Contemporary American History, 1877-1913 Part 9

In nominating Mr. Thomas B. Reed, Mr. Lodge, of Ma.s.sachusetts, declared: "Against the Republican party are arrayed not only that organized failure, the Democratic party, but all the wandering forces of political chaos and social disorder.... Such a man we want for our great office in these bitter times when the forces of disorder are loose and the wreckers with their false lights gather at the sh.o.r.e to lure the s.h.i.+p of state upon the rocks." Mr. Depew, in nominating Mr. Levi P. Morton, decried all of the current criticism of capital. Mr. Foraker, in presenting the name of Mr. McKinley, was more conciliatory: distress and misery were abroad in the land and bond issues and bond syndicates had discredited and scandalized the country; but McKinley was the man to redeem the nation.

This conciliatory att.i.tude was hardly necessary, for there were no radical elements in the Republican a.s.sembly after the withdrawal of the silver faction. The proceedings of the convention were in fact then extraordinarily harmonious, brief, and colorless. The platform, apart from the sound money plank, contained no sign of the social conflict which was being waged in the world outside. Tariff, pensions, civil service, temperance, and the usual formalities of party programs were treated after the fas.h.i.+on consecrated by time. Railway and trust problems were overlooked entirely. Even the money plank was not put first, and it was not so phrased as to const.i.tute the significant challenge which it became in the campaign. "The Republican party," it ran, "is unreservedly for sound money. It caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption of specie payments in 1879; since then every dollar has been good as gold. We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of silver except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, and until such an agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be maintained."

This clear declaration on the financial issue was apparently not a part of the drama as Mr. Hanna and Mr. McKinley had staged it. The former was in favor of the gold standard so far as he understood it, but he was not a student of finance, and he was more interested "in getting what we got," to use his phrase, than in any very fine distinctions in the gold plank. Mr. McKinley, on the other hand, was widely known as a bimetallist; but his reputation throughout the country rested princ.i.p.ally upon his high protective doctrines. He, therefore, wished to avoid the monetary issue by straddling it in such a way as not to alienate the large silver faction in the West. Mr. Hanna's biographer tells us that Mr. Kohlsaat claims to have spent hours on Sunday, June 7, "trying to convince Mr. McKinley of the necessity of inserting the word 'gold' in the platform. The latter argued in opposition that 90 per cent of his mail and his callers were against such decisive action, and he a.s.serted emphatically that thirty days after the convention was over the currency question would drop out of sight and the tariff would become the sole issue. The currency plank, tentatively drawn by Mr. McKinley and his immediate advisers, embodied his resolution to keep the currency issue subordinate and vague."[42] The leaders in the convention, however, refused to accept Mr. McKinley's view and forced him to take the step which he had hoped to avoid.

In his speech of acceptance, McKinley deprecated and sought to smooth over the cla.s.s lines which had been drawn. "It is a cause for painful regret and solicitude," he said, "that an effort is being made by those high in the counsels of the allied parties to divide the people of this country into cla.s.ses and create distinctions among us which in fact do not exist and are repugnant to our form of government.... Every attempt made to array cla.s.s against cla.s.s, 'the cla.s.ses against the ma.s.ses,'

section against section, labor against capital, 'the poor against the rich,' or interest against interest in the United States is in the highest degree reprehensible." In the Populist features of the Democratic platform he saw a grave menace to our inst.i.tutions, but he accepted the challenge. "We avoid no issues. We meet the sudden, dangerous, and revolutionary a.s.sault upon law and order and upon those to whom is confided by the Const.i.tution and laws the authority to uphold and maintain them, which our opponents have made, with the same courage that we have faced every emergency since our organization as a party more than forty years ago."

_The Democratic Convention_

No doubt the decisive action of the Republican convention helped to consolidate the silver forces in the Democratic party; but even if the Republicans had obscured the silver question by a vague declaration, their opponents would have come out definitely against the gold standard. This was so apparent weeks before the Democratic national a.s.sembly met, that conservatives in the party talked of refusing to partic.i.p.ate in the party councils, called at Chicago on July 7. They were aware also that other and deeper sources of discontent were bound to manifest themselves when the proceedings got under way.

The storm which broke over the party had long been gathering. The Grange and Greenback movements did not disappear with the disappearance of the outward signs of organization; they only merged into the Populist movement with c.u.mulative effect. The election of 1892 was ominous, for the agrarian party had polled a million votes. It had elected members of Congress and presidential electors; it was organized and determined. It arose from a ma.s.s of discontent which was justified, if misdirected. It was no temporary wave, as superficial observers have imagined. It had elements of solidity which neither of the old parties could ignore or cover up. No one was more conscious of this than the western and southern leaders in the Democratic party. They had been near the base of action, and they thought that what the eastern leaders called a riot was in fact the beginning of a revolution. Unwilling to desert their traditional party, they decided to make the party desert its traditions, and they came to the Democratic convention in Chicago prepared for war to the hilt.

From the opening to the close, the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1896 was vibrant with cla.s.s feeling. Even in the prayer with which the proceedings began, the clergyman pleaded: "May the hearts of all be filled with profound respect and sympathy for our toiling mult.i.tudes, oppressed with burdens too heavy for them to bear--heavier than we should allow them to bear,"--a prayer that might have been an echo of some of the speeches made in behalf of the income tax in Congress.

The struggle began immediately after the prayer, when the presiding officer, on behalf of the retiring national committee, reported as temporary chairman of the convention, David B. Hill, of New York, the unrelenting opponent of the income tax and everything that savored of it. Immediately afterward, Mr. Clayton, speaking in behalf of twenty-three members of the national committee as opposed to twenty-seven, presented a minority report which proposed the Honorable John W. Daniel, of Virginia, as chairman. Pleas were made that the traditions of the party ought not to be violated by a refusal to accept the recommendations of the national committee.

After a stormy debate, the minority report of the national committee, proposing Mr. Daniel for chairman, was carried by a vote of 556 to 349.

The states which voted solidly or princ.i.p.ally for Mr. Hill were Connecticut, Delaware, Ma.s.sachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hamps.h.i.+re, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Alaska--all of the New England and Central seaboard states, which represented the acc.u.mulated wealth of the country. The official proceedings of the convention state, "When the result of this vote was announced, there was a period of nearly twenty minutes during which no business could be transacted, on account of the applause, cheers, noise and confusion."

In his opening speech as chairman, Mr. Daniel declared that they were witnessing "an uprising of the people for American emanc.i.p.ation from the conspiracies of European kings led by Great Britain, which seek to destroy one half of the money of the world." He declared in favor of bimetallism and devoted most of his speech to the monetary question and to repeated declarations of financial independence in behalf of the United States. He also attacked, however, the tax system which the Democrats inherited from the Republicans in 1893, and in speaking of the deficit which was incurred under the Democratic tariff act he declared that it would have been met by the income tax incorporated in the tariff bill "had not the Supreme Court of the United States reversed its settled doctrines of a hundred years." On the second day of the convention, while the committees were preparing their reports, Governor Hogg, of Texas, Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, Governor Altgeld, of Illinois, and other gentlemen were invited to address the convention.

The first of these speakers denounced the Republican party as a "great cla.s.s maker and ma.s.s smasher"; he scorned that "farcical practice" which had given governmental protection to the wealthy and left the laborer to protect himself. "This protected cla.s.s of Republicans," he exclaimed, "proposes now to destroy labor organizations. To that end it has organized syndicates, pools, and trusts, and proposes through the Federal courts, in the exercise of their unconst.i.tutional powers by the issuance of extraordinary unconst.i.tutional writs, to strike down, to suppress, and to overawe those organizations, backed by the Federal bayonet.... Men who lived there in their mansions and rolled in luxuries were the only ones to get the benefit of this Republican [sugar] bounty called protection." Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, exclaimed that "Christ with a lash drove from the temple a better set of men than those who for twenty years have shaped the financial policy of this country."

Governor Altgeld declared: "We have seen the streets of our cities filled with idle men, with hungry women, and with ragged children. The country to-day looks to the deliberations of this convention to promise some form of relief." This relief was to be secured by the remonetization of silver and the emanc.i.p.ation of the country from English capitalists and eastern financiers.

On the third day of the convention, Senator Jones, of Arkansas, chairman of the committee on platform, reported the conclusions of the majority of his committee. In the platform, as reported, there were many expressions of cla.s.s feeling. It declared that the act of 1873 demonetizing silver caused a fall in the price of commodities produced by the people, a heavy increase in the public taxation and in all debts, public and private, the enrichment of the money-lending cla.s.s at home and abroad, the prostration of industry, and the impoverishment of the people. The McKinley tariff was denounced as "a prolific breeder of trusts and monopolies" which had "enriched the few at the expense of the many."

The platform made the money question, however, the paramount issue, and declared for "the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation." It stated that, until the monetary question was settled, no changes should be made in the tariff laws except for the purpose of meeting the deficit caused by the adverse decision of the Supreme Court in the income tax cases. The platform at this point turned upon the Court and a.s.serted that the income tax law had been pa.s.sed "by a Democratic Congress in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of that Court for nearly a hundred years." It then hinted at a reconstruction of the Court, declaring that, "it is the duty of Congress to use all the const.i.tutional power which remains after that decision or which may come from its reversal by the Court, as it may hereafter be const.i.tuted, so that the burden of taxation may be equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its due proportion of the expense of the government."

The platform contained many expressions of sympathy with labor. "As labor creates the wealth of the country," ran one plank, "we demand the pa.s.sage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights." It favored arbitration for labor conflicts in interstate commerce. Referring to the recent Pullman strike and the labor war in Chicago, it denounced "arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Const.i.tution of the United States and a crime against free inst.i.tutions, and we specially object to government by injunction 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 pa.s.sed by the last session of the United States Senate, and now pending in the House of Representatives, relative to contempt in Federal courts and providing for trials by jury in certain cases of contempt."

The platform did not expressly attack the administration of President Cleveland, but the criticism of the intervention by Federal authorities in local affairs was directed particularly to his interference in the Chicago strike. The departure from the ordinary practice of praising the administration of the party's former leader itself revealed the feeling of the majority of the convention.

A minority of the platform committee composed of sixteen delegates presented objections to the platform as reported by Senator Jones and offered amendments. In their report the minority a.s.serted that many declarations in the majority report were "ill-considered and ambiguously phrased, while others are extreme and revolutionary of the well-recognized principles of the party." The free coinage of silver independently of other nations, the minority claimed, would place the United States at once "upon a silver basis, impair contracts, disturb business, diminish the purchasing powers of the wages of labor, and inflict irreparable evils upon our nation's commerce and industry." The minority, therefore, proposed the maintenance of the existing gold standard; and concluded by criticizing the report of the majority as "defective in failing to make any recognition of the honesty, economy, courage, and fidelity of the present Democratic administration." This minority report was supplemented by two amendments proposed by Senator Hill, one to the effect that any change in the monetary standard should not apply to existing contracts and the other pledging the party to suspend, within one year from its enactment, the law providing for the independent free coinage of silver, in case that coinage did not realize the expectation of the party to secure a parity between gold and silver at the ratio of sixteen to one.

After the presentation of the platform and the proposed changes, an exciting and disorderly debate followed. The discussion was opened by Mr. Tillman, who exclaimed that the Civil War had emanc.i.p.ated the black slaves and that they were now in convention to head a fight for the emanc.i.p.ation of the white slaves, even if it disrupted the Democratic party as the Civil War had disrupted it. Without any equivocation and amid loud and prolonged hissing, he declared that the new issue like the old one was sectional--a declaration of political war on the part of the hewers of wood and the drawers of water in the southern and western states against the East. He compared the growth of fifteen southern states in wealth and population with the growth of Pennsylvania; he compared Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri with Ma.s.sachusetts; to these five western states he added Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas, and Nebraska, and compared them all with the state of New York. The upshot of his comparison was that the twenty-five southern and western states were in economic bondage to the East and that we now had a money oligarchy more insolent than the slave oligarchy which the Civil War had overthrown.

Mr. Tillman could scarcely contain his wrath when he came to a consideration of the proposal to indorse Cleveland's administration. He denounced the Democratic President as "a tool of Wall Street"; and declared that they could not indorse him without writing themselves down as "a.s.ses and liars." "They ask us to indorse his courage," exclaimed Mr. Tillman. "Well, now, no one disputes the man's boldness and obstinacy, because he had the courage to ignore his oath of office, and redeem, in gold, paper obligations of the government, which were payable in coin--both gold and silver, and, furthermore, he had the courage to override the Const.i.tution of the United States and invaded the state of Illinois with the United States army and undertook to override the rights and liberties of his fellow citizens. They ask us to indorse his fidelity. He has been faithful unto death, or rather unto the death of the Democratic party, so far as he represents it, through the policy of the friends that he had in New York and ignored the entire balance of the Union." Mr. Tillman was dissatisfied with the platform because it did not attack Mr. Cleveland's policies, and, amid great confusion throughout the hall, he proposed that the platform should "denounce the administration of President Cleveland as undemocratic and tyrannical."

He warned the convention that, "If this Democratic s.h.i.+p goes to sea on storm-tossed waves without fumigating itself, without express repudiation of this man who has sought to destroy his party, then the Republican s.h.i.+p goes into port and you go down in disgrace, defeated in November." In his proposed amendment to the platform, he a.s.serted that Cleveland had used the veto power to thwart the will of the people, and the appointive power to subsidize the press and debauch Congress. The issue of bonds to purchase gold, to discharge obligations payable in coin at the option of the government, and the use of the proceeds for ordinary expenses, he denounced as "unlawful and usurpations of authority deserving of impeachment."

After Senator Jones was given the floor for a few moments to repudiate the charge brought by Mr. Tillman that the fight was sectional in character, Senator Hill, of New York, began the real attack upon the platform proposed by the majority. The Senator opened by saying that he was a Democrat, but not a revolutionist, that the question before them was one of business and finance, not of bravery and loyalty, and that the first step toward monetary reform should be a statement in favor of international bimetallism. He followed this by a special criticism of the declaration in favor of the ratio of sixteen to one which was, in his opinion, not only an unwise and unnecessary thing, but destined to return to plague them in the future.

Senator Hill then turned to the income tax which he had so vigorously denounced on the floor of the Senate two years before. "What was the necessity," he asked, "for putting into the platform other questions which have never been made the tests of Democratic loyalty before? Why revive the disputed question of the policy and const.i.tutionality of an income tax?... Why, I say, should it be left to this convention to make as a tenet of Democratic faith belief in the propriety and const.i.tutionality of an income tax law?

"Why was it wise to a.s.sail the Supreme Court of your country? Will some one tell what that clause means in this platform? 'If you meant what you said and said what you meant,' will some one explain that provision?

That provision, if it means anything, means that it is the duty of Congress to reconstruct the Supreme Court of the country. It means, and such purpose was openly avowed, it means the adding of additional members to the Court or the turning out of office and reconstructing the whole Court. I said I will not follow any such revolutionary step as that. Whenever before in the history of this country has devotion to an income tax been made the test of Democratic loyalty? Never! Have you not undertaken enough, my good friends, now without seeking to put in this platform these unnecessary, foolish, and ridiculous things?"

"What further have you done?" continued the Senator. "In this platform you have declared, for the first time in the history of this country, that you are opposed to any life tenure whatever for office. Our fathers before us, our Democratic fathers, whom we revere, in the establishment of this government, gave our Federal judges a life tenure of office.

What necessity was there for reviving this question? How foolish and how unnecessary, in my opinion. Democrats, whose whole lives have been devoted to the service of the party, men whose hopes, whose ambitions, whose aspirations, all lie within party lines, are to be driven out of the party upon this new question of life tenure for the great judges of our Federal courts. No, no; this is a revolutionary step, this is an unwise step, this is an unprecedented step in our party history."

Senator Hill then turned to a defense of President Cleveland's policy, denouncing the attempt to bring in the bond issue as foolish and calculated to put them on the defensive in every school district in the country. He closed by begging the convention not "to drive old Democrats out of the party who have grown gray in the service, to make room for a lot of Republicans and Populists, and political nondescripts."

Senator Hill's protest was supported by Senator Vilas from Wisconsin, who saw in the proposed free coinage of silver no difference, except in degree, between "the confiscation of one half of the credits of the nation for the benefit of debtors," and "a universal distribution of property." In this radical scheme there was nothing short of "the beginning of the overthrow of all law, of all justice, of all security and repose in the social order." He warned the convention that the American people would not tolerate the first steps toward the atrocities of the French Revolution, although "in the vastness of this country there may be some Marat unknown, some Danton or Robespierre." He asked the members of the convention when and where robbery by law had come to be a Democratic doctrine, and with solemn earnestness he pleaded with them not to launch the old party out on a wild career or to "pull down the pillars of the temple and crush us all beneath the ruins." He declared that the gold standard was not responsible for falling prices; that any stable standard had "no more to do with prices than a yard stick or a pair of scales." He begged them to adopt the proposed amendment which would limit the effect of the change of standards to future contracts and thus deliver the platform from an imputation of a purpose to plunder.

The closing speech for the platform was then made by Mr. William Jennings Bryan, of Nebraska, who clothed his plea in the armor of righteousness, announcing that he had come to speak "in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty--the cause of humanity." The spirit and zeal of a crusader ran through his speech. Indeed, when speaking of the campaign which the Silver Democrats had made to capture the party, he referred to that frenzy which inspired the crusaders under the leaders.h.i.+p of Peter the Hermit. He spoke in defense of the wage earner, the lawyer in the country town, the merchant at the crossroads store, the farmer and the miner,--naming them one after the other and ranging himself on their side. "We stand here," he said, "representing people who are the equals before the law of the largest cities in the state of Ma.s.sachusetts. When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a business man. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go a thousand feet into the earth or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured in the channels of trade, are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world.

"We come to speak for this broader cla.s.s of business men. Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose--those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature's heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds--out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead--are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.

"It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have pet.i.tioned, and our pet.i.tions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

"We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we pet.i.tion no more. We defy them!"

Mr. Bryan then took up the income tax. He repudiated the idea that the proposed platform contained a criticism of the Supreme Court. He said, "We have simply called attention to what you know. If you want criticisms, read the dissenting opinions of the court." He denied that the income tax law was unconst.i.tutional when it was pa.s.sed, or even when it went before the Supreme Court for the first time. "It did not become unconst.i.tutional," he exclaimed, "until one judge changed his mind; and we cannot be expected to know when a judge will change his mind."

The monetary question was the great paramount issue. But Mr. Bryan did not stop to discuss any of the technical points involved in it.

Protection had slain its thousands, and the gold standard had slain its tens of thousands; the people of the United States did not surrender their rights of self-government to foreign potentates and powers. The common people of no land had ever declared in favor of the gold standard, but bondholders had. If the gold standard was a good thing, international bimetallism was wrong; if the gold standard was a bad thing, the United States ought not to wait for the help of other nations in righting a wrong--this was the line of Mr. Bryan's attack. And he concluded by saying: "Mr. Carlisle said, in 1878, that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling ma.s.ses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and, my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic party fight? Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling ma.s.ses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling ma.s.ses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic party.

"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the ma.s.ses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up and through every cla.s.s that rests upon it.

"You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms, and the gra.s.s will grow in the streets of every city in this country.

"My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single State in this Union.

"I shall not slander the fair State of Ma.s.sachusetts, nor the State of New York, by saying that when its citizens are confronted with the proposition, 'Is this nation able to attend to its own business?'--I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those States will declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3,000,000, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to 70,000,000, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.

"If they dare to come out and in the open defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing ma.s.ses of the Nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling ma.s.ses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

The record of the convention states that "the conclusion of Mr. Bryan's speech was the signal for a tremendous outburst of noise, cheers, etc.

The standards of many states were carried from their places and gathered about the Nebraska delegation." Never in the history of convention oratory had a speaker so swayed the pa.s.sions of his auditors and so quickly made himself unquestionably "the man of the hour."

After some parliamentary skirmis.h.i.+ng, Mr. Hill succeeded in securing from the convention a vote on the proposition of the minority in favor of the maintenance of the gold standard, "until international cooperation among the leading nations in the coinage of silver can be secured." For this proposition the eastern states voted almost solidly, with some help from the western states. Connecticut gave her twelve votes for the subst.i.tute amendment; Delaware, five of her six votes; Maine, ten out of twelve; Maryland, twelve out of sixteen; Ma.s.sachusetts, twenty-seven out of thirty; New Hamps.h.i.+re, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont gave their entire vote for the gold standard. The eastern states secured a little support in the West and South. Minnesota gave eleven out of seventeen votes for the amendment; Wisconsin voted solidly for it; Florida gave three out of eight votes; Was.h.i.+ngton gave three out of eight; Alaska voted solidly for it; the District of Columbia and New Mexico each cast two out of the six votes allotted to them in the convention. Out of a total of 929 votes cast, 303 were for the minority amendment and 626 against it.

The minority proposition to commend "the honesty, economy, courage, and fidelity of the present Democratic administration" was then put to the convention and received a vote of 357 to 564--nine not voting. The additional support to the eastern states came this time princ.i.p.ally from California, Michigan, and Minnesota; but the division between the Northeast and the West and South was sharply maintained. The adoption of the platform as reported by the majority of the committee was then effected by a vote of 628 to 301.

In the evening the convention turned to the selection of candidates. In the nominating speeches, the character of the revolution in American politics came out even more clearly than in the debates on the platform.

The enemy had been routed, and the convention was in the hands of the radicals, and they did not have to compromise and pick phrases in the hope of harmony.

Richard Bland, of Missouri, was the first man put before the convention, and he was represented as "the living, breathing embodiment of the silver cause"--a candidate chosen "not from the usurer's den, nor temple of Mammon where the clink of gold drowns the voice of patriotism; but from the farm, the workshop, the mine--from the hearts and homes of the people." Mr. Overmeyer, of Kansas, seconded the nomination of Mr.

Bland--"that Tiberius Gracchus"--"in the name of the farmers of the United States; in the name of the homeless wanderers who throng your streets in quest of bread; in the name of that mighty army of the unemployed; in the name of that mightier army which has risen in insurrection against every form of despotism."

Mr. Bryan was presented as that young giant of the West, that friend of the people, that champion of the lowly, that apostle and prophet of this great crusade for financial reform--a new Cicero to meet the new Catilines of to-day--to lead the Democratic party, the defender of the poor, and the protector of the oppressed, which this day sent forth "tidings of great joy to all the toiling millions of this overburdened land."

On the first ballot, fourteen candidates were voted for, but Mr. Bland and Mr. Bryan were clearly in the lead. On the fifth ballot, Mr. Bryan was declared nominated by a vote of 652 out of 930. Throughout the balloting, most of the eastern states abstained from voting. Ten delegates from Connecticut, seventeen or eighteen from Ma.s.sachusetts, a majority from New Jersey, all of the delegates from New York, and a majority of the delegates from Wisconsin refused to take any part at all. Pennsylvania remained loyal throughout to the nominee from that state, Pattison, although it was a forlorn hope. Thus in the balloting for candidates, we discover the same alignment of the East against the West and South which was evident in the vote on the platform. In the vote on the Vice President which followed, the eastern states refused to partic.i.p.ate--from 250 to 260 delegates abstaining during the five ballots which resulted in the nomination of Sewall. New York consistently abstained; so did New Jersey; while a majority of the delegates from Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts refused to take part.