Contemporary American History, 1877-1913 Part 19

Mr. Wilson, on the other hand, gained immensely by this predicament in which the Speaker found himself. He was easily the second candidate in the race, as the balloting showed, and his availability was in many respects superb. He was new to politics, and thus had few enemies. He had long been known as a stanch conservative of the old school; and although he apparently had not broken with his party in the stormy days of 1896, it was publicly known that he had wished Mr. Bryan to be "knocked into a c.o.c.ked hat." In his printed utterances he was on record against the newer devices, such as the initiative and referendum, and he therefore commanded the respect and confidence of eastern Democrats. As governor of New Jersey, however, his policies had appealed to the progressive sections of his party, without seriously alienating the other wing. He had pushed through an elaborate system of direct primary legislation, a public utilities bill after the fas.h.i.+on of the Wisconsin system, and a workmen's compensation law. On a western tour he met Mr.

Bryan on such happy terms that their cordiality seemed to be more than ostensible, and at about the same time he declared himself in favor of the initiative and referendum. His friends held that the conservative scholar had been made "progressive" by practical experience; his enemies contended that he was playing the political game; and his managers were able to make use of one record effectively in the West and another effectively in the East. Having the confidence, if not the cordial support, of the conservatives and the great weight of Mr. Bryan's influence on his side, he was able to win the nomination on the forty-sixth ballot taken on the seventh day of the convention.

The Democratic platform adopted at Baltimore naturally opened with a consideration of the tariff question, reiterating the ancient principle that the government "under the Const.i.tution has no right or power to impose or collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue."

President Taft's action in vetoing the tariff bills was denounced, and an immediate, downward revision was demanded. Recognizing the intimate connection between the tariff and business, the Democrats proposed to reach their ultimate ideal by "legislation that will not injure or destroy legitimate industry." On the trust question, the platform took a positive stand, demanding the enforcement of the criminal provisions of the law against trust officials and the enactment of additional legislation to make it "impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United States." The action of the Republican administration in "compromising with the Standard Oil Company and the Tobacco Trust" was condemned, and the judicial construction of the Sherman law criticized.

The valuation of railways was favored; likewise a single term for the President of the United States, anti-injunction laws, currency legislation, presidential primaries, and the declaration of the nation's purpose to establish Philippine independence at the earliest practicable moment.

Mr. Wilson's speech of acceptance partook of the character of an essay in political science rather than of a precise definition of party policies. He spoke of an awakened nation, impatient of partisan make-believe, hindered in its development by circ.u.mstances of privilege and private advantage, and determined to undertake great things in the name of right and justice. Departing from traditions, he refused to discuss the terms of the Baltimore platform, which he dismissed with the short notice that "the platform is not a program." He devoted no little attention to the spirit of "the rule of the people" as opposed to the rule by an inner coterie of the privileged, but he abstained from discussing directly such matters as the initiative, referendum, and recall. He announced his clear conviction that the only safe and legitimate object of a tariff was to raise duties, but he cautioned his party against radical and sudden legislation. He promised to support legislation against the unfair practices of corporations in destroying compet.i.tion; but he gave no solace to those who expected a vigorous a.s.sault on trusts as such.

Indeed, Mr. Wilson refused to commit himself to the old concept of unrestricted compet.i.tion and petty business. "I am not," he said, "one of those who think that compet.i.tion can be established by law against the drift of a world-wide economic tendency.... I am not afraid of anything that is normal. I dare say we shall never return to the old order of individual compet.i.tion and that the organization of business upon a great scale of cooperation is, up to a certain point, itself normal and inevitable." Nevertheless, he hoped to see "our old free, cooperative life restored," and individual opportunity widened. To the working cla.s.s he addressed a word of a.s.surance and confidence: "The working people of America ... are of course the backbone of the Nation.

No law that safeguards their lives, that improves the physical and moral conditions under which they live, that makes their hours of labor rational and tolerable, that gives them freedom to act in their own interest, and that protects them where they cannot protect themselves, can properly be regarded as cla.s.s legislation." As to the Philippines, he simply said that we were under obligations to make any arrangement that would be serviceable to their freedom and development. The whole address was characterized by a note of sympathy and interest in the common lot of the common people, and by an absence of any concrete proposals that might discourage or alarm the business interests of the country. It was a call to arms, but it did not indicate the weapons.

Mr. Wilson's speech had that delightful quality of pleasing all sections of his party. The _New York Times_ saw in it a remarkable address, in spite of what seemed to be a certain remoteness from concrete issues, and congratulated the country that its tone and argument indicated a determination on the part of the candidate to ignore the Baltimore platform. Mr. Bryan, on the other hand, appeared to be immensely pleased with it. "Governor Wilson's speech accepting the Democratic nomination,"

he said, "is original in its method of dealing with the issues of the campaign. Instead of taking up the platform plank by plank, he takes the central idea of the Denver platform [of 1908, Mr. Bryan's own, more radical still]--an idea repeated and emphasized in the Baltimore platform--and elaborates it, using the various questions under consideration to ill.u.s.trate the application of the principle.... Without a.s.suming to formulate a detailed plan for dealing with every condition which may arise, he lifts into a position of extreme importance the dominating thought of the Baltimore platform and appeals to the country for its cooperation in making popular government a reality throughout the land."[91]

While the Republicans and Democrats were bringing their machinery into action, the supporters of Mr. Roosevelt were busy forming the organization of a new party. At a conference held shortly after the break with the Republican convention, a provisional committee had been appointed, and on July 8, a call was issued for the "Progressive"

convention, which duly a.s.sembled on August 5 at Chicago. This party a.s.sembly was sharply marked by the prominence a.s.signed to women for the first time in a political convention. Eighteen of the delegates were women, and Miss Jane Addams, of the Hull House, made one of the "keynote" speeches of the occasion. Even hostile newspapers were forced to admit that no other convention in our history, except possibly the first Republican convention of 1856, rivaled it in the enthusiasm and devotion of the delegates. The typical politician was conspicuous by his absence, and a spirit of religious fervor rather than of manipulation characterized the proceedings. Mr. Roosevelt made a long address, his "Confession of Faith," in which he took a positive stand on many questions which he had hitherto met in evasive language, and a platform was adopted which marked a departure from the old party p.r.o.nouncements, in that it stated the principles with clarity and in great detail.

The Progressive platform fell into three parts: political reforms, labor and social measures, and control of trusts and combinations. The first embraced declarations in favor of direct primaries, including preferential presidential primaries, popular election of United States Senators, the short ballot, the initiative, referendum, and recall, an easier method of amending the Federal Const.i.tution, woman suffrage, limitation and publicity of campaign expenditures, and the recall of judicial decisions in the form of a popular review of any decision annulling a law pa.s.sed under the police power of the state. The program of labor and social legislation included the limitation of the use of the injunction in labor disputes, prohibition of child labor, minimum wage standards for women, the establishment of minimum standards as to health and safety of employees and conditions of labor generally, the creation of a labor department at Was.h.i.+ngton, and the improvement of country life.

The Progressives took a decided stand against indiscriminate trust dissolutions, declaring that great combinations were in some degree inevitable and necessary for national and international efficiency. The evils of stock watering and unfair compet.i.tive methods should be eliminated and the advantages and economies of concentration conserved.

To this end, they urged the establishment of a Federal commission to maintain a supervision over corporations engaged in interstate commerce, a.n.a.logous to that exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission. As to railway corporations, they favored physical valuation. They demanded the retention of the natural resources, except agricultural lands, by the governments, state and national, and their utilization for public benefit. They favored a downward revision of the tariff on a protective basis, income and inheritance taxes, the protection of the public against stock gamblers and promoters and public owners.h.i.+p of railways in Alaska.

In spite of the exciting contests over nomination in both of the old parties, the campaign which followed was extraordinarily quiet.[92] The popular vote shows that the issues failed to enlist confidence or enthusiasm. Mr. Roosevelt polled about 700,000 more votes than Mr. Taft, but their combined vote was less than that polled by the latter in 1908, and slightly less than that received by the former in 1904. Mr. Wilson's vote was more than 100,000 less than that received by Mr. Bryan in 1896 or 1908. The combined Progressive and Republican vote was 1,300,000 greater than the Democratic vote. If we add the votes cast for Mr. Debs, the Socialist candidate, and the vote received by the other minor candidates to the Progressive and Republican vote we have a majority of nearly two and one half millions against Mr. Wilson. Yet Mr. Wilson, owing to the division of the opposition, secured 435 of the 531 electoral votes. The Democrats retained possession of the House of Representatives and secured control of the Senate. The surprise of the election was the large increase in the Socialist vote, from 420,000 in 1908 to 898,000, and this in spite of the socialistic planks in the Progressive platform which were expected to capture a large share of the voters who had formerly gone with the Socialists by way of protest against the existing parties.

These figures should not be taken to imply that had either Mr. Taft or Mr. Roosevelt been eliminated the Democrats would have been defeated. On the contrary, Mr. Wilson would have doubtless been elected if the Republicans had nominated Mr. Roosevelt or if the Progressives had remained out of the field. Nevertheless, the vote would seem to indicate that the Democratic party had no very clear and positive majority mandate on any great issue. However that may be, the policy of the party as outlined by its leader and victorious candidate deserves the most careful a.n.a.lysis.

In the course of the campaign, Mr. Wilson discussed in general terms all of the larger issues of the hour, emphasizing particularly the fact that an economic revolution had changed the questions of earlier years, but always speaking of "restoration" and a "recurrence" to older liberties.[93] "Our life has broken away from the past. The life of America is not the life that it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and with our economic society, the organization of our life. The old political formulas do not fit present problems; they read like doc.u.ments taken out of a forgotten age. The older cries sound as if they belonged to a past which men have almost forgotten.... Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom; is making fresh and critical a.n.a.lysis of its very elements; is questioning its oldest practices as freely as its newest, scrutinizing every arrangement and motive of its life; and it stands ready to attempt nothing less than a radical reconstruction which only frank and honest counsels and the forces of generous cooperation can hold back from becoming a revolution."

One of the most significant of the many changes which const.i.tuted this new order was, in Mr. Wilson's opinion, the mastery of the government by the great business interests. "Suppose you go to Was.h.i.+ngton and try to get at your government. You will always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really consulted are the men who have the biggest stake--the big bankers, the big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad corporations and of steams.h.i.+p corporations.... The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the special interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own.... The government of the United States in recent years has not been administered by the common people of the United States."

Nevertheless, while deploring the control of the government by "big business," Mr. Wilson made no a.s.sault on that type of economic enterprise as such. On the contrary, he differentiated between big business and the trust very sharply in general terms. "A trust is an arrangement to get rid of compet.i.tion, and a big business is a business that has survived compet.i.tion by conquering in the field of intelligence and economy. A trust does not bring efficiency to the aid of business; it buys efficiency out of business. I am for big business and I am against the trusts. Any man who can survive by his brains, any man who can put the others out of the business by making the thing cheaper to the consumer at the same time that he is increasing its intrinsic value and quality, I take off my hat to, and I say: 'You are the man who can build up the United States, and I wish there were more of you.'" Whether any big business in the staple industries had been built up by this process, he did not indicate; neither did he discuss the question as to whether monopoly might not result from the destruction of compet.i.tors as well as from the fusion of compet.i.tors into a trust.

On this distinction between big business and trusts Mr. Wilson built up his theory of governmental policy. The trust, he said, was not a product of compet.i.tion at all, but of the unwillingness of business men to meet it--a distinction which some were inclined to regard as academic.

Because the formation of no great trusts had been unaccompanied by unfair practices, Mr. Wilson seemed to hold that no such concern would have been built up had unfair practices been prohibited. Obviously, therefore, the problem is a simple one--dissolve the trusts and prevent their being reestablished by prohibiting unfair practices and the arts of high finance.

Indeed, such was Mr. Wilson's program. "Our purpose," he says, "is the restoration of freedom. We purpose to prevent private monopoly by law, to see to it that the methods by which monopolies have been built up are made impossible." Mr. Wilson's central idea was to clear the field for the restoration of compet.i.tion as it existed in the early days of mechanical industry. "American industry is not free, as it once was free; American enterprise is not free; the man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crus.h.i.+ng the weak."

"Absolutely free enterprise" was Mr. Wilson's leading phrase. "We design that the limitations on private enterprise shall be removed, so that the next generation of youngsters, as they come along, will not have to become proteges of benevolent trusts, but will be free to go about making their own lives what they will; so that we shall taste again the full cup, not of charity, but of liberty." The restoration of freedom for every person to go into business for himself was the burden of his appeal: "Are you not eager for the time when the genius and initiative of all the people shall be called into the service of business?... when your sons shall be able to look forward to becoming not employees, but heads of some small, it may be, but hopeful business, where their best energies shall be inspired by the knowledge that they are their own masters with the paths of the world before them ... and every avenue of commercial and industrial activity leveled for the feet of all who would tread it?"

Mr. Wilson's economic system seems to be susceptible of the following summary. The great trusts are "unnatural products," not of compet.i.tion, but of the unwillingness of men to face compet.i.tion and of unfair practices. Big business is the product of genuine services to the community, and it should be allowed to destroy whom it can by fairly underselling honest goods. The enemy is, therefore, the trust; it is the trust which prevents everybody who would from becoming his own master in some small business; it is the trust that has taken away the "freedom"

which we once had in the United States. The remedy is inevitably the dissolution of the trusts, the prohibition of unfair practices in compet.i.tion--then will follow as night the day that perfect freedom which is as new wine to a sick nation. With compet.i.tion "restored" and maintained by government prosecution of offenders, no one need have a master unless he chooses.

Mr. Wilson's opponents saw in this simple industrial program nothing more than the old gospel of Adam Smith and Ricardo--the gospel of _laissez faire_ and individualism. They asked him to specify, for example, into how many concerns the Steel Trust should be dissolved in order to permit the man with brains and a few thousand dollars capital to get into the steel business. They asked him to name a catalogue of "unfair practices" which were to be prohibited in order to put compet.i.tion on a "free and natural" basis. They asked him to state just how, with the present acc.u.mulation of great capitals in the hands of a relatively few, the poor but industrious person with small capital could meet the advantages afforded by large capitals. They inquired whether England in the middle of the nineteenth century, with this perfect industrial ideal and free trade besides, presented the picture of utopian liberty which the new freedom promised.

To this demand for more particulars, Mr. Wilson replied that he was not discussing "measures or programs," but was merely attempting "to express the new spirit of our politics and to set forth, in large terms, which may stick in the imagination, what it is that must be done if we are to restore our politics to their full spiritual vigor again, and our national life whether in trade, in industry, or in what concerns us only as families and individuals, to its purity, its self-respect, and its pristine strength and freedom."

For the concrete manifestation of his general principles Mr. Wilson referred to his practical achievements in New Jersey, although at the time of the campaign he had not yet put through his program of trust legislation--a fact which was not overlooked by his opponents. He referred to his public service commission law, modeled on that which had been in effect for some time in Wisconsin. "A year or two ago we got our ideas on the subject enacted into legislation. The corporations involved opposed the legislation with all their might. They talked about ruin,--and I really believe they did think they would be somewhat injured. But they have not been. And I hear I cannot tell you how many men in New Jersey say: 'Governor, we were opposed to you; we did not believe in the things you wanted to do, but now that you have done them, we take off our hats. That was the thing to do, it did not hurt us a bit; it just put us on a normal footing; it took away suspicion from our business.' New Jersey, having taken the cold plunge, cries out to the rest of the states, 'Come on in! The water's fine.'"

In another place, Mr. Wilson summed up his program of redemption in New Jersey: a workman's compensation act, a public service corporations law, and a corrupt practices act. This program of legislation was viewed by Mr. Wilson as an extraordinary achievement. "What was accomplished?" he asked. "Mere justice to cla.s.ses that had not been treated justly before.... When the people had taken over the control of the government, a curious change was wrought in the souls of a great many men; a sudden moral awakening took place, and we simply could not find culprits against whom to bring indictments; it was like a Sunday School, the way they obeyed the laws."

It was on his theory of the trusts that Mr. Wilson based his opposition to all attempts at government regulation. Under the plan of regulation, put forward by the Progressives, said Mr. Wilson, "there will be an avowed partners.h.i.+p between the government and the trusts. I take it the firm will be ostensibly controlled by the senior member. For I take it that the government of the United States is at least the senior member, though the younger member has all along been running the business....

There is no hope to be seen for the people of the United States until the partners.h.i.+p is dissolved. And the business of the party now intrusted with power is to dissolve it." In other words, the government was, in his opinion, too weak to force the trusts to obey certain rules and regulations, but it was strong enough to take their business away from them and prevent their ever getting together again. Apparently, Mr.

Wilson did not expect to find that cordial cooperation from the national trust magnates which he found on the part of New Jersey public service corporations when he undertook to regulate them.

Mr. Wilson's political program was more definite. His short experience in New Jersey politics had evidently wrought great changes in his earlier academic views. In 1907, he thought that the United States Senate, "represents the country as distinct from the acc.u.mulated populations of the country, much more fully and much more truly than the House of Representatives does." In the presidential campaign, he advocated popular election of United States Senators, princ.i.p.ally on the ground "that a little group of Senators holding the balance of power has again and again been able to defeat programs of reform upon which the whole country has set its heart." He did not attack the Senate as a body, but he thought sinister influences had often been at work there.

However, Mr. Wilson declared that the popular election of Senators was not inconsistent with "either the spirit or the essential form of the American government."

As to those other devices of direct democracy, the initiative, referendum, and recall, Mr. Wilson admitted that there were some states where it was premature to discuss them, and added that in some states it might never be necessary to discuss them. The initiative and referendum, he approved as a sort of "gun behind the door," to be used rarely when representative inst.i.tutions failed; and as to the recall he remarked, "I don't see how any man grounded in the traditions of American affairs can find any valid objection to the recall of administrative officers."

The recall of judges, however, he opposed positively and without qualification, pointing out that the remedy for evils in the judicial system lay in methods of nomination and election.

Such was the economic and political philosophy of the new Democratic President inaugurated on March 4, 1913.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] _Autobiography_, p. 476.

[85] La Follette, _Autobiography_, pp. 516 ff.

[86] _Autobiography_, pp. 480 ff., 543 f., 551, 700, 740.

[87] See above, p. 314.

[88] La Follette, _Autobiography_, p. 616.

[89] Above, p. 288.

[90] _A Tale of Two Conventions_, p. 27.

[91] W. J. Bryan, _A Tale of Two Conventions_, p. 228.

[92] The most startling incident was the attempt of a maniac at Milwaukee to a.s.sa.s.sinate Mr. Roosevelt.

[93] These speeches were reprinted in _The New Freedom_ after the election.

APPENDIX

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1876-1912