American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

by H. W. Brands

  Harrison’s split decision summarized the state of national politics as the 1880s ended. Since 1876 the major parties had been as evenly balanced as they ever had been or would be in American history. Though Republicans won the presidency in three of the four elections from 1876 to 1888, the Democratic candidates actually polled more popular votes (19.1 million total to 18.8 million for the Republicans). Republicans controlled the Senate for ten of the twelve years after 1876; Democrats controlled the House for ten of the twelve years. Each party controlled the two houses simultaneously for just two years; during the other eight years Congress was divided.

  The balance seemed a feature of American geography. The Democrats were entrenched in the South, and they became ever more entrenched as the politics of the region grew ever whiter. The Republicans retained their advantage in the Northeast and Ohio Valley. Smart money might have forecast a continuation of the balance, with the Republicans and the Democrats trading control of Congress and of the presidency for the indefinite future.

  Yet smarter money—including money the Republicans were pouring into political campaigns in increasing quantities—suggested a different future. The “New South” wasn’t as new as its publicists liked to boast, and compared with the dynamically growing, industrializing, immigrant-attracting North, it was a veritable backwater. The party that dominated the nation’s manufacturing districts—which was to say, the Republican party—had a potentially decisive edge in national elections. The West was a wild card; its farmers, ranchers, and miners were as unpredictable as the region’s notorious weather. But if the Republicans could convince urban workers that their interests aligned with those of their employers, and if they could prevent the Populists from making effective common cause with the Democrats, there might be no end to the victories the GOP could win.

  BALDING, JOWLY, AND generous of girth, Thomas Reed could have been the model of the Gilded Age politician if not for his mordant sense of humor. Maine’s Republicans (and some of its rare Democrats) had been electing Reed to the House of Representatives since 1876; they probably would have promoted him to the Senate had he not considered it too staid—“a place where good Representatives went when they died,” he remarked. So he remained in the House, where he delighted in skewering his opponents and occasionally himself. He refused to reveal his weight, estimated by others at three hundred pounds. “No gentleman ever weighed over two hundred pounds,” Reed said. At a time when Republican office seekers often inflated their Civil War records, Reed dismissed his service as a navy paymaster. “Tell them I kept a grocery on a gunboat down in Louisiana,” he replied to a supporter eager to spread the word of his exploits. He acknowledged his own inconsistencies. “I do not promise the members of this House whenever they listen to me to give them wisdom of adamant. I do not promise them I shall not change my mind when I see good reason for doing it. I only promise that I will give them honestly what my opinion is at the time. They must take their chances about it being for eternity.” He deprecated his entire class by coining the phrase about a statesman’s being a dead politician. When a eulogist inquired as to what he should say about a recently deceased colleague, Reed answered, “Anything but the truth.” He understood the rules of the political game; after doing something honorable he told a friend, “I do not expect, by acting thus strictly, to escape public slander. I only expect not to deserve it.” On another occasion he declared, “One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted.”

  Reed was an unabashed partisan and consequently reserved his sharpest stabs for the Democrats. “We live in a world of sin and sorrow,” he said. “Otherwise there would not be any Democratic party.” He declared of certain Democrats that they never opened their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge. He told a gathering of Democrats that members of their party could always be counted on to do some “mean, lowlived, and contemptible thing.” When the audience hissed and hooted, he said, “There, I told you so.” Harley Kilgore, a Democratic congressman from Texas particularly irked Reed. Kilgore boasted of a boldness that put his seat in jeopardy; Reed responded, “The gentleman from Texas is safe. His district is Democratic, naturally. The common-school system does not prevail there.” Interrupted by a Democratic heckler during a speech, Reed promptly silenced the challenger with a wicked retort. He then declared, in the nasal drawl of his native state, “Having embedded that fly in the liquid amber of my remarks, I will proceed.”2

  Reed headed the Republican majority in the House in 1890, having been nominated for speaker over William McKinley of Ohio and Joseph Cannon of Illinois (and elected by virtue of that GOP majority). He outraged the Democrats by orchestrating a rule change that prevented members of the minority from declaring themselves absent when they were physically present, thereby blocking a quorum. For his pains he earned the title “czar,” which he wore thereafter with pride.

  The rule change helped the Republicans have their way in the Fifty-first Congress. At the top of their agenda was tariff reform, on which Republicans had long campaigned. Like other sorts of political reform, tariff reform meant more or less whatever the person using the term intended, but for the Republicans in 1890—in particular for William McKinley, who as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee directed tariff considerations—it meant a continuation and perhaps elaboration of the protection American industry had enjoyed since the Civil War. Until the war the tariff had been designed chiefly for revenue, with rates set low enough not to discourage imports excessively (and thereby eliminate the revenue they were counted on to produce). During the war the reigning philosophy changed. The new income and excise taxes cut sharply into net profits of businesses; to soften the blow Congress allowed the tariff rates to rise to a level that afforded protection to American industry. “If we bleed manufacturers,” Republican congressman Justin Morrill of Vermont explained, “we must see to it that the proper tonic is administered at the same time.” American manufacturers grew accustomed to the protection, and even though the wartime taxes were discontinued after Appomattox, the tariff rates stayed high. In time this caused a problem, in the form of a large and growing federal surplus, which the Democrats demanded be reduced by lowering the tariff. The Republicans sought other solutions. They expanded the Civil War pension program, thereby securing the loyalty of additional Union veterans and dependents and allowing James Tanner, the pension commissioner, to boast persuasively: “I will drive a six-mule team through the Treasury.… God help the surplus!” Other spending, on public works, a bigger navy, and the Columbian Exposition, boosted federal outlays to record levels by 1890. The “billion dollar Congress,” critics called the Fifty-first, prompting Reed to reply, “This is a billion dollar country.”3

  The tariff McKinley devised added to the complaints. It raised existing rates and added many items to the protected list. While the additions spread the wealth on the producers’ side, they meant that consumers suddenly found themselves paying more for an entire range of products (and they led to headlong races across the Atlantic by ships carrying newly dutied goods, to arrive just before the law took effect; one steamer, the Etruria, reached New York with minutes to spare, saving its cargo’s owners a reported million dollars in duties). Lest the revision appear a total loss to consumers, McKinley arranged for sugar to be placed on the free list. Yet even this victory was ambiguous, for the big gainer was the sugar trust, whose control of the market allowed it to pocket the savings rather than pass them on to consumers. At the urging of James Blaine, again secretary of state, McKinley permitted the addition of a reciprocity clause to the new tariff: if other countries lowered their tariffs on American goods, the United States would reciprocate.4

  The tariff was a triumph for the capitalist class but a disaster for the Republican party. It played into populist perceptions of the GOP as the lackey of big business, causing even some Republicans to object. “About two thousand millionaires run the policies of the R
epublican party and make its tariffs,” muttered Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune. “Whatever duties protect the two thousand plutocrats is protection to American industries. Whatever don’t is free trade.” The Democrats made the most of their opportunity, blaming the McKinley tariff for every price increase on every item in every store. Tom Reed thought the effect was particularly pronounced among women, who, while not voting in most states, influenced their men, who did. “It is the women who do the shopping,” Reed observed, “who keep the run of prices, who have the keenest scent for increased cost. They heard in every store the clerks behind the counters explain how this article or that could not be sold hereafter at the former price because of the McKinley Bill; they went home and told their husbands and fathers.”5

  Those husbands and fathers handed the Republicans a monumental defeat in the 1890 elections. Democrats and Farmers’ Alliance candidates obliterated the Republican majority in the House, leaving the GOP outnumbered there by 3 to 1. McKinley went down with the ship, as did Joseph Cannon. McKinley, a chronic optimist, suggested that things had worked out for the best. He would now be able to practice law, make some money, and spend time with his family. Cannon sagely puffed his cigar. “That’s what I tell all the boys,” he said. “But, Mack, don’t let’s lie to one another.”6

  PRESIDENTS ARE MADE by good luck as often as by great talent, and sometimes the good luck first looks bad. The Republican debacle of 1890 opened the way for the Democrats to reclaim the White House in 1892, which Grover Cleveland did by beating Benjamin Harrison in a rematch of the 1888 contest. But Cleveland hardly had time to savor his revenge before the Panic of 1893 hit, and as the economy spiraled downward, so did the Democrats’ chances of retaining office. The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act did little for either the economy or the Democrats’ prospects, and their other significant response to the crisis, an 1894 tariff bill named for Congressman William Wilson of West Virginia and Senator Arthur Gorman of Maryland, simply made matters worse. Its rate reductions didn’t noticeably ease the plight of consumers, but they eroded the profits of already weakened manufacturers and hence the job tenure of their workers. The income tax the measure included, in part to offset the tariff reductions, in part to preempt the anti-capitalist demands of the Populists, guaranteed an adverse reaction from the wealthy and powerful. “The Democrats are in favor of an income tax for the reason that Democrats, as a rule, have no incomes to tax,” the Los Angeles Times declared acidly but not wholly inaccurately. Joseph Choate called the tax “communistic in its purpose and tendencies” in argument before the Supreme Court in the 1895 test case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Company. The income tax signaled renewal of class warfare and struck a blow at “the very keystone of the arch upon which all civilized government rests,” Choate said. The court agreed in principle, albeit most disagreeably (John Marshall Harlan wrote confidentially that Associate Justice Stephen Field behaved like a “madman” during deliberations). By 5 to 4 the court struck down the income tax.7

  By then the Democrats had been driven from Congress. Tom Reed had anticipated the 1894 elections with glee, predicting, “The Democratic mortality will be so great next fall that their dead will be buried in trenches and marked ‘unknown.’ ” He subsequently added: “Until the supply of trenches gives out.” Voters made Reed a prophet, prompting Democrat Champ Clark, one of the casualties, to call the election the greatest slaughter of innocents since Herod.8

  William McKinley observed the massacre from the relative calm of Columbus, Ohio. After his ouster from Congress, McKinley had retreated to his home state, where he was taken in hand by Mark Hanna, a Cleveland businessman who increasingly found politics more interesting than the iron mines and coal barges that earned him his fortune. Hanna had long backed John Sherman for president, but his eye fell upon McKinley at the 1888 Republican convention when McKinley, having pledged to Sherman, refused to countenance a boomlet in his own direction. “I would not respect myself if I could find it in my heart to do so,” he told the convention. Hanna, watching from the wings, afterward asserted that McKinley’s statement “destined him as a marked man for President.”9

  Hanna’s attachment to McKinley was opportunistic—the capitalist to the candidate, the kingmaker to the king-to-be—but it was also emotional. Hanna was the senior of the two, the wealthier and more experienced, and casual observers often assumed Hanna directed the relationship. Yet those who watched closely saw something different. William Allen White recalled that Hanna was “just a shade obsequious” around McKinley. Chicago editor Herman Kohlsaat spent a lot of time with the two together, and said of Hanna, regarding McKinley: “His attitude was always that of a big, bashful boy toward a girl he loves.”10

  For love or money, Hanna began grooming McKinley for the presidency. He mined his own bank account when McKinley ran for Ohio governor, and he dunned other businessmen on McKinley’s behalf. After McKinley won, Hanna paid him visits in Columbus and hosted the governor at the Hanna home in Cleveland. Any Republican governor of Ohio was, by virtue of that office and the state’s electoral votes, a contender for the party’s presidential nomination (“Some are born great,” a chestnut of the era explained, “some achieve greatness, and some simply come from Ohio”), and Hanna busied himself prepping McKinley for 1896. The two held late-night policy sessions, and Hanna arranged for McKinley to appear in public as often as possible. “He has advertised McKinley as if he were a patent medicine,” groused Theodore Roosevelt, who preferred Tom Reed. After the depression left McKinley responsible for some notes he had cosigned for a friend, he looked to Hanna for help. “I have kept clear of entanglements all my life,” he was heard to lament. “Oh, that this should come to me now!… I wish Mark was here.” Hanna soon arrived. “I have no heart for any other work until McKinley is relieved from this awful strain,” he said. Hanna gathered a small group of capitalists who nominated themselves trustees for McKinley and took control of his finances. They kept creditors at arm’s length while they urged other capitalists to join the McKinley bailout. Henry Frick gave $2,000, George Pullman and Philip Armour, founder of Chicago’s giant meatpacking firm, $5,000 each. Hanna appreciated the potential for criticism in the course he was following, and so kept the campaign quiet. “We are doing this in a semi-confidential way and will not receive any money from persons except those who give from proper motives,” he declared. Apparently some donations were returned after the donors hinted too openly at what McKinley might do for them. But when the crisis finally passed, McKinley couldn’t help concluding that America’s capitalists were a good bunch and worthy of whatever assistance, within reason and decorum, he could provide them.11

  As 1896 approached, the Republican nomination for president loomed as the great prize in American politics. The economic depression, the labor troubles, and the disarray of the Democrats made the Republican nominee a nearly prohibitive favorite to take the White House. Hanna redoubled his efforts on behalf of McKinley. He purchased publicity promoting McKinley as the “advance agent of prosperity,” and he sent the governor on tour around the country. McKinley spoke to Republican leaders and the rank and file, praising the tariff, condemning the Democrats, and dodging the money question. Hanna worked the South assiduously, fully aware that while the Southern states meant little to Republicans in the general election, due to the disfranchisement of blacks and the marginalization of the few white Republicans, they meant much at the Republican national convention. Hanna’s mastery of the political process allowed McKinley himself to shun anything that smacked of deal making. In a fit of fatigue Hanna one day suggested that the nomination would be McKinley’s if he would merely offer guarantees to certain key party bosses: Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, Thomas Platt of New York. McKinley responded soberly, “Mark, some things come too high. If I were to accept the nomination on those terms, the place would be worth nothing to me and less to the people. If those are the terms, I am out of it.” Hanna caught
himself, saying he had merely identified the easy way to the nomination. They could win without the deals, only it would take longer. By all evidence, Hanna loved McKinley the more for his refusal.12

  Hanna spent at least $100,000 of his own money and an undetermined amount of others’ money on the McKinley campaign and succeeded in overwhelming the GOP competition. Tom Reed, McKinley’s most plausible rival, all but conceded defeat. As the delegates traveled to St. Louis, a friend supportively declared Reed the party’s obvious choice. Reed knew better. “The convention could do worse,” he said, “and probably will.”13

  By then the only drama surrounded the writing of the platform. Hanna and the party professionals wished to be as vague as possible, relying on the depression to defeat the Democrats. Activists advocated specificity, the more clearly to commit the party to their favorite causes. The money question brought the platform drafters nearly to blows. Goldbugs argued for the yellow stuff, demanding that it be mentioned by name. The party pros argued against it with equal vehemence. Whitelaw Reid, no pro but the editor of the New York Tribune, had just returned from Arizona, and he told McKinley, “If a gold plank is adopted, we will not carry a state west of the Mississippi River.” Hanna agreed. When Henry Cabot Lodge pushed his way into a meeting of the McKinley men at Hanna’s St. Louis hotel room and said, “Mr. Hanna, I insist on a positive declaration for a gold-standard plank in the platform,” Hanna glared at the intruder and demanded, “Who in hell are you?” “Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts,” Lodge replied. “Well, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, you can go plumb to hell. You have nothing to say about it.” “All right, sir,” Lodge rejoined, “I will make my fight on the floor of the convention.” “I don’t care a damn where you make your fight,” Hanna said.14