Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed]

"THE SILVER DOG WITH THE GOLDEN TAIL-WILL THE TAIL WAG THE DOG, OR THE DOG WAG THE TAIL?"

(A campaign poster much used in the West. The numerals indicate the electoral vote of each state.)

ever before. The Republican committee, under the chairmanship of the Hon. J. W. Babcock of Wisconsin, has been hard at work since early in June, and, like the National Committee at Chicago, it has broken its own record. The committee has printed 23 different documents. Of a single speech in Congress, that delivered by Representative McCleary of Minnesota in the House last February, in reply to his colleague, Representative Towne, the committee has issued 2,500,000 copies. Another popular money document issued by the committee was Representative Babcock's speech on the history of money and financial legislation in the United States. In the list of pamphlets sent out by the committee were speeches by Senator Sherman, Mr. Blaine, Repre sentative Dingley, Speaker Reed and others. The committee did not restrict itself to the distribution of Congressional speeches, but chose such other ammunition as seemed adapted for the purpose in view. A pamphlet of forty pages was prepared, dealing with the silver question in a conversational way, and this, although one of the longest, proved to be one of the most popular documents sent out. The silver question was not treated wholly to the exclusion of the tariff in these documents, but in the latter weeks of the campaign it was found that the demand for tariff literature gradually increased and a large proportion of the documents distributed from Washington dealt with that subject.

THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE TARIFF LEAGUE.

The distribution of Republican literature from New York City was placed in the hands of the American Protective Tariff League, and this efficient organization, under the direction of Secretary W. F. Wakeman, proved to be fully equal to the task imposed upon it. Some twenty millions of documents were sent out from the headquarters in West Twenty-third street, New York City, to points east and north of the Ohio River. Long experience and thorough organization enabled the League to perform the service with the utmost possible dispatch and thoroughness. Each Congressional district in the territory covered was assigned a pro rata quota of documents, and additional shipments were made from time to time as required. The League's own work of editing and printing material for campaign purposes was done in a most systematic and admirable manner. Although this has not been a tariff campaign, the currency question having overshadowed all others, the League has naturally exerted itself to make the most of every opportunity to circulate tariff literature. The extensive and efficient propaganda of the League was credited with an important influence in bringing about the nomination of Major McKinley, and the best energies of its office machinery have been devoted to securing his election. Oddly enough, it has hap

pened that a speech of Senator Jones of Nevada, on the tariff, which had been widely circulated by the League in past years, has also been much in demand during the present campaign. The League's pamphlet containing parallel columns of extracts from the speeches of Bryan and McKinley on the tariff question has had the truly phenomenal circulation of three millions of copies since Mr Bryan's nomination.

THE SILVER PROPAGANDA.

[ocr errors]

newspaper output of the Republican committee. This agency has been in charge of Mr. F. U. Adams, Secretary of the Democratic Press Bureau.

THE CARTOON IN THE CAMPAIGN.

In connection with the use of plate matter and "ready prints," the newspaper cartoon has played a more important part this year throughout the canvass than ever before in our political history. The effectiveness of the cartoon in political warfare has long been recognized by party managers. This year a great part of the responsibility for this feature in campaign work has been lifted from the shoulders of the national and state committees by the voluntary activity in cartoon illustration on the part of the most influential daily papers throughout the country during the summer and fall months. The political cartoon department of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS has borne ample testimony to this activity

The silver Democrats and Populists, who might have been expected to be most aggressive at the outset of the campaign in which their leaders proposed a radical change in public policy, have really been less active than their opponents in the employment of the printing press to popularize their arguments. The Congressional Committee at Washington, under the direction of Senator Faulker of West Virginia, has published and distributed a large number of documents, several of which were not speeches in Congress, but were selected for their general effectiveness in argument. One of the pamphlets thus chosen was made up of a series of articles entitled "The Bond and the Dollar," contributed by Professor John Clark Ridpath to the Arena. The committee also published a pamphlet of 86 pages entitled "Facts About Silver. " Marcus Willson's "Road to Prosperity was also published under the auspices of the Congressional Committee. Then there was a tract written to prove that the commercial ratio of silver and gold has been unaffected by any cause except discriminating legislation. A history of the coinage laws of the United States by presidential administrations, entitled "The Money of the Constitution," was also distributed broadcast by the committee. There was, of course, much frankable matter sent out in the form of Congressional speeches on the money question. The Congressional Committee was the first of the regular party organizations to begin work on behalf of silver. The opening of the Chicago headquarters occurred comparatively late in the campaign, and it was some time before the machinery of publication and distribution from that centre was gotten under way. Perhaps the most important work in the publication line carried on by the National Democratic Committee at Chicago has been the preparation of plate matter and supplements for daily and weekly papers similar to the

[graphic]

Can the American producer, already heavily weighed down, stand the additional burden of the Permanent Gold Standard?

POPULAR SILVER POSTER.

in the form of reproductions of newspaper cartoons drawn from every conceivable point of view. It is doubtless true that the skill displayed in newspaper caricature, to say nothing of the enterprise shown by newspaper managers in securing the services of able cartoonists, has reached a point heretofore unknown in this country. On the Democratic and Populist side perhaps more use has been made of the newspaper cartoon than on the Republican side. The turn which Mr. Davenport of the New York Journal early in the campaign gave

HON. CHARLES J. FAULKNER, Chairman Democratic Congressional Committee.

to the figure of Mr. Hanna has done duty in thousands of newspaper caricatures from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

POPULISTIC LITERATURE.

The Populists have certainly not employed the ordinary methods of party propaganda to any such extent as have the other parties. The obvious reason for this is the fact that their " campaign of education" had begun years before, and had been continuously prosecuted down to the date of the Chicago convention. Their party organization had been more thorough and more intelligent than people in the East would generally have supposed; hence the leaders of the Populist party did not feel that necessity of re-educating their following which so strongly impressed the leaders of the Republican party at the beginning of the canvass. Every Populist voter knew the arguments for free silver, had read "Coin's Financial School" and Gordon Clark's

"Handbook of Money," and was entirely familiar with the pros if not the cons of the free-silver contention. Thus the ordinary campaign methods of publishing and circulating documents had small place in the Populist programme. What the methods of the Populists have generally been, especially in the rural districts of the middle West, has been graphically described by the Rev. N. D. Hillis in the REVIEW OF REVIEWS for September. The Populist farmer has been working industriously all the campaign, giving out tracts to his unconverted neighbor, arranging for schoolhouse meetings in his district, endeavoring to make known to every hesitating voter the promises and the doctrines of the People's party.

ORATORY IN THE CAMPAIGN.

Considering the remarkable expenditures for the dissemination of argument by means of the printed page, the poster, and the cartoon, it might have been supposed that in this campaign oratory would have had but a minor part. Then, too, the economic and statistical problems of a nation's currency have not usually lent themselves with grace to the fiery utterances of the political orator. But in this respect also the present year's campaigning has been exceptional. The oratorical powers of the opposing candidates had not a little to do with the winning of each nomination-in the one case directly, in the other just as truly if less conspicuously. Mr. Bryan set his own pace in his Chicago convention speech. Mr. McKinley was known at the start as one of the greatest campaign orators of his time. Neither of these men could be forced to obey the tradition which required silence of presidential candidates.

Mr. Bryan's speechmaking record has been the most wonderful one in the whole history of American presidential campaigns. Poor Horace Greeley's famous tour in 1872 and Mr. Blaine's extended journeyings in 1884 are made to seem insignificant by comparison. On the night before election, if pres ent plans are carried out, Mr. Bryan will have made about four hundred reported speeches in twenty-nine states. No previous candidate for the presidency ever attempted such a feat as this. Day after day this speechmaking has gone on-much of it from the rear platforms of railway trains, while the telegraph and the daily newspaper have carried the speaker's utterances everywhere. Here again must be considered the matchless service of the press, without which the orator's words could reach but a limited number.

But for Mr. McKinley, too, this has been a speechmaking campaign. He has remained at his home in Canton, but auditors have come to him from far and near. There is a precision, a fixed adherence to schedule, in the arrangements for receiving and addressing delegations at Canton which is wholly lack. ing in the Bryan "steeple chasing" programme. Mr. McKinley's speeches have been prepared with care and fully reported by the press.

In the early stages of the canvass there was a

[graphic]

dearth in the rank and file of Republican campaign orators of men who could speak convincingly on the merits of the money question. This dearth has since been in some measure supplied by speakers of ability who have enrolled themselves for this fight in the McKinley column on the currency issue alone. Thus some of the most effective speeches for "sound money" have been made by such men as the Hon. Carl Schurz and the Hon. Bourke Cockran -men whose voices have not been heard in other campaigns of recent years in defense of Republican party policy. In the last few weeks there has been no lack of good speakers to present the gold-standard side of the argument.

THE FINAL STRUGGLE.

In the closing weeks of the campaign the main reliance of both parties has been on appeals to voters from the stump. After Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and the other states of the middle West had been deluged with tons of leaflets, pamphlets and other products of pen and press, the whole enginery of each of the rival party organizations was turned to the task of convincing the individual voter by direct word of mouth. The great "honest money" parade on Chicago Day, in which 75,000 men participated, and the triumphal progress of the Union soldiers

(Generals Sickles, Howard and others) through Illinois contributed a spectacular element to the Re publican canvass. No such imposing demonstrations were made by the Popocrats, but throughout his stumping tour through the contested territory Mr. Bryan was greeted by great crowds and his speeches were received with much enthusiasm. It really seems that the influence of oratory is yet potent among us, when such subjects as the currency and the tariff can be enlivened and effectively presented in a way to win and hold attention by the speaker as well as by the journalist and reviewer.

This could not have been true if in a campaign involving purely material issues to so great a degree the appeals of speakers had been merely to the cupidity and avarice of the voter. On the other hand, the ethical aspects of the contest have been kept constantly in view. On the Republican side the voter has been called on to defend and maintain the national honor. On the Democratic and Populist side he has been asked to right what Mr. Bryan and his sympathizers have denounced as a gross injustice to millions of their fellow-citizens. On each side the appeal has been, on the whole, to the higher rather than to the baser motives of political action. W. B. SHAW.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors]

THE MODERN ANDROMEDA-A MUCH USED REPUBLICAN POSTER.

Perseus McKinley getting ready to deal the finishing stroke to the dragon which threatens to devour the distressed maiden. From Wasp (San Francisco, Cal.).

WOULD FREE COINAGE BENEFIT WAGE EARNERS ?

FOR

I. THE AFFIRMATIVE VIEW.

BY DR. CHARLES B. SPAHR.

OR several years organized labor in this country has demanded the free coinage of silver. In the present campaign the lenders of capital are opposing this demand on the ground that under free coinage prices would rise faster than wages, and therefore labor's share of the product of industry would be ruined. Has organized labor mistaken its interests or is its demand the outcome of its experiences with rising and falling prices ?

Neither laborers nor lenders of capital seriously doubt that under the free coinage of silver prices will rise. Those who declare that the currency will be contracted and prices fall involve themselves in the absurdity of declaring that the freely coined silver dollar will be more valuable than the present gold dollar. Yet in the next breath they will assert that the silver dollar will be worth only 53 per cent. of its present value. The two assertions are about equally irrational, and they are absolutely contradictory unless all economic writers prior to the present partisan discussion were wrong; unless all economic history is absolutely false the free coinage of silver will mean steady expansion of the currency and a rise of prices proportionate to this expansion.

A half century ago the world experienced just such an expansion of the currency, and the effects then indicate the probable effects now. With the gold discoveries of 1848 the production of that metal increased at a bound from $30,000,000 a year to $150,000,000. The banking interests of that day predicted its depreciation and demanded that its coinage be suspended. The entire gold money of the world. according to Sorther, was then less than $800,000,000 and more than $100,000,000 a year poured in upon the mints of the gold using countries. The entire currency of these countries increased about 10 per cent. a year, or faster than our currency can possibly be increased by the free coinage of silver. The expansion of the currency brought to an end the business depression that had set in with the panic of 1847 and produced a period of unprece dented business activity.

Until 1873 the free coinage of both metals continued, the supply of money increased faster than the supply of goods and prices rose. Since 1873 silver has been practically excluded from the mints, the supply of currency has increased less rapidly than the supply of goods and prices have fallen. For both of these periods we have comprehensive and reliable statistics concerning the production of wealth, prices and wages. From these we are enabled to judge whether the wage earners

are right or wrong in believing that their interests are furthered by the expansion of the currency and rising prices.

The most comprehensive statistics at hand are, of course, those of Sauerbeck, published yearly in the "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society." Sauer beck's figures cover all the articles in the United Kingdom of which statistics exist and whose value -whether produced in England or imported from abroad-exceeds a million pounds. These articles, forty-five in number, include all the important food products, minerals and textiles, besides a large number of miscellaneous materials such as timber, leather and oil. In order to show the quantities of these goods purchased for the English market Sauerbeck reckons their value each year at a standard price, which is always their average price during the decade from 1868 to 1877. During the past half century the amount produced and imported for each family has increased as follows: Quantity per family. (Standard prices.)

1848-50.

1872-74. 1893-95..

$259

397 434

Gain over previous period.

53 per cent. 10"

In other words, the supply of goods per family increased 53 per cent. during the period of rising prices and business prosperity under bimetallism, while it has increased but 10 per cent. during the

period of falling prices and business depression under the single gold standard.

Since the production of wealth increased so rapidly under bimetallism and so slowly under monometallism it is evident that the working masses were immensely benefited by the old policy, unless it somehow lessened their share of the aggregate product. But this is precisely the opposite of what it accomplished: As Cairnes-one of the last of the great monometallists-freely admitted in his essay on the effect of the gold discoveries, the only class that lost from rising prices were the creditors and others with fixed incomes. Their share of the product was lessened and the share of the producing classes was proportionately increased. Especially, says Cairnes,* was the condition of the laboring classes improved. The first effect of the expansion of the currency, he says, was an increased demand for labor. Prices only rose as the increased earnings of the working people led to an increased demand for goods. The unprecedented rise in wages that took place was, he declares, the happiest result of the expansion of the currency.

Essays in Political Economy," page 152.

« PreviousContinue »