Charles A. Beard

“ I believe the struggle now going on in this country and in other countries for a single gold standard would, if successful, produce widespread disaster throughout the commercial world. The destruction of silver as money and the establishment of gold as the sole unit of value must have a ruinous effect on all forms of property, except those investments which yield a fixed return. ”

“ Cleveland, a consistent enemy of free silver, gave his powerful support to the gold standard and insisted on the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act, thus alienating an increasing number of his own party. In 1893 a grave industrial crisis fell upon the land: banks and business houses went into bankruptcy with startling rapidity; factories were closed; idle men thronged the streets hunting for work; and the prices of wheat and corn dropped to a ruinous level. Labor disputes also filled the crowded record. A strike at the Pullman car works in Chicago spread to the railways. ”

“ Obviously, if the gold in a gold dollar exceeds the value of the silver in a silver dollar on the open market, men will hoard gold money and leave silver money in circulation. When, for example, Congress in 1792 fixed the ratio of the two metals at one to fifteen—one ounce of gold declared worth fifteen of silver—it was soon found that gold had been undervalued. ”

“ Parades, processions, and monster demonstrations filled the land with politics. Whole states were polled in advance by the Republicans and the doubtful voters personally visited by men equipped with arguments and literature. Manufacturers, frightened at the possibility of disordered public credit, announced that they would close their doors if the Democrats won the election. Men were dismissed from public and private places on account of their political views, one eminent college president being forced out for advocating free silver. ”

“ If a fifty-dollar coupon on a bond bought seventy or eighty bushels of wheat instead of twenty or thirty, the advantage to the owner of the coupon was obvious. Moreover the advantage seemed to him entirely just. Creditors had suffered heavy losses when the Civil War carried prices skyward while the interest rates on their old bonds remained stationary. For example, if a man had a $1000 bond issued before 1860 and paying interest at five per cent, he received fifty dollars a year from it. ”

“ In his first inaugural President McKinley, as if still uncertain in his own mind or fearing a revival of the contest just closed, placed the tariff, not the money question, in the forefront. "The people have decided," he said, "that such legislation should be had as will give ample protection and encouragement to the industries and development of our country." Protection for American industries, therefore, he urged, is the task before Congress. ”

“ The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping stone to others larger and more sweeping till our political conditions will become a war of the poor against the rich. ”

“ Under the operation of a shrinkage in the volume of money, this enormous mass of borrowers, at the maturity of their respective debts, though nominally paying no more than the amount borrowed, with interest, are in reality, in the amount of the principal alone, returning a percentage of value greater than they received—more in equity than they contracted to pay.... ”

“ Industries of every kind were soon running full blast; labor was employed; commerce spread more swiftly than ever to the markets of the world. Coincident with this progress was the organization of the greatest combinations and trusts the world had yet seen. In 1899 the smelters formed a trust with a capital of $65,000,000; in the same year the Standard Oil Company with a capital of over one hundred millions took the place of the old trust; and the Copper Trust was incorporated under the laws of New Jersey, its par value capital being fixed shortly afterward at $175,000,000. ”

“ The miners who go a thousand feet into the earth or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs ... are as much business men as the few financial magnates who in a back room corner the money of the world.... ”

“ 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 cross roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York. ”

“ The income tax came next on the program. The platform alleged that the law of 1894, passed by a Democratic Congress, was "in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of the Supreme Court for nearly a hundred years," and then hinted that the decision annulling the law might be reversed by the same body "as it may hereafter be constituted."
The appeal to labor voiced by Mr. Bryan in his "crown of thorns" speech was reinforced in the platform. "As labor creates the wealth of the country," ran one plank, "we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights." ”

“ Whatever the cause, the discontented farmers believed that the way to raise prices was to issue more money. They viewed it as a case of supply and demand. If there was a small volume of currency in circulation, prices would be low; if there was a large volume, prices would be high. Hence they looked with favor upon all plans to increase the amount of money in circulation. First they advocated more paper notes—greenbacks—and then they turned to silver as the remedy. ”

“ Yet, appealing as it did to the most active and independent spirits among the farmers and gathering to itself the strength that always comes from organization, it soon found itself in the hands of leaders more or less involved in politics. Where a few votes are marshaled together in a democracy, there is power. ”

“ The Republicans taunted them with being "babes in the woods." President Cleveland was so dissatisfied with the bill that he refused to sign it, allowing it to become a law, on the lapse of ten days, without his approval.
The Income Tax of 1894.—The advocates of tariff reduction usually associated with their proposal a tax on incomes. The argument which they advanced in support of their program was simple. Most of the industries, they said, are in the East and the protective tariff which taxes consumers for the benefit of manufacturers is, in effect, a tribute laid upon the rest of the country. ”

“ Viewed as a whole we find the dominating influences in the trusts to be made up of a network of large and small capitalists, many allied to one another by ties of more or less importance, but all being appendages to or parts of the greater groups which are themselves dependent on and allied with the two mammoth or Rockefeller and Morgan groups. These two mammoth groups jointly ... constitute the heart of the business and commercial life of the nation." Such was the picture of triumphant business enterprise drawn by a financier within a few years after the memorable campaign of 1896. ”

“ It was patent that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats were prepared for a war on the trusts to the bitter end.
The Minor Parties and Unrest The Demands of Dissenting Parties.—From the election of 1872, when Horace Greeley made his ill-fated excursion into politics, onward, there appeared in each presidential campaign one, and sometimes two or more parties, stressing issues that appealed mainly to wage-earners and farmers. Whether they chose to call themselves Labor Reformers, Greenbackers, or Anti-monopolists, their slogans and their platforms all pointed in one direction. ”

“ In that year, Congress enacted a law authorizing the Treasury to withdraw the greenbacks from circulation. The paper money party set up a shrill cry of protest, and kept up the fight until, in 1878, it forced Congress to provide for the continuous re-issue of the legal tender notes as they came into the Treasury in payment of taxes and other dues. ”

“ In 1887, the pressure became so strong that Congress created the interstate commerce commission and forbade many abuses on the part of railways; such as discriminating in charges between one shipper and another and granting secret rebates to favored persons. This law was a significant beginning; but it left the main question of rate-fixing untouched, much to the discontent of farmers and shippers. ”

“ It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Ours is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in defense of our homes, our families, and our posterity. We have petitioned and our petitions have been scorned. ”

“ The beginnings were disappointing; but two years later, in the congressional elections, the Greenbackers swept whole sections of the country. Their candidates polled more than a million votes and fourteen of them were returned to the House of Representatives. To all outward signs a new and formidable party had entered the lists. ”

“ The Grangers.—This unsparing, not to say revolutionary, criticism of American political life, appealed, it seems, mainly to farmers in the Middle West. Always active in politics, they had, before the Civil War, cast their lot as a rule with one or the other of the leading parties. ”

“ These included among many others: the earliest possible payment of the national debt; regulation of the rates of railways and telegraph companies; repeal of the specie resumption act of 1875; the issue of legal tender notes by the government convertible into interest-bearing obligations on demand; unlimited coinage of silver as well as gold; a graduated inheritance tax; legislation to take from "land, railroad, money, and other gigantic corporate monopolies ... the powers they have so corruptly and unjustly usurped"; popular or direct election of United States Senators; woman suffrage ”