellectual processes of this represen 
 tative of extreme intellectual feebleness, we study the methods of General 
 Butler as they illustrate the operations of the subtlest and most thoroughly 
 enfranchised intellects of the period, we can understand how such men as 
 General Taylor men of strong moral character, wide reading and essen 
 tial rectitude of purpose became powerless to direct the course of events 
 or even to choose their own. 
 
 To General Butler as an agent of the world-controlling policies of the 
 wholesale dealer in those infernal passions which manifest themselves 
 financially as war debts, General Taylor at the south and "earnest, credu 
 lous women" in New England who lectured as the representatives of 
 "higher law," were alike subjects to be operated on and controlled through 
 their prejudices. It may be said of General Butler, certainly without very 
 grave injustice and probably with essential accuracy that in politics he 
 "neither feared God nor regarded man." The most essential character 
 istic of his political methods was his ability to control men through the 
 repulsion of their hatred and dislikes. A few great and wise men know 
 how to control others through the love of goodness, natural if often latent 
 in all men. Another class, believing in self-interest as the only permanent 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 45 
 
 force in politics, but frequently unwilling to violate their own sense of 
 decency too grossly, appeal to "enlightened selfishness." A still larger 
 class in American politics offers its own sympathy with the moral and 
 intellectual vices of the people as its qualification for leadership and title to 
 confidence. It seldom happens that our political conditions give a field for 
 the successful employment of such extraordinary talents as those of Gen 
 eral Butler, who found as much enjoyment in threatening such aristocratic 
 southern whigs as General Taylor with the chimera of "negro equality" as 
 he did in outraging the sensibilities of the clerical and professional classes, 
 the decorous "Brahmins" of New England, by pretending to demonstrate 
 to the world that it was a Massachusetts amusement to tan the skins of 
 paupers who presumably had died of neglect in the almshouses of that 
 model commonwealth.* 
 
 Keenly intellectual, aware of his own failings and with an almost 
 diabolical knowledge of the worst side of human nature, restrained by no 
 sectional prejudice; firmly convinced that at bottom one man, black or 
 white, is as bad as another; capable of finding keen enjoyment in the obser 
 vation of those acute sufferings men inflict upon themselves under the 
 reactions of outraged pride ; not really cruel, but a humorist rather than a 
 soldier or a statesman, and by his humor scarcely less than by his intel 
 lectual habits, freed from the sympathies and moral restraints which so 
 largely influence other men, General Butler became, through the defeat of 
 the liberal republican movement of i8?2, the foremost representative in 
 Congress of the powerful international corporate interests which during 
 this period operated through both parties by such indirection as he was 
 better able to represent than any other man in the public life of his genera 
 tion. 
 
 It is a fact, now self-evident, that the managers of the great inter 
 national banking and other corporations which held the southern agricul 
 tural interests in check by such measures as the Civil Rights bill and the 
 
 *See report of Tewksbury almshouse investigation. 
 
46 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 Federal Election laws of that period, generally agreed with General Taylor 
 that it is part of what has since been called "the white man's burden" to 
 "rule unless exterminated." The movement which took shape in the last 
 ten years of the century as "expansion" and imperialism, had been planned 
 before the campaign of i872 and undoubtedly its object was then as after 
 wards to establish a "party of property" which would be as strong at the 
 north as at the south. But when bonds held in vaults of English 
 and eastern banks were defiantly repudiated as fraudulent by southern 
 landholders whose property they almost if not quite confiscated, it was not 
 feasible to perfect a party organization, controlled north and south alike, 
 by the incorporated capital which the war had centralized in the cities. 
 
 Mr. Bland agreed with Horace Greeley and differed with the financiers 
 represented by General Butler in believing in "liberty for all men, whether 
 they be red, black, white, olive or tawny-colored." He used this language 
 in his Fourth of July address at Lebanon in 1873, an d he never changed 
 least of all when he spent one sleepless night after another in defeating 
 the attack on southern landholders and agricultural producers, which Gen 
 eral Butler led in the Forty- third Congress with keen enjoyment for him 
 self and unmistakable disaster to what was for the time being his party. 
 
 Entering public life in i872, as a supporter of the Greeley movement, 
 Mr. Bland was always a democrat never in any sense a "liberal republi 
 can ;" but he was in full accord with Mr. Greeley in believing that civiliza 
 tion is only a reality in the measure in which it increases liberty and that 
 the values produced directly from the earth by labor must be the base of all 
 others. Throughout his public career, he was consistent in holding these 
 fundamental principles while Mr. Greeley never followed them as far as 
 free trade or the de-centralization of power which they involve. 
 
 In i872, however, it was clear to everyone of Mr. Greeley's intellectual 
 rank, that the essence if not the actual form of republican institutions was 
 about to be sacrificed by the holders of securities representing federal and 
 state debts and the greatly inflated capital of the speculative corporations, 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 47 
 
 which had been organized as an expression of the reckless and fraudulent 
 spirit produced by civil war. While the southern states were being con 
 trolled and reconstructed as military departments, it was made clear to 
 them between 1866 and i87o as it was afterward between 1896 and 1900, 
 that if they would join in this movement, their reconstruction would be 
 accepted as complete and their "loyalty to the restored Union" never after 
 wards questioned. 
 
 This new "era of reconciliation" was to be inaugurated by the revival 
 under Grant of the "expansion" which under Polk and Buchanan had been 
 the direct and unmistakable cause of forcing into immediate and irresistible 
 action all the greatly diverse and not until then convergent causes which, 
 when convergent, made civil war unavoidable. 
 
 The first step towards achieving a "manifest destiny" of world empire 
 for "the Anglo-Saxon race," with its bonded debt for government by 
 standing armies, offensive navies and military garrison held by the com 
 bined financiers of England and America, was the annexation of the West 
 India islands. One of the issues of the campaigns of 1856 and 1860 was 
 the charge that the south wished to seize these islands to be admitted as 
 slave states. Stephen A. Douglas, when his position on slavery in the 
 territories had become untenable, had sought to keep his standing as a 
 presidential candidate by urging a movement for fulfilling what was called 
 "manifest destiny," in which north and south were to be united for the 
 acquisition of such desirable territory as could not be defended by its 
 owners. This movement did not save Mr. Douglas from being forced out 
 of politics and its radical inconsistency with his theories of "local self- 
 government" involved in what was called "squatter sovereignty" is suf 
 ficiently obvious. The formation of new states from purchased territory 
 had been justified by southern statesmen with the assertion that such states 
 were not imperial provinces, but sovereign commonwealths, in a Union 
 based only on consent and formed only to promote their convenience and 
 guard their rights. In 1869, when invited to join in a new expansion 
 
4 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 movement, the southern states were suffering under the demonstration of 
 the inadequacy of their idea of state sovereignty. General Grant himself 
 represented more fully than any other man the hypothesis that the Declara 
 tion of Independence and the Kentucky resolutions as interpreted at Appo- 
 mattox, mean that sovereignty vests finally in the commander who, having 
 men enough under him to enforce his decisions, is most persistent in mov 
 ing on the works of those who dissent from him. Governed, themselves, 
 by military garrisons, the southern states were not tempted to join in 
 extending the system to the West Indies, to Canada or to Mexico at a time 
 when believers in "state's rights" were being reminded (as they were by 
 General Sherman himself) of their obligations as "paroled prisoners." 
 
 It is true that many of the younger generation at the south did believe 
 that the power of the south in the Union could be best restored by a foreign 
 war, but at this period and afterwards, as long as they lived, men whose 
 views on the control of money were as diverse as those of Allen G. Thur- 
 man and Thomas F. Bayard were always ready to join the representatives 
 of the Americanism of New England in thwarting the expression of the 
 spirit of violence. 
 
 In times of great political disturbance, the strongest intellect is wholly 
 inadequate to comprehend what the passage of time and the development 
 of its involved results makes self-evident as the governing causes of events. 
 Men can be justly judged as individuals only as it appears that they were 
 governed in their relations to events by a moral sense arising from a gov 
 erning love of rectitude and the continuous habit of attempting to realize 
 it in action. 
 
 In judging the events of this period, no one who wishes to understand 
 the play of the great constructive and destructive forces of politics, can 
 afford to base his judgment on mere sympathy with the contestants on one 
 side or the other. General Grant, on whose attitude throughout this whole 
 period so much seemed to depend, had an almost infallible judgment of 
 how many men it would be necessary to sacrifice in order to drive a given 
 
G. G. VEST. 
 
 JOSEPH W. BAILEY. 
 
 JOHN G. CARLISLE. 
 
 W. B. ALLISON. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 49 
 
 number of enemies, with good rifles and steady aim, from an intrenched 
 position. Such a word as "judgment," however, is not applicable in at 
 tempting to define the mental operation through which he adjusted himself 
 to political conditions. His history, morally, is a tragedy of struggle against 
 the appetites which had mastered his youth and almost destroyed him. 
 He never yielded to them wholly, and at supreme crises of his career he 
 could assert himself against them and become self-mastering and self- 
 determining. President Lincoln, who after he had passed middle age, was 
 one of the most thoroughly self-controlled men in American history, knew 
 the strength and the weaknesses of General Grant's character so well that 
 he was not afraid to sum his opinion in such advice as he gave a cabal 
 which attacked General Grant on account of his intemperance during the 
 Civil war to "get some of Grant's whiskey." Nor can this weakness of 
 his character, vital as it was and necessary as it is to take it into account, 
 be used in support of any claim of partisan or sectional superiority. We 
 will see that the first decisive struggle against the imperialism of the period 
 was won under the leadership of Mr. Thurman; yet the tradition no 
 doubt inaccurate and unreliable except as it suggests the habits of the 
 time is that when the crisis came and everything depended on Mr. Thur 
 man, he overstifnulated himself to such an extent that it was doubtful 
 whether he would be able to keep his feet in the Senate chamber long 
 enough to deliver his protest. When we reflect that life itself, considered 
 in its physical manifestations, is a process of oxidation ; when we remember 
 that the nerves of those who accomplish most for others are inevitably the 
 most fretted by the corrosion of the chemical reactions which make possible 
 the activities of physical existence ; when we know that under the calm or 
 phlegmatic exterior of men of great achievement, there is the latent con 
 sciousness of the sum of all the suffering it has cost them, we can not 
 afford to judge them by their weaknesses. The man who, however blindly, 
 follows at his own expense, the impulses of his sense of duty, is to be 
 judged by the positive good he has achieved not by his negations. When 
 4 
 
50 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 we do consider these, when we judge the evil in the greatest and strongest 
 nature by the consciousness of the evil in our own, we can the better under 
 stand why after such self-judgment, Lincoln, aware of sharing and being 
 acted on by all the forces of a period of delirium, should continually 
 repeat : "O why should the spirit of mortal be proud." 
 
 While it is not advisable for the student of political phenomena to give 
 exclusive attention to their ethical values since if he does he is likely to 
 become unintelligible, probably to himself and certainly to others yet 
 nothing is more a practical reality in politics than the moral springs of ac 
 tion. The physiology of their manifestation requires their intelligent con 
 sideration. Considering the physiology of Civil war politics, we can not 
 avoid seeing everywhere the symptoms of deep-seated nervous disorder, 
 manifesting itself in many forms of hysterical action and sometimes ap 
 proximating dangerously the fixed delusions which constitute permanent 
 insanity. Hate, the desire to do others harm, to take advantage of them for 
 their oppression, can not be indulged by any individual or any people with 
 out a nervous strain which in its reaction, leaves the entire nervous system 
 disordered. The attempt to repair by stimulants the nervous waste thus 
 superinduced is almost inevitable and it will be impossible for the scientific 
 observer, when he comes, to advance into the physiological investigation of 
 the politics of that period without finding traces of alcoholization at every 
 step, 
 
 It is necessary to say this not only to avoid what might otherwise 
 seem a partisan or sectional attack on General Grant, but because it is a 
 fundamental truth of American morals. That the course of events was 
 determined conclusively by the weakness of this man or that, or any 
 number of men is not to be believed at least not as a part of the hypothesis 
 governing the present attempt to make the events of this period more 
 intelligible. That hypothesis involves the assumption that the course of 
 events is finally determined by the good that is in individuals and peoples 
 not by the merely negative qualities through which they bring suffering 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 5 I 
 
 on themselves and others. Hence the real Grant of American history is, 
 under that hypothesis, the man who, at Mount MacGregor, dying of 
 cancer caused by the cumulative nervous strain of his whole life, won con 
 trol of himself, higher consciousness of himself, fuller charity for his 
 friends and his enemies, fuller tolerance for the infirmities of all mankind. 
 That is the permanent reality of the man. But the Grant of i87o to 1880 
 of "The Man on Horseback" decade was the least heroic of men. Mr. 
 Bland judged him well in judging him with the utmost charity. "In com 
 pany with the Missouri delegation, or a part of them," he writes (Decem 
 ber 5th, 1873), I visited the White House and called upon the president. 
 He seems to be eating and drinking a little too much. Otherwise, I liked 
 Grant's appearance very well. I believe him to be a better man than our 
 party gives him credit for."* 
 
 Around the Grant of i87o, who ate and drank and smoked a little too 
 much; who wanted a little too much power and a little too much money, 
 were men who in their own vernacular had "thrown off the limit." The 
 ' holders of the war debt, which in i87o stood at nearly two and a half 
 billion dollars ($2,480,672,427 at the close of the fiscal year), were largely 
 international operators, caring little or nothing for the sectional hatreds of 
 America except as means of realizing larger profits for themselves and 
 nothing at all for American institutions except as obstacles to their con 
 trol of the country. Co-operating with them, more through sympathy 
 than through full consciousness of their plans, were the holders of a large 
 part of the speculative debt of American corporations by this time so 
 great that if expressed in figures at all they would be unintelligible. The 
 million had become the unit for these operators^ engaged in what has been 
 called "financing the future of the country" that is, in trying to sell what 
 they did not own, to market values as yet uncreated and to raise cash by 
 mortgaging the products of the labor of children still at school or then 
 unborn, who in the twentieth century must deal with the problems of 
 
 *From a letter to Mrs. Bland. 
 
52 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 economic wrong and social injustice thus created or perpetuated. 
 
 The mode through which the political managers representing these 
 policies, proposed to carry them out was twofold that of aggression 
 abroad through "expansion" and coercion, or the threat if it, at home; 
 intended to compel the agricultural producers of the southern states either 
 to accept the new order of things through actual bargain or through the 
 fear of "negro domination." The immediate object to be accom 
 plished under the cover of this agitation was the control of the issue and 
 supply of money and of the supply of commodities produced at home or 
 imported. The white people of the south, not yet able to see the only pos 
 sible solution of "the negro question" in the fullest possible expression of 
 their own moral superiority, were inexpressibly shocked and alarmed by 
 the overwhelming assault made on them with the unfortunate negro as the 
 agent of it; but governed by the sum of individual and inherited virtues, 
 they refused to submit, to compromise or to trade. Relying too much on 
 merely intellectual superiority, and inclined too much to follow such leaders 
 as General Taylor in the worship of a foul, bloody and at last impotent 
 Moloch called "the Anglo-Saxon race," they inaugurated nevertheless a 
 campaign of passive resistance which, considered for what it really was 
 a measure of sectional war was superior to the tactics of the leaders of 
 their own or of the conquering Federal armies in the field. The future 
 historian will find much that is repulsive in it as he will find much that is 
 repulsive in Sherman's march to the sea or Sheridan's campaign in the 
 Valley of Virginia. He will study it in its connection with the Civil war 
 and will judge it as not merely a result but as actually a part of the war. 
 That a sectional war was ever expedient ; ever unavoidable, ever necessary 
 in the United States ; or that any positive good ever came because of it 
 it is no part of the purpose of this chapter to admit. It is enough to assert 
 here, not for the sake of convincing but merely to indicate the standpoint 
 from which the politics of the Civil war period is being judged, that the 
 actual progress of the human race in the nineteenth century will probably 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 53 
 
 appear on examination to have been retarded more by the Civil war in 
 America than by any other overt act of reaction whatever. As a result of 
 the war in America, the control of the machinery of productive civilization, 
 an inheritance of the race from the disinterested genius of all time, passed 
 into the hands of a constantly decreasing number of men who, co-operating 
 with the holders of war debts, entrenched themselves as a governing class 
 both in Europe and America. 
 
 While the south was righting desperately against "bayonet rule and 
 negro domination;" while such "original abolitionists" of the north as 
 Horace Greeley, Seward and Charles Sumner were dying heart-broken and 
 deserted, protesting with their last breath against militarism and imperial 
 ism, the actual government the government which means control of pro 
 duction and exchange was revolutionized and the controlling forces in 
 American politics became international. A single feature of this great 
 change was the demonetization of silver in i872 the year in which Mr. 
 Bland entered politics in support of the Greeley campaign against imperial 
 ism. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Gold Conspiracy and Black Friday. Banker Henry Clews Describes the Means 
 Used to Control General Grant. Champagne and a Pleasure Party. The Treas 
 ury as a Factor in Speculation. The Rothschilds in American Politics. The 
 Belmonts as their Agents and Representatives. Capitalizing a Revolution. The 
 Isthmian Canal Speculation Under Grant and its Connection with Coercive 
 Expansion. The Imperialistic Plot Against Puerto Rico, San Domingo and 
 Cuba. Orville Babcock as an Envoy Extraordinary. History Which Repeated 
 Itself Under the McKinley Administration. The Liberty of the Innocent 
 Against the Safety of the Guilty. The Governing Motive of Civilization. 
 Blaine on Civil Rights. Plutocracy as an Insanity. The Law of Perfect Lib 
 erty. Thurman, Bland, Greeley and Sumner. Government by Garrison. Lord 
 Kitchener and His College at Khartoum. The Civilization of Southern Negroes 
 and the Anglo-Saxonism of Fraudulent Bondholders. International Plutocracy 
 and Murder as a Fine Art. 
 
 N i87o, it was not possible for General Grant or any one else to 
 understand the full meaning of the movement which followed 
 the Civil war. As far as he understood himself and his genera 
 tion at all, Grant was an American, a believer in American 
 institutions and all the freedom compatible with West Point views 
 of social order. He was plain in dress and speech and probably felt 
 pride rather than shame in having supported himself by cutting cordwood 
 for the St. Louis market. But among those who were nearest to him and 
 by whom he was most deeply influenced, reverence for material success, 
 for power, for rank, for money and its manifestations in splendid and 
 luxurious living, was a controlling force. This was so thoroughly under 
 stood by the "financiers" of the time that it was habitually taken into 
 account, not only in shaping public policies but in such minor operations 
 as the gold conspiracy of 1869 which resulted in "Black Friday." In his 
 "Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street/' Mr. Henry Clews, the New York 
 banker certainly not a witness who "can be suspected of undue prejudice 
 against such diplomacy as financiers consider a business necessity has 
 
 54 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 55 
 
 given a succinct and intelligible though cautious account of how General 
 Grant was played upon at that period of speculative conspiracies. Mr. Jay 
 Gould had originally associated with him in his plan to control the Ameri 
 can gold supply, Stern Brothers, of London, probably representatives of 
 one or more of the great international operators who during this epoch 
 succeeded in imposing Mr. Belmont, of New York, their American agent, 
 on the democratic party as a national manager. It was proposed to con 
 vince General Grant that it would be patriotic financiering to hold as much 
 gold as possible in the treasury "in order to promote the export movement 
 of grain and cotton." In carrying out this plan, General Grant was 
 induced to become the guest of a party of financiers on an excursion to the 
 Gilmore Peace Jubilee in Boston. The subject was broached by Mr. Gould 
 in connection with the usual "refreshments." "It was a feast of reason" 
 writes Mr. Clews,* "and those who have imagined that it was all flow of 
 soul on that festive occasion do scant justice to the intelligence that was at 
 the bottom of the deep design of the nocturnal excursion planned by 
 Gould, Fisk and Company." After this excursion, the combination com 
 municated with General Grant through Mr. Abel R. Corbin, of whom Mr. 
 Clews writes : "Mr. Abel R. Corbin came in quite handy at this juncture 
 to help further the designs of Mr. Gould. He was a man of fair education 
 and considerable experience both in business and politics. He had been a 
 lobbyist in Washington for some years. He was well-informed on finan 
 cial matters, a pretty good writer and could talk like a book. His wife was 
 a sister of Mrs. Grant and he had a good opportunity for reaching the 
 presidential ear when he was employed to the best advantage."* 
 
 This will suggest the political methods of a time when the attempt was 
 being made to control the policies of both parties in the United States as a 
 means of controlling the national and international movement of money 
 and trade. The attempt was made to frame the issues on which parties 
 should divide so as to amuse or to frighten the masses of the people with 
 
 *"Twenty Eight Years in Wall Street," by Henry Clews. 
 
56 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 fictitious issues while the objects of plans laid in London and New York 
 bank parlors were being attained. It is possible now to see clearly the mo 
 tives which governed such diplomats in rallying to the defense of "Anglo- 
 Saxon civilization" at the south against attacks which they themselves had 
 promoted in advance. The same phenomenon was seen again in 1898 when, 
 as a means of reviving through republican administration at Washington 
 the "expansion movement" of the Grant administration, the London banks 
 and their associates in New York and other American cities, operated 
 through agents in democratic committees to prevent democratic platforms 
 from declaring against the control of Puerto Rico, Cuba and Hawaii by 
 military garrisons maintained as a preliminary to assuming their "consent" 
 to annexation. It is scarcely a mere coincidence that the estate left by Mr. 
 August Belmont, who, under General Grant was imposed by his principals, 
 the Rothschilds, on the democratic party as a campaign manager, was 
 represented in the movement of 1898 to displace Mr. Bland from demo 
 cratic leadership. In connection with the "expansion" movement of 1898 
 and 1899, it is interesting to quote an authority so well informed as Mr. 
 Clews on what the elder Belmont represented during the epoch of 
 attempted expansion under General Grant : "August Belmont," he says,* 
 "came to New York comparatively poor and is now (i887) worth millions. 
 As a representative of the Rothschilds in this country, he has for many 
 
 years held a high position in the financial world He was born in the 
 
 Rhenish Palatinate sixty-eight years ago. His father was a man in well- 
 to-do circumstances who sent him when he was thirteen years old to be 
 come an apprenticed clerk to the Rothschilds in their Frankfort house 
 
 In 1837, the famous house, recognizing the promising field for investment 
 in this country, sent young Belmont to New York as their agent, a position 
 he held until 1858 when he became their American correspondent and 
 general representative, and this responsible post he has held ever since. . . . 
 He has always been a staunch democrat and for several years was chairman 
 
 *Page 595, "Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street." 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 57 
 
 of the democratic national committee." The meaning of the Rothschild 
 influence in international politics is suggested, seemingly without unfriend 
 liness by Mr. Clews in the thirty-eighth chapter of his History of Wall 
 Street a chapter this summary of which as he gives it in his table of con 
 tents will be enough for present quotation: 
 
 "The Rothschilds: Beginning of the Financial Career of the Great 
 House of Rothschild. The Hessian Blood Money the First Foundation of 
 their Fortune. How the Firm of Five Original Brothers Was Consti 
 tuted ; Nathan the Greatest Speculator of the Family ; His Career in Great 
 Britain and How He Misrepresented the Result of the Battle of Waterloo 
 for Speculative Purposes; Creating a Panic on the London Stock Ex 
 change ; His Terror of Being Assassinated." 
 
 This ought to be enough to suggest to the reader the character of the 
 influences which Mr. Bland opposed in his own and in the republican party 
 from 1 872 until his death in 1899. He did not change and with that clear 
 ness of vision which can come only from honesty of purpose, he saw the 
 realities from which the attention of so many others was distracted by the 
 commonplace and often imbecile pretenses of the agents of fraud. 
 
 In excusing General Grant, it is often demonstrated in his behalf that 
 at the climax of the gold conspiracy of 1868, he caused the treasury to sell 
 gold on the "bear" side of the market. There is no present occasion either 
 to blame or to vindicate him in such a connection. It is important to fix 
 attention on the central fact that at this period, the United States Treasury 
 was one of the great speculative forces of the world and that its control was 
 the political objective of the speculative and usurious class which has con 
 trolled the Bank of England since the Napoleonic wars. It is not neces 
 sary to inquire why gold is held out of circulation by the treasury to 
 increase prices at one time or thrown on the market at another with the 
 avowed purpose of lowering them. The speculative character of treasury 
 management, the fact that as the rule of national campaigns since the Civil 
 war, the control of the treasury has b'een hypothecated in advance of 
 
58 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 presidential elections to national banks controlled from New York, London, 
 Berlin and Paris this is the point of vital interest if we are not to lose the 
 political meaning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as it showed 
 itself in reaction at the close. 
 
 On the tenth of October, 1868, a revolution was inaugurated in the 
 island of Cuba. It is believed that both this movement and the similar one 
 of nearly twenty years later were "capitalized" in New York, not with any 
 intention of allowing the Cubans to establish a republic as they hoped to 
 do, but for the purpose of taking possession of the island in the interest of 
 speculative syndicates as soon as Spain had been dispossessed. This was 
 planned again in 1896 and 1897, and in 1898 the attempt was made to con 
 trol the democratic party in favor of methods already matured for carrying 
 it out through the republican administration. The presumption is strong 
 on the evidence that the same plan had been matured in 1868 in connection 
 with the Isthmian canal and railroad speculations of that epoch. The con 
 trol of the cane-sugar and superfine tobacco supply was in itself a sufficient 
 inducement, even had there existed no plan for using the new patriotic 
 expansion movement as a means of diverting public attention from the 
 inauguration of a "strong government" with an army large enough to pre 
 vent the possibility of failure in the workings of the proposed system of 
 currency and taxation. 
 
 The ultimate fate of Cuba, however, did not become the actual issue in 
 the expansion movement under Grant. A year after the Cuban revolution 
 began, the president sent his private secretary, Orville Babcock, to San 
 Domingo to arrange for the annexation of that island. Mr. Babcock 
 negotiated a treaty similar in its methods to that offered at the time 
 Hawaii was about to be seized. The result, as it retired Charles Sumner 
 from republican leadership and forced Allen G. Thurman forward in the 
 democratic party, would have been of primary importance even if the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 59 
 
 treaty had not been part of the imperialistic movement for the control of 
 money and commodity supply. 
 
 Under cover of the discussion thus provoked, supplemented by vigor 
 ous and highly artistic torture of the "paroled prisoners" of the south, 
 silver was demonetized and the currency contracted not with the consent, 
 but undoubtedly with the tacit assent of not a few real but timid opponents 
 of internationalist control of the American treasury who afterwards pro 
 fessed to be surprised at what had been done. The general public, which 
 in 1898 was harangued by hired orators in favor of "expansion," which 
 a month after the demonetization of silver in 1900, still had its attention 
 artistically focused on a discussion of the system to be used in taxing 
 Puerto Rico and other territory held by military garrison, knew little or 
 nothing of the realities of politics in i872 and 1873, an d it was not until 
 Mr. Bland forced it that the attention of those most vitally interested was 
 turned to the real meaning of the "crime of 1873." 
 
 As in 1898, General Fitzhugh Lee and General Wheeler were put at 
 the front to hold the attention of the south while southern and western 
 regiments were carefully selected to do the worst work of garrison control 
 in the West Indies and Hawaii, and of actual butchery in the Philippines, 
 so from 1868 to i872, the ex-Confederate element of the south, under plans 
 no doubt devised if not actually originated in London banks, were offered 
 amnesty and promotion in consideration of their allegiance to a proposed 
 empire. A bill offering a general amnesty to all political offenders except 
 a sufficient number to prevent the sectional issue from being lost was 
 part of the machinery used for scene-shifting purposes by the able stage- 
 managers of the period. When the south failed to respond, this exhibi 
 tion of magnanimity became still more artistic. If we remember that to 
 such operators the control of commodity and money supply means every 
 thing, we can understand that the purpose to be achieved consisted in dis 
 tracting public attention from real issues, and that though the consent of 
 the south to the contemplated revolution would have been convenient it 
 
60 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 was not vital. When the south refused "reconciliation," the same purpose 
 of controlling public attention was achieved through the renewed threat of 
 coercion. There is something eternally memorable in the ingenuity with 
 which the white people of the south were tortured and threatened not by 
 the people of the north but by ingenious financiers chiefly for the 
 purpose of exciting them to outbursts of passion which would postpone 
 the discussion of economic reforms. After the refusal of the south as a 
 whole to follow General Longstreet and other leaders who had been won 
 over in good faith to the "plan of reconciliation," the "Civil Rights" agita 
 tion was renewed with telling effect. Aspiring young colored men of good 
 ability and the best intentions were brought forward to make magnani 
 mous speeches, forgiving, in the Congressional Record and the newspapers, 
 the wrongs of their race, asking pardon for all "ex-rebels" except a few of 
 "the worst traitors," pleading that their former masters should be allowed 
 to take the oath recanting rebellion and in the same connection, demanding 
 the passage of the law making it an offense for hotel-keepers, owners of 
 theatres, public school teachers, railroad owners and those who control 
 other like public or semi-public institutions to take steps for separating the 
 races. Mr. Elaine in his Twenty Years in Congress (Volume II, page 
 513), illustrates this with his usual placid astuteness of statement: 
 
 "The democrats," he says, "were now to witness an exhibition of 
 magnanimity in the colored representatives which had not been shown 
 towards them. When the amnesty bill came before the House for con 
 sideration, Mr. Rainey of South Carolina, speaking for the colored race 
 whom he represented, said : 'It is not the disposition of my constituents 
 that these disabilities should be longer retained. We are desirous of being 
 magnanimous. It may be that we are so to a fault. Nevertheless we have 
 open and frank hearts to those who were our former oppressors and task 
 masters. We foster no enmity now, and we desire to foster none, for their 
 acts in the past to us or to the government we love so well. But while 
 we are willing to accord them their enfranchisement and here to-day give 
 
 our votes that they may be amnestied we invoke you gentlemen to 
 
 show 'the same kindly feeling toward us, a race long oppressed, and in 
 demonstration of this humane and just feeling, I implore you to give sup- 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 6 1 
 
 port to the Civil Rights bill we have been asking at your hands, lo these 
 many days !" 
 
 It is not necessary to stop to inquire whether such ingenious inven 
 tions for exciting anger of the white people of the south originated in any 
 given instance with the speaker who assumed responsibility for them. 
 They were a part of the politics of a time when the infernal passions of 
 hate and covetousness acted and reacted upon each other. The hot blood 
 of violence made success easy for plans of wrongful acquisition, carefully 
 devised in the cold blood of fraud. The governing motive of civilization, 
 kindness, helpfulness, the love of fair play, the underlying sense that 
 increasing liberty is the necessary and only possible expression of justice, 
 never ceased to operate and the world never ceased to move forward, but 
 surface conditions of the time were such that every reactionist, every self- 
 convicted believer that the liberty of the innocent is incompatible with the 
 safety of the guilty ; every one who had already acquired or who expected 
 to acquire at the expense of others, wealth, position, or any other form 
 of the delegated power of co-operative society, rejoiced in the belief that 
 such conditions as had not existed since the middle of the eighteenth cen 
 tury could be re-established with all the increase of possession and power 
 made possible for the intellectual "pervert" by the great increase in the 
 creative resources of civilization, resulting from the natural evolutionary 
 processes of the healthy human intellect. In insane cunning, in impotent 
 planning to turn back the progress of civilization and in the audacity of 
 their mistaken hopes of coming into immediate control of the world, those 
 victims of mental disorder who are made monomaniacal by craving for 
 the luxury and the power which the possession of large sums of money 
 gives, were never more insistent on making their worst vices, their most 
 criminal insanities, their most futile imbecilities, a part of the permanent 
 record of the world's history than they were at the beginning of the last 
 quarter of the nineteenth century. In the closing years of the century, 
 we have had another signal exhibition of the same spirit, but it could not 
 
62 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 have surpassed if it could have equalled in the cunning of its indirections, 
 in its recklessness of the worst :n justices, in its readiness to shed blood 
 as a means of facilitating commercial and financial cheating, that which 
 manifested itself from 1868 to 1880. 
 
 There is no desire here to arraign a class without exception or to make 
 a sectional or partisan plea of confession and avoidance. What is attempted 
 is the examination of human nature as it manifests itself not only through 
 the moral and intellectual diseases so often obvious as temporarily the 
 governing forces of politics, but as it shows itself in its underlying recti 
 tude of intention, in its sympathy with what no force and no fraud can 
 prevent from becoming at last the law of politics, of production, of distri 
 bution, of co-operative human activity in all its forms the law of perfect 
 liberty under which every man born into the world has a supreme, an ab 
 solute and in the end an omnipotent right to express to the utmost limit of 
 his own intention all the good that is in him. 
 
 To sympathize with intellectual and physical sufferings due to the 
 intellectual and physical diseases of all men of every class, of every estate, 
 of every country is obviously a duty and is logically a necessity. The only 
 higher claim on any human intellect is that of duty to the general principles 
 of progress, the deep moral truths of intellectual and physical existence, 
 through which alone such sufferings can be minimized. It is not possible 
 for any man to free himself from his sympathies and his prejudices so as 
 to be able to judge justly those events of which he himself and those he 
 loves have been a part. It is not easy even to attempt it, but as far as the 
 attempt is possible, it is made here in what is said of the politics of this 
 crucial period. 
 
 The object of primary interest in taking note of the surface phenom 
 ena of the time, is the remarkable fact that the plans of commercial impe 
 rialism reacted by forcing together at once the ex-slaveholders of the south 
 and the original abolitionists of the north classes which, each in its own 
 way, represented the highest possibilities of individual initiative. This 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 63 
 
 could not have been foreseen by those who planned the campaign of i872 
 and it is one of the factors which are still working for their defeat. When 
 we examine more closely into the character of such men as Thurman and 
 Bland, Greeley and Sumner, it will become clear as a part of the logic of 
 the situation, but in the politics of Grant's first administration, nothing was 
 clear the future of America seeming to have become a necessary part of 
 "the frightful welter" created by militant commercialism in Europe. 
 
 Under the effects of the continually urged threat of "negro domina 
 tion" supported by the presence of military garrisons, and realized in the 
 imposition of ruinous taxes made permanent by extravagant issues of state 
 bonds, the south was in danger of anarchy much worse than that which 
 existed during the progress of actual fighting in the Civil war. That this 
 was averted is largely due to the good sense and good conduct of the 
 negroes themselves. More easily influenced by suggestion than the 
 whites, many negroes might be induced temporarily to antagonize and to 
 attempt to control white people whose intellectual superiority they recog 
 nized. But as a rule when left to themselves, they had a cheerful and re 
 spectful toleration of what they regarded as wrong in others, which if it 
 were realized generally in the operation of highly developed intellects, 
 would soon inaugurate whatever millennium is possible on earth. While 
 it was seldom possible to induce them to vote the democratic ticket at this 
 period, they were accustomed to listen with deferential politeness to the 
 opinions of white democrats, parrying, with a tact possible only for habit 
 ual courtesy, all attempts to draw them into argument for which they felt 
 themselves unequal. Having their tendency to vote the republican ticket 
 as an acquired instinct, they had inherent in them the instincts of good 
 nature and tolerance, acquired through the habitual submission of enforced 
 service under a system whose evils their submission and docility had 
 turned to their advantage. Had they not had too often the vices of slavery 
 with its virtues ; had not their intellectual development been checked ; had 
 they been freed without war and without the period of hate and terror 
 
64 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 which followed it, they might have become, without even temporary re 
 action, a highly civilized and productive people, co-operating industrially 
 with the white people of the country to the greatest possible advantage. 
 As it was, the desperate struggle of Civil war politics, putting them between 
 two fires, subjected their fundamental virtues to a most crucial test under 
 which it is a matter of course that there should be shown many instances 
 of individual degeneracy to the original condition of the race. It is a fact, 
 however, that the average of the race in 1900 is, as it was in i87o, superior 
 to such "civilization" as Lord Kitchener illustrated in founding a college 
 at Khartoum immediately after he had butchered there by bayonetting 
 as they lay on the field, more than a thousand wounded who had fal 
 len in heroic if unintelligent resistance to policies proposed by English 
 holders of fraudulent Egyptian bonds representative of the same class 
 who from 1866 to i876 deliberately forced on a dozen great American com 
 monwealths issues which but for the good nature of the negroes and the 
 saving sense of justice in the white people would have made the south an 
 inferno. The possibilities of what might have been are so obvious that they 
 are too repulsive to be allowed to force themselves on imagination, but the 
 reality itself was so bad that for every section of the Union another half 
 century of development, moral and intellectual, will scarcely suffice to undo 
 the work of demoralization begun during that decade. 
 
 When the organized wealth of the world was being directed through 
 all the power of trained and highly intellectual fraud, to overthrow Ameri 
 can institutions, the first stand against it was made by the northern aboli 
 tionists of 1856 whose radicalism, answered by the radicalism of secession 
 ists at the south and exaggerated by the moral cowardice and intellectual 
 inertia of advocates of conquest and coercion in support of an alleged 
 manifest destiny had forced the Civil war. 
 
 The result, however, depended finally on the conduct of devoted lovers 
 of American institutions among the former slave-holders of the south, now 
 ruined and proscribed. It doe* them simple justice to say that the Amer- 
 
*i 
 
 Jfc ^~i 
 1 A M* 
 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, WASHINGTON. 
 
 U. S. TREASURY, WASHINGTON. 
 
 THE THOMAS CIRCLE AND STATUE, WASHINGTON, D. C 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 65 
 
 ica of the future will owe chiefly to them the preservation of whatever shall 
 remain of the institutions depending on the original constitution. They 
 will not be eulogized here. Had they been capable in 1850 of the same 
 self-control and self-repression they showed as a class when driven to the 
 wall in i87o; had they followed the theories of the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence when Mexico was at the mercy of the overwhelmingly superior 
 forces of the United States, the realization of the possibilities of benefi 
 cence inherent in the principles of American liberty might not have been 
 postponed to the twentieth century and the blood and struggle, the reac 
 tion and oppression of the last half of the nineteenth might have been made 
 impossible. But beaten as they were, ruined as they were, attacked as they 
 were from all quarters with all possible opprobrium, they showed among all 
 their failings, the splendid virtues of fortitude, of unsurrendering confi 
 dence in the future and of loyalty to the Constitution of i788 as it had been 
 interpreted by the generation which had transmitted it to them. They be 
 longed to a class and to a generation too prone to violence, too impatient, 
 too apt to strike first and hear afterwards, but when the time of supreme 
 trial came for them, they showed their supreme virtue. They could 
 neither be bought nor bullied ; and if in holding their own against desperate 
 odds, they kept much they might have improved themselves by losing, they 
 kept the world's future with it. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Thurman and Sumner Against "The Man on Horseback." The Attempt to Align 
 the South for Imperialism Fails. The Ideas Represented by Greeley and Bland 
 Against the Forces Behind Grant and Longstreet. The Work of Thurman and 
 Black in Checking Imperial Centralization of Power Prepares the way for Bland. 
 The Liberal Republican and Democratic Fusion Movement of 1872 Against 
 Militarism Draws Bland into Politics. How he came to be Nominated for Con 
 gress. The Influence of a Missouri Fence Corner in Shaping the Course of 
 International Politics. 
 
 HE events of the last decade of the nineteenth century show 
 that in i87o Mr. Bland was one of four men who were to ex 
 ert a decisive influence in preventing the military spirit evoked 
 by the war from destroying civil government. Charles Sum 
 ner, by making the first determined stand against General Grant's plan for 
 the annexation of San Domingo, directed the attention of original Free 
 soilers and abolitionists to a danger greater than any they could anticipate 
 from relaxing their opposition to southern democrats. Allen G. Thurman 
 was a Virginian by birth, and intellectually the heir of the Virginia school 
 which, after the adoption of the Constitution, had checked Hamilton by 
 forcing its amendment. He had voted for the Wilmot proviso against 
 slavery in the territory acquired by the Mexican conquest. This vote he 
 had cast as the representative of an Ohio district, but he represented also 
 the Virginia abolitionists of the eighteenth century, whose initiative in 
 the Ordinance of i787 made Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wiscon 
 sin free states, with an influence which the crisis, when it came, showed 
 to be decisive. He took his seat in the United States Senate on March 4, 
 1869, an d by joining with Sumner against Grant, made it impossible for 
 the imperialists to control the democrats of the south, and west ; to create 
 a diversion through General Longstreet or to secure that tacit assent to 
 their policies which their secret service agents in 1898 described as 
 
 "pairing." 
 
 66 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 67 
 
 Horace Greeley, a Whig by association and by intellectual habit, was 
 fundamentally an individualist with the same governing sympathy for the 
 world's actual producers which gave Mr. Eland's life its direction. The 
 ''Granger Movement/' for which Mr. Greeley was so largely responsi 
 ble, had the same intention as the de-centralizing movement with which 
 the Gracchi attempted to save the Roman republic. Through it Mr. 
 Greeley set in motion forces which were effective in energizing the work 
 done by Thurman and Jeremiah Black against corporation imperialism 
 from 1 876 to 1888, and which in the last ten years of the century, made 
 it possible for Mr. Bland to force issues against those who, in both parties, 
 were conspiring to repeat the tactics of the Grant administration that is, 
 to make a fundamental and revolutionary attack on American institutions, 
 and after thus exciting intense alarm, to compromise with the timid by 
 demonetizing silver, assuring themselves the continued control of the cur 
 rency and perpetuating their hold on the taxing power in connection with 
 a perpetuation of the bonded debt through schemes of conquest, canal 
 building, naval increase, colonial dependencies and anything else likely to 
 serve their purposes. 
 
 Mr. Bland, who was to play so important a part in preventing the work 
 of Sumner, Greeley and Thurman against corporation imperialism from 
 being undone, was, when the fight opened, an unknown country lawyer. 
 He had returned to Missouri from California in i867, and had begun prac 
 ticing law at Rolla with his brother, Charles C. Bland, afterwards Judge 
 of the St. Louis Court of Appeals. This partnership was dissolved by his 
 removal to Lebanon in 1869, where his vigor of intellect, his fearlessness 
 in supporting his political principles and, no doubt, his freedom from a 
 Union or Confederate war record contributed to make him a desirable 
 congressional candidate for the democratic and liberal republican fusion 
 movement, with which, in i872, Missouri responded to the work done in 
 the Senate by Thurman and Sumner. B. Gratz Brown and Carl Schurz 
 for the republicans, Frank P. Blair and John S. Phelps for the democrats 
 
68 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 were its responsible managers in Missouri. Mr. George W. Bradfield of 
 Lebanon, Missouri, one of those who induced Mr. Bland to take part in 
 it, gives this account of his entrance into national politics : 
 
 "In October, 1869, the St. Louis and San Francisco railroad was ex 
 tended from Arlington to Lebanon, and with the extension a number of 
 business men and their families came to Lebanon, established homes and 
 entered into various business pursuits. Among the number was Richard 
 P. Bland, attorney. He came to stay, and we have good reason to know 
 that no political aspirations prompted the step. He was devoted to his 
 profession and his sole object was to secure a permanent location and 
 make his way in it. At this time, party machines were in a demoralized 
 condition. The defeat of John S. Phelps for Governor in 1868 had dis 
 couraged the democrats and the republicans were divided into what were 
 called 'radicals' and 'liberals/ 
 
 The liberals under the leadership of Hon. R. W. Fyan, began an 
 organization of their forces, and in 1869, established a newspaper and 
 placed the editorial department in the hands of an ex-Confederate and dis 
 franchised democrat. The battle soon became interesting. In i87o the 
 liberals made a proposition to the democrats to take the fight off their 
 hands the democrats to give them entire control of state matters, re 
 taining for themselves the control of local affairs. The proposition was 
 accepted, carried out in good faith, and culminated, after a bitter fight, in 
 the election of B. Gratz Brown for governor by a majority of 41,089 votes, 
 the democrats having a majority in both branches of the legislature. 
 
 In this contest, at the solicitation of democrats and liberals, R. P. 
 Bland entered politics as a democrat and took a vigorous part in the cam 
 paign. 
 
 The success of the liberal movement in Missouri in i87o had at 
 tracted the attention of the whole country and in the "presidential year," 
 1 872, democratic organs urged that the same policy should be pursued in 
 the national campaign. In the national democratic convention held at 
 Baltimore the policy was accordingly adopted by the nomination of Horace 
 Greeley for president and B. Gratz Brown for vice-president both liberals. 
 
 In the meantime Congress, in apportioning Representatives among the 
 States under the census of i87o, gave Missouri one additional representa 
 tive. The members of Congress from Missouri though pleased with the 
 gain of one member, were satisfied with existing districts and did not wish 
 them disturbed. 
 
 The legislature which had the matter in charge was equal to the occa 
 sion. They determined to make the new district out of the counties which 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 69 
 
 had none of the sitting members or old democratic leaders in them. To 
 this end they established what they named the Fifth district, composed of 
 Jefferson, Franklin, Gasconade, Osage, Maries, Crawford, Phelps, Pu- 
 laski, Wright, Ozark, Douglas, Howell, Texas, Dent, Shannon and La- 
 clede sixteen counties, which in i87o had given Brown for governor 
 4,432 majority. 
 
 The district had a picturesque appearance on the map of the state. 
 Two of the counties were on the Missouri river; one on the Missouri 
 river whose boundary line extended to the boundary line of three counties 
 in Illinois; two on the boundary line of Arkansas, and two others were 
 but a few hours' ride from the Indian Territory and the state of Kansas. 
 
 As soon as the formation of the new district was made known, the 
 selection of a candidate to represent it became the chief topic of conver 
 sation among its people, and a number of names were suggested. In La- 
 clede county, the home of Mr. Bland, Josiah Ivey was the first who sug 
 gested his name to the editor of the "home organ." He and the editor 
 went accordingly to Mr. Bland's office to confer with him on the subject. 
 The announcement of the object of our visit took him by surprise, but it 
 was finally agreed that a representative committee of democrats and lib 
 erals should be appointed to confer with him. The active leaders of both 
 parties were consulted and selected Capt. J. T. Talliaferro, Josiah Ivey, 
 Harrison Attaway, Hugh McGowin and G. W. Bradfield as the conference 
 committee. They called on Mr. Bland, and after a full conference he 
 agreed to announce himself as a candidate for representative subject to the 
 action of the democratic congressional convention at St. James. 
 
 A joint convention of liberals and democrats of Laclede county was 
 held to appoint delegates to the congressional convention of the Fifth 
 district and Messrs. Harrison Attaway, J. T. Talliaferro and George W. 
 Bradfield, democrats, were chosen as delegates, with Messrs. David Stein 
 berg, R. C. Barrows and Alfred Case, liberals, as alternates. 
 
 The delegates and alternates, and a number of outsiders, the most 
 prominent among whom were Messrs. Hugh McGowin, R. P. Goodall and 
 Josiah Ivey from Laclede county, reached St. James the evening before 
 the convention was to be held. They found the opposition there in full 
 force, occupying as headquarters every room that could be obtained. 
 
 It was soon ascertained that all the candidates were on hand; that 
 Bland was in the lead; that his friends were there for the single purpose 
 of nominating him and that they had no second choice. As they had no 
 place to meet to perfect a temporary organization, it was finally decided 
 that when night came they would meet in the corner of a rail fence some 
 little distance from any highway and place sentinels to keep off intruders. 
 
70 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 His delegates promptly met at the appointed place. Organizing for pru 
 dential reasons, they selected W. H. McGowin of Howell county as tem 
 porary chairman of the convention and unanimously resolved that the 
 nomination of Mr. Bland should be made by a delegate of one of the coun 
 ties which had no candidate in the field Mr. Bland himself to select the 
 delegate. 
 
 The Methodist church was tendered the convention for holding its 
 meetings, and at the time named in the call the delegates and alternates 
 met in the church in full force every county being fully represented. 
 Chairman McGowin called the meeting to order, briefly explained its object 
 and appointed the committees. After a recess, the committee on credentials 
 made their report which was unanimously adopted. The committee on 
 organization recommended Doctor John Hyor of Dent county as chairman 
 of the convention, which was unanimously adopted. The Doctor was 
 escorted to the chair and thanked the convention for the honor conferred 
 upon him. The Bland delegates selected Harrison Attaway to see that 
 the Bland men were on hand at roll call and George W. Bradfield to tally 
 the votes cast. 
 
 On the roll call of counties for nomination of candidates for Con 
 gress, Col. Crews, of Franklin county ; Senator Morse of Jefferson county ; 
 Colonel Wingo of Dent county; Ed. Seay and Doctor Headlee of Phelps 
 county, and J. H. Graham of Wright county were put in nomination. 
 When the county of Laclede was called, Elder Michal Johnson of Maries 
 county, an ex-Confederate colonel, arose and nominated Mr. Bland, 
 George W. Bradfield of Laclede county seconding him. 
 
 After two or three ballots, in which Mr. Bland took and kept 
 the lead, it was apparent that the opposition could not form a combina 
 tion and that by a determined effort the Bland forces could win. Attaway 
 had prepared for the effort. He and Bradfield had agreed that when the 
 votes cast reached the point where the solid vote of Maries county would 
 decide the contest, Bradfield was to give a certain signal. The ballot 
 commenced and progressed with but little change until the county of 
 Shannon voted for Bland. The critical point was reached, the signal was 
 given, Maries county voted solid for Bland and he was nominated. 
 
 The republicans nominated Hon. Andrew J. Seay, against him. Bland 
 made a vigorous campaign, visited all the counties in the district, roused 
 the democrats and carried the district by 1,154 majority.*" 
 
 The unadorned simplicity of Mr. Bradfield's narrative can not fail 
 to commend itself to the Livy who shall study the Rise, as well as the 
 
 *From reminiscences contributed for this work by Mr. George W. Bradfield. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 7 1 
 
 Gibbon who shall write the Decline and Fall, of the "Anglo-Saxon 
 Empire." He will see, if he has learned the art of reading between the 
 lines, that the men who managed Mr. Eland's entrance to public life, 
 though they had never been to London or Berlin in their lives, had savoir 
 faire enough as international diplomats to use a moonlight meeting in the 
 corner of a Missouri rail fence to set in motion international forces which 
 Lord Salisbury and Baron Rothschild have not yet demonstrated their 
 ability to control. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Superiority of "Business" to Party. Plutocratic Attempts to Provide Issues 
 for Both Parties. The Object of "Expansion" Under Grant Accomplished in 
 the Demonetisation of Silver and the Control of the Currency. Sumner De 
 nounces Imperialism and Forces an Open Debate on the Annexation of the 
 West Indies. "A Dance of Blood" Proposed by the Speculative and Non-Pro- 
 ductive Classes. How History Repeated Itself in 1898. General Grant's Argu 
 ments for Imperialism Used Against Bland by Imperialists in Missouri. Thur- 
 man's Speech Against "Expansion." 
 
 HE immediate object of the movement for imperialism under 
 Grant was attained. The national debt was perpetuated; its 
 holders through the demonetization of silver and the substitu 
 tion of notes based on the debt and inflating it, were given 
 control of the currency; and the control of the taxing power was per 
 petuated in the hands of the class which had been enriched by the restric 
 tion in distribution, the artificial scarcity and the unnatural demand in 
 cident to the destructiveness of civil war. 
 
 Those who accomplished this were only incidentally partisans. It is 
 their habit to work through both parties and they did not cease to do this 
 when, as a result of their plans, the republican party was unexpectedly 
 divided and issues forced which worked an almost complete re-alignment 
 of both parties. 
 
 The issue was forced in the Senate on December 20, i87i, when 
 Charles Sumner openly broke with the Grant administration, declaring 
 that it was attempting "to commit Congress to a dance of blood."* 
 
 The Senate had already rejected a "treaty" negotiated between Or- 
 ville Babcock and a "General" Baez, who had proclaimed himself and sev 
 eral of his friends the government of San Domingo and had been "recog 
 nized" for the purposes of the treaty. The subject was revived by a 
 resolution introduced by Senator Morton of Indiana, providing for a com- 
 
 *See Congressional Record, December 21, 1871. 
 
 72 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 73 
 
 mission to visit San Domingo and by a resolution of Mr. Sumner calling 
 on the president for information "to show what European powers, if any, 
 propose to acquire jurisdiction over the island." 
 
 Senator Edmunds, speaking for the administration and outlining its 
 policy, proceeded to feel his way to the temper of the Senate, seeking to 
 discover what it would do when acting openly on a proposition to "resent 
 foreign interference" in the whole of the West Indian archipelago. Af 
 ter explaining that it was a distinctively American doctrine not to permit 
 an enlargement of European influences in the West Indies, he proceeded to 
 enlarge the scope of the issue, before the Senate, from San Domingo to the 
 West Indies as a whole and incidentally to Central America. "Certainly," 
 he said, "if there be any distinctively American doctrine upon which the 
 people are supposed to be a unit, it is that we shall not permit European in 
 terference or aggression (beyond existing conditions which the faith of 
 treaties and public law do not permit us to interfere with) or the enlarge 
 ment of the domain of that species of interference in governments in this 
 great tropical archipelago, of which I have spoken. Therefore, infor 
 mation in respect to any of these islands, in respect to their capacity to 
 support a free, industrious and self-governing population is of interest to 
 the people of the United States. I say this with reference to Cuba as well 
 as San Domingo ; Hayti, the other end of the island, as well as Dominica, 
 St. Thomas or whatever the island may be as to the people who inhabit all 
 those islands, there must always be a centering and absorbing interest 
 they taken as a whole lying in that great Mediterranean sea of the Western 
 hemisphere, connecting us with the Isthmus of Panama and our great 
 coast on the Pacific." 
 
 This utterance, so eminently characteristic of Mr. Edmunds in what it 
 suppressed as in what it suggested, evoked an instant and characteristic 
 reply from Sumner. 
 
 Bold intellectually and morally; honest in his methods of thought, 
 candid in expression, despising fraud in all its forms, a representative New 
 
74 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 England gentleman of the Brahmin class, intellectually and .socially an 
 aristocrat; but politically as extreme in his republicanism as Danton or 
 Desmoulins, the Senator from Massachusetts justified his whole career 
 to posterity by his answer. It was he who, when the conquest and dis 
 memberment of Mexico were about to be undertaken, had delivered the 
 appeal for peace and justice which, under the title he gave it, "The True 
 Grandeur of Nations," will be his best monument for posterity. It was 
 he again who, at the crisis of the Kansas-Nebraska debate, had expressed 
 his contempt for Stephen A. Douglas in terms which almost exhaust the 
 capacity of decent English for vituperation. And now the third time, 
 at the close of his career, he was tested. The real issue in each case was 
 the same. As it was Douglas, who in 1850-60, proposed an era of con 
 quest and violence abroad to avoid the settlement of domestic issues, so 
 it was Grant now Grant as president with complete control of party 
 machinery, and power to drive out of politics any republican who opposed 
 him. 
 
 No one knew this better than Sumner. But he had the gentleman's 
 scorn of cheating and cowardice, and if the pride of the gentleman the 
 indignation he feels at all the mean and knavish forms of injustice and 
 oppression could bring salvation to the world, Sumner might have been 
 the herald of a new and higher civilization as he rose to reply to Edmunds. 
 
 "Mr. President," he said, "the resolution before the Senate commits 
 Congress to a dance of blood. It is a new step in a measure of violence. 
 Several steps have already been taken and Congress is now summoned 
 to take another .... Sir, others may do as they please. Others may accept 
 this policy. I will not. . . .1 object to this proposition because it is a new 
 stage in a measure of violence which, so far as it has been maintained, has 
 been propped by violence. I use strong language but only what the occa 
 sion requires. As a Senator, as a patriot, I can not see my country suffer 
 in its good name without an effort to save it. The negotiation for annex 
 ation began with a person known as Buenventura Baez. All the evidence 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 75 
 
 official and unofficial, shows him to be a political jockey. . . .Ever since the 
 signature of the treaty, and especially ever since its rejection, Baez has 
 been sustained in power by the presence of our naval force. Such I 
 aver to be the fact. I state it with all the responsibility of my position 
 and with full conviction of its truth. I ask you to do as I have done 
 to go to the State department and Navy department and read the reports 
 there on file .... Baez has been treated as you fear Bismarck may treat 
 Louis Napoleon. You call him president. They call him down there, 
 dictator. Better call him emperor and then the parallel will be complete. 
 He is sustained in power by the government of the United States that he 
 may betray his country. Such is the fact and I challenge any senator 
 to deny it." 
 
 This speech is as clearly responsible for forcing the liberal republican 
 bolt of 1 872 as that of George William Curtis in the Chicago convention 
 was for the "Mugwump" bolt against Elaine, or as Bland's "Parting of 
 the Ways" speech was for the issues of 1896 against foreign control of 
 American mints and the American treasury. The power of a single man, 
 accustomed to use his intellect as the vehicle of his moral force, has sel 
 dom had more adequate illustration than in these three speeches, delivered 
 by men so unlike in everything except their fundamental rectitude of pur 
 pose and their deep-seated detestation of knavery. 
 
 Sumner was at once attacked by Senator Morton of Indiana, who, as 
 he became possessed by the subject, showed himself incapable of the indi 
 rections and suppressions which had characterized Mr. Edmunds. "Mr. 
 President," he said, "the annexation of San Domingo will come, I proph 
 esy here to-night that it will come. And with it the annexation of Cuba 
 and Puerto Rico." 
 
 This bold declaration left nothing to the imagination. Taken in con 
 nection with that of Mr. Edmunds, it showed that the imperialism which 
 sought control of the taxing power and the treasury under Grant was 
 identical in methods with that which Mr. Bland opposed in Washington 
 
76 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 and in Missouri in 1897, 1898 and 1899. 
 
 In 1898 when it was obvious that a primary object of the expansion 
 movement was the refunding of the national debt as the base of a corpora 
 tion paper currency substituted for coin and coin certificates, Mr. Bland 
 found himself opposed in Missouri by political experts working to force 
 the "expansion" movement, as was done under Grant, so as to withdraw 
 public attention from the workings of the plan for treasury control and 
 financial revolution. The issues forced ostentatiously against Mr. Bland 
 were the acquisition of Puerto Rico by "force of arms," the annexation of 
 Cuba by garrison control, an indefinite increase of the navy and the digging 
 of the trans-isthmian canal. 
 
 At the time the "expansion debate" was forced on the country under 
 Grant, it is no doubt a fact that the bill to demonetize silver and control 
 the bonded debt and the paper currency of the country had already been 
 drawn, and passed backwards and forwards in duplicate between New 
 York and London. Three years after the expansion movement began, 
 the demonetization bill passed Congress while the "new issues" were being 
 fiercely debated. Mr. Bland entered national politics during that contest, 
 and two years after its renewal in 1898 a year after he had made his 
 last stand in opposing it the new demonetization bill passed and the par 
 allel was completed even to the loud denunciation of their own work, to 
 which agents of the conspiracy resorted in both cases. 
 
 While this is unmistakably apparent now, it could not have been 
 intelligible in i87o to any beyond a select circle of capitalists and their 
 confidential dependants in politics. It is not probable that knowledge of 
 it was sufficiently definite in the mind of Allen G. Thurman to have been 
 one of the factors influencing him in supporting Sumner against Grant. 
 It was natural that he should do so, not merely because he was a partisan 
 and it was an opportunity for occupying an impregnable position, but 
 because he was fundamentally an honest man honest intellectually and 
 practically, accustomed to making the fundamental principles of morality 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 77 
 
 the standard of his action. He was a democrat and a conservative while 
 Mr. Sumner was a federalist and a radical, but both were courageous and 
 honest men. Being so, they understood each other and worked together 
 to defeat what both saw was an intended "Coup d'Etat." Thurman's 
 rejoinder to the attacks on Sumner from the republican side showed a deep 
 insight into the meaning of the movement of American politics during 
 the century. It was unanswerable. 
 
 "Mr. President, I shall occupy very little of your time," he said in 
 opening. "My purpose in rising is chiefly to put on record, in the fewest 
 possible words, the grounds of my opposition to the annexation of San 
 Domingo, and rather to state propositions than to make an argument. 
 But before I do that, I wish to notice remarks which have fallen from 
 senators in the course of this debate. A stranger who should have come 
 into this chamber in the last two hours, unacquainted with the subject 
 under discussion and listening to the speeches that have been made, would 
 naturally have come to the conclusion that it is once more the field of an 
 impeachment trial that at this time it was not a president of the United 
 States who was being arraigned, but a senator of the United States, the 
 senator from Massachusetts. The senator from Michigan (Mr. Chandler) 
 was pleased to tell the senator from Massachusetts that when he came to 
 train this little body of democrats here, it would not be a very difficult 
 undertaking that there were not so many of them but that he would be 
 able to dress the line without great military genius. When the senator 
 made the remark my memory took me back eighteen years to the memor 
 able year 1852. There was a presidential election that year. There were 
 two candidates the whig candidate, General Winfield Scott; the demo 
 cratic candidate, General Franklin Pierce. They stood upon platforms 
 that in one particular had no essential difference whatever platforms that 
 have been proclaimed ever since the year 1861 to have been pro-slavery 
 platforms that denounced in almost the same language and with precisely 
 the same meaning any agitation whatever of the subject of slavery or the 
 
78 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 abolition thereof which denounced it as unpatriotic in anybody whatso 
 ever in any part of this republic to seek to disturb, by any agitation whatso 
 ever, that status of slavery which existed in the southern states. Upon 
 that platform the two great parties went to battle in that year 1852. 
 There was one man in the Senate of the United States that day and but 
 one who repudiated both platforms and would stand upon neither 
 who repudiated both candidates and would vote for neither. That man 
 was Charles Sumner. I see him standing in the senate then without a 
 single follower. He had no ten men, the number of democrats here now, 
 to dress into line then. He had no one but himself. And I have lived 
 to see the day when sixty senators of the republican party, the senator 
 from Michigan among them, were following in his footsteps with the most 
 implicit obedience. I have seen that which I never expected to see. I 
 have seen the man who repudiated your candidate of 1852 who spit upon 
 your platform then, at the head of your column for nearly ten years in the 
 Senate of the United States. Where then were you who now talk of 
 nothing but freedom ? Where then were you who now boast of the enfran 
 chisement of the African race? Where then were you who are now so 
 ready to denounce any man that ever stood up for the institutions of the 
 country or at least sought to prevent the country from being ruined by 
 their disturbance? Where were you, republican senators, in 1852, when 
 the senator from Massachusetts stood, if not solitary, at least alone? 
 Where were you ? One half, or nearly so, voting for Franklin Pierce and 
 the rest for Winneld Scott." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Republican Party Revolutionized under Grant. Surnner is Driven out of it. 
 Seward, Greeley and Sumner Die Heart-Broken. Elaine's Tribute to Sumner. 
 The use of Subconscious Memory in Politics. Militant Commercialism Called 
 to Account for the Fall of Seward, Sumner and Greeley. 
 
 N INTELLECT and in moral force, Sumner and Seward rank 
 with Lincoln as the three greatest men among the founders of 
 the republican party. Horace Greeley, who comes next 
 after them, is next only after a long interval. It is a fact of 
 much historical significance that all three died under Grant's administra 
 tion repudiated by the party they had founded, and in disgrace as far as 
 it could disgrace them. Seward died at Auburn, New York, October 10, 
 1 872; Greeley at his country place in Westchester county, New York, 
 November 29, i872, and Sumner at Washington, March n, 1874. 
 
 The details of Greeley's death are sufficiently well known and it is only 
 pertinent here to add to them that the charge of mental incapacity, pre 
 ferred against him when he was being forced out of the control of the paper 
 he had founded, would have been sufficiently proven, in the minds of some 
 New York and London capitalists, by his stubborn refusal to support their 
 policies and by his "agrarianism." It is not infrequently the habit of 
 political managers of the class Mr. Greeley antagonized, to prefer 
 the charge of mental aberration against those they can not control and 
 they are not rendered the less, but rather the more, prone to do so from 
 the fact that they themselves are often victims of hysteroid diseases of will 
 and judgment, manifesting the chronic nervous disorders which are inci 
 dent to ungoverned appetites and violent desires gratified at the expense 
 both of individual well being and the rights of others. It was by men of 
 this class that Mr. Bland was habitually assailed as "a crank." 
 
 The small but powerful class which decreed that Seward, Greeley and 
 
 79 
 
8o AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 Sumner should be driven out of politics has no such moral reservations and 
 limitations as govern the normal man. It has little hesitation in sacrificing 
 human life at wholesale or retail for commercial advantage to keep up 
 the price of corporation stocks or to prevent their own control of money 
 and trade from being alienated. "The red republicans" of the Reign of 
 Terror in France illustrated a similar enfranchisement of highly developed 
 intellect from moral restraint. They reasoned that in a single war 
 planned by financiers and holders of governmental privileges, from 
 100,000 to 500,000 lives had sometimes been deliberately sacrificed in 
 attaining an object which the statesmanship thus illustrated had concluded 
 to be desirable. Hence the Terrorists argued, that if by cutting off in a 
 year the heads of several thousand of their most pronounced opponents, 
 they could establish their own theories of liberty and justice, the world 
 would be greatly the gainer. 
 
 Such reasoning, however logical it may be from its premises, is cer 
 tainly a symptom of moral insanity and no intellectual flexibility which 
 accompanies it can prevent its reaction upon itself. In 1899 and 1900 
 when the questions of the Greeley campaign again recurred, the same 
 symptoms showed themselves as a class disease, illustrated in the use of 
 the United States army "to move the hemp crop"* the moving consisting 
 of a sudden attack on its producers and the killing of a sufficient number of 
 them in their fields through the use of the latest improved projectiles, to 
 make the rest willing to abandon or surrender their product. That the 
 men who are accustomed thus to act, consider such processes normal and 
 reasonable is probable, but their opinions are not always fully concurred in 
 even by their own political associates. 
 
 Next to Sumner and Seward, James G. Elaine ranks as the greatest 
 intellect of the later republican party. Had he been governed by the 
 high purposes of Seward or the moral inflexibility of Sumner, he might 
 have been greater than either greater indeed than any other statesman 
 
 *See Associated Press report from Washington and Manila. December to March, 1899-1900. 
 

 W. M. STEWART. 
 
 FRANCIS M. COCKRELL. 
 
 ROGER Q. MILLS. 
 
 JOHN SHERMAN. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 8 1 
 
 of the Civil war period. Naturally magnanimous, a lover of justice and a 
 hater of oppression by instinct, he revolted against the policies of which 
 Sumner was the victim, and although he did not have the stern force of 
 character to stand as Sumner stood, he admired him greatly and finally 
 put on record his vindication. 
 
 "The opening of the Forty-second Congress on the fourth of March, 
 1 87 1, was disfigured by an act of grave injustice," writes Mr. Elaine.* 
 "Charles Sumner was deposed from the chairmanship of the committee on 
 Foreign Relations a position he had held continuously since the repub 
 lican party gained control of the Senate. The cause of his displacement 
 may be found in the angry contentions to which the annexation of San 
 Domingo gave rise. Mr. Sumner 's opposition to that project was intense 
 and his words carried with them what was construed as a personal affront 
 to the President of the United States though never so intended by the 
 Massachusetts senator The removal of Mr. Sumner had been de 
 termined by a caucus of republican senators and never was the power of 
 
 the caucus more wrongfully applied For his fidelity to principle and 
 
 his boldness in asserting the truth at an earlier day, Mr. Sumner was 
 struck down in the Senate chamber by a weapon in the hand of a political 
 foe. It was impossible to anticipate that fifteen years later, he would be 
 even more cruelly struck down in the Senate by the members of the party 
 he had done so much to establish. The cruelty was greater in the latter 
 case, as anguish of spirit is greater than suffering of body. In both 
 instances Mr. Sumner's bearing was distinguished by dignity and magna 
 nimity. He gave utterance to no complaints, and silently submitted to the 
 unjustifiable wrong of which he was the victim. That nothing might be 
 lacking in the extraordinary character of the final scene of his deposition, 
 the democratic senators recorded themselves against the consummation 
 of the injustice. They had no co-operation from the republicans. The 
 caucus dictation was so strong that discontented republicans merely re 
 frained from voting." 
 
 As in Sumner's action, checking Grant, we have the explanation of the 
 "liberal republican" movement which made a radical change in the republi 
 can party and repulsed militant commercialism for the time being, so in 
 this expression from Mr. Elaine appears, if only vaguely, the deep, under- 
 
 *Twenty Years in Congress, pp. 503-6. 
 
 6 
 
82 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 lying causes which worked to defeat the Grant third term movement of 
 1880. 
 
 It has been sometimes assumed that Mr. Elaine was moved to antagon 
 ize the third term movement merely by his own ambition, but the reasoning 
 which leads to such conclusions is inadequate. Even in men who are 
 weakest or most timid morally,* the sense of justice is a determining fac 
 ulty one of the great faculties separating men from the lower animals. 
 The other is memory. Animals, of the orders lower than mankind, are 
 certainly able to reason at any given time on any given set of conditions 
 to the full extent of all their faculties, but their faculties are severely 
 limited by the limitations of their memories. As memory increases, as 
 consequently the intellect of which it is a faculty becomes able to store up 
 and co-ordinate a larger number of facts from past observation and ex 
 perience, the reason increases in its power of analysis and synthesis. The 
 influence of the individual who approximates the norm of moral sanity 
 increases proportionately. 
 
 This is perhaps the most important single fact of politics. The bar 
 barian, accustomed to gratify his appetite at once, and habitually unwilling 
 to deny himself the immediate indulgence of his passions of acquisitiveness 
 or destructiveness, can think only of the immediate advantage which he 
 sees it is possible for him to take of those who are not on guard against 
 his superior cunning and his lack of self restraint. For the immediate 
 advantage which he can take of those who are unprepared to resist him, 
 he sacrifices not only their rights but his own future well-being and often 
 if not always his ultimate safety. 
 
 In the memory of every one who is higher in the scale of civilization 
 man those who use their advantage of others for injustice, it is a law of the 
 evolution of mind that the sense of this injustice must inhere with a tenacity 
 bearing a definite relation to the moral and intellectual strength of the 
 individual. In such minds the sense of justice operates through memory 
 
 *Old English, "weakedest;" Modern English, "wickedest." 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 83 
 
 with cumulative force in behalf of others, and at every great crisis of 
 politics they are impelled by all their own essential subconscious forces to 
 use for the benefit of those not so strong as themselves, the slowly accumu 
 lating force of will which they have exerted in the condemnation of acts of 
 injustice they lacked the strength of will or the ability to prevent. Even 
 in men whose wills are weakest, the memory has the same inevitable ten 
 dency to reinforce and make efficient the sense of justice. They may not 
 be energized by the sincerity of Bland, the moral sturdiness of Thurman or 
 the boldness of Sumner, but unless they are hopelessly corrupt, their mem 
 ories are working ceaselessly, above or below the level of their conscious 
 ness, to impel them to a just and at last decisive judgment of the crimes 
 which are inevitably incident to the attempts of the cunning and the pow 
 erful to control the machinery of government for their own advantage. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Issue and Control of the Currency a Vital Prerogative of Sovereignty. Benton 
 Fails to Secure a Direct Issue with the Non-Productive Classes. Abuses of the 
 Control of the Currency by State Banks Flagrant. Bland Renews Benton's 
 Interrupted Work Against Corporation Sovereignty in the Issue of the Cur 
 rency. The Party of Commercial Imperialism in the United States and the 
 Policies of Warren Hastings. The Threat of the Fusillade as a Factor In 
 Economic Discussion. "Bluffing" as a Political Method in America. States 
 manship and the Poker Habit. The Realities of Hate and Passion Behind the 
 Theatrical Threats of Professional Politicians. Stirring the South to Resist 
 ance. Bland and Alexander H. Stephens Consult on Means of Preventing an 
 Outbreak. Butler's Attack Answered at the South by Deep Disturbance. Im 
 morality in all Parties and in all Sections. The Radicalism of Demagogues 
 in the Black Belt. International Commercialism and the Trade for the Con 
 trol of the American Treasury. Bland on Cox and Randall. 
 
 HE long struggle made by Benton against the use of corpora 
 tion tokens as currency had been only partly successful 
 under the democratic party from 1830 to 1860. The demand 
 for a coin currency had been urged by Benton not on account 
 of any attachment to coin as a fetish, but as a means of restoring to the 
 people the exercise of one of the most vital prerogatives of their sover 
 eignty. 
 
 Whoever controls the currency and the taxing power is sovereign, no 
 matter what the form of government may be. It was for the life of re 
 publican institutions that Benton, resisting corporation sovereignty in the 
 control of money, opened the fight which Bland made with even greater 
 force after him. 
 
 At the time Benton' s work was interrupted by civil war, the passion 
 of which broke his influence and retired him from politics, he had never 
 succeeded in forcing the issues logically. As a result of compromise, the 
 power of issuing credit tokens to circulate in lieu of cash, once exercised 
 
 by the Bank of the United States, had been transferred to banks chartered 
 
 84 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 85 
 
 by the states which, while never less rapacious than the bank of the 
 United States had been, were frequently more fraudulent and generally 
 more reckless. They had only the one advantage, that they could not so 
 readily be controlled by foreign dealers in public debt and by currency 
 brokers such as those who during the Civil war took advantage of the 
 necessities of the federal government to impose on it their control of the 
 currency under the national banking system a system so devised as to 
 give holders of United States bonds in London, Paris, and Berlin power to 
 issue American currency and to exercise in all parts of the country a pre 
 rogative which all publicists agree carries sovereignty with it to those who 
 hold it. As the price of the continued existence of the government, Pres 
 ident Lincoln and the Congress supporting his administration, were forced 
 to delegate the better half of the national sovereignty to a class of men 
 whom the President himself and Salmon P. Chase, his secretary of the 
 treasury, had been trained to view with profound distrust. 
 
 No sooner had the war ceased than the real republican element of the 
 party the men who actually hated government by force or by extorted 
 privilege, began to strive even more strenuously for a reconstruction of 
 the government at Washington than for that of the state governments at 
 the south. 
 
 The retirement of Sumner, Seward, and Greeley, followed in each case 
 by death, was the end of the republican party which had forced the war as 
 a protest against slavery. 
 
 The party which succeeded it and showed its impulses under Grant 
 was a party of commercial imperialism whose ideal government was that 
 which, when established by Warren Hastings and his associates, had trans 
 formed England from a limited monarchy to an empire, controlled by the 
 holders of the debt created by the military operations necessary for its 
 maintenance. 
 
 When Mr. Bland reached Washington in December, 1873, to begin 
 his work in Congress, these commercial imperialists, under cover of the 
 
86 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 expansionist agitation for the annexation of the West Indies, reinforced by 
 such measures as the Civil Rights bill and the "reconstruction" measures 
 at home, had demonetized silver and assured to themselves the control of 
 the currency and the taxing power for a generation. 
 
 Being without a "war record" and having a knowledge of conditions 
 at both the south and west such as was hardly possible for any other public 
 man of his time, Mr. Bland became naturally the advocate of southern and 
 western producers against the attempt to restrict production and distribu 
 tion to a basis adjusted to the fancied necessities of class control of money 
 and supply. 
 
 In 1896, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt declared that a number of those 
 who were advocating Mr. Eland's theories of public policy might be ad 
 vantageously "stood up against the wall and shot." This view, rather 
 symptomatic than sectional, governed the policies which prevailed in Wash 
 ington in 1873. There was a certain amount of blood-thirstiness in it, 
 but much more of what is sometimes called "bluffing" the Homeric habit 
 of loud talking illustrated in those primitive heroes who, as champions of 
 their respective sides, stand between the lines, magnifying each his own 
 party and vilifying or threatening the other. So great is the effect of 
 mere atavism in politics, that perhaps such situations as that of 1873 will 
 never be fully understood until the present arbitrary divisions between the 
 sciences, necessary as they are for classification, are abandoned. When 
 every man who attempts to become a publicist begins by studying anthro 
 pology from the time politics and political economy consisted largely of 
 the science of catching and preparing men for actual food, it may be much 
 easier to understand all that was behind General Butler when, as the rep 
 resentative of the element which had demonetized silver, he urged the 
 Civil Rights bill and similar measures to engage public attention until the 
 passage of time should make it more easily possible for the agents of the 
 revolutionary act to escape responsibility for it. It was a time of the 
 loudest and most ferocious talking possible. Much of it was due to actual 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 87 
 
 hatred, but much more was merely representative or atavistic. There is 
 no room to doubt the sectional animosities of the people at this time. 
 Otherwise every question of political economy would have approached its 
 settlement through evolution. But, as for all the evil passions of mankind, 
 the philosopher's stone has been found ; as hatred and malice, blood-thirsti 
 ness and the spirit of violence among peoples are inevitably transmuted into 
 fraud and oppression in the governments they create, it happened that 
 back of all the false pretense of the period at Washington there was a re 
 ality of actual diabolism which was only to be overcome gradually by the 
 inherent virtues of the people. The average politician of that period, re 
 publican or democrat, might lose all real feeling against the political antag 
 onist with whom in private he drank or against whom he "bluffed" at 
 poker a game which, under the Grant administration, was as much a part 
 of the politics of Washington as were the open proceedings of Congress 
 itself. It was at poker that statesmen practiced themselves, in "passing" 
 or in "bluffing," and it was at poker, too, that they learned how little the 
 strength of the cards held in actual politics has to do with the result of the 
 game. A favorite method of bribery was to allow the person to be pur 
 chased to win the purchase money by "bluffing." For this reason and 
 others, the game became a mode of political education in such repute that 
 it was popularized among the governing classes in England by a treatise 
 written by one of President Grant's ministers plenipotentiary. He, how 
 ever, was not responsible for the introduction of American "cocktails" 
 which occurred at about the same period of "Anglo-Saxon unification." 
 Between poker and cocktails, in private, the average politician of the 
 period, "bluffing" in politics as over his cards, was the more ready for loud 
 and ferocious talk in public. Much of it was theatrical and in a rude way 
 artistic. In exceptional cases, such as that of General Butler, it was the 
 height of art with little or no passion in it. But back of it were fierce 
 popular hatreds, stirred to flame by calculating covetousness, and in the 
 south there was a terror of the future which made logical action difficult 
 
88 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 and expressed itself from time to time in desperate acts of protest. Such 
 acts of unreason were anticipated by the leaders on both sides. "I think 
 the radicals are trying to get up as much offensive legislation as possible 
 so as to drive the southern people to resist that they may use the army there 
 in the next presidential election," wrote Mr. Bland in 1875.* "We will 
 do all we can to prevent it. I called on A. H. Stephens of Georgia and 
 had a long talk with him on political matters. This seems to be his idea 
 also." 
 
 In politics the course of every party is finally determined by its 
 extremists, and at this time Louisiana, South Carolina, and the "black 
 belt" of Arkansas presented conditions which invited the attention of party 
 managers, and speculative financiers interested in developing the extreme 
 radicalism of southern objection to the results of "reconstruction." While 
 such democrats as Mr. Bland, and Alexander H. Stephens were planning 
 to prevent outbreaks in these states, General Butler and his principals were 
 working to provoke them, and they were too often met more than half way 
 by local demagogues in the "black belt," cunning enough to know that so 
 long as politics remained sectional they could compel the support of the 
 democrats in such states as Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia 
 where the governing motive of politics was a desire to minimize violence, 
 and restore so much of the old Union as was possible, or could be made 
 possible under the new conditions. There has never been a time in Ameri 
 can politics when the atrocity and the falsity of human nature were all 
 massed on one side or confined to one section. 
 
 "Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra." 
 
 Such calculating and fictitious radicalism as that represented at this 
 period by General Butler had its analogue at the south in men who, when 
 conditions invited it, as in 1896-98, were as ready to change party as he. 
 Like him, they had their own peculiar virtues, and their own individual 
 claims to fitness for survival, but they were like him also in looking on 
 
 "Letter to Mrs. Bland from Washington, January 18, 1875. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 09 
 
 politics as a science involving a knowledge of what is worst and basest 
 in human nature and necessitating habitual appeal to it. If it is fortu 
 nately true that such habits of thought and action are characteristic neither 
 of Massachusetts nor Louisiana, it is true that in every state in the Union 
 the social demoralization and political corruption due to civil war greatly 
 increased the number and the influence of such men men whom the stu 
 dent of politics, cultivating calmness of thought and the habit of reserva 
 tion in statement should be slow to describe publicly as scoundrels, no 
 matter how, for the sake of strict scientific accuracy, he may classify them 
 in his private categories. Among such men, greatly increased everywhere 
 by civil war, the commercial imperialism of 1866 to i876 found its ready 
 instruments as it did once more when, from 1896 to 1900, it was seeking 
 means of undoing Mr. Eland's work, and of controlling the democratic 
 party organization in Missouri and elsewhere against him. 
 
 The stand taken by Sumner and Seward in the east, by Brown, Schurz 
 and Blair in Missouri, and finally by Horace Greeley in the campaign of 
 1 872, checked imperialism for a generation, but to those who saw only the 
 surface phenomena of the time, the defeat of Greeley seemed to be a con 
 clusive indorsement of the policies he opposed. The currency was accord 
 ingly put on an "international" basis, and the policies of the campaign of 
 i872 were accentuated for i876. General Butler was kept at the front 
 with his Civil Rights bill, and a still more radical measure for military 
 control of elections. While the atmosphere of New York City, and of 
 Washington was fetid with the reek of political scandal ; while in politics, 
 national, state and municipal, the public was plundered by "rings" of every 
 description, while the public domain, and the public treasury were being 
 surrendered to an unscrupulous and desperate plutocracy, wholly foreign 
 in idea to America, and to a considerable extent foreign in actual resi 
 dence, the issues of civil war sectionalism were kept alive by attacks on 
 the pride and prejudices of a people conquered, and stripped to the skin. 
 The thinking American of southern birth who, forced to choose between 
 
90 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the principles represented on one side by Charles Sumner and on the other 
 by Jefferson Davis, would unhesitatingly choose those of Sumner, may be, 
 from Sumner's own standpoint, the more fully justified in the utmost de 
 testation for policies which deliberately wrung the human heart to increase 
 the percentage of banking profits, and which the better to control the tax 
 ing power, cunningly impelled the passionate and the ignorant to violence 
 and bloodshed. 
 
 The contest over the election and Civil Rights bill grew more intense 
 -as the presidential year approached. "Mr. Bland told me that six mem 
 bers of the House died as a result of the strain of the fight over the Civil 
 Rights bill," writes Mrs. Bland, t Mr. Eland's letters at this period were 
 written hurriedly in the brief intervals of the struggle, but even in their 
 most hasty and disconnected annotations of the time, they have a lasting 
 value as illustrations of the intensity of the contest. 
 
 It was the policy of the New York bankers, and the protected interests 
 of Pennsylvania to contest on the democratic side the issues which they 
 forced on the republican. In pursuance of this policy they supported S. S. 
 Cox and Samuel J. Randall, both patriotic men of many admirable quali 
 ties, representing interests which at times were more conflicting than those 
 of the north and south. Mr. Cox represented a constituency largely con 
 trolled by newspapers and banks, capitalized in whole or part in London. 
 This capitalization was used in the interests of the gold standard but in 
 favor of a lower tariff which would admit English goods. The Pennsyl 
 vania constituency represented by Mr. Randall was equally in favor of the 
 gold standard, but was opposed to any tariff which would admit English 
 goods. It was on the division between these interests, with Mr. Daniel 
 Manning to represent the banks and the London "international currency" 
 interest in the control of the treasury, that the democratic party was al 
 lowed to seat President Cleveland in 1885. 
 
 Both Mr. Randall and Mr. Cox were strong and sincere men, largely 
 
 fReminiscences of Mr. Bland written for this book. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 9 1 
 
 representative in their public work of sectional and class interests, but even 
 in their representative capacity, accustomed to assert their own individu 
 ality, Mr. Cox was largely instrumental in the preliminary work of demon 
 etizing silver, and Mr. Randall did more than anyone else, perhaps, to make 
 an approximation to free trade impossible for the nineteenth century. But 
 though they were thus radically opposed to Mr. Bland, he showed his 
 usual candor of intellect and kindness of heart in speaking of them. In a 
 speech of April 19, 1880, on the death of Mr. Cox, he said : 
 
 "When I first came to Congress in 1873, I found Mr. Cox a member 
 of the House. He had served many terms prior to that. I had never met 
 him before. His reputation at that time as an orator was world-wide; 
 consequently I was anxious to meet him and hear him speak. My ad 
 miration for the man grew upon me as I became more familiar with him. 
 The Forty-third Congress to which I have alluded gave many occasions 
 for the display of his oratory, wit and humor. Mr. Elaine was speaker. 
 Gen. Butler of Massachusetts was then the acknowledged leader on the 
 republican side. 
 
 "Gen. Butler, with all his great ability and pertinacity, pressed what 
 were then known as the Force bill and the Civil Rights bill. He succeeded 
 in passing the Civil Rights bill, but through the dilatory tactics of the 
 democratic party, led by Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania (whose death, but 
 a week ago we were called to mourn), with Mr. Cox as our great cham 
 pion in debate, the Force bill was defeated. Justice requires me to say in 
 passing that the strict impartiality shown by Mr. Elaine, the speaker, dur 
 ing this memorable contest excited the highest warmth of admiration from 
 his political opponents. In that fight there were two great men and great 
 characters brought more prominently than before into public notice. These 
 were Samuel J. Randall and Samuel Sullivan Cox. 
 
 "My service here with Mr. Cox began in the Forty-third Congress, and 
 was continuous except in the Forty-ninth Congress while he was minister 
 to Turkey. I was fortunate enough to have a seat by him for two years. 
 In this way I learned to know him as a friend. From overwork and 
 cares incident to public life I was in failing health. Mr. Cox took great 
 interest in my case. He gave me the benefit of his advice and experience 
 for he was never robust himself. His amiable disposition threw a halo of 
 sunshine around his companions. As my health was gradually restored, 
 I used to tell him it was all due to his cheerful company and bouyant tem 
 perament. 
 
92 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 "Mr. Cox loved the Union for the Union's sake. His voice and his 
 vote were potential in the war for the Union. When resistance to the 
 Union ceased, his 'cause of war* ceased. He had no resentments. His 
 voice was raised for peace and amnesty. He labored to restore the Union 
 by constitutional methods. 
 
 "The unhappy people of the south in their struggle for restored liberty 
 under our constitution had no truer or abler champion than he. The idea 
 of state government taught by Jefferson, that we now call 'home rule/ 
 was a cardinal principle with him. No man living or dead did more in 
 those halls than he to cement our people in the sublime principles of 
 union and justice. 
 
 "His great victories were achievements of intellect, the trophies of 
 valor won in the arena of debate. His walks were the walks of peace ; his 
 ambition was tempered by justice and mercy. His boundless sympathy 
 took in loving embrace the oppressed everywhere. His smile was the 
 delight of his companions. In it was the well-spring of a perpetual youth. 
 He approached the allotted three score and ten, yet had he lived a century 
 he would have died young. Neither age nor physical infirmity could 
 wrinkle his sunny face, quench the fire of his eye, or blight the evergreen 
 in his soul. 
 
 "Our ideas associate the better world beyond with peace and joy, mirth 
 and song. If this be true, death for him was only the lifting of the thin 
 veil separating time from eternity. As he left this, so he stepped upon the 
 other shore. There was no change." 
 
 As Mr. Bland could say this so readily and sincerely of men from 
 whose opinions on vital issues of political economy he dissented so radi 
 cally as he did from Messrs. Cox and Randall, it is certain that he would 
 wish to have equal concessions made to the sincerity and patriotism of 
 many of the republicans whom, with Cox and Randall, he opposed in the 
 bitter sectional struggle of the times. To many of them, as individuals, 
 no less praise is due than to Mr. Cox and Mr. Randall, but back of the 
 party struggle of the times were the great issues of progress and reaction 
 of popular government against oligarchy. These are not sectional, but for 
 the time being, they can be made to appear so as they were in 1875 when 
 the masses, north and south, believed they were supporting the funda 
 mental principles of popular government, in what appears now with cer 
 tainty to have been a struggle forced by plutocratic influences. This was 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 93 
 
 only vaguely suspected in 1875, however, and it is because they were writ 
 ten from the standpoint of 1875 rather than of 1900, that these extracts 
 from Mr. Eland's letters to Mrs. Bland, given in the next chapter, have 
 their greatest historical value. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 Mr. Bland Describes the Struggle of the Democratic Minority Against the Force 
 Bill and the Civil Rights Bill. The Roll Call on a Motion to Adjourn as the 
 Last Resort of Constitutional Government. The Fight of 1875 in Congress to 
 Control the Presidential Election ot 1876. The Scott Subsidy and the Attempt 
 to Control Distribution through an Increase of Tariff Taxation. The Senate 
 allows the Force Bill to Fail. 
 
 HE letters which follow were written by Mr. Bland to Mrs. 
 Bland, generally in the intervals between roll calls in the 
 House during the "fillibustering" which gave the more con 
 servative republicans of the Senate an opportunity to evade 
 
 the direct issue of systematizing and perpetuating the use of the army at 
 
 the polls: 
 
 A MINORITY WITH ITS BACK TO THE WALL. 
 
 WASHINGTON, January 27, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "We are now fillibustering on the Civil Rights bill, Butler having re 
 ported a new one; we are moving to adjourn, and making all kinds of mo 
 tions so as to stave it off. I expect we will be here all day and all night. We 
 have taken three votes on the roll call to adjourn, and now have another. 
 The excitement is getting greater all the time. The galleries are full of 
 fifteenth amendmenters, and all other kinds of people. I sent you a 
 Record of yesterday showing the vote on the amendment to the Constitu 
 tion. It was defeated two-thirds not voting in the affirmative. I have just 
 stopped and voted aye to adjourn. This is the fourth vote. 'Old Ben' 
 looks smiling, and I suppose will call for his dinner again.* It looks like 
 fighting now, and I suppose we will have it from now on till the adjourn 
 ment. This is the 27th of January only one more month. I am so glad 
 to see the days pass these 'long days/ " 
 
 *During the progress of the "fillibustering" General Butler had ordered his dinner served at his desk 
 in the House. 
 
 94 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 95 
 
 ROLL CALLS AS A LAST HOPE. 
 
 WASHINGTON, January 28, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "Ever since I wrote yesterday we have had a continuous roll call, so 
 that for twenty-four hours I have not slept, nor been absent, but have 
 answered every roll call. The atmosphere in the House would kill a mule 
 in time, and if we are not all made sick it will be a wonder. We have no 
 expectation of any change before Saturday night at 12:00 o'clock, and 
 then we will quit for Sunday. This will be four days and nights without 
 rest. I do not know how we will manage it, but will have to get some 
 sleep or we can not hold out. It is a question of physical endurance. The 
 radicals have three to one, and can rest each other. In this foul atmos 
 phere about one hundred Africans slept all night in the lobbies, and I 
 suppose thought every vote would bring them their 'civil rights/ 'Old 
 Ben' got pretty well worn out, and has gone to take a rest to be ready to 
 night, I suppose, and well I have stopped again to vote for the fiftieth 
 or hundredth time to adjourn, since yesterday. The roll goes on and on, 
 and will, I suppose, until Sunday. I hear them sighing all around me, 
 and they are a sleepy looking set. I have just passed between two tellers 
 for calling the ayes and noes for adjournment. The roll goes on again, 
 so we have three motions now pending one to adjourn now. one to ad 
 journ over till Friday, and one until Saturday, and have to call the roll 
 on all of them, which will take over an hour. When we get all these calls, 
 then we go through the entire process again and again, and we will do so 
 until a physical breakdown overcomes one side or the other. Give my 
 love to little Virgie, and kiss her for papa. My whole heart to her and 
 mamma. I am too tired to write more." 
 
 ONE HOUR'S SLEEP IN FORTY-SIX. 
 
 WASHINGTON, January 30, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "This is Saturday, the 3Oth, and I am glad the month is about out. 
 I wrote two notes, not letters, yesterday. I wrote the first and mailed it 
 about 10:00 o'clock in the morning; half an hour afterward we adjourned 
 and I wrote another, or tried to, but was so sleepy and tired and nervous 
 that I could not write, and went home, and slept about three hours before 
 night, then got up and walked around awhile, and went to bed about half- 
 past nine, and got up about nine this morning, so I feel refreshed, and am 
 well and all right. I don't think I am hurt much, though I am sore about 
 
96 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the muscles. We had a session of forty-six hours, and I slept only about 
 one hour during that time. I was on hand at about every roll call. It will 
 take all day to read the Record. We wore the radicals out." 
 
 READY FOR MORE FILIBUSTERING. 
 
 WASHINGTON, January 31, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "The House adjourned Saturday, and I have had plenty of sleep and 
 rest, and am ready for more fillibustering, if necessary. The radicals say 
 they will amend the rules as to present the Civil Rights bill next week. 
 If they do, then they will pass the bill. Well, we will have to let them take 
 the responsibility, and I expect they will pass it in some shape, but not in 
 the terms of the Senate bill. We whipped them, made them adjourn at 
 any rate, and that was quite a victory, though it cost us the loss of two 
 nights' sleep, and we were almost whipped ourselves when the adjourn 
 ment came. I never felt so glad to hear the House adjourn before." 
 
 THE RULES AMENDED. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 2. 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 ''The radicals have succeeded to-day in so amending the rules as to 
 prevent fillibustering, and now they can pass anything they please. I 
 suppose that in a day or so they will pass the Civil Rights bill, and end that 
 controversy. Let them pass it, for it will hurt them more than anyone 
 else, in my opinion. The galleries are crowded full, and back of me there 
 are about five hundred negroes. It is suffocating." 
 
 THE FORCE BILL. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 8, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "This is Monday, and what may come up before we get through, I 
 can not tell, but I expect some mischief. Now you have got the papers 
 showing all about the excitement over the Civil Rights bill. I have written 
 you most of the matters of interest connected with it. We are threatened 
 now with legislation to put the south under Grant's military rule. It is 
 hard to tell where the radicals will stop, for the last elections have so en 
 raged and alarmed them that they seem entirely desperate. The lobby is 
 full, and all kinds of schemes are on foot to get money from the treasury. 
 
STATUE OF ANDREW^TACKSON. 
 
 PEACE MONUMENT. 
 
 STATUE OF LAFAYETTE. 
 
 ARLINGTON, FORMER HOME OF GEN. R. E. LEE. 
 
 SCENES IN AND NEAR WASHINGTON. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 97 
 
 I have no doubt that we will have an exciting time from now on, and the 
 people are watching very closely what takes place here." 
 
 VINDICTIVE AND DIABOLICAL MEASURES. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 12, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "The republican caucus has agreed on the most vindictive and dia 
 bolical measures possible for the overthrow of the southern states, and to 
 carry the next presidential election. Nothing but a united and full demo 
 cratic delegation can possibly prevent their success. We are on the tariff 
 bill to-day, and it causes great excitement, for it proposes largely increased 
 taxation for the purpose, no doubt, of getting money to maintain a large 
 standing army in the south. The truth is, the country is in imminent 
 danger from the revolutionary intentions and acts of Grant and his party." 
 
 A STORMY TIME EXPECTED. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 14, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "We were on private bills yesterday most of the time, and nothing of 
 note transpired. After Saturday the ten days for suspension of the rules 
 will begin, and from that time on I expect we will have night sessions and 
 a stormy time generally. I am so glad February is half out. It begins 
 to look short now. I have a desperately mean pen, but don't know if I 
 am not writing better with it than I would with a good one. Beck is 
 said to be getting on very well with his broken arm, and will soon be out 
 again. Wood (Fernando) looks as dignified and fine as ever. Holman 
 still fights appropriations, and is called the 'Watch dog of the Treasury/ 
 The Missouri delegation are very quiet this session, making no speeches. 
 I may make one yet, though it is doubtful, for I think it about as well to 
 wait till next winter." 
 
 A VOTE AGAINST SUBSIDY. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 22, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "We had a vote to suspend the rules in favor of Tom Scott's Texas 
 Pacific Railroad to-day. I voted against the radicals, and have incurred 
 the displeasure of the St. Louis Republican. I expect all the St. Louis 
 
 7 
 
9$ AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 papers will take me to task for my vote, but I can not help it for I am op 
 posed to all subsidies. It would help St. Louis, but I do not think it right 
 to tax the people for the benefit of private corporations. I am certain I 
 voted right, and that ends it. We will have night sessions most of the 
 time from now on, but I don't care for that, for it helps to pass the time." 
 
 CONTROLLING THE PRODUCER THROUGH HIS PRODUCT. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 24, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "The tariff bill passed last night. It may not pass the Senate, but I 
 expect it will. I have great hopes that we will get through without any 
 more oppressive legislation for the south, yet the Grant radicals are deter 
 mined to force it if possible." 
 
 A SLEEPLESS STRUGGLE. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 25, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "I hope you will pardon me if I do not write a long letter this time. 
 I have been in the House since yesterday at 10 o'clock. We are all on the 
 'southern force bill/ and have beat the radicals so far by fillibustering. We 
 have gained one day on them and are still at the fight. I have not slept at 
 all, and am quite uneasy and nervous. A certain number of democrats 
 have to stay here without sleep or rest to make the fight, as some of the 
 others shirk and go off. Those of us who stay will endure as long as 
 physical endurance will last, and fight it out. The picture I sent you of 
 the Mead lock' on the Civil Rights bill is a pretty good representation of the 
 House then, as well as now, and will answer both cases quite as well. 
 You need not be uneasy about me, for I think I can stand it as long as any 
 radical, and it will not make me sick. I will take the best care of myself 
 I can." 
 
 STILL THE FORCE BILL. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 26, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "We had a hard time over the southern force bill, as I wrote you yes 
 terday, and it is not over yet. We adjourned last evening about 5 o'clock, 
 and I went to bed at six in the evening, and got up at seven this morning; 
 so I had a good rest. We will begin the fight to-day again, and continue 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 99 
 
 it as long as a dilatory motion can be made. We may be in session all 
 night again ; in fact we will have but little rest from now on, day or night, 
 till adjournment. One great trouble of these night sessions is the injury 
 to the eye. The light is so brilliant at night that with the loss of sleep 
 it almost invariably hurts the eyes. My eyes were in a bad condition last 
 night, and they are a good deal inflamed this morning, so much that it 
 hurts them to read and write." 
 
 AN INCREASE OF GRAY HAIRS. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 27, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "This is Saturday, and I am glad the time draws near for adjourn 
 ment. W T e are still on the southern force bill, and may be all night again. 
 We did not have to stay up last night, of which I am glad, for it tells se 
 verely on our health and comfort, and you will find that I have got many 
 more gray hairs than when I left. At least I think so, and feel so. We 
 have had a desperately hard time of it, and the weather has been so bad 
 that it has been very trying on us. There is hardly a member who is not 
 suffering from complaints brought on by so much loss of sleep and confine 
 ment. The galleries are much crowded to-day. We will have a warm 
 time of it on this bill. If we can keep it from being reported to the Senate 
 till Monday, it will be defeated, but I fear we will not be able to do it." 
 
 THE SENATE FAILS GRANT. 
 
 WASHINGTON, February 28, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "We fillibustered all day yesterday, and up to 12 o'clock last night, 
 when the southern force bill passed. One object, however, was accom 
 plished, for we desired to keep it from passing so as to be reported to the 
 Senate before Monday, and we did so, for the Senate got tired waiting, 
 and adjourned. That will defeat it in the Senate for they can not get it 
 up in time to pass it. So we have killed the main bill for the re 
 election of Grant or some other radical. The Civil Rights bill has passed 
 the Senate, and will be a law, but it is of very little consequence compared 
 with the one we have killed by timely fillibustering." 
 
 MR. BLAND THREATENED WITH CENSURE. 
 (From an undated letter of 1875, to Mrs. Bland) 
 
 "I send Record. On page 21 you will find where they sought to cen 
 sure me for not voting so as to make a quorum. No business could be 
 
100 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 done unless a quorum voted. The democrats refused to vote so as to pre 
 vent any business pertaining to the southern force bill from being done. 
 Clements wanted to make me vote, and Butler wanted to make Randall 
 of Pensylvania vote, but they could not succeed, for that required a quo 
 rum also. I would have been expelled before I would have voted, and by 
 that made a quorum to pass the bill." 
 
 WASHINGTON, March 2, 1875. 
 (To Mrs. Bland.) 
 
 "We had a session nearly all last night, and I suppose we will have 
 but little sleep until we adjourn, you must excuse this short letter. I am 
 worked down, and very tired. I hardly know whaf I write." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Mr. Bland Reviews his Own Connection with the Struggle for American Popular 
 Control of American Mints and the American Treasury. Currency Legislation 
 from the Demonetization Act of 1873 to the Bankers' Panic and the Renewed 
 Struggle for Demonetization in the Last Decade of the Century. How "the 
 Crime of 1873" was Perpetrated. Mr. Bland Appointed to the Committee on 
 Mines and Mining. The Banks Bill and the First Sixteen-to-One Free Coinage 
 Bill. The Silver Commission of the Forty-Fourth Congress. The Bland Free 
 Coinage Bill and the Allison Amendment. The Hayes Veto and the Votes of 
 Messrs. McKinley, Carlisle and Others to pass the Bill over it. The Demand of 
 the Bondholders for the Privilege of Issuing and Controlling the Currency. 
 The London Bankers and their New York and Western Agents Raid the Treas 
 ury, Contract Credits and Compel Panic as a means of Securing a Currency of 
 Corporation Notes for the Public and the Payment of their own Bonds in Gold. 
 England Demonetizes Silver in India to aid Them. At the Parting of the 
 Ways with Wall Street. Mr. Bland Forces the Issues Which Compelled the 
 Chicago Platform and the Campaign of 1896. He Points out the only Possible 
 Course for the Democratic Party in the Future. 
 
 BY R. P. BLAND. 
 
 (In 1895, Mr. Bland delivered a series of lectures in the south and west, reviewing currency legis 
 lation from the demonetization of silver in 1873 to the repeal of the silver purchasing clause of the Sher 
 man act under the second Cleveland administration. In preparing himself for these lectures, he wrote a 
 paper which was found by Mrs. Bland among his other papers after his death. It gives from his 
 own standpoint and as a result of his own experience and observation, a resume of the history of twenty 
 years of currency control. As the control of the currency and the taxing power was the real issue of the 
 sectional demonstration of 1875, which followed the demonetization of silver in 1873, Mr. Eland's own 
 reviews of two decades of currency legislation is given here as vital for an understanding of the 
 reality back of the false pretenses of politics. What follows in this entire chapter is from his manu 
 script.) 
 
 O COMPREHEND the silver question, and the battles fought 
 in Congress for the free coinage of silver for twenty years, it 
 is necessary to begin with the act of 1873 tne ac t which 
 demonetized the standard silver dollar. From the passage 
 of our first mint act in 1792 until the demonetization act of 1873, the 
 standard silver dollar, 371 1-4 grains of pure silver, was the unit of account 
 or standard of value. The amount of pure silver in this dollar was never 
 altered, whereas the gold dollar had been twice changed. For over eighty 
 years and up to 1873 the standard silver dollar, as now coined in pure silver 
 
 was the unit of our coinage. The act of 1873 was entitled "An act revis- 
 
 101 
 
102 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ing and amending the laws relating to the mints and the assay offices and 
 the coinage of the United States." This act contains in all sixty-seven 
 sections and deals with the management of the mints and assay offices. The 
 title of the act and the context indicate its sole purpose to be to amend 
 details relating to the management of mints, assay offices and the coinage. 
 There is nothing whatever in the title of the act giving notice that its pur 
 pose was to displace the old silver unit and to put in its stead the gold 
 dollar as the unit of value; nothing to indicate a purpose to prohibit the 
 coinage of the old silver unit that had had the right of free coinage at our 
 mints and full legal tender from the foundation of the government up to 
 that time. Notwithstanding the act contains sixty-seven sections in all, 
 there was no important change in the law relating to the mints and assay 
 offices and the coinage, excepting that part prohibiting the coinage of the 
 standard silver dollar and substituting the gold dollar for the silver dollar 
 as the unit of account. In further proof of the surreptitious nature of 
 this revolutionary change from the silver unit to the gold unit from the 
 law providing for the free coinage of both gold and silver to the law that 
 prohibited the coinage of any full legal tender money except gold it is 
 only necessary to refer to the manner in which this important change in 
 our "monetary system was brought about. The change could have been 
 made in a few words and in one section had the authors of the bill gone to 
 work openly to accomplish their purpose ; but instead of that, the work of 
 demonetization was done by piecemeal, by indirection and evidently in a 
 stealthy manner. The sections that aid this are sections 14, 15, i7, 20 and 
 21. Section 14 provides that the gold coin of the United States shall be a 
 one dollar piece, which at the standard weight of 25 8-10 grains shall be 
 the unit of value. There is nothing in the title of the act to indicate such 
 a purpose as this and before this section occurs, and this change is made, 
 there are thirteen other sections preceding it, dealing only with the man 
 agement of the mint. Section 15 provides that silver coins of the 
 United States shall be a trade dollar ; a half dollar, or fifty cent piece ; a 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 103 
 
 quarter dollar, or twenty-five cent piece; a dime, or ten cent piece; and 
 that the weight of the trade dollar shall be 420 grains troy. It further 
 provides that these coins shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for 
 any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment, putting the trade 
 dollar and the fractional coins on the same level as to legal tender, limiting 
 them all to five dollars only. It will be noted that the silver dollar, 371 1-4 
 grains pure silver, or 412 1-2 grains standard silver, which had been coined 
 freely up to that time was dropped from the list of silver coins ; yet, the 
 work was not quite done and before the accomplishment of their purpose, 
 it was necessary to conceal the object by putting in the intervening section 
 (section 16) relating to minor coins, or nickels and coppers. Then comes 
 section i7, which completes the work begun in section 15. Section i7 
 provides that no coins either of gold, silver or minor coinage, shall here 
 after be issued from the mint other than those of the denominations, stand 
 ards and weights herein set forth. Section 15 had set forth the silver 
 coins authorized to be struck at our mints, purposely leaving out the silver 
 dollar; so that section i7 clinches the work by inhibiting the coinage of 
 any silver pieces except the coins named in section 15. Section 14, above 
 quoted, had already provided for the coinage of the gold dollar piece as the 
 unit of value; a quarter eagle, or $2.50 piece; a $5 piece, or half eagle; an 
 eagle, or a $10 piece; and a double eagle, or a $20 piece. Section 20 pro 
 vides that any owner of gold bullion may deposit the same at any mint 
 to be formed into coin or bars for his benefit, giving free and unlimited 
 coinage to gold. Section 21 provides that the owner of silver bullion may 
 deposit the same at any mint to be formed into bars or into dollars of 420 
 grains troy, designated in this act as trade dollars, and no deposit of silver 
 for other coinage shall be received ; thus absolutely inhibiting all coinage of 
 full legal tender standard silver money. The trade dollar was not made a 
 legal tender except in sums of $5, being put on the same plane with frac 
 tional or subsidiary coin, while gold was made the unit of value and given 
 unlimited coinage at our mints. While it is evident from the manner in 
 
104 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 which this revolution in our monetary system was accomplished, that it 
 was done in an indirect and stealthy manner, yet it was the most important 
 and far-reaching legislation on money ever enacted by our government. 
 Even the trade dollar was finally struck from the list of coins. By the act 
 of July 22, 1 876, the coinage of the trade dollar was suspended, except 
 that it could be coined in the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 while its legal tender character was repealed. The act of February 9, 
 i887, authorized the retirement and recoinage of the trade dollar by ex 
 changing standard silver dollars for all trade dollars at that time outstand 
 ing, prohibited its further coinage and ordered its recoinage into standard 
 silver dollars. The act of February 12, 1873, was passed in the closing 
 days of the last session of the Forty-second Congress. I was first elected 
 to Congress in November, i872 ; the term of service began on the fourth of 
 March, 1873, not quite one month after silver was demonetized. The 
 Fortv-third Congress assembled in regular session in December, 1873, 
 about ten months after the passage of the act demonetizing silver. James 
 G. Elaine, of Maine, was chosen speaker of the House. During the whole 
 Forty-third Congress the silver question was not alluded to. Both Con 
 gress and the country were entirely ignorant of the effect of the act of 
 February 12, 1873. Mr. Blaine himself, who, at the time of the passage 
 of the act of 1873 was speaker of the House, a few years afterwards stated 
 in the Senate that he was not aware of the effect of the act demonetizing 
 silver. The Forty-third Congress, however, very elaborately considered 
 the currency question. At that time neither gold or silver were in circula 
 tion ; but little attention was paid to coin money by Congress or the masses 
 of the people. Only an interested few, money dealers and bondholders, 
 seem to have been let into the secret of the change in our system of coinage 
 effected in 1873. We were on a paper basis ; consequently the discussions of 
 the currency question related entirely to the greenback circulation. The 
 Forty-third Congress passed what was commonly called at that time the 
 Inflation Act. This act increased the greenback circulation to four hundred 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 105 
 
 millions of dollars, but was vetoed by President Grant. This so-called 
 "Inflation Act" was passed during the first session of the Forty-third 
 Congress and was intended to meet the difficulties of the country at that 
 time an attempted retirement of the greenbacks having produced alarm 
 in the country and brought on a disastrous panic. At the last, or short 
 session, of the Forty-third Congress, the resumption law, so called, was 
 passed, providing for the resumption of specie payments to take place on 
 the first day of January, 1879. This law gave power to the secretary of 
 the treasury to sell the character and description of bonds authorized by the 
 act of July 14, i87o, known as the Refunding Act. These bonds were paya 
 ble in coin of the standard value of that date, July 14, i87o. The standard 
 coins of July 14, i87o, were the silver dollar as the unit of account, having 
 full legal tender power and free coinage; and also the gold dollar and its 
 multiples as now coined. These bonds were based upon the bimetallic 
 system of free coinage of gold and silver at the ratio then prevailing of 
 15.98 to i (commonly called 16 to i), and the ratio at which we have 
 subsequently coined over four hundred millions of silver standard dollars. 
 It is under the authority of the resumption law that the power is still 
 claimed to exist to sell bonds for resumption purposes and under this 
 alleged authority our late bond sales took place. It will be seen, that in 
 the Forty-third Congress, the law was passed, the purpose of which was 
 ultimately to retire the greenbacks and go to a coin basis. Congress, 
 prior to that had prohibited the coinage of anything but gold as a full legal 
 tender money, so that the act of 1873, passed in the Forty-second Con 
 gress, demonetized silver and the act passed in the subsequent Forty-third 
 Congress, providing for the resumption of specie payments, was evidently 
 intended to compel a resumption of specie payments on the single gold 
 standard of payments.* Thus the Forty- third Congress adjourned, leav 
 ing on the statute books the law of the Forty-second Congress demonetizing 
 silver, and the law of the Forty-third Congress requiring the resumption of 
 
 *This is a point of fundamental importance. 
 
106 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 specie payments in 1879. These two acts, had no intervening legislation 
 occurred, would have necessarily forced the country to resumption on the 
 single gold basis. I was elected to the Forty-fourth Congress. The 
 House of the Forty-fourth Congress being Democratic, elected Mr. M. C. 
 Kerr, of Indiana, speaker. I was appointed chairman of the committee 
 on mines and mining. This committee did not have charge of the coinage 
 question proper; but General Banks, of Massachusetts, a member of the 
 House, introduced a bill and referred it to our committee. The object and 
 title of his bill was to "utilize the product of the gold and silver mines of 
 the United States." The bill provided for the deposit of gold and silver 
 bullion with various assay offices and authorized the issuing of certificates 
 of deposit thereon these certificates showing the weight and the fineness 
 of the bullion deposited. The holders of the certificates to be paid in bul 
 lion of the weight and fineness and of the kind and amount deposited, 
 on presentation of the certificate. These certificates were not made 
 money or a legal tender for any purpose. No provision was made 
 in the bill for the coinage of the bullion. In fact the government 
 was made a mere depository for the bullion and was not to become 
 the owner. The idea of the author seems to have been that the certifi 
 cates would have gone into use in mercantile transactions without 
 having any legal tender power. The committee on mines and mining was 
 composed of the following members: Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, 
 chairman ; Jacob Turney, of Pensylvania ; Milton J. Durham, of Kentucky ; 
 Allen Potter, of Michigan ; N. Holmes O'Dell, of New York ; Randall N. 
 Gibson, of Louisiana; Alexander Campbell, of Illinois; James L. Evans, 
 of Indiana; William Woodburn, of Nevada; Lucian B. Cosswell, of 
 Wisconsin ; and John R. Lynch, of Mississippi. About the time that this 
 bill was referred to our committee, the silver question was being discussed 
 in Congress and especially in the Senate. I am not informed as to how the 
 secret of the act of 1873 was found out, or who first discovered the mischief 
 wrought by it. I can say, however, that the first information I had of the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 107 
 
 demonetization of silver came from Senator Bogy, of Missouri. Whether 
 he was the first in Congress to unearth this infamy, I do not know; I can 
 only say that possibly others may have discovered it before him. The 
 first great speech, upon the subject in either House was made by Senator 
 Jones, of Nevada, in the Senate during the first session of the Forty- fourth 
 Congress. It was one of the ablest speeches made at that or any other 
 time upon this subject and it attracted world-wide attention. In the mean 
 time the committee on mines and mining took up the Banks Bullion bill, 
 and after several weeks' consideration reported it back to the House with 
 a free coinage provision. The bill as thus amended was reported back 
 to the House, providing for the free coinage of silver into standard silver 
 dollars at the exact ratio of 16 to I. The idea was to make it exactly 16 to 
 i. The ratio, prevailing at the time silver was demonetized was 15.98 to 
 i, which as stated before, is still the legal ratio. Our committee was not 
 a privileged committee; that is, we were not authorized to report at any 
 time for consideration. Our only opportunity for consideration was during 
 what was called "the morning hour." At a stated time each morning 
 committees were called in their order for bills for consideration. When a 
 bill was called up in the morning hour, only one hour was allotted for its 
 consideration. If not disposed of during the hour it went over and was 
 called up again in the morning hour of the next day, and so on from day to 
 day until disposed of. This bill was called up in the morning hour, but 
 no vote could be reached on the bill because of "filibustering" motions. 
 A motion to adjourn and a roll call on this motion would consume at least 
 half an hour. Another motion would be made for a recess and a roll call 
 on that would consume at least another half hour. Thus two roll calls 
 consumed the whole hour, defeating a vote on the bill. The bill was 
 thus "fillibustered" for about three months, until the final adjournment of 
 the first session of the Forty- fourth Congress in August, i876. The chief 
 actors in these obstructive tactics were A. S. Hewitt, of New York, and 
 Eugene Hale, of Maine. The Presidential election took place in Novem- 
 
IOS AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ber, 1 876, and also the election of members to the Forty-fifth Congress. 
 I was elected again as a member of the Forty-fifth Congress. The Forty- 
 fourth Congress held its last or short session, beginning on the first 
 Monday in December, i876. The over-shadowing question during that 
 session was who had been elected President of the United States, and the 
 great contest between Mr. Tilden and Mr. Hayes was fought out during 
 this session. About a week after the assembling of the last session of 
 the Forty-fourth Congress and on December 13, i876, I offered as a 
 substitute for the Banks bill and the amendments, a bill for the free coinage 
 of silver into standard silver -dollars, 371 1-4 grains pure silver, or 412 1-2 
 grains standard silver, thus restoring the old dollar at the old ratio the 
 dollar that is now in circulation. This substitute was adopted by the 
 House and the bill passed. It was sent to the Senate, but was never taken 
 up or acted upon in the Senate. It was during the first session oi the Forty- 
 fourth Congress that the Silver commission was authorized, by joint resolu 
 tion, August 5, 1 876, to inquire into the silver question and the money 
 question generally. This commission as organized, consisted of John P. 
 Jones, Louis V. Bogy and George S. Boutwell, of the Senate, and Randall 
 L. Gibson, George Willard and Richard P. Bland on the part of the House ; 
 with experts from private life, William Groesbeck, of Ohio, and Prof. 
 Bowen, of Massachusetts. George N. Weston, of Maine, was appointed 
 secretary. This commission investigated the subject of the demonetiza 
 tion of silver, making an exhaustive report to Congress on March 2, i877. 
 The Forty-fourth Congress adjourned without having finally acted upon 
 the silver question, and the subject-matter went over until the Forty-fifth 
 Congress. Mr. Hayes was inaugurated President and called an extra ses 
 sion of the Forty-fifth Congress to meet on the fifteenth of October, i877. 
 Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, was elected speaker of the House. On 
 November 5, of this special session, I moved the suspension of the rules 
 and had passed" a bill for the free coinage of silver, which was substantially 
 the same as the House had passed in the Forty-fourth Congress. The 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 109 
 
 bill went to the Senate and Mr. Allison, from the committee of finance in 
 the Senate, reported it back, striking out the free coinage part and inserting 
 a provision for the purchase of not less than two million nor more than 
 four million dollars, worth of silver bullion per month, and requiring the 
 bullion to be coined into silver dollars provided for in the House bill. 
 The bill as thus amended, passed the Senate and finally passed the House. 
 It was vetoed by President Hayes, but was passed over his veto in both 
 Houses on the twenty-eighth of February, i878, thus becoming the law 
 commonly known as the "Bland-Allison Act." The free coinage bill 
 as it passed the House received more than a two-thirds vote.* It will 
 be observed in the record as given that the following prominent public 
 men voted for the free coinage bill as it passed the House : Mr. Cannon, 
 of Illinois, a member elect to the Fifty-fourth Congress; Mr. Carlisle, of 
 Kentucky, afterwards secretary of the treasury under Mr. Cleveland; 
 Mr. Foster, of Ohio, secretary of the treasury under Mr. Harrison's 
 administration; Mr. Herbert, afterwards secretary of the Navy; Mr. 
 McKinley, afterwards governor of Ohio (and President of the United 
 States); Mr. Mills, of Texas, afterwards senator from that state; and 
 Mr. Morrison, of Illinois, afterwards inter-state commerce commissioner. 
 The fact that most of these gentlemen, if not all of them, subsequently 
 changed their views upon this question should be attributed to the un 
 certainty of human opinion and of the action of public men; for surelv 
 silver restoration is as meritorious and is as necessary now as it was 
 
 then 
 
 Congress passed a concurrent resolution declaring that, under the law 
 of the United States, bonds issued under the refunding act of July 14, 
 i87o, and the resumption act of July 14, 1875, were payable at the option of 
 the government in standard silver dollars, 412 1-2 grains, or in gold coin 
 without violation of public faith. This resolution was passed in the 
 Senate by yeas 43, nays 22. In the House this concurrent resolution 
 
 *It required two-thirds to suspend the rules and pass it. 
 
1 10 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 passed, yeas 189, nays 7g, thus settling, beyond controversy, so far as the 
 people's representatives in Congress were concerned, that we have no 
 public debt whatever that is not legally payable at the option of the govern 
 ment in the standard gold and silver coins now struck at our mints. This 
 fact must be taken into account as it was taken into account at the time 
 when the question of the ratio was under consideration. Our debt was 
 based upon a bimetallic system consisting of gold and silver, with the free 
 coinage of both at the ratio prevailing in i87o the present legal ratio 
 15.98 to i, commonly called 16 to I. The fact that hostile legislation has 
 depressed and depreciated silver bullion, as compared to gold bullion, 
 is met and answered by the other fact that the demonetization of silver has 
 caused the appreciation of gold, and has made the difference between 
 the bullion value of gold and silver. It is obvious that the repeal of this 
 legislation will restore the position held by gold and silver at the time both 
 had free coinage at our mints, and that both can be coined at this ratio 
 without doing injustice to anyone. The relative value of the two coins 
 now in circulation is that of parity, and this parity would be maintained as 
 to all the coins that would be put into circulation under the bimetallic 
 system of free coinage at the present ratio. 
 
 The next contest fought over silver was of a minor character, relating 
 to the retirement and recoinage of the trade dollars. In the Forty-sixth 
 Congress, a free coinage bill was reported by A. J. Warner, of Ohio. 
 This bill was debated and considered for some days and finally passed the 
 House May 24, 1879, yeas 114, nays 97. The bill was never acted upon in 
 the Senate. The next fight occurred after the election of Mr. Cleveland in 
 1884. In Mr. Cleveland's first message, after he was elected President, 
 sent to the Forty-ninth Congress in which Mr. Carlisle was speaker, he 
 strongly insisted upon the repeal or suspension of the coinage of silver un 
 der what is called the Bland- Allison act. There was great pressure brought 
 to bear on Congress to secure the repeal of this act. The demand for the 
 repeal of this act came from the same sources that had opposed the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. Ill 
 
 restoration of the coinage of the standard silver dollar, and that had con 
 tinuously demanded the repeal of the Bland-Allison act. It originated 
 in the bank and bondholding circles of New York, the chambers of 
 commerce and boards of trade of that city. With the metropolitan press 
 on the eastern seaboard demanding the repeal of the silver law, an 
 effort was then made to create an alarm throughout the country. Indeed 
 a semi-panic feeling had been brought about by the clamors of the money 
 changers in New York and throughout the east, so that when Congress 
 met in December, 1885, the whole country was roused upon the silver 
 question. It was declared by the gold standard people that -any further 
 coinage of the standard silver dollar would bring disaster to the country. 
 On April 8, 1886, a vote was taken on a proposition to suspend the coinage 
 of silver dollars. The proposition was overwhelmingly defeated bv a 
 vote of 84 in favor of suspension and 201 against it; and a free coinage 
 bill offered by myself was defeated by a vote of 126 for and 163 against 
 it. Thus ended the effort to stop the coinage of silver; and thus also 
 terminated the endeavor to create a panic, for after it was ascertained that 
 it was impossible to suspend the coinage of silver, the gold standard people 
 ceased their croaking and the country went on as usual. The next battle 
 fought was after the election of Mr. Harrison as President; and in the 
 Fifty-first Congress. This Congress met on the first Monday in Decem 
 ber, 1889; Mr. Reed, of Maine, was elected speaker of the House, The 
 first vote taken in this Congress was on June 5, 1890, in the House of 
 Representatives, on the bill known as the Windom Silver Bullion Pur 
 chase bill. Mr. Conger, the chairman of the committee of coins, weights 
 and measures, offered a substitute for the Windom bill. The Conger bill 
 was also a bullion purchase bill, not a free coinage bill. I moved to 
 recommit this bullion purchase bill, with instructions that the committee 
 on coinage, weights and measures report back to the House a free coinage 
 bill. This motion was defeated, yeas 116, nays 140; and the substitute 
 offered by Mr. Conger was then passed, yeas 135, nays 119. Among the 
 
112 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 riembers .who voted for free coinage at that time, and were afterwards 
 members of the next House (the Fifty-fourth Congress), were Mr. 
 Abbott, of Texas ; Mr. Allen, of Mississippi ; Mr. Bankhead, of Alabama ; 
 Mr. Blanchard (afterwards a senator from Louisiana) ; Mr. Catch- 
 ings, of Mississippi; Mr. Clark, of Alabama; Mr. Cobb, of Alabama; Mr. 
 Craine, of Texas; Mr. Crisp, of Georgia; Mr. Culbertson, of Texas; Mr. 
 Dockery, of Missouri ; Mr. Herman, of Oregon ; Mr. Lester, of Georgia ; 
 Mr. McCreary, of Kentucky ; Mr. McCrea, of Arkansas ; Mr. Richardson, 
 of Tennessee; Mr. Robinson, of Louisiana; Mr. Sayers, of Texas; Mr. 
 Stockdale, of Mississippi; Mr. Tarsney, of Missouri; Mr, Tucker, of 
 Virginia; Mr. Turner, of Georgia; Mr. Washington, of Tennessee, and 
 Mr. Wheeler, of Alabama. The Conger bill was sent to the Senate, and 
 while the bill was pending in the Senate, Mr. Plumb, of Kansas offered 
 En amendment for the free coinage of silver which was agreed to, yeas 42, 
 nays 25. When this free coinage bill was sent to the House and a vote 
 taken on it (June 25), it was defeated by a vote of 135 yeas to 152 nays. 
 A conference committee was appointed on the part of the two Houses. 
 A majority of this committee agreed to a bill authorizing the purchase 
 of four million five hundred thousand ounces of silver bullion every 
 month, and the issuance of treasury notes in payment for the bullion so 
 purchased. This bill passed both Houses and became what is commonly 
 known as "the Sherman law." The total amount of silver purchased 
 under the Sherman act, as given by the director of the mint in his 
 annual report for the year 1894, was 168,674,682.53 ounces of fine silver. 
 This report shows that there has been coined of this bullion 38,531,143 
 silver dollars. The amount wasted by the assay offices and sold as 
 "sweeps" was 63,570.3? ounces fine silver, leaving a balance on November 
 the first 1894 of 138,809,681.28 ounces fine silver. The coining value of 
 the bullion in the treasury, according to this report, is 179,471,103 dollars, 
 which shows a gain or seigniorage of $54,369,719.36. According to 
 the report of the director of the mint referred to, we had coined up to 
 
CHAMP CLARK. 
 
 ADL A I STEVENSON. 
 
 J. B. WEAVER. 
 
 HENRY M. TELLER. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 113 
 
 November 4, 1894, under what is known as the Bland- Allison act 
 378,166,793 standard silver dollars; and under the act of July 4, 1890, 
 or what is called the Sherman law, $38,531,143; and out of the trade dollar 
 bullion we had coined $5,o78,472, making the total coinage of the standard 
 silver dollars to that time (November, 1894), $421,776,408. The amount 
 of standard silver dollars coined since that time will not greatly change the 
 above total. 
 
 The next battle of the silver question was at the second session of 
 this Congress, the Fifty-first. Senator Stewart, of Nevada, moved to 
 lay aside the Federal Election bill, then pending in the Senate, and to 
 take up Free Coinage bill, Number 4675. To this bill Mr. Vest, of Mis 
 souri, offered a substitute for free coinage, which was agreed to, yeas 39, 
 nays 27. This free coinage bill came to the House and was referred to 
 the committee on coinage, weights and measures. After protracted delay 
 in the committee, Mr. Conger, the chairman of the committee, reported 
 the bill back with an adverse recommendation and no further action 
 was taken. The next (Fifty-second) Congress, assembled the first Mon 
 day in December, 1891 and elected Mr. Crisp, of Georgia, speaker of the 
 House. There was a great contest over the silver question, at the first 
 session of this Congress, pending the Presidential election. The Com 
 mittee on Coinage, Weights and Measures reported a free coinage bill, 
 which was taken up and considered by the House for three days, and on 
 the evening of the third day, I moved the previous question on its final 
 passage. Mr. Burroughs, of Michigan, moved to lay on the table. On 
 this motion, the vote was 148 for tabling the bill and 148 against it. The 
 speaker voted against tabling the bill, making the vote stand for tabling 
 148 and 149 against it. "Filibustering" was then resorted to by motions to 
 reconsider the vote to table the bill, motions for adjournment and for 
 recess. These motions were interposed until it became evident that no vote 
 
 could be had on the bill without a cloture rule. The House, at a late 
 & 
 
114 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 hour of night, adjourned with the understanding that the committee on 
 rules would bring in a cloture rule for the purpose of bringing the bill to 
 a final vote. No such rule, however, was reported and no final vote was 
 taken upon the bill at that time. In the Senate, however, during this 
 session, and in July, 1892, they took up and passed a free coinage bill by a 
 vote of, yeas 29, nays 25. This bill was sent to the House and referred, 
 on July 5, to the committee on coinage, weights and measures. The 
 coinage committee reported the bill back to the House with the recom 
 mendation that it should pass. The committee on rules brought in 
 a cloture rule for the purpose of compelling a vote upon this bill ; but the 
 resolution was defeated by a vote of 136 yeas, 154 nays. This defeated 
 the consideration of the bill and no further attempt was made to pass it. 
 The Presidential election of 1892 took place immediately after the adjourn 
 ment of the first session of the Fifty-second Congress, and resulted in the 
 election of Mr. Cleveland over Mr. Harrison. Immediately after the 
 election of Mr. Cleveland, the anti-silver forces of the country organized 
 for the purpose of securing the repeal of the purchase clause of the 
 so-called Sherman law. The bankers and bondholders of this country, 
 aided and supported by the bankers and bondholders of Europe, de 
 liberately set to work to bring on a stringency in the money market and 
 to raise a hue and cry against silver as the cause of the pressure. The 
 "financiers" of London induced the Government of England to suspend 
 the free coinage of silver for India. This was done early in the summer of 
 1893, and evidently for the purpose of affecting legislation in this country 
 on the silver question. No sooner had the British Government suspended 
 free coinage of silver in India than this fact was seized upon by the gold 
 standard people in this country as a further excuse for making war on 
 silver here. This fight on silver caused great consternation ihroughout 
 the country and the world. To give a further "object lesson," as it was 
 called to teach the people the bad effects of silver coinage, the banking 
 institutions of England and of this country began a systematic process of 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 15 
 
 hoarding money, drawing in their loans and refusing advances to their 
 customers, thus precipitating what was called and properly called a 
 bankers' panic. Probably it was not intended to bring about such a severe 
 panic as ensued, but the people generally became alarmed, not because 
 they were afraid of silver or silver money, or that they distrusted our 
 money in any sense. On the contrary, in their eagerness to possess their 
 own money and hold it safely they made a run on the banks and withdrew 
 their deposits, showing that it was the banks they were afraid of and not 
 the money of the country. These runs upon banking institutions caused 
 many to fail and wide-spread and disastrous panic ensued. The "object 
 lesson" was now complete. England had done her part in stopping the 
 coinage of silver in India. The banking institutions of this country and 
 the eastern metropolitan press had terrorized the people into a gen 
 eral panic. The President called Congress together amid all this excitement 
 and demanded in his call the repeal of the Sherman law which he attacked 
 as the sole cause of all monetary difficulties in the country. Congress 
 assembled in special session, under the call of the President, on August 7, 
 1893. The President's message to Congress demanded the unconditional 
 repeal of the Sherman law, insisting that with that law wiped from the 
 statute books prosperity would again come to the people. This \\as the most 
 critical time for silver and silver legislation since the demonetization act of 
 1873. The friends of silver in this country and the world knew that the 
 suspension of the free coinage of silver in India, coupled with the suspen 
 sion of all purchases and coinage in this country, would contract the 
 currency throughout the world, cause panics in the silver market and 
 force a further divergence between the relative value of gold and silver. 
 The friends of bimetallism also knew that this war on silver would nec 
 essarily make a great demand for gold and thus send gold up in the 
 market. Should gold be the sole standard of valuation, the advance of gold, 
 which is but another name for the depreciation in the price of all property, 
 except mortgages, bonds and taxes, would be ruinous to the country. 
 
Il6 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 Mr. Wilson, of West Virginia, on August n, 1893, introduced a bill "to 
 repeal a part of an act approved July 14, 1890, entitled 'An act directing the 
 purchase of silver bullion and the issuing of treasury notes thereon, and for 
 other purposes/ } This bill provided for the repeal of so much of the 
 Sherman law as authorized the secretary of the treasury to purchase 
 monthly four million five hundred thousand ounces of silver bullion and 
 issue treasury notes in payment for the bullion. To this bill, which under 
 an order of the House, was debated for two weeks, I offered a substitute, 
 submitting a free coinage proposition at various ratios beginning with 
 1 6 to I and going up to i7, 18, 19, and 20 to i. To set forth the truth 
 of the history of this fight for the repeal of the Sherman law, it u necessary 
 to say that the friends of free coinage had no hopes of securing the enact 
 ment of a free coinage law. It was well known that Mr. Cleveland would 
 veto such a bill. It was vainly hoped, however, that we could secure 
 some amendment to the repeal bill that would either result in the defeat of 
 the bill or greatly mitigate the consequences of the repeal. Hence, while 
 we were in favor of the free coinage of silver at the present legal ratio 
 of 1 6 to i, we did not hesitate to offer and vote for ratios up to 20 to i, 
 believing that any amendments to a bill of this character would result in 
 the defeat of the repeal. Again, it was desirable to test the sincerity of 
 those who were fighting silver coinage at the present ratio, by compelling 
 them to vote for free coinage at a greater ratio, or to show the insincerity 
 of their professed friendship for bimetallism. The result of this experi 
 ment showed that practically the only real friends of bimetallism were 
 those who advocated and adhered to the justice of free coinage of silver 
 at the present legal ratio. The vote for free coinage at 1 6 to i, or the 
 present legal ratio, showed, yeas 125, nays 227; for free coinage at i7 to i, 
 yeas, 100, nays 240; 18 to i, yeas 102, nays 239; 19 to i, yeas 105, nays 239; 
 at 20 to i, yeas 122, nays 222. It is shown by this record that the 
 strongest proposition before the House was for free coinage at the 
 present legal ratio; that no gains were made by any attempted change 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. II 7 
 
 of the ratio, but on the contrary it weakened the coinage proposition. 
 After all free coinage propositions were voted down, I offered a further 
 amendment restoring the law of February 28, i878. On this proposition 
 the yeas were 136, nays 223. After all amendments were voted down, 
 the repeal bill passed the House by a vote of 239 yeas, and 108 nays. 
 This extraordinary proceeding and extraordinary vote against silver was 
 one of the most remarkable transactions that ever took place in the Ameri 
 can Congress. Impartial history would show that this result was secured by 
 methods as deplorable as they were extraordinary. The moneyed power of 
 this country and Europe had sought to bring the people and their represen 
 tatives into complete subjection. Debtors everywhere were threatened with 
 the pressure of foreclosures and bankruptcy; the owners of money ab 
 solutely refused relief to the people. A corner on money had been 
 established; business was prostrated in every section of the land; a reign 
 of terror was thus brought about. Resolutions were formulated in blank 
 in Wall Street and telegraphed to the various chambers of commerce 
 and boards of trade throughout the country (to be adopted), demanding the 
 repeal of the purchase clause of the Sherman Act. The vast private debt 
 existing throughout the country was pressed for collection, and when 
 debtors went to the banks to secure loans to meet their obligations, they 
 were coolly told that it was not safe to loan money until the repeal of 
 the purchase clause of the Sherman Act. It was insisted by the money 
 lenders that so soon as this act was repealed money would be plentiful, 
 that it would be loaned without stint and that prosperity would immediately 
 return. This pressure induced the people to petition Congress for the 
 repeal of this act, and the result of it all was an overwhelming vote in 
 the House for its repeal. The bill went to the Senate ; there it met with a 
 stubborn opposition, for at the time the bill passed the House and went 
 to the Senate, it was well known and understood that a majority of 
 senators were opposed to the repeal; but the same pressure was used to 
 force the bill through the Senate which was resorted to in the House. 
 
Il8 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 All offers of compromise were spurned and unconditional repeal was 
 demanded. Without it, the money that was hoarded and cornered would 
 have been held until an impoverished people were brought into subjection 
 and compelled to yield. The repeal bill that passed the House was sent 
 to the Senate and reported substantially, as it passed the House on August 
 28, by Mr. Voorhees, the chairman of the finance committee. The bill was 
 taken up and debated in the Senate and various amendments were offered 
 to it and voted down. It finally passed the Senate with some slight 
 amendments reported by the finance committee on the thirtieth cf October. 
 The House agreed to these amendments and the bill finally passed the 
 House of Representatives on November the first, and was approved by 
 the President on the second day of November, 1893. The debates that 
 took place in the House and Senate on this bill constituted what was 
 probably the ablest and most prolonged discussion of the money question 
 that ever took place in any parliamentary body. The friends of silver 
 predicted then precisely what has taken place. They predicted a great 
 appreciation of gold, a depreciation of prices, hard times and business 
 stagnation, as the result of silver demonetization. These things came to 
 pass. The friends of gold monometallism insisted that the repeal of the 
 purchase clause of the Sherman act, the declaration made in favor of 
 eliminating silver as standard money and for the change to the gold 
 standard of payments, would restore confidence throughout the country, 
 invite an inflow of gold and bring universal prosperity. Just the reverse 
 occurred. We were compelled to sell bonds* to the amount of $162,000,000 
 soon after the repeal in order to check the flow of gold from cur shores 
 and to maintain the single gold standard. People everywhere have been 
 out of employment and business prostration generally prevailing; unrest 
 and discontent with this legislation still exists, and the great masses of 
 the people believe to-day that their only hope for future prosperity is a 
 full and complete restoration of silver coinage. The gold monometallists 
 
 * k 'To sell bonds" 5. e., to borrow money, thus putting the gold standard itself on a credit basis. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 119 
 
 have given the people an object lesson indeed one they will not forget 
 an object lesson that has been the best education in favor of bimetallism 
 that could possibly have been given. 
 
 The next great contest came in the House of Representatives in the 
 first regular session of this same Congress. This fight occurred on what 
 is commonly called the "Seigniorage Bill." This bill provided for the 
 coinage of all silver bullion held in the treasury, purchased under the 
 provision of the Sherman act; that the seigniorage or gain arising from the 
 purchase of this bullion, amounting to about $55,000,000, should be first 
 coined and used in payment of public expenses; that after the coinage 
 of the seigniorage, the remainder of the bullion should be coined as fast as 
 possible, and the coin used for the purpose of redeeming the treasury notes 
 issued for the purchase of the bullion. This bill was taken up February 
 7, 1894, and debated for several days, but when an attempt was made to 
 bring the House to vote upon the bill, fillibustering motions were resorted 
 to, led by Mr. Tracey, of New York and Mr. Reed, of Maine; and the 
 bill was thus tied up in the House from February 7, until the twenty- 
 eighth of that month, when the committee on rules reported a rule cutting 
 off all fillibustering motions, bringing the House to a direct vote. This rule 
 was adopted and a vote compelled upon the bill and its amendments. 
 The House voted down various amendments and motions to recommit 
 and finally passed the bill by a vote of yeas 168, nays 129. The bill 
 went to the Senate March 5, 1894; and was taken up and passed pre 
 cisely as it passed the House, the vote in the Senate being yeas 44, nays 31. 
 This bill was vetoed by the president and taken up in the House April 4; 
 and on a roll call to pass the bill, notwithstanding the objections of the 
 president, the yeas were 144, nays 114. The constitution requiring two- 
 thirds to pass a bill over the veto of the president, the bill failed. The first 
 session of this Congress adjourned without further action on the silver 
 question. Before the re-assembling of the Fifty-third Congress the first 
 Monday in December, 1894, in the short session the bankers and money 
 
120 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 brokers of Wall Street and Europe set to work to bring pressure on Con 
 gress to compel the retirement of greenbacks, and the utter degradation of 
 silver, by issuing bonds payable specifically in gold. The national banks 
 and the so-called state banks under national control, which in reality would 
 be national banks if they exist at all, under what is called "the Carlisle 
 plan," commenced to rid the treasury of its gold as an "object lesson" to 
 show the necessity of wiping out all paper money, greenbacks, silver certifi 
 cates, and in effect, standard silver dollars as money insisting that all these 
 forms of money were but obligations on the treasury to be payable in gold 
 on demand; that therefore to prevent these demands on the treasury for 
 gold, all forms of our money should be withdrawn and funded into bonds 
 except gold and bank notes.* The relation this fight had to the silver ques 
 tion is apparent. The bond holders and money lenders of this country 
 and Europe are determined, if they can possibly bring it about, to compel 
 this government to abandon its sovereign power of coining money and 
 issuing it by the treasury itself, except gold, and to turn over to bond 
 holders and banking corporations of Europe, the control of the volume of 
 our money. These various propositions, however, were defeated one after 
 another. So that the question now remains for the people to determine in 
 their future elections for President and Congress which system shall pre 
 vail ; that is to say, whether we are to have the free and unlimited coinage 
 of both gold and silver the money of our Constitution, the supply of 
 which must come from the people's government or whether we are to 
 abandon the bimetallic system and enter upon a system that contemplates 
 nothing but gold as legal tender money, and bank notes issued by corpora 
 tions to supplement it. This is the future fight on the money question, 
 and that question now is paramount to all others and the voters must take 
 sides for one system or the other. In reviewing the history of the bat 
 tles on the money question in Congress for the past twenty years, a true 
 story can not be told without alluding to the political situation during that 
 
 *See Act of 1900. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 121 
 
 time. Unhappily our great contests in presidential elections heretofore 
 have been fought out upon "war issues," growing out of our unhappy 
 civil strife. It is known that the people of the south a great agricultural 
 community have been from the commencement steadfast sympathizers 
 and friends of silver coinage. So it may be said of the southwest and our 
 great gold and silver producing regions, but these forces have not found a 
 way to make their combined strength effective. In all the great battles in 
 Congress on the silver question the force of circumstances has made oppo 
 nents of those who should have been friends. The southern people, while 
 enthusiastic for silver, have had that sympathy and enthusiasm clouded 
 by the dread of Force bills or Federal interference with their right of local 
 self-government. Doubtful as to whether their safety depended on alli 
 ance with New York and the east for protection in their local rights, or 
 whether to follow where nature led them, they have hesitated on the 
 threshold of victory for silver. Fortunately, however, in their great 
 battle over the Force bill in the Senate, the senators of the west, 
 and especially of the gold and silver mining states, in their opposi 
 tion to this measure, which resulted in its final overthrow and defeat, gave 
 assurance to the people of the south that their political reliance, both for 
 the safety of their home institutions and their prosperity on economic 
 questions, should be the west. We do not intend to draw sectional lines 
 further than those who insist on the single gold standard have forced upon 
 us this situation. The great money centers of the east, whose banking 
 institutions are dominated, if not owned and controlled, by European bank 
 ing houses, have forced the people of the west and the south, in self- 
 defense, to make war upon their system of finance. The day has now come 
 when war issues can no longer dominate our politics. The great political 
 battles of the future will be fought on economic questions. The battle of the 
 standards is the greatest battle to be fought in this country and the world 
 over. The enslaved masses of the old world, look naturally to this free 
 people to lead the way. This vast country of ours of forty-four independ- 
 
122 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ent states, with a population of seventy millions of people, increasing at 
 the rate of more than a million annually, is strong enough to maintain its 
 own monetary system, to open the mints to the free coinage of gold and 
 silver, and thus again restore, not only to ourselves, but to the world, the 
 old order of things by which gold and silver circulated side by side, aiding 
 and supporting each other in giving labor employment and effecting the ex 
 changes of commerce. In conclusion, attention should be called to the fact 
 that heretofore no president of the United States, since 1873, has been a 
 friend of silver. Mr. Hayes vetoed a limited coinage bill. It is well 
 known that every president since has been hostile to free coinage and would 
 veto any such bill if sent to him. This has had the effect of discouraging 
 Congress in all these great contests. I have reason to believe that silver 
 would have long ago been restored to its old place in our system of money 
 had there been a president of the United States favorable to it. The bat 
 tle to be fought and the all important point to gain is to secure a president 
 who will sign a free coinage bill if sent to him ; who will not use the power 
 and patronage of his office to prevent such a bill coming to him, but on the 
 contrary will give encouragement to such legislation. If we can once se 
 cure such a president, the battle is won. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The "Whirling Dervish of the Market" as a Factor in Public Affairs. Henry Dem- 
 arest Lloyd and Richard Brinsley Sheridan on the Speculative Use of the Co 
 ercive Power of Government. "The Meanness of the Pedlar and the Profligacy of 
 the Pirate." Trade as War. Commercial Use of the War-Making, Debt-Making 
 and Tax-Levying Power of the People. Can Selfishness be "Enlightened?" 
 The Question of Forcing Unselfishness by Law. Socialism or Coerced Co-op 
 eration. Bland as a Representative of Free Co-operation and Unrestricted De 
 velopment. Increasing Honesty and Liberality in Trade. "Laissez Faire" as a 
 Policy of Unsurrendering Resistance to Restriction, Obstruction and Oppression. 
 The Foundation Principle of all True Political and Social Economy the Ob 
 servance of the Right of Individual Growth and of Fuller Expansion for the Con 
 structive Powers of Common Humanity. Liberty Impossible for the Unjust. 
 
 HILDREN yet, writes Mr. Henry Demarest Lloyd, "we run 
 everything we do love or war, work or leisure, religion or 
 liberty to excess. Every possibility of body and mind must 
 be played upon until it is torn to pieces as toys by children. 
 Priests, voluptuaries, tyrants, knights, ascetics in the long procession of 
 fanatics a newcomer takes his place. He is called 'the model merchant' 
 the crudest fanatic in history. He is the high priest of the latest idolatry 
 the self-worship of self-interest. Whirling dervish of the market self, 
 friends, family, body, and soul, loves, hopes, and faith all are sacrificed 
 to seeing how many turns he can make before he drops dead." 
 
 These are extraordinary sentences, written by a man of unusual pow 
 ers after an analysis of the commercialism which operated during the quar 
 ter of a century which elapsed between the demonetization act of 1873 an ^ 
 that of 1900. 
 
 The same idea has been even more forcibly expressed by Richard 
 Brinsley Sheridan. Taught by Burke to abhor militant commercialism as 
 tyranny in its worst form, he asserted the force of his intellect against the 
 tendency of the English aristocracy of his day to change the base of its 
 
 123 
 
124 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 privileges from the feudalism of land-tenure to that of the corporation 
 system. 
 
 "There is something," he said of the East India Company, "in the 
 frame and constitution of the company which extends the sordid princi 
 ples of their origin over all their successive operations, connecting with 
 their civil policies and even with their boldest achievements the meanness 
 of a pedlar and the profligacy of pirates. Alike in the political and mili 
 tary line could be observed auctioneering embassadors and trading gen 
 erals. And thus we saw revolution brought about by affidavits ; an army 
 employed in executing an arrest; a town besieged on a note of hand a 
 prince dethroned for a balance of account ! Thus it was that they exhibited 
 a government which united the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre and the 
 little traffic of a merchant counting-house wielding a truncheon in one 
 hand and picking a pocket with the other."* 
 
 These sentences, like those of Mr. Lloyd, are intended to apply as the 
 expression of a demand for exact justice against a system. They are not 
 mere rhetoric. Within their limitations they are a scientific expression of 
 a fundamental truth of morals and of social economy. 
 
 If it is necessarily true that "trade is war" in another form; if the 
 theory which governed American speculation and the politics depending on 
 it from 1860 to 1900 is the true theory of the economy of distribution, then 
 there is no need to go beyond Sheridan and no possibility of going beyond 
 Lloyd to find the reality of individual character and of political policy 
 during this half-century of commercial use of the war-making, debt-mak 
 ing, taxing and money-issuing power. 
 
 If it is true, as was once asserted in the United States Senate by a 
 representative of the policies against which Mr. Bland contended, that trade 
 is a matter of taking the largest possible advantage, then those who use 
 the coercive powers of government for trade purposes have no appeal from 
 such judgments as those of Lloyd and Sheridan; for it is by their own 
 standards that they are condemned. 
 
 *World's Best Orations, Vol. X, 3943. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 125 
 
 Such a theory of trade, shows its absurdity, as soon as it is critically 
 examined. All fair trade is the distribution of wealth from the producer 
 to the consumer in the way that gives the largest possible advantage ( I ) 
 to the producer, (2) to the distributor, and, (3) to the consumer. If there 
 is no cheating, no taking advantage by private fraud and coercion, or by 
 the far worse fraud and coercion which is exercised through government, 
 all are benefited by a process without which neither society nor liberty in 
 society, nor evolution through liberty could exist at all. 
 
 Two radical mistakes are made by holders of opposing theories. One 
 is that it is safe to trust "enlightened selfishness." The other is that sel 
 fishness which can not be checked by government in individuals can be 
 controlled by giving it expression through government. 
 
 As men can become enlightened only in the measure in which they 
 cease to be selfish, the first theory of trade regulation rests on a fault of 
 definition. The latter half of the nineteenth century has been character 
 ized by the highest intelligence shown in trade. But no one who will ex 
 amine the results of political commercialism will say that this intelligence 
 involved enlightenment or that its exercise could have educated any other 
 than those reactionary faculties in the individual which make for his final 
 destruction. 
 
 The contending theory of trade one apt to be held by men of benevo 
 lent disposition and poetic temperament, is equally a result of illogical defi 
 nition ; for the government on which they rely for the suppression of sel 
 fishness is itself necessarily an expression of selfishness to the extent it 
 attempts to coerce co-operation or to regulate co-operation by coercion 
 further than is necessary to prevent fraud or violence. 
 
 No system of government which could be devised, no theory of econ 
 omy which could be applied through it, would stand' the strain of results 
 necessarily proceeding from the spirit of ruthlessness, of rapacity, of reck 
 lessness which governed the speculative and non-productive commercial 
 ism against which Mr. Eland's whole life was a protest. In contrast to 
 
126 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 its spirit, he opposed his own moderation of speech, his gentleness of 
 temper, his unwillingness to take even the smallest advantage where the 
 greatest was possible, his inflexible adherence to principles and his habitual 
 refusal to force issues to an extreme of destructiveness. 
 
 The spirit he represented in politics showed itself in trade also; and 
 in trade as in politics it has its manifestation in all the constructive results 
 of the century. Every man who gave another willingly a fair return of 
 service for service done was a part of its enormous forces. These forces 
 the natural, evolutionary forces of free co-operation, are superior to all 
 coercive government and the measure in which they are able to find ex 
 pression through an increase in the world's moral sense, is necessarily the 
 measure of the suppression of the coercive powers of government. 
 
 While we can not avoid apprehension because of the results of the 
 past and the menace for the future due to the increase in the intelligence 
 of those who apply themselves to trade without moral restraint, it is clear 
 that as trade means the distribution of the necessaries and comforts of 
 life, it involves the willingness of a continually increasing number of men 
 to give a fair return for what they take from others. There is a smaller 
 but also a constantly increasing class which in every trade, sees its own 
 highest interests in giving a quality of product representing a higher skill 
 and intelligence than that represented by the labor of those it is supplying. 
 Where it is a question between losing a little and cheating a little there is 
 undoubtedly an increasing number of "model merchants" who would 
 rather lose a little, and a still larger number who would rather not 
 trade at all than to cheat at all. These are not the "whirling der 
 vishes of the market" so picturesquely described by Mr. Lloyd. Un 
 fortunately the sane and honest often confound themselves with the 
 dervishes when issues are forced they have not had time to understand. 
 Had it been otherwise, Mr. Eland's work might have advanced America 
 far into the twentieth century during his own lifetime. As it was, we see 
 that intelligence, greatly increasing in the speculative and usurious classes, 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 127 
 
 took advantage of its power not to express "enlightened selfishness," but 
 to attempt class monopoly of the results of the disinterested work of scien 
 tists, scholars, and the non-acquisitive classes of all ages results which 
 in the nineteenth century showed themselves in an unprecedented increase 
 in productive machinery, in an unanticipated revolution in distribution, 
 effected through steam and electricity, and in an increase of the intelligence 
 represented by the average labor product of the world such as no other 
 century had ever realized or even promised as far as its promise could be 
 understood. 
 
 The control of these almost infinite advantages of civilization was 
 the question always urged against Mr. Bland by the advocates of restric 
 tion. The meaning of his whole life-work, of his every measure and his 
 every utterance, is that this control belongs to the people alone that it is 
 a part of their sovereign power, and that no assumption of their own sov 
 ereignty against them can bind them to submit. It was in this that he was 
 formidable in spite of his gentleness and conservatism and for this in him, 
 the times called. 
 
 The positive forces of determined and unsurrendering resistance to 
 injustice are a part of evolution, through increasing freedom of co-opera 
 tion. All forms of coerced co-operation (slavery and its variants) have 
 been necessarily supported by law, and it is a necessary effect of the work 
 ings of the principles of free co-operation for which Mr. Bland stood, to 
 oppose the perpetration of injustice by law. 
 
 The "Laissez Faire" for which he stood did not mean letting wrong 
 alone in its control of the forces of government, but actively opposing 
 it; wresting the law-making and law-executing power from it, and 
 establishing natural conditions conditions under which the positive forces 
 of goodness, of fair play, of helpfulness, of productiveness, of the inher 
 ent, inappeasable desire of the human race to express in concrete forms 
 of use and beauty its innate sense of fitness, may find for itself the largest 
 possible liberty of expression. Under conditions of liberty, of peace, of 
 
I 28 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 freedom from the restrictive and repressive influences of fraud and vio 
 lence, the sense of order and harmony impressed on the human mind by 
 the order and harmony of the universe, must of itself result in raising any 
 sept of the human family to the plane of intelligent creativeness which 
 evolved the Parthenon of ancient times as it did the steam engine and the 
 electric motor of modern. 
 
 In the measure in which men become free and just with a government 
 which will not interfere with them or oppress them which will have no 
 other function than that of enforcing justice in that measure the highest 
 possible productiveness, the freest and widest possible distribution of all 
 products of intelligence will necessarily result. But no matter what the 
 system, no matter how great the opportunity, the sense of justice is the 
 vital factor of productiveness as it is the necessary basis of free co-opera 
 tion. No constitution, no system of finance, no creed, no code of laws or 
 of ethics however exalted, can be efficient beyond the limitations of the 
 efficiency of the sense of justice governing the mass of co-operative soci 
 ety at any given time. 
 
 Because the American sense of justice had been so deeply disturbed 
 by civil war; because, in subjugating the southern states to restore the 
 Union and enfranchise the negroes, both north and south had been de 
 moralized ; because, at length as a result of this demoralization, the power 
 of government was used by the class which Mr. Lloyd calls the "whirling 
 dervishes of the market" because of this, and not because of liberty, 
 the speculative and unproductive classes in America and the world came 
 into a fuller control in the last half of the nineteenth century than they had 
 exercised since the first half of the eighteenth. 
 
 Had the currency been under popular control; had production and 
 distribution been unchecked ; had the power of the government been used 
 to protect universal rights instead of special interests, the development of 
 the transmississippi west an event of lasting importance to the human 
 race would not have necessitated a fierce political struggle to prevent 
 
STATE, WAR AND NAVY. 
 
 THE EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON. 
 
 PATENT OFFICE. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 129 
 
 the holders of its mortgages and the consumers of its products from usurp 
 ing permanent control of its vast creative forces for their own purposes 
 of restriction and obstruction. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Speculative Plutocracy from 1873 to 1893. The "Whirling Dervish" as a Promoter 
 of Panics. The Gold Corner and "Black Friday" Panic Under Grant not an 
 Isolated Incident. Emotional Insanity as a Result of Moral Disturbance Due to 
 the Speculative Habit. Beginning of Trusts Under Grant. The Standard Oil 
 Trust. Conservatism in Administration Under Hayes no Check to the Growth 
 of Plutocracy. The Attempt to Regulate the "Commune of Capital." Use of 
 the Law-Making Power by "Practical" Politicians to Blackmail Law-Breaking 
 Corporations. The Land Grabbing Spirit in its Relations to Speculative 
 Monopoly. 
 
 HE Whirling Dervish of the Market," to whom the reader 
 has been introduced by Mr. Lloyd, is the fact of most mo 
 mentous importance in the financial, the commercial, the 
 political life of the generation which followed the Civil 
 war in America. 
 
 In the great panic of 1893, forced by the speculative managers of 
 national banks as a means of demonetizing silver and perpetuating the 
 national debt, interest on call loans in New York City was forced up to two 
 per cent a day. The non-producers who are at one time the agents or 
 at another the victims of such crimes are equally insistent that they alone 
 are fit to determine the financial policies of the country, but no one who has 
 seen them at times when they are expressing with least reserve their own 
 deepest reality, will be in doubt of the meaning or the accuracy of the 
 phrase, "whirling dervishes" as it applies to them. 
 
 The gold corner and consequent panic under Grant which was an in 
 cident of the policies of speculative commercialism was not an isolated in 
 cident. It was a typical result of a panic-producing system, necessarily 
 manifesting the fraudulent intent to get something for nothing to take 
 without giving to use law, government, commercial and social organiza 
 tion, the church, the schools and colleges, the whole machinery of co-opera 
 tive civilization for purposes of obstructing production and distribution 
 
 130 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 131 
 
 so as to force the payment of fraudulent tolls to non-producers. 
 
 At times when this spirit manifests itself at its climaxes, the scene 
 on the exchanges of St. Louis, Chicago or New York gives an immediate 
 explanation of all that is worst and most demoralizing in our politics The 
 most dangerous element of society is seen without restraint. The mob 
 around the call board and in what is strikingly called "the pit" shows 
 symptoms of more violent dementia than is seen in the insane asylums. 
 They crowd each other hither and thither, pushing, jostling, scrambling 
 as only the fiercest animals scramble when food is thrown them. Their 
 ejaculations, cries and shrieks show the most intense emotion, uncon 
 trolled except by the desire to take advantage of those with whom, indi 
 vidually and collectively, they are struggling. The confusion is anarchical 
 and expressive of the latent fierceness of. the primitive animal nature not 
 less than is that of the average riot due to labor strikes where, too often in 
 the same spirit and by what too closely resembles the same methods, the 
 attempt is being made to control the markets. 
 
 This anarchy, this madness, this dire disease under which men cease 
 to be moral beings, is economically a manifestation of the same desire to 
 control others by controlling prices unnaturally which leads the same men 
 to go into political conventions to dictate platforms and candidates, or to 
 fill the lobbies of legislatures and of Congress with their agents, bullying or 
 bribing the representatives of the people into subserviency to their poli 
 cies policies illustrated when two per cent a day is charged on call loans 
 in New York at times when western crops are being "moved." 
 
 This is not denunciation. It is not inspired by partisanship of a can 
 didate, a political organization or a theory. Back of its expression is the 
 conviction based on close and familiar observation of such conditions, that 
 no theory, no system, no party-action, no piling up of legislative enactment 
 upon enactment, can avail anything without a radical change from the 
 private morals and the public spirit, which make such things seem toler 
 able. 
 
132 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 To take a piece of paper worth the tenth of a cent ; to spread upon it 
 the hundredth part of a cent's worth of green ink and then to market it as 
 "a security" worth a hundred or a thousand dollars this method of cor 
 poration feudalism, supported by enactment, explains such related incidents 
 as have been described, and leaves little to the imagination when the causes 
 of business demoralization and political reaction are being sought for. 
 
 Back of all that has been said of the political and social demoraliza 
 tion under the administrations of Grant: back of all that Mr. Bland has 
 said in describing the resistance to his attempt to re-establish a sound and 
 natural system of currency and trade, these conditions of desperate specu 
 lation are to be understood. Mr. Bland never compromised with them, 
 and he never misunderstood them. His was not the narrow partisanship 
 which is blind to the faults and crimes of its own party. In 1893, when 
 men representing these conditions and the spirit which produced them 
 had put in control of the cabinet of an administration elected by democratic 
 votes, representatives of the great fortunes accumulated by such methods, 
 Mr. Bland declared that he had come to the "parting of the ways" with 
 them. He spoke without malice, without fear, without reservation. No 
 one has a right to speak for him or of him, who does not deal with such 
 conditions in the same spirit. 
 
 Under Grant, the great combinations of corporations which have 
 since been called "trusts," began their operations in the United States, 
 steadily increasing in number and audacity under the administrations of 
 Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison and McKinley all of which 
 were controlled to a marked extent in their interests the Cleveland ad 
 ministration of 1885 being inaugurated with Mr. Daniel Manning, a na 
 tional banker as secretary of the treasury, and Mr. William C. Whitney of 
 New York as secretary of the navy Mr. Whitney being closely identi 
 fied with the Standard Oil Company and later on with other great com 
 binations of speculative capital which have done so much to force existing 
 conditions. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 133 
 
 The election of President Hayes was a result of the reaction from the 
 extreme radicalism of plutocracy under Grant. As president, Mr. Hayes 
 represented the idea that government is a commercial affair rather than 
 an agency of simple justice, but he did not believe in allowing the specu 
 lative and non-productive element to control the army and use the police 
 and war-making power as they had done under Grant. 
 
 The method of his election calls only for such a passing reference here 
 as will attract attention to Mr. Eland's protest against it, and to the de 
 moralization of the times. It was undoubtedly a manifestation of plu 
 tocracy, but Mr. Hayes personally was not so thoroughly committed to 
 plutocratic methods as was Mr. Tilden whose immense fortune had been 
 accumulated not by productive enterprise but by his ingenuity as an attor 
 ney and political agent for the same corporate combinations in America 
 and Europe which, after forcing the panic of 1893, called in the Roths 
 childs to "underwrite" the American treasury rather than pay out five 
 dollars in silver and five dollars in gold to redeem a ten dollar greenback. 
 The issues between Mr. Tilden and Mr. Hayes were vital only as they con 
 cerned methods of government. There was no such issue of principle be 
 tween them as between Bland and Grant or Bland and Cleveland. 
 
 The whirling dervish element of the corporation system of specula 
 tive and unproductive assimilation did not control the Hayes administra 
 tion as it had done under Grant and it controlled still less under Arthur, 
 as far as the administrative part of the actual government was concerned. 
 But from Grant to the third year of McKinley's administration, there has 
 been no check on its advance towards complete control of money and trade 
 under restrictive and obstructive laws enacted and sustained as a result of 
 "contributions to campaign funds" and "assistance" to political managers. 
 
 Between 1860 and i87o there was an increase of nearly 100 per cent 
 in the railroad mileage of the country, due largely to the completion of the 
 Union and Central Pacific roads. In 1873, a special committee of the 
 United States Senate, with Messrs. Sherman and Windom among its mem- 
 
134 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 bers, reported that the gross receipts of American railroads for i872 had 
 amounted to $473,241,058. By 1892, according to Poor's estimates, gross 
 receipts had increased to $1,1 7 1,000,000, and during the same period the 
 futility of the attempt at government regulation had been demonstrated. 
 In the case of railroads, as of all other corporations which were allowed 
 to exercise for their private benefit the delegated sovereignty of the peo 
 ple, it had been shown, as it was asserted by the Senate committee of 1873, 
 that "where combination is possible, competition is impossible."* 
 
 The railroads, the national banks and the protected manufacturing 
 corporations, while they had among themselves an obvious conflict of in 
 terests, constituted, as against the public, a "commune of capital," always 
 ready to unite for the purchase of salable politicians and the control of 
 elections. The federal legislation enacted as the result of the crusade led 
 by Allen G. Thurman and Jeremiah Black, merely increased the activity 
 of the railroads in politics. State legislation to check the abuse of rail 
 road, manufacturing, insurance and banking franchises had the same 
 effect to an extent even more marked. In Missouri, Illinois, and other 
 leading states of the west severe inspection laws were passed to restrain 
 monopoly, but they increased the corruption of politics and the power of 
 the combined corporations by increasing the "contributions" to the cam 
 paign funds of both parties. These "contributions" represent at all times 
 the elements both of blackmail and of bribery. Corporation managers, 
 whose profits depend on public grants threatened always with public 
 regulation and restriction, would be more than human if they did not seek 
 to control the government as a means of avoiding control by it. But where 
 they did not bribe they were almost inevitably blackmailed by the "prac 
 tical politicians" of both parties who, when in charge of political com 
 mittees, have been known to allow themselves and their friends consider 
 able percentages on funds thus extorted by the menace of the law. In 
 other instances, the fees charged for the inspection of such monopolies as 
 
 *See Report Senate Special Committee on Transportation, December 1873. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 135 
 
 that in petroleum or in the handling of grain and other products are al 
 lowed to go to an inspector, pledged to content himself with a moderate 
 salary from them turning over the rest to the "committee." The cor 
 ruption of business through speculation and of politics through bribery 
 and blackmail increased thus pari passu with the growth of speculative 
 monopoly in banking, in manufacturing, in railroad building and manage 
 ment, and in the control of western lands. The element of fraud in the 
 speculative assimilation of lands intended for actual settlement was often 
 very striking and it was seldom absent for any considerable period while 
 desirable lands were to be had. A picturesque illustration is afforded by 
 the case of a well known writer and politician, originally from St. Louis, 
 who planned to acquire a principality near Devil's lake, in what was then 
 the territory of Dakota by building a "shack" on it in which he could give 
 his friends poker parties as many nights of the year as were required to 
 meet the demands of the law for "actual settlement." Professor An 
 drews, in his History of the Last Quarter of the Century, says that in 
 Montana a representative of the plutocratic method of assimilating land 
 values, "gave a series of balls and dinners at a country house, inviting a 
 large number of ladies and accompanying each invitation with a promise 
 of a $100 present. At each festival, in the midst of the whirl, each guest 
 signed a claim to a homesteader's rights in the adjoining lands. When 
 the claims were proved up, each lady received her $100 and the authors 
 of the scheme got land enough for a dukedom."* 
 
 The same spirit, with changes of methods suggested by circumstances, 
 governed the operations of the great railroad combinations in securing 
 land grants and special privileges of right of way, so that Mr. Bland 
 could hardly have been surprised when in 1898 those who were attempting 
 to thrust aside the coinage issue so as to make room for the demonetiza 
 tion act of 1900 should have argued the necessity of making concession to 
 the spirit of the people who, as they asserted, "always wanted to grab 
 
 * History of the Last Quarter Century in the United States, by E. Benjamin Andrews. Scribners, 
 1896. 
 
136 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 something" who by such reasoning, were therefore to be encouraged to 
 withdraw attention from the control of the currency and similar reforms 
 at home in order to devote it to the acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico and 
 other countries, which a little while before, the United States, in a "War 
 for Humanity," had pledged itself to the world to free from foreign control. 
 The imperialistic movement under McKinley, as under Grant, was 
 thus the logical and the only logical development of the methods and the 
 spirit of the whirling dervish of the market the speculative banker, land- 
 grabber, stock-waterer, grain-broker the parasite of whatever name or 
 class, who seeks to take toll from trade without either producing or distrib 
 uting what has been produced. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Fundamental Principle of Plutocracy Manifested in Debt Inflation Accom 
 panied by a Demand for a Contraction of the Supply of Cash Issued by Govern 
 ment. Mr. Eland's Consistency. Debt Inflation Described by Henry Clews. 
 Speculative Banks as Holders of Inflated Stocks and Bonds. The Character of 
 Fiske as Described by William Walter Phelps. The Imperialistic Movement 
 and the Demonetization of Silver in 1900 a Part of the Logic of What Fiske 
 Represented. 
 
 HE fundamental principle of the plutocracy Mr. Bland op 
 posed has shown itself in an enormous inflation of all cor 
 poration debts, accompanied by a persistent and often men 
 acing demand for the contraction of the cash currency which 
 is issued by the mints and controlled by the public treasury. 
 
 When honesty returns to public life and sanity to business, it will 
 seem incredible that for twenty-five years in America, such a principle 
 should have steadily gained ground in public and private business. But 
 there is now no need to argue a fact so completely self-evident. 
 
 At a time when, year by year, the dementia of speculation has been 
 adding one billion after another to the floating debt and the bonded debt 
 of corporations of all kinds ; when year by year the business of the country 
 has been forced more completely to the basis of corporation inflation for 
 all values, the demand has been pressed for a minimum amount of cash, 
 though an increasing supply was clearly necessary to meet this debt, to 
 carry on a business constantly increased by new inventions and to stave 
 off inevitable "liquidation." 
 
 Accompanying this madness, has been the not less insane insistence on 
 a currency of corporation notes, every dollar of which inflates 100 per cent 
 another dollar of debt the corporation note itself drawing from business 
 "all the traffic will bear" and the bond on which it is issued drawing another 
 interest from the tax-payer. 
 
 137 
 
138 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 In opposing the watering of railroad stocks, the increase of the tariff, 
 the extension of such monopolies as the Standard Oil Company, the re 
 newal of the charters of national banks, the payment of heavy premiums 
 on bonds to London and Wall street bankers and finally the use of the 
 military force of the government for the establishment of "carpet-bag" 
 control in Louisiana, Arkansas and South Carolina as in Puerto Rico, 
 Cuba, Hawaii and the Philippines, Mr. Bland was supporting identically 
 the same principle he supported in advocating the free and unlimited coin 
 age of the precious metals. He was attempting to free the government 
 from the control of speculative and coercive commercialists and to leave 
 trade and distribution subject to the great laws of national evolution. 
 
 In his chapter on railroad capitalization Mr. Clews gives his readers 
 a lucid explanation of the methods by which the inflated corporation 
 paper outstanding against cash in circulation has been so increased as to 
 threaten the country with the same constant return of panic which Bank 
 of England control imposes on English trade. 
 
 "Perhaps I may best succeed in making myself understood," he 
 writes,* "by illustrating the way in which our railroads are usually built. 
 Under the laws of the state of New York, which are a fair sample of the 
 laws of other states, a number of persons form a company under the gen 
 eral railroad laws, registering at Albany the proposed route of the road, 
 the amount of capital stock and bonds to be issued and a few other par 
 ticulars required in the papers of incorporation. The incorporators then 
 proceed to form themselves into a syndicate or company for the purpose 
 of contracting to build or equip the road. Here comes the first step in 
 the system of 'crooked' financiering. In their capacity of incorporators, 
 the same men make a contract with themselves in their capacity of con 
 structors. Of course they do not fail to make a bargain to suit their own 
 interest. They would be more than human if they did. Usually the bar 
 gain is that the construction company undertakes to build the road for 80 
 to ico per cent of the face value of the first-mortgage bonds with an equal 
 amount of stock and sometimes with a certain amount of second mortgages 
 thrown in, virtually without consideration. The first mortgages are sup- 
 
 k< Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street." 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 39 
 
 posed to represent the real cash outlay on the construction and equipment, 
 but as a matter of fact the true cash cost of the work done and materials 
 furnished ranges from 60 to 80 per cent of the amount of first liens trans 
 ferred to the contractors. The construction company disposes of the bonds 
 partly by negotiating their sale to the public through bankers at an advance 
 upon the valuation at which they received them and partly by using them 
 in payment for rails and equipment. Beyond the profits made from build 
 ing the road for the first-mortgage bonds, there remains in the hands of 
 the constructors the entire capital stock and any second-mortgage bonds 
 they may have received as a clear bonus, to be held for future apprecia 
 tion and to be kept in control of the company and ultimately to be so sold on 
 a market deftly manipulated for that purpose. This is the way in which a 
 large majority of our railroads have been and others still are constructed. 
 It will thus be seen that the actual cash cost of a railroad is ordinarily less 
 than fifty per cent of the stock and bonds issued against the property and 
 that its first mortgage exceeds the amount of the legitimate actual cost 
 of the road." 
 
 The method Mr. Clews is here describing is that of "business con 
 servatism." In suggesting the methods of such great financiers as Mr. 
 Villard, Mr. Gould, Mr. Fiske, Mr. Ward and others equally well known, 
 Mr. Clews mentions that at the organization of the Oregon Navigation 
 Company its assets did not exceed $3,500,000, against which there* was an 
 original issue of $6,000,000 in stock followed by an increase of $3,000,000, 
 a second increase of $6,000,000 and a bond issue of $6,000,000 or over 
 six dollars of fraudulently inflated paper outstanding against every dollar 
 of cash.* 
 
 When note is taken of the statement by Mr. Clews that such "securi 
 ties" as this are disposed of "by negotiating their sale through bankers" 
 when we remember how corporations interlock, how money thus acquired 
 is invested in national bank stock and how national bank directors specu 
 late in such "investments," we can see the necessary effect of this reckless 
 fraud on treasury management. 
 
 *For similar instances of speculative corporation methods confer the evidence of the investigation 
 of trusts by the New York legislature and by Congress. 
 
140 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 After such an inflation as this, the men guilty of it invest part of their 
 fraudulent profits in newspapers to denounce as "cranks" men like Mr. 
 Bland who resist their control of the federal treasury. 
 
 Their object in seeking political power is primarily to keep the supply 
 of available cash so centralized that it can be "cornered" if not completely, 
 at least to such an extent as will enable them to influence prices especially 
 the speculative prices on the control of which their ability to plunder each 
 other and the public depends. In describing one of them a typical Amer 
 ican plutocrat, the organizer of the first great gold corner Mr. William 
 Walter Phelps, who was minister to Austria under President Garfield and 
 to Germany under President Harrison, said at a banquet in St. Louis, 
 March 24, 1874: 
 
 "He was without education, culture or morality. He had respect 
 neither for God nor man. He had no faith in the purity of woman nor 
 the honor of his fellows. But he had the ambition of wealth and he de 
 termined to get money at any cost. The markets of a country demoralized 
 by a long war, gave the opportunity and he seized it unscrupulously using 
 all the agencies which the experience of centuries had discovered. He 
 gained a fortune by robbery and went unpunished. With it, he bought 
 men and women until finally he sat in his gilded palace, boasting believing 
 that he owned the legislature that made, the courts that interpreted and the 
 governor that executed, the laws of his state. On the base of a great rail 
 way which he took from its owners by fraud, he built a pyramid of splendid 
 profligacy so high that the world saw and wondered. The luxury of Sar- 
 danapalus, the vices of Nero, were his. The pedlar drove his four-in- 
 hand. The coward marched at the head of a noble regiment. He who 
 knew not his own tongue controlled the artists of a continent. In his own 
 theatre he sought rest, and watched the evolutions of dancing girls and 
 listened to the voices of singing men and singing women. He sent his 
 own steamers out of port and enticed into their lavish hospitality many of 
 the great of the land. He even hired assassins to maim his enemies and 
 drove in the sunlight surrounded by a bevy of his mistresses. The man 
 debauched the moral sense of the young, disgraced his country, and died 
 as the fool dies, shot by a profligate rival for a wanton's charms. He died 
 and left nothing except the contempt of the good and the execrations of the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 141 
 
 weak whom his example had ruined." 
 
 Nothing needs to be added to or taken from this masterly delineation 
 of the type of plutocracy produced by the demoralization of civil war and 
 the politics which followed it. The foundations of the fortune laid by this 
 man and his partner in the great gold conspiracy of 1869, grew under the 
 cumulative frauds of others until it found itself represented in millions of 
 the "securities" of railroads in Missouri and other western states, whose 
 managers, interested in national bank control of the currency and every 
 other form of monopoly, were always alert to use their free passes and other 
 modes of bribery to control Missouri conventions against Mr. Bland and 
 to keep the secret enemies of the honesty he represented in control of dem 
 ocratic machinery. The imperialistic movement of 1898 and the conse 
 quent demonetization of silver were made possible by such methods. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Superiority of Plutocracy to Party Illustrated by Mr. Jay Gould. He Demonstrates 
 His "Soundness" by Opening His Safe. Influence of New York Safe Deposit 
 Vaults in Missouri Politics. The Growth of Corporate Inflation Accompanied 
 by an Increase of Irresponsibility in Politics. Banks, Railroads and Boards of 
 Trade as Necessary Agencies of Civilization. Production and Distribution the 
 Legitimate Ends of all Business Activity. Result of the Speculative Spirit 
 in Missouri Politics. The Attempt of Gambling and Railroad Rings to get 
 Something for Nothing. Regulation of Railroad Rates Accompanied by a Com 
 plete Absence of Regulation for the Power to Issue Stocks and Bonds Against 
 the Credit of General Business. Rings and the Ruthlessness of Speculative 
 Politics. Abuse of the Courts Against the People. 
 
 N NOVEMBER, i872, Mr. Jay Gould was arrested on crimi 
 nal charges based on his mismanagement of the Erie rail 
 road. The suit seems to have been intended, not for the 
 purpose of bringing him to justice, but merely to force him 
 to disgorge. In December following he surrendered securities of the face 
 value of over $9,000,000 and the prosecution against him was allowed to 
 lapse. 
 
 It was during the struggle over the management of the Erie that he 
 testified to plutocratic disregard of parties, by saying that he was a demo 
 crat in a democratic district, a republican in a republican district and al 
 ways an Erie man. 
 
 The spirit of plutocracy has been suggested by Mr. Phelps in the 
 speech from which an extract has been quoted. His analysis of the character 
 of Fiske illustrates the ethical idea of "unsoundness." The financial idea 
 was illustrated in March, 1882, thirteen years after the gold corner in 
 which Mr. Fiske laid the foundations of his own reputation and assisted 
 Mr. Gould in his first steps toward financial soundness. The report hav 
 ing been circulated that Mr. Gould was sound no longer, he disposed of 
 
 it at once by inviting a select committee of financiers to accompany him 
 
 142 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 143 
 
 to the safe deposit vault where he took from a tin box and showed them 
 $23,000,000 Western Union, $12,000,000 Missouri Pacific, $6,000,000 Man 
 hattan Elevated, $2,000,000 Wabash Common and $10,000,000 bonds of 
 Metropolitan, New York Elevated and Wabash Preferred. It is said that 
 "he offered to show $30,000,000 additional railway stocks but his visitors 
 had seen enough."* 
 
 The connection between this incident and Mr. Eland's work in Mis 
 souri appears when we recall the fact that the fundamental question in 
 Missouri during the entire time of his public service was the question of 
 the extent to which the politics of this hoard and other hoards like it, held 
 in safe deposit vaults in New York and London should dominate Missouri, 
 and through Missouri, the Union. In January, 1882, Messrs. Gould and 
 Huntington purchased a controlling interest in the San Francisco railroad 
 which intersects the district Mr. Bland represented. The Missouri Pacific, 
 the Iron Mountain, the Wabash and the San Francisco gave the Gould 
 interest a power which, when united with that of the other railroads center 
 ing in St. Louis and co-operating with the national banks of St. Louis, 
 Kansas City and St. Joseph, would have been omnipotent but for the steady 
 resistance of those who had Mr. Bland to rely on in emergencies. Often 
 the fiercest fighting, sometimes in actual earnest, took place between repre 
 sentatives of opposing corporations and syndicates, which, after shaping 
 the issues to suit themselves, allowed their representatives on one side 
 and the other, to struggle with each other for the sake of exercise or of 
 salaries to be paid them as officeholders by the people. 
 
 The pretense of antagonism between agents of the same corporations, 
 sometimes admired as the mark of deep and subtle statesmanship, is char 
 acteristic of the spirit of those who used their by no means inconsiderable 
 ingenuity in the effort to keep Mr. Bland in obscurity on the ground that 
 he was "objectionable to the business interests" the "business interests" 
 meant, being the national banks and the holders of such hoards as that ex- 
 
 *Clews' "Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street," page 518. 
 
144 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 hibited by Mr. Gould. 
 
 While the exposure of individual false-pretenses would be an un 
 grateful task and a useless one in any event, it is a necessary part of the 
 truth of history to show that when Mr. Bland did come to the front in 
 Missouri politics and the politics of the world, it was a result of the work 
 ing of the evolutionary forces of the people, and in opposition to the wishes 
 and interests of the mere parasitic politicians and professional office 
 holders of all parties. 
 
 As a result of the evolutionary impulses of growth in the people, three 
 decades of Missouri history made during Mr. Eland's connection with the 
 public affairs of the state represented steady progress industrially and 
 socially. If political conditions in 1900 seem to represent the extreme of 
 demoralization, it is hard to say that they are worse than they were in i87o. 
 It is a saying of the late S. S. Cox that it is not always the best men who 
 are best in their relations to public affairs, and while it is not to be con 
 ceded that moral irresponsibility ih politics is to be tolerated or compro 
 mised with, there is no room either for surprise or despair when it is found 
 that a very considerable number of those who become parasites on the pub 
 lic as officeholders or professional politicians, become morally irresponsible 
 under any system in which the ultima ratio of government is in fact 
 coercive and the immediate object of "practical politics," is the enactment 
 of laws which will put this power of coercion in the hands of the most 
 astute, aggressive and acquisitive. In Missouri, as elsewhere in the United 
 States, in the thirty years since i87o, the increase in plutocracy as a spirit 
 in government has bred an increase of irresponsibility in practical poli 
 tics. Many of the men, however, who have been demoralized until they 
 are irresponsible as individuals, are by no means malevolent, and under 
 conditions which will make the moral forces of the people the governing 
 forces in politics, they can be restored to a very considerable measure of 
 constructive usefulness. 
 
 Hence it is not to be assumed that logical conclusions from the study 
 
JOHN A. HOCKADAY 
 
 S. W. T. LANHAM. 
 
 JOSEPH:D. SAVERS. 
 
 CHARLES A. TOWNE. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 145 
 
 of American politics, local and general, are necessarily pessimistic. On 
 the contrary, they warrant the belief that progress will be continuous and 
 that all attempts to interrupt it or to turn it back will fail. 
 
 The railroads, the banks, the manufacturing enterprises, all the varied 
 phenomena of industrial co-operation under free institutions, are them 
 selves collectively and severally, not merely individual enterprises but mani 
 festations of irresistible creative force derived from the people and increas 
 ing with the development of the popular intellectual and moral sense. The 
 very opposition to their mismanagement which sometimes is called "enmity 
 to progress" is an essential part of the force which called them into exist 
 ence. As far as a railroad is an actual agency of distribution, helping to 
 exchange products from producer to consumer, it is a most beneficent and 
 necessary part of that great scheme of liberty and progress into which 
 Mr. Eland's life-work has already been absorbed. As far as a bank is 
 not a mere device for collecting non-productive usury from the products 
 of the people or for inflating debt with its notes issued against the volume 
 of trade ; as far as it is actually helping to distribute food and clothing 
 the necessaries and comforts of life to the hungry and the naked, its work 
 is beneficent and noble. As far as the speculator in grain or in railroad 
 stocks, or in the "securities" of the trusts, is helping the actual workers of 
 the world to help each other by exchanging their products and realizing 
 as wealth w r hat would otherwise be mere wasted labor, then he too is a 
 highly useful member of society and every howl he utters, every shriek, 
 every contortion of his body in the "panics" he brings on by his own in 
 sanity assisted by that of others like him, helps the work of progress and 
 gives him a claim to survival where otherwise he would have none. 
 
 In the unfair use of privileges enjoyed by railroad and banking cor 
 porations and in the speculative mania fostered by boards of trade and 
 similar institutions for the promotion of gaming as an incident of business, 
 we can find a sufficient cause of the worst demoralization of Missouri 
 
 politics and of national politics during the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 10 
 
146 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 century, but when we go to the roots of every evil in politics, as of every 
 good thing in society, in business, and in government, we find it in the 
 people themselves. The fierceness of civil war in America in general and 
 in Missouri in particular, impeded the operation of popular constructive 
 intelligence. It can not be repeated too often that in the measure in which 
 hate and passion exist as governing forces in the popular mind, fraud upon 
 the people is made possible for those who through self-interest have 
 learned to control passion, whose acquisitiveness does not necessarily in 
 volve hate, whose intellectual activity in gaining for themselves what be 
 longs to others does not result in malevolence except where they are 
 strenuously and successfully resisted. 
 
 Except to make it clear that the people, as the source of social and co 
 operative energy are themselves primarily and finally responsible for all the 
 corruptions and abuses of which they are made the victims, it would be 
 worse than useless to go over again the old story of the obstruction and 
 perversion of the forces of progress. If, however, the people can be made 
 to realize that their whole social and industrial order is at every stage of 
 the world completely representative of their own moral and intellectual 
 condition, the work of denouncing perversion and obstruction will be con 
 structive where otherwise it would stand for negation. 
 
 Whether in London, in Washington or in Jefferson City, we can not 
 examine into the practical workings of legislation and of executive gov 
 ernment without finding that the radical question under existing economic 
 and industrial conditions is the control of the bonds representing the debts 
 of the states, of municipalities and of corporations operating under the dele 
 gated sovereignty of states and municipalities. The "money question" is 
 an incident of this, as the whole struggle over the currency pivots on the 
 question of whether or not corporations shall be allowed to circulate paper 
 evidence of their own indebtedness to take the place of cash issued by the 
 people. In an article in the London Contemporary Review (1896) on Mr. 
 Bland and other "American Currency Cranks," Mr. J. R. Lawton made a 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. H7 
 
 statement which illustrates the reality of the objections alleged against bi 
 metallism as a part of the Missouri demand for popular government in 
 America. "Bank money/' he said, "is to be the money of the future. It 
 is already doing nine-tenths of the work of civilization. Metallic money 
 has become a mere appendage to it and the relations of the two demand 
 re-adjustment." 
 
 Remembering that the question under a system of industry based on 
 feudal grants to corporations; is necessarily that of accepting or resisting 
 their control of the taxing, money-issuing and debt-making power of the 
 people, we will see that no change of subject is involved in shifting from 
 London in 1896 to Jefferson City thirty years earlier, when the question 
 was one of controlling the future of the state in the interest of the finan 
 ciers who had acquired possession of its bonds and of the bonds issued in 
 the name of its counties and municipalities. 
 
 The value of the property of the state, including slaves, was assessed 
 for taxation at $317,928,000 in 1860. In 1865, it was placed at $200,000,- 
 ooo, but in 1868 it was placed at $468,000,000, against which a bonded 
 debt of $18,654,000, issued under state authority, was outstanding exclu 
 sive of county and municipal debts. More than $13,000,000 of this state 
 debt represented bonds issued as subsidies to railroads, and the county 
 debts had been imposed largely for the same purpose. Where not actu 
 ally fraudulent in a legal sense, and therefore void, as they often were, 
 these bonds stood for the principle of communism in its worst form, and 
 every dollar collected on them in interest or principal, meant the hand of 
 the state applied in confiscation to the property of the citizen. Except 
 under the communistic principle, they can not be justified or excused. As 
 they passed into the hands of bankers, they became a part of the same in 
 terest represented by the demand for "bank money" instead of coin, 
 made so insistently from London and New York. In the year 1868, in 
 which the struggle over them opened in Missouri, a statue was erected to 
 Thomas H. Benton in St. Louis. It was the "first monument ever erected 
 
148 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 to a public man in the state of Missouri," and on May 27, the address 
 dedicating it was made by Frank P. Blair, who succeeded Benton in the 
 Senate as the representative of the Missouri tradition of individual lib 
 erty against communism of the corporations on the one hand and the mob 
 on the other. Blair was elected to the United States Senate in i87i. In 
 i872 the legislature passed a resolution that the state had a right to redeem 
 its debt in legal tender notes and the supreme court decided that the state 
 might prescribe the methods of debt payment. The issues were intensified 
 as popular opposition to corporation control of the state began to assert 
 itself. General John B. Henderson, the candidate for governor defeated 
 when Woodson was elected in i872, was afterwards publicly identified 
 with the long struggle made by the holders of county bonds for the con 
 trol of the courts especially of the county courts without which they could 
 not reach the property they proposed to sell. Rather than levy on the farms 
 of those whose rights had been overridden; whose fundamental principle 
 of government had been supplanted by that of the communism of granting 
 unearned wealth to corporations, county judges spent months hiding in 
 the woods to escape the processes of judges put on the bench of the higher 
 courts by plutocratic influence. Others, when arrested for contempt of 
 such wrongful court orders, spent their whole terms in jail. Such was 
 the persistence of the holders of these bonds, such was the influence they 
 were able to exercise, that this struggle went on for twenty-five years ; and 
 even now men are found on the bench who will declare as law the commun 
 istic claim of the equal right of all to the legislative use of the private prop 
 erty of each on behalf of any enterprise which can make a plausible pre 
 tense of being in the public interest. This dishonesty goes deep. It un 
 derlies the worst corruptions in the public and business life of the state 
 and of the country. 
 
 In 1875, when Senator Sherman was pushing the bill "for the resump 
 tion of specie payments," which was really in its intention a bill for the 
 perpetuation of national "bank money" to take the place both of treasury 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 149 
 
 notes and specie, the Missouri legislature passed a "funding bill" which 
 satisfied the holders of the state's bonds that they would not have their 
 interest stopped by a too prompt payment of the principal. Unable to 
 inflate the principal by new issues through the state legislature, they con 
 tinued inflation through the counties and municipalities, but more espec 
 ially through increase of capital recorded in the office of the secretary of 
 state. The amount of paper issued by Mr. Gould alone against the credit 
 of general business and the industry of the country is enormous. In 
 1875, an act was passed providing for the appointment of three railroad 
 commissioners, empowered to regulate passenger and freight rates. While 
 they were doing it, the work of inflation went on with increasing activity. 
 While the commissioners saved, or professed to save, a thousand dollars 
 on rates, a million in stock-increases or in new bonds could be issued 
 against the property of the commonwealth and the industry of society, 
 under the authority of the state itself, unchecked and almost unnoticed. 
 
 The claim that this enormous inflation of outstanding debt was based 
 on private property is too obviously untenable to be discussed at all among 
 those who are capable of even rudimentary thought. Every dollar of this 
 debt, in Missouri and elsewhere, issued by warrant of the state and by 
 authority of statute, represents the delegated sovereignty of the state 
 and is in its economy as much a part of the public debt as the bonds 
 of the state or of the United States. The interest on every dollar of it 
 must be paid out of the product of public co-operative industry and every 
 dollar of its principal when paid at all must be paid by levies of one kind or 
 another on the private property of citizens whose sovereignty in their col 
 lective capacity as a state was abused in its issuance. 
 
 The result of this continually increasing inflation was a continual in 
 crease in the energy of the attempt to "take all the traffic will bear." In 
 1880, in order to evade all issues against plutocracy, a handsome and 
 distinguished West Pointer, a chivalric and honest gentleman who de 
 clared the tariff a "local issue," was imposed on the democratic party as 
 
150 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 its presidential candidate. During the same period, and as evidence of 
 the same conditions, an open headquarters was maintained at Jefferson 
 City for the control by purchase or otherwise, of members of the legisla 
 ture. It offered free passes, free cigars and free drinks to all comers who 
 could show a pretense of official or personal influence and it promoted the 
 "poker parties" at which it was said that the purchasable were sometimes 
 allowed to win the price of their votes. From 1880 to 1884, the condition 
 of municipal politics in Missouri showed the public demoralization which 
 manifested itself at Washington and in the larger cities of the east and 
 south. St. Louis had a gambling ring as compactly organized as the 
 lottery ring of New Orleans, the Tweed ring of New York or the Shepherd 
 ring of Washington. The whiskey ring of the Grant administration, with 
 headquarters in Missouri, had suggested methods which others equally 
 audacious and unscrupulous were quick to imitate. The keeper of a St. 
 Louis keno room, striving to monopolize the privileges of his business as 
 so many other financiers were doing at the time, secured special privileges 
 which enabled him to dictate the appointment of police commissioners and 
 other officials the resignations of some of whom he kept signed in his 
 safe so that the dates could be filled in whenever their official conduct dis 
 pleased him. The chairman of the democratic state central committee 
 a railroad employee had been imposed on the honest democrats of the state 
 by corporation influence and the entire machinery of the party was used to 
 support the ring. It controlled the St. Louis courts and the machinery 
 of the city government, but at its worst it was disorganized by an attack 
 opened on it by men who opposed it because of the same impulses which 
 made them supporters of Mr. Eland's policies. 
 
 What American political conditions have meant during the last quarter 
 of the nineteenth century is illustrated by the fact a very commonplace 
 one that when all other means of controlling those who were found to 
 be the real promoters of this reform failed, they were notified in several 
 instances that they would be "shot on sight." The execution of the threat 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 151 
 
 may or may not have been intended. "I bluffed him with language and 
 language is cheap/' said a witness before the Trust investigating com 
 mittee of Congress* The idea that "language" is a cheap means of con 
 trolling those who protest against their methods is a favorite one with 
 those who wish to control the law-making power for their own benefit. 
 The threats which are made will not be carried out in many cases even 
 where they fail to intimidate, but that the men who make them are often 
 desperadoes, there can be no doubt. That they often prompt others to 
 commit crimes which would promote their own interest was illustrated 
 by the blowing up of a distillery which antagonized the whiskey trust, by 
 the wrecking of a refinery which held out against the Standard Oil trust 
 and by the ruthless use of violence to suppress objections to the sugar 
 trust's plans for controlling the cane sugar supply in Puerto Rico, Cuba, 
 Hawaii and the Philippines. 
 
 In studying the history of political morals, the sequence of cause and 
 effect from the corruptions of ward politics to national and international 
 crimes is unmistakable. It was said at one of the great crises of Mr. 
 Eland's work, when a St. Louis convention was being packed against him 
 nearly twenty years after the exposure of the gambling ring of 1876-84, 
 that if the roll of its surviving members had been called, they would have 
 been found almost without exception on the floor, organizing the conven 
 tion to promote local frauds which in their turn, were intended to promote 
 national and international injustice so grave as to be impossible of perpet 
 uation except through violence or the always imminent threat of it. 
 
 "See testimony quoted in Lloyd's "Wealth Against Commonwealth." 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Democratic Party in Missouri as Bland Represented it. The Idea Which Has 
 Given it Coherence and Efficiency. The Only Motive Which Can Justify Men 
 of Higher Intelligence in Taking Part in Politics. Bland and the Courage of 
 Leadership. Frank P. Blair and His Pistols. Eland's Steadfast Patience. The 
 Supreme Test of Fitness for Success. Bland as the Type of the Highest Possi 
 bilities of Missouri Character. The Military Idea in Missouri Politics. Growth 
 of Plutocratic Combinations. Bland and the Transmississippi West Overthrow 
 Malthusianism. The Struggle for the Largest Possible Production and the 
 Freest Possible Distribution. Attempts of the Speculative Element to Control 
 in Missouri. Marmaduke's Epoch-making Stand for Principle. 
 
 HE democratic party in Missouri has been held together by 
 an intense if undefined conviction that freedom to grow is 
 the only possible solution of every possible problem. 
 
 This idea, which Mr. Bland was honest enough and 
 strong enough to represent, has saved the state and the country from vio 
 lent revolution, which would have been otherwise the necessary conse 
 quence of such immorality as has been touched on in the last chapter. 
 
 Devotion to an ideal higher than the possibilities of the present, faith 
 in goodness inherent in human nature and above it as the ultimate solu 
 tion of all problems, readiness when convinced of duty to make any sacri 
 fice for it these are characteristics of the best type of Americanism in 
 Missouri, and Mr. Bland represented them in Missouri politics in a way 
 that gave them high efficiency. 
 
 The hope of providing a more nearly adequate means of expression 
 for the goodness in human nature is the only motive which can justify a 
 man of common sense and of right impulses in having anything to do 
 with the struggles of politics in a generation as fierce as that which fought 
 the Civil war in America. 
 
 At the very outset of his career in Missouri politics, Mr. Eland's life 
 
 was threatened, and when he spoke in spite of the threat, he risked his life 
 
 152 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 53 
 
 to denounce what he looked upon as intolerable wrong. When, during 
 the same period, Frank P. Blair* spoke with a pistol displayed on the 
 stand in front of him, his life was no doubt in as much actual danger as it 
 had ever been in battle. Though conditions slowly improved, the rever 
 sion due to the spirit excited by the Spanish war was marked, and it must 
 be taken fully into account in explaining the demoralization of politics in 
 a state where the great majority of the people assimilate distinctly the 
 type of simplicity, honesty, benevolence and steadfastness which Mr. 
 Bland represented. 
 
 No matter how often it is repeated by rote that good citizenship 
 requires the extremes of violent contention for this measure or that, for 
 this leader or that, no one who has made the actual experiment can look 
 back upon his experience in meeting the evil in politics upon its own 
 ground, without seeing that the pistol, which Blair displayed or that with 
 which he himself may have worn out his own pockets while waiting the 
 overt act of those who coerce timid champions of right with threats, is 
 itself, representative of the worst forces of opposition to the evolution of 
 justice in Being and liberty in Growing. 
 
 The highest citizenship the only good citizenship is that of long- 
 suffering and unsurrendering devotion to principle such citizenship as 
 Mr. Bland represented when with his life-work done, and his last, long- 
 husbanded vital forces exhausted in the struggle of 1898, he died slowly 
 and patiently, fully realizing that as a result of the defection made possi 
 ble by the spirit of violence excited during the Spanish war, silver would be 
 demonetized, the national banks given complete control of the currency, 
 the influence of England made predominant in American finances for the 
 time being and the hold of plutocracy on the machinery of society strength 
 ened in America and the world. 
 
 To be able to work calmly and persistently through life for an object, 
 not stopping for abuse or changing for opposition, and then at the last to 
 
 *See Eulogy of Blair by Hon. Champ Clark, in the Congressional Record for 1899. 
 
154 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 die defeated, with all the patience of the long struggle not exhausted by 
 defeat but increased by it this is the supreme test of fitness for final suc 
 cess and this is the sure means of achieving it where all others fail. 
 
 In this Mr. Bland was as much a type of the highest possibilities of 
 Missouri character as Washington was of the highest type of the Virginia 
 character of his day. Nothing is hopeless in a world where men can live 
 so and die so. 
 
 In antithesis to the possibilities of achievement for the future thus man 
 ifested, we have the actual conditions of the past and of the present, which 
 must be studied patiently and candidly if we are not to go on forever mak 
 ing folly in one generation a precedent for crime in the next. 
 
 The struggle over the organization of Kansas and Nebraska as states, 
 evoked in Missouri and Kansas in violent acts what had become the spirit 
 of the national life a spirit of discord and destructiveness which in the 
 first decade after the Civil war showed itself in violence and fraud in pol 
 itics. 
 
 Missouri, which became a pivotal state in '1820, demonstrated that it 
 was still so in 1861 when, under Blair's leadership, it kept the control of 
 the Mississippi against the Confederacy, and finally in the liberal republican 
 movement and the later movement forced by Mr. Bland, showed that the 
 same causes which gave it power at the beginning were still at work. 
 
 These causes are clearly apparent in the three decades of state politics 
 between i87o and 1900, and chief among them is the keenness of con 
 tention between representatives of radically conflicting ideas who lack on 
 both sides the forces necessary to win decisive victory. 
 
 The necessity for sharp and continuous struggle is easily recognizable 
 by those who are subjected to such conditions, and as a part of the same 
 necessity they see that frequent compromises are unavoidable. In the 
 "Young Men's Movement" in Missouri, between 1880 and 1890, it was said 
 vindictively that for nearly twenty years, the "Civil War Colonels" on both 
 sides had been adjusting their differences by falling on each other's neck 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 55 
 
 in public "reconciliation" as a preliminary to dividing the offices in private. 
 If this assertion was prompted as much by a sense of humor as by the bit 
 terness it professes, it is not for that reason less worthy to be taken into 
 account as an explanation of otherwise unexplainable phenomena in Amer 
 ican history. In Missouri and in the country at large, government be 
 tween 1866 and 1896 was distinctly military. The "soldier vote" con 
 trolled the doubtful states and its demand for increases of pensions was 
 insistent and menacing. The southern states filled Congress with the 
 officers of the Confederate army who, while they were being constantly 
 attacked as "paroled prisoners" and "pardoned rebels," were in no 
 position to object effectively to what came to be called "pretorianism." 
 North and south, the state offices not less than the federal, were given as 
 the rewards of military service and, as has been said elsewhere, Mr. 
 Bland was almost unique in Missouri public life because of his lack of a 
 war record. In making up the "slates" at conventions the balance was 
 carefully adjusted to give Union and Confederate soldiers equal represen 
 tation on the ticket. The liberal republican element of 1860, represented 
 by Blair, Bates, Brown and others who helped to prevent the secession 
 of the state, worked to sustain the ex-Confederates as a check on radical 
 ism and out of such conditions came a certain open-mindedness in Mis 
 souri which was developed less slowly in other states. Up to 1888, the 
 governors of the state had been chosen as a result of real or apparent com 
 promises between the Union and Confederate elements. After that, 
 though the old sectionalism was still kept at the front, the decisive issues 
 were rather the antagonism between organized capital in the cities and 
 the producers of the country. The great corporations learned to select 
 "Union" or "Confederate" candidates without prejudice as it suited their 
 interests to do so. One of the most heated campaigns ever made for a 
 nomination in the state was apparently between Union and Confederate 
 candidates for a party nomination, each one of whom was supported by 
 agents of the same corporate combination. The only real issue was which 
 
156 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 one of two agents of a syndicate should be promoted for distinguished 
 success in serving its interests. The one whose candidate secured the 
 nomination was promoted and the nomination itself was charged to the 
 Civil war account as "Another Victory of the Rebellion." 
 
 The era of Mr. Eland's greatest influence in the state dates from the 
 time the syndicated and speculative interests, operating from St. Louis and 
 Kansas City, began this system of trading on civil war sectionalism to 
 accomplish their own ends. Although they may be deceived for the time 
 being in a particular case, the people in communities where political agi 
 tation has been so incessant as in Missouri, are very sensitive to the real 
 spirit of politics, and since the campaign of 1884 they have been governed 
 more in their political action by the issue for and against that which Mr. 
 Bland represented than by the politics of the struggle over slavery. 
 
 In 1^90, two years after the adoption of the federal constitution, only 
 one-thirtieth of the population of the United States were residents of cities. 
 Virginia, which gave Missouri its institutions, represented the average 
 conditions of the country conditions which favored a strong individualism 
 and the tendency to openness, frankness and boldness in dealing with all 
 social and political problems. 
 
 In 1880, the proportion of city residents had grown to nearly one- 
 fourth of the whole and by 1890 it had approximated one-third. 
 
 It is unsafe to conclude that this is an unmixed evil. It was an inci 
 dent of a world-wide movement which extended from Eastern Russia to 
 the Pacific coast of the United States and it was directly due to the forces 
 Mr. Bland represented the forces of increasing production for breadstuffs, 
 wool, cotton and other necessaries and comforts of life. 
 
 Mr. Eland's own constituents in Missouri and the agricultural produc 
 ing states of the west and south were most largely responsible for it. 
 Given a generation of peace after the close of the Civil war and their labor 
 demonstrated the limitless possibility of the soil to sustain human life. 
 They showed that with restrictive influences removed and the power of 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 157 
 
 aristocracy and plutocracy so checked as to allow free production and dis 
 tribution, the plutocratic theories of the necessity of war, plague and 
 famine, are as much a delusion as the other oligarchic idea that society is 
 improved by the rack, the thumbscrew and the stake.* 
 
 Between 1880 and 1900, the theory of Mai thus, the most nearly in 
 fernal theory of economy which the perversion of human intellect had ever 
 originated for the comfort of the most criminal classes, was wiped out of 
 the category of sane systems of economy. Krapotkin and other extreme re 
 formers had attacked it in Europe with force of logic, powerful enough to 
 have demonstrated its falsity, if falsity could be so demonstrated. It was 
 overthrown, however, by the logic of events not by that of words. Men in 
 America who saw in it the strongest bulwark of the English toryism which 
 was actively operating for the control of America, saw in the "corn-burn 
 ing era'" of Kansas the opportunity to demonstrate that the poverty and 
 suffering of the world are due to waste, to restriction and to oppression 
 not to the laws of God or of Nature. They advanced to the use of their 
 opportunity without menace, without advertisement of their purpose, but 
 with an intelligent understanding of the vastness of the possibility of benef 
 icent achievement for universal humanity. Mr. Bland was the one man 
 in Congress whose work made possible the success of all other work done 
 by believers in the infinite possibilities of development under liberty. 
 While some others were raising campaign funds and taking their per 
 centages, or quarreling with each other over the possession of the offices, 
 he forced the issue which will shape the twentieth century and insure the 
 continued progress of America and the world against all forces of reac 
 tion. 
 
 The fight for the largest possible production, the freest possible dis 
 tribution, is a necessary part if it be not logically the whole of what is 
 
 *The theory of Malthus, a favorite with English conservatives and commercial imperialists, in 
 volves the idea that births increase faster than the possibilities of food, and that under natural conditions 
 of growth, unrelieved by the destructiveness of war, pestilence and famine, the human race tends to con 
 ditions of increasing discomfort finally to result in general misery. No other theory could have been 
 logically used to support the policies of the British Empire since the time of Clive and Hastings. 
 
158 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 denounced as "agrarianism." The direct producer, having no opportunity 
 for speculative profit, must comply absolutely with the great natural law 
 that only those who give most are entitled to take most. Hence, in Mis 
 souri, as elsewhere, we find a non-producing element in the cities attempt 
 ing to push urban populations into conflict with the natural laws of pro 
 duction and distribution laws which operate at all times as the forces of 
 progress, the governing influences of civilization. 
 
 The speculative element of St. Louis and other Missouri cities, con 
 nected with the speculative element in the east and in London by the 
 nexus of "banking credits" and common ownership of inflated securities, 
 began to assert its power to control Missouri as soon as the Civil war 
 spirit had so lost its influence as to make the issue between direct producers 
 and speculative dealers and brokers in products and money a decisive one. 
 
 General John S. Marmaduke was the last governor elected in Missouri 
 on civil war issues. It is perhaps true that he was not intellectually a 
 great man, and he had the habit which crippled Grant the habit of over 
 stimulation which has been the curse of American politics and the ruin, 
 morally and intellectually, of many who might otherwise have been ben 
 efactors of their race. But when this is said, it remains true that at a 
 great crisis in the history of the state, the United States and the world, 
 he made a stand for principle which postponed for nearly two decades the 
 reaction towards plutocracy which showed itself after the Spanish war. 
 
 Following the great strikes of i877 due primarily to the fact that the 
 system of finance and trade, supported by the police and taxing power of 
 the federal government, is restrictive and unfit to distribute anything ex 
 cept a minimized product the holders of great fortunes accumulated by 
 speculative methods, grew frightened and, in their controlling spirit, fierce. 
 They were ready to shoot down opposition from labor and by the use of 
 their money to drive out of public life all who opposed them in their policy 
 of making government the vehicle of the maximum rather than the min 
 imum of coercion. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 59 
 
 They met in Marmaduke as they had met in Sumner a representative 
 of the moral forces of the "pride of the gentleman," and it turned them 
 back upon themselves in impotent anger. From i877, and for ten years 
 thereafter, the plutocracy of consolidated corporations, not satisfied with 
 buying control of courts and legislatures, had begun organizing such bands 
 of feudal retainers as attended the great landholders of the middle ages. 
 These, known as "Pinkertons," were sometimes kept employed continu 
 ously from year to year as by the owners of certain Missouri coal mines, 
 or else were hired for the occasion from men who made a business of 
 recruiting them from the broken and desperate men of the cities for ship 
 ment wherever they were called for. 
 
 Governor Marmaduke died in December, i887, but in his short official 
 life, he had done that for which he ought to be remembered as long as 
 manly independence is admired and liberty valued. In the great south 
 western strike on railroads centering in St. Louis, the speculative element 
 attempted to refuse to deal with the men, preferring rather to "suppress 
 the strike" by the use of Pinkertons and the state militia. They had in 
 fluence enough to force a resolution through the St. Louis Merchant's 
 Exchange demanding that this policy should be supported by the state 
 administration. When they sent a delegation to Jefferson City to intimi 
 date Governor Marmaduke, they found him such a man as Providence 
 seems to reserve for great emergencies. The weakness of character, for 
 which he had been assailed, disappeared. He showed the strength which 
 can not exist except as it is founded in rectitude. No matter what threats 
 were made, he refused to allow the crowds in the streets of St. Louis to be 
 fired on so long as they remained orderly. He insisted that the police, not 
 the militia, were the proper guardians of the peace until they had exhausted 
 their resources, and that only when there was actual and violent resistance 
 to the authority of the state could the militia justly and lawfully open 
 fire. 
 
 While he may not have defined his position in so many words, this 
 
l6o AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 represents accurately what it was, and as he held it immovably, the spec 
 ulative element was obliged to exhaust its indignation in withdrawing ad 
 vertising patronage from newspapers which supported the policy represent 
 ed by Governor Marmaduke. In East St. Louis, however, where the forces 
 of government were actually controlled by plutocratic influences, the 
 streets were filled with "Pinkertons" and the militia was ordered out to 
 reinforce them in "suppressing the strike." 
 
 The result was the "East St. Louis massacre" which opened the way 
 for the campaign against the employment of armed bands by corporations 
 a campaign which was essentially a part of the movement which carried 
 the northwest and forced Mr. Bland into national leadership as a represen 
 tative of opposition to the coercive policies of speculative commercialism. 
 
 Of the speculative spirit of this period as it showed itself in St. Louis, 
 Chicago, New York and other great American cities, W. S. Aubrey, LL. 
 D., an intelligent English student of American conditions, wrote in 1888 : 
 
 "In 1860, the national wealth was estimated at 3,232,000,000, and in 
 1880 at 8,728,000,000. In the interval, a million of men had perished 
 on the battlefield or in the hospitals, and an incalculable amount of property 
 had been destroyed. A comparatively few railroad magnates, and money 
 speculators, and contractors, and owners of mines, and political adven 
 turers, and those interested in 'booming up' real estate, have grown enor 
 mously rich, but farmers, manufacturers, tradesmen, and artisans have had 
 to suffer. Even where this has not been the case, the condition of the latter 
 classes might have been much better, in the absence of the gambling spirit 
 which seems to possess almost every branch of American commerce. Great 
 cities like New York and Chicago have their produce exchange or board 
 of trade, where 'rings' and 'corners' are formed for mad and reckless 
 speculation in all kinds of commodities. These places are exaggerated 
 stock exchanges, and the scenes are suggestive of Bedlam let loose. The 
 excitement, the clamor, the struggling, the rivalry, the contentions, and 
 the feverish heat and strain with which time bargains are carried on, 
 show how the spirit of gambling has been evoked. A single firm in 
 Chicago, a few years ago, gained control of the pork market, succeeded in 
 doubling the price, and cleared more than a million sterling by the transac- 
 
EUGENE HALE. 
 
 R. A. PIERCE. 
 
 J. R. WILLIAMS. 
 
 B. R. TILLMAX. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. l6l 
 
 tion, the influence of which in advancing prices was felt everywhere. In 
 the New York Produce Exchange alone the members buy and sell (of 
 course, not for delivery) two bushels of wheat for every one that is grown 
 in the country. They deal in five times the cotton crop of the entire south. 
 Pennsylvania yields about twenty-four millions of barrels of oil in a year, 
 but in New York city as much nominally changes hands in a week, and 
 the various petroleum exchanges sold last year two thousand million bar 
 rels, or fifty times the total yield."* 
 
 The importance of such speculative conditions in their bearing on poli 
 tics, appears at once when it is remembered that men thus enriched became 
 directors in national banks, "trusts" and political corporations of all kinds. 
 
 Alarmed by the failure to control Governor Marmaduke, this specula 
 tive and non-productive element of St. Louis began the organized effort, 
 which they have since made continuously, to control the state and to nomi 
 nate the candidates of both parties. Mr. Bland was continuously subjected 
 to their attacks, and they have left nothing undone to control the courts, 
 the executive offices and legislature. The political history of Missouri, 
 from the death of Marmaduke in i887 to the death of Bland in 1899, is 
 the history of the attempt to supplant American institutions in Missouri 
 with the ideas of men who are in principle not merely imperialists, believ 
 ing in coercive government to the utmost possible extent, but communists, 
 believing in it for the purpose of using its coercive powers to support them 
 selves in taking what they have not earned. 
 
 The "Laissez Faire" Bland stood for, did not mean letting such men 
 alone. It meant with him, and it still means, opposing them in all their 
 attempts to impose on society, as its laws, the intellectual and moral dis 
 eases by which, if left to themselves, they will destroy themselves and the 
 government they control. 
 
 The "Whirling Dervish" must be reckoned with. He is not necessa 
 rily a villain. He may be, and often is, socially, a man of charming traits, 
 and in the sum of things if he is not allowed to have his own way with the 
 
 *Social Problems in America, by W. S. Aubrey, LL. D., in the Fortnightly Review, London. Re 
 printed in the Eclectic, for August, 1888. 
 II 
 
I 62 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 universe, he will demonstrate his usefulness. But to give him his own 
 way, would mean to invite the certainty of destruction for all the splendid 
 results of the slow and painful struggle towards civilization. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 "Who Owns the West?" The Beginnings of a Great Political Revolution. Western 
 Mortgages and the "Bloody Shirt." How Hon. John James Ingalls Retired 
 From Public Life. A Ten Dollar Fac-Simile and its Far-Reaching Sequences. 
 The Law of Maximum Production Against Oligarchic Restriction. The Work 
 of D. M. Grissom in Journalism Complementing that of Mr. Bland in Congress. 
 Non-Resident Ownership of Productive Bases. The Centralization of Values 
 and the Demand of Non-Residents for Political Control. 
 
 HE laws of nature operate to force a maximum product in 
 return for human activity. The political and commercial 
 system, against which Mr. Bland's life was a protest, oper 
 ates to minimize the product that it may be more easily con 
 trolled by a political and commercial oligarchy. There can only be one 
 result from a system of oligarchic restriction, operating through the gold 
 standard and national bank control of the money supply on one hand and 
 on the other through stock watering, through combinations in restraint 
 of trade, through duties levied to prohibit imports and through speculation 
 at the expense of distribution. 
 
 Whenever the laws of nature force an approximation to the maximum 
 product, the oligarchic system breaks down, and unless supported by mil 
 itary force, those who have profited by it, can not sustain it so as to pre 
 vent the possibility of reform. 
 
 This principle, felt as a decisive fact of politics, if not so clearly defined 
 as it is here, guided the work of those who joined with Mr. Bland in forc 
 ing the issues which, after the defeat of Mr. Cleveland by Mr. Harrison in 
 1888, completely revolutionized "practical politics" in America, ending for 
 ever the era during which New York city and Indiana held joint dictator 
 ship over the sections. 
 
 The governing cause of the change was a visible supply of wheat, cot 
 ton, corn and other agricultural products, so abundant that the restrictive. 
 
164 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 system, lacking the help of unusual scarcity abroad, was inadequate to dis 
 tribute them so as to realize the so-called "surplus" as wealth. When 
 Kansas began burning its corn for fuel, Mr. John James Ingalls, a talented 
 and amiable gentleman, then United States senator from the state, shared 
 a common delusion that the whole art and mystery of politics consisted 
 in animadverting in an emphatic manner, sometimes approximating harsh 
 ness, on the sins of the southern cotton planters "nigger chasers," as in 
 a Pickwickian sense the late Colonel Joseph Medill, of the Chicago 
 Tribune, sometimes called them, at a time when the connection of the Civil 
 war amendments to the constitution and affairs in the Philippines had not 
 been considered as it has been since. 
 
 While Senator Ingalls and many other talented statesmen of equally 
 good intentions, if of less striking eloquence, were exercising their talents 
 in this seemingly inexpensive way, the roadsides of Kingman and other 
 Kansas counties were frequently heaped with the chattels of landholders, 
 evicted under foreclosure because their abundant crops could not be dis 
 tributed and monetized. Mr. Ingalls' name happened to appear as a direc 
 tor on the letterhead of one of the mortgage companies engaged in this 
 work. It attracted the attention of an acquaintance of Mr. Bland a 
 newspaper writer who shared his belief in the great disadvantages of 
 artificially restricted distribution. He offered jestingly, to retire Mr. 
 Ingalls from politics "bloody shirt and all" in return for $10, to be 
 expended by his newspaper in making a fac-simile of the mortgage 
 company's letterhead, with a finger pointing directly at the name of Ingalls 
 among its directors. The offer was accepted, though with the regretful 
 assertion that Kansas "would probably elect some one worse in his place." 
 The fac-simile appeared, and after the work of corn-burning and evictions 
 had proceeded further, the people of Kansas, supported by the great law 
 that natural production under continuous effort tends to the maximum, 
 did retire him from public life. Presently an ex-Confederate was elected 
 in his stead, and Kansas, no longer "a stronghold of loyalty," began to 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 165 
 
 be denounced as far east as London as a breeding place for "sockless states 
 men" and "long-whiskered cranks." With Kansas the central west and 
 the leading states of the northwest broke from the republican party, and, 
 regardless of the sectional lines drawn by civil war, sided with the cotton 
 planting states against restraint of trade, and the use of governmental force 
 to limit production and distribution. 
 
 The two men who did most to give the initial impetus to the forces 
 which wrought this great and most beneficent change were Mr. Bland 
 and Mr. D. M. Grissom, the latter of whom was for many years the brains 
 and conscience of the editorial page of the Missouri Republican. 
 
 Between Mr. Bland and Mr. Grissom the perfect understanding 
 existed which can exist only between good and unselfish men of high and 
 trained intelligence. They seldom saw each other, and when they did it 
 was probably to talk of the weather, the crops, the progress of railroad 
 building or anything else rather than of politics. Mr. Bland seldom wrote 
 letters, and to Mr. Grissom he did not need to write. What the one did 
 the other understood, and from the time Mr. Bland forced issues on the 
 Bland- Allison Act, the work of the journalist complemented that of the 
 statesman until at last, after the result had become inevitable, the usual 
 methods of stopping the work were resorted to. Through Mr. Bland in 
 Washington, and through others, it went on without interruption, however, 
 and with gathering force until the result appeared in the campaign of 1896 
 and the Chicago platform. 
 
 Mr. Grissom saw that the restrictions on distribution threatened the 
 producing states with non-resident ownership. He began systematic 
 work to demonstrate this and to check the process of centralization through 
 which the ownership of western values was being massed in the control 
 of a few great bankers and debt brokers in London and the larger Amer 
 ican cities chiefly in New York and Boston. He showed that the 
 safety of American institutions, the welfare of the people everywhere de 
 pended on checking this movement; and the figures he collected were so 
 
1 66 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 conclusive, the arguments with which he supported them so unanswerable, 
 that even after it was supposed by some that he had been deprived by their 
 opposition of means of doing effective work, what he had done already 
 forced republicans in Congress unwilling as they were and knowing it 
 would be disastrous to them to consent to a census of the farm-mortgage 
 debt of the country. 
 
 Through this and similar measures growing out of Mr. Eland's work 
 or the work of others supporting the same principles, the second election 
 of Mr. Cleveland was made possible as it never could have been had there 
 been a definite issue on the lines of his policies of allowing the national 
 banks to direct his treasury management. 
 
 Mr. Grissom made clear, as it had never been before, the effect of 
 stock-watering as a restriction on the distribution of the products of labor. 
 Every dollar of false valuation in the fictitious capital of railroads, grain 
 elevators and other agencies of distribution, calls for "all the traffic will 
 bear" in dividends to be paid by the product of labor before it can be so 
 distributed as to become wealth. This restriction, joined to the restriction 
 of trade by prohibitive tariffs and to the still worse restriction of the 
 medium of exchange by corporation sovereignty over money, inevitably 
 operated to force non-resident ownership of all the bases of production 
 of land, houses, machinery, and mills as well as of railroads, elevators and 
 factories for secondary production. 
 
 Over and over again as this discussion progressed, the question "Who 
 Owns the West?" was emphasized. In 1894, when the same question 
 recurred, Mr. Grissom contributed to the press a series of articles similar 
 to those which had forced the issues on which President Harrison's re-elec 
 tion was so overwhelmingly defeated. In one of these, he showed the con 
 nection between the watered capitalization of railroads and the demand of 
 the west for a natural currency so strikingly that the reader will find in 
 the study of it a better means of understanding the underlying forces of 
 the last quarter of the nineteenth century than he could well find elsewhere. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 167 
 
 After having illustrated the vicious effects of the unsound and dangerous 
 policy of centralization and restriction as it operates through oligarchic 
 control of bank-credits, money and the visible agencies of production, Mr. 
 Grissom wrote of the centralized ownership of inflated railway capital : 
 
 "Money and bank credits, capital and surplus, are not the only great 
 items that enter into the aggregate of wealth of the northeast. That sec 
 tion is very rich also in western property those kinds of western property 
 that are most available for drawing annual incomes from railroads, 
 telegraph and telephone lines, real estate mortgages, water works, gas 
 works, electric light works, mines, mills, factories and banks. 
 
 If the total of these items of western wealth owned and controlled 
 in the east could be accurately and officially stated, it would startle these 
 western bankers, merchants and business men who are accustomed to 
 accept and adopt eastern theories of finance because they are presumed to 
 be sound and safe. But let us, for the present, content ourselves with 
 those very important and conspicuous earners of incomes, western rail 
 roads. The actual and official reports of them are at hand, and strik 
 ingly presented in the subjoined tables: 
 
 RAILROAD INVESTMENTS IN ELEVEN WESTERN STATES 1894. 
 
 Capital Stock. Funded Debt. 
 
 Ohio $ 463,000,000 $ 480,000,000 
 
 Michigan 111,000,000 118,000,000 
 
 Indiana 109,000,000 138,000,000 
 
 Illinois 430,000,000 545,000,000 
 
 Wisconsin .. 117,000,000 193,000,000 
 
 Missouri 275,000,000 282,000,000 
 
 Kansas 143,000,000 280,000,000 
 
 Colorado 116,000,000 91,000,000 
 
 Iowa , 65,000,000 58,000,000 
 
 Minnesota 294,000,000 351,000,000 
 
 Nebraska 74,000,000 145,000,000 
 
 $2,167,000,000 $2,681,000,000 
 
 Total investment $4,848,000,000 
 
 INTEREST AND DIVIDENDS PAID IN 1894. 
 
 Interest. Dividends. 
 
 Ohio $ 18,386,000 $ 11,845,000 
 
 Michigan ... 6,893,000 1,519,000 
 
 Indiana .'.... 5,830,000 516,000 
 
 Illinois 25,556,000 15,181,000 
 
 Wisconsin 9,471,000 2,319,000 
 
 Missouri 13,521,000 1,913,000 
 
 Kansas 10,540,000 
 
 Colorado 3>777..ooo 473, ooo 
 
 Iowa : , 2,427,000 356,000 
 
 Minnesota 16,551,000 4, 163,000 
 
 Nebraska 6,545,000 
 
 Total $ 119,397,000 $ 38,285,000 
 
1 68 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 "The first of these tables exhibits about five billion dollars' worth of 
 western railroads, and the second shows the interest and dividends they 
 yielded last year. They are western property, but they are not owned in 
 the west. It would be a very liberal estimate to credit five per cent of their 
 value to the states in which they are found. They are owned in the north 
 east and abroad, and the $119,397,000 interest paid on their bonds and 
 $38,285,000 paid in dividends on their stocks making a total of $157,682,- 
 ooo is drained off to swell the incomes of their bondholders and stock 
 holders in the northeast and Europe. 
 
 This, perhaps, is not a matter that we have a right to complain of, 
 since the non-resident owners of these western railroads have a right to 
 claim their own and do what they please with it. But it may be sug 
 gested that it is a matter of tremendous concern whether this annual drain 
 of $157,682,000 shall be paid in free coined silver worth 100 cents to the 
 dollar, or in gold or at a gold standard of 200 cents to the dollar. Or, to 
 put it in another way, in wheat at $i and corn at 50 cents a bushel, or in 
 wheat at 50 cents and corn at 25 cents a bushel." 
 
 Mr. Bland once estimated that of the American values thus centralized 
 in non-resident hands, about five billion (five thousand million dollars) are 
 held or controlled by English or other European capitalists. It never oc 
 curred to him that these capitalists ought to be deprived of any right of 
 property representing an honest investment. It did seem to him unreason 
 able, unjust and in the highest degree destructive of the foundations of 
 political and economic morality, that stocks and bonds issued to represent 
 non-existing values and used to take from the producer a percentage of 
 his product for which nothing at all was given him that based on such 
 an obvious fraud as this, these holdings in the hands of non-residents 
 should be used to control the domestic politics of America so as to force 
 the payment of dividends in the dearest possible money that is, in the 
 cheapest possible wheat, cotton, corn and other products sold by America 
 and bought by Europe.* 
 
 *In a coinage catechism, "The People's Dollars," issued in 1896, Mr. Grissom gave this illustra 
 tion of the enormous debt inflation outstanding against American producers especially against the di 
 rect producers of the corn, wheat and cotton states : 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. l6g 
 
 INDEBTEDNESS OF THE WEST AND SOUTH. 
 
 Q. Are there any reliable methods of estimating the aggregate indebtedness you speak of? 
 
 A. Yes; the census reports, the reports of state railroad commissioners, Poor's Railroad Manual, 
 and other official statements put forth at Washington, and at the state capitals, enable us to make a very 
 close approximation. 
 
 There is the national debt to begin with $962,430,000 nearly three-fourths of which, say, $600,- 
 000,000, rests upon the people of the western, southern, mountain and Pacific states, according to popu 
 lation. 
 
 The aggregate state, county, city, district and town debts of these states are $500,000,000. 
 
 Next take the railroad and real estate mortgage debts. The bonded and floating debt of the Illinois 
 railroads is $312,000,000, and the real estate mortgages in the same state amount to $380,000,000, making a 
 total for Illinois of $692,000,000. 
 
 The Kansas railroads are bonded for $210,000,000 and the farms and other real estate are mortgaged 
 for $160,000,000 more making a total for Kansas of $370,000,000. 
 
 The railroad debt of Missouri is $142,000,000 and the real estate mortgage indebtedness is estimated 
 at $100,000,000 making a total for Missouri of $242,000,000. 
 
 The railroad debts and farm mortgage debts of these three states alone Illinois, Kansas and Mis 
 souri, therefore amount to $1,304,000,000. 
 
 The railroad mileage of all the western, southern and mountain states is 134,000 miles, and the 
 bonded debt on them is an average of $26,000 a mile, making a total of $3,484,000,000. 
 
 Their aggregate real estate mortgage debts would be very moderately estimated at $2,000,000,000. 
 
 Summing up these several items, we have the following statement of the 
 
 INDEBTEDNESS OF THE WESTERN, SOUTHERN AND MOUNTAIN STATES. 
 
 Share of the National debt $ 600,000,000 
 
 State, county, city, town and district 500,000,000 
 
 Railroad debt 3,484,000,000 
 
 Real estate and mortgage debt 2,000,000,000 
 
 Total $6,584,000,000 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The Balance of Power in the Electoral College Passes to the Northwest. Modifica 
 tions of the Sectional Issue Which Had Been Forced by the Mexican Conquest. 
 Robert Toombs on the Domestic Consequences of Aggression Abroad. The 
 Sword as a Title to Territory. Toombs and Stephens of Georgia Isolated Under 
 Polk's Administration in their Attempt to Prevent Civil War. Their Opposi 
 tion to the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. Toombs Accepts War as an 
 Inevitable Result of the Annexation of Mexican Territory and Becomes a 
 Radical Secessionist in 1850. The South Changes Front in 1889 and Abandons 
 the Struggle for Sectional Equality in the Electoral College. President 
 Cleveland's First Administration as it Provoked Political Revolution. "Ex 
 pansion," the Nicaragua Canal, the Annexation of the West Indies, and the 
 Nullification of the Constitution as Discussed by Mr. E. V. Smalley in 1880. 
 Effect of the Civil War on Constitutional Interpretation. The Republican 
 Reaction Against Grant. Mr. Cleveland as a Representative of the "Better 
 Element." 
 
 HE sectional division of the Civil war, as it governed so long 
 in the electoral college, was virtually abandoned in 1889, 
 when the northwestern states were admitted. From the time 
 of the Wilmot Proviso until 1889, American policies had 
 been decided chiefly by the invasion of Mexico and the contest over terri 
 tory extorted from that helpless republic. In 1850, Robert Toombs, speak 
 ing in the House of Representatives said of California and New Mexico : 
 
 "These are the first fruits of successful war. We have borne our full 
 share of its burdens we demand an equal participation in its benefits. The 
 rights of the south are consecrated by the blood of her children. The 
 sword is the title by which the nation acquired that country. The thought 
 is suggestive; wise men will ponder over it; brave men will act upon it. I 
 foresaw the dangers of this question. I warned the country of these dan 
 gers. From the day the first gun was fired upon the Rio Grande until the 
 act was consummated by all the departments of this government, I resisted 
 all acquisition of territory. My honorable colleague before me (Alexander 
 H. Stephens) and I, standing upon the ground taken by the republican 
 
 170 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 171 
 
 party in 1796 against Jay's treaty, voted against appropriating the money 
 
 to carry out the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo I saw no prospect of 
 
 adjusting the question which the acquisition would present. I therefore 
 resisted a policy which threatened the ruin of the south and the subversion 
 of the government. And to-day, men of the north, these are the alterna 
 tives you present ! We demand an equal participation in the whole country 
 acquired or a division of it between the north and south."* 
 
 Toombs, Stephens and other educated men at the south saw as clearly 
 as did Corwin and Sumner at the north, that the dismemberment of Mexico 
 would force civil war, and from 1850, when the issue came on California, 
 Toombs seemed to have accepted war as already begun in everything ex 
 cept the actual operation of armies in the field. Ceasing to plead for peace 
 and justice as he had done in opposing the Mexican conquest, (when, as 
 he said, he had no support at all from the south and only six votes from the 
 north) he seemed to have taken it for granted that the country must suffer 
 the dreadful consequences of its own injustice.! No one, after the issue 
 came on the organization of the first territory acquired from Mexico, was 
 a fiercer partisan of the south than was he. "When argument is exhausted, 
 we will stand by our arms," he said in the same speech from which quota 
 tion has been made above. 
 
 When, because of the quarrel forced on Mexico, the south had been 
 ruined as he feared it would be; when the old alignment in Congress and 
 the electoral college had become a mere reminiscence of the unrepented 
 injustices of both sections, the old struggle over the admission of new 
 states was continued from force of habit until the question of bimetallism 
 against corporation paper money opened the way to new issues and a new 
 era in national politics. 
 
 After the south had been "raided" under Grant by the speculative 
 
 *Volume IX, World's Best Orations, page 3643. 
 
 tAccording to the report of the provost marshal general the total of deaths in battle and from wounds 
 and disease during the Civil war was 413,225 or probably ten American lives sacrificed for every 
 Mexican killed in acquiring the territory which, -in the judgment of Mr. Toombs of Georgia and Mr. 
 Corwin of Ohio, made civil war so clearly inevitable that both joined in predicting it and in preparing 
 for it ten years before it came openly. 
 
172 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 financiers who used the imperialism (militant commercialism) General 
 Grant represented to bond the southern states wherever they could control 
 their legislatures, the south saw only one recourse to destroy its own 
 credit so that the process could not be repeated. It is said that, when 
 Alabama was discussing the repudiation of a debt fraudulently imposed 
 by financiers who controlled the United States army as a factor in their 
 operations, an agent of the bondholders, who argued that the "credit of the 
 state would be hopelessly ruined in the markets of the world," was told 
 that this was exactly what was wanted; that the property owners of the 
 state had no safety from confiscation so long as one bond issue after 
 another could be floated against their property by legislatures controlled 
 by speculators supported by United States troops.* 
 
 Such answers were in their way conclusive, but, disgusted with the 
 south as a field for "investment," great speculative combinations of ban 
 kers, steamship owners and railroads operating from London and New 
 York, deflected immigration to the northwest and used all possible means to 
 populate the Dakotas, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming rapidly 
 in order to use their votes in the Senate and electoral college in support 
 of plutocratic policies against the agricultural producers of the south. 
 
 Hence when the bills admitting these territories as states came up for 
 passage, there was inevitable southern opposition. The attitude of thinkers 
 in Missouri who had been greatly influenced by Mr. Eland's work was 
 decisive against the continuance of the sectional struggle. It was believed 
 that if all southern opposition to the admission of the northwest were with 
 drawn, the new states would be forced by the logic of events and their own 
 economic necessities for a maximum distribution, to oppose the minimized 
 
 *Mr. Henry Clews is almost pathetic in his discussion of such southern ingratitude. "One of the 
 saddest events of my business experience arose from the purest motives on my part," he says in the 
 twenty-seventh chapter of his valuable book on Wall Street. "I ventured my money and offered my 
 friendship at a time when that section of the country stood in need of both money and friendship. . . . 
 For these kindly offices I was treated with the basest ingratitude by some of the southern states." Mr. 
 Clews is referring more particularly to Georgia and Alabama, which, when relieved from control by 
 military garrisons, refused to recognize the moral obligation of claims urged on their gratitude by those 
 who had promoted bond issues during the reconstruction period. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 73 
 
 distribution insisted on by combinations of corporations which were now 
 showing their determination to become a permanent plutocracy and to 
 supplant republican institutions with oligarchy. Opposition to the admis 
 sion of the northwest was accordingly withdrawn or made formal. North 
 Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington were admitted in 1889 
 and Idaho and Wyoming hi 1890 though Utah, as supposably a demo 
 cratic state, was kept out until 1896; and the people of New Mexico, who 
 were acquired by conquest two generations ago, are still excluded. 
 
 The result of the admission of the northwest fully justified this antic 
 ipation. The fight from this time on was made intelligently for the break 
 ing down of civil war sectionalism as the first consideration. It was fully 
 understood that the continued support of the democratic party by the "solid 
 south" would not be possible when the republican party was no longer sup 
 ported by the solid west. Partisanship, however, was the least weighty 
 of the considerations which determined the action of those who, in spite 
 of protest from party leaders, began forcing Mr. Bland to the front, disre 
 garding well-meant warnings that "the east would never stand it." 
 
 There was a deep-seated conviction that the refusal of the east to 
 "stand it" would be greatly beneficial to the country at large and finally to 
 the east itself, if it should result as seemed inevitable in destroying 
 the dictatorship exercised over the solid south and solid west by capitalistic 
 combinations which controlled New York city and Indiana as a balance 
 of power in the electoral college. 
 
 The amount of capital they represented was so great ; their influence 
 through their control of banking credits and of railroad privileges so far 
 reaching, that the success of the movement to cut them off from their base 
 in national politics might never have been possible if they had not believed 
 success impossible for it. They ridiculed it as "the rainbow chasing cam 
 paign" and except to ridicule it, paid little or no attention to it until the 
 northwest had broken away from them and had established a new balance 
 of power in national politics. 
 
174 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 The whole trend of events under the first Cleveland administration 
 was in the direction of political revolution though Mr. Cleveland him 
 self pursued what his advisers considered a carefully conservative policy. 
 
 Politically Mr. Cleveland, though convinced of his own staunch 
 "democracy," was a stubborn, old-school whig, with ideas and sympathies 
 paralleling those of Henry Clay, in most things, though he leaned toward 
 federalism more strongly than Clay or even than Hamilton himself. 
 Probably, however, he was not aware of this himself until he learned it in 
 the Pullman strike when he ordered troops into a "sovereign state" not 
 merely without the call of the governor, but against his protest. This 
 is one of the class of things pronounced impossible by Alexander Ham 
 ilton, in his speeches in the New York convention called to pass on the Fed 
 eral Constitution. The time had come, however, when the New York pol 
 itician, who had asked in perfect good faith, "What is the Constitution 
 between friends?" represented not merely the attitude of his own imme 
 diate associates toward constitutional government, but that of a majority 
 of the "practical politicians" of the country. Few of them had read it and 
 fewer still cared for it. In a remarkable article, (republished in the 
 Library Magazine for 1880) suggesting the movement for new conquests 
 of territory to be held under the colonial system, Mr. E. V. Smalley, a high 
 authority among those who attach no importance to constitutional restric 
 tions in government, said: 
 
 "One thing we may be satisfied of at the start. Constitutional restric 
 tions will not long fetter the people in their efforts to realize the ideas of a 
 broader and more potent nationality which are now germinating in their 
 minds. The day of the worship of old forms and instruments has gone 
 by. The old belief in the infallibility of the Constitution, which exercised 
 a profound influence upon the political thought and activity of the country 
 during the first half of the century, no longer exists. It received a rude 
 shock when it was made apparent that the so-called sacred instrument had 
 made no provision for the unity and perpetuity of the nation. It was an 
 open question whether the right of secession existed or not The time 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 75 
 
 will doubtless come when we shall make larger efforts, stimulated by a 
 wise government policy, to extend our commerce through the world and we 
 shall seek with prudence, patience and sagacity to bring all lands and 
 regions in North America under our control. In that time we shall foster 
 our mercantile marine, instead of burdening it with imposts and shall give 
 it the protection of a powerful navy. A railroad through Mexico, Central 
 America and the Isthmus to South America, will be constructed with 
 American capital as a national undertaking of immense future importance. 
 The Panama Canal, whether built by De Lesseps or by our own engineers, 
 will be completely under American control. The Canadian provinces, 
 inhabited as they are by people of our own race and language, accustomed 
 to public education and self government, will be brought to see how barren 
 of promise is their colonial condition and how greatly their material and 
 intellectual development will be furthered by a union with us. Without 
 compulsion or unfriendliness on our part, but simply as the result of a wise, 
 persistent policy looking to their voluntary annexation, they will 
 finally become states of the American Union. We shall thus receive an 
 accession of nearly four millions of population and shall obliterate our only 
 long inland frontier, and open to our people whatever resources the extreme 
 north may have hidden behind the screen of Canadian lethargy. 
 
 The West India islands and the tropical continental lands of Mexico 
 and Central America, with their degraded mixed populations and their 
 climate working against the development of a vigorous, progressive race, 
 are not likely to be made partners in our governmental system not, at 
 least, until they can be thoroughly regenerated by fresh blood and the 
 influences of Anglo-Saxon civilization. They may, however, come into a 
 condition of partial union and be brought within the range of our postal 
 and customs system ; and thus be fully opened to our commercial, mining, 
 and agricultural activities. There can be little doubt that before the ten 
 dency toward gigantic nationalities is exhausted and replaced by another 
 form of development, the whole of North America will be brought under 
 one government, and that that government, imperial in power, though not 
 in form or name, will be the government of the United States."* 
 
 A special importance attaches to the date of this article. It is so strik 
 ingly like the speeches made in St. Louis, at Springfield and elsewhere by 
 
 'Library Magazine for 1880, Vol. VI. 
 
176 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 those who were attempting to force Mr. Bland to the rear in 1898, that it 
 might seem to be re-hashed from one of them. But is merely a part of the 
 sequence of events working uninterruptedly from the invasion of Mexico 
 to Appomattox, from Appomattox to the Grant administration and from 
 the admission of the northwest to the end of the century. 
 
 When the struggle for the rehabilitation of constitutional govern 
 ment for that was its meaning was begun with due caution after the 
 election of Mr. Cleveland, and in support of what Bland stood for as against 
 the forces back of Mr. Cleveland, it was well understood that the last 
 resort of those whose wrongful privileges would be threatened by it was 
 foreign war and the renewal of the imperialism of the Grant administra 
 tion. In view of such articles as that from Mr. Smalley, quoted above, 
 it required no special insight to perceive this, nor in 1897 and 1898, when, 
 without a change of issues, the defeat of the McKinley administration 
 on the issue of restraint of trade through high tariffs and the gold stan 
 dard was certain, did it require a special faculty of divination to understand 
 in whose service speeches, reproducing the "expansion" arguments of 
 the Grant administration, were made. 
 
 The logic of this argument is that assuming it can not be demonstrated 
 that there was constitutional warrant for suppressing the southern Confed 
 eracy, therefore constitutional government is a failure and the logic of the 
 maximum of coercion is the sole logic of government. Hence, "expan 
 sion," foreign war, acquisition of territory by conquest and "national 
 glory," was the last ditch of the international oligarchy of corporations 
 which, with its agents working for salaries, fees or political promotion in 
 both the great parties in America, aspired to revolutionize the government 
 and to establish a new order of things, "imperial in power though not in 
 form or name." 
 
 Those who stood with Mr. Bland in 1898 understood this, and 
 when it was proposed to them to "pair" with the republican adminis 
 tration in carrying it out using the United States army to annex 
 
THE BLAND RESIDENCE NEAR LEBANON. 
 
 WHERE MR. BLAND LIVED IN WASHINGTON. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 1 77 
 
 Cuba "by consent" and advancing along the lines of "expansion" to the 
 realization of this "manifest destiny," the reply given was that so long 
 as there was standing room in America to oppose such a policy, it ought to 
 be opposed regardless of personal or partisan considerations.* 
 
 The chain of cause and effect, from the movement for wresting the 
 west for the republican party to that of 1898 which put Fitzhugh Lee and 
 General Wheeler at the front in doing imperial garrison duty in govern 
 ing Cuba and the Philippines, is not only clear now, but it has been unmis 
 takably clear during the whole course of its development. Hence, we may 
 leave it for the time being, and return to the immediate causes of the 
 political revolution which preceded it. 
 
 The republican reaction against Grant carried that party away from 
 the ultra-restrictive ideas of militant commercialism. After Hayes, Gar- 
 field and Arthur, there was no violent change involved in seating Mr. 
 Cleveland. He adopted their treasury policies without change, and Mr. 
 Daniel Manning, a national banker, was put in control of the treasury as 
 a guarantee that there would be no change. On the tariff, Mr. Cleveland 
 held the view of Clay, that the duties should cover the difference in labor- 
 cost between the United States and foreign countries. He was thus in 
 principle a protectionist, and by abolishing duties on raw material, he would 
 often have actually increased the percentage of protection given the manu 
 facturer. If anything short of the prohibitive principle, applied through 
 taxation adjusted by themselves, would have satisfied the great syndicated 
 corporations of the republican party, Mr. Cleveland would have done it. 
 
 *Mr. Eland's own attitude in 1898 was defined in the following letter written from Lebanon, 
 Missouri, on July 22, 1898, and supplied by the recipient for publication in this work: 
 
 LEBANON, Mo., July 22, 1898. 
 W. V. BYARS, ESQ., 
 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 FRIEND BYARS: 
 
 Your letter received. I do not believe there is any danger of our party adopting a platform of 
 principles looking to the jingo politics of island acquisition and colonial greed, to be supplemented and 
 sustained with a large standing army and navy. I do not think the party is ready yet for suicide. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 R. P. BLAND. 
 12 
 
178 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 He had held these ideas from the first and had made no secret of them. 
 In 1884, when his candidacy was first announced, his failure to define 
 himself more exactly in accordance with the views of the opponents of 
 restraint of trade, had led to the movement in Missouri to nominate Mr. 
 Bayard, and his celebrated "tariff reform message" involved no change of 
 attitude whatever. It was a document Henry Clay himself, the father of 
 the "home market" idea, might easily have written, and it is now clear that 
 no reform of the tariff was possible along its lines of protecting manufac 
 turers of secondary products at the expense of the direct producer. 
 
 The marked feature of Mr. Cleveland's administration, which differ 
 entiated it from any other during the quarter of a century to which it be 
 longed, was its freedom from civil war sectionalism. Mr. Cleveland cared 
 nothing at all about the glorious work done by Americans of different sec 
 tions in killing each other. He had progressed intellectually beyond the 
 stage of merely animal antagonism. He had no desire to kill any one and 
 no admiration for those who did have it. In this, more than anything else, 
 he approximated Thomas Jefferson, and no other quality of intellect and 
 morals he could have had would have been more valuable to the world in 
 his generation. He filled his cabinet impartially with "ex-rebels" and 
 with representatives of the "better element" in the Atlantic states. For 
 the "unwashed democracy" of the masses in the Atlantic states he had a 
 great contempt looking on them as a corrupt and dangerous element 
 whose share in the government ought to be minimized. 
 
 In all the policies to which he was committed by such sympathies, he 
 helped on the great work of breaking down the lines of civil war. He 
 shocked southern democrats beyond expression. "Great God!" ex 
 claimed a Virginia editor, commenting on something Mr. Cleveland had 
 said soon after his inauguration in 1885 ; "Great God, is this the language 
 of the President of the United States or of a Buffalo tough !" The next 
 day the same editor was writing editorials as strong as ever in support of 
 the administration. He had relieved his feelings and relapsed into his 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. I/) 
 
 party allegiance. Mr. Cleveland was not a "Buffalo tough," however, 
 and he was President of the United States. He was so far from sympa 
 thizing with the "tough" element of American politics, that at the last anal 
 ysis, the policies of his administrations will be found to have been dictated 
 by the aristocratic idea that the good and wise, the virtuous, well-fed and 
 "well-soaped" elements of society are, by divine right of their virtue and 
 cleanliness, entitled to administer government "as a sacred trust" under 
 which "fitness is the sole test." 
 
 Whatever merits this idea may have, it is in the strongest possible 
 antagonism to the Missouri idea of democracy represented by Benton and 
 Bland, and if it had not been for the race question at the south and the 
 menacing attitude of republican leaders on it, Missouri would have broken 
 away from Mr. Cleveland at the start. 
 
 The Missouri feeling towards him was well-illustrated when he 
 "flipped out" M. E. Benton, United States district attorney for the western 
 district of Missouri, for making a political speech to a small gathering of 
 no special importance in politics. Some one had complained (probably 
 to test the merits of Mr. Cleveland's threat to "flip out offensive parti 
 sans"), and Mr. Benton was violently evicted as a warning to others. An 
 influential democratic newspaper in Missouri publicly requested the admin 
 istration to restore Mr. Benton to office at once on the ground that he had 
 never been indicted and that the number of Mr. Cleveland's appointees in 
 Missouri, who had not been indicted, ought by no means to be diminished. 
 It also offered to print for Mr. Cleveland's information the old indictments 
 against appointees who had been left in office as "inoffensive partisans" 
 while Mr. Benton was being "flipped out." This seems to have surprised 
 Mr. Cleveland or his advisers greatly and perhaps to have weakened his 
 confidence in those who sign the recommendations of applicants for office. 
 At any rate he restored Mr. Benton to office after having so popularized 
 him in Missouri that the effects are still evident. 
 
 As a result of his sympathy for the "better element" in government 
 
I So AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 and of his financial policies, Mr. Cleveland broke the "solid south." North 
 Carolina elected a legislature against him, and the opposition to his admin 
 istration claimed with a show of probability that they had carried Arkansas 
 in the "off year." The third party movement received a great impetus 
 everywhere, and the south would have probably divided permanently but 
 for the republican threat of a "force bill' and for one of the most remark 
 able phenomena of modern economics. 
 
 Up to the close of the first Cleveland administration, the policy of 
 reducing the national debt was carried out with an approximation to good 
 faith. As a result, large sums of money, locked up in bonds as family 
 endowments, were forced to seek investments either in real estate or in 
 productive enterprises. 
 
 The extent to which bonds are used as a means of endowing families 
 and institutions, which it is desired to put beyond the operations of the 
 natural laws of redistribution, is hardly realized as yet by students of 
 economics. It has been one of the great revolutionary forces in the cen 
 tralization of the nineteenth century. Mr. Cleveland, in continuing to pay 
 off the debt, threatened to inaugurate a new era in finance and business 
 as well as in social life. The family hoards released from bonds came 
 west to find safe investment and larger interest in mortgages on real estate, 
 or went south to develop mines and establish factories. The immediate 
 result was "the new south movement" and the unprecedented "boom" in 
 western real estate. The idea of the safety of real estate as an investment 
 had so strong a hold on the believers in permanent endowments that for 
 a time the owners of farms and city lots in Kansas and other western 
 states were actively solicited by the agents of rival mortgage companies 
 to borrow the money of endowed families and corporations. Under the 
 influence of this competition, thrifty and prudent people were so far 
 demoralized by the speculative spirit that new towns in Kansas were fitted 
 out with "palatial" court houses, high schools, electric lighting plants and 
 other modern improvements, which, when the "boom" collapsed, brought 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. l8l 
 
 them to the worst possible straits. In one instance it is said that they 
 surrendered the town to their insistent creditors and moved away to 
 another site, leaving their public buildings in the hands of the holders of 
 the mortgages on them. 
 
 If, in the given case, this is an exaggeration, it illustrates general con 
 ditions which were consequent on the cessation of national debt redemp 
 tion. When money was no longer forced out of bonds, investments in the 
 south and west began to slacken, and finally, under the Harrison adminis 
 tration, in a year of the most abundant crops, when the west ought to have 
 been adding millions to its wealth, "the boom" collapsed completely, and 
 the whole west was filled with what was ungenerously called "the calamity 
 howl" of farmers evicted for failing to meet interest payments on loans 
 which were fairly thrust upon them sometimes actually by the agents of 
 the companies, and always by the conditions which these companies repre- 
 
 sented - 333221 
 
 As a result of such conditions, the producers of the west and south, 
 began to turn more and more to Mr. Bland for leadership the more so as 
 the collapse of agricultural values was accompanied everywhere by a cen 
 tralization of manufacturing industries, resulting in a decreased number 
 of plants and too generally in the shutting down of plants in the west in 
 order to limit the production of corporate combinations with headquarters 
 in New York and with speculative stocks "industrials" dealt in as a 
 mode of gambling. 
 
 After his defeat by Mr. Harrison, Mr. Cleveland denounced such 
 combinations as "a commune of capital" but his second administration left 
 them stronger than ever, though in the meantime a law had been enacted 
 giving the national government power to suppress them. The central 
 fact of the relations of the national government to such corporate combina 
 tion is that its power over them is never likely to be used by one party or 
 the other except to intimidate them in elections and to force them to con 
 tribute to campaign funds from which the friends or agents of "com- 
 
1 82 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 mitteemen" who are appointed solicitors may realize their percentages or 
 "commissions" as collectors. 
 
 Of such "practical politics," Bland knew nothing. He had deliber 
 ately and steadfastly refused to learn. Consequently when the crisis 
 came and the opportunity to make a stand for the restoration of constitu 
 tional government by "splitting" both the west and south was clearly 
 present, it was on Bland that it was possible to rely when no other man 
 in public life had so clearly demonstrated the steadfastness of purpose and 
 the simplicity of morals necessary for the success of so great an under 
 taking. 
 
 There was no miscalculation in regard to him. From first to last he 
 never stopped to see whether he would gain or lose by doing his duty. At 
 a time under the second Cleveland administration when the work of his 
 life was at stake when all the work which had been done in the west for 
 the restoration of constitutional liberty might have been as completely lost 
 as was the work done in the fiasco of the Cass campaign, he stood his 
 ground although almost completely isolated by Mr. Cleveland's power and 
 skill, until he had forced a reluctant party to take the risk from which it 
 shrank to make the advance without which it would have been at once 
 disorganized. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Fundamental Reality of American Politics. International Combinations of 
 Corporations and Maximum Coercion in America. The Demand for Bonds as 
 a Means of Endowing Families, Suspending the Natural Laws of Bedistribu- 
 tion and Creating Hereditary Oligarchy. Restraint of Trade by Tariff Laws not 
 Earnestly Opposed Under the First Cleveland Administration. No Vital Reform 
 of Any Kind Possible While the Electoral College Represented Civil War Sec 
 tionalism. President Harrison as a More Extreme Federalist than Mr. Cleve 
 land. His Mistake of Judgment in Proposing New Measures of Coercion 
 Against Southern Planters W T hile Western Farmers Were Using Unmarketable 
 Breadstuffs for Fuel. "Cheap Money," Dear Collateral, and Wasted Wealth. 
 Speculation in Money at the Expense of Agricultural Exports. Enormous 
 Interest Rates on Call Loans During the "Crop Moving Season." The 
 "Calamity Howl," Its Causes and Its Results. 
 
 E HAVE seen that the reality of American politics is the 
 struggle for the control of government as a means of control 
 ling the products of labor, either directly or by the control of 
 the medium through which they are exchanged of money, 
 however issued. 
 
 We have seen that under the Grant administration, an international 
 combination of corporations proposed the maximum of coercion in using 
 the power of government for this purpose; that they did actually control 
 politics by the use of the army and add enormously to the public and cor 
 poration debt outstanding at interest against production a debt which 
 when held as endowments for families and corporations inevitably 
 operates to produce a worse oligarchy than that of hereditary succession 
 in land. 
 
 We have seen a republican reaction after this under Hayes, Garfield 
 and Arthur, followed by the apparent change involved in the inauguration 
 of the first Cleveland administration a change conceded by plutocracy 
 not as a means of meeting the public demands for radical reform but of 
 postponing it by apparent concession which would leave power still in the 
 
184 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 hands of those who had used the opportunities given them by civil war 
 to usurp it. 
 
 The attempts at tariff reform under the first Cleveland administra 
 tion failed because, on the part of many from the manufacturing states 
 who professed to support them, they were not made in good faith. In 
 the Forty-eighth Congress, the enacting clause of the Morrison bill was 
 stricken out (in March, 1884) by a vote which showed how complete was 
 the control exercised by corporate combination over the then existing 
 machinery of both parties. In i887, when the Mills bill was presented, 
 President Cleveland had carefully evaded an issue of principle. "It is a 
 condition, not a theory, which confronts us," he said in introducing his 
 argument that the surplus revenue in the treasury, rather than any issue 
 of principle, or of right or wrong, required reduced taxation. "The ques 
 tion of free trade is absolutely irrelevant," he continued, emphasizing the 
 point already made that he did not intend to oppose, per se, the system of 
 restraint of trade which at that time involved the tariff laws, the internal 
 revenue system and the issue and distribution of money. Such an argu 
 ment at such a time could have only one logical result that of stimulating 
 attempts to remove the condition without confronting the theory. The 
 surplus was finally disposed of by increased appropriations involving the 
 most extraordinary expenditures for pensions ever made in the history 
 of politics, ancient or modern. Mr. Cleveland was kept busy vetoing 
 special pension bills as well as general measures; and with that perverse 
 ingenuity which is so characteristic of American partisanship, his oppo 
 nents so managed it that not a few of the worst cases of special legislation 
 which he was compelled to veto involved his own supporters professional 
 statesmen, who, seeing the surplus in process of distribution, were encour 
 aged to remember rheumatism, or other chronic disabilities incident to the 
 patriotic self-sacrifices of their youth. When Mr. Cleveland indulged 
 his sense of humor at their expense as he sometimes did in flagrant cases, 
 what came to be called the "pretorian" element was so infuriated that 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 185 
 
 when he authorized the return of a number of captured battle flags to the 
 ex-Confederates who originally owned them, the same men who had been 
 actively engaged in promoting the exchange backwards and forwards of 
 such trophies, turned on him and raised such a teapot tempest of news 
 paper protest that he was compelled to recede from his position of what 
 was thus established as too much sympathy for "rebellion and treason." 
 
 As nothing was done under his administration for tariff reform, as 
 his treasury policies were those of his republican predecessors, the "war 
 feeling," incident to the spending of the surplus in increased pensions and 
 other appropriations of not less doubtful propriety, appeared to be decisive 
 in the campaign of 1888, and under the mistaken idea that it had been 
 so, President Harrison began vigorously attacking the southern states on 
 the race issue, as had been done under Grant. 
 
 It became clear enough under the first Cleveland administration that 
 no real reform was possible in any direction under the then existing align 
 ment of the states in the electoral college and in Congress. This must be 
 kept in mind when there is a disposition to hold Mr. Cleveland himself 
 wholly responsible for the failure of his four years' work. The southern 
 democrats were at all times kept on the defensive by assertions that they 
 represented "the property party" at the south while professing to oppose 
 it at the north, and whenever they showed a disposition to work for a 
 genuine reform of the enormous abuses of the corporation system, the 
 threat of a new era of reconstruction, involving the complete control of their 
 elections through the use of federal force was made against them and they 
 were "forced back to their entrenchments." 
 
 Mr. Harrison, a more extreme federalist than Mr. Cleveland himself, 
 believed in a larger measure of coercion in government than the majority 
 of Americans at that time were willing to sanction. Not only was he 
 ready to deal with the labor troubles of the industrial centers in a highly 
 peremptory fashion, but twenty years after the close of the Civil war, he 
 proposed against the south what would have been, if adopted, new meas- 
 
1 86 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ures of violent reconstruction. 
 
 This policy was attempted at a time when the economic theories for 
 which he stood were demonstrating their logical opposition to the natural 
 laws of production, and it made inevitable such unanswerable sarcasm as 
 that with which Kansas farmers, sitting on the roadside with their goods 
 and chattels, after being evicted by mortgage companies, were invited 
 to go on singing : "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave" or 
 "We'll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree," while a new force bill was 
 being enacted against the impoverished cotton planters of the south. 
 
 The reiteration of such arguments had an effect which was not 
 diminished by counter attacks involving frequent use of such epithets as 
 "cranks," "lunatics" and "calamity howlers." The increasing poverty of 
 farmers, whose growing crops could not be adequately distributed because 
 of currency and trade restrictions, was accompanied by frequent strikes 
 and labor troubles in the cities and by the growing use of "Pinkertons" 
 as armed retainers of corporations, wealthy and unwise enough to employ 
 them in what was called at the time "private war." 
 
 These conditions encouraged the attempt to break away from the 
 restraints of political conditions surviving from the Civil war. The 
 financial conditions which accompanied this surfeit of farm products in 
 the hands of the producer were, to many, unaccountable. Money was 
 "cheap," and a great deal of newspaper space was devoted to exhibiting 
 what was described as a decreasing interest rate. 
 
 This meant then, as it has meant since, that the holders of money 
 were reducing credits by demanding increased security. The man who 
 could deposit government bonds, or something approximating them in 
 safety as an investment, might get money at three or four per cent., as 
 was loudly alleged, but the tendency to restrict credit on real estate 
 security after the collapse of the western "boom" and the frequent refusal 
 to lend at all on what in "flush times" had been held as excellent collateral, 
 brought the west to the verge of hopeless bankruptcy. The control of the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 187 
 
 money supply of the country, made possible under the existing system, 
 rendered inevitable an excessive interest rate on "call loans" and on other 
 speculative loans made in competition with the demand for money to 
 "move" western crops. Consequently the speculative markets of New 
 York were kept on the verge of panic by demands for usury on "doubtful" 
 loans reaching as high as two per cent, a day. Although this was simply 
 highway robbery, it was asserted over and over in the leading New York 
 papers including the Herald, which can not be accused of prejudice in 
 favor of calamity-howlers or free silver cranks that even Mr. Russell 
 Sage himself, though in his personal expenditures the most moderate of 
 men, frequently used such opportunities for "taking all the traffic would 
 bear." No matter who paid these enormous rates first, the crops which 
 were being "moved" under the system of supplanting cash with banking 
 credits and corporation notes, paid it finally. 
 
 Hence the question: "Who Owns the West?" was decisive against 
 Mr. Harrison. He was beaten as no other candidate had ever been up to 
 that time, and Mr. Cleveland was re-elected, regardless of what four years 
 before had been his increasing unpopularity. 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 "The Rainbow Chasing Movement" Begins. Its Object the Restoration of Con 
 stitutional Government Based on the Principles of 1788. "Winning Without 
 New York/' an Incident of It. Mr. Cleveland's Whig Policies Revive the 
 "Fierce Democracy" of the Jackson Epoch. Revolt Against Wade Hampton 
 in South Carolina and Ingalls in Kansas. The Northwest as the Hope of 
 America Against "Floaters in Blocks of Five." Illinois as a Keystone State. 
 The Surrender of the Presidency to New York the Only means of Breaking the 
 New York and Indiana Combination. "The Coat and the Cloak" Both Given 
 up Successfully In Practical Politics. Results of Forcing Issues for Principle. 
 Henry George and His Supporters Reinforce Mr. Bland on the "Farm Mortgage 
 Census." The Issue in Illinois. "Rainbow Chasers" Not Prejudiced Against 
 Mr. Cleveland or New York. 
 
 FDER the Harrison administration, it became evident, that by 
 ignoring the struggle for office, ceasing to consider the ques 
 tion of nominating this candidate or that for any office from the 
 presidency down, and forcing issues strongly for what in the 
 discussion of the federal constitution in i788 had been asserted as the 
 fundamental principles of free government and human progress, condi 
 tions might be created under which it would become possible for the 
 American people to decide for themselves in spite of the immense power 
 of plutocratic combinations whether or not they were so far fitted for 
 the forms and methods of government they had inherited as to wish a 
 return to the realities involved by them. 
 
 The discontent at the south with the policies of Mr. Cleveland's first 
 administration which were nothing more nor less than the whig policies 
 of John Quincy Adams and Webster in treasury management and of Clay 
 in most other things had revived what, in the first half century of the 
 government, was called indifferently "the Fierce Democracy/' or the 
 "Dirty Democracy," according to the condition of alarm or disgust in 
 
 which those so characterizing it happened to be. While the possibility 
 
 1 88 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 189 
 
 of "reviving the old whig party at the south" was being discussed, the 
 "old whig party" with Mr. Cleveland as its head was already in office at 
 Washington, and under Mr. Harrison it was succeeded by the new feder 
 alists. There was no more of democracy in Mr. Cleveland's administra 
 tion than there was of republicanism in that of Mr. Harrison. The effects 
 of this negation of principle were quite evident in the "off year" of Mr. 
 Harrison's administration. At the south even before Mr. Harrison's 
 inauguration, the "plow-holders" were in open revolt against the classes 
 which held land and other property as an investment and lived in whole 
 or part on incomes resulting from capitalization rather than from actual 
 individual industry. 
 
 The leaders of the revolt were generally ex-Confederate soldiers 
 such men as those of the rank and file who had followed Pickett up 
 Cemetery hill and planted their colors on the heights crowned by its cap 
 tured batteries. They spoke a vernacular English which made them 
 seem absurd when it was travestied by their opponents. They did not 
 always shave regularly, and their manners frequently lacked aristocratic 
 repose. But they were not men who could be turned back by trifling 
 objections or minor difficulties, and their unrest represented tremendous 
 possibilities of change. In South Carolina, which had been governed by 
 its colonial gentry since the revolution of i776, the question was between 
 this uncultured element and the leadership of such admirable gentlemen 
 as Wade Hampton men of incorruptible integrity, of high capacity for 
 disinterested virtue, of cultivated intelligence and trained fitness for gov 
 erning. And in Kansas, it was exactly the same question. The old 
 soldiers of Grant and Sherman, rude-looking men with long beards and 
 hard hands, who had never heard of Massillon nor sat at the feet of 
 Bourdaloue to study eloquence, were surrounding the elegant and accom 
 plished Senator Ingalls demanding in menacing tones to know what he 
 stood for what the future of the country was to be whether mortgages, 
 the burning of corn for fuel and the enforced borrowing of a national 
 
190 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 bank note currency at rates as high as sixteen per cent, on "drouth-belt" 
 farms, were to go on forever. 
 
 This made the opportunity for what was called "the rainbow chasing 
 movement." 
 
 Its object was to obliterate the lines of civil war sectionalism by 
 forcing the northwest to the front in national politics, and vesting it with 
 the balance of power which had been held by the plutocratic element of 
 New York City and London operating through the purchase of "floaters 
 in blocks of five." To effect this it was necessary to sacrifice the accom 
 plished Wade Hampton in South Carolina to the same forces which would 
 retire the brilliant Ingalls in Kansas. The essential unity of the popular 
 movement in the south and in the west was fully recognized, and it was 
 fully determined in advance to make every possible concession to it in 
 order to break down what had become the ruinous restrictions of the 
 "practical politics" of sectionalism. The key of the entire situation was 
 the political condition of Illinois. It was recognized that whatever forcing 
 of principles to their crucial test would be sufficient to take that state 
 from its long affiliation with the republican party would carry the north 
 west also. 
 
 It has been pointed out already that the civilization of the village 
 commune of rural England, developing towards combination through the 
 corporation, and the related but seemingly antagonistic civilization of the 
 farm and the individualism produced by it, are each strongly developed in 
 Illinois and present a plain line of sectional demarcation. There had not 
 been a time, perhaps, in ten years when by forcing an issue of vital prin 
 ciples, Illinois might not have been carried, but it had never been a part 
 of the policies of interests controlling, to a large extent in both parties, to 
 allow the national balance of power to be shifted from New York City. 
 When it became evident that the attempt to carry Illinois was being made, 
 it might have been checked at once had not objection to it been removed 
 by the immediate concession of the power to select presidential candidates 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 19! 
 
 to the same element which had for so long exercised it. Mr. Cleveland 
 wrote a letter defining his already well-known views of currency restric 
 tion, and had he been attacked on it as he was attacked by Mr. Bland in 
 1893, he could hardly have controlled a single western or southern dele 
 gation in the convention which actually renominated him by acclamation. 
 His nomination was conceded, however, chiefly because it was clear that 
 there was no effective machinery for preventing it, but also with a full 
 assurance that it would not interrupt the play of forces which were operat 
 ing to disorganize the political combinations for which he stood. When it 
 became evident that he would be renominated without opposition and that 
 both national conventions would nominate "safe men," all that remained 
 to the practical politics of corporation feudalism was the usual trading to 
 secure self-constituted leaders of what had now come to be called the 
 populist party. Mr. Cleveland's supporters at the south made strenuous 
 attempts to drive back the revolted element but they were worsted. In 
 Tennessee and South Carolina the one as naturally a democratic state as 
 the other was naturally aristocratic the "new issue men" carried every 
 thing before them as they did in the northwest. In Missouri they were 
 held to their allegiance to the democratic party chiefly by the fact that 
 much of the work to carry Illinois, Kansas and the northwest was done 
 through the St. Louis press. The idea that the maximum of coercion is 
 necessary and beneficial in government had manifested itself everywhere 
 as an inherent part of the federalism for which Mr. Harrison stood. In 
 Illinois it showed itself not only in the presence of Pinkertons, supplanting 
 the functions of the sheriff, but in an attempt to close Lutheran and 
 Catholic parochial schools, because of their refusal to admit the justice of 
 state regulation of their religious and literary curriculum. An examina 
 tion of the United States census showed that on this issue alone, the advo 
 cates of coercive government might be defeated in Illinois by a sufficiently 
 vigorous attack. As a matter of fact, both in Illinois and Wisconsin, 
 where a similar law against private schools had been enacted, the latent 
 
192 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 discontent with the injustice of the whole system of political, economic 
 and social restriction and repression was so great that Wisconsin a state 
 which was not considered at all in initial calculations was actually car 
 ried by the same contest which carried Illinois, though that fight was made 
 chiefly from St. Louis and apparently at too long a range to be at all 
 effective. So far-reaching is the inevitable result of a determined asser 
 tion of these fundamental principles through which the constructive forces 
 of the human intellect are given freedom of action and rendered efficient. 
 
 Whenever an issue of radical principle is made, advocates of the most 
 widely divergent methods are united. Thus, Mr. Bland had no special 
 confidence in the land theory of Henry George as a means of "abolishing 
 poverty," and Mr. George was inclined to be impatient with bimetallism 
 or any other issue which prevented a fuller discussion of his land theory. 
 But in fundamental economic principle, Mr. Bland and Mr. George 
 united each holding direct production from the soil of paramount 
 economic importance. In the east, Mr. George, by his advocacy of free 
 trade, had done more to break down civil war sectionalism than had been 
 done by any one else in that section. When Mr. Eland's work forced the 
 issues against the eviction at wholesale of the mortgaged farmers of the 
 west, it was the followers of Henry George who worked incessantly and 
 strenuously until they had compelled the passage of the law for making a 
 census of farm mortgages. Again, in a few months after the ex-Confed 
 erates of South Carolina and the ex-Federals of Kansas had been denounc 
 ing each other with a fierceness born of the force of long-standing habit, 
 the power of new convictions, excited in them by the appeal to fundamental 
 principle, had united them for a common purpose and made them efficient 
 for its achievement. Seldom in the history of politics anywhere has there 
 been a more remarkable or more encouraging spectacle than the readiness 
 with which, over a vast territory, divided by seemingly impassable barriers 
 of natural causes and artificial prejudice, men of the most diverse views 
 and antagonistic habits rallied for a common purpose and advanced 
 
A BLAND BADGE OF THE CAMPAIGN 
 OF 1890. 
 
 MR. BLAND'S LAW OFFICE AT ROLLA, MO. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 193 
 
 irresistibly to carry it out. 
 
 This was the "rainbow chasing movement" which grew out of Eland's 
 work in Missouri. It is true that at the front of it was a false pretense 
 that if Mr. Cleveland, whom every student of politics knew to be a repre 
 sentative of antagonism to all it stood for, had not been forced forward as 
 its beneficiary, it might not have been possible at all. But it was not the 
 less remarkable, but rather the more so, on that account. When every 
 thing that can be taken away from men of trained intelligence who devote 
 it as Mr. Bland did his to serving mankind, has been taken, it leaves 
 their power greater than ever by forcing the quicker development of the 
 hidden realities of politics and by giving the advocates of repression and 
 restriction full opportunity to develop their logic to its necessary reductio 
 ad absurdum. 
 
 To carry a presidential election without New York and Indiana, to 
 break down the sectionalism of civil war, to break the solid west and 
 "split" the solid south so that the purchase of "floaters in blocks of five" 
 in a dozen wards and counties could no longer control 60,000,000 people 
 that was the purpose of the "rainbow-chasing campaign," and "rainbow 
 chasers," who knew Mr. Cleveland as a representative man and had no 
 prejudice against him personally because of what he represented, accepted 
 him as inevitable and began preparing for the issue which was unavoidable 
 as a result of his election. That issue Mr. Bland met with moral courage 
 which has seldom been equalled courage for which the twentieth cen 
 tury owes him more than it owes any other man in the public life of his 
 generation. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland's Second Term. His Attempt to "Restore the Hegemony of New 
 York" Forces His Party to Repudiate Him. He Defeats Tariff Reform by 
 Supplanting it With a Manufactured Issue Against Bimetallic Coinage. Mr. 
 Cleveland's Thoroughgoing Whiggery and His Dislike of the Vulgus. He 
 Attempts to Isolate Mr. Bland in Missouri. How a National Combination Was 
 Broken by the Assault of a Single Newspaper. Mr. Bland Boomed for Presi 
 dent in Missouri. Mr. Cleveland's Missouri Supporters in Congress Driven to 
 Cover. Bland Defeats the Gates Bankruptcy Bill. The Real Meaning of 
 "Tariff Reform" as Mr. Cleveland Represented It. He and His Friends 
 Dictate the Protectionist Plank in the Report of the Platform Committee at 
 Chicago in 1892. It is Rejected by the Convention. The Standard Oil Com 
 pany, the Sugar Trust and the Banks as a Political Combination. Federalism 
 and the Illinois Strike. 
 
 JR. CLEVELAND was no sooner inaugurated for his second 
 term than, with his usual courage and determination, he pro 
 ceeded to force on his party as its only hope of escaping com 
 plete and immediate ruin, a repudiation of his policies and a 
 radical stand against all that with which, in the public mind, he was most 
 completely identified. 
 
 In 1862, Daniel W. Voorhees, and other representatives of the "cop 
 perhead element" in the central west, began vigorous attacks on the dis 
 criminations of the Morrill tariff, hoping to check abuses in the use of the 
 taxing power for war purposes. They so far succeeded in centering pub 
 lic attention on the subject that in the midst of the confusion of civil war 
 and the period of anarchy which followed it, the feeling of opposition to 
 the restrictive economic policies of the republican party kept the demo 
 cratic party alive and growing in spite of a position which was logically 
 untenable a position which in 1866 required it to represent both the con 
 servatism of the landed interests of the south and the radicalism of the 
 "proletarian" masses in New York and other northern cities. 
 
 A thoroughgoing whig, with all the prejudices of the "gentleman's 
 
 194 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 195 
 
 party" against the "vulgus" of his own state, Mr. Cleveland squared issues 
 against himself by forcing an issue for the restrictive control of the cur 
 rency into precedence of the issue against restrictive tariff taxation on 
 which he had been elected. 
 
 The false pretenses of the campaign which elected him were not his. 
 He had announced his position against bimetallic coinage, and having 
 been elected in spite of it, he felt free to follow the dictates of his own 
 sense of duty. He did so accordingly with far reaching results, which 
 had been by no means unanticipated by those who believed that the future 
 of the country would be worked out by the development of its constructive 
 forces, operating in spite of any and all attempts at checking them. 
 
 In issuing what has been called his "panic proclamation" against 
 silver, Mr. Cleveland was logical and strictly consistent with his own 
 record. He looked on control of the currency by national bankers as 
 desirable, and he had no confidence in the ability of the "inexperienced 
 masses" to manage the finances of the government. It is not likely that it 
 occurred to him to apply the same argument against allowing the inex 
 perienced masses to have anything at all to do with government, but his 
 sympathies inclined him at all points to a government of experts and of 
 the "fit," selected, not because they represented the rest, but because of 
 demonstrated superiority manifested in ability to govern rather than to 
 represent others. This is merely saying once more that Mr. Cleveland 
 believed in a government "by the better element," and being firmly con 
 vinced that the national banks and other "business interests," represented 
 in his first cabinet by such able men as Daniel Manning and William C. 
 Whitney, were the better element, he adopted their views as his own and 
 supplanted the tariff issue with an issue against silver coinage and an 
 automatic currency. 
 
 It has been said that as a result of the anomalous division forced by 
 the "free soil" contest, a reform of the tariff was logically impossible 
 during the twenty-five years which followed the Civil war. But had Mr. 
 
196 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 Cleveland forced the issue for tariff reform as he did the issue against 
 bimetallism, he would have ranked still as one of the greatest and most 
 popular leaders of his party. As he did not as in the nature of things 
 he could not his administration made a failure to reform the tariff, so 
 complete, so humiliating, so manifestly ludicrous from every possible 
 standpoint at which it could be looked, that it would have been suicide 
 to discuss the tariff and tariff reform at all in the ensuing national cam 
 paign. The democratic party had only one hope of survival that of 
 forcing radically the only other issue with the republican party which 
 remained that of bimetallism the free and unlimited coinage of silver 
 at the ratio of 16 to i. 
 
 So obvious was this necessity so clear was it even to men who had 
 united with Mr. Cleveland in attempting to keep Mr. Bland in the back 
 ground that Mr. Cleveland, who, at the outset of the struggle under his 
 second administration, had complete control of the democratic party 
 machinery, with only Bland and Eland's immediate following holding out 
 against him found his influence nullified and his administration openly 
 repudiated. 
 
 It was the logic of the situation that it should be so. Nothing could 
 have prevented it, or it would have been prevented at the start. Between 
 the defeat of Harrison and Mr. Cleveland's second inauguration, careful 
 preparations had been made for the work Mr. Cleveland was to do. Lead 
 ing newspapers had been prepared for it by systematic pressure from 
 national bankers and advertisers influenced by national bankers. It was 
 believed when the Cleveland administration revealed its policies, that Mr. 
 Bland would have practically no support, even in Missouri where a strong 
 combination had been made against him, consisting of members of the 
 congressional delegation and others, some of whom professed habitually 
 the highest reverence for him and made compliments to his "sincerity" 
 and "earnestness," part of their stock in trade before Missouri audiences. 
 No advocate of 16 to i coinage had reason to expect control of Mr. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 197 
 
 Cleveland's postoffices or other patronage, and as a result, Mr. Bland 
 seemed to be completely isolated when Mr. Cleveland began the fight for 
 demonetization. 
 
 Mr. Bland at this time v/as in doubt whether it would be possible to 
 make the contest for bimetallism, or any other reform, within the lines of 
 the democratic party as its organization then existed. He was ready to 
 leave the party if necessary.* In the meantime, almost wholly without sup 
 port, he began the struggle which prevented the party from being com 
 pletely disorganized. He was supported in Missouri from an unexpected 
 quarter. The St. Louis Chronicle, at that time edited by Gen. Mor 
 ton L. H:.wkins, saw in the situation an opportunity for journalism of the 
 highest type and began vigorously "booming" Mr. Bland for president in 
 connection with a strong attack made on those members of the Missouri 
 delegation who had either secretly adopted Mr. Cleveland's views or had 
 assented to them as the inevitable. A circular letter was sent out by Gen 
 eral Hawkins to the democratic weekly newspapers of Missouri, Illinois 
 and other states, asking their opinion of the policy which was about to be 
 adopted by the administration. The replies were immediate and were 
 virtually if not wholly unanimous in their indignant condemnation. As 
 one broadside after another of these letters was printed, Washington in 
 general, and the Senate and House of Representatives in particular, re- 
 
 *"Nothing short of revolution it seems to me can save the cause," Mr. Bland wrote in 1894 to the ed 
 itor of this volume. His view of party allegiance in general was given as follows in a letter to Virgil 
 Salmon, Mercer University, Macon, Georgia: 
 
 "Feb. 5, 1898. 
 
 "The question of whether party action is better in politics than independent action must be con 
 sidered from the standpoint of a government resting upon the will of the people. Parties seem to be 
 indispensable, at least unavoidable, in the conduct of a republican form of government such as ours. 
 Political parties are supposed to represent certain principles of government supposed to be necessary to 
 its proper administration. On these questions people will naturally divide. I have not the time to 
 present the great principles on which political parties have heretofore divided, or on which they are now 
 divided, but suffice it to say that inasmuch as parties seem to be indispensable to our government, 
 therefore party allegiance is preferable to independent action, for principles cannot be enforced without 
 party discipline and party allegiance; yet, I would not be understood to mean by this that, when a 
 political party becomes the mere tool of designing persons for the conduct of a government used to 
 benefit the few at the expense of the many, allegiance is owed it, but rather in this case the party has 
 forfeited its claims upon voters, and thus independent action is not only preferable but absolutely 
 necessary." 
 
198 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ceived the full benefit of special editions of the paper. It soon became 
 apparent that the combination against Mr. Bland could be broken with 
 ease as far as the west and south were concerned, and the attack on it was 
 made with persistent determination. 
 
 Mr. Bland, instead of being isolated as it had been hoped by his oppo 
 nents, found himself supported by the entire democratic press of the west 
 and south, except by a few city papers representing special interests. 
 Those who expected to control him through his disinterestedness and his 
 unwillingness to assert claims for leadership, found that they had com 
 pletely lost their influence with him. He demonstrated his natural super 
 iority to the merely "practical" politician around him, and in a few 
 weeks he had proven his ability to lead in spite of them. A signal instance 
 of it was given during this period, in the ease with which he forced the 
 defeat of the national bankruptcy bill, which was then held ready for pass 
 age, backed by the banks and boards of trade of the country and supple 
 mented with a clause under which debtors on a mere affidavit of "knowl 
 edge and belief" could be imprisoned and held until bailed. The Chronicle 
 opened the fight upon this bill with such vigor in St. Louis that Congress 
 man Gates of Alabama who was then in charge of the bill was reported 
 in 4 Washington dispatches as having threatened General Hawkins. No 
 doubt this was an exaggeration, but there was no possibility of exaggerat 
 ing the radicalism of the element which Mr. Oates had been put forward to 
 represent. The bill, in spite of its imprisonment clause, was forced for 
 passage and it would have passed had not Mr. Bland taken the offensive 
 against it and moved to strike out its enacting clause. Its friends were 
 thrown into confusion and, as some on the democratic side who would 
 have supported it otherwise did not have the courage to do so, it was 
 defeated. 
 
 On the issue against the coinage of silver, Mr. Bland, though he 
 seemed to be defeated, won with the same ease an overwhelming victory 
 for principle. When his work culminated in the great "parting of the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 199 
 
 ways" speech which defined the issues of 1896, public sentiment in Mis 
 souri and the west had become so manifest and so menacing that those 
 who had joined with Mr. Cleveland, in the attempt to "swing the party," 
 were obliged to vote with Mr. Bland in order to keep standing room in 
 Congress as representatives of western and southern constituencies. 
 
 After Mr. Cleveland succeeded in compelling the suspension of silver 
 coinage under the Sherman act, Mr. Bland forced him to veto a bill for the 
 coinage of the "seigniorage," and by refusal to concede anything to the 
 policies the administration represented, brought about a more definite 
 public understanding of what they really were. 
 
 The end contemplated by these policies was to force the business of the 
 country as far as possible away from a cash basis, in order that the maxi 
 mum amount of "banking credits" might be utilized. It was proposed to 
 back the credit of the banks with that of the United States, and to this end 
 an elaborate system was devised under the auspices of Mr. Carlisle. It can 
 be characterized without prejudice as tending to exaggerate every evil of 
 the national banking system, by adding the element of the worst speculative 
 insecurity to that of monopoly, through the employment of the delegated 
 sovereignty of the government. This had been anticipated in the demo 
 cratic platform of 1892, where Mr. Cleveland's financial associates man 
 aged to secure complete control of the platform committee. 
 
 In the national convention held at Chicago in that year, the results of 
 the second Cleveland administration were clearly foreshadowed. Mr. 
 Cleveland's whig and federalist friends, controlling the platform com 
 mittee, rejected a democratic plank written in Missouri committing the 
 party squarely to its historic principles of "tariff for revenue only," and 
 substituted for it the compromise idea for which Mr. Cleveland had always 
 stood the idea of a tariff high enough to protect the manufacturer -and to 
 yield revenue in the absence of all protection for raw materials produced in 
 America. It does Mr. Cleveland no injustice to say that the Standard Oil 
 Company and the combined national banking interest of the country were 
 
200 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 represented by those who represented him most authoritatively in that 
 convention. The policy of the platform committee, so far as it related to 
 the tariff, was repudiated in open convention, and a plank almost exactly 
 identical in phraseology with that from Missouri, which had been rejected, 
 was adopted by the convention. 
 
 The convention, however, paid no attention to an inconspicuous clause 
 under which it was proposed to revive "state banks" as banks of issue, 
 with a national guarantee of their currency. As it presently appeared, 
 this looked to be the issuance of corporation notes to circulate as money on 
 the "security" of the bonded debt of other corporations even of railroads 
 representing values largely speculative. This was said to be a plan for 
 "retiring the treasury from the banking business" meaning that with a 
 minimum coinage by the treasury, the rest of the currency needed in busi 
 ness was to be issued chiefly on government credit by private corporations, 
 putting it in circulation at interest to be collected and appropriated by 
 their managers. Under this plan as indeed under the national banking 
 system a dollar of bonded debt, outstanding against business, is inflated 
 one hundred per cent, by a note for a dollar "based" on it and put in circula 
 tion to do the work of cash. The system was invented by the celebrated 
 John Law, and no rational intellect which consents to consider its realities, 
 can conclude that it is logical, scientific or indeed sane, except as claims 
 of sanity may be made for it because of the facility it gives for the acquisi 
 tion of unearned wealth at the expense of natural production and distri 
 bution. 
 
 Along this line of monopoly control of the currency by corporations 
 substituting inflated paper for cash, issues were forced in connection with 
 a tariff bill which, in spite of the national platform of 1892, recurred to the 
 whig basis proposed by Mr. W. C. Whitney from the platform committee 
 at Chicago. In many cases, the Wilson bill, by absolute free trade in raw 
 materials and a duty of over a third against imports of manufactured 
 goods, made the protective difference greater for the American manu- 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 2OI 
 
 facturer than it had been before. It was asserted at the time, with a show 
 of probability, that the average duties of the bill were on the whole higher 
 than those of the "war tariff" which the democratic party had been 
 denouncing for so many years. The tax on incomes, as it manifestly 
 tends to restrict investment and to minimize production, was in opposition 
 to the free trade theory of the least possible restriction, but, nevertheless, 
 it was the most popular feature of the bill and when, as was perhaps 
 anticipated, the Supreme Court declared against it, the bill as it had 
 passed was left so odious with both parties, that democrats mentioned it 
 only with shame and republicans with execration the more violent be 
 cause it was only thus that they could make or simulate a decided diver 
 gence from Mr. Cleveland's now pronounced federalism. 
 
 There is little question that his second administration did more to 
 break down popular adherence to the original principles of the government 
 than that of General Grant himself. Mr. Cleveland had most of the good 
 qualities of John Adams and differed politically in no essential respect 
 from Adams in his tendencies and sympathies. Although Illinois had 
 been carried against the republicans in 1892, largely on the merits of the 
 determined attempt made to restrict the tendency of commercial corpora 
 tions to use force as a business method ; although General John M. Palmer, 
 the quondam opponent of General Sheridan, had been selected and forced 
 to the front in Illinois to represent opposition to the Pinkerton system and 
 to the unnecessary intervention of the military in civil government, Mr. 
 Cleveland during the Pullman strike sent federal troops into Illinois to do 
 police duty, not only without the call of the governor, but against his 
 wishes. It is useless to discuss the occasion for this, here. It needs to be 
 considered only as a fact, unprecedented in the history of the democratic 
 party, and in its effects on democratic organization, necessarily revolution 
 ary. Mr. Bland opposed it in Congress, but he was unable to do more 
 than put his protest on record Congress being controlled at the time by a 
 combination between republicans and those who were known as "cuckoos" 
 
202 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 a name given to them to suggest the promptness and reliability with 
 which the cuckoo in a well made clock responds in voice and action to the 
 movements of the governing machinery. 
 
 When a president elected as a democrat, and the first to be seated as 
 a democrat since the Civil war, thus openly repudiated the theories of the 
 federal constitution to which the democratic party owed its first great vic 
 tory against Adams in 1800; for which southern Confederates had fought 
 four years and northern "copperheads" endured persecution and igno 
 miny for a full generation, it was evident that a new era had come indeed. 
 Unyielding in his conviction of duty, devoted to the welfare of the country 
 as he understood it, and governed as were his intimate associates by a pro 
 found distrust of the masses of the people, Mr. Cleveland's patriotism and 
 willingness to sacrifice the last remnants of his personal popularity to what 
 he conceived to be the necessity of leading the democratic party in new 
 directions, worked to make inevitable such a radical change in politics as 
 had hardly been seen since similar issues were forced by the elder Adams. 
 
 Among the federalist presidents of the United States, Mr. Cleveland 
 will rank with Adams in ability and in patriotism, but no matter how wil 
 ling we may be to do him full justice, it is impossible to escape the conclu 
 sion that except as it disorganized sectional politics and forced party 
 re-alignment, his second administration was one of the most unfortunate 
 in the history of the country. 
 
 His attempt at tariff reform was worse than a failure. His sale of 
 bonds to maintain the gold basis had the effect of making gold itself a part 
 of an unsafe system of credit currency, for if government credit utilized 
 in the issue of bonds must be used to support gold as the standard, it is 
 clear that in economic effect gold is no longer cash (money of final 
 account), but is as much a part of a general system of credit currency as 
 if it were paper promise to pay, unsecured. Every million dollars in gold, 
 held in reserve by Mr. Cleveland through an issue of bonds against it to 
 keep it in reserve, was inflated by the amount of the bonds issued. And 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 203 
 
 when to this unscientific and unnatural system, was added the resort to 
 such foreign financial agents as Mr. Pierpont Morgan and the Rothschilds 
 to "underwrite the treasury" and support the credit of the country in a time 
 of profound peace, nothing except the use of the army for police duty in 
 Illinois was needed to divide Mr. Cleveland forever from what its oppo 
 nents call the "bourbon" element of his party. Sixteen to one bimetallism 
 and the work of Mr. Bland made the issue when the crisis came, but long 
 before it came, Cleveland himself had made it through his funda 
 mental federalism his innate belief in the necessity of government of, by 
 and for "the better element." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The Financial Policies of Plutocracy and John Law as Their Prophet. Turgot and 
 Quesnay as Representatives of Sanity and the Principles of Progress. Mr. 
 Eland's Work Justified by the Strictest Standard of Turgot. "Hands Off! Let 
 the World Move!" The Bankers' Panic and Its Causes. The Tendency to 
 Maximum Production as a Law of Nature and the Fact of Minimum Distribu 
 tion as a Result of Plutocratic Oligarchy. Political Economy in Its Last 
 Analysis. Vest on the Sherman Anti-Trust Law as Humbug. "Frying Out 
 the Fat" of Lawbreaking Combinations. Trusts in no Danger From the 
 Collectors of Campaign Funds. Mills and Factories Closed by Restriction and 
 Under-Distribution. Necessary Collapse of Restrictive Systems in the Pres 
 ence of Natural Maximum Production. 
 
 HE POSITION taken by Mr. Bland against the Carlisle 
 scheme of credit currency was strictly in line with the best 
 traditions of economic science. Those who will consult 
 Turgot's "Letter on Paper Money," addressed to the Abbe 
 de Cice against John Law's theory of substituting for cash, bank paper 
 issued under government privilege, will find that the issues of the last 
 twenty-five years of the nineteenth century are not new. When Quesnay 
 and Turgot attacked land feudalism in France, the same principles were 
 involved which came to issue when Mr. Bland attacked the abuses of the 
 analogous corporation feudalism in America. 
 
 In France the great feudal interests demanded toll of production and 
 distribution without which they refused to allow the progress of the world. 
 Laissez faire, laissez passer!" "Hands off! Let the world move!" 
 that was the rallying cry of the "Physiocrats," led by Quesnay, Turgot 
 and the elder Mirabeau, teachers of Jefferson and Samuel Adams in 
 America ! 
 
 Their work made possible the immense development of the nineteenth 
 century in America and at the end of the century, Bland stood as a repre 
 sentative of the right of the twentieth to the same development. "Hands 
 
 204 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 205 
 
 off ! Let the world move !" that was his message also to the men with 
 muck rakes who search in the filth which fertilizes civilization, for that 
 which satisfies them if it is found who if their search be interrupted, 
 throng with strident cries to threaten progress and to mob its prophets! 
 
 In demanding a bimetallic currency, issued and put in circulation by 
 the government without a delegation of its sovereignty to corporations, 
 Mr. Bland stood for the least possible restriction of production and distri 
 bution, just as he did in opposing prohibitive duties against imports. 
 
 The issue was, and it still remains, clearly defined between minimum 
 and maximum restriction of production and distribution. Mr. Bland stood 
 at all times for the minimum of restriction. He never changed his position 
 or compromised it during his public life. Under Grant, Hayes, Garfield 
 and Arthur, under Cleveland, Harrison and McKinley he opposed a credit 
 currency of corporation paper because it represented the maximum of 
 interference with free exchange of the products of labor of the necessaries 
 and comforts of life. The issue was never between the dollar of gold and 
 the dollar of silver, but between a dollar in cash representing a settling 
 power of 100 per cent, plus, and a credit dollar of corporation paper issued 
 on government guaranty, representing 100 per cent, minus an inflation 
 of 100 per cent, of its face as an addition to the floating debt outstanding 
 against business, and operating in the direct ratio of its volume to force 
 collapse and panic. 
 
 So clear is Mr. Bland in his intellectual as in his moral rectitude, 
 that among all his opponents, there has never yet been one to meet him on 
 the real issue between the high, constructive principles of Turgot and 
 those of Bourbon despotism and folly in France of plutocratic despotism 
 and folly in America. 
 
 The disciples of John Law in America, organized as speculative bank 
 ing corporations, have done all that perverse ingenuity supported by limit 
 less means can do to discredit the great truths of progress which inspired 
 Mr. Eland's work, but they are so far from having silenced him that in 
 
206 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the first ten years of the twentieth century even if they make an armed 
 camp of the world and of America with it, they will still hear more insist 
 ently than ever the message of his work, the moral of his life "Hands 
 off! Let the world move!" 
 
 The "banker's panic," created by the restriction of credits for political 
 effect under the Cleveland administration, was an incident of the collapse 
 of a restrictive system of distribution in the presence of production tending 
 to the maximum. 
 
 Between 1884 and 1894, this tendency to maximum production as a 
 law of nature, imperative in its results showed itself in manufacturing as 
 well as in direct production from the soil. It is clear that on final analysis, 
 all production is reducible to two classifications (i) direct from the soil 
 in agriculture and mining and (2) secondary, in improving the form of 
 direct products as in changing wheat to flour, cotton to cloth and iron ore 
 to plowshares. Both forms are necessary, and of the highest value to civ 
 ilization, but it is manifest that Mr. Bland did not err in holding direct 
 production from the earth as of primary economic importance. 
 
 As all forms of legitimate industrial activity are reducible to produc 
 tion and distribution and that which promotes them, we have as the agen 
 cies of distribution (i) buyers and sellers and (2) carriers of products 
 between buyers and sellers or producers and consumers. Sustaining them 
 selves at the expense of these, but under favorable conditions capable of 
 greatly promoting their activities are (i) dealers in currency and actual 
 credits based on it and (2) speculative dealers in fictitious credits depend 
 ing on the rise and fall of prices. 
 
 In 1894, production, direct and secondary, had increased far beyond 
 the possibilities of the restrictive system of distribution to handle its max 
 imum output. With people starving and half clad in the great cities of 
 the United States and Europe, the producer with food and clothing he 
 could neither use himself nor monetize as wealth by supplying it to the 
 needy, was warned over and over of the dangers of "overproduction." As 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 2Oy 
 
 demonetized wealth* accumulated on the farm and at the mouths of iron, 
 lead, coal and silver mines, undistributed and unused, so it did in the great 
 workshops and factories of the country. As this product far more, in 
 the reality of things and in the strict use of language, "demonetized" than 
 silver had ever been accumulated as undistributed waste, it was clearly 
 necessary to do one of two things either to change the whole system and 
 to adopt a system giving maximum facilities of distribution in response 
 to maximum production, or else to form combinations, cease competition 
 and shut down the factories which represented possibilities of increasing 
 production. 
 
 The latter alternative was inevitable under the circumstances. "Where, 
 under a restrictive system, combination is possible, competition and the 
 maximum production involved by competition are impossible." No doubt 
 it was with this in view that Senator Vest of Missouri, when in the Senate 
 the secret service agents of plutocracy proposed to "prohibit trusts" under 
 the Sherman act then pending, pointed out that such action was mere "bru- 
 tum fulmen!" in English, humbug! the political economy which gov 
 erns the Punch and Judy show where the economist behind the curtain 
 puts into Punchinello, to amuse the penny producing crowd in front, only 
 so much reality as can be transmitted through his own thumbs to the cloth 
 and pasteboard of his puppet. 
 
 The sugar trust, the standard oil trust and the national banks, 
 through millionaire stockholders combined in various other syndicates, po 
 litical and commercial, had contributed to Mr. Cleveland's campaign fund, 
 but this fact was not decisive in controlling the policies of his administration 
 towards them. The complete failure to enforce the Sherman act under 
 two administrations elected as republican and one inaugurated as demo 
 cratic, is due primarily to the fact that every indictment under it is the 
 indictment of a system, and every punishment under it would be the pun 
 ishment of a theory of government supported and carried out by the eco- 
 
 *Wealth of any kind is demonetized when it has lost its exchange value. 
 
208 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 nomic laws and the executive machinery of the entire United States. As 
 long as distribution is restricted by law, maximum production will result 
 in a demonetized surplus, and no penalty, no system of federal regulation 
 possible or imaginable can keep in operation the mills whose product is 
 thus robbed of its exchangeable quality as wealth and reduced to mere 
 waste. 
 
 On this point as on every other of fundamental importance, Mr. Bland 
 was calmly logical. He saw the practical politicians of both parties "fry 
 ing the fat" of the great law-breaking combinations of manufacturing cor 
 porations by threatening them with a justice which there was no power 
 to execute which seemed formidable to the law-breakers themselves more 
 because of their own consciousness of guilt than of any actual intellectual 
 and reasonable apprehension of being brought to justice. From time to 
 time, an indictment, found in the state or the federal courts by the officials 
 of whatever party happened to have control of court machinery, would 
 create a considerable intellectual disturbance and so stimulate moral self- 
 consciousness in the law-breakers as to facilitate "voluntary contributions" 
 to campaign funds on their percentages from which as collectors, practi 
 cal statesmen are sometimes obliged to depend for even the bare necessaries 
 of life. But no rational mind can conclude that such methods are capable 
 of restoring or even of promoting free production and distribution under 
 a system which is carefully devised to restrict both. 
 
 With mills and factories shutting down, with food stuffs and raw 
 material for clothing "overproduced" in a badly-clad and badly-fed world, 
 the producers of the country, whether farmers or factory-owners, were 
 reduced to the lowest point of productive activity, while the activity of the 
 speculative element, which thrives on the wreckage of business, increased. 
 During this period, the dealers in credits and in speculative values, threw 
 into the hands of receivers, one after another of the great railroad systems 
 on which the producer of the west and south chiefly depend, and re-or 
 ganized them later on, largely under control of capitalists, having their 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 2O 
 
 headquarters in London. Out of the immense opportunity given by this 
 wreckage, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, an able New York financier who is 
 complimented by the Rothschilds with the management of much of their 
 American business political and financial, developed power as a reorganize! 
 which Mr. Jay Gould had never equalled at his best. For his work in this 
 line, he was naturally subjected personally to some reproach, but it was 
 not the result of logical processes of thought. His operations were merely 
 incidents of a system, and they were inevitable under it. As a result of 
 that system, the wreckage of railroads, the collapse of the manufacturing 
 organizations, the failure of economic machinery for exchanging the pro 
 ducts of farm and mine, all followed the desperate attack made by the com 
 bined currency-dealers of the world on the American system of issuing 
 cash from the mints and the treasury to supersede corporation paper in cir 
 culation. 
 
 The collapse of the whole restrictive system came when nature gave 
 maximum crops to this country in the same years with crops approaching 
 the maximum in Europe and the southern hemisphere. Under the same 
 system, a similar collapse is as inevitable when similar conditions recur 
 as are the operations of the laws governing the seemingly lawless trade 
 winds and ocean currents. It did not change these laws it only made 
 their final effects more emphatic, when after forcing panic and compelling 
 further restriction of exchange through the cessation of bimetallic coinage, 
 the "financiers" took advantage of the apathy of the country to go into 
 Mr. Eland's district in the "off" year and defeat his re-election accom 
 plishing secretly what no 1 amount of campaign funds behind them would 
 have made possible had it been attempted openly. 
 
 This done, announcement solemn and impressive, was made that free- 
 coinage was dead and that the "16 to I cranks," were "no longer in a 
 position to prevent the return of prosperity." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 "The Right Thing from the Right Man at the Right Time" as the Decisive Factor 
 in History Making. Mr. Bland Writes a Letter and Sees a Reporter. Who 
 Shall Bolt: Bland or Cleveland? Why and How Mr. Cleveland Was Induced 
 to Bolt. He Himself Forces 16 to i Coinage as an Unavoidable Issue. 
 His Objections to Being "Elected Without New York" in 1892. His View of 
 "Rainbow Chasing" as Sectional and Dangerous. Mr. Bland Consummates 
 the Work of the Rainbow Chasers With an Interview Defining the Vital Issues 
 of the Chicago Platform. The Stand Made Against International Control of 
 the American Treasury Forces the Republican Party to a Change of Base in 
 1896 and to Open Alliance With English Imperialists in 1898. 
 
 R. BLAND represented in 1895 the full strength of the issues 
 on which Mr. Harrison had been defeated in 1892. These 
 issues involved either the immediate re-organization or the 
 complete disorganization of the democratic party. After 
 postponing all legislation on the currency in order "not to embarrass tariff 
 reform," tariff reform had been deliberately put out of sight by Mr. Cleve 
 land as the first act of his second term. In a letter of July n, 1893, pub 
 lished at the time over a fac-simile of his signature, Mr. Bland made this 
 situation clear. 
 
 "During the last Congress," he said, "I did all I could to pass a free 
 coinage bill in the House, the Senate having already passed it. But no 
 the tariff was the great issue. Now the tariff is brushed aside that silver 
 demonetization may be accomplished. Had we then passed a free coinage 
 bill, the question would have been settled. We would not have been con 
 fronted with the British demonetization policy in India. How much 
 longer are we to be controlled by the advocates of a waiting policy ? We 
 are now by this dallying brought face to face with the question of total 
 silver demonetization in this, the greatest metallic power the world ever 
 knew. The repeal of the Sherman law unconditionally is all that is neces 
 sary now to accomplish this end for which the gold party has struggled 
 from the beginning. 
 
 The democratic party promised first of all a reform of the tariff. 
 
 210 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 211 
 
 Tariff reform is no longer talked of except with bated breath. The east 
 proposes to formulate a tariff policy on the lines of the original Chicago 
 platform, brought forward by the protectionist element of the democratic 
 party and not in harmony with the substitute finally adopted by the con 
 vention.* They now also propose to repeal the Sherman law without 
 granting the free coinage part of our platform. 
 
 Our eastern friends seem to regard the democratic platform on the sil 
 ver question as a mere seesaw. As the Sherman law end goes down the 
 free coinage end must go up in mid-air and remain suspended there. 
 
 It is plain to all now that they played a huge bunco game on the 
 democracy of the south and west by lustily preaching tariff reform, a 
 measure so popular here, but at the same time intending to spring upon us, 
 after the election, the sole issue of silver demonetization. 
 
 If the representatives of the west and south are true to themselves 
 and the interests of their constituents, this conspiracy will not succeed. 
 If they are recreant, the people will hold them individually, if not collec 
 tively, responsible for their cringing cowardice. 
 
 To repeal the Sherman law outright and substitute nothing for it 
 would precipitate a silver panic throughout the world and probably cause 
 its universal demonetization, a consummation devoutly wished by the gold 
 party. It seems to me no true friend of silver could advocate such a 
 policy. 
 
 If we ever intend the free coinage of silver in this country we must 
 fight for it now right now." 
 
 The recipient of this letter supplied it for publication to the St. Louis 
 Chronicle with Mr. Eland's approval. The impression it produced was 
 profound and lasting. 
 
 From this time on, it became more and more evident that either Mr. 
 Cleveland and his supporters or else all those who held Mr. Eland's views 
 of opposition to restriction of the currency and trade must leave the demo 
 cratic party. Mr. Cleveland had made this inevitable and it was accepted 
 
 *Mr. Bland here refers more especially to Mr. William C. Whitney who represented Mr. Cleveland 
 on the platform committee of the Chicago convention of 1892, and, with his usual skill in such matters, 
 contrived to have a majority of the platform committee favorable to his views. See preceding chapter. 
 The "plank" in favor of "tariff for revenue only" rejected by Mr. Whitney in the committee was 
 written in Missouri by the same person to whom Mr. Bland wrote the above letter. The knowledge of 
 the situation expressed by Mr. Bland was not theoretical merely. 
 
212 AN AMEPaCAN COMMONER. 
 
 as inevitable though he did not seem to have contemplated it as a neces 
 sity of the situation until the Chicago convention of 1896 had actually been 
 held. 
 
 The pivotal point of the situation was the fact of the then existing 
 international control of the United States treasury. Mr. Cleveland had 
 not indorsed the campaign for carrying Kansas and Illinois against Mr. 
 Harrison. He had regarded objections to New York "hegemony" as 
 sectional and dangerous, and not understanding the realities of opposition 
 to sectionalism involved in it, had written letters to Missouri attempting 
 to check it. He did not succeed in doing so, however, and after his proc 
 lamation against silver had defeated tariff reform, the sectionalism of the 
 Civil war was so far disposed of also, that the only logical issue was against 
 the control of the United States treasury by foreign financiers operating 
 through national banks, and issuing currency on bonds owned abroad. 
 
 After Mr. Cleveland's policy had been fully developed under his 
 second administration, it was thought that the democratic party, if not 
 relieved of responsibility for it, would hardly carry half a dozen states 
 that Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and everything west 
 of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio would vote for anything to show 
 dissent from his policies. 
 
 As democratic congressmen and senators, controlled by the influence 
 of patronage and by pressure from the national banks, had not checked Mr. 
 Cleveland as they might easily have done, the democratic organization as 
 they represented it had no right to repudiate him and no right to win by 
 repudiating him. But the issue was not one of party. Mr. Bland put 
 principle high above partisanship. He had determined to stand for prin 
 ciple at any cost, and it was clear that Mr. Cleveland and the national 
 banking element he represented, would bolt any platform which stood for 
 bimetallism and a cash currency against one of national bank paper. 
 
 Under such circumstances, it was from the standpoint of bimetallism, 
 highly desirable that Mr. Cleveland should "bolt" rather than that the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 213 
 
 advocates of bimetallism should be forced to do so. The issues shaped 
 themselves to this end from early in 1895, and Mr. Bland did more than 
 any one else to give them their direction. 
 
 This was done to a very great extent already by his "parting of the 
 ways" speech, by similar speeches in Congress and by the letter quoted 
 above as it appeared in the St. Louis Chronicle. The results seem to have 
 been made conclusive, however, by a carefully calculated interview which 
 appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer in March, 1895. General Hawkins, 
 editor of the St. Louis Chronicle when the struggle opened between Mr. 
 Bland and Mr. Cleveland, had now become managing editor of the Cin 
 cinnati Enquirer and his influence secured for that newspaper one of the 
 most decisive interviews ever published in America. Before sending to 
 Lebanon, General Hawkins, wrote to an acquaintance of Mr. Eland's that 
 Mr. Bland was not likely to remain in any party dominated by Mr. Cleve 
 land's policies and asked for a schedule of questions, involving the pos 
 sibility of answers which would not only define Mr. Eland's views, but 
 would direct public attention to the decisive issues of what would become 
 the "new politics" of the coming struggle. These questions prepared in 
 harmony with Mr. Eland's known views, elicited the interview which de 
 cided what the Chicago plaform of 1896 should be especially in its crucial 
 feature of protest, direct and absolute, against international control of 
 American mints and the American treasury. As this interview follows 
 below, it has been submitted for revision to the same person who prepared 
 the questions for it: 
 
 LEBANON, Mo., March 23. Richard Parks Bland, the great apostle 
 of silver, and one of the most intelligent and forceful advocates of bimetal 
 lism in the world, is still a democrat, all reports to the contrary notwith 
 standing. I found him at his home to-day near this city, and had the 
 highly interesting interview with him which follows. Mr. Bland appeared 
 
214 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 to weigh carefully every word he uttered, though he talked with the utmost 
 freedom. The only question he declined to answer was as to what he 
 would advise his party followers to do in the event that the next democratic 
 national convention nominated a ticket and adopted a platform in harmony 
 with the Cleveland administration on the monetary question. 
 
 "What is the present condition of the country in regard to debt?" 
 was the first question asked and Mr. Bland replied : 
 
 "In speaking of debts we should consider the national debts, the state 
 debts, municipal debts, county debts, railroad and other corporation 
 debts as well as all private debts. It may be stated generally that 
 the national debt is near $1,000,000,000, and at the present low 
 price of commodities and the products of labor it will take as much 
 of these products generally to pay the $1,000,000,000 debts at this 
 time as it would have required to pay the national debt when it was 
 $2,000,000,000. In other words since the demonetization of silver, 
 prices have gone down nearly one half. Our railroad debt alone is prob 
 ably not below $5,000,000,000. Mr. Sibley, in a valuable speech in Con 
 gress on January 8, 1895, in this connection, said: Nothing can more 
 clearly show the effects of falling prices than the interest charged upon the 
 indebtedness of the people of the Union, as exemplified by the following 
 article from a weekly newspaper, to which my attention has been called. 
 Mr. Walker, a republican member of Congress from Massachusetts, says 
 the people of the United States owe debts, public and private, to the 
 amount of $32,000,000,000. Now, we take Mr. Walker as authority be 
 cause he, coming from a New England state and being a republican, will 
 not be accused of placing the figures too high. It is claimed by some that the 
 rate of interest on this indebtedness will average eight per cent, per annum. 
 But to be entirely safe and to be conservative, and for the purpose of giv 
 ing to the public a birds-eye view of their condition, we will place the 
 rate at six per cent. Now, six per cent, on $32,000,000,000 amounts to 
 $1,920,000,000. In 1892 we raised 1,628,464,000 bushels of corn. At 40 
 cents per bushel we would have $651,385,600 as its total value. Our 
 wheat crop the same year was 519,400,000 bushels. At an average of 
 80 cents per bushel we realized $415,592,000. Our oat crop was 661,- 
 037,000 bushels. At 25 cents per bushel we have $165,259,000. Our gold 
 mines produced $33,000,000 and our silver mines $75,000,000. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 'Now let us add this together and see what the result will be: 
 
 Value of corn crop $ 651,385,600 
 
 Value of wheat crop 415,592,000 
 
 Value of oat crop. .. . ... ,... 165,259,000 
 
 Value of gold crop 33,000,000 
 
 Value of silver crop 75,000,000 
 
 Total $1,340,236,600 
 
 Interest on debt $ 1,920,000,000 
 
 Difference $ 579,763,400 
 
 "I know Mr. Walker well, and know him to be a student of political 
 economy, and he would not be likely to state the amount of debt of our 
 people in an exaggerated sense. Indeed, Mr. Harvey, in his book, called 
 'Coin's Financial School/ says (page 119) the total debt in the United 
 States, national, municipal, state, county, corporate and private, is now 
 estimated at $40,000,000,006. The railroad bonded debt is $5,000,000,000, 
 or one-eighth of the whole amount. 
 
 "The interest on $40,000,000,000 at an average rate of six per cent., is 
 $2,400,000,000. I have no doubt that the estimate of Coin as given by Mr. 
 Harvey is more nearly correct than that attributed to Mr. Walker." 
 
 "How much of this debt is held abroad ?" 
 
 "Of course it is difficult to estimate or determine the amount accu 
 rately. There is such a close connection between the great banking houses 
 of New York, Boston and commercial centers and the banking houses of 
 London, Berlin and Paris that whatever of our securities may be negoti 
 ated in our own commercial center we can not determine how much of 
 this amount has really been negotiated for banking houses in for 
 eign countries, with which our own banking firms are usually con 
 nected as agents or copartners. It is well known that the principal 
 banking firms of New York and London are branches of the same 
 institutions; in other words, Wall street and Lombard street are 
 twin brothers in finance. Our recent bond negotiations of $64,000,000 
 show the close connection between the banking houses of New York and 
 the Rothschilds of London. I may linger for a moment here to add that- 
 there is a gold trust; that the gold can be cornered at any time against even 
 a powerful government like our own. This fact was practically admitted 
 by the secretary of the treasury when he recently stated in connection with 
 the negotiation of the $64,000,000 of bonds that he had endeavored to nego- 
 
2l6 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 tiate his loan in New York, and that also by cable to London, but that he 
 was wholly unable to do so until he had agreed with a bond syndicate or 
 trust composed of bankers in New York and London, and was compelled 
 to negotiate with the trust or syndicate at a loss of over $10,000,000 to the 
 government. If, therefore, the owners of gold can thus corner the gov 
 ernment of the United States, how much more easily can they corner the 
 poor private debtors of this country and the world ! And in forcing the 
 negotiations of loans and the payment of loans so long as gold is the sole 
 standard of payment they can force these private debtors into utter ruin 
 and bankruptcy. Even the great railroad corporations of the country can 
 not withstand the pressure of the single gold standard. This is proved by 
 the fact of so many of them being in the hands of receivers. 
 
 "To return to the question as to the amount of our debt payable abroad : 
 Mr. Gladstone, as a part of his objection to England adopting bimetal 
 lism, claimed that the world owed England no less than $10,000,000,000 in 
 gold ; that bimetallism meant the depreciation of gold or, what is the same 
 thing, an appreciation of all commodities. Doubtless, our debt to 
 England in the way of interest and other charges exceeds $500,000,000 
 annually. While we have no means of knowing positively the amount, 
 yet the fact that our exports exceed largely our imports, and that we are 
 constantly shipping gold and losing our gold, would go to show that our 
 foreign debt must be very great. 
 
 "In a statement by Mr. George A. Butler, president of a national bank 
 in Connecticut, a strong advocate and a very intelligent man, before the 
 committee on banking and currency last year, he said it is estimated that 
 Americans spend abroad every year $90,000,000 ; another $60,000,000 goes 
 abroad on various investments in this country held abroad. That is $150,- 
 000,000; add to that $25,000,000 or $30,000,000 paid out for foreign 
 freight and $10,000,000 for insurance and sundries, making in all $195,,- 
 000,000. Say we receive $40,000,000 from immigrants, there would be 
 still left $135,000,000 in the nature of maturing obligations against the 
 country independent of any commercial transactions. Unquestionably the 
 estimate of Mr. Butler as to the interest paid abroad is too low by half. 
 But no matter whether this interest is paid to Old England or New En 
 gland, it is paid from the products of labor and principally from the prod 
 ucts of agriculture from the south and the west. To pay this interest at this 
 time on the gold standard requires twice the number of bushels of wheat 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 2 17 
 
 and bales of cotton and double the amount of farm products generally to 
 pay the estimated $2,400,000,000 interest annually that would have been 
 required prior to the demonetization of silver. In other words since i8?3 
 there has been a fall of prices of more than fifty per cent. The question of 
 debtor and creditor, however, is not the only question involved in the 
 silver question, nor the most important question. Should the owners of 
 gold, and creditors generally, force the whole world into liquidation, and 
 sell out all debtors, even forcing them to bankruptcy, and at the same time 
 consent to the full restoration of the free coinage of silver as it existed 
 prior to 1873, the revival of business and the revival of prices of the 
 products of labor consequent to such restoration would immediately set in 
 motion the great productive industries of the country, and thus enable the 
 laboring people and the impoverished debtors to so prosper to such an extent 
 as would put them in a better condition ten years hence than they would be 
 to forego the foreclosure of mortgages and the liquidation of debts. In 
 other words, the debtors could better afford at this time to give up every 
 thing they have to their creditors in exchange for the full restoration of sil 
 ver than to risk the payment of their debts under the single gold standard, 
 Money being but a tool of industry in one sense and in the greater sense, the 
 restoration of silver would furnish the tool by which to set every man to 
 work and revive the activity of every industry of this country, which 
 would result in an enormous production of wealth, the only remedy for 
 starvation and poverty, and the only way by which debts can be met and 
 paid without confiscation and bankruptcy." 
 
 "What have you to say of the desire of foreign bankers for the perpet 
 uation of our national debt ? Do you believe they seek to control our cur 
 rency or prevent the opening of our mints to the free coinage of silver?" 
 
 "My observation in Congress for the last 20 years, and ever since the 
 agitation of the silver question, convinces me beyond a doubt that the bank 
 ing houses of London and Berlin, especially through their branch banks 
 in New York, seek to control absolutely the monetary affairs of this coun 
 try. I have never seen the free coinage of silver agitated in Congress 
 without the interference of these foreigners. The moment a free coinage 
 bill or any bill looking to the restoration of silver is brought up in Congress 
 the New York papers are filled with dispatches from the banking houses 
 and the press of London and Berlin warning this country against the sin 
 gle silver standard, and to intimidate Congress they immediately set to 
 
2i8 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 work to draw gold from the federal treasury and ship it abroad and charge 
 that the agitation of the silver question is drawing all of the gold out of this 
 country. They return their American bonds and securities with the threat 
 of forcing them on the American market because of an alleged fear of a 
 single silver standard. The New York bankers, the clearing house asso 
 ciations, chambers of commerce and boards of trade take up this for 
 eign refrain by passing resolutions denouncing silver and imme 
 diately telegraph blank resolutions to be passed by the various 
 boards of trade and chambers of commerce throughout the country 
 to be sent to Congress protesting against the restoration of silver. 
 The bankers of London and New York deliberately planned and executed 
 a panic in this country to secure the repeal of the purchasing clause of the 
 Sherman act. That fact I think will be generally admitted by every observ 
 ant man, who will express honestly his convictions. Their power has 
 been felt on every occasion when silver has been the subject of legislation 
 in Congress. That we are at the mercy of foreigners on the money ques 
 tion is admitted by every honest advocate of the gold standard. The fact 
 is, about the only argument they make for the gold standard is based on 
 the theory that we must have the same money that European countries 
 have. Whatever Europe says on the money question we must say, 'What 
 ever Europe does we must do. Whatever Europe tells us to do we are com 
 pelled to do or else we can negotiate no loans in Europe. We are told that 
 we can not live and prosper without European aid ; hence our money must 
 be gold because Europe says it must be gold, or else Europe will loan us 
 no money/ Of course we understand that the bondholders of Europe 
 and this country are opposed to the restoration of silver because the restor 
 ation of silver will greatly cheapen gold by coming in competition with 
 gold as a money metal of ultimate redemption. Again, it is understood 
 that the cheapening of gold means a rise in the price of commodities and 
 all other things but gold. In other words, instead of the bondholder get 
 ting for his dollar two bushels of wheat he would get but one, and so on 
 with all other agricultural products as well as of the factory and mine." 
 
 "What connection, if any, do you believe exists between the foreign 
 and home bankers and the metropolitan press of New York ?" 
 
 "This question may be answered by stating that not only the metropol 
 itan press of New York, but unfortunately to some extent the press 
 throughout the country, seems to be in harmony with foreign banking 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 2 19 
 
 institutions and those of this country. The public pretty generally believes 
 that the accommodations and loans furnished the metropolitan press have 
 much to do with this." 
 
 "Has the Cleveland administration been under the control of this 
 influence ?" 
 
 "I have no doubt that Mr. Cleveland honestly believes in the single 
 gold standard, and honestly believing in the single gold standard, of course 
 the gold standard advocates have his ear, to the exclusion of the advocates 
 of silver restoration. Of course Mr. Cleveland believes we must have 
 whatever money Europe has, else we can not negotiate our loans there. 
 If Europe says we must have gold, Mr. Cleveland says we must have gold. 
 If Europe says we should not restore silver, Mr. Cleveland says we 
 shall not restore silver. If Europe and Wall street say we must redeem 
 all our greenbacks and treasury notes, as well as silver dollars and silver 
 certificates in gold, of course Mr. Cleveland says they must all be redeem 
 ed in gold. If a silver dollar should be treated as redemption money, the 
 bankers of New York and London say it would immediately bankrupt 
 the treasury ; consequently in deference to these gentlemen we must redeem 
 even-thing in gold. This, of course, forced the Cleveland administration, 
 as it forced all republican administrations before it, to rely upon the 
 bankers of New York and London to run the treasury department as they 
 saw proper, and not as the American people wished." 
 
 "What have you to say about the redemption of the silver dollar and 
 silver certificate in gold?" 
 
 "The law restoring the standard silver dollar, 'the Bland-Allison act/ 
 intended to make the dollar a dollar of redemption, and not a charge upon 
 the treasury, and it was so understood at the time, and until the pas 
 sage of the Sherman act. The Sherman act provided that the notes 
 issued in the purchase of silver bullion under said act should be redeemed 
 in gold or silver coin, at the discretion of the secretary of the treas 
 ury, declaring in that connection it to be the established policy of the gov 
 ernment to maintain the two metals at a parity. This provision was in 
 serted at the earnest dictation of Senator John Sherman, and has been con 
 strued to mean by every secretary of the treasury, as well as Mr. Sherman, 
 that, in order to maintain the parity, gold must be paid whenever de 
 manded; in consequence of this, silver has been treated practically as a 
 debtor charge upon the treasury, instead of redemption money. So the 
 
22O AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 practical effect of this act has been to depreciate silver and appreciate gold 
 intensifying the strain on gold and lowering prices. That portion of the 
 act especially ought to have been repealed, instead of repealing the pur 
 chase clause, but that part of the act was left standing, and is enforced 
 to-day so as practically to outlaw our silver coin as well as silver bullion. 
 The effect of this, as stated before, has been to lower prices and destroy 
 business activities. It has been exemplified to the American people the 
 impossibility of maintaining prosperity with silver thus outlawed." 
 
 "What is the effect of currency contraction to the gold basis upon 
 our railways, factories, real estate, farms, and farm products, the business 
 of the merchant and the workers generally?" 
 
 "I have before instanced the fact of the enormous amount of railroad 
 property now in the hands of receivers. Railroads are public institutions 
 as well as private corporations. As private corporations they have 
 suffered tremendously in consequence of want of prosperity among 
 the people. They depend for their earnings principally upon the 
 products of the soil and the factory and the mine. In the first 
 instance, upon the farm. If agricultural people are prosperous they 
 will consume more largely of the products of the factory and the 
 mine, thus causing producers and consumers generally to prosper. 
 The railroads in transporting and making the exchange of the products 
 of the factories and of the farms and of the mines make their profits. 
 Without prosperity among the laboring people of the farm, mine and fac 
 tory the railroads can not prosper. The dire distress of railroad invest 
 ment at this time is an object lesson which must show all attentive observ 
 ers that the whole country is suffering. In this connection it may be cited 
 as another object lesson of the gold standard that the railroads are now 
 endeavoring by every means possible to save themselves from the disasters 
 consequent to the single gold standard. To this end they secured the pas 
 sage of a bill in the House of Representatives last winter authorizing 
 them to pool and combine, and thus by a system of monopoly escape im 
 pending ruin. The bill failed to pass the Senate. It may be possible for 
 powerful corporations and monopolies in the future to partially escape 
 the effects of the single gold standard by way of special legislation. 
 
 "The single gold standard is driving the people of this country to the 
 shelter of a paternal government. The manufacturer seeks his bounty 
 in the way of tariffs ; railroads and other corporations by favorable legis- 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 221 
 
 lation to them on the part of Congress; bankers and money lenders by 
 insisting on legislation that will make their property more valuable from 
 year to year, and insisting that the government shall not issue its legal ten 
 der coin silver money, but shall surrender the power to issue money to 
 the banks. The great mass of the working people in all productive indus 
 tries, however, are neglected, and the whole burden is shifted upon their 
 shoulders." 
 
 "Is there not an identity of interest among the farmers, the railroads, 
 merchants, American manufacturers and workers generally against the 
 money dealers here and in Europe?" Mr. Bland was asked. 
 
 "As I stated in answer to previous questions," he replied, "the prosper 
 ity of the railroads, farmers, merchants, manufacturers and workers gener 
 ally is mutually dependent. It is to be regretted that they do not work 
 together for mutual relief. Assuming that the restoration of silver will 
 accomplish the restoration of prices and prosperity in this country, it 
 would not be difficult for the vast productive interests embraced in the 
 question to bring about adequate legislation on the subject. This would be 
 a blessing to all and more advantageous to any particular class than special 
 legislation for them would be. Of course, the money lenders of this 
 country and Europe have great power because of their money. It is selfish 
 in them to undertake, as they do, to sit at the tollgates along the highways 
 of all human activities and allow no one to pass until he has paid them 
 their demands. These demands are becoming so exorbitant as to work 
 practical confiscation upon debtors and destruction to the business 
 prosperity of the people. Values are constantly going down, and deprecia 
 tion is written upon every piece of property throughout the country. The 
 day has come when even bonds and mortgages are depreciating, except 
 such as are government securities. The day is coming, if it is not here 
 now, when mortgages must depreciate because of the utter lack of security 
 upon which they are based. The European money lender may get his 
 pound of flesh, but woe be to him when he exacts one drop of American 
 blood. I can not better describe the situation than was foretold by Hon. 
 John G. Carlisle, now secretary of the treasury, and Mr. Elaine, then a 
 senator of the United States, pending the discussion of what was known 
 as the Bland-Allison bill in Congress. Mr. Blaine, following the same line 
 of argument and thought in the Senate, used this language : 'On the much- 
 vexed and long-mooted question of a bimetallic or monometallic standard, 
 
222 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 my own views are sufficiently indicated in the remarks I have made. I 
 believe the struggle now going on in this country and in other countries 
 for a single gold standard would, if successful, produce wide-spread disas 
 ter in and throughout the commercial world. The destruction of silver as 
 money and establishing gold as the sole unit of value must have a ruinous 
 effect on all forms of property, except these investments which yield a 
 fixed return in money. These would be enormously enhanced in value, 
 and would gain a disproportionate and unfair advantage over every other 
 species of property. If, as the most reliable statistics affirm, there are 
 nearly $7,ooo,ooo,ooo of coin or bullion in the world, not very unequally 
 divided between gold and silver, it is impossible to strike silver out of 
 existence as money without results which will prove distressing to mil 
 lions and utterly disastrous to thousands. I believe gold and silver coin 
 to.be the money of the Constitution indeed, the money of the American 
 people anterior of the Constitution, which the great organic law recog 
 nized as quite independent of its own existence. No power has conferred 
 on Congress to declare either metal should not be money. Congress has, 
 therefore, in my judgment, no power to demonetize either any more than to 
 demonetize both. If, therefore, silver has been demonetized, I am in 
 favor of remonetizing it. If its coinage has been prohibited I am in 
 favor of having it resumed. If it has been restricted I am in favor of hav 
 ing it enlarged/ 
 
 "The fact that statesmen, when this question was first broached, and 
 before the money power got its hand upon it, expressed not only their hon 
 est sentiments, but the true situation, speaks volumes for the sincerity 
 of the expressions then made, and throws a shade of discredit upon any 
 professed change of heart. The further fact that the very things prac 
 ticed by Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Elaine in consequence of a single gold 
 standard shows that they had a better foresight of the future than the 
 appreciation the same class of statesmen have of present conditions." 
 
 "Do you think the workers of New York and New England, and those 
 of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys have a common interest on this ques 
 tion?" 
 
 "I certainly do, and believe if a fair expression of opinions could 
 be had from them they would show unanimity, for as I stated before, 
 money in its greater sense is a tool of trade and industry, and is as much 
 a necessity to the workers of New England and New York, as to those of 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 223 
 
 the south and west. It is quite evident that the time has come when the 
 American people must make a bold stand for American democracy as 
 against foreign plutocracy. The moneyed plutocracy of the world has 
 interfered with our legislation, as I before pointed out. They are ruin- 
 ning the agricultural people of this country and that means the ruin of 
 the manufacturers, the merchants and all workers. At their dictation and 
 behest we have been driven to the single gold standard. They have done 
 this to procure the products of our soil at one-half their value. Of course, 
 it is understood, that our vast debts abroad and commercial transactions 
 are liquidated not in money, but for the most in commodities. These 
 commodities are measured under the gold standard by gold only. Gold 
 having gone up to nearly double what it was before silver was demone 
 tized and this high-priced gold being the measure of our commodities it 
 necessarily means that it takes twice the amount of our export commodities 
 to liquidate these debts abroad that it took before the demonetization of sil 
 ver. Thus foreigners have swindled the producers of this country in the last 
 twenty years out of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. It was said in 
 the days of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Benton and the great 
 democratic fathers of our early history that England sought to control 
 this country by controlling our financial system. Among the strongest 
 arguments they made against the old national bank and national banking 
 institutions of their day was based upon the fact that English money and 
 English capital were largely involved in the banks, and the foreigners thus 
 practically controlled the operation of the bank, and that the national bank 
 practically controlled the financial operations of the government and the 
 people of this country ; that the foreigner was not satisfied thus to control 
 the financial institutions of the country, but sought, through the instru- 
 mentally of the banks, also to control the politics of the country. The 
 Cleveland administration has been run upon the lines of old federalism, 
 and counter to the teachings of Jefferson and Jackson and the great fathers 
 of democracy. And this fact accounts for the utter failure of his admin 
 istration up to this time. A vast section of his party in Congress would 
 not follow him on these lines. This caused dissensions and utter inability 
 to legislate upon this question, as the people had demanded. It also 
 accounts for the fact that the democratic party has been trodden down in 
 the dust of humiliation and defeat. The party can gain no victory in the 
 future without utterly repudiating Cleveland's policy on the money ques- 
 
224 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 tion. The party must get back to its old principles of equal rights to all 
 and special privileges to none; demand the restoration of the old demo 
 cratic bimetallic standard that existed for eighty years in our history. The 
 rights of the sovereign states and the liberty of the citizen, as taught by 
 our democratic fathers, must be maintained. We must abandon our 
 fight for money and moneyed interests, and take up the fight for man and 
 the interests of the people." 
 
 "Mr. Bland, there has been a great deal of newspaper gossip and 
 surmise as to your intentions of deserting the democratic party and leading 
 a bolt from its organization in favor of a new party in the next presiden 
 tial election. What have you to say to that?" 
 
 Mr. Bland answered promptly and frankly: "I am a democrat and 
 expect to do everything in my power as a democrat to bring the party 
 back to its old principles. It is a critical period in the history of the dem 
 ocratic party. I have refused heretofore to follow Mr. Cleveland on the 
 money question. If the democratic party puts up a candidate on a plat 
 form in harmony with Mr. Cleveland's administration, I could not con 
 sistently support him. I do not say this in any spirit of bolting or threat, 
 but I simply speak my honest convictions of duty, and I believe voice the 
 intentions of two thirds of the democratic voters, especially of the south 
 and west." 
 
 This interview defined the issue of the campaign the same issue 
 against the imperial policies of English commercialism which Mr. Bland 
 stood for in 1898, when the attempt was being made to use "expansion," 
 to divert democrats from their opposition to foreign management of our 
 finances. 
 
 Mr. Bland cared nothing for the "practical politics" of what he said, 
 but as a matter of obvious fact the interview, considered merely from that 
 low standpoint, is most remarkable. It not only laid down the lines on 
 which Mr. Cleveland and the national bank element would be compelled 
 to leave the democratic party, but it took from the republican party the 
 pretense of intense Americanism on which it had made so many cam 
 paigns since Elaine, Garfield and Harrison had taken up Henry Clay's 
 "American policy" and the "home market" idea he had involved with it. 
 
Jpr 
 
 MR. TRUMBULL'S RESIDENCE IN DENVER. 
 
 THOMAS O. TOWLES. 
 
 MR. BLAND AND HIS DAUGHTER VIRGINIA. 
 
 (From a Snap Shot Photograph taken in the fields at his Home in 
 
 Lebanon.) 
 
 JAMES T. TALIAFERRO. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 225 
 
 No party, forced to defend international control of American finances, as 
 the decisive issue of a national campaign, could at the same time glorify 
 itself successfully as the exclusive representative of America against the 
 world on the tariff. In fact, since this interview was published and the 
 issues it presented forced, the phrases "American policy" and the "home 
 market" have disappeared from politics, and the republican party so 
 violently anti-British under Elaine and Garfield, has become under Messrs. 
 McKinley and Hanna the advocate of Anglo-Saxon unity and the cooper 
 ation of the English government with that of the United States in "com 
 mercial expansion." 
 
 So much does it avail for the making of history if the right man says 
 the right thing at the right time. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Bland as a Leader of a Forlorn Hope. Forced into the Presidential Contest as the 
 Only Man on Whom the Democratic Party Could Reorganize. His Candidacy a 
 Matter of Duty. His Nomination not Expected on Account of His Residence 
 in a Former Slave State. Popular Demonstrations During His Lecturing Tour. 
 Missouri Conventions at Pertle Springs and at Sedalia. Formation of Bland 
 Clubs in Missouri. His Attitude Towards the Presidency. Falsity of Asser 
 tions that He Was "the Victim of Treachery" at Chicago. 
 
 I HEN Mr. Bland gave out the interview republished in the last 
 chapter, he had decided that it was necessary either that he 
 should accept party leadership or give up all hopes of bi 
 metallism. He was thrust, at first by the pressure of events 
 and afterwards by the deliberate action of the advocates of the principles he 
 stood for, into the leadership of a forlorn hope. His consent was not asked 
 and not a word on the subject of the presidency was said to him until after 
 he had clearly demonstrated his ability to force back and hold in check the 
 enormous power of capital, organized in support of the policies of the 
 Cleveland administration. With him, hopes of the presidency, if he enter 
 tained them at all, were never serious enough to be governing motives. 
 The work to which he addressed himself was that of "squaring the issue" 
 so that the people could decide. 
 
 "If they will force the issues you represent and nominate you on them, 
 they can elect you, but I do not think they will," wrote an acquaintance on 
 whose judgment he seemed sometimes to rely, on the rare occasions when 
 he himself was in doubt. It will not be asserted here that he accepted this 
 judgment, for he was not accustomed to define himself in such connections, 
 but it can be said with confidence that in becoming a candidate, he faced and 
 considered the possibility of complete physical exhaustion in addition to the 
 loss of his small competency. He had been publicly reproached for mere 
 
 physical inertia. His unconsciousness of the possibilities of his own great 
 
 226 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 227 
 
 intellectual powers was so complete that one of the means used to compel 
 him to take a leadership no one else conld take was the public assertion that 
 with the best analytical mind in Congress, he was "too lazy to use it" for 
 what it was worth. It was not known at the time this was uttered how 
 greatly the long struggle against the policies of the Grant administration 
 and the not less arduous contest against the international combination of 
 monometallists organized after the Franco-Prussian war had sapped his 
 strength. He was husbanding his resources for emergencies and using 
 them at the expense of his vitality, when the call was made on him to put 
 forth all his strength of mind .and body in what for him seemed inevitably 
 a losing fight. He was called upon to become, seemingly, a f actionist ; to 
 break away from friends in Missouri, in the east and elsewhere whom he 
 loved and on whose judgment, as long as it was possible to do so, he pre 
 ferred to rely in "practical politics" rather than on his own. He was a 
 citizen of what had been a slave state- of what among the slave states had 
 been more closely identified than any other with the violent struggle which 
 immediately preceded the Civil war. The manifest probabilities on this 
 account alone were two to one against his nomination in a democratic con 
 vention, and at the crisis which forced his leadership against Mr. Cleve 
 land, such manifest probabilities were not left out of consideration. Even 
 had he been nominated, it would have been to lead a party which had been 
 suddenly reformed in presence of the enemy after having been completely 
 disorganized. In such a contest the little money Mr. Bland had saved for 
 his family out of his salary would have disappeared at once and the proba 
 bilities were that even under the most favorable conditions he would be left 
 penniless and probabiy an invalid. Some of these probabilities he discussed 
 from time to time with Mrs. Bland, but they did not deter him when, in 
 1893 a handful of "extremists" and "cranks" who had determined to do at 
 any cost what could be done to check the reactionary tendencies of the plu 
 tocracy which sought to control the Cleveland administration, began not 
 urging, but actually crowding Mr. Bland into the breach. He did not re- 
 
228 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 mon strata. He did not assent. His response was first publicly under 
 stood when he made his speech, "At the Parting of the Ways." From that 
 time on, it was manifest that the people had a leader whom no considera 
 tion of partisanship, of private friendship, of personal gain or loss, would 
 swerve from his purposes. In their own vernacular, they saw that he 
 "was not a quitter," and as they are continually seeking to find some one 
 they can trust, some one who is "not a quitter" to stand for them, to say 
 what they can not say, to do for them what they do not know how to do 
 for themselves, they relied on him with pathetic devotion. Nothing is 
 more touching than the love of an often-deceived and long-oppressed people 
 for the man whom at the crisis they see to be their friend, honest, simple, 
 and brave. They recognized these qualities in Mr. Bland. They knew 
 that he at least was not a schemer, seeking to market their confidence for 
 money or preferment. In spite of the abuse he challenged and indeed 
 because of it they gave him their full confidence. He was never an or 
 ganizer or a "mixer." Men who have the analytical faculty strongly de 
 veloped, can not be, in the nature of things. Yet so great was his moral 
 force that within less than four years' time a party so disorganized that 
 it was not certain of carrying any state in the Union for in 1894 it could 
 no longer count even on Missouri was reorganized and given such vitality 
 that in 1896, it polled, under the most unfavorable circumstances, a larger 
 vote than had ever been polled before that year for any presidential candi 
 date. 
 
 The immediate cause of this was the finesse which took advantage of 
 the disorganization occasioned by Mr. Cleveland's policies to center repub 
 lican efforts on Mr. Eland's district so that he might be held up to the 
 country at large as responsible for what he had done everything possible 
 to prevent. In spite of the maxim of law and of political economy, that 
 no man is allowed to take advantage of his own tort, Mr. Cleveland's sup 
 porters, after their policies had taken the whole country from the demo 
 cratic party, took advantage of Mr. Eland's defeat in the "off year" to 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 229 
 
 demonstrate once more to their own comfort, that "the free silver lunacy 
 did it" and that the lunacy was now "harmless forever." 
 
 After his defeat, Mr. Bland was forced from his farm to the lecture 
 platform. He traveled through the west and south, speaking on questions 
 of the day, and more especially on bimetallism, to audiences whose enthu 
 siasm suggested for the first time the power of the popular impulses which 
 were to produce the great upheaval of 1896. In Colorado and the north 
 west, which had so lately been republican strongholds, the spirit of the new 
 politics showed itself as a force paramount to all partisanship. What may 
 be called the first "overt act" in the revolution in the northwest had come 
 under the Harrison administration in a motion from the northwest in the 
 Senate to substitute a free coinage bill for the Harrison "Force Bill" for 
 the control of southern elections. Subsequent events had made this spirit 
 more determined. Mr. Cleveland's proclamation against silver in 1893, 
 and his policy of calling money from commercial and industrial investment 
 by bond issues, had completed the prostration of the west. The "Coxey 
 army," which he drove off the grass at Washington with such indignation 
 was a sadly ludicrous manifestation of what a policy of restriction means 
 in the presence of stringency. The panic under Van Buren had been 
 checked by liberal issues of treasury notes. Mr. Cleveland who might 
 have claimed this as a New York precedent called money from western 
 and southern investment by bond issues in order to prevent what he re 
 garded as a too liberal supply of currency this at a time when machinery 
 and all the improved processes of civilization had so immensely increased 
 the possibilities of products to be distributed that the existing supply of 
 cash from the mintage of all the gold and silver in the world would, no 
 doubt, have been inadequate without at least thirty per cent, of credit cur 
 rency. But Mr. Cleveland's supporters, demanding ninety-five per cent, of 
 credits on which they could take toll, and insisting on five per cent of cash 
 as adequate for their system, scorned anything less than the full possibili 
 ties of what they imagined to be their opportunities. As they issued bonds 
 
230 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 for the New York and London markets, the west rallied on Bland. In 
 Missouri where Mr. Cleveland had what seemed to be a compact organiza 
 tion, it vanished, and outside of the city of St. Louis, there was scarcely a 
 voice of opposition to the policies for which Mr. Bland stood when it was 
 proposed to call a convention at Pertle Springs to formulate them. This 
 convention held in August, 1895,* made the attitude of Missouri so clear 
 that after it Mr. Cleveland had no declared following in the state, even 
 among those who had opposed the calling of the convention, and in 1893 
 had attempted to control the state so as to undo the work which in 1892 
 had created a democratic majority in the electoral college without New 
 York. 
 
 Soon after this an organization was formed in the state to "boom" 
 Mr. Bland for the presidency. It was in the main spontaneous and alto 
 gether gratuitous as far as he was concerned, though letters written to him 
 at the time show artistic efforts to commit him to co-operation in seeking 
 the place. All such efforts he met with the quiet dignity which character 
 ized his life. He was almost universally known in Missouri as "Dick," 
 and Missourians spoke of him as familiarly as of a member of their own 
 immediate families, but from the first, they had recognized fully that he 
 was not one of those who can be slapped on the back and propitiated to 
 
 *In speaking of what preceded and followed the Pertle Springs convention, Senator F. M. Cockrell 
 said in his eulogy of Mr. Bland, delivered in the Senate, April 9, 1900: "After President Cleveland's veto 
 of the Bland Seigniorage bill bimetallism became an exciting question, and its friends began an earnest, 
 vigorous campaign to secure delegates to the national democratic convention in 1896 who could neither 
 be corrupted nor intimidated to a surrender of that principle. 
 
 "It was believed in Missouri that some members of the state central committee were not friendly to 
 the free and unlimited coinage of the standard silver dollar equally with gold at the old ratio. Many 
 meetings were held and a state democratic convention was called, by order of the state central committee, 
 to meet at Pertle Springs, Mo., on the sixth day of August, 1895. The convention met, with strong dele 
 gations from almost every county in the state, made Mr. Bland chairman, and passed resolutions strongly 
 favoring free silver coinage equally with gold. There was in the convention a strong feeling to indorse 
 Mr. Bland for the nomination for the presidency in 1896. This movement was strongly opposed by Mr. 
 Bland, and no action in that direction was taken. 
 
 "The feeling, however, continued to grow in strength, notwithstanding Mr. Bland took the position 
 that it was not wise for Missouri to have a presidential candidate. His sincerity was never questioned, 
 but he could not control his friends. 
 
 "When the state convention assembled at Sedalia, Mo., on the fifteenth day of April, 1896, the dele 
 gates were almost unanimous for Mr. Bland as one of the delegates at large to the Chicago convention 
 and for indorsing him as the choice of Missouri for the nomination for president. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 231 
 
 more intimate acquaintance by an invitation to drink. He had no personal 
 vanity, and no man was more approachable than he, but, though he did not 
 assert his superiority, his quiet failure to respond to appeals which assumed 
 egotism as latent in him, impressed every one who approached him with a 
 sense of his natural dignity. 
 
 His attitude towards the presidency may be stated here with assurance 
 of representing him correctly. 
 
 He had never sought party leadership except as it was necessary to 
 do so in forcing issues for principle. In the politics of Missouri, he had 
 been satisfied to do his work in the House of Representatives, refusing to 
 seek even a senatorship, which he might easily have had, which, indeed he 
 would have accepted without hesitation could it have come to him without 
 retiring either Senator Vest or Senator Cockrell men whom he regarded 
 as fit for the place and fully capable of representing the state. 
 
 He looked at the presidency in much the same way, as a place of trust 
 where he would have the power of the people in carrying out policies which 
 he believed to represent their rights and their will. When he was forced 
 into leadership in 1893, ^ was tne ^ rst time in his life that he had been 
 called upon to isolate himself openly from those with whom he had co 
 operated during the two decades of civil war politics which followed his 
 election in the Greeley campaign. Although in 1892 he fully represented 
 
 "Mr. Eland's position was characteristic. He said: 
 
 11 'If I am the candidate of this state for the presidential nomination, it would not be becoming in me 
 to go as a member of the delegation from this state to the convention.' 
 
 "He was consequently not chosen as a delegate, but was unanimously indorsed by the convention as 
 the candidate of Missouri for the presidency. 
 
 "He returned to his home, near Lebanon, Mo., and remained there until after the national, conven 
 tion had made its nomination, refusing the importunities of his friends to attend meetings anywhere or 
 to do aught that might be construed as electioneering for himself or promotive of his candidacy for nom 
 ination. His candidacy was not of his own seeking. The good people of Missouri had seen distinguished 
 gentlemen of acknowledged abilities and high character, eminent and influential in party councils and 
 intrusted with high official positions, who for years had been outspoken advocates of bimetallism and 
 professed friends of silver, turn their backs upon their past records, and to the money power and execu 
 tive power, freely exerted, 'crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning.' 
 
 "Knowing Mr. Eland's sincerity and honesty of purpose, his uncompromising integrity, his moral 
 courage, and unyielding firmness, and his lifelong devotion to and advocacy of the restoration of bimet- 
 tallism, they naturally regarded him as the personification of that monetary principle." Congressional 
 Record, April 9, 1900. 
 
232 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the issues which gave the democratic party the greatest victory of its his 
 tory, he stood in 1893 as one of a handful who, wherever they openly ap 
 peared, were denounced as "fanatics" and "dangerous men," and, if 
 possible, silenced by threats of political ruin who, where this proved in 
 effective, were attacked on the theory that no man whose means of sub 
 sistence is controlled against him can long maintain an effective struggle 
 for principle of any kind. A more hopeless and consequently a more 
 disinterested fight was never made in American politics than that Mr. 
 Bland opened on the Cleveland administration when it had seemingly at its 
 back, and presumably represented by Mr. Cleveland, the forces which had 
 just achieved the unprecedented victory of 1892. Yet if Mr. Bland hesi 
 tated at all, if he required to be compelled by force of circumstances to go 
 where he might not have gone otherwise, it was only because of his habitual 
 unwillingness to thrust himself forward and of his desire to make peace, 
 compromise and patience serve ends which to others seem attainable only 
 by violent contention. But when he saw what he regarded as the cause of 
 civilization about to be sacrificed, he did not stop to ask what the conse 
 quences would be to himself in loss of friends, party standing or position. 
 He accepted the issue with Mr. Cleveland, and when it made him logically 
 the only presidential candidate on whom, during the next three years, it 
 was possible for the democratic party to reform its completely demoralized 
 lines, he accepted the situation as freely as he had accepted the initial re 
 sponsibility of making the first open stand against Mr. Cleveland. 
 
 The letter referred to above, in which it was suggested that his nom 
 ination was improbable, he did not discuss with the writer of it, nor did he 
 ever assume that he was being treacherously dealt with by this man or that 
 as was often charged at the time. He received letters of warning, such 
 as no doubt are written to all presidential candidates, but they did not 
 change his relations to those against whom he was warned. Several years 
 later when he saw manifested in another way the reality of the methods 
 of one of those against whom he had been warned by letter prior to the 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 233 
 
 Chicago convention of 1896, he smiled and said : "That's his idea of poli 
 tics." That was all. He accepted men as he found them, judged them 
 by the results of ideas dictated by the habits of their past and then dis 
 missed them to the judgment of their own future. 
 
 It can not be too strongly emphasized, however, that he was not the 
 "victim of treachery" in 1896. Missouri was for him. The west and south 
 were for him. All recognized that he alone had made possible that new 
 organization of the party of which the Chicago convention was a manifes 
 tation. The one thing which prevented his nomination was his residence 
 in Missouri a southwestern "slave state." Had he been a resident of 
 Nebraska his nomination would have been made unanimously. As the 
 man who, when Mr. Bland made his "parting of the ways" speech in 1893, 
 had seconded it for the northwest and above everything else as the represen 
 tative of the northwestern balance of power against the "hegemony" of the 
 lower wards of New York City as they represent international commercial 
 imperialism, Mr. Bryan was nominated not as a result of mere sudden 
 enthusiasm, but of the forces which had been operating since the south 
 withdrew its opposition to the admisson of the northwestern states. Mr. 
 Eland's work made "the logical candidate" a representative democrat 
 not from Missouri, but from Illinois or Nebraska. No one recognized 
 this more fully than Mr. Bland himself. He asked nothing for himself. 
 In less than four years he had wrested the organization of his party from 
 an administration which at the beginning had reduced him almost to a 
 minority of one. He had done a man's work so well, so manfully, that 
 the office which had been filled by Van Buren, Fillmore, Tyler, Polk 
 and Grant could have added nothing to the dignity of his simple man 
 hood. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 The Chicago Platform Against a Corporation Currency and Federal Invasion of the 
 Province of the States. These Sections Forced by Mr. Cleveland's Attempt to 
 Undo the Results of the Campaign of 1892 so as to Restore the New York-Indiana 
 Balance of Power. Great Determination Shown by Mr. Cleveland in This 
 Attempt. Cleveland and Bayard Compared. Bayard an Anti-Federalist. The 
 Democratic Party at its Last Gasp When Restored by the Chicago Platform. 
 The Balloting for President at Chicago. Mr. Sewall as a Compromise on the 
 Platform. The Action of the Convention Deliberate. 
 
 HE democratic national convention of 1896 met at Chicago on 
 July 7, and two days later adopted the platform which 
 resulted in the bolt of Mr. Cleveland and those who be 
 lieved with him in the issuance and control of the currency 
 by national banks or other corporations. 
 
 The platform represented the issues as they had been outlined by Mr. 
 Bland in his Enquirer interview and in his speeches in Congress. It 
 was adopted after correspondence preceding the convention between Mr. 
 Bland and Mr. Bryan, with others interested in the reformation of politics. 
 It contained sections expressing unqualified disapproval of bond issues 
 in time of peace and of national bank control of the currency. It had 
 been suggested in advance of the convention that if the section against 
 national bank control of the currency were adopted, Mr. Cleveland and 
 his administration would relieve the party, as far as it was possible to do so, 
 of responsibility for their action. As these two sections without doubt 
 led Mr. Cleveland to "bolt," they may be quoted here as a suggestion of 
 what was the fundamental issue of the campaign. 
 
 We are opposed to the issuing of interest-bearing bonds of the United 
 States, in time of peace and condemn the trafficking with banking syndi 
 cates which in exchange for bonds and at an enormous profit to them 
 selves supply the federal treasury with gold to maintain the policy of 
 gold monometallism. 
 
 234 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 235 
 
 Congress alone has the power to coin and issue money, and President 
 Jackson declared that this power could not be delegated to corporations 
 or individuals. We, therefore, denounce the issuance of notes intended 
 to circulate as money by national banks as in derogation of the Constitu 
 tion, and we demand that all paper which is made a legal tender for public 
 and private debts, or which is receivable for duties to the United States, 
 shall be issued by the government of the United States, and shall be re 
 deemable in coin. 
 
 These sections forced Mr. Cleveland's withdrawal. They were not 
 adopted maliciously, but as a matter of necessity, and with them, as a 
 matter of the same necessity, was adopted this repudiation of Mr. Cleve 
 land's action in sending troops into Illinois without the call of the gov 
 ernor : 
 
 We denounce arbitrary interference by federal authorities in local 
 affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and a crime 
 against free institutions, and we especially object to government by injunc 
 tion as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression by which federal 
 judges in contempt of the laws of the states and rights of citizens, become at 
 once legislators, judges and executioners, and we approve the bill passed at 
 the last session of the United States Senate, and now pending in the House 
 of Representatives, relative to contempts in federal courts and providing for 
 trials by jury in certain cases of contempt. 
 
 To understand what these sections mean, we must once more recall the 
 fact that largely as a result of Mr. Eland's work in breaking down civil 
 war sectionalism in the west and south, Mr. Cleveland had been elected 
 in 1892 by a majority of the votes of the electoral college before New 
 York was reached ; that this was done by placing Illinois in the position of 
 prominence which for twenty years had been accorded to New York; 
 that Mr. Cleveland's own nomination was the only concession made to 
 New York in the campaign; that the campaign itself was made on principles 
 he did not approve and on plans against which he protested ; that as a result 
 of it a democratic governor had been elected in Illinois for the first time 
 since the Civil war began; that Mr. Cleveland had not only overridden 
 this democratic governor, but with all the skill and resources at his com- 
 
336 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 mand had endeavored to undo the work of the campaign of 1890 and 1892. 
 As president during his second term he showed rare qualities of courage 
 and individuality. Could any force of individuality or of organization or 
 of resources have undone the already accomplished work of a great and 
 beneficent revolution in the practical politics of America, he would have 
 succeeded. No other man could have done more than he did in support 
 of his principles. It is hard to point out any other one man of his genera 
 tion who could have done so much. Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, a man 
 of the highest ability and of untainted virtue, was, like Mr. Cleveland, a 
 whig, by birth and tradition a representative of the aristocratic theory of 
 government. But he was by no means so pronounced a federalist as Mr. 
 Cleveland. Indeed, in spite of his family traditions of federalism, he had 
 strongly inclined, during his whole public career, to the theory of state 
 sovereignty which Jefferson had defined in the Kentucky resolutions. 
 In 1884, when he was supported against Mr. Cleveland as a means of 
 forcing the issue of tariff reform more strongly than Mr. Cleveland seemed 
 to think advisable, it was chiefly because of the publication by the New 
 York Sun of a strongly anti-federal speech made by him in Delaware at 
 the beginning of the movement of troops against the south, that he failed 
 to secure a stronger eastern support. No other member of the Cleveland 
 administration could be compared to Mr. Bayard in intellectual grasp, but 
 he lacked Mr. Cleveland's driving force of will, and it is safe to say that 
 neither he nor any other man in public life could have succeeded where 
 Mr. Cleveland himself failed. 
 
 As a result of Mr. Cleveland's determined effort to restore the political 
 conditions which had prevailed in the electoral college prior to the change 
 forced by Illinois and Kansas, the democratic party was apparently at its 
 last gasp. No matter what came of reasserting the principles through which 
 Illinois had been carried and the west taken from the republican party, it 
 could not be worse for the party organization than the conditions which 
 the "off-year election" had demonstrated conditions suggested by the fact 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 237 
 
 that in Missouri in 1894, eight democratic nominees for Congress had 
 been defeated as a result of party disorganization. As Mr. Bland was 
 one of these, the result was attributed to popular disapproval of his oppo 
 sition to administration policies, and it is said that up to the very time of 
 the adoption of the platform, Mr. Cleveland's representatives expected to 
 control the convention. If they expected "pairing" from delegates who 
 opposed them, it had been anticipated from the other side also, and pro 
 vided against. As a result of work inaugurated by Senator Harris, of 
 Tennessee, a convention had assembled such as had not been seen before 
 during the generation. It was largely composed of men who do not 
 attend conventions at all except in great emergencies, and though among 
 the delegates at large there were the usual number of experts, who support 
 themselves by the "ground floor privileges" of politics, the body of the con 
 vention consisted of men of Mr. Eland's class who mean what they say 
 and believe that government should be actually an expression of the pop 
 ular will. They came determined to achieve results. Nothing less than 
 the adoption of such a platform as was adopted v/ould have satisfied them. 
 When it was adopted, and they had voted down a resolution indorsing 
 Mr. Cleveland, they went home and gave it 6,319,000 votes as against 
 5,554,000 votes polled for Mr. Cleveland in 1892 that being the largest 
 vote ever polled in the United States up to that time. When we remem 
 ber that this was done without a campaign fund, with practically no work 
 ing machinery and in presence of opposition representing the combined 
 capitalistic influence of England and America, it is possible to get some sug 
 gestion of the moral forces Mr. Bland had called into active operation 
 against plutocracy. 
 
 The account of the balloting for president given by Senator Cockrell 
 in the Congressional Record of April 10, 1900, is concise and accurate 
 The following report of the proceedings was adapted from it : 
 
 Most of the nominations for the presidency were made on the night of 
 
238 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 July 9, and the remainder on the morning of July 10, when the balloting 
 began. 
 
 Fourteen distinguished gentlemen received votes on the first ballot, 
 the result of which for the seven receiving the highest number of votes was 
 announced as follows: Richard P. Bland, 235; William J. Bryan, 13?; 
 Robert E. Pattison, 9?; J. C. S. Blackburn, 82; Horace Boies, 67; John R. 
 McLean, 54, and Claude Matthews, 3?. 
 
 The result of the second ballot for the three receiving the highest 
 number of votes was as follows : Bland, 281 ; Bryan, 197, and Pattison, 
 100. 
 
 The result of the third ballot for the two receiving the highest number 
 of votes was: Bland, 291; Bryan, 219. 
 
 The fourth ballot resulted in 241 for Bland and 280 for Bryan. 
 
 At the beginning of the fifth ballot one of the delegates at large from 
 Missouri read the following letter from Mr. Bland: 
 
 "I wish it to be understood that I do. not desire the nomination unless 
 it is the judgment of the free silver delegates that I would be the strongest 
 candidate. If it should at any time appear that my candidacy is the least 
 obstruction to the nomination of any candidate who is acceptable to the 
 free coinage delegates in the convention, or one more acceptable to a ma 
 jority of these delegates than myself, I wish my name at once uncondi 
 tionally withdrawn from further consideration. I am willing to waive 
 the state instructions for me, if need be, and let the free silver delegates 
 decide the whole matter. The cause must be put above the man." 
 
 Mr. Eland's name was then withdrawn and the vote of Missouri cast 
 for Mr. Bryan, the gifted and glorious son of Nebraska.* 
 
 The nominations for the vice-presidency were made on July n. Mr. 
 Bland on the first ballot, without having been placed in nomination and 
 
 *To what is here adapted from Senator Cockrell, it needs only to be added that the managers of the 
 preliminaries of the convention had taken what seems to have been considerable pains to secure deliber 
 ate action in the balloting. A letter had been written to Mr. Bland himself protesting against what his 
 friends in a neighboring state were doing on their own motion to secure positive instruction for him. Mr. 
 Bland, who destroyed most of his letters of this character, left this on file among others somewhat similar. 
 In response to it he sent a despatch cautioning his friends, as requested. This letter, written from St. 
 Louis, June IT, 1896, said among other things: "I think the greatest danger you will have to face be 
 tween now and the meeting of the national convention is the overzealous indiscretion of men inexperi 
 enced in politics making a mess of things, in what they imagine to be an effort to further your interests. 
 I have tried to impress upon Allen, Rickey and the rest that the wise policy is to avoid placing you in a 
 position of antagonism to any local favorite, but in such cases to conciliate the favorite's friends and en 
 deavor to make you second choice." 
 
 In spite of this caution, of Mr. Eland's telegram and of "local favorites" the state in question insisted 
 on instructing for him, but as Senator Cockrell indicates, "fourteen distinguished gentlemen received 
 votes on the first ballot." This seems sufficient to illustrate whatever arrangements were made prior to 
 the assembling of the convention. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 239 
 
 with the votes of Missouri cast for others, received 62 votes. 
 
 On the second ballot, when many votes were being cast for Mr. Bland 
 and Missouri was called, the spokesman of the Missouri delegation said : 
 "The state of Missouri presented the name of one of its citizens for the 
 presidential nomination. In the wisdom of this convention another was 
 selected. The delegation has no authority to present the name of that 
 citizen for the second place upon the ticket. If it is done by this conven 
 tion, it must be done of its own accord, without solicitation by the Mis 
 souri delegation " and cast the votes of Missouri for other names. 
 
 On the second ballot 294 votes were given to Mr. Bland. On the 
 .third ballot 255 votes were given to Mr. Bland. After the announcement 
 of the third ballot, further balloting for Mr. .Bland as a candidate for 
 vice-president was stopped by the receipt of a telegram sent by him to be 
 read to the convention. It was submitted accordingly by the Missouri 
 delegation. In it Mr. Bland said that he thought it "unwise and impolitic 
 to nominate both candidates from the west side of the Mississippi." He 
 requested the delegation to assure the convention of his hearty approval of 
 the nomination of Mr. Bryan and of his hope that the one object in making 
 the nomination for vice-president would be to strengthen the ticket. He 
 prohibited the further use of his name in the balloting and it was dropped 
 accordingly. The balloting then proceeded with the issue between Mr. 
 John R. McLean, of Ohio, and Mr. Arthur Sewall, of Maine. A telegram 
 was read from Mr. McLean protesting against the use of his name, and 
 the nomination of Mr. Sewall followed on the fifth ballot. He was well 
 known in Maine as an amiable gentleman of unblemished reputation, a 
 capitalist, promoter and national banker by profession. His nomination 
 as a representative of a hopelessly republican state has never been ac 
 counted for, but it was probably influenced to some extent by the feeling 
 almost universal among political experts in all American parties that 
 whenever a platform of decided principles, candidly stated, is adopted at 
 least one of the candidates placed on it ought to be notoriously identified 
 with principles clearly antagonistic to it. While Mr. Sewall was an ad 
 vocate of free coinage, holding personal opinions which may not have been 
 
240 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 at all antagonistic to the platform, his business career represented a con 
 tradiction of it, and his nomination, so far as it had any effect at all, served 
 to break the force of Mr. Eland's work and to prevent Mr. Bryan from 
 "squaring" effectively the only issues on which he could have been 
 elected.* 
 
 *Full details of the balloting both for president and vice-president are given in Mr. Bryan's admir 
 able book, "The First Battle" (chapters X to XII inclusive). In concluding chapter XI, Mr. Bryan 
 writes: "It gives me pleasure to testify to the fact that those who were prominent in the contest, for the 
 presidential nomination gave loyal and enthusiastic support to the ticket. Mr. Bland, whose vote was 
 next to my own, devoted himself to the cause with voice and pen. Mr. Blackburn visited all parts of the 
 Union and responded to every call. Mr. Boies did effective work upon the stump during the entire 
 campaign. Mr. McLean, as a member of the executive committee of the national committee, was 
 an invaluable counselor and gave most efficient aid. Mr. Matthews was actively at work from the ad - 
 journment of the convention to the closing of the polls. Mr. Pattison, while not in accord with some parts 
 of the platform still supported the ticket. Mr. Tillman, who, while his name was not placed in nomination, 
 received the vote of his state on the first ballot, delivered a large number of speeches in support of the 
 platform and ticket. Vice-President Stevenson, who, though not formally a candidate, received several 
 votes in the convention, promptly placed himself at the disposal of the national committee and spoke 
 in several states. Mr. Sibley, who, notwithstanding his refusal to be a candidate, received a large vote 
 for the vice-presidency, was a zealous supporter and untiring in his efforts in behalf of the ticket." 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Charles A. Dana on Bland as the Only Statesman in the American Public Life of 
 the Last Quarter of the Century. Contrast Between Eland's Manners and Those 
 of Fashionable New York. He Visits New York with Mr. Bryan in 1896. Con 
 ditions Existing in New York at That Time. Great Intellectual and Defective 
 Moral Force in the New York Governing Class. Solidarity of Wealth in 1896. 
 Starvation in the Presence of Undistributed Fruit and Breadstuffs. Foreign 
 Dictation in New York Politics. Will the City be Forced to the Second Place? 
 Its Possibilities of Progress. Its System of Free Co-Operation Probably the 
 Best in the World. 
 
 HARLES A. DANA once said that Mr. Bland was the only 
 man in the public life of the United States who had reached 
 the level of statesmanship since the reconstruction period.* 
 Mr. Dana had done his best to check the "rainbow-chasing 
 movement" in the west. It was his paper which gave it this name. It 
 was he who, at every step of the contest, asked : "What are you going to 
 do without New York?" It was he, more than any one else, who repre 
 sented the full intellectual force of all that to which Mr. Bland was most 
 opposed and when he saw the great revolution in American politics, made 
 possible by Mr. Eland's work, and effected in spite of his own best efforts 
 to prevent it, he was better qualified than almost any one else to give an 
 authoritative judgment. But when Mr. Bland visited New York City in 
 August after the convention of 1896, no one who lacked Mr. Dana's acute- 
 ness of intellect would have selected him from among the crowds in the 
 Fifth Avenue Hotel as the greatest American of the last quarter of the 
 nineteenth century. "Esse quam videri" is the motto on the great seal of 
 North Carolina, borrowed from what was said of Metellus at a time when 
 it was sai 1 also that in the politics of Rome, all things except the honor of 
 Metellus were for sale. "To be rather than to seem" a worker of great 
 
 *Amos J. Cummings, Mr. Dana's confidential friend, in a signed article in the Washington Post of 
 Sunday, December 12, 1897. 
 
 1 6 241 
 
242 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 results that had become a second nature with Mr. Bland. He thought 
 little of himself or of his personal appearance. With his badly-fitting 
 coat, and trousers which bagged at the knees, he seemed wholly discordant 
 with the civilization of the great and splendid city where even the cham 
 pion pugilists wear irreproachable silk hats and dine in absolutely faultless 
 evening dress. 
 
 He had come with Mr. Bryan's party as the correspondent of a New 
 York newspaper sending it from station to station along the route, letters 
 or telegrams in support of Mr. Bryan's candidacy. 
 
 Nothing could have been more characteristic than his willingness to 
 render such unpretentious service. The Chicago convention, as we have 
 seen, had three times given Mr. Bland a majority of its votes for president 
 with enough scattering votes held out to prevent his nomination. On the 
 fifth ballot his name had been withdrawn under instructions from him 
 which had been secured in advance, and that episode in his career had 
 closed. It had been nothing more than an episode. His great work as a 
 leader had been done in forcing the conditions which made the Chicago 
 platform possible and when he reached New York, it was to witness at close 
 range the intellectual effects on the powerful domestic and foreign capital 
 istic interests of that city, of the first open and determined revolt against 
 their control of the policies of both parties and of the government through 
 one or the other of the parties put into power as their agent. 
 
 The New York City of 1896 was well worth the careful and long- 
 continued study of the patriot and statesman. With great possibilities of 
 evil always involved by the dictation of its privileged classes and with the 
 always imminent menace to popular government and to civilization itself 
 resulting from their habitual use of money in controlling elections, the city 
 represented also what is without doubt the most highly organized system 
 of free industrial and commercial co-operation in the world. It had ac 
 cumulated, in the hands of a few men of great intellect and no visible lim 
 itation of morals, the vast wealth which resulted from a change of economic 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 24; 
 
 system made during and immediately after the Civil war and intended to 
 make the agricultural producers of the south pay a continuous war-indem 
 nity, levied on their products by those highly scientific modern methods, 
 which take from a conquered people in times of profound quiet more than 
 Roman conquest could take when the gold and silver from the public 
 treasuries and the altars of the gods were carried with the private treas 
 ures of the conquered to be distributed at Rome. This policy, operating 
 not only against the south but against the direct producer everywhere, 
 had put in the hands of a few thousand men, most of them well read in 
 books and some of them extraordinarily subtle in intellect, a vaster power 
 than any Roman oligarchy had ever exercised. Some of them had grown 
 haughty and in their haughtiness ferocious ready, as one of the higher 
 type of the class said at about the time of Mr. Eland's visit, to stand "free 
 coinage cranks," or others whom they disapproved, against the wall and 
 shoot them. Their alliances with London were close. Their sympathies 
 were at all times with Europe rather than with America. Their inter 
 marriages with the English landholding nobility, impoverished by western 
 agricultural competition, made their detestation of government by the 
 majority a matter of class pride as well as of the timidity of capital. This 
 timidity was so great that in every strike they seemed to expect a civil 
 war and in every street mob the beginning of a new reign of terror in which 
 the guillotine was to be set up in City Hall park and they themselves 
 decapitated as the first step in the distribution of the vast hoards they held, 
 largely untaxed and untaxable in their safe-deposit vaults. Between such 
 men as Herr Most, who might not object to distribution by the guillotine 
 and by such extra-judicial measures as that by which the southern slaves 
 were liberated between unscientific revolutionists of that type and states 
 men like Mr. Bland who proposed an even more effective redistribution 
 by the slow and unavoidable processes of natural law, they made no real 
 distinction. The adoption of the Chicago platform threw them into such a 
 blind rage as had not been seen in the politics of the country since the 
 
244 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 election of 1860.* They attacked, by every means in their power, any one 
 they could reach who ventured to favor the democratic candidates. They 
 aimed to create and they virtually did create a complete solidarity of the 
 banking, commercial and manufacturing classes against the Chicago plat 
 form. When Messrs. Bryan and Bland reached the city, they had al 
 ready so far succeeded that an acquaintance of Mr. Bland who met him in 
 the corridor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel the day after the great speech with 
 which Mr. Bryan opened the campaign, suggested the absolute hopeless 
 ness of accomplishing anything in New York except by appeal to the 
 despised masses of the people. 
 
 At this time, among these "masses" people representing the average 
 goodness and the highest possibilities of human nature there was much 
 suffering, and as it is a fact well known to all who profit by the status quo 
 that revolutions "come seldom except on empty stomachs," this increased 
 the dread of the future in a country which manifestly could no longer be 
 controlled for "business stability" by buying a few Indiana counties. 
 The prostration of business incident to the bankers' panic and the suspen 
 sion of silver coinage, had filled the country with unemployed laborers, 
 and many of them had collected in New York City, where already thous 
 ands were on the verge of starvation. When it is remembered that at this 
 time, with women dropping dead in the streets of New York from sheer 
 starvation, the west and south had a "surplus" of undistributed food which 
 would have been given away if necessary; when it is a fact that within a 
 range of twenty miles of New York, fruit of so good quality as to be a 
 luxury to the best fed in the tenement districts could be seen rotting 
 under the trees in the suburbs of villages where silver was "boycotted" and 
 where trade was almost stopped by the difficulty small dealers had in 
 changing ten dollar national bank notes; when at midnight around a 
 bakery in the lower part of the city where fragments of stale bread were 
 given away, a long line of men and women would stand night after night 
 
 *Their action against Banker St. John for entertaining Mr. Bryan is an illustration of their temper. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 2 45 
 
 patiently waiting for that which kept together the souls and bodies of their 
 children thinking of such things as these, we can the better realize what 
 the benevolence of Mr. Eland's statesmanship would have meant for the 
 comfort, happiness and safety of New York City at a time when the lead 
 ing representative of its "better element" was openly calling for the fusil 
 lade as an economic argument.* 
 
 It is not possible here to do more than suggest New York conditions. 
 The worst of its dangers is foreign control the dictation of its municipal 
 policies and its national attitude by non-resident financiers, who have their 
 branch banks or their financial agencies in the district below Chambers 
 street. If it escapes this danger; if it refuses to be an European and be 
 comes an American city, its already highly developed system of industrial 
 and commercial co-operation will give it the mastery of the trade of the 
 world. But if it refuses ; if it is to be governed by the tyranny of the few 
 square miles between Chambers street and the Battery, it will become a 
 second class American city, sent to the background by forces which its 
 non-resident European magnates can no more estimate than in August, 
 1896, they could have estimated the moral forces represented by Mr. 
 Bland, as he kept in the background among the crowds of notables who 
 thronged the lobbies and halls of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. 
 
 Of the possibilities of New York City for progress, there can be no 
 doubt. It had in 1896 the most effective organization of charitable 
 workers in the country, if not in the world. The work of its religious 
 organizations has been crippled, it is true, by such plutocratic influence as 
 
 *The moral condition of the idle and dangerous classes of the city at this period was illustrated by 
 the notorious banquet at which an unfortunate woman was hired to dance unclad on the table before the 
 guests. Another characteristic incident was a "disrobing act" in one of the theatres a scene in which a 
 woman, hired to lose her miserable soul for that purpose, undressed to her last garment on the stage be 
 fore the mayor of "Greater New York'' and according to a New York newspaper report, threw her stock 
 ings into his lap. A similar exhibition was given in St. Louis in 1898 just prior to the Springfield conven 
 tion, and it is something more than a co-incidence that the direct beneficiaries of its proceeds were po 
 litical experts, long accustomed to packing conventions against what Mr. Bland represented in politics 
 and in ethics. The theatrical posters of New York or St. Louis any day in the season are apt to illustrate 
 the moral meaning of the "New Americanism" which is too "expansive" to be restrained by the constitu 
 tion or the decalogue. 
 
246 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 that which has capitalized one of its great denominations on a business 
 basis of real estate endowment, held permanently in mortmain by an 
 evasion of the spirit of the common law. But in spite of this, the city 
 shows a continually increasing number of intelligent people, willing to 
 do unpaid work for others and capable of organizing with quickness and 
 precision to carry out, through definite and business-like methods, pur 
 poses which have their origin in the spirit which alone saves the world 
 from becoming an inferno the spirit of sympathy of each in the depriva 
 tions and sufferings of all the rest, even of those who suffer deservedly. 
 These, whether they spend their lives among the dangerous classes, in the 
 palaces with which the city is so greatly afflicted, or live in more fortunate 
 poverty, sharing their little all to relieve those who have nothing at all 
 these are the "better element" of New York and in 1896, they had no 
 better representative in the world than the unostentatious Missourian who 
 came among them and went from them almost unnoticed and wholly mis 
 understood. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Mr. Eland's Years of Greatest Achievement. The Climax of a Great Career Comes 
 in 1898. His Stand Against Imperialism.- The Spanish War Used to Turn the 
 Flank of Chicago Platform Democracy so as to Demonetize Silver. Issues 
 Precipitated by the Teller Resolution. Sanford B. Dole as the Agent of the 
 Imperialistic Movement. The Hawaiian Government Employs Sub-Agents to 
 Attack Mr. Eland's Rear. Hawaii and Cuba Discussed Before the Spanish War. 
 Far-Reaching Influence of the Standard Oil Company and the "Sugar Trust." 
 The Attempt to Shape the Policies of Both Parties so as to Prevent an Issue 
 Against Imperialism. Mr. Bland Forces Open Fighting. 
 
 [E years of greatest achievement in Mr. Eland's life were 
 1 877, when he moved to suspend the rules and pass the free 
 coinage bill which became the Bland- Allison Act; 1893-4, 
 when he checked the federalism of the Cleveland administra 
 tion, and 1898, when he forced issues for American constitutional liberty 
 against the programme of commercial imperialism, which had been revived 
 from the Grant administration. 
 
 It happens to many men who have been active in public life to outlive 
 their usefulness. Mr. Bland had the great good fortune to be able to call 
 into play in the last years of his life the full force of his reserve powers 
 and thus to make these closing years the climax of his work. At the 
 crisis which decided the future of the country after the Mexican conquest, 
 Webster, Clay and Benton all three exhausted their last remaining forces 
 and died in the attempt to save the country from retrogression and 
 anarchy. Again, after the Civil war, Sumner, Greeley and Seward sac 
 rificed power, popularity and the possibilities of long life to prevent the 
 complete overthrow of the Constitution by the oligarchy which controlled 
 the Grant administration. When, after the Spanish war, the cause of 
 civilization, of progress, of constitutional liberty once more demanded 
 
 such devotion, Mr. Bland was ready to do his best simply and steadfastly 
 
 247 
 
2 48 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 as he had always done it. If it happened to him, as it had happened to 
 Benton before him, to seem to stand alone, he had with him still the 
 twentieth century majority for whom he contended, striving that the pain 
 fully achieved results of the nineteenth century sacrifice might not be lost 
 to them. Had he died at the close of the campaign of 1896, it might 
 have been truly said of him that no other public man of his generation had 
 done more to break down obstruction and clear the way for the world's 
 future. As he died in 1899, after having made the stand which will save 
 the country from a complete repudiation of the constitutional principles 
 of 1 788, it must be said of him by all who will do him justice, that no 
 other public man of the last quarter of the nineteenth century had done so 
 much. 
 
 In the campaign of 1896, Mr. Bland was re-elected to Congress after 
 having been elected and re-elected to every Congress since i872, except the 
 Fifty-fourth the Congress elected in the "off year" of the Cleveland 
 administration when the democratic party as an organization was prac 
 tically nonexistent. He was urged to take the governorship of Missouri in 
 1896, but he believed that his still unfinished work required his presence 
 in the House of Representatives. He was right. The conditions of 1873, 
 which had called him into public life, were about to recur, forced by the 
 same methods, for the same purposes, and developing finally in 1900 the 
 same results the demonetization of silver and the perpetuation of a 
 corporation currency. 
 
 The last resort of plutocracy struggling to prevent oligarchy from 
 being supplanted by popular government, is, in every country, war 
 foreign war if convenient, civil war if necessary. The unprecedented vote 
 cast for the Chicago platform in 1896 showed conclusively that the people 
 were in a position to re-assume control of the government, unless some 
 thing decisive was done to prevent it, and in January, 1898, when the 
 combined bimetallists of the Senate, by a vote of 47 to 32, made a demon 
 stration in force by passing the Teller resolution declaring the national 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 249 
 
 debt payable, principal and interest, in silver at the government's option, 
 the crisis came. In the House where Mr. Bland forced issues with them, 
 the republicans voted against the resolution by 182 to 50, but it was clear 
 that at the "off year" election the House, under conditions then existing, 
 was likely to become two-thirds democratic. 
 
 It is now evident that the passage of the Teller resolution was a great 
 tactical mistake. It was in fact a challenge which called the managers of 
 an administration party of great skill and ruthless determination, repre 
 senting the greatest capitalistic combinations of the world, to do their ut 
 most against a recently organized and at that time not thoroughly coherent 
 opposition. 
 
 At the very time this resolution passed, Mr. Sanford B. Dole, "presi 
 dent of the Hawaiian Republic," was travelling in the United States, 
 and "the Hawaiian government" was employing agents with political in 
 fluence, to open in both parties the work of "expansion," by which the 
 imperialism of the Grant administration was to be renewed. Part of this 
 plan was to get into Mr. Eland's rear in Missouri, and if possible cut 
 him off from his base. For that purpose, agents were employed tc 
 travel through the southwest attempting to organize the imperialistic 
 movement in Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Illinois and Texas a solid 
 block of powerful states, the control of which was rightly considered vital. 
 At this time (February, 189?), the writer was editing a paper in Missouri 
 intended to support Mr.Bland's policies and to prevent the Chicago platform 
 from being abandoned. In this paper of February i7, 1898, the week of 
 the blowing up of the Maine, appeared the following: 
 
 "President Dole, of Hawaii, is travelling in the interests of the cap- 
 talists he represents in what is more a commercial syndicate than a govern 
 ment. The best possible settlement of the question he is trying to force on 
 us, would be to secure all the port-room we need in Hawaii for naval sta 
 tions and then to let the islands alone, leaving the Monroe doctrine to take 
 care of them, as it is entirely able to do." 
 
 The connection of the question of "liberating Cuba" with Mr. Dole's 
 
250 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 mission in the interest of the sugar syndicate was recognized in the para 
 graph following this in the same issue : 
 
 "The question of the fate of Cuba is one of the deepest interest to 
 
 every American It is pitiful to see these poor people suffering as they 
 
 do under Spanish rule, and yet there could hardly be a greater misfortune 
 
 for the country than the annexation of the island If we annex them 
 
 or if we annex Hawaii, we will get servants, not citizens, and we will have 
 
 to increase our already burdensome navy to a permanent war basis 
 
 The annexation of Cuba would be the final decisive step away from the 
 old republic of free and equal states into an imperialism in which a league 
 of the more powerful communities would dominate the weaker and 
 hold them as subject provinces." 
 
 As this was written in February, 1898, before the Spanish war and be 
 fore the blowing up of the Maine it will be accepted, no doubt, as better 
 evidence than anything which could be written now of what was then 
 suggested to Mr. Eland's supporters by the work of Mr. Dole and the 
 Hawaiian sugar syndicate in the interest of what is now demonstrated as 
 a conspiracy to turn the flank of the democratic party, to defeat bimetallism, 
 to refund the national debt on a gold basis, to give the control of the cur 
 rency permanently to the national banks and at the same time to annex 
 Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, as the base of production 
 for the bulk of the cane sugar output of the world. 
 
 The New York sugar syndicate in league with that of the Pacific coast 
 had a direct interest in this, warranting heavy expenditures in contribu 
 tions to campaign funds and "attorneys' fees"* to realize it. In 189?, it had 
 been announced in the New York papers that the leading stockholders of 
 the Standard Oil Company had invested so heavily in sugar securities that 
 both these great monopolies were virtually under one political manage 
 ment. In the same newspaper from which the foregoing extracts were 
 
 *It is said on authority which entitles it to full consideration, that checks were cashed in St. Louis for 
 services rendered in this connection to "the Hawaiian government." The interest of the "Hawaiian 
 government" in employing "attorneys" at large expense to break down the authority of Mr. Bland and 
 of the democratic House caucus against Hawaiian annexation, appeared shortly after the joint resolu 
 tion seizing the islands on the ground of "military necessity" when it was announced that the sugar 
 trust had assumed control of their sugar output. W. V. B. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 251 
 
 made, and at the same page of the same issue (February i7, 1898), ap 
 peared an editorial which is reproduced here in explanation of the forces 
 then organizing attacks upon Mr. Bland, both at Washington and in the 
 west. The editorial in question was as follows: 
 
 The committee of the Ohio legislature investigating the Standard 
 Oil Company, learns that it controls eighty-five per cent of the oil produc 
 tion of the country. It is now reorganizing its system so as to evade the 
 anti-trust law more effectively. At the same time, it has done what was 
 a mere child's play for the men in it taken control of the New York mar 
 ket and forced up the price of its stock $25,000,000 or from $420 to $440 
 a share. 
 
 The trust is without doubt the most dangerous and most powerful 
 monopoly in the world. It illustrates the "communism of capital" as noth 
 ing else could. Its stockholders have grown enormously rich as a result 
 of violating the laws, bribing legislatures and corrupting courts. Of 
 course they do not allow the money they draw from the public as plunder 
 they call it dividends to lie idle. They reinvest it at once. 
 
 United States bonds are a favorite investment with them. In the 
 first place they can deposit them in the treasury at Washington instead of 
 paying rent to a safe-deposit company to take care of them. In the 
 treasury vaults, the government itself takes care of them, and is ready to 
 use the entire United States army for that purpose, if necessary. 
 
 It not only guards them without expense to the trust, but pays interest 
 on them. And what is most remarkable of all, it gives the Standard Oil 
 stockholder who deposits a thousand dollar bond, $900 in crisp, new, silk 
 paper money indorsed by the government and intended to circulate on the 
 public credit. 
 
 He gets these 900 new silk paper dollars for nothing. They are a 
 present to him because he is a financier who knows more about money 
 than other people, and is entitled to call other people repudiators and 
 scoundrels if they object. It is true, he is required to organize several of 
 his employes into a "bank" and to sign this elegant new silk paper money 
 with his own name as president, before he lends it to western borrowers at 
 rates which run as high as sixteen per cent, or to hard-pressed New York 
 speculators at rates as high as sixty, but he does this cheerfully. Ink is 
 cheap and when the stroke of a pen is all that is required to put into circu 
 lation (where it will stay until it wears out) a hundred silk dollars indorsed 
 by the greatest nation of the most outrageously fooled people on earth, he 
 would be indeed an economical Standard Oil magnate who would grudge 
 
252 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the cost. There are no such. They are all far-sighted men who never 
 step over a pound to save a penny, and there is not one of them but is ready 
 to give by the hundred thousand these silk paper dollars presented to him 
 by the government, whenever they are needed, to campaign funds to uphold 
 the cause of "honest money." 
 
 But national banks are only one of a hundred different semi-political 
 money manufacturing enterprises in which the Standard Oil magnates 
 are either controlling or influential partners. They have bought into the 
 sugar trust. They are heavily interested in the steel trust. They control 
 the syndicate iron fields of the northwest. They are deep into steamship 
 companies which (largely through their influence) have been subsidized 
 from the federal treasury on the pretext that they can not carry the mail 
 at ordinary rates. They are partners in the iniquity of the anthracite coal 
 pool which keeps the coal supply of New York City entirely cornered, and 
 forces up the price against thousands, of poor families who shiver and 
 freeze through the winter because of it. They have obtained by corruption 
 the most valuable public franchises of New York City. They are back of its 
 gas monopoly. They own the enormously valuable Broadway surface road 
 franchise, and wherever else through the greater city, a franchise was to be 
 grabbed they have grabbed it, until now the streets are more completely un 
 der their control and the control of their political agents, than they are of 
 the people. They have begun to use the surplus from other monopolies to 
 control the trolley road franchises on the most frequented routes in the 
 neighborhood of eastern cities. They are going into electric lighting com 
 panies, into manufacturing, into banking, into every enterprise for which 
 monopoly can be obtained, or subsidy wrung from the people. 
 
 The income for a single day of such men as the Rockefellers, the 
 Flaglers and the Whitneys is more than a king's ransom. They have more 
 money than they can spend, though they build palaces in town and country, 
 buy yachts and racing stables, travel from continent to continent and revel 
 in every luxury that the servitude of mankind throughout the globe can 
 offer to minister to their pride or to pamper them in the indulgence of the 
 luxurious tastes which their immense wealth creates. 
 
 If any American dare oppose them in their determination to make 
 the government of this country which God designed to be, and which will 
 be the greatest and freest on earth a mere annex of their plutocratic 
 commune, then he is a "fool, a crank, a lunatic, an anarchist." They pro 
 ceed to smirch his character, to blast his business, to deprive him of his em 
 ployment, to bring him to want and his children to hunger. In their 
 politics they show no mercy to anyone who opposes them. They buy 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 253 
 
 or intimidate newspapers, driving out from them every man who dares 
 have a mind or a conscience of his own. They send their money into 
 congressional and judicial districts to force out of public life the congress 
 man who has been brave enough to voice the will of the people against 
 them, the judge who has been just enough to resist the infamous demand 
 for the prostitution of the bench. They invested money not by the thous 
 and, but by the million, to buy the presidency, and they believe that they 
 succeeded. They believe that they can succeed again, over and over, as 
 often as they please. 
 
 As an explanation of the polemical tone too warm to produce the 
 impression of deliberative impartiality in which this is written, it should 
 be remembered that it appeared as a newspaper editorial at what was mani 
 festly a crisis. There was no intention then nor is there now, of aspersing 
 the private character of Mr. Whitney, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Flagler or any 
 other great "Captain of Industry." As a rule, they are, in their private 
 lives, amiable men. But when all their private amiability is admitted it 
 remains true that no warmth of tone could do justice to the demoralizing 
 and corrupting influences of the corporate combinations from which they 
 draw dividends. 
 
 At this time (1898), Mr. Richard Croker, the leading political expert 
 of Greater New York, had been brought home from Europe and restored 
 to power that "a trade" might be made to better advantage with political 
 experts in the south and west more especially in Missouri, which Mr. 
 Eland's work had made a "keystone state." Mr. Bland was to be sent 
 to the rear if possible it did not appear how at the time. But it did ap 
 pear later when the money of the Hawaiian sugar syndicate was used 
 against him to promote not only the annexation of Hawaii but of Cuba 
 and Puerto Rico as well. It was evident that for the time being Mr. Bland 
 would be forced back by the unlimited power of this great combination 
 of corporations. All he could do for the time being was to make the stand 
 which would force an open contest, on the merits of which the people might 
 have opportunity to pass. This he did with decisive success. 
 
 As the plan of the combination against him developed with the develop- 
 
254 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ment of the Spanish war excitement, its purpose became clear. It was to 
 shape the policies of both parties so as to prevent a decisive issue on the 
 part of the democrats against what was to be done through the republicans 
 in administration. Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and, if possible, the 
 Philippines were to be annexed. But democratic opposition to imperial 
 ism was to be directed, if possible, only against the annexation of the 
 Philippines so that in spite of the pledged faith of the government, the 
 Cuban republic could be suppressed by garrison control and a "carpet-bag" 
 government, set up to seize and hold the island while professing to repre 
 sent the Cuban people. It was in such a conspiracy as this that Mr. 
 Eland's supporters were asked to join. It was against this that they stood 
 with him when he made his last great contest in the summer and autumn 
 of 1898. He died before the passage of the demonetization act of 1900 
 which resulted from the loss of the House and Senate in 1898. Had he 
 been more strongly supported this might have been prevented. But he had 
 not lost for he had checked imperialism in Missouri and the west and had 
 once more saved the life of the democratic party. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 The Spanish War as a War for the Suppression of the Cuban Republic. Mr. Bland 
 Forces Issues With President McKinley and Compels Him to go on Record. 
 Recognition of the Cuban Republic Openly Opposed by the Administration. 
 Its Anxiety to Begin War Leads it to Fire on Merchant Vessels Before War is 
 Declared. ' 'A War for Humanity" Converted into a Movement for Imperial 
 ism. Failure of an Attempt to Turn Missouri Democrats Against Mr. Bland. 
 The Flag of the Cuban Republic Torn Down at San Luis. Open Declaration of 
 the Plan to Suppress the Cuban Republic by Garrison Government. Benevolent 
 Assimilation in the Philippines. What the Flag Meant for Mr. Bland. His 
 Work for Higher Civilization Finished. 
 
 OSTILITIES against Spain were begun prior to a formal 
 declaration of war by the action of the administration in 
 firing on and seizing the Buena Ventura, the Pedro, the 
 Mathilde,the Miguel Joves, the Catalina, the Sophia, the Can 
 dida, the Saturnina and the Antonio nine "tramp steamers" then trading 
 with our ports or those of Cuba under the Spanish flag. Between April 
 20, when Secretary Sherman telegraphed the ultimatum of the United 
 States to Madrid and Monday, April 25, when war was formally declared, 
 this action had been taken in order to make recession impossible and to 
 prevent any change of the lines on which "intervention" had been author 
 ized. In the declaration, the war was "dated back" to legalize the seizure 
 of these vessels, the clause adopted for that purpose being as follows : 
 
 "Be it enacted, first, that war be and the same is hereby declared to 
 exist, and that war has existed since the 2ist day of April, 1898, including 
 said day, between the United States of America and the Kingdom of 
 Spain." 
 
 In the face of the fact that these harmless tramp steamers loaded with 
 fruit, lumber and the like, and trading back and forth along our coast line 
 in the perfect security of the good faith of our government were thus fired 
 on at once as soon as Congress had been brought to the views of the 
 
 2 55 
 
256 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 administration and in presence of the official concession here made that 
 the seizures were prior to the declaration of war, the assertion that the 
 president was greatly unwilling to engage in war is obviously unhistorical. 
 
 The "unwillingness" he showed consisted of unwillingness to proceed 
 for the establishment of a free and independent republic in Cuba. This 
 was the issue which Mr. Bland, with quiet and skillful statesmanship, 
 forced upon him. 
 
 What is here said of Mr. McKinley is in no sense personal. He is 
 spoken of only as the representative of forces it was beyond his power :o 
 control or greatly to modify although it must be added that being a free 
 agent, he need not have represented them. 
 
 The theory on which Mr. Bland proceeded was based on close study 
 of conditions in New York Gity since the beginning of the Cuban insur 
 rection. It was simply this that while the Cuban patriots had been 
 encouraged to fight desperately for their independence, to sacrifice their 
 lives, to lay waste the island and to reject all offers of conciliation from 
 Spain, no matter how liberal that while money had been supplied them 
 by New York capitalists for this purpose, it was never a part of the inten 
 tion of the New York combination, which planned the new imperialistic 
 movement, to allow the island to achieve its independence, but rather to 
 seize it, control its street railroad and other franchises, and exploit its sugar 
 production in connection wth the control of the sugar supply of Puerto 
 Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines. 
 
 Mr. Bland recognized that unless the necessity for domestic reforms 
 were kept strongly before the people and that if their attention were 
 distracted even temporarily by this "expansion" movement, the reforma 
 tion of the currency, the relief of trade from its tariff restrictions and the 
 enfranchisement of the people from the worst evils of plutocratic oligarchy 
 would be postponed probably beyond his lifetime. He had every motive a 
 man of high purposes can have to inspire him to achievement and he did 
 his work well. 
 
Amanda Black Goody- 
 / koontz, Mr. Eland's 
 
 half sister. 
 
 
 HIS FAVORITE CHAIR. 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Bland Tetley, 
 Mr. Eland's sister. 
 
 Mrs. Mary Steinmetz, Mr. Eland's 
 Niece and adopted daughter. 
 
 LIVING MEMBERS 
 
 OF THE 
 BLAND FAMILY. 
 
 JUDGE C. C. BLAND. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 257 
 
 It was believed that if the recognition of the Cuban republic could be 
 forced on the administration as an issue connected indissolubly with the 
 declaration of war against Spain, the sugar interests in New York and their 
 allied corporations would not allow war to be declared. This belief justi 
 fied itself in results, for, when the issue was thus forced on the administra 
 tion, President McKinley sent in his message of April n, declaring that 
 "it would not be wise or prudent for this government to recognize at this 
 time the so-called Cuban republic," and that such recognition would com 
 pel the United States to assume towards the Cuban republic "the mere re 
 lation of a friendly ally." 
 
 While this completely justified the theory on which Mr. Bland acted 
 in organizing the forces of opposition to imperialism, the working plan 
 which this theory inspired failed at the crisis, not because it had not been 
 justified, but because the democratic organization at the time was not. 
 sufficiently coherent to be capable of holding the high level of Mr. Bland's 
 statesmanship. Instead of forcing the recognition of the Cuban republic 
 which there was every reason to believe would compel President McKin- 
 ley's supporters to fully reveal their plans, a resolution was adopted declar 
 ing merely that the "people of Cuba are and of right ought to be free and 
 independent." This was substituted for a resolution that "the United 
 States government hereby recognizes the independence of the Republic of 
 Cuba," which had been supported by Messrs. Clark of Missouri, Williams, 
 Dinsmore, Berry and Howard, the democratic members of the House 
 committee on foreign relations in a report in which they declared that "we 
 have no doubt our simple recognition of the Republic of Cuba will enable 
 the Cubans themselves ultimately to expel the Spaniards from every por 
 tion of that island." 
 
 Instead of intervention on this basis which it was said openly at the 
 time the president would veto, the resolutions adopted were "that the peo 
 ple of the island of Cuba are and of right ought to be free and independ 
 ent," and that the United States disclaim any intention of annexing the 
 
258 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 island. On Monday, April 18, when the House considered the Senate reso 
 lution containing the clause : "Resolved that the people of Cuba are and of 
 right ought to be free and independent and that the government of the 
 United States hereby recognizes the Republic of Cuba as the true and 
 lawful government of that island," Mr. Dingley, as the representative of 
 the administration, moved to strike out all recognition of the Cuban repub 
 lic. The motion carried by i78 to 156 and finally on conference between 
 the House and Senate, the resolution was so amended as to impose on the 
 administration only the opportunity to violate its obligation to enforce the 
 rights of the Cuban people to sovereignty. This resolution did not declare 
 war, but it called upon Spain to withdraw from Cuba and authorized the ad 
 ministration to intervene to secure withdrawal. The method of "interven 
 tion" adopted was immediate attack on Spanish merchant vessels before the 
 declaration of war. At ten minutes after one o'clock on the morning of 
 April 19, the conferees of the House and Senate had conceded the ad 
 ministration's point against recognizing the Cuban republic, and between 
 April 20 and April 25, in advance of the declaration of war, the mer 
 chant steamers mentioned above had been seized as a means of making all 
 further negotiations impossible. 
 
 The connection of this movement with that for the annexation of 
 Hawaii appeared at once. Mr. Bland, supported by the democrats of 
 the House almost without exception, had made the first stand against the 
 imperialistic conspiracy by resisting the annexation of Hawaii on the de 
 mand of the sugar syndicate government which had no other title than 
 that of open and flagrant usurpation. He was secretly attacked inside 
 democratic lines on this, but a majority of the House democrats supported 
 him by caucus vote and, in spite of the great power of the combination 
 against him, it controlled only one democrat vote from Missouri. As 
 soon as the agents of this combination saw that Mr. Bland had not suc 
 ceeded in forcing the recognition of the Cuban republic, they began active 
 work for the annexation of the island "by consent" and for the seizure 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 259 
 
 of Puerto Rico and its control by "possession of arms." It was rightly 
 reasoned, that if this declaration could be established as democratic against 
 Mr. Eland's position, the issue in favor of self-government and against 
 garrison government could not be squared in Cuba, Hawaii, or the Philip 
 pines. There is no doubt that this plan in its general details was orig 
 inated or vised by the great international financial combination of London 
 and New York which was seeking to establish our national debt as a 
 permanency on a gold basis, and there is no room to question the skill 
 shown in its conception and execution.* 
 
 Mr. Bland met it openly and with far-seeing statesmanship. He so 
 forced issues that the republicans representing the administration were 
 compelled to vote down the measure authorizing the coinage of the silver 
 seigniorage for war purposes, to vote down taxes on the great corporations 
 which had forced the war, and to take their position openly in favor of an 
 obviously unnecessary bond issue, supplemented by stamp taxes on 
 business. 
 
 When this policy was reinforced by the immediate vote of all appro 
 priations asked from the democrats of the House and Senate for war pur 
 poses, it was obviously too strong to be resisted and the same influences 
 which controlled the administration set out to force recession from it. The 
 result of this was what was called "pairing with the administration on the 
 issues of the war/' advocated as a policy by those who had already begun 
 their opposition to Mr. Bland in the case of Hawaii. They favored the 
 seizure of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hawaii, the construction of the Nica 
 ragua canal in connection with fresh bond issues and appropriations for 
 an imperial navy including the subsidized auxiliary cruisers of the com 
 bination which had inaugurated the "expansion" movement. This attempt 
 to set Mr. Bland aside was joined by the same men who had joined Mr. 
 Cleveland in the attempt to control Missouri in favor of monometallism 
 in 1893. They had no influence whatever with Mr. Eland's constituents. 
 
 *See Act of 1900, demonetizing silver and refunding the debt on a gold basis. 
 
260 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 He was renominated for Congress in 1898 and re-elected on a platform 
 adopted by the democrats of his district, strongly supporting him in the 
 stand he had taken against the policy of fraud and force the plutocratic 
 oligarchy was attempting to inaugurate under cover of what had been de 
 clared "a war of humanity," to liberate the people of Cuba. 
 
 His position on the issues of the war was defined in a speech deliv 
 ered at Springfield, Mo., August u, 1898, in opening a convention held 
 there for the purpose of nominating candidates for state offices. 
 
 "We do not intend to-day nor in the future," he said, "to lose sight 
 of the great issues laid down in the Chicago platform because they must 
 be paramount as democratic issues until they are settled. We propose 
 to make this battle in the coming campaign along thesd lines. We do not 
 propose that plutocratic designs in this country, shall, for a moment disturb 
 the minds of the people, so as to distract and confuse in the coming cam 
 paign, this great issue. 
 
 "To give liberty, freedom and prosperity to the American people is 
 our first duty. 
 
 "Unhappily, as it would seem, though I hope it may be otherwise, we 
 were drawn into war, a war that will cost us some three hundred millions 
 of dollars (if I remember correctly,) with two hundred millions of bonds 
 issued, two hundred millions more authorized to be issued and a taxing 
 system that puts the burden upon the people and refuses to put it upon the 
 wealth of the country. We insisted that in providing for this war an 
 income tax should be placed on wealth as well as internal revenue taxes 
 on business. That was rejected. And why? Why, my friends, the sec 
 retary of the treasury had said before the war was supposed to be imminent, 
 that he wanted an issue of bonds. War or no war, they intended to have 
 the bonds. 
 
 "My friends, war was declared and declared in resolutions by Congress 
 that placed this nation far beyond the nations of the world and the nations 
 of modern history in its high elevation of purpose and humane and demo 
 cratic designs We declared that the war was not prosecuted for the pur 
 pose of selfish aggrandizement, but in the interest of humanity. I say 
 such a spectacle as that, such devotion to humanity and freedom in declara 
 tion of war is unparalleled in the history of the world. I know the grave 
 questions that are before this convention and our country in regard to this 
 matter. We may differ upon them as democrats and republicans, but I 
 say to you, in my opinion, the democratic party can do only one thing and 
 
AN AMERICAN CpMMONER. 261 
 
 that is to follow the principles of our fathers, the Monroe doctrine, the 
 teachings of Washington and Jefferson."* 
 
 On August 12, 1898, the preliminary peace protocol, which put an 
 end to the war with Spain, was signed at Washington, and in September 
 following, the administration tore down the flag of the Cuban republic at 
 San Luis, using a detachment of soldiers for that purpose. At about the 
 same time, the Cuban patriot troops, who had fought with ours to capture 
 Santiago, were excluded from the city and everywhere throughout the 
 island the republic was suppressed by garrison control. What this meant 
 how force was eked with "diplomacy" in carrying out the plan of control- 
 ing the island against its people, was admitted in a candid article published 
 on the editorial page of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Rep.), of March 
 27, 1900, from its Havana correspondent, J. D. Whelpley. 
 
 "The appointment of Quintin Bandera to an office in this island is a 
 good illustration of the real political conditions which exist on this island," 
 
 wrote the Globe-Democrat correspondent "Bandera is the most 
 
 virulent type of the unscrupulous, anti-American-Cuban politician. Others 
 are not so dangerous, but are, perhaps, more influential with a better class 
 of people. Gen. Gomez, the military hero of the war, is resting quietly 
 at home, though he, too, in a more intelligent way, is in favor of American 
 withdrawal. Since the Americans came to Cuba Gen. Gomez has received 
 from the public funds on one pretext or another $i7,ooo in cash. A 
 temporary quiet is profitable to him under these circumstances even as it is 
 to the others. Gens. Rabi, Lara, Pedro and young Garcia, all these, and 
 many others have taken offices at good salaries and expenses. Giving din 
 ners to their friends and living luxuriously on their official incomes is about 
 the extent of their acknowledgment of the fact that they are in the public 
 pay. In short, the men dangerous to the peace of the island and the success 
 of the American administration have been bribed at heavy cost to behave 
 themselves. 
 
 No one can suppose for a moment that these men can change their 
 opinions, their character, or lose their ambitions when they accept the mil 
 itary governor's shilling. Far from it ; it whets their desire for unrestricted 
 
 *The platform of this convention was not reported finally until the convention was about to adjourn 
 and in the confusion an incoherent section declaring ''possession of arms" a title to territory was not 
 eliminated as it should have been. The democrats of Missouri, however, were correctly represented by 
 Mr. Bland. 
 
262 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 power. It increases their own estimate of their importance. It suggests 
 possibilities and gives them position and means to work out their schemes. 
 As a temporary policy, it is a success. There will be no serious trouble 
 in Cuba for some time. Any talk of an immediate general insurrection 
 is sensational. Cuba will not force herself to the front with the people of 
 the United States in time to enter as a leading issue into the campaign of 
 1900. It is a latent issue, however, and one which in time will overshadow 
 in insistency and importance many others which are now absorbing the 
 attention of the American people. 
 
 For a time the people of Cuba will be opposed to the annexation of the 
 island to the United States, or, in fact, anything less than complete inde 
 pendence. The American occupation has not made itself particularly pop 
 ular. The full flush of the possibilities of home rule are upon the people. 
 This feeling is ingeniously fostered and encouraged by those who expect to 
 profit thereby. The Spaniards, the owners of property among the Cubans, 
 and the great mass of the people who are neither politicians, warriors nor 
 adventurers, desire a reign of peace. They fear the possible recurrence of 
 a time of war, and they remember the evils of the Spanish system, but they 
 also recognize the military and restraining character of the American occu 
 pation and realize that these Americans are aliens in blood and mind. The 
 Spaniards generally favor an American control indefinitely continued, but 
 their favor is not because of political or social affiliation, but is purely selfish 
 and commercial. The solid class of the natives hope for a Cuban republic, 
 and at present they favor trying it. Knowing their own people as they 
 do, however, they fear for its possibilities. As they say, 'In my heart I 
 want to see Cuba free. In my head I fear this can never be so.' 
 
 These patriotic men are right. Cuba never can be free in the meaning 
 they now give to the word. At first a realization of this truth will come 
 as a shock to many able and honest citizens who assisted in driving Spain 
 from their country. Before the inhabitants agree that independence can 
 never come to Cuba, it is even possible that the island will have to pass 
 through another ordeal of fire." 
 
 While the conditions referred to by Mr. Whelpley were being brought 
 about, it was announced that the street railways of Havana had passed 
 under control of "promoters" known to be identical with the Standard Oil 
 and Sugar trust interest, and in the Philippines after the islands had been 
 occupied by agents of similar combinations of financiers as able, enterpris 
 ing and aggressive as Drake or Lafitte, war had been begun with our late 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 263 
 
 allies, the Filipinos and their flag also was pulled down for purposes de 
 scribed by President McKinley as "benevolent assimilation." 
 
 Through all this, Mr. Bland had kept his faith in the principles of 
 free and constitutional government. He returned to Washington, and on 
 January 30, 1899, made his speech on "English Plutocracy and the Liberties 
 of the World," in which he championed the unfortunate people of the 
 Philippines as he had spoken before for those of Cuba, Puerto Rico and 
 Hawaii. 
 
 From 1873, when, in his first recorded speech in politics, he declared 
 that the flag of the United States must stand for "liberty and justice to all 
 men whether they be red, black, white, olive or tawny-colored" from 
 that noble beginning to the end, when, regardless of what others said or 
 did, he still spoke for the liberty of all men, of all races and all countries, 
 he had kept in all simplicity, without malice and without hypocrisy, the 
 faith of an American Commoner. When he died, June 15, 1899, his work 
 was done and it had been done so well that no power of money or of organ 
 ization or of the shrewdness of those who make selfish advantage their rule 
 of right will ever undo it, or change the least part of its beneficent results. 
 It belongs to the always increasing potency of higher civilization, and it 
 will realize itself in greater things than we can now imagine. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Mr. Eland's Early Home in Kentucky. The Stock From Which He Sprang. His 
 Life as an Orphan Boy on a Farm. At the Plow in Summer and at School in 
 Winter. He Emigrates to Missouri and to California. His Life in the Mines. 
 Cooking and Washing for Orphan Children. He Studies Law and Returns to 
 Missouri. His Characteristics as a Lawyer. His Work Before Election Boards 
 Under the Drake Constitution. Judge C. C. Eland's Reminiscences of His 
 Mother. 
 
 BY JUDGE CHARLES C. BLAND.* 
 
 jICHARD P. ELAND'S father, Stouten Edward Bland, was 
 born July 14, i8o7. He was reared near Lebanon, Ky., on a 
 farm which is now owned by Proctor Knott. His ances 
 tors emigrated from Virginia to Kentucky at a very early 
 day. His wife, Margaret Parks Nail, eldest daughter of Richards Parks 
 Nail and Polly Nail (nee Berryman), was born at Hartford, Ohio county, 
 Ky., June 4, 1816. S. E. Bland and Margaret P. Nail were married at 
 Hartford, Ky., October 9, 1834. 
 
 Richard Parks Bland, the eldest child of this union was born August 
 I9> J 835> at Hartford. S. E. Bland moved from Hartford to Eland's Mills, 
 ten miles above Hartford, on the Hartford river, in the year 1838. Here 
 he procured the establishment of "Eland's Mills" as a postoffice, and he him 
 self was appointed postmaster by Amos Kendall, who was then postmaster 
 general in General Jackson's cabinet. Early in 1841 Stouten Bland gave 
 up the management of his mill business, because of ill health, and moved 
 his residence to a farm, about midway between the mill and Hartford. He 
 continued to live on this farm until his death, which occurred June 5, 1842. 
 
 *Mr. Eland's brother, presiding judge St. Louis court of appeals. Judge Bland says in transmitting 
 his reminiscences to the editor: "After my tenth year my brother and I were separated for many years 
 and I never saw him until he came to Rolla in 1867. I will add one thing here, that is, that while we 
 practiced together, I never discovered that he was in error as to the law of a case his judgment on a law 
 point seemed to be unerring at all times " 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 265 
 
 After his death his widow with four children remained on the farm for 
 a year, when she removed to the home of her mother who was then a 
 widow. In 1844 she married Francis Black, a farmer in the neighborhood, 
 and her son, Richard, went with her to the home of Mr. Black, where he 
 remained until the death of his mother, December 20, 1849. After the 
 death of his mother he worked as a farm hand for wages during the spring 
 and summer and went to school during the fall and winter. Mr. Craig 
 I wish I could recall his given name* who resided near Beaver Dam, was 
 his fast and valuable friend during this period, helping him to attend 
 school, and giving him a home at his house, whenever he chose to make it 
 there. Richard finished his scholastic education at the age of nineteen by 
 graduating from the Hartford Academy, then the best school in that section 
 of the state. After leaving school, he emigrated to Missouri and went to 
 Wayne county, to the home of Robert Fulton, who had married Mariah 
 Nail, the youngest sister of his mother. He taught school for three months 
 in Wayne county, making his home with his aunt. In 1855, Mr. Fulton sold 
 his property in Wayne county, and emigrated to California with his family, 
 by way of New York and the isthmus. Richard accompanied them. After 
 reaching California they engaged in mining, but Mr. Fulton soon sickened 
 and died. His wife followed him in a short time, leaving three small 
 children to be cared for by Richard. He continued mining and took care of 
 the children, doing cooking and washing for them and himself, until ar 
 rangements were made to return them to Missouri. They embarked on a 
 steamer for New York with an uncle (Fulton). When the vessel was 
 
 *Isaiah Craig, who was still alive during the campaign of 1896. Mr. Bland heard from him as a 
 result of correspondence growing out of an invitation to visit his old home in Kentucky, among the 
 signatures to which appeared the name "Isaiah Craig;" supposing this to be the son of his old friend, 
 Mr. Bland wrote: 
 
 "That I had many trials you all know, for as an orphan boy I was thrown on my own resources to 
 work my way through life as best I could. Yet I had many sympathizing friends who gave me a helping 
 hand, Isaiah Craig was one. I am informed he has gone to the unknown land beyond the dark waters 
 and if the good and kind are rewarded there for their acts here, then Isaiah Craig is blessed. I take it for 
 granted that the 'Isaiah Craig' who signs this letter is the son of the greatest benefactor of my youth." 
 
 On learning that the signature was that of his old friend in person, Mr. Bland opened correspon 
 dence with him and sent him money. 
 
266 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 about three miles from shore, it took fire and was burned to the water's 
 edge. The uncle and three boys jumped overboard, and undertook to swim 
 ashore, but the uncle and two of the boys were drowned. George (about 
 nine years old) swam or floated ashore and was sent back to Missouri.* 
 
 Mining in California not proving profitable, Richard went to Nevada, 
 studied law, was admitted to practice, and served as treasurer of Carson 
 county. In i867 he returned to Missouri and formed a partnership with 
 his brother C. C. Bland who had opened a law office at Rolla, Missouri. 
 This partnership continued until 1869 when Richard went to Lebanon, 
 Mo., and opened an office there. He continued to practice law in Laclede 
 county and counties adjacent to it, until his first election to Congress in 
 i872. After that date, he was not actively engaged in the practice of his 
 profession. 
 
 When a boy, Richard was very active and fond of athletic sports. He 
 was ambitious, determined and unfaltering in his purposes. His youth 
 was spent on a farm, with an occasional three months term of school in 
 the winter. He was devoted to his mother, and to his brothers and sisters. 
 Their needs and their welfare were always his first thoughts. His own came 
 afterwards if at all. He was studious, learned rapidly at school, and after he 
 was fifteen years of age never lost a moment's opportunity to improve his 
 mind by reading and study. He was fond of debating societies, joining them 
 whenever he could do so. He never failed to take an active part in their 
 debates. In debate and in every other way, he was fearless. If the ele 
 ment of fear was in his nature, it was never perceptible, but he was not 
 quarrelsome. 
 
 With his active mind and body he could not be lazy or indolent, and 
 it was the universal opinion of his elders, who knew him well that he would 
 distinguish himself, if he should live to become a man. 
 
 As a lawyer, he was a formidable antagonist at any bar. He was 
 well grounded in the principles and doctrines of the common law. Always 
 
 *He now resides in Philadelphia. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 267 
 
 reasoning out his conclusions from common law maxims and doctrines, 
 it rarely happened that he failed to reach a correct conclusion as to the 
 law of his case. He tolerated no wrong to his client. Making the client's 
 case his own, he was more deeply concerned for the success of right 
 principles in important cases than were his clients themselves. Nor would 
 he submit to unfairness from the opposite counsel or from the judge on 
 the bench. 
 
 He first attracted general notice and won his first popularity with 
 democrats in southwest Missouri by defending rejected voters, before 
 boards of revision, operated under the Drake Constitution. He was re 
 markably fearless but always courteous before these boards and seldom 
 failed to have his client's name put on the list of qualified voters. For these 
 services he would take no fee, declaring that his work against political pro 
 scription was a public duty, done for the good of the state. 
 
 I know so little about our father that I am unable to give the names 
 of his parents or brothers and sisters. From a neighbor, who was his inti 
 mate friend, I learned when a child, that father was a well educated man 
 for his period, was a school teacher when he married mother, that he was 
 a man of great personal courage, and very religious. I have his Bible, 
 which shows by marginal notes and references, which I believe were made 
 by him, that he studied the book with great care. Both parents were mem 
 bers of the Methodist church, and I have been told that father preached 
 occasionally in the little log church near our home. Of mother, I have 
 very vivid memories so much so, that were I an artist I believe I could 
 reproduce her exact likeness on canvas. She was a patient woman, full of 
 kindness, and in answer to calls for help in sickness, doing more volunteer 
 nursing than any other woman in the neighborhood. When one of her 
 brothers or sisters were sick, no one could nurse them but "Margaret." 
 When a neighbor was sick if it were possible her services were secured. 
 In 1849 an epidemic of typhoid fever prevailed in the neighborhood, and 
 she continued nursing its victims until she was stricken with the disease. 
 
268 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 The fever proved fatal in her case, as it did generally in the country at 
 that time. She was a most devoted mother, and a very sensible woman. 
 Her life was one of toil, but one of service spent in doing good, and in 
 making those around her happy. To my recollection she had the kindest 
 face and the most sympathetic eyes ever I looked into, and if I could paint 
 her, I would put a halo of glory around her head, and rays of divine light 
 in her eyes. "Dick" had a heart like his mother's. I could pay him no 
 higher compliment. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Mr. Eland's Boyhood in Kentucky. Mrs. Bland Investigates and Interviews His 
 Kinsfolk and Old Neighbors. Shorthand Report of an Interview Between Mrs. 
 Bland and Mr. Eland's Uncle, Mr. Frank Nail, of Ohio County, Kentucky. 
 How Mr. Bland Got His Characteristics. His Truthfulness as a Boy. The Fights 
 He Was Forced Into. He is Tempted to Become a Preacher. Stops Driving 
 Oxen and Decides to use His Intellect. The Use of Beech Limbs by His School- 
 Master. The Questions He Debated as a Boy. His First Speech and the Repu 
 tation it Made Him. Life on No Creek in the Days of Henry Clay. 
 
 N COLLECTING material for this volume, Mrs. Bland 
 spent several weeks of the spring of 1900 in Ohio county, 
 Kentucky, visiting the house in which Mr. Bland was born, 
 the scenes of his childhood and of his youthful struggles, 
 and gathering carefully from surviving relatives and friends who had 
 known him in youth, such reminiscences of him as best illustrate his char 
 acter. In that country of contentment and good neighborliness, where they 
 speak the English of Addison's time and have not wholly lost the spirit of 
 Queen Anne's reign, they live still in the "story and a half" houses of the 
 colonial era, and know the names of their grandfathers and great-grand 
 fathers as well as they do the pedigrees of their horses. 
 
 Out of houses of hewn logs, built when Clay and Jackson were rivals 
 for the leadership of North America, Mrs. Bland might easily have secured 
 authentic pedigrees of the Bland, the Nail and the Parks families, enough 
 in themselves to make a volume larger than this, but instead of doing so, 
 she took a stenographer with her and "interviewed" Mr. Bland's old neigh 
 bors and his kinsfolk asking leading questions with the pertinacity of a 
 veteran interviewer, the stenographer taking down both question and 
 answer in shorthand. These interviews were intended only for the editor's 
 information, but that of Mrs. Bland with Mr. Frank Nail, brother of Mr. 
 
 Bland's mother, is too interesting in itself, and too valuable as documentary 
 
 269 
 
270 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 evidence, to be omitted especially as Mrs. Eland's questions are often 
 not less informing than the answers themselves. Mr. Nail is now over 
 seventy-six years of age. 
 
 MRS. BLAND INTERVIEWS MR. ELAND'S KENTUCKY UNCLE. 
 
 "Mr. Nail," said Mrs. Bland in opening. "I wish to learn where Mr. 
 Bland got his characteristics. I have an idea that he took his firmness from 
 his father and his goodness from his mother." 
 
 "He did as far as I am capable of judging," replied Mr. Nail. "Mr. 
 Eland's father was a school teacher and I went to school to him. At the 
 time of his death I was about ten years old. We lived close together and 
 I was often at his house. I had a chance to know him as well as any person 
 of my age could have done. He was a man of more than ordinary intelli 
 gence, and had a high education for that day. That is, he had a good 
 English education. You didn't find men in those days as well educated as 
 they are now. A man with a good English education at that time was 
 considered a well-educated man." 
 
 "You say he was firm ?" "Yes, he was a man of firmness. His word 
 was just as solid as a rock. He was a man everybody had the utmost con 
 fidence in." 
 
 "Do you think he possessed the quality Mr. Bland had of looking 
 into a question and making up his mind, and sticking to it ?" "Yes he was 
 true to his convictions." 
 
 "Now, about his mother. Was she a firm woman?" "Yes. You 
 know how Methodist people were raised very strictly. She was raised 
 by a pious mother, and she would regard a falsehood, or anything wrong 
 with as much disfavor as we would a calamity." 
 
 "I see uncle J. C. Berryman, of Caledonia, made the statement in the 
 papers that Mr. Bland never told a lie. Mr. Bland laughed at that. But 
 I suppose he was a truthful boy?" "Yes, he was so regarded. The peo 
 ple of Ohio county had the utmost confidence in his father, and in him. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 271 
 
 They knew his father, and knew that Dick was of the same quality. Be 
 cause of his natural intelligence and honesty he never lacked a friend. I 
 can remember when I first saw him. He was a little baby playing on the 
 carpet on the floor, and my mother used to let me go over to Mr. Eland's. 
 It was about a mile. I was very much attached to him. I loved to play 
 with him. It was a great enjoyment to me, always, to see him laugh and 
 enjoy himself. It might have been that I was prejudiced towards him be 
 cause he was close kin, but others seemed to think as I did. As he grew 
 and got older, he grew more attractive. He had more natural intelligence 
 about him than was common to most children. He was quick to catch 
 anything, and quick to learn anything, and he never forgot anything he 
 got hold of." 
 
 "It Is said he had fights when he was a boy?" "Yes, that got out in 
 this way, I suppose. He had been tried by the boys. You know it is 
 common when boys get together that some of them always want to get up 
 a fight between others, and don't wan't to get into it themselves. They 
 always tried to ring him in. They had a way there of trying boys' pluck. 
 I think they tried him once or twice to their sorrow. While he never 
 sought a fight, he would undoubtedly fight." 
 
 "I have a general impression that Mr. Bland was a great hand at 
 debate?" "Yes, he used to attend those debating societies. They would 
 take up some theory, and debate it. Dick was a great favorite among the 
 debating societies, and he had the reputation of being hard to turn down. 
 He had a great deal more than ordinary intelligence in that line. He 
 was a natural debater." 
 
 "Did Mr. Bland have his hearty laugh as a boy?" "Yes, he had always 
 retained that from the time I first saw him. I never saw him after he left 
 here in his nineteenth year. Up to that time he was always full of laughter 
 and merry. He never seemed to take trouble at all, but was always in a 
 good humor full of laughter and fun." 
 
272 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 "Do you remember any incidents or have any reminiscences about him 
 Mr. Nail ? Mrs. Perkins told me about his driving oxen and plowing and 
 sitting on the fence. Do you remember the remark he made on that occa 
 sion?" "I don't suppose there was any work to be done on a farm by a 
 boy that he had not done driving oxen, hoeing, plowing, etc. I think 
 he was some ten or twelve years old when his mother died. He had not 
 gone to school any except what he got through the winter when he lived 
 at Black's. After his mother died, he tried Dr. Downard's a while. He 
 offered him a situation, and he went there to live, but he hired out to Mr. 
 Craig by the month and not to Mr. Downard. Mr. Craig, you- know, was 
 a farmer, and as a general rule they rise very early and get their work 
 through before the heat of the day. He would work there through the 
 spring and summer and go to school in the winter, and attend those debat 
 ing societies, and study at night. Mr. Craig was a very good scholar and 
 he took great pains in tutoring Dick, and he did not require Dick to pay 
 him for anything he could do for him. He seemed willing to help him in any 
 way he could, and did. 
 
 "Mr. Bland sent him some money in his last days did he not?" 
 "Yes, a check for $50. That was a present in remembrance of his kind 
 ness to him." 
 
 "Mrs. Mitchell told me that he was plowing one day, and that he 
 stopped after he had made one or two rows, and sat down on the fence 
 to rest, and took up a stick and began to whittle on it, and remarked that he 
 could do better than that, and that he did not intend to drive oxen all his 
 life." "Yes, he always said that he never expected to get a living by hard 
 labor that he was not built that way. That is the reason he applied him 
 self to study. I remember that when he lived at Mr. Craig's and attended 
 school there in the neighborhood, the teacher who taught there was only the 
 ordinary country school teacher. I think Dick got to believe that he could 
 teach the teacher, and I expect he could in some things. I don't think he 
 had gone to school there. I believe he was about sixteen then when he 
 
MR. BLAND AS A YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 (From a Photograph taken in Virginia City, 
 
 Nevada, Prior to 18G5.) 
 
 MRS. BLAND AT NINETEEN. 
 (From a Photograph taken Shortly before Her Marriage.) 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 273 
 
 himself began teaching in that neighborhood. It was an old log house, 
 which stood upon a hill the White Oak schoolhouse. It is on the 
 waters of No Creek, No Creek schoolhouse being further down in a 
 
 different neighborhood I remember that Mr. Ellis lived near me 
 
 when Dick was living at Craig's. Our farms joined Craig's, Ellis's, and 
 mine. Craig married Ellis's oldest daughter. Old man Ellis and wife 
 thought there was no one like Dick. Ed Ellis and Dick used to run to 
 gether. They thought the world and all of each other. He would come 
 up there sometimes, and spend Saturday night and Sunday with Ellis, 
 and sometimes a whole week when he wasn't busy. Dick was very fond 
 of a gun and hunting." 
 
 "He used to tell me that there was somebody there that had hounds," 
 said Mrs. Bland. "He said he would go hunting for opossum and 'coon, 
 and that that was the way he made his Christmas money?" "Yes, 
 the boys use to make pocket change selling the hides of 'coons, mink, etc., 
 and at the same time they had their fun. One of the Ellis boys lives up 
 on No Creek now Alex Ellis, half brother to Ed. I expect Dick was the 
 older." 
 
 "Did not Mr. Ellis and Mr. Craig think they would make a preacher 
 of Mr. Bland once?" "Yes, he had some notion of it once. You see 
 they were what we called Campbellites, but they are called Christians here 
 now. You know there is a good deal of rivalry between churches. Dick 
 was raised a Methodist. They would read the scriptures to Dick and 
 explain them to him. I will tell you an incident: While he lived at 
 Craig's he asked my opinion if I thought he was calculated for a preacher. 
 I said I believed he was not. I remember he laughed, and said it was his 
 opinion, and that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Craig had been trying to persuade 
 him to go into the ministry. I asked him what kind of a preacher he 
 would be. He said 'I will be a Campbellite of course.' I said 'you were 
 raised a Methodist.' He said 'Yes, but I have been studying the Bible, 
 
 and I believe the Campbellites are right.' He said that he would not argue 
 18 
 
274 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 scripture with me at all, and for me to just do as I pleased " 
 
 "Was he inclined to argue very much?" "Yes, he was fond of 
 argument, but I don't think he was any hand to argue for argument's sake. 
 If he had an idea and was upholding the right, he would contend for his 
 position to the last." 
 
 "Had he any of idea of what he would be when he left Kentucky?" 
 "No, I saw him a short time before he left, and he told me he was going 
 to Missouri, and go to school. Charlie (Judge C. C. Bland) was out 
 there at Arcadia, going to school, and I supposed they had got Dick to 
 come. I don't know how long he went to school. I think he taught 
 school, and went, too; but I think he acquired most of his education by 
 chance. There are some people naturally smart you know, and I always 
 thought Dick was one of them. He had not many educational advan- 
 
 tages." 
 
 "Mrs. Mitchell tells me that his mother was a very good woman?" 
 
 "Yes, she was my sister, and everyone thinks his own kind are everything 
 they should be. I have seen her tried, and I think she was as good a 
 woman as ever lived. She was perfectly calm, and never took any trou 
 ble." 
 
 "Do you remember where Mr. Bland was born?" "Yes. The 
 
 place is about a mile above the mill. Mr. Armendt lives there now. 
 There were three little places there. My father owned all of them. You 
 know we had no frame or brick houses then. This was a neat log house, 
 and my recollection is that it had one room, twenty feet square. What 
 we would call a nice hewed-log house. It had a white ash floor, and then 
 there was a little porch between that and what was called the kitchen. It 
 had a loft room above. That was the size of the house. After Mr. Bland 
 moved away from there I think a man by the name of Mason became the 
 purchaser, and he lived in the same house, for a good many years. When 
 he died the place fell into the hands of Mr. Armendt." 
 
 When asked to give his reminiscences of the school he attended with 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 275 
 
 Mr. Bland, Mr. James F. Carson, of Hartford, Ky., said: 
 
 "The teacher was Mr. John F. Park who was educated in Penn 
 sylvania. The school was at No Creek. One of the modes of punishment 
 in Kentucky schools then was to use beech limbs as long as room would 
 admit of. Teachers would whip the boys on the legs about half way 
 between the knees and feet. As boys went bare-footed in the summer 
 time the soles of their feet would get quite tough and would generally be 
 used as a fender to ward off the blows. The punishment would cause them 
 to stand first on one foot and then on the other. The girls he would whip 
 on their backs. I have seen them gather pennyroyal and stuff down 
 their backs as a protection. Another mode was to make the convict 
 stand in the corner behind the teacher's chair. That was the fun 
 niest mode of all, for when he would be busy I, or the others, would 
 pull one hair of his head at a time to see him scratch. This often caused 
 a laugh and caused us to get the 'rod/ as he called it. The seats were 
 made of slabs with auger holes bored in them with beech limbs inserted for 
 legs, or sometimes they split timber out with an axe, very rudely done, 
 what might be called 'rustic work/ The tops of seats were at different 
 levels, some low, some high. The high ones were the dunce blocks/' 
 
 Mr. John S. Thomas, of Hartford, another of Mr. Eland's school 
 mates, recalls that boys who were being trained for future masters of 
 America were sometimes lifted bodily from the floor by the ear as a 
 means of disciplining them. In spite of this, the schools were a means of 
 stimulating intellect. Their debating societies made every Kentucky boy 
 a possible statesman, waiting his opportunity to show his talents. Of 
 such debates, Mr. J. S. Fitzhugh said to Mrs. Bland: 
 
 "During our schoolboy days we would frequently have debates in 
 the neighborhood, and among the questions brought up for discussion 
 I remember one of them that was stated something like this : 'Who de 
 serves the greater praise, Columbus for discovering America, or Wash 
 ington for defending human liberty ?' ' 
 
276 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 "One I remember," said a neighbor present, "was : 'Which is the more 
 attractive to the eye, the works of nature or the works of man?' " 
 
 "Another," continued Mr. Fitzhugh, "was: 'Which furnishes the 
 greatest pleasure, pursuit or possession ?' ' : 
 
 To this, Mr. James A. Sullenger, of Hartford, Ky., adds : 
 
 "Mr. Bland and I went to school together. It was about the second 
 school I ever went to, I think. I heard him make the first speech he ever 
 made. There were about fifteen of us boys, and he made the best and 
 only speech that was made by any of us. The balance of us were all 
 scared, except Dick, and he was not scared one bit. I remember feeling 
 ashamed of myself; I did not have the pluck that Mr. Bland had. I 
 remember my uncle who was teacher saying that he did not see why 
 the balance of us boys could not talk as Mr. Bland did. The school was 
 taught after his father's death at what was called the Bland house." 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 MRS. ELAND'S REMINISCENCES I. 
 
 Mrs. Bland Writes Her Reminiscences of Mr. Eland's Home Life. Their First 
 Meeting When She Was a Schoolgirl. Mr. Bland as a Confirmed Old Bach 
 elor in Love for the Second Time. He Tells Mrs. Bland of His Romance at 
 Nineteen. The Girl in White Apron aud Sun Bonnet Who Died After Marry 
 ing to Please Her Parents. Mr. Bland Corresponds With Mrs. B.'s Father. 
 The Story of a Threatened Elopement. At Washington Under Grant. South 
 ern Pianos as Presents. Mr. Eland's Love of Children. His Domestic Habits. 
 Sitting up all Night on His Last Night in Congress. His Last Illness and 
 Death. 
 
 BY MRS. RICHARD PARKS BLAND. 
 
 | MET Mr. Bland first at Caledonia, Mo., where I was attend 
 ing the Bellevue' Collegiate Institute. He had been to New 
 Orleans to look into the matter of deepening the channel of 
 the Mississippi river by means of jetties and had come to 
 Caledonia to visit his sister, Mrs. Goodykoontz, before returning to Wash 
 ington. 
 
 Mr. Bland had known my father and had practiced law in the same 
 courts with him. When he was first introduced to me I had just passed 
 nineteen being nineteen in May, and this was the tenth of June. Mr. 
 Bland was thirty-eight the coming August. 
 
 I had taught school when I was only seventeen years old and after at 
 tending school at Caledonia, I would have continued to teach, had not Mr. 
 Bland, as he said himself, "broken up the school" I expected to teach. When 
 I first met him at the Bellevue Collegiate Institute, the young ladies of our 
 school were making Latin mottoes in evergreens for decoration at com 
 mencement. The motto was "I came, I saw, I conquered." I told him 
 if he wished to stay he would have to help with the work of preparing 
 the motto. He did so, staying until we had completed the work. The 
 
 girls had a literary society, presided over by Professor McKinney, the 
 
 277 
 
278 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 principal of the school. I was vice-president. We had an open session 
 and a debate on the subject : "Which influences our lives most, hope or 
 memory?" I led one side and Miss Hatcher, daughter of Congressman 
 Hatcher, the other. Mr. Bland was present that night and said after 
 wards: "Why did you not tell me you were going to talk? I would 
 have given you the bouquet I promised to another young lady." When 
 school adjourned Mr. Bland accompanied me as far as Victoria, a small 
 town on the Iron Mountain road, near Hillsboro, where I was to visit my 
 uncle, Judge John L. Thomas. My uncle, my aunt, a young lady friend 
 and myself went to Potosi and took the train there. Mr. Bland came out, 
 and helped us on and after managing to put my friend (who was going to 
 visit me) with another young lady, he sat down by me himself. Then 
 he wrote to me at Hillsboro, and soon afterwards I told my father I had 
 met him and asked what he thought of him. Mr. Bland never was effu 
 sive in his manners, and my father said he liked him very well, but that he 
 was "as cold as a wagon tire." When he found how much mistaken 
 he was in his judgment, he had to stand a good deal of joking because of 
 this answer. 
 
 Mr. Bland had at that time the reputation of a confirmed old bach 
 elor and stories have been published that he had some difficulty in convinc 
 ing my father that I had made the best choice possible for a girl of nine 
 teen. My father never really objected but he was away from home when 
 Mr. Bland wrote asking his consent to a marriage, and, as the letter 
 remained unanswered, Mr. Bland wrote him that he hoped the marriage 
 would take place with his consent if possible, intimating half seriously, 
 that it might possibly take place without it. My father, who had by this 
 time returned and found both letters awaiting him, wrote that he 
 would not put him to the test, but would give his consent* As I have 
 
 *Mrs. Bland (Miss Virginia Elizabeth Mitchell, when Mr. Bland met her in 1873) is the daughter of 
 General E. Y. Mitchell of Rolla, Mo. On November 4, 1873, Mr. Bland wrote to her from Lebanon as 
 follows: 
 
 "I was at Springfield and saw your father. We had a long talk. He will offer no objections to our 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 279 
 
 said Mr. Bland was thirty-seven years old at the time and perhaps his 
 friends thought him older. At any rate he had a good deal of trouble 
 in convincing them that he intended to marry. His own brother would 
 not believe him at first. When we were married by Rev. Dr. McAnally, 
 Mr. Bland wore a dress coat. I think his "best man," Mr. Estell 
 McHenry, was responsible for it, as Mr. Bland himself had no special 
 fondness for them and they were seldom worn in rural Missouri towns of 
 that time. 
 
 I ought to mention here that Mr. Bland had had his romance before 
 ho met me when he was nineteen years old, and when I had just begun my 
 existence in this world. He was in love with a Miss Moore and she with 
 him, but as she had a suitor who was well-to-do in this world's goods, her 
 parents wanted her to marry this man. They had no objections to Mr. 
 Bland except that he was poor. He started for the far west with his uncle 
 and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Fulton, asking the young lady to write to him. 
 He never received a letter from her. He told me he believed her parents 
 intercepted her letters to him. She married a year later and died within a 
 year after her marriage. His love for her was very great. She used to 
 wear a calico dress, white apron and white sun-bonnet, and he always 
 liked to see a woman dressed thus, saying they looked prettier so than in 
 any other dress. 
 
 I copy here a letter written by Mr. Bland to me October 27, 18^3, from 
 Lebanon, Mo. : 
 
 marriage. I am indeed glad of it. I have seldom seen a fortunate marriage, where parents objected. 
 They seem to have a keen perception on such points. I do not say this because of the good luck in our 
 case. I think I told you as much before we knew how the matter would end." 
 
 In a letter of October 30, 1873, he wrote as follows, enclosing a letter from General Mitchell, con 
 senting to the marriage: 
 
 "I feel proud of the compliments he pays me and I will try to prove them well founded. He says my 
 letter to him contained "a covert threat" and that he admired my courage, etc. What I said was that 
 we had made up our minds to marry and that I thought nothing but death could keep us apart or prevent 
 us from carrying out our engagement so I hoped he would make no useless objection. It was in the 
 
 nature of a threat probably but he says he will not put our courage to the test. I never thought 
 
 he would make any serious objection but I did not know what he might do. I am so glad be has given 
 his consent with so much grace and willingness." 
 
 This, then, is the whole history of the "elopement." 
 
280 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 "I am no believer in the idea that a man or woman nevec, love but 
 once," he wrote "for I once loved a girl so well that I thought I would 
 never love another, and I suppose my remaining single has to some extent 
 proved that theory, but it is all exploded now." 
 
 We were married the seventeenth of the December following our first 
 meeting in June. The wedding was at the residence of Judge John L. 
 Thomas, my uncle at Hillsboro, and two weeks later we went to Washing 
 ton, where Mr. Bland was serving his first term in Congress. We boarded 
 for about six months, and during that time I met Mr. Dawes of Mas 
 sachusetts, Hon. Fernando Wood, of New York, Mr. Elaine, Attorney- 
 General Williams, Secretary Belknap and many other well-known people 
 including even the famous "Boss" Shepherd himself. Of course these 
 were only incidental acquaintances. The Missouri friends with whom I 
 was thrown most at this time, were Hon. Erastus Wells, General John 
 B. Clark, Hon. Thomas T. Crittenden, Hon. William E. Stone, of St. 
 Louis, James B. Eads and their families. 
 
 At the time I reached Washington, sectional feeling ran high. "Force 
 Bills" and measures of the same kind, were being agitated in Congress and 
 the discussion grew so heated at our boarding house that Mr. Bland finally 
 changed it on my account. 
 
 One of the ladies at the dinner table said to another: "Why didn't 
 your husband send you a piano from the south as mine did me?" They 
 were wives of members of Congress and as they called the people of the 
 south "rebels" and "traitors," I was somewhat disturbed by it, and we 
 went to a place where there was less of that kind of political discussion. 
 
 I spent the next winter in Missouri, but during our whole married 
 life I did not miss more than four winters from Washington, and during 
 that time Mr. Bland wrote to me daily. 
 
 Mr Bland and I lived together twenty-five years and six months from 
 the time of our marriage at Hillsboro to his death at Lebanon, June 15, 
 1899. No man was ever fonder of his home and family than he was.* 
 
 *The children born to us were: Virgie, born January 18, 1875, in Caledonia, Mo., died April 3, 1876; 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 28l 
 
 He loved children dearly. Often when going to and from the House in 
 Washington he could be seen playing with the children on the way, turning 
 the rope for them or pulling the girls' hair and teasing them. 
 
 One day while we were living in Washington, a friend called and 
 said : **! saw Mr. Bland on the avenue with the children." I said, "No, 
 not our children ; they are here at home." "I saw him running in and out 
 of Gaits' jewelry store after some children or other," she replied. 
 
 At another time he was on a street car and took a little girl about two 
 years old on his lap. After a time she went to sleep. The mother sat 
 bolt upright and you would never have imagined the child was hers. When 
 Mr. Bland reached Q street he rose and put the little one on the mother's 
 lap, saying : "Madam, here is your baby, I must get off here." The chil 
 dren in our block used to throw sand and dirt all over him to see him jump 
 and run. Before he was married and when court was in session he said 
 his favorites among the children of Lebanon about half a dozen in num 
 ber would follow him around, and lawyers from a distance would say: 
 "Bland, are these your children?" He would give the children nickels 
 and "match" with them. So one day, Charlie Taliaferro, a small friend of 
 his wanted to match nickles with him in church. 
 
 The Indian war dance he learned in the far west was a favorite pas 
 time with the children. In the evening after dinner Mr. Bland would 
 stamp and sing a kind of war whoop and the children would dance or 
 jump as he sang. He used to say that when we were in rented rooms he 
 could not have the Indian dance as people would think we were crazy. 
 
 Fanny, born June 4, 1876, in Washington; Theo, born November 25, 1877, in Lebanon; Ewing Charles 
 born May 17, 1882, in Washington; George Vest, born February 10, 1884, in Washington; Hattie, born 
 November 5, 1885, in Lebanon, died March 3, 1887; Margaret Nail, born December 1, 1887, in Wash 
 ington, died September 11, 1892; John Lilburn, born July 28, 1889; Virginia M., born in Washington 
 December 19, 1892. 
 
 The following from a letter written by Mr. Bland from Washington, December 5, 1894, is charac 
 teristic in its suggestion of his tender feelings for children. 
 
 "I opened my box and found in it three baby shoes. Now did you put them in the box to remind 
 me of the baby, or did the baby or John store them away? I have them put up on the mantle and they 
 look quite home like. In fact they are better company than a picture would for they remind me of the 
 realities of the baby's life." 
 
282 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 We had rented houses for about ten years and he got so he would not board 
 or live in rented rooms. We lived in some very stuffy, small houses, as rents 
 were very high in Washington. He used to get out and run races with the 
 children and he was never happier than when he was on the floor with 
 three or four children climbing over him and wrestling with him. He 
 would get one under each arm and with the rest pounding him and 
 trying to get the others loose and they would keep such a din that I would 
 have to get out and leave them to themselves. He was gentle, kind 
 and affectionate as any woman and his love for home was so great that he 
 hardly went into town except to get the mail or attend to some pressing 
 business and then he always hurried home again. I used to think the last 
 few years of his life that he did not know the people of^ our own county as 
 he ought to have done as a public man, but at home he was at perfect 
 liberty. He could do as he pleased and take his ease. He had his own 
 favorite chairs and corners and everybody got up and gave these to him 
 when he appeared. In summer he loved to sit under the shade of the 
 trees in a big chair without collar, tie or coat and even with his vest 
 unbuttoned. 
 
 He was fond of chewing tobacco but I never heard him swear or use 
 bad language and I never saw him intoxicated in all my life. He could 
 never bear to hear one call another a liar. He rarely ever punished a 
 child, but would do so quickly for this. He said that when a younger man 
 he had to be restrained, in court, from taking a chair to or throwing a law 
 book at a fellow lawyer who questioned his veracity and that he felt like 
 killing anyone who called him -a liar. Some said this was "Kentucky 
 blood." 
 
 He used to have a time with the boys getting them to work when they 
 were small. He would get a hoe and take them to the garden. For a 
 while you could see the hoes going up and down very briskly, his with the 
 boys', but as soon as he left to go to town for his mail, they would be gone 
 and in ten minutes they would be out of hearing even. When he would 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 283 
 
 return he would ask where they were and say: "The little rascals; I 
 can't get a bit of work out of them ! But that reminds me of Charlie and 
 myself running away to the creek and floating logs all day, where we could 
 not hear our mother calling us." 
 
 At other times he would run foot races with them, and the children 
 considered him a boy with them. They would often say things to him 
 that I thought they should not have said and I would correct them for it. 
 I had been taught that children should respect their parents and older 
 people but he was their companion and the children when nearly grown, 
 would hang around him and sit on his knee. When he spoke decidedly 
 to them, however, they obeyed, and when he had writing or other business 
 to attend to, he would go into his office and no one dared to interrupt him 
 except the babies who would slip in occasionally. He did very little work 
 on the farm, but would sometimes drive the wagon in haying time. He 
 always tried to keep the boys at work, at least part of the time and they 
 always helped in haying time. Often with the help of the hired man they 
 put up the entire crop of hay. 
 
 His last day and night in Congress showed how conscientious he was. 
 He sat up that last night all night to watch the appropriations for the dis 
 trict, coming home in a drizzling rain at five o'clock in the morning and 
 returning for the adjournment at 12 o'clock next day. He took cold and 
 his throat was affected again. He was again threatened with tonsilitis, 
 but on returning home in March lie seemed fairly well for two weeks. 
 His throat still troubled him and he worried much over my sickness, for I 
 had been sick in Washington for six weeks, and after returning home had 
 relapsed. He was much worried and one day while writing he was over 
 come with what he called "a dizzy spell" 'and was unable to speak. They 
 kept it from me for a week, but on the first day I sat up Mr. Bland was 
 talking to me when he took one of those spells and I knew then that he 
 would never get over this and that these spells would prove fatal. They 
 continued for three months growing worse and worse. He grew weaker 
 
284 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 and weaker. We begged him to go to St. Louis, but he would not leave 
 our country home. He would not consent to have Dr. Gregory from St. 
 Louis, saying: "If this is anything serious no one can help me. If not 
 Dr. McCombs will bring me out." Finally without getting his consent, I 
 sent for Dr. Gregory but the doctors were unable to stay the disease. That 
 he knew he was going to die is certain for in November he made his will, 
 saying to Judge Holt : "Holt, I am not going to live long and I want to 
 make my will. I may live for some time or I may go at any time and I 
 want to settle up my affairs. I do not want you to mention this, for my 
 political enemies would use it against me." 
 
 When he was ill in the spring, Judge Holt came out to see him and 
 when done with him, said : "Well, Bland, let's us old fellows go fishing. 
 Set a time now." He said Mr. Bland looked at him, shook his head and 
 said : "Holt, do you remember what I told you last fall ?" 
 
 Mr. Bland seemed to sleep so much better all the winter of 1898-99 that 
 we congratulated ourselves that he was growing stronger on this account, 
 but it must have been the beginning of the end, for he died in one of those 
 deep sleeps. He had several of those spells in which he grew cold and 
 stiff one very severe one on the Saturday before his death. 
 
 There was something he tried to tell us for some days before 
 the end, but he could not speak without great effort and the 
 doctors said we must not question him or talk to him that 
 no new faces must come near and that no one could imagine how 
 much of an effort it was for him to recognize even those whom he had 
 been used to seeing. About a week before he died we took Major 
 Towles to see him. They had been long and good friends. When 
 the major had gone in Mr. Bland put his hand over his eyes and looked at 
 him earnestly for a moment then held out his hand and taking the major's 
 held it very tightly and tried to speak but the major urged him not to do 
 so. When the major came out his voice trembled as he said : "He knew 
 me, he knew me." 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 285 
 
 On the Tuesday night before his death (Thursday) he whispered 
 something and only the baby could understand him. She said : "He says 
 'George and John !' " When John came (he is ten years old), his father took 
 his two hands in his, looked at him long and tenderly and finally shook both 
 his hands. On this same day he shook hands with many of us near him and 
 I now know he was telling us good-bye. He would take our hands and hold 
 them so tight we could not get loose without great trouble. On Tuesday 
 night about 7 o'clock he whispered the baby's pet name. She was on the bed 
 by him and this was his last word. He afterward looked anxiously and 
 affectionately at us both. I had little Virginia in my lap. He could not 
 speak and he then went into a deep sleep and never awakened. I hoped 
 so he would and stayed by him almost constantly, hoping. He had asked 
 me a week before not to leave him. About half past 10 o'clock Wednesday 
 night I lay down and got up again at twelve. I found his feet cold and 
 immediately began to rub him and apply bottles of warm water. I sat by 
 his bed all night and rubbed his limbs and arms. 
 
 About 2 o'clock, I think it was, his brother came in and 
 one by one the household gathered. About half past 2 o'clock his pulse 
 went up to 150 and the friend who was with us helping to nurse (and she 
 herself was a physician), advised us to send for the family physician. He 
 arrived about half past 3 o'clock and when he took Mr. Eland's hand he 
 looked at me quickly, dropping his eyes. Then he looked in his face and 
 said in a startled tone : "Mrs. Bland, I do not like his symptoms." He 
 endeavored to give him medical aid without avail. All of us were at his 
 side. The end was fast approaching. I and my daughter left the room. 
 We could not stand to see him go. In a few minutes he was dead. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 MRS. ELAND'S REMINISCENCES. II. 
 
 Mr. Eland's First Speech in Congress and the Piute War. He Favors Impeaching 
 Grant. Disappointed at Cleveland's Defeat in 1888. Crisp's Defection From 
 Bimetallism. "Those Whom They Can't Bribe They Get Drunk." Mills Begs 
 Support and Sheds Tears. Cleveland's Second Administration. Alarm Over 
 the Coxey Army. Closets Filled With Loaded Rifles. Clubs and Government 
 Grass. Mr. Eland's Indignation. Mr. Eland's Lecture Tour in the West. His 
 Acquaintance With Mark Twain. The Chicago Convention. What He Said 
 During its Progress. His Trip to the East and His Visit to Mr. McKinley. His 
 Logical Mind and His Faculty of Foresight. 
 
 | HE first time I remember hearing Mr. Bland address the 
 House was when a proposed appropriation was up in the 
 House to pay the state of Nevada for the expenses of an 
 Indian war and the validity of the claim was being ques 
 tioned. This was during our first year in Washington. Mr. Bland had 
 taken part in the Indian war, having volunteered with other citizens of 
 Virginia City to follow up the Indians and drive them off. This they did, 
 driving them beyond Pyramid Lake. Mr. Bland told me that parts of the 
 dismembered bodies were found scattered all the way to Pyramid Lake 
 over about one hundred miles of the trail. Mr. Bland said the Piute 
 Indians were hard to fight, as they got behind trees. He told me that he 
 shot one Indian and saw him fall. So he spoke for a few minutes in favor 
 of the bill saying he knew it was a just claim. 
 
 When the contest between Tilden and Hayes was pending, Washing 
 ton was filled with troops, and our old colored nurse said it put her in mind 
 of war times. On the street corners everywhere could be seen squads of 
 
 soldiers. Mr. Bland was much opposed to this action of President Grant 
 
 286 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 287 
 
 and was at this time in favor of getting up articles of impeachment against 
 him. 
 
 I well remember the morning on which it was thought that Cleveland 
 was elected the first time. We went into town from Lebanon and an old 
 man about eighty years old, a Mr. Evans, came up and said to Mr. Bland : 
 "Well, Dick, what do you think of the outlook?" "Well, Uncle Billy," 
 Mr. Bland replied, "we have been in the woods a long time, but I believe 
 we are going to come out. I think Mr. Cleveland is elected." 
 
 During this time while the truth was still in doubt, a certain democrat 
 of our town, who was very enthusiastic, said to Mr. Bland : "Bland, I don't 
 believe you are a good democrat; you don't seem to believe Cleveland is 
 elected." "I am a good enough democrat to vote the straight ticket and 
 not to scratch," Mr. Bland replied. He knew that this acquaintance had 
 "scratched" during the preceding election. 
 
 It was quite a disappointment to Mr. Bland when Mr. Cleveland was 
 defeated for election in 1888 though he had hardly wanted him nominated. 
 He said that just at that time when the treasury was in good condition, 
 with' a surplus on hand, Cleveland's election would have been a better 
 thing for his party than his last election with the treasury empty. When 
 the news of his defeat was confirmed we were sitting in the dining room, 
 looking very blue and Mr. Bland looking as if he had lost a friend. The 
 children would persist in singing the campaign songs, which they had just 
 begun to know very well. They would sing: "Vote for Grover Cleve 
 land early in the morning." Mr. Bland would say to them : "Go in the 
 kitchen/' or "go out of doors." 
 
 During the campaign in which William R. Morrison was defeated, a 
 
288 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 strong fight was made on several old members, Mr. Bland among the rest. 
 Mr. Simmons (of Simmons Hardware Co.), sent Mr. Bland a check 
 saying he understood a fight was being made upon him (Mr. Bland) and 
 he feared he would be defeated. Mr. Bland thanked him heartily and 
 returned the money, saying: "If I know my people, and I think I do, 
 I will not need it." There was a strong fight made against him, papers 
 springing up like mushrooms over the district and nobody seeming to know 
 where the money came from to start such papers. 
 
 The year Sergeant-at-Arms Silcott ran away with the money in the 
 treasury of the House of Representatives, Mr. Bland refused to accept part 
 of that month's salary. It was found that Silcott had left enough in 
 the treasury to pay $60 to each member instead of $416. Mr. Bland 
 would only accept that much, and I now have in my possession, I think, 
 the receipt for the rest of the $416, from the officer who succeeded Silcott. 
 He (Mr. Bland) said that he and the other older members were responsible 
 for the loose manner in which the office of sergeant-at-arms was kept and 
 that they ought to have to suffer for it, but that the younger members ought 
 to accept their full salary. 
 
 At 12 o'clock on the night of March 26, 1892, I was in the gallery 
 of the House when the votes were being taken on cloture. Mr. Bland 
 stood near Mr. Gate, of Arkansas, a member of the banks and banking 
 committee, who shortly afterwards went over to the gold forces. Mr. Gate 
 said to Mr. Bland : "Bland, they are standing by us nobly." 
 
 "Yes, those who are able to stand," Mr. Bland replied after Mr. Gate 
 went down. I asked Mr. Bland what he meant. "Why," he said, "those 
 whom they can't bribe they get drunk and eight of our men are too drunk 
 to vote." 
 
 Mr. Bland went to Crisp that night about the time of the tie vote, and 
 
MR. BLAND AT THIRTY-EIGHT. 
 (From a Photograph in Mrs. Bland's Possession.) 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. ^09 
 
 said to him that he was willing and ready to keep his forces there all night 
 if necessary or as long as it was necessary and Crisp told him to move to 
 adjourn and he would see that a cloture rule was brought in. 
 
 The first that Mr. Bland knew of Mr. Crisp's backing out, was when a 
 New York correspondent came to him and told him. He got about a dozen 
 of the members oldest in point of service and took them to the speaker's 
 room. Confronting him Mr. Bland asked if he did not promise that night 
 to see that the cloture rule was brought in and that when he (Mr. B.) went 
 to him he wrote the rule with his own hand 
 
 When Mr. Crisp was running for senator from his state, they wrote 
 to Mr. Bland asking him if Mr. Crisp had been true to bimetallism. Mr. 
 Bland wrote that it was a matter in which he did not wish to interfere and 
 told them to look to the history of that time. 
 
 I was in the congressional library in the capitol, reading on Monday, 
 putting in the time while waiting for the bill to come up. Mr. Bland came 
 in to find me and I knew when I looked up at him that something had 
 happened, he looked so utterly miserable. I said : "What is the matter ?" 
 He spoke in an undertone for others were near and said : "Well, we are 
 sold out again ; Crisp has gone over to the enemy." Mr. Bland was very 
 angry. 
 
 I am sure that it was about this time or on Sunday preceding the Mon 
 day of the refusal of Speaker Crisp to bring in the cloture rule, that three 
 free silver democrats called on Mr. Bland and told him that they under 
 stood Mr. Catchings had gone to New York to consult with Wall street and 
 that he and Crisp were going to back down. Mr. Bland told me, after they 
 left, of their conversation, saying he thought there was nothing in it. Mr. 
 Catchings afterward went over boldly. Clifton Breckenridge and he were 
 defeated for it. 
 
290 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 When the speakership contest was in progress between Messrs. Mills 
 and Crisp, Mr. Bland was greatly worried and he afterwards told me all 
 about it. He had written to Mr. Mills after his speech in Indiana that fall 
 and asked him if he really meant what he had said in that speech. Mr. 
 Bland was much disturbed over it and when he read it in the paper he said : 
 "If Mills said what this paper says he did, he has deserted us." He looked 
 as if some member of the family had recently died and immediately 
 wrote to Mr. Mills and Mr. Mills in reply acknowledged the speech. When 
 Mr. Bland got to Washington he had not made up his mind what to do and 
 the contest became very heated and for three days and nights the news 
 paper men and friends of Mills haunted his footsteps. In the meantime 
 Mr. Mills had sent for Mr. Bland and told him he would not organize the 
 House or the committee on coinage, weights and measures against silver. 
 Several persons had come to Mr. Bland and informed him that Senator 
 Hill of New York was backing Crisp. He said he knew what that meant ; 
 that he was afraid to support Crisp, and that he had known Mills a long 
 time and had his assurance that he would not organize against silver. 
 Finally, going to Mills' room and finding it full of people he said : "Gentle 
 men, I wish to speak to Mr. Mills alone," and when they went out he said 
 to Mills: "Well, Mr. Mills, we have known each other a long time 
 and have been friends a long time ; I have come to tell you I am going to 
 vote for you." Mr. Bland said : "We shook hands and Mills shed tears 
 and I did too." But it was late ; the silver men had become scattered and 
 could not be gotten together. So Crisp was elected. 
 
 During the year of the repeal of the Sherman act, at the close of the 
 extra session, a motion was made to vote extra mileage. Mr. Bland 
 took the floor and said he was opposed to democratic members going on 
 record as voting and accepting extra mileage and that he, for one, would 
 not accept it. The motion carried and Mr. Bland would not accept this 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 291 
 
 mileage although urged by myself and our daughter to do so. There was 
 a question as to whether we could keep her in school longer. Our expenses 
 being heavy and the fear of the defeat which followed overshadowed us 
 all. He steadily refused and on our daughter's insisting and saying : "Oh, 
 papa, take it, it would be enough to finish me at school," he spoke very 
 slowly and said: "Would you have me do a thing that I do not 
 consider honorable?" I well remember that one member from the Far 
 West, who was a near neighbor of ours, accepted the extra 
 mileage of about $2,000 and never left the city. There was only about 
 six weeks between this session and the regular session and but few mem 
 bers really went home. 
 
 In the spring of 1894, I think it was, when some silver measure was 
 up and there was such a large democratic majority in the House, and mem 
 bers seemed indifferent and a full attendance could not be obtained, a reso 
 lution was introduced to dock each man his salary during the time he so 
 absented himself (this was the spring of the Kansas City convention), 
 but it seems this did not succeed since members behaved in bad faith and 
 did accept their pay. A this time the New York and New England demo 
 crats walked out of the democratic caucus. Mr. Reed of Maine, and Mr. 
 Tracy were working together and it was then that Pence made his speech 
 saying "it is Tommy on this side and Tommy on that" meaning Mr. Reed 
 and Mr. Tracy. Mr. Bland had charge of the time and after spending 
 several days and accomplishing nothing and becoming exasperated, he re 
 fused to allow them to adjourn for Washington's birthday, saying that 
 "if they would not work, they must not play." Finally, several members, 
 among the number General Sickles and some other New Yorker, were sum 
 moned before the bar of the House to be censured. They refused to come. 
 Mr. Bland made a speech, in which, he called attention to all these facts 
 and the fact that members would not vote. In concluding he said: "I 
 
292 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 all the attention of the people of this country to the state of things exist 
 ing here. Gentlemen are summoned before the bar of this House and re 
 fuse to come. I call attention to the fact that we are proceeding against 
 law and order and gentlemen of this House are but little better than the 
 anarchists who would throw a bomb from this gallery." Mr. Reed was 
 very angry and said : "Yes, Bland would have someone throwing a bomb 
 from the gallery at us." But after that they voted, for they saw that Mr. 
 Bland had called attention to their being the cause of the delay in business. 
 He became so worried over this that he could not sleep and he used to go to 
 the House quite ill. I followed him there, watching from the gallery, ex 
 pecting to see him carried out. One day after a number of roll calls, in 
 which the democrats would fail to answer roll call and come in from the 
 lobbies just too late to vote, Mr. Bland said: "I am disgusted; I have a 
 mind to resign and go home." 
 
 During the conference between the House and Senate on the Sherman 
 bill, Mr. Bland was a member of that committee. In discussing that part 
 of the bill referring to the paying out of silver or gold on demand, he said 
 to Senator Stewart that that part of the bill was dangerous, since the sec 
 retary of the treasury would always construe it to mean gold. Senator 
 Stewart thought not. Mr. Bland added that that part of the bill was put 
 in by Mr. Sherman. He knew, he said, that nothing favoring silver would 
 be put in by Sherman. Senator Stewart afterwards acknowledged that 
 Mr. Bland was right, as the clause was construed to mean "gold." 
 
 The spring Coxey was to come to Washington, the people of that city 
 were much alarmed and even the officers of the government must have been 
 frightened for a friend of ours who was employed in the treasury told Mr. 
 Bland that the closets in that building had been stored with loaded guns 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 293 
 
 and other arms. Mr. Bland said : "What in the world are people afraid 
 of? These men are a crowd of poor, poverty-stricken fellows who would 
 not harm anyone." "Do you think so," she asked. 
 
 "I know so," said Mr. Bland. The lobbies here are filled with people 
 when a public measure is up like the tariff or silver. Why not be afraid 
 of them ? They are well dressed and can go all over the capitol ; but when 
 a few poverty-stricken men come here to ask relief they are feared and a 
 great noise is made. There is no harm in them." 
 
 Afterward, this friend said to Mr. Bland: "You were right, Mr. 
 Bland, I feel very sorry for those poor men, half-clad and so miserable 
 looking, many of them are but youths." The day Coxey had set to make 
 his talk on the steps of the capitol, all Washington was out, and hundreds 
 were walking and running on the grass and the police were not paying the 
 slightest attention to them, but were excitedly talking in groups about what 
 they were going to do if any of Coxey's men undertook to cross the grounds. 
 We were standing on the front side of the capitol. Mr. Bland and I stood 
 with other members and their families when Carl Brown undertook to 
 cross a small reservation on the House side of the capitol, and the police 
 ran at him striking him with their clubs. You could distinctly hear the 
 blows. Mr. Bland said "What a shame ! I believe they are killing him !" 
 When the case came up in court Mr. Bland was summoned and gave his 
 testimony which was not satisfactory. He was not questioned at length. 
 He said afterwards that they did not want his testimony. 
 
 During the spring of 1894, several hundred workingmen of Ouray, 
 Colorado, each subscribing twenty-five cents had a set of souvenir table 
 spoons made with Colorado scenery and the head of the) Indian chief 
 Ouray, on them. They were sent to Senators Wolcott and Teller to pre 
 sent to Mr. Bland. They were in a case with "R. P. Bland" on it and on 
 the inside they were engraved "To the Hon. Richard P. Bland, Champion 
 
294 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 of the People's Money, as a Slight Token of Regard from the People of 
 Ouray, Col." Mr. Bland would not receive them, saying that his enemies 
 were only watching to have an excuse to say that he was working for the 
 mine owners. He felt badly to have to return them, saying he feared the 
 people of Ouray would think that he suspected them wrongly; that they 
 had taken of their small earnings to send the present and he regretted he 
 could not accept it. He took the box back to Senators Wolcott and Teller. 
 I told him I had a mind to slip up behind him and take them from him. 
 Of course I wanted them, but no amount of persuasion could change him. 
 
 Mr. Bland, after his defeat for Congress, and during the time he was 
 out of office, made a lecture tour of Colorado. He was greatly aided by 
 Messrs. Shafroth, Bell, Pence, and Frank Trumbull. He would never 
 travel on a pass while in Congress, as he said he wished to be free to vote 
 as his conscience dictated. But while on this trip he did accept passes and 
 traveled through Colorado on them. He made or cleared about $3,500 in 
 lecturing which was a great help to him at this time. At Aspen he re 
 ceived his largest sum, $7oo, while in Denver it was said he had the largest 
 reception ever given in the state 1 . This was held at the Brown Palace 
 Hotel, one of the finest hotels in the world, and for about two hours a con 
 stant stream of people passed through to shake hands with him. Here 
 he was presented with a beautiful silver plate by the Republican Ladies 
 League, of Denver, by whom the reception was given. When Mr. Bland 
 was in California and Nevada, he knew Mark Twain. He said Mr. 
 Clemens was never happier than when telling stories in a crowded place. 
 Once when Mr. Bland was sick, I got Mark Twain's book on "Roughing 
 It," and read aloud from it. Mr. Bland enjoyed it very much. When I 
 read to him about the stage robbers he said : "Why I defended that man 
 and Mark has given him a name. His real name was Brown. I was out 
 there so much earlier than Clemens," he added, "that if I had only saved 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 295 
 
 data it would have been valuable to me." He also knew the author of 
 "Flush Times in Mississippi and Georgia," whom he first met in the west. 
 
 Mr. Bland believed Mr. Cleveland would sign the seigniorage bill as 
 it was not an extreme measure. The night after it was vetoed we both 
 felt badly over it, and when it was time to go to bed, I said : "Mr. Bland, 
 I hope you will sleep to-night and that you do not feel worse than I do." 
 He smiled and said "he hoped not." 
 
 During the time the seigniorage bill was before the president a delega 
 tion of men from New York were in Washington to lobby on the tariff 
 bill. An eastern senator told Mr. Bland that one of these gentlemen 
 had informed him that he had just called upon the president and that in 
 conversation with him, he had said : "Well, Mr. President, of course you 
 will veto the seigniorage bill !" 
 
 The president answered : "I do not know about that. I have had no 
 petitions about the matter." 
 
 The gentleman said to Mr. Hill : "He will have plenty of petitions 
 in the next twenty-four hours. I go by Baltimore and Philadelphia to 
 night and he will have enough." Mr. Hill said to Mr. Bland next morn 
 ing: "Watch and see the petitions and telegrams come in." They did 
 come and the president then said that owing to the poor construction of 
 the bill and the petitions and telegrams from the business men of the 
 country, he could not sign it. 
 
 When the seigniorage bill had passed both houses and had gone to the 
 president for his signature, Mr. Bland called upon him one day on other 
 business, but said to the president: "Mr. President, I hope you will not 
 think of that bill of mine for two weeks." Mr. Bland said the president re- 
 
296 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 plied : "Well, Bland, you do give me more trouble than any other good 
 man in the country.* 
 
 When, in 1896, they were urging Mr. Bland to go to Kentucky and 
 letters were being received by him signed by old acquaintances and friends 
 asking him to come, he would not do so, saying that Senator Blackburn 
 was a presidential candidate and that if he went to Kentucky it might ob 
 scure the issue of 16 to I coinage and cause "a contest over men." 
 
 During the Chicago convention, the reporters in Lebanon wondered 
 why Mr. Bland would not go into the "Bland Headquarters" in town. He 
 did so for a single day, but he said he could have no privacy and that if he 
 dropped a word it was misconstrued. The night after the adoption of the 
 Chicago platform when the reporters came out about half past ten o'clock, 
 he was somewhat annoyed. That night our twelve-year-old boy, 
 Ewing, who had worked all day in the harvest field, went in with my father 
 and sat up until news of adjournment came. Mr. Bland would not go in 
 but said to me : "Let us get to bed early for we may be awakened in the 
 night and have to get up, for I believe I will be nominated and they will 
 come out here in numbers." 
 
 That night about eight o'clock, Dr. McCombs came out. Mr. Bland 
 had sent me in for him telling me not to go directly to the doctor's office, 
 but to walk around and slip up to the office and tell the doctor to wait until 
 dark and come out. He told the doctor he was feeling very nervous and 
 wanted something to "brace him up." The doctor said, "Do you think you 
 will be nominated, Mr. Bland?" "Yes, I am sure of it," Mr. Bland said. 
 "I do not want it but it seems to be coming my way." 
 
 *In a letter of 1900 to the editor of this work Mr. Cleveland said Mr. Bland troubled him so little 
 about patronage that he had little opportunity to become well acquainted with him. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 297 
 
 The doctor prescribed for him, but the afternoon Bryan was nominated 
 Mr. Bland said : "I feel better than I have for three months." He picked 
 up the bottles and emptying them out said : "I will not need medicine now 
 and to-night I shall sleep all right." 
 
 The night before the Chicago balloting we were talking and he said : 
 "Well, if I am nominated I shall do my best to merit it, but I am not as 
 strong as I once was and it seems strange and too bad that during all these 
 years I could make my campaigns and get through all right, but that now 
 when I could accomplish so much by lecturing and make a competency for 
 myself and family in my declining years I have not the strength to do it." 
 He had been urged to lecture and had been offered large sums to do so, but 
 he said : "If I go I will have to neglect my own people. I am needed here 
 in my own district and shall stay." 
 
 That afternoon when he returned from town and sat in the yard he 
 and my father were talking and he said that under no condition would he 
 be a candidate for vice-president. Later on, he sent two messages which 
 my father says he read, saying not to let his name go up for vice-president. 
 
 He knew nothing about their balloting for him for vice-president until 
 the third ballot, I think it was, when they brought out the bulletin. He 
 was very much disturbed. Sitting down he wrote out a telegram handing 
 it to the messenger and saying : "Here, Arthur, get on your horse and run 
 him to town or they will nominate me on the next ballot." Turning to me 
 his eyes flashed and he said : "I would not have the nomination if they gave 
 it to me sixteen times over. If they wanted me on that ticket why didn't 
 they put me where I belonged." 
 
298 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 That he did not want the nomination I am sure. On three occasions, 
 I had to use all my efforts to keep him from making a public statement that 
 he would not be a candidate and I know if he had not feared that such a 
 statement would hurt the cause, he would have done so. He said to me 
 that he would not mind losing his home (about all we had) so much or his 
 life for his counrty, but that not being strong he might hamper his party ; 
 that if he lost a night's sleep from illness, the reporters would get hold of 
 it and it would go out to the country that he was breaking down, etc. 
 
 When we were on our way to the New York ratification meeting, we 
 stopped at Alliance to wait for Mr. Bryan. The committee from Pittsburg, 
 who came to our hotel in Alliance, took us up to Canton, suggesting that we 
 go up and call upon Mr. McKinley. This we did. He seemed very glad 
 to see Mr. Bland and came out to the sidewalk to meet us, saying : "Why, 
 Bland, did you not let me know you were here ? I should have sent down 
 for you." After the address of the committee, he asked us in to see Mrs. 
 McKinley and we had quite a conversation, he saying to Mrs. McKinley : 
 "My dear, this is Mr. Bland whom Mr. Bryan defeated for the democratic 
 nomination for president." Turning to Mr. Bland he said : "Bland, you 
 should have been nominated ; you were the logical candidate and the strong 
 est man your party had." 
 
 "I am satisfied if my party is," replied Mr. Bland. 
 
 Mr. Bland has remarked to me that he led the fight against Mr. 
 McKinley's famous tariff bill and that often he (McKinley) would come to 
 him and say : "Now, Bland, don't make a fight on this schedule." 
 
 Mr. Bland was very quiet and rarely expressed his feeling, but after 
 Mr. Holman died and while we were house hunting, a certain house was 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 299 
 
 spoken of for rent. "I will not look at that one," he said ; " I could not live 
 there; there is where Holman died." 
 
 When the members were all back of the chairs in the House waiting 
 to draw seats in December, 1897, he and Mr. Holman were standing to 
 gether. Mr Holman asked him for a chew of tobacco. Often during 
 that session I saw him do the same thing, and a relative of mine said: 
 "Look at the two old cronies chewing tobacco together." 
 
 Mr. Bland often said that if it had not been for the financial question, 
 and the unfortunate disagreement of the party, that Mr. Cleveland's two 
 administrations would have gone down into history as having been the era 
 of much good legislation; that many good bills were passed, but that the 
 financial fight obscured everything else. 
 
 Mr. Bland sent money back from California and Nevada to help edu 
 cate his sister, Mrs. Tetley (Bettie Bland), and after returning from the 
 west sent his younger half-sister, Mrs. Goodykoontz (Amanda Black), to 
 school at Caledonia, bringing her from Kentucky. 
 
 I do not know why Mr. Bland seemed to shun notoriety. Perhaps it 
 was because he was left early without a father and mother and had no one 
 to confide in or bring him out. He certainly appreciated a kindness and 
 valued his political friends. Others had to do all the approaching and yet 
 how easily he was to approach when one knew just how to do it. I know 
 I did not fully understand him until we had been married a long time. 
 
300 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 Mr. Bland had a logical mind and he had the best judgment I ever 
 knew. He would predict what the outcome of certain bills would be and 
 this always came true. I always found myself in trouble if I went against 
 his advice and always right when I followed it. He was not severe, but 
 as he was older, I generally depended on his judgment. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE FINAL WORD. 
 
 This Volume as a Prophecy of Progress. Evolution a Slow Growth. Intellectual 
 Development Dependent on Moral. The Sense of Justice Mr. Bland Repre 
 sented. No Justice Without Freedom, No Freedom Without Justice. The 
 Sympathy of Genius for Universal Aspiration. Political Economy and the 
 Law of Kindness. The Greatest Development of Civilization Still in the 
 Future. 
 
 |S FAR as this volume is inspired by the spirit which dom 
 inated Mr. Eland's work, it is a prophecy of progress. The 
 great evolutionary forces which moved in him and through 
 him as a representative American, are moving still. They 
 will never go backwards. Progress is slow. It can come only as men 
 make it possible by becoming fit for it. When we reach a certain plane of 
 morals, certain things are within our intellectual grasp which were un 
 imaginable on a lower plane. Mr. Eland's life and work, mean that prog 
 ress is first of all moral that when once such moral progress is developed, 
 the methods by which it will express itself in constructive achievement in 
 all its diverse forms, will suggest themselves at once to intellects fitted to 
 understand the best possible method of applying them. 
 
 Personally, Mr. Bland was remarkable in the public life of his genera 
 tion for the faculty on which civilization most depends the sense of jus 
 tice. Before everything else and above everything else he was "a just 
 man" in the scriptural sense. This gave him the keenness of perception 
 which belongs only to genius. Essentially he was a man of genius, with 
 all the physical symptoms, the sensitiveness and suffering it entails. The 
 spirit of human aspiration the keen sympathy of genius for the universal 
 suffering humanity undergoes in its upward struggle, moved strongly in 
 
 him. It tortured him to action. He suffered much for others in attempt- 
 
 301 
 
302 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ing to do his work. He would have suffered more, however, in attempting 
 to evade it. He was driven to it by a high knowledge of the realities of 
 things, in the strength of which he saw increasing peace, increasing civili 
 zation, increasing comfort for the world, increasing usefulness for all 
 men in it as possibilities only of increasing justice and of that liberty which, 
 as it begins and ends in justice, is its necessary expression. "No freedom 
 without justice, no justice without freedom" this is the message of his 
 life. 
 
 Back of statute law and the laws of political economy is the law of 
 kindness and helpfulness of the natural good in human nature. To find 
 methods by which this may be developed ; to make men freer that they may 
 express what is good in them; to minimize coercion; to obstruct violence, 
 to humanize government, to energize society with a spirit by grace of which 
 each will desire to help others as much as possible rather than to take the 
 utmost possible advantage of others for this theory of government and of 
 political economy Mr. Bland stood. It is not original. It is not new. 
 It is the spirit of civilization itself and its greatest development is still 
 in the future. 
 
SPEECHES 
 
MR. RLAND AT FORTY-EIGHT. 
 (From a Photograph in Mrs. Eland's Possession.) 
 
SPEECHES FBOM 1870 TO 1899. 
 
 S AN extemporaneous speaker on any topic which interested 
 him, Mr. Bland has seldom been surpassed in effectiveness. 
 His control of simple and strong English is so nearly complete 
 that his ideas flow into words without attracting attention from 
 his thought to the manner of its expression. The last speech he delivered 
 in Congress that on the Army Reorganization bill, in January, 1899, and 
 his speech of August 12, 1893, are examples of his spontaneous power over 
 words which can be appreciated at their full value only when they are com 
 pared with the plain English of the speeches of John Bright or with the 
 plainer German of the great effort of Bismarck's life, the plea for imperial 
 armament he made in the Reichstag, February 6, 1888. Mr. Bland is 
 always careless of rhetoric and at times he is too loose in his syntax, 
 but when the true perspective of the history made by his speeches appears 
 it will be seen that he was a worthy coadjutor of plain John Bright and the 
 forlorn hope of plain men who, after the Crimean war in Europe and the 
 Civil war in America, held the breach for civilization against the militant 
 commercialism which was seeking to dominate the world through the 
 "Blood and Iron" methods of the mediaevalism for which Bismarck stood 
 in Germany. 
 
 . In their relation to American history the importance of Mr. Eland's 
 speeches from 1 872 to 1899 can hardly be overestimated. It is not too 
 much to say that their meaning, as they represent the upward impulses of 
 the people, must be clearly grasped before it is possible to have a definite 
 appreciation of the meaning of the movement of the nineteenth century in 
 America and Europe. They show the faculty in which perhaps Mr. Bland 
 
 excelled every other public man in America during his generation analyt- 
 20 305 
 
2O6 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 ical power habitually used and capable of focusing on any given subject 
 every other power of his mind. By virtue of this power and this habit, he 
 grasped the permanent realities of great questions while others were deal 
 ing only with their transitory phenomena. It happened thus that while 
 he was by nature gentle and unaggressive, unwilling to wound, reluc 
 tant to punish, and prone to pardon even unrepented injustice, he had a 
 power to force issues which made his influence co-extensive with civil 
 ization. His speech "At the Parting of the Ways/' on August 12, 1893, 
 is superior in the quality of its thought as it is in manner to the most care 
 fully prepared speech Thomas H. Benton ever delivered, while the only 
 speech on an economic topic which in its effect on American history can 
 be compared to it is that with which Benton opened the debate on the Foot 
 resolution in 1830. Benton's speech in 1830 provoked the debate between 
 Hayne and Webster, and its importance is thus not wholly intrinsic, except 
 as it represented the same idea which inspired Mr. Bland the idea that 
 the worst abuses of government are sectional or class laws enacted at 
 the dictation of those who wish to take unfair advantage of the direct pro 
 ducer. The "Parting of the Ways" speech, which Mr. Bland rightly 
 considered the most important speech of his public life, produced its great 
 results through its own intrinsic force a force with which Mr. Eland's 
 mind had become electrically charged through his habitual sympathy with 
 the industrious, virtuous and efficient workers of Missouri, of the west and 
 south, of America and of the world. All the powers of his intellect, all 
 the impulses of his life moved him to speak for a cause which he saw others 
 deserting. The crude conceptions of eloquence which so many public men 
 derive from the collection of hyperboles and climaxes in the "Complete 
 Orators" of their debating society days, had no effect upon him. He 
 spoke the English of everyday life with a true Attic plainness of phrase, 
 and with a force above the utmost possibilities of rhetoric. "When public 
 bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions," says Daniel Webster, 
 "when great interests are at stake and ::rong passions excited, nothing is 
 
SPEECHES FROM iS^O TO 1899. 307 
 
 valuable in speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and 
 moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities 
 which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in 
 speech. It can not be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil 
 for it; but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled 
 in every way; but they can not compass it. It must exist in the man, in 
 the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the 
 pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it they can not reach it. 
 It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, 
 or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native 
 force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied 
 contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, and 
 the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the deci 
 sion of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and 
 all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked 
 and subdued as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is 
 eloquent ; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception outrunning 
 the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the daunt 
 less spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every 
 feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object 
 this, this is eloquence ; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all 
 eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action." 
 
 Little in this eulogy of John Adams, speaking for the independence of 
 America, need be changed to make the whole apply with full force to Bland 
 as he rallied a retreating party back to standards which he believed with all 
 the forces of his nature to represent the world's hope of justice and prog 
 ress. It is not well to attribute too great excellence to any man, and it 
 ought to be remembered when we see Mr. Bland mastering and compelling 
 those who had underrated and depreciated him, that the power he exercised 
 was essentially moral a power which belongs to every virtuous and 
 manly man in the tull measure in which he is willing to exercise it. Asso- 
 
308 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 dating, by the necessity of public life, with that too large class in all parties 
 who are demoralized and emasculated by the deceits of politics, Mr. Bland 
 retained the virility, the manliness, which can come only from virtue. It 
 happened thus, that when "silver tongued orators," made famous by 
 intellectual and rhetorical assumptions of virtue, failed at the climaxes of 
 their careers of false pretense and passed over to the left hand among the 
 fruitless and useless of all generations, he stood "to give the world assur 
 ance of a man." 
 
 His speeches in congress cover a wide range of subjects, but in one 
 way or another, they all deal with the fundamental causes of progress 
 and reaction. Mr. Eland's mind was so constituted that he found it diffi 
 cult to deal with any subject without analyzing it until he had mastered its 
 governing principles. As a political economist and specialist he was a 
 believer in progress through the evolutionary power of human nature con 
 trolling its environment in the measure of its own freedom to develop. 
 Tracing the source of all wealth on earth to the earth itself, he habitually 
 applied the tests of his principles to every question and so produced in the 
 minds of the ignorant and the prejudiced the idea that he was a specialist 
 whose habits of thought and expression were narrowed to the demands of a 
 single subject. Of that charge, whether made openly by his opponents or 
 insinuated by his political associates, he took no notice during his life, and 
 he needs against it now no other defense than the speeches here presented. 
 They show in their face that, while Thomas H. Benton is the only other 
 Missourian who can compare with him, he is above Benton in power to give 
 clear and definite concepts, a clear and unmistakable expression. Missouri 
 produced during the nineteenth century many public men who belonged to 
 American history, but among them Bland is the only one who belongs un 
 mistakably to the history of civilization to the world as it is now and still 
 more to the world of justice and generosity, of kindness and goodness, of 
 virtue and manliness that is to be when civilization has made real in trade 
 and politics the fundamental law, that "Right Wrongs No Man." 
 
ENGLISH PLUTOCRACY AND THE LIBERTIES OF 
 THE WORLD 
 
 (Mr. Eland's Last Speech in Congress, Delivered in the House of Representatives 
 on the Army Reorganization Bill, January 30, 1899). 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : It seems that the whole country, the president, and 
 the house are all drifting somewhere, and there is no power as yet to deter 
 mine where we are going. We are passing a bill increasing the army to 
 100,000 men without any message from the president telling us for what 
 purpose this army is to be used, nor can any gentleman on the other side 
 inform as to the particular object of this army. We are either deceiving 
 ourselves and I speak more especially for my friends on the other side 
 or this is a deep-laid plot to deceive the people and the taxpayers of this 
 country. 
 
 If we propose to give free government to Cuba, now is the best time 
 to do it, before an organized system of plutocracy and trusts and combines 
 have been permitted to loot them without their consent. If we intend to 
 hold the Philippine Islands, if it is not the intent to deceive the people of 
 this country, it ought to be avowed right here and now. We are legislating, 
 sir, in the dark. We are told that it is the duty of this government to main 
 tain law and order in the Philippine Islands because we have overthrown 
 on those islands the Spanish government. I deny it. It is true we took the 
 harbor of Manila and now have control of the city; but beyond that the 
 American forces have never gone and American power has never been ex 
 ercised. 
 
 If it is a duty of honor that we owe the foreigners residing in the city 
 of Manila, then let us protect them there; and the city of Manila and the 
 harbor of Manila are all that this country ever needs to protect or needs to 
 occupy. Why not understand the policy that is to be pursued before we 
 proceed to legislate with reference to it? We are not in honor bound to 
 protect the property of the Philippine Islands or the people of those islands, 
 either native or foreign residents, beyond that part that our army has occu 
 pied and occupies to-day ; and if it is our policy only to perform that part of 
 our duty, then this bill for 100,000 men is wholly and absolutely unneces 
 sary. 
 
 But I fear, Mr. Chairman, that we have been led into this thing, not so 
 
 39 
 
310 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 much, probably, by the will really of the administration uninfluenced, but 
 somehow or in some way the idea has got control of this administration that 
 we must hold the Philippine Islands for an ulterior purpose. We have been 
 informed of a pressure on the part of Great Britain to induce this govern 
 ment to maintain its authority over the Philippine Islands for the purpose 
 of prosecuting further conquest in Chinese waters and over the Chinese 
 Empire. That is the secret reason of this bill ; and yet, Mr. Chairman, the 
 people of the country are not so informed, either by the president or the 
 majority of this house. 
 
 The diplomacy of England has always been marvelous. Isolated as 
 Great Britain is among the nations of Europe, with great colonial posses 
 sions in her charge, and yet greedily seeking to force her way into China 
 in competition with all Europe, she finds that allies and friends are neces 
 sary to accomplish this object. She has sought by every means that diplo 
 macy could devise to commit us to a policy that would bring about the 
 necessity of cooperating with her in order to carry out her designs. If 
 England can succeed in inducing the American government to hold the 
 Philippine Islands at the point of bayonets (and we can hold them no other 
 way), it is quite apparent that the friendship of England and her aid will 
 be necessary to our success. 
 
 This is precisely what England wants. England wishes to place the 
 United States in a position of dependency on her. We will then no longer 
 be independent; will no longer have the position of absolute segregation 
 from the broils of the Old World. Dependent upon England to hold 
 Asiatic territory, we must of necessity aid her in her wars of conquest. 
 It may be well to have the friendship of England ; in fact, the friendship of 
 all European countries ; but it' is far better not to need the friendship of any. 
 The idea of a standing army of 100,000 men strikes the American people 
 with horror. It forebodes plutocratic control by the use of the bayonet; 
 it looks to a strong centralized power with an army at its back to subdue 
 the people into silence and to plutocratic methods. 
 
 A conservative estimate places the cost of each soldier in our Army at 
 $1,000 per year in time of peace. At the lowest estimate that can be made 
 with safety an army of 100,000 men will tax the people of this country 
 $100,000,000 annually. If this army must be utilized in the subjugation of 
 the Philippine Islands, the cost of transportation and ammunition and dis 
 ease and death, resulting in pensions, will, in all probability, tax the people 
 of this country $150,000,000 annually. We now pay out about $150,000,- 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 31 I 
 
 000 annually for pensions, which is charged to the military establishment, 
 and to add to it another $150,000,000 would make a sum of $300,000,000 
 a year spent as the result of war and the prosecution of war, as contem 
 plated in this bill. The overtaxed and inhumanly burdened people would 
 cry against it. This army, however, will be used to repress the efforts of 
 the people to throw off their burdens and bring about reforms. 
 
 I can not but regard it as a deep-laid scheme to enslave the American 
 people under the present domination of plutocracy. English influence has 
 been thus far successfully exerted in fixing upon our people the English 
 gold standard. The power of the Bank of England, the wealth of that 
 country, over the banks and moneyed institutions of this country has 
 brought to bear the combined power of the capitalists of England and 
 America to control our financial system. The next move is to put our army 
 and navy at the service of England in the prosecution of Asiatic conquest, 
 the end of which no man can see. We have no use whatever for the Philip 
 pine Islands. To annex them is practically to abandon the Monroe doc 
 trine. 
 
 Heretofore we have asserted our supremacy on the American conti 
 nent ; we have warned the world that we would not permit any aggression 
 or conquest upon this continent. We have assumed to control this conti 
 nent, so as to dedicate it as fast as possible to free government and human 
 liberty. We now propose to abandon this position and start out upon a 
 policy of conquest and aggression, and inflict upon the people of Asiatic 
 countries a government not of their choice, but compel them to submit to 
 whatever slavery we may see proper to inflict upon them. We not only 
 abandon the idea of America for American institutions, but what is worse, 
 we give the lie to the Declaration of Independence "that all just powers of 
 government are derived from the consent of the governed." Against this 
 
 1 protest, and shall vote against the bill. (Applause.) 
 
COLONIAL IMPERIALISM AND THE SPANISH WARS. 
 
 (Complete Text from the Official Report of the Speech Delivered in the House of 
 Representatives, June 13, 1898, the House Having Under Consideration the Joint 
 Resolution H. Res. 259 to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the 
 United States.) 
 
 MR. SPEAKER : In entering upon a discussion of this important ques 
 tion at the present time, we should not forget the situation that confronts 
 us. Whatever may be said with regard to the ultimate policy of this gov 
 ernment toward the Hawaiian Islands or as to the importance of that peo 
 ple and that country in relation to our own, this is not the time to enter 
 upon any final disposition of that question. We are now in the midst of 
 a war, the prosecution of which was entered upon for a certain purpose. 
 
 The resolutions that passed this House and the other branch of 
 Congress declaring war against Spain committed this government ex 
 pressly to the sole policy of freedom, disclaiming any intention of an ag 
 gressive warfare. Cuba, almost a part of our own territory, the most 
 important island south of us, would be, as a part of our own territory, a 
 means of defense in time of war far more important than the Hawaiian 
 Islands. Yet in order that the civilized world might know, as well as our 
 own people, that we had entered upon this contest in the interest of hu 
 manity, in the interest of freedom, and not in a spirit of aggression, we 
 declared that the sole purpose of this war was to relieve the starving and 
 distressed people of Cuba and to extinguish the barbarity of Spanish rule 
 in that island. 
 
 Our war resolutions explicitly stated that we entered on no war for 
 conquest, and that we would not annex the Island of Cuba, but would give 
 free government to her people. That was the declared purpose, and that 
 only. For that purpose, and that purpose only, have we voted to supply 
 the army and the navy of the United States. For that purpose, and that 
 purpose only, have the American people sanctioned unanimously this war 
 as being a holy war. 
 
 Why, sir, if it had been contended here when we were entering upon 
 this contest that it was intended for aggression, for the seizure of the 
 Hawaiian Islands, the maintenance of our sovereignty in the China Sea, 
 that it was intended to make alliances with other great governments in 
 
 312 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 313 
 
 order to participate in the partition of China and to make aggressions in 
 the Asiatic waters meaning thereby not only $500,000,000 of interest- 
 bearing debt, but probably four times that amount, meaning thereby not 
 only increased taxation upon the people of this country to the extent of 
 $150,000,000 annually for a temporary purpose, but a debt of at least 
 $2,000,000,000 increased taxation for a purpose without limit and without 
 termination I doubt if this House or the Senate would ever have made 
 a declaration of war under such conditions. And, sir, to bring forward 
 this policy now and to urge this measure as a war measure is simply to 
 write on the statute books of this country a falsification of the very declar 
 ations that we made in going to war. 
 
 A war measure ! There is no Spanish fleet threatening the Hawaiian 
 Islands. No one pretends that the possession of those islands is necessary 
 now as a defense of our coast. But, on the contrary, Mr. Speaker, we 
 have assembled to-day at San Francisco a fleet ready to transport troops 
 and supplies to the Philippine Islands; all of our war ships are practically 
 leaving that coast and going to the defense of Dewey in the Philippine 
 Islands because we need no defense on that coast. 
 
 If we had any use or shall have any need of a base for coal supplies 
 and a harbor of refuge at Hawaii, we have all that now in the Sandwich 
 Islands. By treaty we are in possession of Pearl Harbor, the only harbor 
 on the Sandwich Islands that is suitable for this purpose. We have the 
 sole sovereign control of this harbor, even to the exclusion of the govern 
 ment of Hawaii. We now own and control a naval station on these islands. 
 We need nothing more. Even admitting that there is or should be a ne 
 cessity for a coaling station there, we have that as completely and as ef 
 fectually as we could have it by owning the islands. 
 
 Coal has never been found on the Hawaiian Islands, and a coaling 
 station there must be supplied by transporting coal to the islands and 
 storing it in our station there a station that by treaty we have the ex 
 clusive right to fortify and hold against the world, and Pearl Harbor is 
 the only place on the whole coast of Hawaii where such a station is at all 
 feasible. No other nation can get such a station on these islands, for 
 there is no other practicable harbor there to possess. 
 
 Why undertake to deceive ourselves or deceive the world by the 
 hypocritical cry that Hawaii is necessary now as a war measure? No 
 intelligent man believes such a statement. 
 
 No, sir, we started out protesting against the system of colonization. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 We have from the beginning denounced the idea of colonization. We 
 started out for the purpose of wresting one of Spain's colonies from her 
 rule, because our Government is hostile to the idea of people being domi 
 nated as a colony. In vindication of our antagonism to colonization and 
 our position in favor of freedom, our flag was to be planted by our 
 army and navy upon the soil of Cuba. Now, on the contrary, that same 
 flag as a "war measure," it is said is to be taken and planted upon the 
 Island of Hawaii without the consent of the people of that island. Such 
 a policy is indefensible; and the plea which is put forward in excuse for 
 it has no foundation in fact at the present time. 
 
 The gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Newlands), who addressed this 
 House a short time ago, undertook to put himself right on this question 
 by disclaiming any idea of pressing this policy of colonization into the 
 China Seas or interfering with European complications. But he ought to 
 know that this movement for the annexation of Hawaii is simply an en 
 tering wedge for such a policy. If not, Mr. Speaker, why can we not wait 
 until this war is over and the people can take this question into considera 
 tion without reference to any of the complications existing at the present 
 time? 
 
 The fact is, the government of Hawaii as now constituted not the 
 people of Hawaii has been knocking for some years at our doors. Dur 
 ing two administrations, or during a period beginning at the close of one 
 administration and extending through the whole of another, that govern 
 ment has been presenting itself here. But up to this hour, Mr. Speaker, 
 there has been a steady refusal on the part of the government of the 
 United States to accept their treaty or their entreaties. In time of peace, 
 when this question could be considered calmly and dispassionately, when 
 no complications were involved, when no pressure could be made under 
 militarism and military aggression, we have refused this offer. 
 
 But now, sir, taking advantage of a declaration of war, of a condition 
 of hostilities with the bankrupt government of Spain, under that pressure 
 and in violation of the spirit in which the war was entered upon, a policy of 
 aggression and a policy of territorial acquisition is urged. It will not do, 
 Mr. Speaker. This government, after having made its solemn declara 
 tion that this war was a war of humanity and for freedom, can not afford 
 now to pervert it into a selfish policy of greed and oppression. It is dis 
 honorable. It does not become a great nation like ours to perpetrate a 
 deception upon its own people and upon others. 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 315 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, so far as the Philippine Islands are concerned, 
 I do not believe there is a gentleman on either side of this House who is not 
 more than willing and anxious to make complete and perfect the victory so 
 gallantly won by Dewey, the most notable, probably, in the annals of naval 
 warfare. We will not abandon the Philippine Islands until we get ready 
 and in our own good time. But, sir, we do not need the Hawaiian Islands 
 to hold the Philippines. 
 
 The Philippine Islands were a part of the territory of Spain. Dewey 
 and his fleet being in Chinese waters, and having no other place where 
 they could go for the purpose of inflicting a crushing defeat upon the 
 enemy and securing a base of operations, went into the harbor and fought 
 that battle and won that glorious victory. That was legitimate war upon 
 the enemy against whom we had declared war, war in the interest of free 
 dom, war in the very spirit of our resolutions. Being Spanish territory, 
 legitimately acquired, we will hold these islands until this war is over, and 
 that problem can then be solved. 
 
 Solved how? I may not stop here to argue that question, but there 
 is only one true way to solve it. We can not sell the islands, because we 
 have no right as a free people to undertake to sell a people or a part of 
 a people we have conquered. They deserve the boon of liberty as much 
 as do the people of Cuba; and if, in the providence of God, those islands 
 are also freed and turned over to their own people for 'Self-government 
 as Cuba must be freed, it simply adds to our lustre and does not detract 
 from it. 
 
 But we can not honorably do anything else with those islands. We 
 can not profitably hold them permanently, because the holding of them 
 would involve us in all the diplomatic relations with European and Asiatic 
 politics, against which entanglements we have from the beginning pro 
 tested. 
 
 So far as Puerto Rico is concerned, I believe that it is the duty of this 
 government to drive Spain from that island and forever quit her dominion 
 over it. Because we have begun a war against Spain, that is the govern 
 ment which it is proper to vanquish as far as possible in accomplishing our 
 great purposes of liberty, and I say that the driving of the Spanish from the 
 island of Puerto Rico is not only legitimate, but I believe it to be neces 
 sary for the peace and security of our country in the future. 
 
 Spain is a bad neighbor, but after we have extinguished the last au 
 thority of Spain in this hemisphere and practically established the Monroe 
 
316 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 doctrine, shall we abandon that policy and start upon the Asiatic seas, 
 among Asiatic populations, in countries devoted to Asiatic civilization, 
 unnecessary in peace, wholly unnecessary in war, and perpetrate the 
 wrongs that will be perpetrated by the passing of these resolutions ? 
 
 Why, gentlemen tell us that the government of Hawaii favors this 
 proposition. I use that word only as recognizing those having authority 
 there the representatives of a few thousand probably three or four thou 
 sand among a hundred thousand the white intelligent race ruling the 
 Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese, as the intelligent white Caucasian race 
 will rule the inferior race wherever they are brought together. You gen 
 tlemen on that side who have undertaken to make issues here against some 
 of the southern states upon this proposition show where you stand to-day 
 when you are willing to countenance the government of an island by a 
 few white people at the expense of extreme domination over an inferior 
 race. (Applause on the Democratic side.) 
 
 Hawaii is 2,500 miles from San Francisco, the nearest important 
 port on our seacoast. Hawaii has a population of pure and mixed natives, 
 39,504; Chinese, 21,616; Portuguese, 15,291, or a total population of 101,- 
 818 that may be denominated as an inferior race. A large portion of 
 this population we have by treaty and statute undertaken to exclude from 
 our shores because they are undesirable. 
 
 There are British residents on the island, 2,250; Germans, 1,432; 
 Americans, 3,080. Of the Caucasian race, which dominates and controls, 
 there are only 6,762. 
 
 Under the constitution of Hawaii no one can vote without swearing 
 to support that constitution, and it so happens that this constitution pro 
 vides for annexing the island to the United States. This constitution was 
 forced upon the people of the island by a handful of Americans, and has 
 disfranchised all the inhabitants of the island who will not swear that they 
 will vote to surrender their native land to another government before they 
 are permitted to vote. This may be called a free ballot, but it has the 
 appearance of a ballot offered to the voter in one hand with the condition 
 of his voting that he surrender his birthright, and if he refuses this condi 
 tion a sword is held in the other hand to strike down the ballot and to dis 
 franchise the voter. It is a government thus organized that presents the 
 treaty that we propose to accept by the resolutions pending before this 
 House. I deny that the people of the island have been fairly consulted in 
 this transaction. It is a scheme to force a robbery, pure and simple, that 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 317 
 
 we are called upon to sanction and enforce. 
 
 MR. TAWNEY: Will the gentleman allow an interruption? 
 
 MR. BLAND : I have but thirty minutes. 
 
 MR. TAWNEY: I simply desire to ask whether you know that the 
 Senate of Hawaii which ratified the treaty is composed largely of native 
 Hawaiians ? 
 
 MR. BLAND : Oh, Mr. Speaker, I am not speaking of natives or for 
 eigners. There are a few white natives. I am speaking of the population 
 of that island, and especially the population to whom that island by na 
 tivity belongs. When the gentleman presses that question, it as an ad 
 mission that he has disfranchised them by the wholesale, and the pretense 
 that they are presenting this treaty here voluntarily is a fraud and a lie 
 upon its face. 
 
 MR. TAWNEY : Do you not also know 
 
 THE SPEAKER pro tempore : Does the gentleman from Missouri yield 
 to the gentleman from Minnesota ? 
 
 MR. BLAND : I can not yield any further. I have not the time. The 
 gentleman can speak in his own time. 
 
 MR. TAWNEY : I simply wanted to call your attention to the fact 
 
 MR. BLAND : I do not want to be discourteous to the gentleman, but 
 I have only thirty minutes. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, I am not here to denounce the American people 
 upon that island for their Americanism. I am here, so far as justice and 
 right will permit it, to uphold them and to turn to them our support for 
 whatever sympathy they have given us in this struggle. If they have 
 violated any of the principles of neutrality, if they have subjected them 
 selves to any claim of damages from Spain, this great government of ours 
 stands ready to foot the bill four times over, if necessary. 
 
 When we come to treat with Spain we may have a much larger 
 bill of damages than Spain can possibly present to Hawaii. Gentlemen 
 know, and the ruling powers in Hawaii know, that they are perfectly safe 
 in any favors they give to this great government. Not only that, but they 
 know that in the future, as well as in the past, this government intends 
 that no hostile power shall ever dominate those islands. 
 
 That has been our pledge and our policy from the beginning. The 
 resolutions to be offered by us as a substitute for annexation provides 
 that we shall forever guarantee independence to the Sandwich Islands. 
 This is a mere pretext thrown in here under the war spirit to perpetrate 
 
318 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 upon the people of this country what I conceive to be a wrong; not so 
 much now in the acquisition of Hawaii as in what it looks to in the future 
 for the acquisition of territory beyond. 
 
 Why, they tell us that the acquisition of territory is nothing new. 
 That is very true. The policy of our government heretofore, and its prac 
 tice, has been to admit territory that was contiguous, until we have become 
 a homogeneous people. All of our territory, except that which we ac 
 quired from Russia, is connected by land and subject to defense. The 
 great land power of the world to-day is this country. The next great land 
 power is Russia. No government since 1812 has ever attempted to invade 
 the United States of America. 
 
 No one has ever attempted to invade Russia since the disaster that 
 overtook Napoleon in his retreat from Moscow. Here we are pursuing a 
 policy of our own under the teachings of our fathers to abstain from all 
 trans-Atlantic aggressions, complications, or alliances, building up for our 
 selves a compact territory, as far as honor will permit, remaining at peace 
 with all the world, and we have grown up to be the most powerful nation 
 in the world by pursuing this policy. 
 
 To-day we are at war with Spain. And what has been the policy of 
 Spain? Precisely the policy that we, by these resolutions, are invited to 
 enter upon. But a short time ago in modern history Spain was the most 
 powerful nation, probably, on earth. She had her colonies in every land 
 and fronting on every sea. In Europe was her great kingdom and its 
 dependencies. The whole of South America practically was hers, and 
 part of our own North America was under her flag. 
 
 These colonies and the support of them have brought Spain to ruin 
 and bankruptcy. She is unable longer to continue that policy. The last 
 of her colonies upon this continent are about to be taken from her, and 
 nearly all upon the other. This is the policy which has brought ruin and 
 disaster to her, so that she is hardly a respectable enemy in a conflict with 
 a nation that has pursued the opposite policy, that has eschewed coloniza 
 tion and eschewed the idea that we must go over the world in order to map 
 out colonies here and there as a place for American settlement and on 
 which to plant the American flag, and by which we will be involved in 
 large expense in order to maintain and defend them. 
 
 Here is the contrast of the two nations to-day. Let us not depart 
 from our policy. This is a departure, and a dangerous departure. 
 
 Some one asked the question a while ago how these islands would be 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 319 
 
 governed if we acquired them. It could not be answered. No gentleman 
 has undertaken to answer that question. It is left, I suppose, for the 
 future consideration of Congress. 
 
 Suppose you had that question here now, as you will have it if you 
 annex them. How are you going to govern them ? Is it to free a people ? 
 No. You know you do not intend to do it. Do you intend to give the 
 ballot to the people of Hawaii ? You know you do not, although the con 
 stitution declares that everyone born in the United States shall have the 
 right to vote, that he is a citizen, at least, and shall not be disfranchised on 
 account of race or previous condition. 
 
 Now, the question arises, When it becomes a part of the territory of 
 the United States, and there are those born on that territory, what are 
 you going to do with them ? Are they citizens or not ? 
 
 MR. LANHAM : If the gentleman will permit me to interrupt him, 
 would they not be subject to taxation if annexed to the United States? 
 And if so, would they not logically be entitled to representation? 
 
 MR. BLAND : Well, I think as a matter of course, if we are to annex 
 the Hawaiian Islands, and they are to be governed as citizens of the United 
 States, we are bound to permit them to exercise all the rights of citizenship 
 and the right of the ballot ; because we have no right to tax them without 
 representation. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States provides that every person born 
 in the United States is a citizen thereof. It also provides that no citizen 
 of the United States shall be disfranchised on account of race, color, or 
 previous condition of servitude. An important question in this connec 
 tion arises here. There are 39,504 natives on the island, nearly all of 
 whom are of the inferior race. There are only 3,000 Americans. When 
 Hawaii becomes a part of the territory of the United States what shall be 
 said as to the legal status of these 39,000 natives ? May they not claim the 
 right of native citizenship, because the territory would then be a part of 
 the United States ? They would also be natives of that part of the United 
 States. 
 
 It is true that at the date of their birth they were not natives of the 
 United States, but so soon as the territory becomes a part of the United 
 States they would claim and reasonably insist that they are natives of this 
 country. They would insist that the Constitution did not intend to confine 
 nativity to the territory belonging to the United States at the time of the 
 adoption of this amendment to the Constitution of the United States, but 
 
3 20 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 that it necessarily includes whatever territory might at any time come 
 within the jurisdiction of the Constitution. 
 
 Also, what will be the status of the children born of Chinese, Japan 
 ese, and Portuguese parentage? In other words, will not the native infe 
 rior race under the Constitution become voters so soon as the territory is 
 admitted, and will not this fact place the whole government in the hands 
 of the inferior race beyond hope of redemption ? Will such a population 
 add to the glory and security of our institutions, or will not the superior 
 race find some pretext to disfranchise the inferiors after they have been ad 
 mitted, since we know they did that in order to form a treaty of admission ? 
 
 MR. SMITH, of Arizona : Do not we do it in the territories of the 
 United States? 
 
 MR. BLAND: But my friend must remember that in all the admis 
 sions of territory and annexation of territories, most of which was done 
 by the policy of Jefferson and his democratic confreres, it had been ter 
 ritory the climatic conditions of which was admissible for the Caucasian 
 race, admitted for the very purpose of settlement by our own people and 
 our own race, and all these admissions of territory of suitable climate and 
 soil, and being contiguous, it was a fit home for the American citizen ; and 
 so it is with your territory, and if you are not admitted as a state it is 
 not because you are Chinese or Japanese, but because you produce silver. 
 That is your crime. 
 
 But I say the same government would practically be introduced in 
 Hawaii as is there now a government that you on the other side of this 
 House have denounced upon this floor. That is one where the intelligence 
 and the property-holding element control. And they will find a way to 
 control in that island as they have everywhere. But do you want any more 
 such territories? Have we not enough now of race prejudice and race 
 conflict in this country? This race question is not settled here, Mr. 
 Speaker. It is one of the most perplexing problems in the future of this 
 government to settle, and the more perplexities you add to it the more 
 difficult and the more dangerous it becomes. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasing thing to jingoism, the idea of plant 
 ing upon the seas war stations for the American flag ! They believe that 
 it is great and glorious ; but it may end in a denial of suffrage to the peo 
 ple you acquire, to place them under the control of military governors and 
 improvised congressional legislation. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, I have said that the future of Hawaii is somewhat 
 
m#-.& 
 
 MR. BLAND ON HIS FARM. 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 321 
 
 perplexing. Of course we all understand that. We do not propose that 
 they shall fall into the hands of another government hostile to ours. It 
 is not necessary to annex them in order to carry out that policy. It is un 
 derstood now. There is no danger of it. 
 
 The prime movers for the annexation of Hawaii boldly assert on this 
 floor, and we find it everywhere in the plutocratic press of the country, 
 that Hawaii is necessary to us in our new policy. This new policy is de 
 fined as being the permanent occupation of the Philippine Islands, Cuba, 
 Puerto Rico, and whatever other territory we may conquer during this 
 war, and more still, they tell us that we must make alliances with England 
 and Japan, if not openly, then secretly, to the end that we may participate 
 in carving up and parceling out the Chinese Empire. 
 
 They tell us that this must be done in order to push our trade in the 
 Orient. We are to be brought immediately into conflict with France, 
 Germany, Russia, Italy, and Austria, in these enterprises. We are solaced 
 with the a* Durances that there are no dangers of war. We are told that 
 even if war should come, that the United States, England, and Japan could 
 hold their own against the world. This is called our new destiny. Every 
 intelligent man knows that all the nations that I have named are armed to 
 the teeth. They present a military camp and they have immense navies. 
 The laboring and producing people of these countries have been taxed in 
 order to keep up these military establishments until they are mere slaves 
 to plutocratic power as represented in militarism. Millions of them have 
 come to our shores because we were exempt from the necessities of mili 
 tary rule. 
 
 They love our country because they find freedom here from the 
 enormous burdens and the degrading tyranny of the governments of the 
 Old World. Shall we enter upon a policy that requires immense navies 
 and standing armies and that involves the enormous taxation necessary 
 to maintain them? If we are to prosecute this war for such purposes it 
 will be a source of disappointment to the people who entered upon it in the 
 interest of freedom and not of slavery. Such a policy as this is intended 
 and is urged by its promoters for the purpose of building up in this country 
 a centralized power of wealth with big standing armies and navies to pro 
 tect this plutocratic control. When our people complain, as the taxpayers 
 will complain, of the burdens thus imposed upon them, plutocracy 
 expects to be able with military power to answer their petition, if neces 
 sary, with an array of bayonets. 
 
 21 
 
3 22 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 THE SPEAKER, pro tempore : The time of the gentleman has expired. 
 
 MR. BLAND : I would like about five minutes more. 
 MR. DINSMORE: I yield five minutes to the gentleman. 
 
 MR. BLAND : And that is where this will lead to. That is why I ob 
 ject to it at this time. It is because the promoters of the annexation of 
 Hawaii foreshadow a policy such as I have alluded to that I most strenu 
 ously object to the admission at this time. 
 
 I would oppose the annexation of Hawaii under any circumstances, 
 but to annex Hawaii with the avowed purpose of using Hawaii as a prece 
 dent, and also as an aid to the acquisition and permanent occupation of 
 colonies everywhere and for the purpose of entering upon schemes of 
 imperialism, meets my earnest and emphatic protest. 
 
 You are simply on the road to despotism in this country in trying to 
 free the little Island of Cuba. You are on the road to imperialism, with a 
 large navy and standing armies and oppressive taxation, oppressing labor 
 by putting it down by the military, and adopting a military government in 
 stead of republican institutions and constitutional liberty. That is in 
 volved in this very discussion. 
 
 You may go on for a while under the military spirit and excitement 
 of war, but the day will come for reckoning when your bills are to be 
 footed, when your taxes are to be paid, when bond after bond is to be is 
 sued, and when the starving labor begins to "cry 'Peace/ when there is no 
 peace." Your day of reckoning will come, and I call a halt now, for now 
 is the time. 
 
 Some gentlemen have spoken to me about leprosy and lepers. Why, 
 Mr. Speaker, I have not time to go into all these questions. No intelli 
 gent man here can be deceived as to the population of the Hawaiian 
 Islands. Any intelligent man here knows that they are not our equals in 
 any sense of the word. They do not comprehend our system of govern 
 ment. They are wholly incapable of understanding it. Yet they are en 
 titled to freedom. 
 
 It does not matter whether they can govern themselves as well as we 
 can or not. They are entitled to try the experiment of self-government. 
 It belongs to them, or else the Declaration of Independence is a lie in itself. 
 And so it is with Cuba, so it is with Puerto Rico, so it is with the Philip 
 pine Islands. We can do no more than to turn over whatever territory 
 comes under our jurisdiction to their people, free to do with it as they 
 please. And if in the providence of God they are capable of self-govern- 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 323 
 
 ment, they will succeed. Above all, our consciences will be free and our 
 liberties not endangered. (Applause.) 
 
 IN FAVOR OF LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN. 
 
 (Peroration of a Fourth of July Address, Delivered at Lebanon, Missouri, in 1873). 
 
 Nearly forty millions of Americans rejoice in the blessings of liberty, 
 purchased by the blood of the truest and the bravest people the sun in 
 Heaven ever beheld. Shall we to-day make new resolves to be worthy of 
 this? Shall we form an enduring link in the chain of our country's his 
 tory? To us is committed for a short time this priceless heritage. By 
 the memories of the past, by the weighty responsibilities of the present, 
 and all that we hold dear on earth in the future, let us be encouraged to 
 act well our part. No republican government can stand unless the people 
 are educated, morally and intellectually. Upon the virtue and intelligence 
 of the American people depends the last hope of man for self-govern 
 ment. So long as the masses are uncorrupted, there is no danger; for if 
 their servants should prove unworthy, they can easily be displaced. It 
 was not until the people of Rome became money-worshipping and corrupt 
 that Caesar dared cross the Rubicon, and cast the die of his country's 
 liberties in the fortunes of civil war. May the guidance of Heaven shield 
 us from such a fate, or from that of Greece as Byron sings it : 
 
 "Twere long to tell and sad to trace 
 Each step from splendor to disgrace! 
 Enough! No foreign foe could quell 
 Thy soul till from itself it fell! 
 Yes, self-abasement paved the way 
 To villain bonds and despot sway!" 
 
 Long, long may our banner float aloft on every sea as the emblem of 
 freedom; and as the stars of Heaven soften with their silver rays the 
 darkness of night's solitude and gloom, speaking in air tongues to ad 
 monish the nations that there is a God who rules the Universe with exact 
 justice, so let each star in our flag, moving undimmed and unfettered in 
 its proper orbit, symbolize as that flag waves in every clime, that here un 
 der its ample folds, liberty and justice are guaranteed to all; "Whether 
 they be red, black, white, olive, or tawny-colored." 
 
"THE PARTING OF THE WAYS." 
 
 (Delivered in the House of Representatives Saturday, August 12, 1893, in Protest 
 Against the Bill H. R. i to Repeal a Part of an Act Approved July 4, 1890, en 
 titled "An Act Directing the Purchase of Silver Bullion and the Issue of Treas 
 ury Notes Thereon and for Other Purposes.") 
 
 MR. SPEAKER: I regret to be called upon to discuss this question 
 without previous preparation, when we have just reached an agreement 
 to take it up. I further regret ttiat any gentleman on our side of the House 
 should see proper to read in this presence one part of our platform and to 
 retreat from that part, above all others, which contributed to the- vote that 
 gave him a seat in this House. I regret that any western man should turn 
 his face toward the east and his back to the west. 
 
 We understood, Mr. Speaker, what that platform meant. The whole 
 democratic party voted against the Sherman bill, and so far as I am per 
 sonally concerned, I did what little my ability permitted me to do to pre 
 vent its passage in this house ; but the so-called Sherman law passed, and 
 a better law having been repealed by its passage, it is now the only law on 
 the statute books looking to the use of silver as money in this country. 
 
 I know, Mr. Speaker, that the gold-standard elements, the very ele 
 ments that are in opposition to the free coinage of silver, secured the 
 passage of that act. I knew they would demand its repeal the moment 
 they saw the opportunity. A promise to repeal that act was put in the 
 platform at Chicago, I suppose, to satisfy that element of the democratic 
 party that wants no law upon the statute book for the coinage of silver. 
 But following that, and in the same paragraph, a part and parcel of it at 
 least, was the promise made at Chicago by the democratic party* for the 
 use of both gold and silver as money in this country, with equal privileges 
 at the mints of our government. And speaking for myself and for the 
 people whom I have the honor to represent, they understood at least, that 
 the free coinage of silver, in accordance with our platform, necessarily re 
 pealed the Sherman law; and it would. (Applause.) 
 
 The two laws can not exist together. They are inconsistent, and 
 that part of the platform that pledged us to the free coinage of silver nec 
 essarily meant the repeal of the Sherman law by a free coinage bill. 
 
 I want, Mr. Speaker, to call attention to this phase of the situation. 
 We have here different propositions that will be voted upon, submitted in 
 
 3 2 4 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 325 
 
 pursuance of the Chicago platform, if you please to call it so. Gentlemen 
 may choose their ratio. They have an opportunity at least to express 
 their own opinions by their votes in this House and by their speeches, and 
 to state what they mean by the free coinage of silver and the Chicago 
 platform. 
 
 It is not my privilege nor my purpose to call in question the sincerity 
 of any member upon this floor or to undertake to criticise his attitude; 
 but I do want to call attention to the fact that we are proposing, as I con 
 sider it, to try in good faith to conform ourselves to the platform on which 
 we were elected in legislating upon this question. 
 
 Why, it is said we have met here under peculiar circumstances, in the 
 midst of a financial crisis. We are asked by the opposite side to legislate 
 in haste. We are asked to forego a part of our duties. We are asked to 
 legislate by piecemeal, and to take our chances in the future. 
 
 I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that the great voting masses of the people 
 of this country may get into a panic themselves when election day comes 
 around. The people will not regard our proceedings in the light that 
 gentlemen wish them to view those proceedings. You may proceed in a 
 panic, you may believe that some legislative act is necessary here to stop a 
 panic, and you may vote for it without due consideration; but every vote 
 cast and every word uttered will be reviewed by our constituencies, not in 
 a panic, but in cool deliberation, and you will be held accountable for what 
 you do, whether you deliberate or not. 
 
 It is said that history repeats itself, and it seems that the democratic 
 party is especially the victim of repeating history in some way. When a 
 people intrusted our party in 1884 with the administration of the govern 
 ment, when the democratic House of Representatives was chosen, I re 
 member full well, and I see around me gentlemen who remember it as I 
 do, for they were here at that time, that before the inauguration of the 
 president of the United States whom we had elected, the emissaries of 
 Wall street swarmed the lobbies of the House and this Capitol, just as 
 they did last winter, demanding what? Demanding the repeal of the so- 
 called Bland act. 
 
 Precisely the same proceedings that we had here last winter. We 
 were told that it was the wish of the executive-elect that that act be re 
 pealed, as we were told last winter. We were told that it was his opinion 
 and the opinion of his advisers that this country was coming then to the 
 single silver standard if we did not repeal that law. We were threatened 
 
326 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 with a panic, with gold coming to a premium. That House was forced 
 to a vote upon that subject before we adjourned at that time, as we were 
 practically last winter ; but it voted the proposition down by a tremendous 
 majority. During the following summer the New York papers, as they 
 have been this summer, were filled with predictions of gold premiums and 
 panics. 
 
 The New York Herald, one of their leading papers, had every day in 
 its columns, "We are still coining the 7o and 75 cent dollars" as a stand 
 ing advertisement of a panic. 
 
 Some time in September or October, before the meeting of Congress, 
 these generous bankers in New York, who say that they control the 
 finances of this country, and what they demand must be acceded, made 
 arrangement with the then Secretary of the Treasury by which they were 
 to withdraw $10,000,000 of subsidiary silver coin and to place in the 
 Treasury of the United States $10,000,000 of gold, in order to secure and 
 maintain gold payments, advertising to all the country that the bankers of 
 New York had come to the relief of the Federal treasury with $10,000- 
 ooo of gold to maintain the public credit. 
 
 It was done, Mr. Speaker, to terrorize the people of this country and, 
 if possible, to bring about a panic such as you have to-day, and they know 
 it. And we met in something of a financial panic; not so severe as it 
 is now, however. The whole country was stirred on the silver question. 
 We met in Congress and the question was debated. The result of it all 
 was the refusal to repeal the silver law by over a two-thirds vote of that 
 House; and the panic vanished. That was the end of it. When they as 
 certained that the free people of this country, through their representa 
 tives, could not be driven as a herd of buffaloes on the western plains into 
 a panic, to trample themselves and those depending upon them, they 
 ceased. 
 
 The howl against silver and the panic stopped. The country con 
 tinued in its usual prosperity, whatever that may be. We kept on coin 
 ing these 7o-cent dollars and no disturbance was made of it, practically, for 
 four years. The democratic party in the House maintained it against all 
 assaults. But when, unfortunately, our friends on the other side got the 
 power they enacted another law, repealing the law of i878. 
 
 That law, Mr. Speaker, The Sherman law, I denounced in an article 
 in the North American Review, about two months after it was enacted, 
 as a "Janus-faced" statute. A law that provided for the purchase of 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 327 
 
 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion per month on which treasury notes 
 should be issued at the market rate of the purchases; that these notes 
 should not be kept in circulation in excess of the cost price of the bullion ; 
 that the bullion was to be coined for the redemption of the notes, and that 
 it further provided that in the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury 
 the notes should be redeemed in gold, in order to keep a parity between the 
 two metals. 
 
 The face of the gold part of it was turned to the east the gold stand 
 ard; the other part, to redeem in silver, looked to the west; and if the 
 statute had included with purchase of bullion and coining it into money, 
 the redemption of the notes in the resulting coin, it would in some respects, 
 at least, be in harmony with the idea of ultimate bimetallism. But I pre 
 dicted in that article, with the administration then in power, the purchase 
 of silver would probably go on and the law be executed until after the next 
 presidential election, and if an administration hostile to silver was elected, 
 gentlemen who gave it their support would be very sick of their bargain. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, I have no defense to make of that law, further 
 than this : We are told by the Herschell committee that investigated the 
 subject of suspending the coinage in India that the repeal of this act, the 
 so-called Sherman act, would cause a heavy decline in the price of that 
 metal. I will send to the clerk's desk and have read the portion of that 
 report I have marked. 
 
 The clerk read as follows : 
 
 Moreover a strong agitation exists in the United States with respect 
 to the law now in force providing for the purchase of silver. Fears have 
 been and are entertained that there may come to be a premium on gold, 
 and strong pressure has been brought to bear upon the government of that 
 country with a view to bring about an alteration of that law. 
 
 In December !ast a bill was introduced in the Senate to repeal the 
 Sherman act, and another to suspend the purchase, under it. Whether 
 any such measure will pass into law it is impossible to foretell, but it must 
 be regarded as possible; and although in the light of past experience pre 
 dictions on such a subject must be made with caution, it is certainly proba 
 ble that the repeal of the Sherman act would be followed with a heavy 
 fall in the price of silver. 
 
 MR. BLAND: Mr. Speaker, there is another portion of that report 
 that I will not have read at present, but it is to the same effect. It predicts 
 a fall in the price of silver when we repeal the Sherman act of probably 
 six pence per ounce, and it is said, sir, that it was the apprehension that the 
 Government of the United States would suspend the coinage of silver, 
 would repeal the law, that induced the British Parliament to recommend 
 
328 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 to the government of India the suspension of the coinage of silver at the 
 mints of India. We understand that India, while it is said to have a gov 
 ernment of its own, is simply governed by a council of Englishmen ap 
 pointed for that purpose. I said the British Parliament, Mr. Speaker, 
 but I made a mistake. The British Parliament had nothing to do with this 
 measure, and they are even now beginning to criticise it. It was the 
 British council for India. 
 
 Now, sir, we are asked here deliberately to repeal this law, and I 
 want to call the attention of my friends on this side of the House, who 
 proclaim themselves to be friends of free coinage at a reasonable ratio 
 I want to call their attention to this point and to ask them this question : 
 Why do you gentlemen insist that you will repeal this law and send silver 
 down probably fifteen cents an ounce before you fix the ratio ? Is that an act 
 friendly to silver ? Can any gentleman here face his free coinage constitu 
 ency and defend his vote subtracting from the value of silver fifteen cents 
 an ounce before he votes to fix the ratio ? I dare him to undertake it. He 
 can not do it. 
 
 It may be convenient to follow the recommendations of the president, 
 but the president does not elect the members of this house. We do not hold 
 our commissions from the executive, and I am afraid that if some of us 
 undertake to act here upon that line, when our present commissions ex 
 pire, we shall have all the leisure that we want to study the silver question 
 in peace and quietness at home. (Laughter.) For myself I feel it to be 
 a conscientious duty to carry out my convictions on this subject, and I owe 
 it to my constituents to represent what I believe to be their interests. Why 
 are we rushed in here and asked to repeal the only law that sustains, for 
 the moment, at least, the value of silver, before we fix the ratio ? 
 
 There is no consistency in it; none whatever. The claim is not sin 
 cere that the president expects hereafter to recommend bimetallism, for he 
 does not do it in his message, and that claim misrepresents his position. 
 He recommends the reverse. The concluding paragraph of the message 
 means, if it means anything, that after you shall have totally demonetized 
 silver by repealing this Sherman act, you will be required to go further in 
 the same direction ; and I make a prediction here and now, and my friends, 
 I want you to watch the proceedings of Congress in these coming weeks 
 of this extra session, or of the next regular session, to see whether I am 
 right or not. 
 
 My prediction is that in order to carry out the recommendations of 
 
SPEECHES FROM iS^O TO 1899. 329 
 
 that message we shall be called upon to sell bonds to procure gold. For 
 what? To redeem all our pecuniary obligations, according to the very 
 language of that message in that money which is recognized by the prin 
 cipal nations of the world. Why did not the president say "gold?" 
 (Laughter.) We know what his language means. (Laughter.) You 
 are asked to load up the Federal Treasury with gold, to redeem every 
 pecuniary obligation of the government with gold, although the standard 
 silver dollar is the identical dollar on which bond obligations were based 
 when they were issued, because they called for coin of the standard value 
 at the time of their issue, and that was the standard. 
 
 But now, I repeat, we shall have to redeem all this bullion, all these 
 Sherman notes, in gold ; we shall have to sell bonds to get gold to redeem 
 all our greenbacks, all our silver certificates, and we will be compelled to 
 carry our silver dollars as so much dead weight of bullion in the treasury, 
 so that we might as well dump them into the Potomac. That is what all 
 this means. In other words, every piece of paper money issued in this 
 country to-day, every silver certificate, every greenback, every bond, every 
 Sherman note, is to be redeemed in gold, and we must procure the gold 
 for their redemption. 
 
 What, then, are you to do with your silver bullion, and with all your 
 silver dollars, together about $500,000,000? They are to be demon 
 etized as a base metal, and you know it. I am talking to intelligent gen 
 tlemen who have read that message, and there is not an intelligent gentle 
 man here who has read it who can misunderstand it. Why should you' 
 go on, then, to try to deceive yourselves and your constituents on this sub 
 ject? There is no silver in that message, and gentlemen on the other side 
 will simply do themselves and the subject justice if, hereafter, in the course 
 of their debate, they will leave silver out of it, because they are proposing 
 a measure in which there is no consideration whatever for silver. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it may be necessary, and probably is, that I go somewhat 
 into the discussion of the silver question on its merits. I have alluded to 
 these preliminary matters which have been thrown in, and have tried to 
 state that no legislation which we can enact here is going to relieve the 
 panic. This panic has been brought about for the express purpose of re 
 pealing this law; there is no question about that. We were threatened 
 last winter with a gold premium. I stated then on this floor, and I state 
 now, that there is no gold premium. 
 
 On the contrary I believe the people are now paying a premium for 
 
33 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 silver and silver certificates. We were urged that we must issue more 
 bonds, that if we did not we were to have a panic. All the newspapers of 
 the east especially were advertising a panic if we did not issue bonds. We 
 did not issue them. The Secretary of the Treasury was threatened with 
 a panic if he did not comply with the demand, and he refused. Those who 
 were interested in getting up this panic began to refuse loans, to cramp, 
 to draw in currency. Many of the banks which had been engaged in 
 booming real estate, or in other questionable transactions, and were conse 
 quently weak, began to fail. 
 
 Stocks, called industrial stocks, that had been watered in Wall street, 
 cordage trusts, lead trusts, whisky trusts, railroad stocks that had been 
 watered, began to tumble down to something like reasonable rates, and you 
 had a panic. Banks which were weak began to fail, and the people began 
 a run on banks which were strong. The whole country became alarmed. 
 People began to take their money out of the banks and put it into safe- 
 deposit vaults or into their safes at home. It is said theyxDUght to let their 
 money remain in the banks. Well, probably they ought to do so; but 
 what is the difference? The banks are afraid to let the money go out if 
 they have it. Now, the panic has come; and those who conspired to 
 bring it about have got more than they bargained for. The idea is that 
 we can relieve this panic by the repeal of the Sherman law. 
 
 Why, Mr. Speaker, I say right here (and history will bear me out in 
 the statement) that while there was some alarm in the country before, yet 
 the moment the British government demonetized silver in India, then the 
 panic began in earnest not before; that precipitated this panic in its 
 present shape. We all understand that. In this way desolation was 
 brought into many of the states of this Union, and men who had before 
 been prosperous and happy were by the thousands sent as tramps through 
 out the land. 
 
 All parts of the country have felt the effects. It is this fight upon 
 silver that has precipitated this panic; and the repeal of the Sherman law 
 will only intensify it, not relieve it. The panic will be relieved when 
 everything gets so low that people see they can make money by buying; 
 when they begin to buy prices will go up ; and when everybody is buying 
 money will come from its hoarding places and you will have some relief. 
 In no other way will relief come. 
 
 Gold is coming to us to-day. Notwithstanding we are told the peo 
 ple across the water are afraid to invest here for fear that we will not pay 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 33 1 
 
 in gold, yet these people are sustaining prices to-day and sending here 
 all the money that they can spare. There was a panic in gold-using Aus 
 tralia that has bankrupted that whole people and sent terror to the banks 
 all over England. We know that gold can not be obtained there except 
 by paying for it ; yet it is coming here. 
 
 Talk about a premium on gold; here is the treasury of the United 
 States that is open to the plunder of every speculator of the civilized world. 
 He can take his Sherman note or his greenback or any other government 
 currency there and get gold without cost. Did you ever notice the names 
 of these gentlemen in New York who are shipping gold abroad, or bring 
 ing it back? Every one of those names that I have seen has a foreign 
 termination; every one of those gentlemen, so far as I am advised, is an 
 agent or branch bank of some bank across the water. 
 
 If you go to the bank of England to get gold for export you must pay 
 a premium on it ; if you go to the bank of France to get gold for export you 
 must pay a premium on it. The case is the same with every other banking 
 house in Europe ; no gold can be obtained there without paying a premium. 
 But here is the treasury of the United States professing to be so helpless 
 that it can not prevent every gold speculator from robbing the government 
 of its gold. Our treasury will not pay out the silver which it might pay. 
 
 The Bank of France will pay out silver, or will charge a premium on 
 gold if it is wanted for anything but domestic use. But the treasury of 
 the United States, instead of paying out gold and silver in equal quantities 
 and thus preventing its gold (if it is necessary to preserve it, though I see 
 no necessity of preserving it, for all our money is at a premium to-day), 
 lets everybody go there and get as much gold as he pleases. Why not pay 
 out the silver when we have more of it than we have of gold, or pay out 
 gold when we have more of it than of silver, and thus protect ourselves ? 
 
 It is because the administration is hostile to silver ; and thus it is sur 
 rendering this country to the Shylocks of the Old World who have made 
 war upon it. The aristocracy of western Europe has absolutely tabooed 
 silver in those countries; driven it away from there. Here it finds its only 
 resting place. The last fight for the white metal is to be made here in this 
 country and in this house, my friends. Will you stand by it now, or will 
 you let the Shylocks come and have their way ? It is for you to determine. 
 
 I think, Mr. Speaker, that we can trust the people of this country on 
 a question of importance as vital as this. The question is now before us. 
 This is its last resort. Will you virtually demonetize the money of nearly 
 
33 2 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 70,000,000 of people, with a vast empire of 3,000,000 of square miles, a 
 people thirsting for money to open up new railroads, to establish new fac 
 tories, to operate new places of business, to inaugurate new industries; 
 7o, ooo, ooo of people demanding money, twice what we have to-day, a new 
 people, a new country, a free people, or they ought to be free whether they 
 are or not? 
 
 Are you to give up the fight and let this vast body of our wealth go to 
 ruin? I do not believe it. We know well enough that if we repeal this 
 law and give nothing for it, the people of this country will regard it as 
 a total demonetization of silver, which it will be so far as this Congress is 
 concerned, without any question. 
 
 Now, my friends and I do not care whether you are democrats or 
 republicans, or who you are. I appeal to you, especially as democrats 
 when in 1890 in nearly every state of this Union the democratic party in 
 its platforms demanded free and unlimited coinage of silver, when you 
 embodied it in your great Chicago national platform, when the democratic 
 party has for years stood before the House and the country as the bulwark 
 in defense of the white metal, in the face of all these things are you now 
 to desert the cause and surrender the fight ? Can you afford to do it ? Will 
 you go to your people and tell them that you are not able to carry out the 
 pledges of your platform, the promises upon which you were sent here, or 
 any part of it, except that which resulted in the total demonetization of 
 silver and the sacrifice of their interests? 
 
 What does free coinage of silver mean ? It means that the holders of 
 silver bullion, at some ratio to be fixed in the bill, may go to the mints of 
 the government and have it struck into the legal-tender money of the coun 
 try and deposit the dollars so coined, if the holder so desires, and have a 
 certificate issued to him in place of it. What is the effect of unlimited 
 coinage of silver in this country, and I invite your attention to this partic 
 ularly, because it is a question of vital importance? It means that the 
 silver coins of the United States at whatever ratio fixed and I want the 
 present ratio that we have now, 16 to I, maintained precisely as it is it 
 means that the silver of the world can come here in exchange for what we 
 have to sell. 
 
 Yes, it means that the silver of the whole world can come here. But they 
 say that we will be flooded with the world's silver, that it will be dumped 
 down upon us. Now, let us see about that for a moment. It means that 
 anyone with sixteen ounces of silver can come here from any part of the 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 333 
 
 world, or with one ounce of gold, and he can buy your grain, he can buy 
 your house and lot, he can buy your manufactured product, and buy the 
 property and commodities of all sorts that you have to sell with either the 
 one or the other; that is to say, he can buy just as much with his sixteen 
 ounces of silver as with his one ounce of gold. 
 
 With the billions upon billions of property existing in this country to 
 day, and being produced in this country every year, we simply offer to ex 
 change that which we have in abundance on a basis of one pound of gold as 
 the equivalent of sixteen pounds of silver. We invite, then, the world to 
 come with its silver and make the exchange. No nation now, it is true, 
 offers in exchange for silver the gold at any fixed ratio; consequently all 
 the silver that is coined is used in the countries where it is coined. And 
 why? Because no great power offers to exchange commodities for one 
 metal or the other at any fixed ratio. That is the trouble with silver to-day. 
 
 Now, it must be remembered that France gave an example to the world 
 in this regard, having kept its silver on a parity with gold for a period of 
 seventy years on a ratio of 16 1-2 to I. It said to the nations of the 
 world, "Come with your gold and your silver, fifteen and one-half ounces 
 of silver or one of gold, and you can buy all of our salable property in 
 France and you can pay us in silver or in gold, just as you choose, on that 
 basis." And according to the report of the British royal commission of 
 1888 on that subject, France was enabled to maintain the parity of the two 
 metals at that ratio for the reason that she had property enough to effect 
 exchanges on that basis. We are in the same condition. 
 
 Wha'i. is it then that you are asked to do ? It is that we, the govern 
 ment of the United States, we as a people, say to all the world, especially 
 to the silver-using people, all of the Asiatic nations and the Great Indies, 
 come here with your white metal if you choose to come, and trade with 
 us on the basis of 16 to i and buy your commodities from us at that ratio. 
 When you do that, will not the silver-using people of the world come to 
 our shores to make their purchases rather than go to the European powers, 
 where they demand a ratio of from 22 to 25 ? There can be no doubt of the 
 answer to that question. 
 
 You at once undermine and sap the prosperity of western Europe. 
 You will divert from them all the trade of every silver-using country in 
 the world, because you offer to sell those people property and commodities 
 here that are better, and on better terms, than they can get anywhere else 
 in the world. You say their silver will come here. Suppose it does. It 
 
334 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 will go back again, because here is the floodgate that is opened for gold 
 and silver to come and to go with the tides of trade, of free exchange in 
 this the greatest country the world ever saw. It will come and it will go, 
 and so it will continue; because we have opened up the mint, we have 
 opened a sluice for the dam that now blockades the silver tide. 
 
 Do you suppose England could stand that for a moment? Certainly 
 not. What has made the manufacturers in Manchester, England, the 
 strongest bimetallists in the world to-day? Simply the fact that they 
 must sell their commodities in India for the India rupee. They are thus 
 interested in the value of that silver rupee. They want to maintain it ; and 
 if all the manufactured products of western Europe that are sent here and 
 sold to us are sold for silver, as they must be, or gold at our ratio, do you 
 not see how quickly you will convert them all to bimetallism? Thus you 
 will segregate all the industrial inhabitants of western Europe from those 
 who live on fixed incomes, the aristocracy, the bondholders, and the 
 coupon clippers. That is all there is about it, and we want to segregate 
 them. 
 
 You see, then, that when we do this in this country western Europe 
 must come to our standard or abandon commerce with all silver-using 
 countries, and with us. Mark that. We are the best market in the world 
 for manufactured European products. They can not live without this 
 market, and they can not keep this market unless they recognize and take 
 our silver at the same value that we take it ; and they know it. 
 
 I know that the gold owners in that country and this, the bondholders 
 and bankers, those who are living on fixed incomes, and who are living on 
 interest, and whose business it is to loan money and to have that money in 
 crease in value from year to year they fight this proposition as a matter 
 of course; but I do not think they ought to do it, for ultimately I think 
 they would be benefited, as would the industrial people of the world. They 
 ought not to fight it. They know what I state is true, that if this country 
 gives free coinage of gold and silver at a fair ratio it settles the question 
 for the world and drives the world to bimetallism instead of gold mono 
 metallism. They know that, and hence their eagerness and determination 
 to prevent it. 
 
 It is a fight between the standards ; and this great country must settle 
 it, and you, my friends, must think about settling it here. It is a serious 
 question. It is not only a serious question for the American people, but we 
 are appealed to by the oppressed in the Old World, those who have not the 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 335 
 
 voice that our people in. their sovereignty have. 
 
 The oppressed of the Old World are appealing to us to settle for the 
 world this great question, and to settle it not for men who are seeking ad 
 vantages in the stock markets, not for men who are seeking advantages in 
 bondholding, in interest drawing, in money lending, in seeking to have 
 money increase in value every day and every year, but for the great toiling 
 and producing masses of the other countries as well as our own, for whom 
 it is our proud province here to think about and to legislate. They are in 
 a panic, my friends. I want to remind you of that, and they will remind 
 you of it when you go home if you are not reminded of it now. 
 
 The people are watching this thing. They understand that the battle 
 to be fought here is the battle of the standards the world over, and the man 
 who fails now they will brand as a traitor to the cause which is intrusted 
 to his hands. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, in this line of my remarks I wish to have read 
 from the clerk's desk an extract from the parliamentary report to which 
 I have referred. 
 
 The clerk read as follows : 
 
 191. The explanation commonly offered of these constant variations 
 in the silver market is that the rise or depression of the price of silver de 
 pends upon the briskness or slackness of the demand for the purpose of 
 remittance to silver-using countries, and that the price is largely affected by 
 the amount of the bills sold from time to time by the secretary of state for 
 India in council. 
 
 But these causes were, as far as can be seen, operating prior to 1873, 
 as well as subsequent to that date, and yet the silver market did not display 
 the sensitiveness to these influences from day to day and month to month 
 which it now does. 
 
 192. These considerations seem to suggest the existence of some 
 steadying influence in former periods, which has now been removed, and 
 which has left the silver market subject to the free influence of causes, the 
 full effect of which was previously kept in check. 
 
 The question therefore forces itself upon us : Is there any other cir 
 cumstance calculated to affect the relation of silver to gold which distin 
 guishes the later period from the earlier ? 
 
 Now, undoubtedly, the date which forms the dividing line between 
 an epoch of approximate fixity in the relative value of gold and silver and 
 one of marked instability, is the year when the bimetallic system which had 
 previously been in force in the Latin Union ceased to be in full operation ; 
 and we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that the operation of that sys 
 tem, established as it was in countries the population and commerce of 
 which were considerable, exerted a material influence upon the relative 
 value of the two metals. 
 
 So long as that system was in force we think that, notwithstanding the 
 
336 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 changes in the production and use of the precious metals, it kept the mar 
 ket price of silver approximately steady at the ratio by law between them, 
 namely, 15 1-2 to i. 
 
 When once the conclusion is arrived at that this was the case, the cir 
 cumstances on which we have dwelt as characterizing the period since 
 1873 appear amply sufficient to account for the fall in the price of silver, 
 tending as they all do in that direction ; and the fact that on any particular 
 day the supply of silver and of council bills may be large while the need of 
 remittance is small, and vice versa, would explain the constant fluctuations 
 in the price of silver which have manifested themselves in recent years. 
 
 193. Now does it appear to us a priori unreasonable to suppose that 
 the existence in the Latin Union of a bimetallic system with a ratio of 
 15 1-2 to i fixed between the two metals should have been capable of keep 
 ing the market price of silver steady at approximately that ratio. 
 
 The view that it could only affect the market price to the extent to 
 which there was a demand for it for currency purposes in the Latin Union, 
 or to which it was actually taken to the mints of those countries, is, we 
 think, fallacious. 
 
 The fact that the owner of silver could, in the last resort, take it to 
 those mints and have it converted into coin which would purchase com 
 modities at the ratio of 15 1-2 of silver to i of gold, would in our opinion, 
 be likely to affect the price of silver in the market generally, w 1 ever the 
 purchaser and for whatever country it was destined. It would ble the 
 seller to stand out for a price approximating to the legal ratio vvould 
 tend to keep the market steady at about that point. 
 
 194. It has been urged that during the earlier of the two periods 
 which we have been contrasting, the conditions which existed from time 
 to time were favorable to the maintenance of the legal ratio ; that the great 
 influx of gold towards the middle of this century found France with a 
 large stock of silver, and that this silver, owing to exceptional circum 
 stances, had a ready outlet to India. 
 
 But we do not think this affords an adequate solution of the problem 
 without taking into account the existence of the bimetallic system. It 
 may be true that the circumstances referred to were conditions which 
 helped to make the bimetallic system operative. But as we have observed 
 before, circumstances and conditions of a like nature have been more or less 
 operative both before and since 1873, and yet the effect on the relative value 
 of the two metals has been very different. 
 
 195. It is said that the altered circumstances since 1873 would have 
 rendered it impossible to maintain silver at the former ratio, even if the 
 Latin Union had not abandoned the free mintage of silver, and that sooner 
 or later the bimetallic system must have broken down and its steadying 
 influence have ceased. 
 
 To estimate the force of causes without adequate experience of their 
 effects in the past is a matter of extreme difficulty. But even if it were 
 true that the Latin Union would not have been able down to the present 
 time to preserve silver from falling below the legal ratio, this does not 
 prove that the views which we have propounded as to the causes of the 
 former stability of the gold price of silver and of its present unstable con- 
 
HIS FAVORITE CHAIR AND CORNER. 
 
 BLAND AVENUE, LEBANON, MO. 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 337 
 
 V 
 
 dition, are incorrect. 
 
 Whether silver would ultimately have fallen to its present price, and 
 whether the Latin Union could now, by reversing its action and reopening 
 its mints, restore silver to its former gold value, and reestablish the former 
 condition of stability, are questions very material to another part of the 
 case, but the determination of which is not essential to the particular point 
 with which we are now dealing*. 
 
 MR. CULBERSON : Mr. Speaker, as the time of the gentleman from 
 Missouri is about to expire, I ask unanimous consent that he may be allow 
 ed to use such time as is necessary in order to complete his argument. 
 
 The SPEAKER pro tempore (MR. OUTHWAITE in the chair) : The 
 gentleman from Texas asks unanimous consent that the gentleman from 
 Missouri have time as he desires in which to complete his arguments. Is 
 there objection? (After a pause.) The chair hears none and it so order 
 ed. 
 
 MR. BLAND: Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas and 
 the house for the courtesy. 
 
 If the gentlemen have given attention to the statement just read, I 
 think they will attach all the importance to it that it deserves, especially as 
 I say that it has been promulgated by twelve experts appointed by the Brit 
 ish parliament, one-half of whom were gold monometallists and among the 
 ablest financiers of Europe, and I desire to read a brief extract when the 
 document is returned to me. 
 
 But I want to call attention to the principle they state. They admit 
 that France was enabled to maintain silver on a parity with gold at the ratio 
 of 15-2 to i. They admit it, state it, and give the reason why. It is ad 
 mitted by Herschell, the gentleman who was chairman of this committee 
 that secured the demonetization of silver in India, and it is also admitted 
 by Goschen both of whom are monometallists. 
 
 Now, what was the principle laid down ? They say in so many words 
 that France had fixed the ratio of 15 1-2 to I and that France had told the 
 nations if the world "you can come here with your gold and your silver 
 and you can buy all that France has, and you can buy as much for fifteen 
 and one-half ounces of silver as you can with one ounce of gold." France 
 was able to do that because it was an important country. The report cites 
 the Latin Union, but we all know that France is substantially the Latin 
 Union. 
 
 It was because it was a country of sufficient power to make those ex 
 changes by which it could keep the parity between gold and silver the 
 
 22 
 
338 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 world over ; because the world could come there and exchange it for prop 
 erty at that rate; and why? Why, they say no matter where anyone had 
 silver bullion, wherever it be in the world, the owner would not take any 
 less at that spot for it than he could get in France, less the cost of trans 
 portation, and he could hold it for that value. 
 
 Now, we frequently hear it said that if we adopt a ratio of 16 to i and 
 coin silver it will have no effect except in this country ; but if it is coined 
 at that ratio it will affect silver everywhere, because the world would know 
 that they could take it at that rate and get that amount for it in the United 
 States. Now, I will read from the report of that commission: 
 
 The fact that the owner of silver could in the last resort take it to those 
 mints and have it converted into coin which would purchase commodities 
 at the ratio of 15 1-2 silver to I of gold would, in our opinion, be likely to 
 affect the price of silver in the market generally, whoever the purchaser 
 and for whatever country it was destined. It would enable the seller to 
 stand up for a price approximating to the legal ratio and tend to keep the 
 market steadily about- that point. 
 
 Why, the gold monometallists here tell us that it will run the gold out 
 of the country. Those monometallists whom I have read from do not say 
 that, and it is not true. They say you will exchange commodities for it, 
 that you will buy commodities for silver and gold at a fixed ratio: and 
 because the holders of the silver anywhere in the world can come here with 
 it and exchange it for commodities, silver will be used as much as gold at a 
 fixed ratio ; and it will not matter whether they pay in silver or gold. Then 
 you will see the parity between gold and silver restored and maintained at 
 this rate. France did it, in a territory not so large as the state represented 
 on the floor by my distinguished friend who did me the honor to have my 
 time extended, having 38,000,000 of people. 
 
 Now, I say, Mr. Speaker, the contention that we lose our gold and 
 that we have got to exchange gold for silver does not hold good. It is 
 put on the broad proposition of a nation which produces enough wealth ; 
 and where is the nation under the shining sun that compares with this 
 growing country of ours in population and increasing development? I 
 believe that I may yet live to see this country with nearly 100,000,000 in 
 habitants, increasing, as it does, at the rate of over a million and a half an 
 nually. 
 
 Many now born, by the time they are voters, will compose part of a 
 nation containing perhaps 125,000,000 of people, with unsurpassed ener 
 gies, with a genius nowhere equaled, and with a vast territory upon which 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 339 
 
 those energies and that genius can operate. But a short time ago when 
 you looked across the Alleghany Mountains you beheld the western wilder 
 ness roamed only by the savage and the wild beast. To-day it is teeming 
 with its millions of civilized people, the great Mississippi Valley, and when 
 you cross the Mississippi you just begin to enter the great domain of this 
 country of ours, for more than two-thirds of it lies beyond the Father of 
 Waters. 
 
 And, Mr. Speaker, it is that two-thirds of our territory, rich as it is in 
 gold and silver, embedded together in the same deposits, in the same moun 
 tains, so that you can not extract the one without extracting the other it 
 is that portion of our territory that would give us the money that we need, 
 the money of the world, good money, hard money, democratic money 
 (laughter and applause) a country that the civilized world must look to 
 for its future monetary supply if it is to continue on what is called the hard- 
 money basis. And yet we are to-day asked to do what? To lay the blighting 
 hand of confiscation upon the millions of people inhabiting that country, 
 to turn them out as tramps upon the land, merely to satisfy the greed of 
 English gold. 
 
 O my God, shall we do such a thing as that? (Applause.) Will 
 you crush the people of your own land and send them abroad as tramps, 
 will you kill and destroy your own industries, and especially the produc 
 tion of your precious metals that ought to be sent abroad everywhere 
 will you do this simply to satisfy the greed of Wall street, the mere agent of 
 Lombard street in oppressing the people of Europe and of this country? 
 It can not be done ! It shall not be done ! I speak for the great masses of 
 the Mississippi Valley, and those west of it, when I say you shall not do it ! 
 (Applause.) 
 
 Any political party that undertakes to do it will, in God's name, be 
 trampled, as it ought to be trampled, into the dust of condemnation now 
 and in the future. (Applause.) Speaking as a democrat, all my life bat 
 tling for what I conceived to be democracy and what I conceived to be 
 right, I am yet an American above democracy. (Applause.) I do not in 
 tend, we do not intend, that any party shall survive, if we can help it, that 
 will lay the confiscating hand upon Americans in the interest of England 
 or of Europe. Now, mark it. This may be strong language, but heed it. 
 The people mean it, and, my friends of eastern democracy, we bid farewell 
 when you do that thing. (Applause.) 
 
 Now, you can take your choice of sustaining America against Eng- 
 
340 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 land, American interests, and American laborers and producers, or you 
 can go out of power. We have come to the parting of the ways. I do not 
 pretend to speak for anybody but myself and my constituents, but I believe 
 that I do speak for the great masses of the great Mississippi Valley when I 
 say that we will not submit to the domination of any political party, how 
 ever much we may love it, that lays the sacrificing hand upon silver and 
 will demonetize it in this country. 
 
 For myself I will not support such a policy here or elsewhere, but will 
 denounce it, and as a democrat I will denounce it ao un-democratic and un- 
 American, and will ask the people of this country to condemn it as they 
 ought to have condemned the so-called democrats engaged in it as the 
 agents, the tools I withdraw that word, but I will say as the represen 
 tatives, unintentionally, of the money power and the moneyed interests, 
 and not of the masses of the American people. (Applause.) 
 
 Gentlemen, you can not hold the democratic party together on that 
 line. You can not pledge yourselves to bimetallism in your platform and 
 ignore it in your legislation. We pledged ourselves in the first place to 
 tariff reform, and the people had a right to expect us to deal with that 
 first. In my part of the country we were told to let silver alone ; that we 
 already had a law on that subject. They said to us : "Do not disturb that 
 question, but take up the tariff; we are united on the tariff (laughter on 
 the republican side) ; let us take up the tariff and reform and reduce it; 
 the tariff is doing us great injury, let us attend to that first." We thought 
 that declaration was sincere and we thought the first thing to be taken up 
 was the repeal of the McKinley bill. 
 
 Well, now, my people of the Mississippi Valley believed that you 
 would let silver alone, that you would not try to demonetize it, that you 
 would let it stand where it is ; they believed the tariff would be considered 
 first. But when you come to say that you are going to demonetize silver, 
 let me tell you that this is a bigger question than the tariff or anything else. 
 This battle of the standards is a world-wide question. The question is 
 whether we are to be put upon a gold standard ; and that question is one 
 which in importance is away beyond the year by year regulation of your 
 revenue. 
 
 We voted the ticket in good faith; we expected that the platform 
 would be carried out as was promised that we would have tariff revision, 
 and that when we came to the money question it would be regulated ac 
 cording to the Chicago platform, that we should have the free coinage of 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 341 
 
 silver, which in itself would destroy this makeshift. But lo and behold, 
 we find that we were tricked, that we were deceived. (Laughter.) And 
 I use that language advisedly. I believe it is not intended by our eastern 
 democratic friends that tariff reform should be considered first, but their 
 main, if not their sole, object was to put their hands upon silver and de 
 monetize it and let tariff reform take care of itself afterward. (Laugh 
 ter.) And here we are, just in that situation. Reduce the tariff 25 per 
 cent, yet make money in gold 25 per cent more valuable, the tariff remains 
 as great a burden as ever. It takes the same quantity of wheat, corn, pork, 
 and cotton to pay it as before. 
 
 A MEMBER. That is where we are at. 
 
 MR. BLAND. Yes; we know where we are at now. Now, I tell you 
 I am not going to submit to it. You may pass your bill and do these 
 things ; but if you do we are going to cut loose from you. You may go 
 ahead, but you will never trick us again. I am speaking for my people. 
 Do not charge me with being a radical or a fanatic or with indulging in 
 threats. I speak the sentiment of the masses of the people I represent, and 
 they are resolved upon the policy I have stated. I would not say so if it 
 were not true. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, as I have already stated, the silver question, as 
 now presented, is not the question we have had presented to us in the past. 
 It is true that in what has been called the Bland coinage act we passed in 
 this House a free coinage bill (I mean not in this particular body, but in 
 the House of Representatives) by a large majority by a two- thirds vote. 
 But when it went to the Senate there was engrafted upon it a provision 
 requiring the purchase of at least $2,000,000 worth of silver each month 
 and not exceeding $4,000,000 worth and its coinage into standard silver 
 dollars. That was a bullion purchase bill. 
 
 But mark the distinction : It required every dollar of that bullion to 
 be coined into money as fast as purchased ; and it required the issue on that 
 money of certificates redeemable in silver. To that extent the measure 
 was in the line of bimetallism. The only difficulty was the limitation as to 
 the amount. But the present law repealed that law. You do not propose 
 now to put us back to where we were when you repealed that act, which 
 was adopted as a compromise measure providing for the purchase of from 
 two million to four million dollars worth of silver per month. 
 
 You propose to wipe out the act of repeal and to leave us where? 
 You propose to remit us to the demonetizing act of 1873, which in all my 
 
342 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 section of country the democratic party on every stump has denounced as 
 the monumental fraud of the nineteenth century. Here is a democratic 
 House proposing to go right back to that act. When you do so you will be 
 guilty of a greater fraud than that act itself. I speak advisedly when I 
 say that if the democratic party, after all the pledges it has made in regard 
 to silver in its platforms, national and state, should take the country back 
 to its condition under the act of 1873, you will have consummated the 
 monumental fraud of the nineteenth century, because we never expected 
 much from Mr. Sherman or his party; they never made many promises, 
 as we have. 
 
 If we now violate in the light of day every pledge that we have made, 
 we shall be convicted of insincerity, of betraying the people who sent us 
 here, of bowing our necks meekly to the yoke of Wall street. If democ 
 racy means anything, it is that those who come here from the people to 
 represent them should carry out their pledges in good faith. It does not 
 mean that we are to pass an act which (though some people say it will stop 
 the panic) will put a yoke upon your constituencies for probably cen 
 turies to come. 
 
 I spoke of the British royal commission as having laid down the prin 
 ciples by which bimetallism was maintained in France; and I contend that 
 this government can maintain it upon the same principles, and at the ratio 
 of 16 to i. Yet the house will have the opportunity to vote on different 
 ratios. My objection to changing the ratio is, in the first place, that the 
 ratio of 16 to I is that which now exists. It is the ratio of the standard 
 silver dollar, which is still the standard silver dollar that it always was. It 
 is the law of the land and basis of equities between debtor and creditor. 
 
 Some gentlemen say that gold is the unit of value and the standard. 
 What was meant by the unit of value was simply that the dollar was the 
 unit of account from which we should reckon both down and up down 
 into fractions and up into multiples. It was merely the unit of account 
 for government accounts and private debts and everything computed in 
 dollars and cents. That is what it meant. And that unit was to be coined 
 in silver. That was the original act. Whether the unit of value as it ap 
 peared in the act of 1873 was intended to mean anything more than the 
 unit of account, I do not care. If it was, then, according to that construc 
 tion, the silver dollar was the unit of value until 1873. 
 
 It was the only dollar authorized and coined until 1849, when the gold 
 dollar was authorized to be coined. But the silver dollar was the unit. 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 343 
 
 Now, in the act of i878, the title reads "An act for the coinage of the stan 
 dard silver dollar and to restore its legal-tender character." The context 
 refers to the act of 1837, and the coining of the dollar authorized there 
 with the same superscription, which is the same standard dollar, the silver 
 dollar, that has been identically the same in all of the history of our 
 country. That act restored that standard as the standard dollar, and dis 
 placed the gold dollar. 
 
 There is no question about that. We do not coin the gold dollar at 
 all to-day. It is prohibited to be done by the mints, and the only dollar 
 that is coined is the silver dollar ; and I repeat sir, I deny that the gold dol 
 lar is the standard of value. When we resumed specie payments and came 
 from the midst of the greenback circulation to coin payments, we emerged 
 with a standard silver dollar coined at the mints, and had been for nearly 
 a year. In all of our business obligations, in all of our contracts since the 
 resumption o'f specie payments, we refer to the standard silver dollar. 
 We have been coining them, and our contracts rest on silver as well as on 
 gold. But you want to eliminate them altogether and put everything on 
 a gold basis. 
 
 But I repeat, sir, I deny the assumption that the gold dollar is the stan 
 dard. I assert that the silver dollar is now, as it has always been, the unit 
 of value in this country, and therefore that the unlimited coinage of silver 
 will place bullion silver at par at the mints and in the world's markets 
 equally with gold, according to the Chicago platform. It must necessarily 
 do it, and we will comply with the platform and its pledges by coining our 
 silver at a ratio of 16 to i. For you must take notice that all of the silver 
 in circulation in the world to-day, coined with reference to any ratio to 
 gold, is about 15 1-2, or below that amount. Four billions of silver money 
 is in circulation at a coinage ratio of about 15 1-2, while ours is 16 to I. 
 We have departed so far from the coinage ratio of the world as to go 
 above 15 1-2. But why ? What reason is there for going above 16 to I. 
 
 I say, sir, and the statistics will demonstrate the fact, that if you go 
 back for the last twenty years and compare the production of gold with 
 that of silver, that the ratio of production will be found to be about 15 1-2 
 or between that and 16 to I. Of course within the last four or five years 
 the production of silver has increased, but you must take, in making com 
 parisons of this character, long periods and not a few years Take, then, for 
 this purpose the production of silver for the last twenty years or since the 
 price of silver has begun to fall, and the comparative production of the 
 
344 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 two metals is about 15 1-2, or something below 16, to i. 
 
 There is, then, no reason why we should change the existing ratio, 
 except we admit in order to change the ratio that restoring silver to its 
 proper and legitimate function will not restore its value. 
 
 MR. JOHNSON of North Dakota : Will the gentleman allow me to ask 
 him a question ? 
 
 MR. BLAND: Yes. 
 
 MR. JOHNSON of North Dakota : Can the gentleman name any coun 
 try of the world, where they have free coinage to-day, where the coin is 
 not debased exactly to the bullion value? 
 
 MR. BLAND : I do not understand the gentleman's question. 
 
 MR. JOHNSON of North Dakota: I say ban the gentleman name any 
 country with free coinage where the coin and bullion are not exactly of 
 the same value, and that the bullion value of that country is just the coin 
 value ? 
 
 MR. BLAND : There is no country I know of to-day where gold and 
 silver are coined at any fixed ratio free. I am not going on the hypothesis 
 that Mexico or some weak country like that can, by any of its enactments, 
 have any material effect upon the question. 
 
 I am speaking of a system for this country where it is proposed to coin 
 the two metals at a fixed ratio, or of a country which, in the language of 
 this report of the British commission, is of "sufficient importance to be 
 considered," where it has property and products and commerce enough to 
 make exchanges, and that country was France. I am not taking a little 
 country like Mexico, that has no fixed relation between the metals, or even 
 India. I speak of bimetallism, having a fixed ratio, and where the country 
 is strong enough in its products to say we will give as much in exchange 
 for sixteen ounces of silver as for one ounce of gold. This can not be made 
 to apply to single-standard countries. I am speaking of bimetallism, or 
 where a nation of sufficient commerce fixes a ratio of exchange for the two 
 metals with free coinage for both. 
 
 MR. JOHNSON of North Dakota : Can you name such a nation now ? 
 
 MR. BLAND: I say that this royal commission, whose report I read 
 awhile ago, admitted that France did it for some seventy years. 
 
 MR. JOHNSON of North Dakota : Any country could have done it then, 
 but no country has done it for the last twenty years. 
 
 MR. BLAND : No country has been trying to do it for the last twenty 
 years, and I want this country to try it. (Applause.) 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 345 
 
 Here is a country which, in the direction of its resources, is larger 
 to day than France, England and Germany thrown together. I say that 
 advisedly. I do not mean that it is larger in population, for we have not 
 got the population. I do not mean greater in its visible wealth, for we have 
 not that; but I do mean in our resources to be developed, in our demands 
 for money as a new people. They are old and effete and worn out, and 
 doomed to particular habits. 
 
 We are progressing and demanding money every day. Every new 
 factory that is started in this country is a direct demand upon the mone 
 tary supply, and a contraction of the currency to that extent. Every rail 
 road that is built is a demand upon your volume of money and a contraction 
 of the currency to that extent, as compared to everything else. Every 
 farm that is opened is a new demand for money, and a contraction of the 
 volume of currency; and here we are opening up vast territories, and we 
 ought to open up more still. All these things demand money and must 
 draw upon the present supply, and to that extent the currency is contracted, 
 as compared to everything else. 
 
 Now, you can not do business on a contracted currency in this coun 
 try. So that I say we are not to be compared with those people; and 
 when you compare us, in the way of new demands, new developments, in 
 population to be increased, we are greater than all of them combined; 
 and when a gentleman admits that France and England and Germany, or 
 two of them or all of them, could fix the ratio, they admit that this country 
 can do more than all of them together. (Applause.) There is no ques 
 tion about that. You admit all the argument there is in it when you admit 
 that much ; and here is a commission composed of the most eminent experts 
 of the Old World, a gold commission, which admits that France did this 
 thing, and practically admits that France could still do it if she wanted to. 
 
 We have been befogged upon this subject. We have been misled and 
 misrepresented. It is difficult to get a silver argument into the subsi 
 dized press of this country, and it seems that nearly all the metropolitan 
 papers are included in that term. They will talk about nothing but banks 
 and bonds and gold, and they control practically the press; but the great 
 argument is to come at last, and will come unless you settle it here. It will 
 not stop, but it will be settled. 
 
 But if you say we are not able to fix the ratio at 16 to I, we have 
 offered other propositions. I have stated that I will not vote against a free- 
 coinage bill because the house may fix a ratio that I do not like. I do be- 
 
346 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 lieve, and I admit the proposition, that the fixing of the ratio is a fair ques 
 tion for discussion and debate; but I do assert that, as a constitutional 
 question, free coinage is enjoined by the constitution, notwithstanding the 
 learned argument of the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Rayner) to the 
 contrary. (Laughter.) The constitution inhibits any state in this Union 
 from making anything a legal tender except gold and silver, and it confers 
 upon congress the sole power to coin money and regulate its value. 
 
 Now, does that mean that a state shall make nothing a legal tender, 
 and that congress will refuse to make anything a legal tender? If the 
 states have conferred a power upon congress, the exercise of which is nec 
 essary to the life of the states, I say it is treason to the states to deny 
 that right as a legal proposition. The states have given up the power to 
 coin money and to make legal tender, and have conferred that power upon 
 congress. If congress refuses to exercise this power which is necessary 
 to the very existence of the state, it is, so to speak, disunion. We ought to 
 give back, then, to the states the power to coin money and regulate its value 
 and to make it legal tender. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, here we are. No state in this Union can coin 
 money or make anything a legal tender except gold and silver. We are 
 denying to them a privilege conferred by the constitution of this country, 
 which says they may make gold and silver a legal tender. Yet we will 
 not coin it, will not conform to the constitution and do our duty. Not only 
 that, but "coin money" means an automatic supply. One of the arguments 
 that you can adduce in favor of coin money in place of paper money is that 
 coin money can be over-issued, and that is the most important distinc 
 tion. 
 
 Another argument is that it is not so easily burned up. The metals 
 are not so easily destroyed. Many other qualities pertain to it which it is 
 not necessary to explain ; but the great thought underlying all is that the 
 supply of gold and silver is limited by nature, that contracts are based 
 upon the stock on hand, accumulated for ages, as the world has grown up 
 in business ; that the values of contracts are fixed by the money of the world 
 thus accumulated, and that the annual supply is so small in amount com 
 pared with the vast stock on hand hardly one per cent a year that you 
 can not impair the equity of contracts by largely inflating the volume of 
 money, nor very seriously disturb property values, by lowering the value of 
 the money by a large supply. 
 
 But here we want to interfere with that automatic supply. When we 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 347 
 
 have free coinage and the mints open, the production of gold and silver 
 supplies the volume in the manner I have stated; for you make all the 
 stocks of gold and silver on hand and all that comes in the future a part of 
 the possible monetary supply. Nature limits the supply, so that we can 
 not over-issue it if we want to. Very good; but some wise people about 
 twenty years ago thought that this continuing supply of gold and silver 
 was interfering with those holding bonds and drawing interest, and living 
 on fixed incomes. They thought the production of silver was going to be 
 largely increased, and would probably lower the value of both gold and 
 silver as money, and hence they undertook by legislation to prevent the 
 automatic supply of money and to inhibit the coinage of one of the precious 
 metals in order to protect the volume of money from that increase. 
 
 Now we had better be on a paper system than on a system like that. 
 If we are to regulate the volume of money by prohibiting the coinage of 
 one of the metals, why not abandon the metals altogether and go to paper 
 at once? We are asked to believe that the contention is true that we do 
 not need much money anyhow, because ninety per cent of the business of 
 the world is done on credit. Why not one hundred per cent and get rid of 
 money altogether? 
 
 The time has come, my friends, when credit goes very slow and a 
 little money very much faster. There is always a day of liquidation, and 
 you must have the money. But, as I said before, if ninety per cent is credit 
 money, why not one hundred per cent ? Let us print credit money, but let 
 that money rest upon the credit of the government and not upon the credit 
 of some bankers in London or Wall street. There is about ninety per cent 
 of the American people who do not know anything about credit. They have 
 to do their business on a cash basis. They must have money. 
 
 The concluding part of our bill provides that the dollar coined, what 
 ever it may be, may be deposited and a silver certificate issued on it, as 
 now provided by law: so that if you reach a ratio of 18, 19, or 20 to I, you 
 still have the same right to a certificate that you have to-day. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, in closing this argument and as stated, an argu 
 ment entirely without preparation, not expecting that I would speak to it 
 at all to-day I wish to say that the time has come when we will have to 
 decide whether or not this country is to come to monometallism or bimet 
 allism. I think it is the duty of this House, and especially of my associ 
 ates, to settle this money question, and to settle it on the lines I have 
 pointed out, not by piecemeal, and not by a repeal of an act that sustains 
 
348 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the value of silver, before fixing the ratio, not to demonetize silver and then 
 undertake to restore it afterwards ; but we have time now to arrange, ac 
 cording to the principles of bimetallism, a measure in conformity with our 
 promise to the American people ; and we ask our friends on the other side 
 of this question our democratic friends on this side, who are so eager to 
 get rid of the Sherman law, so-called, which I do not defend upon any 
 other principle than that it is the only law which sustains silver until we 
 can fix the ratio I ask them to come in all fairness and enable us to carry 
 out our pledges to restore bimetallism to this country. If you do not, 
 yours is the responsibility, not ours. 
 
 GOVERNMENT BY INJUNCTION AS A MODE OF 
 IMPERIALISM. 
 
 (Delivered in the House of Representatives, July 16, 1894, Against a Resolution En 
 dorsing the Cleveland Administration.) 
 
 MR. SPEAKER: It is to be regretted that a resolution of this char 
 acter should be thrust here under a fifteen minute rule for debate, because 
 it opens a wide field for discussion not but that I believe that any member 
 of this House, no matter to what political party he belongs, will indorse the 
 state government and the Federal government, in all legitimate efforts to 
 preserve our institutions, to put down riots, and to preserve the majesty 
 of the law of this country ! 
 
 I have no sympathy, Mr. Speaker, with anyone who raises his arm in 
 violence to destroy property, or in enforcing what he may consider his 
 rights of work, tries to prevent others from working. No principle of 
 that kind can find indorsement on the part of anyone who has a proper 
 conception of the rights of the people of this country to liberty. But, sir, 
 in great and disturbing times, such as we have passed through, it often 
 happens that acts are done under assumption of authority that we may be 
 called upon to indorse by a sweeping resolution of this character. As a 
 democrat, I am to-day where I have always been ; and that is for the rights 
 and the dignity of the people of the states. 
 
 I believe in local state government and that the whole arm of the state 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 349 
 
 authority should be used in suppressing violence before the Federal gov 
 ernment should interfere, except to protect its own property and to protect 
 its mails. 
 
 I am aware, Mr. Speaker, that throughout this country, even in states 
 where there was no violence, and where if violence occurred at all, the state 
 authorities are ready and able to deal with it without any instructions sent 
 out by the Attorney-General, the whole country was flooded with deputy 
 marshals.* Sheriffs were arrested, state authority was overthrown, and the 
 strong arm of the Federal government took possession of matters properly 
 belonging to the states. Against that, sir, I protest. I protest against 
 these "blanket" Federal injunctions. I protest against the omnibus in 
 junction. I object to sending deputy marshals all over the country to take 
 the place of state authority. In a measure like this resolution, urged 
 during the excitement of the times, we, as a party, as a democratic party, 
 are liable to do violence to every democratic principle and to surrender 
 here, in these halls, as representatives of the people of our states, the es 
 sential democratic principle of local self-government. 
 
 If this Union is to be maintained, it is to be maintained by maintain 
 ing and respecting the rights and the authority of the people of the states. 
 
 If we are to have imperialism let it not come with the assent of the 
 representatives of the people in this House. 
 
 A STAND IN TIME OF PANIC. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives Supporting a Motion to Strike out 
 the Enacting Clause of the Oates Bankruptcy Bill. Dec. 8," 1893.) 
 
 Gentlemen who are interested in banking rather than in farming or 
 manufacturing, may very properly advocate this bill. At a time of panic 
 and distress, when manufacturers, farmers, mechanics and persons en 
 gaged in all branches of industry are simply asking a little time, a little 
 postponement, with an opportunity to secure their property from confisca 
 tion and to enter again upon business enterprises, we propose by this bill 
 to put the whole business interest of the country into bankruptcy and let 
 the bankers loot these interests. That is the effect of the measure. Thou- 
 
 *During the Pullman Strike. 
 
AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 sands of men throughout the country who are in debt, who are a little 
 cramped in their business operations, and desire a little further time will 
 recover themselves if we will let them alone. If we will permit them to 
 go on in their .usual way under state laws, without interfering with them, 
 they will finally get out of debt and become prosperous. 
 
 But here is a bill declaring all debts practically due at this time, and 
 if a man can not meet his obligations, pay his expenses, or liquidate all of 
 his debts from day to day, he is subject to be declared a bankrupt and his 
 business and property confiscated. It is simply putting in bankruptcy the 
 whole people of the country and subjecting them to be fleeced by bankers 
 and the banking capital of which the gentleman from Illinois speaks. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, if there is a demand for the bankruptcy system in the 
 United States at all, it is certainly not a present demand. It is not asked 
 for at this time. 
 
 It is not demanded by business men engaged in manufacturing en 
 terprises. It is demanded, if at all, by the mercantile community and by 
 the banking community who desire to go out upon the shores of our finan 
 cial distress and gather their rich reward from the wreckage of the busi 
 ness and fortunes of the masses of the people. It is pressed here by that 
 class of people, and not by the laboring people, by the manufacturing, the 
 farming or business people of the country. There is no question about 
 that. The vote in the committee of the whole, and the records of the rolls 
 of this House will show the interests which are involved in it. 
 
 Now, sir, the gentleman talks about striking out the enacting clause 
 of the bill as though it were something unusual. I have seen it done 
 frequently in this House. I have seen, sir, the enacting clause of a tariff 
 bill stricken out in committee and the bill so reported back to the House. 
 
 If the House is not ready for this bill, if it does not wish to pass a 
 bankruptcy bill at this time, why spend the time of the House in further 
 discussion of it ? My own experience about these amendments of which 
 the gentleman speaks as perfecting the bill is that it is not unusual in the 
 committee of the whole under the five minute rule, when the members are 
 inattentive, when they are in the cloak rooms or scattered about, the 
 amendments are placed in the bill, making it ten times worse than it was 
 before. For my own part I would rather take the present bill, bad as it 
 is, if we are to have a bankruptcy bill at all, than to run the risk of what 
 may be added to it in the committee of the whole. 
 
 All of this special plea, Mr. Speaker, about involuntary bankruptcy 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSyO TO 1899. 351 
 
 comes from a source that is well understood. We know where the plea 
 comes from. The gentleman from Illinois, when he stated that there 
 ought to be some involuntary bankruptcy proceedings as well as voluntary 
 proceedings, if I understood him correctly, meant 
 
 MR. CANNON of Illinois : If the gentleman will allow me, I will sug 
 gest, first, that there ought to be a voluntary system of bankruptcy, and a 
 bill providing for that purpose passed. I think it entirely likely, also, that 
 there might be an involuntary provision, and there ought to be such a 
 provision to catch dishonest men. I think, though, from the little talk I 
 have heard during this debate, that it is altogether likely the invol 
 untary part of the bill is not wise, and I stand ready if it is subject to that 
 criticism to help perfect it 
 
 MR. BLAND : Mr. Speaker, we are now in the beginning of the long 
 session of Congress. If this House determines that it wants no involun 
 tary bankruptcy bill, now is the time to determine it, and the committee on 
 judiciary can then frame and introduce here a voluntary bankruptcy 
 bill, and if the gentleman from Illiniois wishes to vote for it, it is in. his 
 power to do so. But I take it for granted that the membership of this 
 House want no part of this bill, and that it is dangerous to go into com 
 mittee of the whole to undertake to amend a bill that has been already con 
 demned by the House. 
 
 Now, sir, I do not desire to take up the time of the House in any fur 
 ther discussion of the bill, and if there is no gentleman desiring to speak 
 upon the subject I move the previous question. 
 
 EUROPEAN CONTROL AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, March 31, 1897.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : The effect of this bill known as the Dingley bill will 
 be largely to increase the taxes of the people. It will tend to shut out impor 
 tations, and in that mode the bill will necessarily interfere with the expor- 
 tations of agricultural products from this country. The trusts and com 
 binations now organized under the shelter of our tariff system are to be 
 more thoroughly organized and multiplied by the opportunity given them 
 in the high tax schedules of this bill, and they will dominate and control 
 
35 2 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the markets of this country. They will fix the price of all manufactured 
 products by it, and practically control the prices of all that the agricultural 
 ists have to sell as well as what they have to buy. 
 
 It is not the remedy for present conditions. Your purpose, as shown 
 by this bill, at least the effect of it, will be to raise the prices of all articles 
 controlled by syndicates and trusts and at the same time lower the prices 
 of all other things. The democratic party insisted in the last campaign, 
 and still insists, upon raising prices on commodities of the country in a 
 uniform manner. Our party declared a policy of restoring the money of 
 the Constitution. We insisted on opening the mints to the unlim 
 ited free coinage of silver and thereby increasing the volume of money. 
 This would have the effect of uniformly raising prices. This policy would 
 benefit all classes alike. But you propose by this bill to increase the prices 
 of the products of a particular class of our people. Your bill is class 
 legislation. It will benefit the class least deserving of favors. The rich 
 monopolists, syndicates, and combinations will be protected and benefited 
 as far as the high protective tariff can do so, but the other producers of the 
 country will be injured in proportion to the benefits you confer upon 
 monopolists. This is not the remedy for our existing hard times. 
 
 It is the stock and trade of the republican party to denounce the Wil 
 son tariff bill as the cause of our present business depression. About the 
 only argument adduced in the present debate is to the effect that the Wil 
 son tariff bill lowered duties, and in that way caused foreign competition 
 with home manufacturers, thereby crippling our home manufacturers 
 and throwing labor out of employment and bringing upon our people gen 
 eral distress. The fact is, however, that our importations under the Wil 
 son bill have been less than they were under the McKinley bill; so that 
 argument falls to the ground. 
 
 The Wilson bill was not the cause of our financial panics; it had 
 nothing to do with bringing the people of this country or other countries 
 to penury and want. The Dingley bill will be impotent to relieve our 
 present deplorable condition. Anyone familiar with the history of the 
 country for the past four years will not fail to note that prior to the elec 
 tion of Mr. Cleveland, and during the administration of Mr. Harrison, 
 beginning in the latter part of the year 1891, a conspiracy was formed for 
 the purpose of compelling the suspension of free coinage of silver for 
 India and the repeal of the Sherman law in this country. In 1891 bills 
 were introduced in Congress to repeal the Sherman law. In December of 
 
MR. ELAND'S SURVIVING FAMILY. 
 
 (From a Recent Photograph.) 
 
 (1.) Mrs. R. P. Bland. (3.) E wing Charles Bland. (5.) George Vest Bland. 
 
 (2.) Theodric Richard Bland. (4.) Frances A. Bland. (6.) Virginia Mary Bland. 
 
 (7.) John Lilburn Bland. 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1 870 TO 1899. 353 
 
 that year, Mr. Sherman, the author of that law, introduced a bill in the 
 Senate repealing the purchasing clause of that law. The metropolitan 
 papers of the country, and especially those of the east, were demanding the 
 repeal of that law. 
 
 All the facts of recent history show that the banking institutions of 
 this country and of England had determined upon the repeal of the Sher 
 man law. Early in March, 1892, a scheme to demonetize silver in India was 
 set on foot in England, which resulted in the appointment of a commission, 
 commonly known as the Herschell commission, to inquire into the Indian 
 currency. 
 
 During the summer of 1892 the secretary of the treasury of the United 
 States, Mr. Foster, visited the monetary centers of Europe for the pur 
 pose of ascertaining the feasibility of holding a monetary conference to 
 consider the silver question. On his return to the United States, Congress 
 authorized the president to enter into arrangements with other countries 
 for this conference. This conference convened at Brussels on November 
 22,- 1892. It will be noted that the Herschell commission was appointed 
 some months before the meeting of the Brussels conference and prior to 
 the presidential election of 1892. It will be observed that these two mone 
 tary commissions were authorized in 1892 prior to the presidential elec 
 tion of that year the first on the part of Great Britain to investigate the 
 silver question for India, and the second called at the request of the United 
 States for the purpose of effecting, if possible, an international agreement 
 for the coinage of gold and silver. The Herschell commission was at 
 work upon the subject of silver with the suspension of the free coinage of 
 silver for India in view. The proceedings of the Herschell commission, 
 it would seem, were suspended, or at least held back, for the purpose of 
 ascertaining whether anything could be accomplished at Brussels by which 
 gold and silver would be freely coined by the several nations sending dele 
 gates to the Brussels conference. 
 
 The conference met at Brussels on the 22d of November 1892. A 
 very able academic discussion of the silver question took place during the 
 sitting of this conference, which was participated in by the several dele 
 gates from this country and the European countries having a gold stand 
 ard. The conference accomplished nothing, and broke up, or rather ad 
 journed over to meet again in the following May (1893). 
 
 The Herschell commission, it would seem, awaited the second meeting 
 of the Brussels conference before taking final action with respect to silver 
 
 23 
 
354 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER, 
 
 in India. 
 
 When the time arrived for the second meeting of the Brussels con 
 ference, no delegates appeared. It would seem that this government had 
 purposely omitted to provide for the second meeting, having no delegation 
 at Brussels, and that no other government insisted upon a further effort 
 for an international agreement upon the subject of silver. The Herschell 
 commission, about a month after the date fixed for the second meeting of 
 the Brussels conference, proceeded to recommend the suspension of the 
 free coinage of silver for India, and accordingly the British council for 
 India issued a decree stopping the free coinage of silver in India. This 
 caused a slump in the silver market, and silver lost more than twenty 
 points in value as compared with gold. 
 
 Following the policy of Great Britain in demonetizing silver for 
 India, the president of the United States in the following August convened 
 Congress for the purpose of repealing the Sherman law, which 
 provided for the purchase of four and one-half million ounces of silver 
 bullion each month and the issuing of legal tender treasury notes in pay 
 ment thereof. 
 
 It may be said that the failure to reach an international agreement at 
 Brussels precipitated the demonetization of silver for India and the repeal 
 of the purchasing clause of the Sherman law in this country. In fact, it 
 seems that every international conference thus far held has been a failure 
 so far as coming to any agreement is concerned, and that the failure of 
 these conferences has afforded pretexts for hostile legislation against 
 silver. It will be further noted in this connection that in August, 1892, 
 the Austrian government authorized the finance minister of that country to 
 sell bonds from time time to procure gold in sufficient quantity to estab 
 lish and maintain the single gold standard. 
 
 To recapitulate the situation in 1892 and 1893: Austria began in 
 August, 1892, to prepare for the single gold standard; the British gov 
 ernment early in 1892 began preparations for the suspension of the free 
 coinage of silver in India, and in December, 1892, bills were introduced in 
 the Congress of the United States for the repeal of our silver law. There 
 seems to have been a concerted movement in Europe and in this country 
 for the total destruction of silver as money. This movement caused a 
 financial panic in all gold standard countries. This panic was upon us be 
 fore the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as president ; indeed, it had begun 
 in Europe and reached our shores before the presidential election. Doubt- 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 355 
 
 less Mr. Harrison's administration hoped, by bringing about an inter 
 national agreement, to stop this feeling of panic and possibly accomplish an 
 international agreement that might save the world from the blow then 
 threatened to be inflicted by Austria, India, and the United States in 
 1892-93. 
 
 As evidence that some of the great financiers of the world had a dread 
 and apprehension of this question, I read the statement of one of Great 
 Britain's delegates at the Brussels conference. Mr. de Rothschild said: 
 
 The stock of silver in the world is estimated at some thousands of 
 millions, and if this conference were to break up without arriving at any 
 definite results there would be a depreciation in the value of that com 
 modity which it would be frightful to contemplate, and out of which a 
 monetary panic would ensue, the far-spreading effects of which it would 
 be impossible to foretell. 
 
 Other apprehensions with regard to the probable effects of threatened 
 legislation at that time on the silver question might be quoted, but it is 
 not deemed necessary. It is only necessary to remind any intelligent stu 
 dent or thinker upon financial questions of the legislation above referred 
 to in order that he may understand and admit that a monetary revolution 
 such as took place could have no other effect than that foretold by Baron 
 Rothschild. 
 
 It is, therefore, senseless as well as insincere to attempt to make it ap 
 pear that the passage of the Wilson tariff bill was the cause of the financial 
 panic that occurred concurrently with the adoption of the gold standard 
 for Austria, and the sale of bonds to the amount of some forty millions 
 by that country for gold, the suspension of the free coinage for India, and 
 the repeal of the Sherman law for this country. The panic for 1893 was, 
 unquestionably, the result of the silver legislation above referred to. It 
 took place more than a year prior to the passage of the Wilson bill. The 
 cause for this panic occurred many months before the election of Mr. 
 Cleveland. We have not as yet recovered from the effects of this legis 
 lation on the silver question. It will be impossible to recover either under 
 the Wilson bill or the Dingley bill. No tariff bill can have such an effect. 
 The effect of tariff bills is to tax the people; to take money from their 
 pockets ; to store it up in the public treasuries, or to put in in the coffers of 
 the monopolies. No tariff bill provides for supplying the people 
 with money, but on the contrary, it takes from the pockets of the producer 
 what little money he may have. 
 
 In the debates at the time of the passage of the Sherman law, the 
 
356 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 author of the bill, Mr. Sherman, stated that the bill would put in circula 
 tion annually some $55,0x30,000 of money; that this amount of additional 
 currency was necessary to meet the annual increase in our population, 
 wealth, and trade. This was urged by the friends of the Sherman bill as 
 being necessary to the prosperity of the people. The bill was repealed in 
 November, 1893 three and one-half years ago. This repeal has caused a 
 loss or contraction of our currency, according to the theory of the advo 
 cates of the bill to the amount of nearly $200,000,000. This of itself is a 
 sufficient explanation of the financial distress of our people. India coined 
 and put in circulation before the repeal of the free coinage of silver in that 
 country took place about $40,000,000 annually. It has been nearly four 
 years since the suspension of free coinage of silver for India. We think 
 that we are warranted in saying that the suspension of free coinage of sil 
 ver for India and the repeal of the Sherman law in this country have up to 
 this time worked a contraction of the world's money to an amount equal 
 to at least $350,000,000. 
 
 History shows beyond doubt that from the day the German govern 
 ment demonetized silver, and the suspension of the coinage of standard 
 silver dollars in this country in 1873, every blow struck at silver by any 
 important nation has caused disturbances in the money market and re 
 sulted in the reduction of prices. 
 
 To restore prosperity to this country we must retrace our steps; we 
 must restore silver to its time-honored place as a money metal; we must 
 give equal rights to silver with gold at the ratio prevailing 16 to I and 
 open up our mints to the unlimited coinage of both metals. 
 
 ADMINISTRATIVE CORRUPTION DUE TO ARBITRARY 
 POWER AND CIVIL WAR. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, June 25, 1882.) 
 
 The republican party in Missouri disfranchised over fifty thousand 
 voters every man who had sympathized with those engaged in rebellion ; 
 prohibited him from voting, prohibited him from holding any office, act 
 ing in any capacity of trust, public or private. He could not be the ad 
 ministrator of an estate. He could not sit upon a jury or even preach the 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 357 
 
 Gospel or solemnize a marriage ceremony. He was outlawed, trodden 
 upon. Under the reconstruction acts in all the southern states, public 
 affairs were no better than in Missouri. Military rule prevailed every 
 where. The republican rule in the south gave to that country such 
 worthies as Warmouth, Packard, Wells, Darrall, and Anderson, in Louisi 
 ana, and others I might name; Bullock, in Georgia; Ames in Mississippi, 
 and Chamberlain and Moses, in South Carolina, and many others too 
 numerous to mention. 
 
 Under that rule the legislature of Louisiana was dispersed with the 
 bayonet. Governors were kept in power by military force against the 
 voice of the people. The same thing was done in South Carolina. It 
 was not until a democratic congress refused to grant military supplies 
 and appropriations until this rule was withdrawn that South Carolina and 
 Louisiana were enabled to see inaugurated governors of their choice. 
 Having inaugurated one president by fraud and force I say force for it 
 is well known that at the time this capitol was surrounded with military 
 brought here for the purpose by President Grant, whose intention was 
 boasted to be to inaugurate Hayes or plunge the country in civil war the 
 business interests of the country were paralyzed, and the democrats in 
 this House were everywhere appealed to to give up the fight for the inau 
 guration of Tilden and Hendricks, in order to preserve republican insti 
 tutions from the military rule threatened by Grant, a republican president. 
 What was the result? Hayes vetoed every measure passed by the demo 
 crats for the relief of the country and the curtailing of the power of mo 
 nopolies and corporate wealth. He vetoed the silver bill; the bill to pre 
 vent troops at the polls; the bill that placed the bonds at a low rate of 
 interest and provided for their payment, and the extinguishment of the 
 national banks. 
 
 The greed for office, for political power, and public plunder did not 
 cease with the inauguration of Mr. Hayes. This precedent of fraud and 
 force, this example of terror and lawlessness, had its fruit afterward. 
 When the next election for president came, we find the henchmen in the 
 republican party bargaining and intriguing among themselves for the 
 control of office and patronage. 
 
 Public moneys stolen by the star-route thieves were poured into In 
 diana by the million to purchase that state at the October election for the 
 republican party. Thus, by the corrupt use of public moneys, were their 
 candidates elected. General Garfield was inaugurated president. He had 
 
353 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER, 
 
 but begun the duties of his high office when it was charged by two of the 
 leading senators of his party that he had violated his pledges and agree 
 ments, by which, before the election, he had promised to give to them the 
 control of the Federal patronage in the state of New York. This feud 
 led to the resignation of those senators, and they left their seats and went 
 home to the legislature of their state, asking to be returned as a rebuke to 
 their own party administration. The intense excitement of these events 
 finally culminated in a heart-rending tragedy that startled the world and 
 clothed the republic in sackcloth and ashes. 
 
 Need I say that all these crimes crimes of forcing upon the Ameri 
 can people a usurper in the high office of Chief Magistrate, of plundering 
 the treasury by venal office holders, and the stolen moneys used to corrupt 
 the ballot box, of bargaining and parceling out the offices and places of 
 political power as a consideration for support in elections, bore the bitter 
 fruit of political assassination ? 
 
 AGAINST BUREAUCRATIC PRIVILEGE. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, June 25, 1882, Opposing a Civil 
 
 Pension Bill.) 
 
 This bill proposes to pension persons engaged in the civil service, and, 
 as far as I know, it is the first proposition that looks to the general pen 
 sioning of those in official positions. It is true that this is confined to 
 postoffice inspectors, superintendents of money-order offices, railway mail 
 agents, and to messengers. But that is the very beginning; if we are to 
 pension the widows of these officers or the officers themselves when they 
 meet with misfortune, why not continue it to all the officers of the gov 
 ernment who may meet with misfortune while engaged in official position ? 
 If the gentleman, my colleague, a member of congress, should unfortun 
 ately contract a disease superinduced by the malaria of Washington and be 
 come disabled so that he could not support himself in private business, why 
 should not he be pensioned also ? Why not run it through all the branches 
 of the government? 
 
 In England and other countries where office holders are a privileged 
 and aristocratic class they take care of themselves and their posterity by 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 359 
 
 providing pensions of this" sort. But this is the first time in free America 
 that a proposition so extended as this has been made to pension the office 
 holders of this government. Our pension list now is enormous and grow 
 ing every day, made up of army and navy pensions. This we have done 
 before. Our soldiers in the Mexican war, Revolutionary war, and war of 
 1812 have been pensioned. The American people are satisfied with pen 
 sioning those who have suffered in consequence of their patriotic services 
 in time of war. But the idea of pensioning the 100,000 office holders of 
 this government is to place the tax upon the American people beyond en 
 durance. Only two days ago we passed an appropriation of $100,000,000 
 for pensions. 
 
 It is calculated that it will take $500,000,000 to meet the require 
 ments of the arrearage-of-pension act alone, to say nothing of the gen 
 eral and special laws with reference to pensions. Yet upon top of all 
 this my greenback colleague proposes that the government shall extend 
 its gratuity to the civil list as well as the army list. He certainly does not 
 mean to hold this out as some extra inducement for gentlemen to seek 
 positions under the government. The pressure now is greatly beyond en 
 durance. 
 
 The civil service of the government is now constituted for political 
 purposes. There is a universal and demoralizing scramble for these offices. 
 Hence, there is no necessity for any further pay or inducement for men to 
 seek and accept these positions. Let them do as individuals in private 
 station do provide for their widows and their orphans by policies of in 
 surance upon their lives, and otherwise. 
 
 FRAUD AND FORCE IN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Kepresentatives, January 26, 1877.) 
 
 MR. SPEAKER : This is the first instance in the history of our govern 
 ment that a dispute as to who is the rightfully-elected president of the 
 United States has arisen. It is true that none dispute the fact that Mr. 
 Tilden received nearly a quarter of a million majority of the popular vote, 
 and if he is not declared the president it will also be the first instance in our 
 
360 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 history where a candidate who received such a majority of the popular vote 
 was not elected. 
 
 Those who undertake to explain or apologize for this anomaly pretend 
 that it is owing to some mysterious defect in our constitutional provisions 
 for the election of president; but such is not wholly the case. Why the 
 country should now be in a state of political perturbation and business 
 paralysis is a question of easy solution. Last June the republican party 
 met in convention at Cincinnati and announced its platform and nominated 
 its candidates for president and vice-president. A short time thereafter 
 the democratic party met in convention at St. Louis and announced its 
 platform and nominated its candidates for president and vice-president. 
 Thus the two political parties went to the country with their respective 
 candidates and declared policy and principles. It was reasonably sup 
 posed at that time that the verdict of a majority of the people rendered 
 upon the issue presented would be final and respected by all parties as 
 conclusive. 
 
 But Mr. Speaker, when the October elections clearly foreshadowed 
 the victory of the democratic candidates, the question was raised by dis 
 tinguished republican senators and politicians as to who should count and 
 how should be counted the electoral vote. Republican organs throughout 
 the country gave it to be understood that in case the election of Tilden and 
 Hendricks depended upon the electoral votes of South Carolina or Florida, 
 and especially Louisiana, they would never be inaugurated. Just why the 
 vote of these states, or any one of them should not elect Tilden and Hen 
 dricks and yet should elect Hayes and Wheeler, is made clear only when 
 we consider that after the October elections it was reasonably certain that 
 if Tilden and Hendricks carried any one of them they would be elected. 
 The republicans had upheld governments in these states so long against 
 the will of the people that they were considered the property of that party. 
 These states had been so long dragged at the car of the republican party, 
 riveted there with Federal bayonets, that any attempt to relieve them from 
 their bondage was regarded as treason. 
 
 It is clear that this controversy was determined upon by republican 
 leaders before the election took place. Whether you call it a conspiracy 
 or what not, all know that this difficulty was foreshadowed by the repub 
 lican leaders and boldly announced in their leading organs two weeks be 
 fore the election. They had determined Tilden and Hendricks should not 
 have the electoral votes of any of those states, for the simple reason that 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 361 
 
 the republican party had in those states unscrupulous tools of their own 
 for returning boards, and knew they could be used to count fraudulently 
 to count majorities into minorities that they could and would, in plain 
 words, be induced to count the votes of all those states for Hayes and 
 Wheeler, no matter how the people might vote. Knowing these facts, 
 the declaration was made before the election that Tilden and Hendricks 
 should not be inaugurated, if their election depended upon the electoral 
 vote of any of those states. The republican leaders have made good their 
 threats; hence the fact confronts us that the two if not all three of those 
 states voted for Tilden and Hendricks, but have been counted for Hayes 
 and Wheeler. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it is not my purpose to enter into a discussion of the 
 powers of this House or of Congress to remedy this outrage. I am ready 
 to cooperate in any lawful way to right this wrong, and believing that the 
 bill proposed by the joint committee is the best that can now be devised, 
 I am disposed to give it my support. This bill, however, is intended for this 
 occasion and is not designed as a permanent statute. It only meets an 
 emergency that now exists. No law can be devised that will be so per 
 fect in all its scope and details as to be an absolute check upon rascality 
 like this. We have all the laws upon the subject now that our fathers and 
 fathers' fathers believed necessary. You will amend your constitution, 
 enact statutes, and adopt rules in vain if this sort of politics is to be tol 
 erated in this government. So long as the people shall sustain a party 
 that thus defies law and decency, our country is liable at any moment to 
 be plunged in a shoreless sea of civil discord and anarchy. No law can be 
 enacted that dishonest and corrupt officials will not evade and falsify for 
 political ends. 
 
 Fraud has clothed in legal forms the result of corrupt returning 
 boards, and thus sent here in the garments of law villainous cheats in 
 shape of electoral votes from Florida and Louisiana to be counted for 
 Hayes and Wheeler. Force stands ready with Federal bayonets declaring 
 that the men thus elected shall be inaugurated. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, as a representative of the people, I am not inclined to 
 accede to anything that in my judgment looks in any other direction than 
 the ultimate triumph of the right. Yet I must admit that there is too much 
 of the appearance of compromising with wrong in this measure not to call 
 attention to the grave dangers in the future. That Tilden and Hendricks 
 were elected fairly, and honestly elected president and vice-president of 
 
362 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the United States in the late election I can not believe any intelligent man 
 doubts. Whether they are to be cheated out of this victory and the people 
 of their choice depends upon the result of this commission. I dislike even 
 to admit that there is a possibility of this conspiracy succeeding. 
 
 But sir, there is much here for reflection. The people of this gov 
 ernment are yet to decide at the ballot box whether a party that has brought 
 so much fraud, corruption and dishonor upon this country will in the future 
 meet with their favor. If so, I can not see that there is much hope for our 
 republican institutions. We will soon be upon the level of Mexico, where 
 the boldest political buccaneer by force and fraud usurps power and op 
 presses the people till some other freebooter supplants him. Force breeds 
 fraud, and fraud in turn results in force. Louisiana has been governed by 
 force of Federal bayonets. Federal interference installed a bogus gov 
 ernment in i87o and i872. Again in 1874. The same fraud and force are 
 appealed to in i877. Shall it succeed ? I think not. It is to be hoped that 
 prejudice and passion will die out; that the fearful crisis through which 
 we are now passing will exhibit to the people of this country the terrible 
 dangers that lie in our path as a nation should we so far depart from the 
 government and principles of our fathers as longer to tolerate the usurpa 
 tions of such men as Wells, Anderson, Packard, Kellogg, "et id omne 
 genus." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I might compare this Confederacy to the Siamese Twins ; 
 each state possessing an independent entity and individuality, all are linked 
 together and thus constituting the Federal Union, bound together with 
 ligaments of flesh and blood, so that no one of them can possibly suffer 
 without affecting all. If poison be inserted in the veins of one, all become 
 contaminated. Thus we see that the fraud and corruption injected into 
 the body-politic of Louisiana by Federal bayonets has at last infected the 
 whole nation with a moral leprosy. 
 
 The malignant virus that we have permitted, even fostered, in the 
 bayonet states of South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, has at last cir 
 cled the whole body-politic of this government ; and now, from the lakes to 
 the Gulf, and from ocean to ocean, the words "fraud and corruption," 
 "force and violence," are on the lips of all. The Louisiana returning 
 board has been condemned in the house of its friends. Its president and 
 leading member was branded as a dishonest man and removed from office 
 as governor of Louisiana by General Sheridan, because of his alleged cor 
 ruption and dishonesty. A republican committee of this House, two years 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 363 
 
 ago, condemned the board for doing the very acts for which it is now 
 upheld. Why is it that the frauds condemned two years ago by a repub 
 lican committee of this House, by the leading journals and statesmen of 
 both parties, should now be apologized for by members on this floor? If 
 it was dishonest to count out a democratic majority then, it is, if possible, 
 more so now; for the majority is larger now than at that time, and the re 
 sults of vastly greater moment. Our republican friends could afford to 
 condemn fraud when it affected only the result in Louisiana, but now 
 that the election of Mr. Hayes depends upon upholding and apologizing 
 for that fraud we find a different stand is taken. When it comes to 
 this, that a political party of the numbers, power, and influence of the re 
 publican party is willing not only to accept, but to hazard a civil war to 
 secure the supposed advantages of such frauds, then indeed may we de 
 spair of our country's perpetuity. 
 
 As I said before, there is no rule or law, no constitution that can be 
 framed so far-reaching in its provisions as to provide for all the possible 
 tricks of evasion and rascally inventions of corrupt, designing men. If 
 our republic is to stand, it will be because the people will remorselessly 
 frown down the wrong and determinedly uphold the right. Let it be 
 known that corruption shall be visited with the scorn and detestation of 
 every honest man, come from what party or source it may. What can be 
 expected of a man or party that secures position in this government by a 
 false and fraudulent count of ballots ? The ballot box contains the voters' 
 will. Where in all this country, or where on earth except in Louisiana, is 
 to be found the man or set of men whose penetrating minds and disinter 
 ested, honest judgment can determine the desire of the voter who casts a 
 ballot better than the voter himself as shown by his ballot ? 
 
 There is no power on earth, and none above it save One, that de 
 serves the title of "The Searcher of Hearts," yet this returning board as 
 sumes that divine attribute, and our republican friends swear this board 
 has correctly searched the hearts of over twelve thousand male adult citi 
 zens of Louisiana, and has determined from their penetrating, all-power 
 ful examination that this twelve thousand men voted directly opposite to 
 what each of them intended or desired. Mr. Speaker, what greatness 
 must be in the future for a state that has for its citizens four men who can 
 fathom the hearts and minds of every voter in it and determine to a demon 
 stration just how each voter desires to cast his ballot, with power to count 
 accordingly. Why, sir, there is no use at all for an election there, because 
 
3 6 4 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER, 
 
 these four men know better than the voter how the voter should or would 
 vote or intended to vote. All that is necessary is a census table to ascer 
 tain the approximate number of voters, so that of that number each can 
 didate may have his due proportion. Still I hardly see the necessity for 
 census tables. If their intention is such as to know just how every voter 
 intends to vote, the board ought to know how many voters there are, their 
 names, personal and political predilections. The advantage of having such 
 powerful men consists in the fact that, with their knowledge of the will of 
 the people, they can declare that will at the proper time without the voters 
 of the state taking the time or trouble to go to the polls. Thus each one 
 of them will save to himself his day's work, instead of going to the elec 
 tion, and the state will be saved the costs attending elections. A happy 
 state, Louisiana ! O, for a returning board in all the states ! Millions can 
 be saved the people by this happy invention. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, why the necessity of any forms of election at all 
 in Louisiana or elsewhere ? If these great men can so accurately judge the 
 will of the people of Louisiana, why not of the whole nation ? Their pen 
 etration of hearts can not be confined to the dangers of that state alone. 
 Being the searcher of all hearts and knowing the will and intent of people 
 in this respect, why not say to these eminent men : Take control of 
 this government ; you know the will of the people so perfectly that you will 
 never make a mistake; you can always govern us according to our will 
 without asking us any questions on that subject? May the splinters of 
 this board never grow less, but multiply until it is shivered and splintered 
 from Louisiana to Maine. But we had forgotten Florida. Money and 
 troops seem to have been the means of enlightening the board there. There 
 a Tilden majority was transformed into a Hayes majority. It is true that 
 Governor Stearns said it would require money and troops to accomplish 
 the feat of legerdemain. Chandler was equal to the emergency. So 
 troops were ordered to Florida to see a fair count for Hayes and a fraudu 
 lent count for Tilden. 
 
 This Louisiana returning board consisted of two white men and two 
 negroes, all republicans, and what is still worse, all rogues. The law 
 made some pretense of fairness by requiring that both political parties 
 should be represented in the board, but that small piece of justice was de 
 nied the democratic party. I stated before that this board had been con 
 demned to infamy in the house of its friends. I shall now quote from the 
 report of the select committee on the condition of the south in their re- 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSyO TO 1899. 365 
 
 port made to the Forty-third Congress. That congress we all know was 
 republican. This committee was a republican committee, Mr. Wheeler, 
 late candidate of that party for the high office of vice-president, being a 
 member of the committee. This committee goes on to say : 
 
 The law provides that this committee shall consist of five persons 
 "from all political parties/' It consisted at the opening of their last session 
 of five republicans, upon the resignation of one of whom (General Long- 
 street) Mr. Arroyo, a conservative, was taken to fill the vacancy. After 
 protesting against the action of the board in secret session he resigned 
 about the conclusion of their labors, and his place was not filled; so that, 
 as your committee think, the law as to the constitution of the board was 
 not complied with. 
 
 Remember that the same members of the board acted at the last elec 
 tion, and under this same law alluded to in this report. At the last elec 
 tion the democrats requested that the law be complied with by the ap 
 pointment of a democrat upon the board. This request was persistently 
 refused. We here have the testimony of a republican committee that the 
 law in 1874 and i876 was not complied with. This same committee fur 
 ther on uses the following language : 
 
 Your committee are therefore constrained to declare that the action 
 of the returning board, in rejecting these returns in the parish of Rapides 
 and giving the seats for that parish to the republican candidates, was arbi 
 trary, unfair, and without warrant of law. If the committee were to go 
 behind the papers before the board and consider the alleged charge of in 
 timidation upon the proofs before the committee, their finding would nec 
 essarily be the same. It was asserted in Governor Wells's affidavit that 
 the McEnery officials had usurped the offices of the parish, and thereby 
 intimidated voters. Immediately after the I4th of September, when the 
 Kellogg authorities in New Orleans were put out by the Penn authorities, 
 certain changes took place in some of the parishes. When the news from 
 New Orleans reached these parishes the McEnery officials demanded their 
 places of the Kellogg officials, and they were at once given up. When the 
 Federal government intervened and unseated the McEnery authorities, the 
 Kellogg officials demanded and received back their places ; but in Rapides 
 some time seems to have elapsed before the Kellogg officials took their 
 places back; indeed, the McEnery register of deeds was still acting as 
 such when your committee were in New Orleans, the Kellogg register 
 never having come to reclaim the place, which is said to be worth nothing. 
 
 If the returning board, in the language of this republican committee, 
 acted arbitrarily, unfairly, and without warrant of law in 1874, in count 
 ing out members of the legislature, what could we expect of them when 
 the far greater prize of the presidency was at stake ? The past conduct of 
 this board as here shown was guarantee sufficient to the republican mana 
 gers here at Washington that Hayes would be counted in provided the 
 
366 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 troops and money were forthcoming. The troops and money were duly on 
 hand as required. The result was that a clear democratic majority of over 
 8,000 was transformed into a republican majority of near 4,000, making a 
 difference of 12,000 votes as counted by the returning board and as actu 
 ally cast at the polls. Hence, Hayes is declared elected and Tilden de 
 feated. Is this arbitrary, unfair, and without warrant of law? All hon 
 est men, it seems to me, would think it a little arbitrary, unfair and without 
 warrant of law. This report is full of sweeping condemnations of this 
 board. 
 
 I can not do better than to read a little further from this same book. 
 On page four is the following : 
 
 The action of the returning board in the parish of Rapides alone 
 changed the political complexion of the lower house, but their action in 
 other parishes was equally objectionable. For instance, in Iberia parish 
 it was claimed before your committee that the vote of poll No. I in that 
 parish had been rejected on account of intimidation, but the papers pro 
 duced by the clerk of the board showed no such proof whatever. One of 
 the counsel, Mr. Ray, produced some affidavits which he declared had 
 been submitted to the board by another of the counsel, General Campbell. 
 The conservative counsel insisted these papers had never been before the 
 board. Opportunity was given to the republican counsel to show the pa 
 pers had been submitted; but the testimony offered for that purpose by 
 them so far, however, from establishing that fact, established the reverse. 
 
 On page six, we find the great howl of intimidation disposed of as 
 follows : 
 
 Upon the general subject of the state of affairs in the south, and as 
 to whether the alleged wrongs to colored citizens for political offenses are 
 real or were asserted without due foundation, your committee took such 
 proof as the opportunity offered. Both parties agreed upon four parishes 
 as samples of the condition of affairs in that respect in the state. Of 
 these, owing to the impossibility of procuring witnesses from the locality 
 in time, your committee were obliged to confine their especial examination 
 to two parishes most accessible. As to these parishes they received all 
 the testimony that was offered, and, in addition, they received all the tes 
 timony that was then on hand in New Orleans, offered by either party, as 
 to the condition of affairs in other parts of the state. 
 
 As a whole, they are constrained to say that the intention charged is 
 not borne out by the facts before us. No general intimidation of repub 
 lican voters was established ; no colored man was produced who had been 
 threatened or assaulted by any conservative because of political opinion, 
 or discharged from employment or refused employment. Of all those 
 who testified to intimidation there was hardly any one who of his own 
 knowledge could specify a reliable instance of such acts, and of the white 
 men who were produced to testify generally on such subjects, very nearly 
 all, if not every single one, was the holder of an office. Throughout the 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 367 
 
 rural districts of the state the number of white republicans are very few ; 
 it hardly extends beyond those holding office and those connected with 
 them. No witness, we believe, succeeded in naming, in any parish, five 
 republicans who supported the Kellogg government who were not them 
 selves office holders or related to office holders or those having official em 
 ployment. 
 
 It is clearly shown here that there was no intimidation as charged in 
 1874. Yet the democrats carried the state then, carried it without any 
 intimidation. If they could carry the state in 1874 without intimidation, 
 why not in i876? If the returning board in 1874 falsely charged intimi 
 dation, for the purpose of counting out a democratic majority, "arbitra 
 rily, unfairly, and without warrant of law," why could they not falsely 
 charge the same reason for an arbitrary, unfair, and illegal count in i876? 
 
 Mr. Speaker, this is too plain for argument, it is too villainous to talk 
 about. And yet we are asked to give full faith and credit to this false 
 count. We are told that there is no power to go behind this action. I 
 had always supposed that fraud made null and void everything it entered 
 into. 
 
 But, sir, I shall go on with this very interesting report. On page six 
 we find the following pertinent statement : 
 
 On the other hand, it was in evidence that blacks who sought to 
 act with the conservative party, were, on their part, sometimes exposed 
 to enmity and abuse. In the interior one colored man was shot for mak 
 ing a conservative speech, and in New Orleans it appeared from the testi 
 mony that colored men who sought to cooperate with the conservatives 
 were subject to so much abuse from the police and otherwise that an asso 
 ciation of lawyers volunteered to protect them but without effect. 
 
 The radical ox is here gored. It is the republicans who do the work 
 of intimidation, but I suppose the board counted all the intimidation against 
 the democrats and all the votes for republicans. 
 
 But, sir, I shall pass on to page seven of this report, made by a repub 
 lican committee, of which William A. Wheeler was a member, and unani 
 mously adopted: 
 
 With this conviction is a general want of confidence in the integrity 
 of the existing state and local officials, a want of confidence equally in their 
 purposes and in their personnel, which is accompanied by the paralyzation 
 of business and destruction of values. The most hopeful witness pro 
 duced by the Kellogg party, while he declared that business was in a 
 sounder condition than ever before, because there was less credit, has since 
 declared that "there was no prosperity." The securities of the state have 
 fallen in two years from 7o or 80 to 25 ; of the city of New Orleans, from 
 80 or 90 to 30 or 40, while the fall in bank shares, railway shares, city and 
 other corporate companies have, in a degree corresponded. Throughout 
 
3 68 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 the rural districts of the state the negroes, reared in habits of reliance upon 
 their masters for support, and in a community in which the members are 
 always ready to divide the necessaries of life with each other, not regard 
 ing such action as very evil, and having immunity from punishment from 
 the nature of the local officials, had come to filching and stealing fruit, veg 
 etables, and poultry so generally as Bishop Wilmarth stated without 
 contradiction from any source that the raising of these articles had to be 
 entirely abandoned, to the great distress of the white people, while within 
 the parishes, as well as in New Orleans, the taxation had been carried al 
 most literally to the extent of confiscation. In New Orleans the assessors 
 are paid a commission for the amount assessed, and houses and stores are 
 to be had there for the taxes. In Natchitochcs, the taxation reached about 
 8 per cent of the assessed value on the property. In many parishes all the 
 white republicans and all the office holders belong to a single family. There 
 are five of the Greens in office in Lincoln ; there are seven of the Boults in 
 office in Natchitoches. As the people saw taxation increase and prosperity 
 diminish, as they grew poor while officials grew rich, they became naturally 
 sore. That they love their rulers can not be pretended. 
 
 Here we have it. The reason for democratic majorities in Louisiana 
 is the same as elsewhere ; it is because of their miserable government under 
 carpet-bag rule. As the people saw taxation increase and prosperity di 
 minish, as they grew poor while officers grew rich, they became naturally 
 sore, yes, they became discontented and tired of such government. There 
 is too much of that government in Louisiana and many other places, 
 where officers grow rich while tax payers grow poor. The difference is, 
 that elsewhere the tax payer has his remedy by voting the democratic 
 ticket or some other ticket, and they turn out of place these sleek officers 
 who are growing rich, fattening off the hard earnings of the people; but 
 in Louisiana troops and money attend the count. The ballot avails not as 
 against the rich officer holder. The beaks of corrupt official plunderers 
 are plunged deep in the writhing flesh of the people. Troops and money 
 have kept them down. Bayonets have glistened in their teeth as a warn 
 ing to be quiet while they are being devoured. Great God ! And all this 
 in free America. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I will read one of the last paragraphs of this report, for 
 it is significant. It is as follows: 
 
 Indeed, in our judgment, the substantial citizens of the state will sub 
 mit to any fair determination of the question of the late elections, or do 
 anything by which they can secure a firm and good government. What 
 they seek is peace and an opportunity for prosperity ; to that end they will 
 support any form of government that will afford them just protection 
 in their business and personal relations. In their distress they have got 
 beyond any mere question of political party. They regard themselves as 
 practically without government and without the power to form one. 
 
COLORADO SCENES. 
 Photographed by Jackson-Smith Photograph Co., Denver, Colo. 
 
SPEECHES FROM l8jO TO 1899. 369 
 
 Now, sir, here is a solemn admission by a republican committee, of 
 which William A. Wheeler was a member, that the people of Louisiana 
 want peace. They want good government. I have shown from this re 
 port that they had not a good government, but, on the contrary, taxes in 
 creased while prosperity waned. The people grew poor while the officers 
 grew rich. The republican party failed to give them good govern 
 ment. Had they not the right, had they not the duty to perform of 
 voting the ticket of that party they believed would give them good govern 
 ment? Was it not the duty of this returning board to count that ticket 
 or ballot as it was actually cast ? But troops and money, fraud and force, 
 stood in the way. Hayes must have Louisiana. He could not be elected 
 without it. This simple fact accounts for many of the supposed mysteries 
 of the late election. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, no one can now look to the 5th of March next with a 
 vision clear enough to see who shall be then inaugurated. If Tilden and 
 Hendricks succeed at last, if Tilden then takes the seat to which he is in all 
 honesty and justice entitled, it will be such a triumph of right over wrong, 
 of law and order over force and fraud, as will place this republic on 
 firmer foundations than ever before. As a people, we will enter the paths 
 of political regeneration and business prosperity. On the other hand, if 
 fraud, incased in legal forms and technical terms, thwarts at this time the 
 known will of the people, I believe a sense of justice that always charac 
 terizes the American people will set its seal of condemnation upon the 
 party forcing its candidates into office against the known merits of the 
 case. 
 
 I shall vote for the bill providing for a mode of counting the electoral 
 vote, because I hope it will secure substantial justice, and because, unless 
 that bill passes there is no possibility of any agreement at all between the 
 House and the Senate. Unless this bill shall settle the dispute the presi 
 dent of the Senate will declare Hayes and Wheeler elected and the House 
 Tilden and Hendricks, thus- setting up a dual presidency and a conflict, 
 of authority that will result in all the horrors of civil conflict, the end of 
 which no man can see but, I venture to say would be the downfall of our 
 liberties and the end of the world's hope of constitutional government 
 resting upon the freeman's will as expressed at the ballot box. 
 
 24 
 
AGAINST CERNUSCHI AND INTERNATIONAL INTERVEN 
 TION IN AMERICA. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, April 7, 1886.) 
 
 MR. SPEAKER : We have the advice of Mr. Cernuschi in last Sunday's 
 Herald as to the best way out of our difficulty. I can not state his propo 
 sition precisely, but in substance it is this : If a free coinage bill should 
 fail to pass, or, having passed, should be vetoed, he proposes that we pur 
 chase silver, so much every month and send it to England; that we pur 
 chase say $600,000 worth of silver bullion one month and ship it to Lon 
 don, double the amount the next month, and so on until, within the year, 
 we shall have dumped down upon the London market about $22,000,000 
 worth of silver bullion, selling it at a lower rate every month, and in that 
 way make a panic in the silver market and disturb the exchange between 
 Great Britain and India, so that Great Britain will succumb and enter into 
 a pact with France and the United States for the purpose of restoring 
 silver. 
 
 Now, if it be true that Great Britain and France and those European 
 countries are getting cheaper wheat and cotton from India with this cheap 
 silver, certainly that would disarrange nothing. But is that statesman 
 ship; is that sensible? If it is statesmanship, if it is sensible, and if Mr. 
 Cernuschi is so anxious to have a pact with Great Britain, France, and 
 Germany and certainly there is some reason why those countries should 
 have the same money let France and Mr. Cernuschi go into the market 
 and buy the silver and ship it to England and run the risk. That they do 
 not do it shows the fallacy of the argument. He says that France has got 
 six hundred millions of silver that she wants to get rid of. If that is so, 
 why not dump the silver down on the London market and strike terror 
 into the Englishmen and compel them to submit to French dictation? 
 Suppose this scheme should fail; suppose that (as we are invited to do by 
 the gold advocates) we suspend silver coinage, for the purpose of shipping 
 this silver bullion and disturbing the English exchange and flooding Eu 
 rope with cheap silver in order to bring them to better terms suppose that 
 policy fails and we find, after we have demonetized silver and suspended 
 its coinage and adopted this plan that it does not have the desired effect, in 
 what condition are we left ? 
 
 37 
 
SPEECHES FROM l8>JO TO 1899. 37l 
 
 As to Mr. Cernuschi and his bimetallic school, no matter which way 
 it goes they have won. They do not believe in bimetallism unless it can 
 be international bimetallism; in order to carry into effect their particular 
 views upon the monetary question, they are quite willing that the United 
 States shall step into the breach and suffer all the loss and all the conse 
 quences, if their predictions and theories prove to be fallacious. Mr. 
 Cernuschi is certainly a gentleman of education and ability; there is no 
 doubt of his being well versed in financial questions, but, like other gentle 
 men, and probably myself among them, he may be a little inconsistent at 
 times, and certainly he has changed his views within the past few years. 
 To show this, I propose to read an extract from his statement before the 
 silver commission of the United States in i876, of which body I was at the 
 time a member. 
 
 Hon. Mr. Bogy, at that time a senator from Missouri, asked him this 
 question : 
 
 By retaining sixteen here, and fifteen and a half there (in France) our 
 silver of course would go right to France. Would not that compel France 
 to abandon the bimetallic system? 
 
 Answer: The policy of France would be not to coin, but to wait. 
 France committed a great mistake when in 1874, after the example given 
 by Belgium, she limited the coinage of silver. It has been a great mistake. 
 If France had continued to coin silver freely the German silver would have 
 flowed into France and some of the gold of France would have flowed into 
 Germany, and silver would have maintained everywhere its value rela 
 tively to gold. In limiting the mintage a difference has been created be 
 tween the value of bullion and the value of coin. 
 
 This, gentlemen, is the authority quoted on this floor by the gold ad 
 vocates; yet he insists, and it no doubt is the fact, that had France con-r 
 tinued the free coinage of silver, there would have been no silver question 
 to-day, because for seventy years so long as silver was coined free 
 gold and silver were at a parity at the French ratio of 15 1-2 to I. This is 
 Mr. Cernuschi's statement, notwithstanding he has made a different and 
 inconsistent statement in a little pamphlet which we have all had occasion 
 no doubt to read, copies having been sent to us by Mr. Manton Marble, 
 called "The Great Metallic Powers." 
 
 Now, if it be true that France by continuing the free coinage of silver 
 could have maintained the parity between the two metals, what may we ex 
 pect by free coinage in the United States ? Why, Mr. Speaker, we have a 
 
37 2 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 bimetallic union of our own. Under a bimetallic constitution we have a 
 bimetallic union consisting of thirty-eight states in addition to the territo 
 ries. This bimetallic union includes a population of 60,000,000, and an 
 area of over 3,000,000 square miles, embracing 2,000,000,000 acres of land. 
 Here is a bimetallic union compared with which the Latin union is a mere 
 bagatelle so far as the resources of the future are concerned. Having a 
 population of 60,000,000, increasing at the rate of 1,000,000 annually 
 spread over this vast area, before we could coin the quantity of silver that 
 France has to-day we would have a population probably as large as or 
 larger than that of the Latin Union, whose territory compared with ours is 
 insignificant. 
 
 MAKESHIFTS AND COMPROMISES. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, January 8, 1895.) 
 
 All your makeshifts are but a fraud and a sham. I believe that the 
 American people will soon understand this, if they do not now. It 
 may take a few years more of hard times, of grinding poverty, a few more 
 bank failures, to teach them this lesson. And as my distinguished friend 
 from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sibley) has said in his speech to-day, the men 
 who have heretofore enjoyed the profits of this increased value of their 
 securities are to-day becoming very much alarmed on account of the 
 shrinkage of value of the property or wealth on which these securities are 
 resting. Take your railroad securities. Half of your railroads are to-day 
 in the hands of receivers. I do not like to allude to this railroad question 
 just now, and will not do so for the purpose of giving offense to any mem 
 bers of this house. 
 
 You undertook recently to save the railroad monopolies from the 
 effects of the single gold standard and by permitting them to pool, to go 
 into trusts. Why was that done? Simply because the shrinkage of the 
 value of their earnings and their securities was bankrupting those corpora 
 tions, and they came here for relief. All the banking and railroad monop 
 olies and their trusts come here to be saved. The tariff barons and all of 
 them come, each and everyone seeking, by means of legislation at the hands 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 373 
 
 of congress, to escape the crash that is coming in the future, by being made 
 the preferred pets of congress. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, in the name of an outraged democracy I protest 
 against the whole proceeding. I have been a democrat all my life, and 
 expect to live and die one, battling for the principles of that great party. 
 I believe them to be essential to the perpetuity of the republic. I have 
 seen them trampled on here day by day and month by month. But this 
 House is not the democratic party. Neither is this administration the 
 democratic party. (Laughter and applause.) I will appeal from this 
 presence to that vast yeomanry of this country, the great masses of the peo 
 ple, and I hope that there will be a sufficiency of the democratic party to 
 rally around the great principles of democracy, therefore, in the coming 
 days and reorganize the party on the principles of Jefferson and Jackson, 
 and go back to the ancient days and landmarks on which the party has 
 grown and prospered and made this country great and happy. 
 
 LAWS TO PROTECT THE STRONG AGAINST THE WEAK. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, January 25, 1883. 
 
 The law is usually made for the strong, when it ought to be made for 
 the protection of the weak. We respond to the demands of capital and 
 legislate for the protection of capital rather than the protection of the 
 laboring man and the poor. When the laboring man of this country is 
 taught to believe that he must rely upon congressional legislation, upon 
 tariff bills to protect him, he is relying upon a broken reed and taught a 
 dangerous doctrine, because all the legislation of congress for the last 
 twenty years has confessedly been in the interest of capital and against 
 labor. To-day I can look around me and see in these galleries, in this 
 lobby, in these corridors, the agents and attorneys of these millionaire man 
 ufacturers and corporations, who are here pressing the passage of this bill 
 in their interest, although it is death to the laboring interests of the country. 
 You can scarcely leave one of your committee rooms to come into this 
 chamber without being jostled from your path by this eager crowd. To 
 day they are swarming in this city, the hotels are full of them. The news- 
 
374 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 papers are publishing everywhere the fact that the lobby is here to-day in 
 greater force than ever before. Lobbyists of whom? Of the farmer and 
 the laboring man ? Oh, no. It is these millionaires who are demanding the 
 passage of this bill for the purpose of enslaving and crushing labor of 
 building up monopolies. This bill is full of "infant industries." These in 
 fants, being of royal birth, are to be born and bred millionaires. In a few 
 years they will grow to lusty manhood, full-grown millionaire cormorants. 
 
 As I before stated, we are dependent upon the soil for all the wealth 
 of this country. That which might encourage the tilling of the soil would 
 be to the interest of the laboring man and all concerned. Why ? Because 
 the price of labor depends upon the wage capital, the wealth to be invested 
 in wages. The wealth to be invested in wages, which keeps up the price of 
 labor, is that wealth which comes from the soil, that keeps up all prices 
 and all business industries. When we diminish that and legislate against 
 it we destroy the wealth and the capital or wage fund to be invested in 
 labor, and to this extent we destroy or reduce the price of labor. 
 
 I can illustrate some of the workings of the present tariff system with 
 regard to labor by referring to the "strike" a few years ago. One of the 
 great difficulties of congressional legislation, with reference to the business 
 of the country, is its tendency to build up monopolies, to legislate in favor 
 of the rich as against the poor. Under the stimulus of a high protective 
 tariff we find that capital rushes into these protected branches of industry. 
 They go on for awhile at a large profit, but finally they ascertain that they 
 have manufactured beyond the demands of the market. They have crip 
 pled agriculture by reducing its profits. They have reduced the opportu 
 nities for a market and the amount of wealth to be invested in wages. 
 What do they do under these circumstances ? Why, sir, we are told that 
 sometimes one factory will buy out another or pay it to stop a short time 
 for five or six months, or probably they will all shut down and wait awhile 
 until prices rise. Meanwhile the laborers are turned out of employment. 
 Thus instead of the laborer working the year round, as he might do on a 
 farm, he is employed only five or six months in a year or not quite so long, 
 and during the remainder of the year is idle. The manufacturer, however, 
 retains his wares and refuses to place them upon the market, in order to 
 maintain his prices and his profits. 
 
 We had an illustration of the working of this system when the strike 
 occurred a few years ago when the city of Pittsburg was almost laid in 
 ashes when from one end of the country to the other state governments 
 
SPEECHES FROM iS^O TO 1899. 375 
 
 were called upon to summon out their troops to put down mobs, and even 
 the Federal government was appealed to to shoot down starving laborers 
 who had been turned out of employment. What did these laborers do? 
 They came to our western country as "tramps," so-called ; they came there 
 to get bread which had been refused them by these monopolists and manu 
 facturers. They went from door to door. They obtained bread, and fin 
 ally obtained labor. Many of them to-day are prosperous farmers on our 
 western prairies. But the monopolists follow them there and by protective 
 tariffs rob them to further swell their own profits 
 
 To sum up, protection does not increase the wage of labor, but de 
 creases its profits. These bounties or advantages are first utilized by cap 
 italists. They are in a position immediately to avail themselves of the 
 favorable situation and at once accumulate large fortunes. Thus being 
 made strong and powerful, they are able to dominate and control the home 
 market. Poor men or laborers can not become proprietors, because capi 
 tal has beforehand absorbed these bounties. They crush out all competi 
 tion at home by their sudden wealth and prevent all competition from 
 abroad by legal enactments. In this manner they dictate prices and levy 
 tribute upon consumers and fix prices for the laborer so low as to make him 
 a mere slave for whatever his wages may be. His cost of living is so great 
 that he has nothing at the end of the year. 
 
 Protection is a species of robbery perpetrated on the farmer, because 
 the farmer is taxed to swell the profits of the manufacturer. Protection 
 compels the farmer to buy of the protected manufacturer at the price fixed 
 by the conscience of the manufacturer, for law has prevented foreign com 
 petition, and the advantages this law gives have enabled a few rich compa 
 nies to control the home market to the exclusion of the competition the 
 poor manufacturer would give if he was not crushed out by powerful and 
 rich corporations. That is to say, a company of poor laborers might or 
 ganize for the purpose of carrying on business for themselves; but they 
 would soon find that their neighbor who had already grown rich through 
 protection, and who understood the law and could have the law changed to 
 suit him, would bankrupt the laborers who had presumed to compete with 
 these barons. 
 
 All wealth comes primarily from the soil. Two total failures of crops 
 succeeding each other would bankrupt the country ; would put out the fires 
 in the engine and the furnace; would throw all labor out of employment 
 and bring starvation to our doors. This proves that the soil is the origin 
 
376 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 of all real wealth. It takes wealth to pay for labor. The more wealth we 
 have the greater the wage fund ; the greater the wage fund the greater will 
 be the price of wages. Whatever, therefore, decreases the profits of the 
 farm decreases the wage fund and thereby decreases the price of wages. 
 
 STOCK JOBBING CONTROL OF THE TREASURY. 
 
 (From a Speech Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 25, 1893.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : It will be observed that before the resumption law 
 went into effect in 1879, the congress of the United States had passed an act 
 known popularly as the Bland-Allison act, restoring the silver dollar. 
 That was in February, i878, nearly one year before the resumption was to 
 operate. That act provided that that dollar should be a legal tender for 
 all debts public and private, except where the contract otherwise stipulated, 
 and it is as much a resumption fund, under the laws of this country, as the 
 gold dollar for the greenbacks and all other currency in this country not 
 specifically payable by contract in gold. 
 
 We are told, Mr. Chairman, that our difficulties to-day arise on ac 
 count of what is called the Sherman act. I am not in favor of the Sherman 
 act, and never was. I did not believe at the time it would accomplish the 
 purpose for which it was enacted. I believed when that act was passed that 
 we would have the very difficulties we have to-day, because it limited the 
 coinage of silver bullion purchased to the discretion of the secretary of the 
 treasury. 
 
 Again, it declared that the secretary of the treasury could use 
 gold, in his discretion, in redeeming the notes used in the purchase of sil 
 ver bullion. And to-day what have we? Notes issued for the purchase 
 of silver bullion are held to be exclusively gold notes. They are being 
 redeemed in gold and thus depleting the gold in the treasury, instead of 
 paying them as they ought to to be paid and as the law contemplated they 
 should be paid, by the coinage of the bullion purchased. That is one of the 
 vices that I see in giving the secretary of the treasury the power to pay in 
 gold the notes issued under the Sherman act. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, we are now told that that act is alone responsible for 
 the depletion of the gold in the treasury. But let us think for a moment. 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 377 
 
 Since that act was passed, if my memory serves me correctly, we have 
 paid about $250,000,000 of public debt, and that has gone far to deplete the 
 treasury of its gold. Since the passage of that act, the congress of the 
 United States has increased our appropriations from about $800,000,000 
 every two years to over a thousand millions in every two years ; and by the 
 extraordinary appropriations of congress the Federal treasury is drained 
 of all its money, gold, silver, and greenbacks; and they are scraping the 
 tills, I am told, now for the subsidiary coinage. 
 
 Now, that is the objection I have to the proposition. I am not wil 
 ling to sell bonds for the purpose of putting into the treasury sufficient 
 money to run the government in its ordinary expenses; but what I want 
 here is to reduce the appropriations of the public money so as to have means 
 to resume or to provide that the surplus revenues shall become a surplus 
 fund, and let it go into the treasury for that purpose, and not be drained 
 out by extravagant appropriations of congress. There is our objection. 
 
 First, the Sherman law that provided silver certificates should be paid 
 by gold certificates; second, the extraordinary appropriations of congress 
 that have drained the treasury of all its reserve except that set apart by 
 the act of 1882. Are you going to submit to that, Mr. Chairman? Now, 
 you may as well, as I have said awhile ago, take $50,000,000 of your gold 
 and buy bonds, and those bonds could be paid for again by $50,000,000 of 
 silver certificates. 
 
 Take for instance the New York Clearing House Association, which 
 is so closely connected with the treasury department that that department 
 always keeps an agent there to deal with the Clearing House Association. 
 Now, suppose these associated bankers take $50,000,000 of bonds, pay the 
 gold into the United States treasury, and next day present greenbacks or 
 bullion notes and draw out this same gold. These legal tender notes thus 
 paid in for gold become surplus revenues in the Federal treasury and can 
 be paid in the ordinary expenses of the government, so that you are not 
 holding the proper amount in reserve, but making a way to increase the 
 bonded debt of the government for no other purpose than to pay out the 
 extravagant appropriations made by the Federal congress. 
 
 I do not know whether this amendment is intended for that, or what it 
 is intended for. I do not know whether it means that the treasury has been 
 so depleted that they have not money enough to run this government and 
 pay its ordinary expenditure until congress meets again, and that therefore 
 it is necessary to get funds in this way, or whether it is meant to prop up 
 
378 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 stocks in New York and convince Europe that we are financially sound. 
 We all remember that about a month ago we were threatened with a finan 
 cial panic in Wall street. 
 
 Stocks were running down, especially the trust stocks, the sugar 
 trust, the lead, the cordage trust, all the various trusts and combinations 
 which are organized conspiracies against the free trade and commerce of 
 this country for the purpose of putting up commodities against the interest 
 of the people, the combinations that have watered their stocks and desire to 
 maintain them at high prices. They desire this legislation, and they may 
 succeed in maintaining those watered stocks at high prices if they can 
 induce the Federal treasury to load itself up with gold so as to satisfy Eu 
 rope, I suppose, that there is no danger but that the interest will be paid 
 in gold. 
 
 In that way they can float their inflated stocks and thereby doubly 
 rob the people of this country. (Applause.) Take the Reading Railroad, 
 which formed its combinations, a syndicate of roads and monopolies, with 
 its large coal fields, with its coal and iron trusts, with its endeavor to put 
 up the price of coal to the great detriment of the suffering poor of this 
 country, that combination got into trouble. How ? Through the inflated 
 stocks and their rascally manipulation of the money market. They were 
 threatened with a slump in their stocks and they came here to Washington. 
 
 They did, I believe, induce the secretary of the treasury to go to New 
 York to investigate the matter, a,nd, if current history is true, they induced 
 him to believe that an issue of bonds was necessary in order to prevent a 
 financial panic, but when the matter was submitted to the president of the 
 United States he simply put his foot upon it. And, although I differ with 
 the president of the United States in politics and as to a great many of his 
 public measures, yet I say that in that instance he did exhibit that integ 
 rity of heart and that backbone which this house ought to emulate and to 
 follow. (Applause.) 
 
 He refused, and if current history is true, he assigned as the ground of 
 his refusal that this was a mere stock- jobbing operation, and the conse 
 quence was that the Reading Railroad, with its inflated stocks, went to the 
 wall, where it ought to go, and where all these stocks that have been 
 watered and inflated and all these combinations organized to rob the peo 
 ple of this country ought to go, and will go if the congress of the United 
 States refuses to come to their relief by issuing gold bonds. 
 
 And I stand here, Mr. Chairman, to appeal to the patriotism of this 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 379 
 
 House. I appeal to you gentlemen upon this floor, if you are opposed to 
 organized trusts, to inflated stocks and to a gold trust, I appeal to you to 
 stand as men against this scheme of Wall street. When the elections come 
 round we go home to our constituents, and to them we are in the habit of 
 denouncing trusts and the inflation and watering of stocks ; we talk to them 
 about, fifteen, twenty, or thirty thousand men in this country owning the 
 great mass of the wealth of the country, but when we come back here we 
 seem to get into a different atmosphere altogether. 
 
 When we go home and face the free people, the toiling masses of this 
 country, who have to bear these enormous burdens; when we appeal to 
 them for their support we are their friends, and we remain so until after 
 the election; but when we come here to Washington we get under the 
 shadow of Wall street we get into poisoned atmosphere that fills these 
 lobbies with the gamblers of Wall street, demanding all possible kinds of 
 legislation in their own interest. We are told that we are to have a panic ; 
 we are told that we must come to the rescue, and, I am sorry to say, that, 
 forgetting the interests of the great people who send us here and the prom 
 ises that we have made to them, we bow the knee to the golden Baal, and, 
 so help me God, I hope that every man who does it will be remembered by 
 his people when he again asks their votes ! 
 
 AGAINST BANK NOTES AND FIAT PAPER. 
 
 (From a Speech Delivered in the House of Representatives, June 22, 1882.) 
 
 I propose to allude to what I conceive to be the difference between 
 the greenback theory of money and what I mean by the greenback theory 
 of money is fiat paper money and those who hold to the doctrine that all 
 paper money issued by the government should be made redeemable that is 
 to say, when the government issues paper money it should make it legal 
 tender for public debts, should make it a promise to pay, make it redeem 
 able in coin, and make it convertible or redeemable in the money of the 
 government. That I take it to be the democratic doctrine, because it was 
 so declared in their Cincinnati platform. 
 
 In that platform the democrats declared that gold and silver coin and 
 paper convertible into coin should constitute the money of the government, 
 
380 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 and it will be noticed here that the democrats in that platform expressed 
 themselves fairly and squarely in favor of silver as well as gold whereas 
 the republican party demonetized silver. In their national platform they 
 never declared themselves in favor of silver ; but, on the contrary, the sec 
 retary of the treasury, the president, members of the House and Senate, in 
 fact the majority of the leading republicans are opposed to silver and in 
 favor of gold, and they reported to the House under the advice of the secre 
 tary of the treasury a bill to stop the coinage of silver. So that the republi 
 can party is a gold and national-bank party ; on the other hand, the demo 
 cratic party is in favor of silver as well as gold and of paper that is convert 
 ible into coin and has a promise to pay. The greenback party is in favor of 
 what they call fiat paper money, paper money that is not redeemable or 
 convertible into coin, that has no promise to pay and no redemption to 
 support it. It is this sort of money that they propose to compel the busi 
 ness interests of the country to take, to compel the plow-holder to take, but 
 not the bondholder. 
 
 Now, what is the difference between a piece of paper stamped by the 
 government as money resting upon act of congress that declares it shall 
 be received as a legal tender for all debts public and private, but having 
 no promise of redemption or convertibility, and a piece of paper that is 
 made receivable for all public debts, or, if you please, for all public and pri 
 vate duties and which also has a promise of redemption or convertibility 
 upon its face like our present greenbacks ? 
 
 Our present greenback dollar is not only legal tender, but it is a prom 
 issory note of the government. You will read upon it the words "The 
 United States will pay to bearer one dollar." There is a promise to pay. 
 It is more than a fiat paper dollar or legal tender. It is a promise of the 
 government that it will pay this dollar in whatever may be money at the 
 time for redemption, impliedly in coin. Hence it is the money contemplated 
 in the democratic platform. It is convertible paper money a promise to 
 pay. All the wealth of the government is pledged to make this a good dol 
 lar. The faith of the nation is expressed upon the face of it in the words 
 "The United States will pay to bearer one dollar." So that if the act of 
 congress be repealed that makes it a legal tender, it is still a demand against 
 the government for a dollar, and is good money, because the faith of the 
 nation is written upon it that the government will redeem it and pay a dol 
 lar for it ; and should congress to-day repeal the legal tender act, or should 
 the Supreme Court of the United States decide it not competent for 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 381 
 
 congress to make it a legal tender in time of peace, it still would be good 
 money, because the government has promised to redeem it and to make it 
 good, and it is a demand against the government. 
 
 The good faith of the government must respond to it, and it will be 
 redeemed by the government in whatever is money at the time, whether 
 gold or silver or otherwise. But the fiat paper dollar is not a promise to 
 pay; it has no promise of the government upon it to redeem it, but rests 
 solely upon an act of congress that declares this piece of paper stamped 
 as a dollar shall be a legal tender for all debts, public and private. 
 Should congress pass such an act and issue, say fifty million dollars of 
 this money, and it should go into circulation, my greenback friends would 
 tell their constituents, "This is all good money, good as gold, good as sil 
 ver; it has been issued by the government, stamped by the government, 
 like a piece of gold or a piece of silver, and therefore is as valuable as 
 metals." Their constituents believe this doctrine. 
 
 One of them, Mr. A, for instance, sells his farm or other property for 
 ten, fifteen or twenty thousand dollars of this money. He lays away his 
 money, not having immediate use for it. He relies upon it as being as good 
 as the gold and silver the greenbackers have told him it was. He ex 
 pects his money to be distributed at some time for the benefit of his family. 
 He makes his will at his death; so much shall be given to John, so much 
 to Tom, and so on. But the next election comes around ; the congress is 
 elected that is opposed to fiat money. They repeal the act of congress 
 making it a legal tender; consequently it is no longer money. It can no 
 longer pay a debt, and no one will receive it for any purpose whatever. 
 It is worthless paper. It was created by an act of congress; it was de 
 stroyed by the same power that made it. The government has not prom 
 ised to redeem it, so that the owner of the money, if he goes to the treasury 
 or elsewhere and demands its payment, is told that there is nothing upon 
 the face of it which promises its payment. Consequently, the faith of the 
 government is not written upon it and no promise of the government is 
 connected with it. 
 
 It rested solely upon an act of congress which declared it to be a legal 
 tender, and when the act was repealed it was no longer of any validity, so 
 that this bequest that was made to Mr. A/s children proved to be a delusion 
 and a snare, and instead of his being worth $15,000, which the heirs should 
 have received as a legacy, they received so much waste paper. And this 
 is the sort of money that our greenback friends propose that the plow- 
 
282 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 holder should lake, when, in the same breath, they declare that the bond 
 holder is to have coin. 
 
 Now, it so happens with gold and silver that they are precious metals, 
 and made so by the consent and usage of the civilized world. They find 
 their utility as money throughout the world and in the arts. So that if con 
 gress to-day should declare that neither gold nor silver should be a legal 
 tender in the payment of debts in this government it might slightly de 
 preciate their value, but they would be money all over the world the same 
 as they are money now. The business man who had a piece of gold or a 
 piece of silver in the bank that was declared no longer money by this gov 
 ernment could go to his merchant and make his purchase with it the same 
 as with his wheat, or his corn, or other products, for that merchant would 
 take it to the money centers of New York, or other cities, and purchase all 
 of his goods there with gold and silver; because the merchant in New 
 York could go to London and Paris and use this gold and silver in all of 
 his purchases made there of goods, stores, and merchandise that we use 
 here, for in that country it would be the only money by which he could 
 make these purchases. So that we see that gold and silver is international 
 money by consent of mankind. 
 
 We demonetize these metals here and they will be shipped abroad the 
 same as other products and bring in return their value. Practically 
 speaking, the man who owns a silver dollar or a gold dollar, if it were 
 demonetized here, would simply ship it to Europe and get a dollar's worth 
 for it, but no one would pretend to say that he could do so with a piece of 
 paper that had nothing upon it but the stamp of the government ; and the 
 act of congress declaring it to be money having been repealed, no one 
 would pretend to say that such a piece of paper as that would be worth 
 anything here or elsewhere. So we see the distinction between the fiat 
 paper dollar and the fiat of the government stamped upon gold and silver. 
 One has an international, world-wide intrinsic value, the other has a value 
 given to it solely by an act of congress, and when that act of congress is 
 repealed the value is repealed and goes with it. 
 
 I make these illustrations for the purpose of showing the difference 
 between a treasury note that is redeemable by the government, a treasury 
 note as contemplated by the democratic platform, and a fiat paper dollar as 
 contemplated by the greenback platform. 
 
 Our greenback friends rest their doctrine of fiat money upon the deci 
 sion of the supreme court in the legal tender cases, in which they say 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 383 
 
 that the supreme court decides that congress has a right to issue a piece of 
 paper and stamp it as a dollar and make it a legal tender. The supreme 
 court in the legal tender cases, as is well known by those who have read 
 them carefully, rested their decision mainly upon the ground of public 
 necessity existing during the war, and that it was a war measure, and as 
 such congress had the right to stamp a piece of paper, to issue a promise 
 to pay a dollar and make it a legal tender the same as the dollar promised. 
 They did not decide that congress had the right to stamp a piece of paper 
 the same as gold and silver and make it a legal tender for private debts. 
 The following extract from that decision shows the position of the supreme 
 court : 
 
 It is said there can be no uniform standard of weights without weights 
 or of measures without length or space, and we are asked how anything can 
 be made a uniform standard of value which has itself no value? This is 
 a question foreign to the subject before us. The legal tender acts do not at 
 tempt to make paper a standard of value; we do not rest their validity upon 
 the assertion that their emission is coinage or any regulation of the value of 
 money; nor do we assert that congress may make anything which has no 
 value money. What we do assert is that congress has power to enact 
 that the government's promise to pay money shall be for the time being 
 equivalent in value to the representative of value determined by the coin 
 age acts or to multiples thereof. 
 
 It will be observed by this extract that the courts say : 
 
 We do not rest their validity upon the assertion that their emission 
 is coinage, or any regulation of the value of money, nor do we assert that 
 Congress may make anything which has no value money. What we do 
 assert is that Congress has power to enact that the government's promise 
 to pay money shall be for the time being equivalent in value to the repre 
 sentative of value determined by the coinage acts or to multiples thereof. 
 
 In short the supreme court simply declares that the Government's 
 promise to pay a dollar can, by an act of congress, be made equivalent to 
 the dollar promised ; and therefore a promise to pay a dollar can be made 
 a legal tender as well as the dollar promised, but they do not decide that a 
 piece of paper that has no promise upon it to pay a dollar can be made a 
 legal tender. 
 
 The evident meaning of the report is that congress should have no 
 power to issue such a piece of paper. So that our greenback friends bot 
 tom their theories of fiat paper money upon a decision of the supreme court, 
 which, if it means anything, means that congress has no right to issue such 
 money. We see in many of their papers throughout the country quota 
 tions from Jefferson, from Calhoun, and others in support of their theory. 
 
384 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 I take one extract from a speech delivered by my colleague (Mr. Hazel- 
 tine) in the House May 6, 1882 ; as follows : 
 Mr. Calhoun also said : 
 
 I now undertake to affirm, and without the least fear that I can be 
 answered, that the paper issued by government, with the simple promise to 
 receive it for all its dues, leaving its creditors to take it or gold or silver at 
 their option, would, to the extent it could circulate, form a perfect paper 
 circulation, which could not be abused by the government; that it would 
 be as uniform in value as the metals themselves, and I shall be able to 
 prove that it is within the constitution and powers of congress to use such 
 a paper in the management of its finance, according to the most rigid rule 
 of construing the constitution. 
 
 The extract from Jefferson is as follows : 
 Thomas Jefferson, in his letter to Mr. Epps, said : 
 
 Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must 
 be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. It is the only fund on which 
 they can rely for loans ; it is the only resource which can never fail them, 
 and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose. Treasury bills, 
 bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as may be found neces 
 sary, thrown into circulation will take the place of so much gold or silver, 
 which last, when crowded, will find an efflux into other countries, and thus 
 keep the quantum of medium at its salutary level. 
 
 These extracts from Jefferson and Calhoun nowhere state that treas 
 ury notes can be made a legal tender for private debts ; but they speak only 
 of public dues and taxes ; money issued by the government and bottomed 
 on taxes, that is made receivable for all government taxes, bearing or not 
 bearing interest, could be thrown into circulation as money. For, as Mr. 
 Calhoun said, leaving its creditors to take it or gold or silver at their op 
 tion would, to the extent it could circulate, form a perfect paper circula 
 tion, etc. This shows that they meant not to force it upon private creditors 
 or make it a legal tender for private debts, but only for debts due the gov 
 ernment and from the government to others. No one denies the proposi 
 tion, or ever has denied it. In fact, it is one that the democratic party has 
 always contended for, that congress has a right to issue a government note 
 payable and receivable for all government dues not otherwise prohibited by 
 law; it has done so in time past, and treasury notes thus issued will cir 
 culate as money. But they have always been issued in the form of a 
 promise to pay, the same as our greenback. 
 
 I also take the following from what is claimed to be a speech of Mr. 
 Calhoun : 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina^ said in the Senate, September 19, 
 i8 3 7 : 
 
INTERIOR OF MR. BLAND'S OFFICE. 
 
 
 I 
 
 THE OLD SCHOOL HOUSE. YET STANDING ON NO CREEK, NEAR 
 
 HARFORD, OHIO COUNTY, KENTUCKY, WHERE 
 
 MR. BLAND TAUGHT SCHOOL. 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 385 
 
 It appears to me, after bestowing the best reflection I can give the 
 subject, that no convertible paper, that is, no paper whose credit rests upon 
 a promise to pay, is suitable for currency. * * * I would ask, why 
 should the government mingle its credit with that of private corporations ? 
 No one can doubt but that the government credit is better than that of any 
 bank, more stable and more safe. Why, then, should it mix it up with the 
 less perfect credit of those institutions ? Why not use its own credit to the 
 amount of its own transactions ? 
 
 I have searched the records of the Senate of September 19, 183?, but I 
 find that Calhoun made no such speech upon the subject at that time, nor 
 am I able to find any such language; but even if he used the language, it 
 was used with reference to notes issued by the national banks then exist 
 ing, which rested simply upon their convertibility and were not receivable 
 for taxes, as spoken of subsequently by Calhoun. They were like many of 
 our state bank notes, that were simply private promises to pay, redeemable 
 in coin, and were not authorized to circulate as currency in payment of 
 taxes. He therefore objected to that form of money, and he objected to 
 mingling the government credit with that of private corporations. He did 
 not speak in this with reference to treasury notes issued directly by the 
 government and made receivable for taxes and redeemable for a promise 
 to pay on the part of the government, for he says that "No one can doubt 
 but that the government credit is better than that of any bank, more stable 
 and more safe. Why, then, should it mix up with the less perfect credit of 
 those institutions ? Why not use its own credit to the amount of its own 
 transactions ?" 
 
 And that is the democratic doctrine to-day of the government credit. 
 Treasury notes, paper money, must rest upon the credit of the government, 
 and as opposed to national banks, he favored the issue of treasury notes 
 redeemable by the government and payable for all government dues and 
 debts, and receivable in like manner for all government taxes. 
 
 BIMETALLISM AND BONDED DEBT. 
 
 (Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 31, 1898, in Support of a Reso 
 lution (Concurrent Resolution No. 22) Declaring all bonds of the United States 
 Payable in Gold or Silver at the Government's Option and that to Restore the 
 Coinage of Silver is not in Derogation of the Rights of Public Creditors.) 
 
 MR. SPEAKER : Ten minutes can not be utilized so as to discuss this 
 question as it ought to be, nor can one day or two days, if allotted to this 
 25 
 
386 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 House, be sufficient for that purpose. The gold standard advocates of 
 this country have driven bimetallists to the position of introducing this 
 resolution. You charged that we undertook to disturb the public credit 
 "playing politics," in the language of the gentleman from Maine (Mr. 
 Dingley) when your side of the House and your administration have 
 called forth an expression of the representatives of the people upon this 
 subject. You are violating your record in opposing this resolution. You 
 say by your vote to table this resolution that this government shall not con 
 tinue the coinage of silver, either the free coinage or limited coinage or any 
 other kind ; and you know it. 
 
 Every man who does that practically condemns the secretary of the 
 treasury for coining silver in the last eight months, as he has coined some 
 $10,000,000 in that time. 
 
 Your president announced at a banquet a short time ago that all the 
 public debts must be paid in gold. Your secretary of the treasury made 
 the statement before the committee on banking and currency in which he 
 said your party must be committed to the single gold standard and effectu 
 ally rivet it on the people of this country ; and yet when we meet you with 
 a proposition of bimetallism, a proposition that your party once professed 
 friendship for when we make that protest, this resolution, the gentleman 
 from Maine says it is "politics." What are you doing by your politics ? 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, what is this resolution? Simply a declaration 
 that by the law which authorized the issue of these bonds they may be paid 
 in standard silver dollars of 412 1-2 grains of silver or in gold. No one dis 
 putes but that is the law to-day, as it was when this resolution originally 
 passed the Senate. No one denies the fact that the silver dollar is a full 
 legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and private ; yet here you 
 are to-day by your votes to declare that every silver dollar coined of the 
 $460,000,000 is not to be used to pay the public debt. 
 
 You are to declare by voting down this resolution that no coinage that 
 may proceed under the Sherman act shall be paid on the public debt, not 
 withstanding the law. You are to declare all other creditors of the govern 
 ment, the great mass of the American people, are to receive this silver 
 money, but by some arrangement, I know not what, the bondholders are 
 to be elevated as a class in this community whose rights and whose inter 
 ests are to be subserved, notwithstanding it may be against the interest of 
 the taxpayers, the people of this country. You are to pay the bonds in gold. 
 
 Where are you to get the gold ? Your Chief Executive has announced 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 387 
 
 to you that there is not one dollar of tax in all this country, by the law of 
 the land, that is payable specifically in gold, and the only way you have to 
 get gold when it is needed is by selling bonds for that purpose. Now, do 
 you propose to inaugurate a policy in this country by which one bond is to 
 be liquidated by the sale of another? If so, when are you to extinguish 
 the public debt ? How long before the people of this country, instead of 
 groaning under nearly $1,000,000,000 of interest bearing debt, will have 
 it amount to twice that sum? That is your policy and that is where the 
 republican party is drifting to adopt a policy that means that all the bonds 
 of the government must be paid in gold, whereas you have no way of pro 
 curing that gold except by still further bonding the people of this country 
 for the purpose. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, if I had the time I would like to show where from the 
 very beginning of this fight for restoration of silver the interest of the 
 bondholder has been held up against the interest of the taxpayer. In all 
 the difficulties we have had upon this subject the bondholder and the na 
 tional banker alone have had the high consideration of public honor and 
 public faith. When you declare it is contrary to public honor and public 
 faith to pay these bonds with silver dollars, you stultify yourselves; you 
 accuse yourselves of dishonor and bad faith when you make everybody 
 else take it. If it means anything, it means to carry out your idea of pub 
 lic honor and good faith , that you are to relegate silver to subsidiary coin 
 age and no longer recognize it as standard money in this country. 
 
 We come here in protest against all this, and you raise the false and 
 hypocritical cry that we are trying to ruin the public credit and the people 
 of the country. Your bonds never stood better than while we had 450,- 
 000,000 standard silver dollars recognized as money until recently by every 
 administration except those of Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, and 
 William McKinley. When you have all of that money now in circulation, 
 are you to strike it down and demonetize it by voting to table this resolu 
 tion? for that is what it means. 
 
 No, Mr. Speaker ; I remember in the Fifty-third Congress, the con 
 gress when this same question practically was up for consideration, when 
 the administration of Mr. Cleveland had asked congress to pass a bill au 
 thorizing the negotiation of a loan to be paid in gold, the distinguished 
 gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hopkins), whom I now see in his seat, led 
 the republican party in opposition to it, and nearly every republican from 
 the west went on record declaring his opposition to making those bonds 
 
^88 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 payable specifically in gold. 
 
 The distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Grosvenor) declared 
 that that was a move of the Rothschilds ; that the Rothschilds were willing 
 to pay $16,000,000 in order to have the American government change its 
 policy, and ridiculing the idea that we could not maintain bimetallism in 
 this country. I have not the time to read the Record. Then the gentle 
 man from Ohio cited his own platform in opposition to making the bonds 
 payable in gold. His party was pledged to bimetallism bimetallism, that 
 gold and silver should have the same rights of coinage in the mints. There 
 should be not only concurrent circulation but a concurrent and equal 
 coinage and concurrent and equal use of the money silver in the payment of 
 debts. 
 
 Nearly the whole of our interest bearing debt is refunded under the 
 act of July 14, i87o, which made bonds payable in coin of the standard 
 weight and fineness of that time. Our interest bearing debt now outstand 
 ing amounts to $847,365,130, exclusive of the Pacific railroad bonds. A 
 copy of these bonds will show under what authority they were issued, and 
 that holders of the bonds had due notice of the terms and limitations of 
 the law, to wit: 
 
 THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 Are indebted to , or assigns, in the sum of one thousand dollars. 
 
 This bond is issued in accordance with the provisions of an act of congress 
 entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt, approved 
 July 14, i87o, amended by an act approved January 20, i87i," and is re 
 deemable at the pleasure of the United States after the first day of Septem 
 ber, A. D. 1891, in coin of the standard value of the United States, on said 
 July 14, i87o, with interest in such coin, from the day of the date hereof, 
 at the rate of four and a half per centum per annum, payable quarterly on 
 the first day of December, March, June and September in each year. The 
 principal and interest are exempt from the payment of all taxes or duties 
 of the United States, as well as from taxation in any form by or under 
 state, municipal, or local authority. Transferable on the books of this 
 office. 
 
 The act of January 20, i87i, referred to as amendatory of the act of 
 i87o, only provided for a larger issue of bonds, but did not in any manner 
 amend or change the law of i87o, providing for the payment of the bonds 
 in coin of the standard value of July 14, i87o. At the date of the passage 
 of the act authorizing the issue of these bonds the mints of our government 
 were open to the free coinage of silver into standard silver dollars of 
 412 1-2 grains. These silver dollars were then, and had been since 1792, 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 389 
 
 the unit of account or value in this country. 
 
 Our first mint act established the silver dollar as the unit. It was to 
 consist of 371 1-4 grains pure silver. It continued the unit until 1873, 
 when the silver dollar was dropped from our coinage and the gold dollar 
 made the unit of account or value. We have never had bonds issued pay 
 able in gold only. We have always recognized that this government was a 
 bimetallic nation ; consequently our obligations called for coin, not for gold 
 specifically, nor for silver specifically. The contract under which these 
 bonds were issued, as shown upon the face of the bond itself, calls for the 
 payment of the bond, principal and interest, in coin of the standard value 
 of i87o. 
 
 Since silver was the unit of account in i87o, it could be more consist 
 ently claimed that the bonds are payable specifically in silver than to insist 
 that they are payable only in gold. The fact that the silver dollar was 
 dropped from the coinage in 1873 did not change the contract in respect 
 to these bonds. So soon as it was known that the power to coin silver dol 
 lars had been withheld by an act of congress, efforts were immediately 
 made to restore these dollars to the coinage, and in i878 the coinage of the 
 standard silver dollar was resumed by the act of February 28, i878. The 
 restored silver dollar was made a legal tender for all debts, public and pri 
 vate. This is statutory law to-day. 
 
 In 1 878 the same arguments were made against the restoration of the 
 silver dollar that are made against this resolution. It was contended then 
 that it would not be equitable or just to compel the bondholder to receive 
 the standard silver dollars in payment of his bonds. Indeed, the fight from 
 thsbeginning has been to compel the bondholders and the fund holders in 
 general to live up to their contract with the people. The bondholders 
 seek to control the action of congress upon the money question, but the 
 interests of the bondholder, or, more properly, his greed, should not be 
 permitted to interfere with the constitutional rights of congress to coin 
 money and to regulate the value thereof. 
 
 This is a sovereign power conferred upon congress by the constitu 
 tion. This power ought not to be controlled or limited by or on account 
 of the interests or demands of any one particular class. Had these bonds 
 been made payable specifically in gold, still congress, under the constitu 
 tion, would have ample right and authority to restore silver to legal tender 
 and free coinage. In compelling the bondholder to accept it notwithstand 
 ing his contract for gold Congress would violate no law nor would it be 
 
39 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 unjust. It would violate no law, because congress would be exercising its 
 constitutional duty in coining money of both silver and gold. It would not 
 be unjust, because under the free coinage system the silver dollar would be 
 of equal value with the gold dollar, so that, notwithstanding the contract, 
 had it been made payable in gold, which it was not, congress would have 
 the rightful power under the constitution to restore silver to free coinage 
 and to compel all creditors, public and private to receive it. 
 
 If under the system of free coinage of silver the silver dollar should 
 not be equal in value to the gold dollar, the contract payable in gold might 
 present a case of equity. Being submitted to the people it would no doubt 
 receive fair consideration and treatment. The American people do not 
 wish to take unfair advantage of the public or private creditor ; they wish to 
 deal fairly with all classes. They believe in equal rights to all and special 
 privileges to none. But we insist that no unfounded fears and false proph 
 ecies, or extortionate greed shall be lugged into this discussion simply to 
 control the action of congress in the interests of the creditor class. 
 
 Let the constitutional power of congress be first executed by the open 
 ing of the mints to the free coinage of silver as well as gold. After this 
 shall have been accomplished it will be time enough to discuss the ques 
 tion as to whether anyone has been injured, and if so, what remedy would 
 be necessary. But the bondholders of the government, of all others, would 
 have the least cause to complain, because the government holds a specific 
 contract with them to pay the interest bearing debt of the government in 
 either gold or silver of the standard value of July 14, i87o. 
 
 As before stated, the president of the United States at a banquet given 
 by the Manufacturers' Club of New York a few weeks ago declared that 
 the bonded debt of the government, no matter what the contract called for, 
 should be paid in gold, or the best money in the world. This catch phrase, 
 "best money in the world," is very fashionable nowadays with our repub 
 lican friends. They have abandoned all idea that silver in the near future 
 is to become the best money in the world, according to the interpretation 
 of what the best money in the world really is. 
 
 Their argument insists upon payment in the money that the world 
 shall establish for us and not the money that we may establish for our 
 selves. They would change our contracts with our bondholders so as to 
 comply with the demands of the creditor. They advocate the policy that 
 we must permit other nations to dictate our monetary system and the man 
 ner in which we shall pay our debts. Against this idea the democratic 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSjO TO 1899. 39! 
 
 party protests. We are patriotic enough to believe that this country is 
 quite able to manage its own financial affairs and to have a financial system 
 of its own independent of other countries. 
 
 We believe, as our forefathers, that bimetallism is a better system 
 than monometallism. We know that our country was constituted bimet 
 allic and that it so existed for over eighty years. The constitution en 
 joins upon congress the duty of coining money and prohibits the states 
 making anything a tender in the payment of debts but silver and gold 
 coin, thus establishing for the states of the Union a bimetallic system and 
 conferring upon congress the power to coin money for this system. 
 
 Congress has no lawful power under the constitution to demonetize 
 silver or to refuse silver the same privileges at our mints that it gives to 
 gold. The bondholders nor any other class should be permitted to thrust 
 their special interests into the discussion to influence congress in disobey 
 ing a constitutional command. As before said, the power to coin money 
 and to regulate the value thereof is a sovereign power conferred by the 
 constitution upon the congress. One congress can not waive or limit this 
 power so as to bind a subsequent congress. No congress can bind its suc 
 cessors so as to prevent succeeding congresses from exercising the consti 
 tutional requirement to coin silver as well as gold. 
 
 It was exercised for over eighty years, as before stated, and no con 
 tract, public or private, can deprive the congress of the United States of 
 the lawful right to coin silver freely as a full legal tender for this country. 
 
 The resolution under consideration is as follows : 
 
 Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring 
 therein), That all the bonds of the United States issued or authorized to 
 be issued under the said acts of congress hereinbefore recited are payable, 
 principal and interest, at the option of the government of the United 
 States, in silver dollars of the coinage of the United States containing 
 412 1-2 grains each of standard silver, and that to restore to its coinage 
 such silver coins as a legal tender in payment of said bonds, principal and 
 interest, is not in violation of the public faith nor in derogation of the 
 rights of the public creditor. 
 
 These resolutions were introduced in the Senate in i878 by Senator 
 Stanley Matthews, of Ohio, during the presidency of Mr. Hayes. Senator 
 Matthews was an advocate of the restoration of silver to free coinage. He 
 was a distinguished republican senator. He was afterwards appointed a 
 justice of the supreme court by President Hayes. Stanley Matthews was 
 a prominent republican. His ability as a lawyer can not be questioned by 
 our republican friends. The resolutions are concurrent resolutions declar- 
 
39 2 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 atory of the sense of the Senate and House. 
 
 They did not then and do not now require the signature of the presi 
 dent, consequently the only effect of the resolution is the expression of the 
 opinion of congress. They do not have the effect of a statute. The reso 
 lutions are historical evidence of the fact that at the time they were first 
 introduced by Stanley Matthews in i878 the bondholders were determined, 
 if possible, to defeat the free coinage of silver. These resolutions were 
 passed by both Houses of congress in i878, before the passage and adop 
 tion of what is now known as the Bland-Allison act that restored silver 
 to a limited coinage. 
 
 From that day to this the interests of the bondholders and national 
 banks have been held up as a scare crow to deter congress from the restora 
 tion of the free coinage of silver. Our republican friends at this time ad 
 mit that under the law all our bonded debts and other government obliga 
 tions are payable in standard silver dollars. Admitting this, they pretend 
 that they have no objection to the first part of the resolutions, which de 
 clares the law to be that all public debts are by law payable in standard 
 silver dollars. They now, as they did in i878, object to the coinage of 
 these dollars for the purpose of paying these debts. 
 
 While admitting the lawful right to pay in silver, they are putting 
 themselves on record as protesting against the exercise of that right by 
 coining silver dollars so as to enable the government to discharge these 
 bond obligations according to law. "They favor the war but are opposed to 
 its prosecution." If these bonds and other government obligations are law 
 fully payable in silver as well as gold, it becomes the duty of congress to 
 coin silver as well as gold to pay our debts. It is the duty congress owes 
 to the taxpaying people of this country who are burdened with this debt. 
 They have some rights in this controversy. Their interests should be con 
 sidered as paramount. 
 
 They ought not to be saddled with the burden of paying these obli 
 gations under the single gold standard when they have a specific contract 
 to pay under the bimetallic standard. At the time of the passage of the act 
 refunding the public debts in coin bonds the taxpayers had the right to 
 draw on two sources of monetary supply. They had the right to look to 
 the gold supply and also to the silver supply for the money. 
 
 The opportunity thus to draw from two monetary supplies protected 
 them from monetary famine and from monetary monopoly. The cutting 
 off the silver supply has so enhanced the value of gold that it now takes 
 
SPEECHES FROM l8jO TO 1899. 393 
 
 twice the amount of commodities to pay a debt it would take to pay in 
 gold or silver according to contract. The demonetization of silver has 
 about doubled the value or purchasing power of gold ; hence to pay debts, 
 public or private, under the gold standard, it requires twice the amount of 
 labor and the products of labor to pay a dollar as would be required under 
 the bimetallic system. 
 
 Our interest bearing debt has been reduced from about two thousand 
 millions down to less than nine hundred millions. To pay this nine hun 
 dred millions under the gold standard will require more labor and the 
 products of labor than would have been required to pay the whole two 
 thousand millions under the bimetallic system. In other words, while 
 nominally we have reduced the debt more than one-half, the burden of 
 paying what remains, if paid under the single gold standard, would be as 
 great as the original two thousand millions would be under the bimetallic 
 standard. 
 
 EVILS OF USING CORPORATION NOTES AS MONEY. 
 
 (From a Speech in the House of Representatives, May 13, 1882, on the Bill to En 
 able National Banks to Extend their Corporate Existence.) 
 
 MR. SPEAKER : In discussing this question I shall undertake to an 
 swer some of the points made by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
 Crapo) in favor of the national banks. One of the arguments last made 
 by the gentleman from Massachusetts in favor of the national banking 
 system, and against the proposition submitted by other gentlemen as well 
 as myself of adopting treasury notes for bank notes, was that there is a 
 danger of overissue on the part of the government if the matter of issuing 
 treasury notes is confined to congress alone, and that it is better to transfer 
 this power of regulating the volume of paper money to corporations, to 
 gentlemen whose interest it is to subserve private ends, instead of holding 
 that power in the representatives of the people for the public benefit. And 
 he eulogizes further the national banking system because, he says, it has 
 furnished the government and the people with a paper currency secure and 
 valid everywhere. And why so? What is a national bank note other 
 than a treasury note? When gentlemen come to argue this question I 
 
394 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 want them to answer that proposition. What is a national bank note to 
 day other than state paper? Nothing. It is not redeemable in anything 
 but state paper. It is not based upon coin, but upon paper. It is re 
 deemable in a treasury note, which is state paper. It is made receivable 
 and payable for all public dues, with certain exceptions, and is therefore 
 essentially nothing more nor less than state paper issued by the govern 
 ment, and handed over to corporations to circulate and receive the profit 
 of the issues. 
 
 From that proposition there is no escape. Under this system is there 
 no danger of banks contracting and expanding the currency, the very 
 danger that the gentleman warns the country against with reference to 
 treasury notes ? Is there no danger with reference to bank notes in 
 the same direction? Why, when the funding bill was up at the last ses 
 sion of congress we remember that the national banking institutions, in 
 order to dragoon congress into passing such measures as they thought 
 would redound to their benefit, secured the veto of the bill by bulldozing 
 the president with threats of contracting the currency and inviting a 
 financial panic. 
 
 Let gentlemen who are favoring national banks here to-day re 
 member what took place in the Forty-third Congress. That congress 
 assembled in the midst of a panic greater probably than this country ever 
 experienced before. It was under this national banking system, and it 
 was determined here upon the part of those favoring the national banking 
 system that instead of increasing the volume of legal tender notes or 
 treasury notes the banking law should be extended and amended so as to 
 permit banks to issue the money without limit. Banking was made free, 
 and other measures and amendments of the bank law in their interest were 
 made at that congress. And to-day the same proposition is here. It is 
 contended by the treasurer that the banks contract and expand this cur 
 rency in their own interest and not in the interest of the people. And if 
 congress can overissue treasury notes, if there is danger of congress mak 
 ing these overissues without the intervention and the coercion of banks, 
 then there is certainly still greater danger that this money which we turn 
 over to our banking corporations for their benefit and use may be con 
 tracted and expanded at the behest of these corporations, where we know 
 they demand their own terms as to our legislation, or, failing to get their 
 demands, paralyze business with forebodings of financial disasters. 
 
 When we are told there is danger of centralization also in the proposi- 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 395 
 
 tion to substitute treasury notes for bank notes, I reply, Mr. Speaker, that 
 the danger of centralization and revolution in this government comes not 
 from the people or their representatives here untrammeled by corporations. 
 The danger of centralization, the danger of revolution, the danger of 
 changing our republican form of government to that of an aristocratic 
 form of government, arises from the vast power of the corporations that 
 congress has built up in this country ; among the greatest and most power 
 ful and most to be feared are these banks. 
 
 Why, sir, the danger of centralization when the people's representa 
 tives are left free to act upon public subjects, when banking corporations 
 that we build up in this land have the power of threatening panic by bull 
 dozing congress, by saying to us if we do not pass this bill to-day or another 
 bill to-morrow in their interest the country will go to ruin, and they will 
 bring panics and financial disaster upon us, the danger of centralization 
 is in the power of those institutions, and not in the power of congress rep 
 resenting the people of this country. 
 
 The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Crapo) in his argument for 
 the continuance of the national banks, and in defense of the national bank 
 system, referred to the great benefits rendered by the banks during the 
 war. Suppose we admit for the sake of argument that at that time they 
 worked great benefit. But there were other patriots in the land besides 
 those engaged in national banking ; there were other capitalists who should 
 be considered as well as these bankers. The great mass of the producing 
 people of the country, who must pay all the expenses of these corporations, 
 should be considered as well as the banks ; for the people were as patriotic 
 as were the banks. 
 
 What was the effect of banking institutions during the war, and what 
 has been their effect since in demanding legislation on the part of congress ? 
 What have been the influences brought to bear by the banks ? During the 
 war they purchased bonds for legal tender notes, when those notes were 
 worth but sixty cents on the dollar in coin. They converted into bonds 
 bearing coin interest paper worth but sixty or seventy cents on the dollar 
 bonds to full amount or face value of this depreciated paper. 
 
 Had the government gone into the markets of the world and offered 
 its bonds to be sold for coin, and had sold them for sixty or seventy cents 
 on the dollar, we would then have understood the transaction. We would 
 have seen that we were losing thirty or forty and, in some instances, proba 
 bly fifty cents on the dollar in that transaction. 
 
39 6 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 Yet we lost the same amount by converting these paper issues into 
 bonds; paper money that was depreciated on account of the issues of the 
 national banks themselves. The legal tender notes issued during the war, 
 had there been no other issues, had bank notes not been issued, might have 
 stood near par all the time. But every bank note that was issued came in 
 competition with the legal tender notes, and depreciated them to that ex 
 tent. These banks and their circulation depreciated the paper of the gov 
 ernment for which the bonds were sold, and instead of being a benefit to 
 the government during the war they cost it not less than $500,000,000. 
 
 More than that. When they had secured these bonds at a low price 
 and had control of them, they came into the halls of congress and demanded 
 that bonds thus payable in paper money below par should be made a coin 
 bond. By the act of 1869 congress pledged the faith of this nation to re 
 deem its public debt in coin. This is a specimen of the influence brought 
 to bear by the national banks upon the legislation of this country in the 
 past. Instead of being a public benefit these banks have been a public 
 curse; instead of being in the interest of the people they have been the 
 grandest robbers of the taxpayers of this country that ever existed under 
 any government. Yet we are asked now to continue them. Why? Be 
 cause the comptroller of the currency says that their circulation is gradu 
 ally going out, and that this objection to them is not longer to be urged. 
 He suggests furthermore that we should not consider what shall be sub 
 stituted for these national banks when they have ceased to exist ; that some 
 time in the future will be early enough to consider that question. But, sir, 
 we are paying off the national debt at the rate of over $100,000,000 a year, 
 and, unless we cease to pay off this debt, unless this bill means, as I think it 
 does, that when we have continued and rechartered these banks the next 
 legislation asked on the part of congress will be to cease the payment of 
 the public debt in order to maintain the banks, the basis on which the na 
 tional bank currency has rested must shortly pass away. The indefinite 
 continuation of the national debt is what the comptroller of the currency 
 invites us to, although he has not the hardihood to say so; for it is con 
 fessed here that the banking system can not exist much longer unless we 
 stop immediately the rapid payment of the public debt. This bill }s simply 
 the preliminary and forerunner of other legislation looking to the perpetu 
 ation of the national debt in order to perpetuate the national banks. Oth 
 erwise this bill means nothing; it is a mere brutum fuhnen, because the 
 banks whose charters it continues and the very system it seeks to uphold 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 397 
 
 are expiring are dying from day to day, and in a few short years must 
 go out of existence. 
 
 We hear it proclaimed throughout the country to-day that a national 
 debt is a national blessing. There are in this country, and have been since 
 the formation of our government, those who believe that the nearer we 
 pattern after the government of Great Britain the nearer are we to per 
 fection. They believe in aristocratic government ; a government controlled 
 by wealth and power as against the people; a government in which the 
 aristocratic classes shall control the masses. It is the class who thus be 
 lieve, who proclaim, that a national debt is a national blessing. Why? 
 Because in accordance with the English system we can bank upon a per 
 petual debt. It is this species of legislation which in a few short years has 
 raised up in this country millionaires by the thousand, when, before the 
 war, scarcely one was heard of. The great contrast between extreme pov 
 erty and extreme wealth in this country is steadily and surely marking the 
 line between the aristocratic and the laboring classes of our people 
 
 No man goes to the bank counter and demands the redemption of a 
 national bank bill. Why? Because it is practically government paper, 
 and is as good as the paper in which it would be redeemed. The pending 
 bill proposes to extend the charters of these banks for twenty years and 
 thus give them for the term of forty years the use of the government paper 
 without costing them a dollar. That is one of the objects of the pending 
 bill. It proposes to extend the time for the banks to redeem their circu 
 lation, and they know it. Yet they come here and claim that they are act 
 ing for the benefit of the people. This is one of the swindles to be per 
 petrated. 
 
 If they are compelled to redeem their circulation at once in lawful 
 money of the government, and if this money be deposited in the treasury 
 we can use it as other surplus revenues are used, in redeeming the bonds 
 upon which these banks are doing business ; and in order to take up their 
 circulation we can issue treasury notes having the same monetary func 
 tions as the bank notes. As these bank notes come into the treasury in 
 the payment of taxes and otherwise the bill which I have prepared provides 
 that the secretary of the treasury shall issue circulating treasury notes to 
 take their place 
 
 Sir, in the days of Benton, in 1834, when this same subject was up, 
 rechartering the national bank, the national banks were very much op 
 posed to his proposition to so amend the coinage laws as to induce gold as 
 
398 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 well as silver to flow to this country to take the place of bank notes. They 
 denounced gold then as they do silver now. They ridiculed gold and ridi 
 culed Benton. And because we to-day seek to bring silver back to where 
 it was before its demonetization, because we desire coin in this government 
 that is contemplated in the constitution, these same institutions that de 
 nounced gold in Benton's days are denouncing silver now, and denouncing 
 those who favor it as silver humbugs as they called him a gold humbug. 
 This proposition is intended to accommodate them. They would demone 
 tize gold to-day if it was necessary to do so in order that their paper should 
 circulate. For the purpose of supplying the vacuum that would be occa 
 sioned by withdrawing the coinage of silver and silver certificates for the 
 purpose of supplying that vacuum with bank paper they ask this congress 
 to stop the coinage of silver and the issue of silver certificates. And that 
 is the sort of legislation that we are asked from year to year to enact in or 
 der to accommodate national banks. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, while upon this silver question, I desire to submit a few 
 reflections in reference to it. In the first place, a few days ago congress 
 abandoned its duty in reference to the tariff and turned that over to a com 
 mission. We are asked now to abandon our duty in reference to the state 
 paper of the government and turn that over to a banking commission. 
 We have been asked heretofore with reference to silver to stop coinage 
 and turn that over to another commission to meet with foreign govern 
 ments and ask their aid. When we talk of bills regulating railroad corpora 
 tions there must be a commission for that also. When it is sought to perpet 
 uate these enormities and iniquities and to increase the power of these vast 
 corporations that have grown up here, they are afraid to trust the repre 
 sentatives of the people and ask to turn over everything to commissions to 
 be controlled by them. No, Mr. Speaker ; we want no commission to meet 
 with foreign governments on this silver question. It is simply cowardice 
 to talk of sending agents to foreign governments to ask them to restore 
 silver to circulation as money. As the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rea 
 gan) just now remarks to me, it is worse than that; it is corruption. And 
 why? You take Great Britain, France, and other European countries, 
 and their production of silver is simply nothing. You take the American 
 continent, and here is the production of that metal. In the United States 
 one-half of the annual supply of the silver of the world is produced. There 
 were in the year 1879 about eighty millions of dollars' worth of silver pro 
 duced in the civilized world, and forty millions of that were produced in 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 399 
 
 our country. That being our product, we ought to protect it, because the 
 constitution requires us to do so, by making money of it. We produce 
 one-half of the silver produced in the civilized world to-day, and yet we 
 are too cowardly to take hold of our own product and establish its value 
 in the market. We must go to nations who produce nothing of it ; we must 
 ask their cooperation to rehabilitate it ! 
 
 Why, Mr. Speaker, all this is the demand of the national banks. It 
 does not come from the great mass of people of this country. Not at all. 
 When the Senate struck from the bill we passed in the House the unlimited 
 coinage feature of the silver bill it infracted every principle of monetary 
 science. It was that act that depreciated silver. And why? Because 
 it laid an embargo upon it. It said to gold, "You can come into the mints 
 and the treasury, and go free in and out every door; you are here recog 
 nized; you are here honored." But it said to silver, "You can come to the 
 mints in limited quantities only ; and if you come in greater quantities than 
 that we will barricade the doors and shut you out ; we will go into the mar 
 ket to depreciate you and purchase you at cheap rates." And worse than 
 that, it violated the very theory of metallic money. 
 
 What is the idea of metallic money? The theory upon which metallic 
 money is based is simply this : That gold and silver being produced in lim 
 ited quantities, by consent of mankind have become money, and that if 
 both are taken to the mint and given unlimited coinage you may charge 
 something for the coinage ; that is not the question ; but it shall be coined 
 unlimitedly and thus nature supplies the demand for money. That is to 
 say, all the jurisdiction congress has over the coining of gold and silver 
 is to declare the relation existing between the two as to value, to declare 
 what shall constitute a dollar in silver and a dollar in gold, and open the 
 mint to both. When it has done that its functions cease. I do not pretend 
 to say that it is even necessary to declare it to be legal tender, for I believe 
 it to be so under the constitution. Usually we authorize its circulation, 
 we declare it to be a legal tender, and there we stop. Nature, through 
 the labor of mankind, in his industries in opening mines, in carrying on 
 trade, supplies the volume of money more regularly than does the legisla 
 tion of congress when applied to the regulation of paper money. 
 
 Nature will supply these metals to this nation and to all nations alike ; 
 and hence the volume of money will be steady ; it will not be contracted to 
 day and expanded to-morrow for the purpose of enriching a few at the ex 
 pense of the great mass of the people. It will come in in a steady volume, 
 
400 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 so to speak. You will have all the stock which has been dug from the 
 mines for centuries back, and all the products of the future to draw from, 
 which has been relied upon and upon which contracts have been based 
 heretofore. Hence it becomes a national and international money, and is 
 supplied to all peoples alike. 
 
 When you do away with that argument, you knock from under it the 
 foundation upon which it rests. And when congress undertakes to say 
 that it will regulate the volume of metallic money by demonetizing gold or 
 demonetizing silver, or by limiting the coinage, it infringes every prin 
 ciple of metallic money and does violence to all true monetary theories. You 
 may as well go upon a paper basis and do away with the monetary metals 
 entirely. 
 
 When you throw open the mints to gold and silver of the world then 
 you will have a parity between the metals in this country and in all coun 
 tries. We are able to maintain it ourselves without the aid of foreign gov 
 ernments. They are not able further to demonetize silver. On the con 
 trary, the last monetary conference showed that they had gone as far in 
 that direction as it was possible for them to go, and a little further than it 
 was safe to go. 
 
 I say, then, that this nation, with its vast extent of territory, reaching 
 as it does from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the lakes to the Gulf, 
 with its fifty millions of busy people handling and transacting all kinds of 
 business, with a population increasing by immigration at the rate of a half 
 a million annually, this great nation is able to utilize our own product of 
 the precious metals without asking the permission of foreign governments. 
 
 Hence I denounce as a crime the attempted demonetization of silver 
 or its limited coinage as embraced in that bill. I denounce it as a swindle; 
 I denounce it here upon this floor as being in the interest of the banks and 
 other corporations in this country and against the interests of the people; 
 I denounce it as a species of robbery which ought to be kicked out of this 
 legislative hall ; and I hope it will be, and the authors left at home the next 
 election. 
 
 I mean no disrespect to the gentlemen of the committee who have 
 reported the bill. I may have said a little too much in making that state 
 ment; but I will admonish them of one thing; they must answer for this 
 before the people of the country. 
 
 If silver and gold had been in circulation in i8?3 ; if we had then been 
 on a coin basis as we are now, and the proposition had then been made to 
 
SPEECHES FROM 1870 TO 1899. 40! 
 
 demonetize one or the other of these metals, the people would have under 
 stood what it meant, and the proposition would have been denounced from 
 one end of the Union to the other. It never could have been accomplished. 
 
 And now that the people of the country have silver in circulation, 
 although in limited quantities, you never can take it from them until the na 
 tional banks shall step into the hall of this house and into the other end of 
 the capitol, and, by threatening panics and otherwise, induce the repre 
 sentatives of the people to obey their behests and their will 
 
 From the beginning of this government there have been two opposing 
 theories, one represented by Hamilton, the other by Jefferson. Hamilton 
 represented the idea of an aristocratic government; he advocated national 
 banks Jefferson represented a republican form of government ; he did not 
 favor national banks. The democratic party in all its history never 
 established a national bank, while it has always been in favor of the free, 
 unlimited coinage of gold and silver. The democratic party never op 
 pressed the people of this land by legislation for the creation or extension 
 of banking corporations. It has never built up institutions of this sort, 
 but has always done what it could to put them down. In the days of Ben- 
 ton this war was waged; and now to-day, nearly one hundred years from 
 the formation of the government, we meet the same issues and the same 
 doctrines that prevailed and divided parties at that time. 
 
 We are called upon to-day to defend on this floor the doctrine that ours 
 is a government of limited powers, against centralization of power in the 
 Federal government. Wealthy corporations seek to centralize power for 
 their own aggrandizement. This idea of centralization is dangerous to 
 the interests of the masses of the people. Centralization may protect 
 wealth, but it destroys liberty. Following Jefferson and the teachings 
 of the democratic party, I am opposed to building up corporations in this 
 country upon theories of centralized government 
 
 THE DEBT PAYING POWER OF WESTERN PRODUCTS. 
 
 (An Address to the Senate Committee on Finance, Delivered in 1897, to a Delega 
 tion of New York Bankers.) 
 
 I did not come here with the expectation of making any remarks what 
 ever ; I came as a listener ; but as a matter of course, when the gentleman 
 26 
 
402 
 
 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 was figuring there awhile ago, I took this position and I think it a tenable 
 one that, admitting, as he did in his figures, that our debt abroad and at 
 home, under the law is payable in silver, and that a bushel of wheat is worth 
 a dollar and eight cents in silver and a dollar in gold that the farmer in 
 the west, who pays his eastern debt in wheat, will gain eight cents over 
 that measured in gold. His debt was contracted when you had an inflated 
 currency ; he never borrowed of you one solitary cent of gold, nor even of 
 silver, but what you call a depreciated currency a fraud when it was 
 inflated ; and to-day the farmer of the west who with a hundred bushels of 
 wheat five or six years ago, in your inflated currency, could pay $200 of 
 that debt, to-day can pay but $75. That is what he complains of. It is 
 a plain proposition. His debt stands him so many dollars. His debt 
 never comes down from that. It is measured in units, in dollars, in mort 
 gages calling for dollars. He got greenback dollars when they were far 
 below gold. You now undertake to make him pay you in gold by con 
 tracting and doing away with the money that he borrowed of you, and 
 you claim now that you are not satisfied even with silver that has been the 
 money of this country ever since this was a government ; a money that is 
 incorporated in your constitution by your fathers as the coin of your 
 country, and was so until the act of 1873 tnat dropped it from the coins; 
 the money of the constitution, the money denominated in your bonds 
 which provide that it was to be payable in coin at its present weight and 
 fineness that is to say, the silver dollar of 412.5 grains. Then, if you 
 recollect, it is the producers of this country who pay all your debts; you 
 gentlemen in Wall street do not pay one dollar of it; it is the great pro 
 ducing element of this country that pays you and pays these debts ; debts, 
 I say, that were contracted in paper, and now you want to compel them, 
 by doing away with that paper, withdrawing it, contracting the currency, 
 reducing the value of the commodities in which you are to be paid ; that 
 is the complaint they make, and it does seem to me it is a very just one. 
 If I was in debt five years ago $100 my labor the wages were worth 
 $i a day, $100 paid that debt. To-day, after the reduction of the volume 
 of the circulating medium, you have reduced prices so that this labor is 
 worth only fifty cents, and instead of buying in $100 it takes $200; that is 
 plain. These are plain propositions that the people want to understand, 
 and they can not be satisfied by any such propositions as that you can bor 
 row a little money a little cheaper somewhere when you have a gold stand 
 ard than when commodities are measured by gold and silver. These 
 
SPEECHES FROM iSyO TO 1899. 403 
 
 commodities will pay so much more than when measured in gold alone; 
 and, having contracted debts on a paper basis or inflated prices, you now 
 ask them to pay you on contracted prices. You take two bushels of 
 wheat, whereas you give them but one, and I want to say now, with all 
 due deference here, you had better accept the proposition if I know the 
 people that I represent, and I think I do, throughout all the west and south ! 
 And we had a little experiment of it last summer, when there was an upris 
 ing of it throughout the Union, and promises were made that this financial 
 matter would be attended to, that these people would have some relief; 
 and these men went home and are looking to congress to-day. But I tell 
 you if you "put on the screws" much further, and reduce these people yet 
 further to the necessities, when the uprising comes again there is no power 
 in this government to put it down; and instead of the interest of your 
 bonds being paid in gold, they will be wiped out as with a sponge ; and I 
 stand here as a conservative man when I say so. I am willing to pay it 
 as demanded in the bond, and for what the contract calls, but unless this 
 measure is adopted you will see men in the next congress that will place 
 you back where you were in 1869, making your debt payable in paper. I 
 speak to you as a friend and not as an enemy, as a friend to my country, 
 and I urge you now sincerely and honestly to take that warning. 
 
 MASONRY AND ITS SECRET CHARITIES. 
 
 (From an Address on Masonry Delivered at Lebanon, Mo., June 24, 1870.) 
 
 The manner of Masonry is secrecy silence! It works love and 
 charity. Times of broils and battles, blood and carnage, that "try men's 
 souls," causing widows to mourn, and orphans to hunger, are specially 
 the occasion for this secret work of charity. When fathers and 
 sons mistrust each other, when confidence flees from men, when rapine 
 and murder infest the land, Masonry, with its unseen but trusty hand 
 dries the widow's tears, feeds the orphan, soothes and heals the sick and 
 wounded, and buries the dead. 
 
 To those who wish to become Masons for these noble purposes, the 
 portals are open. No others should seek to enter within those sacred veils 
 
404 AN AMERICAN COMMONER. 
 
 "where incense burns upon the holy altars day and night." 
 
 When we view Masonry in this light we agree that it should be per 
 petuated. In this manner it has been and it will be perpetuated. Na 
 tions, age after age, and one after another, have sprung into existence to 
 awe and dazzle the world with their deeds of valor their learning, their 
 poetry, eloquence, science and art; cities, with their lofty towers and 
 spires piercing the heavens, have grown up like magic. And in all this, 
 operative Masonry played an important part. 
 
 But dissensions, wars and pestilence have swept away the people while 
 time has toppled into decay their cities and towns. Fertile plains become 
 a desert waste. Mountains, where the shepherd in the soft moonlight of 
 a summer's eve, watched with peaceful heart and pastoral care over his 
 sleeping flocks, and offered up his sacrifices to the one true and living God, 
 have been shaken by earthquakes and leveled to the lowest plain. Noth 
 ing earthly remains of the warrior, the poet, the builder, save the solitary 
 monument that marks his dust 
 
 Nations of people perish and are forgotten. Masonry is preserved 
 and transmitted from father to son, from generation to generation, as a 
 rich legacy, a precious heritage. 
 
 "We have seen the lightning write its fiery path upon the dark cloud 
 and expire. So the genius of man amid the shades of mortality, glitters a 
 moment through the gloom, and vanishes from our sight forever." 
 
 The cloud, unlocked by the thunderbolt, opens its gates, pours out its 
 torrents, and floods the earth with its destructive elements, sweeping along 
 the forests, plowing and twisting from their aged roots the tallest oaks. 
 Yet the cloud spends its force and melts away into the air. The thunder's 
 roar dies away in soft echoes among the distant hills. The flood foams 
 and frets and rushes headlong into the eternal sea. Thus rushes away 
 into eternity nation after nation, age upon age, generation after genera 
 tion. All are elements of time, but the principles of Masonry are a part 
 of true Divinity. It is that part of the eternal in man which will survive 
 the flight of time the wreck of matter to receive a reward in eternity that 
 Time denies and can not give. 
 
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DUE ON THE LAST DATE