XXIX

THE SECOND HARRISON

WHEN a political party acquires control of the executive department of the government after passing twenty-four years in the cold shade of the opposition, a redistribution of offices is naturally the matter that first engages its attention. Mr. Cleveland, entering upon the duties of President, found himself in a peculiar position. He owed his election as much to a body of dissident Republicans as to the Democratic party. His "Mugwump" supporters were for the most part thorough believers in the principles of civil service reform, and had supported him in the belief that he agreed with them on that issue. They were totally opposed to a "clean sweep" of the appointive officers of the government. On the other hand, the main body of his adherents regarded the offices as the fruits of victory, and would not be satisfied so long as Republicans were drawing salaries from the Treasury. Mr. Cleveland so shaped his course as not wholly to disappoint either wing of his supporters. That he did not wholly satisfy either wing is involved in this statement. Removals from office for political reasons were numerous; and at the end of the four years' term a large proportion of the incumbents were Democrats. But in one case Mr. Cleveland reappointed a Republican to an important office; the removals were not made with too unseemly haste; and in many instances Republicans were suffered to serve out the full term of four years for which they had been appointed. There was not much friction between the President and the Senate, although the Republicans controlled that branch of Congress during Mr. Cleveland's term of office. The Senate usually acquiesced in the removals, and confirmed the President's appointments; and before his term had half expired, it concurred with the Democratic House of Representatives in repealing the Tenure of Office Act, which had been devised to limit President Johnson's power of removal from

office, and which, in a modified form, had been retained on the statute book ever since.

Although the Senate interposed no great obstacles to the President's distribution of the offices according to his pleasure, it set up an effectual barrier to the enactment of legislation of a political character. There was no serious attempt to draw up the two great parties in line of battle during the continuance of the Forty-ninth Congress. The party wrangling took place for the most part over the executive acts of the President, the Democrats upholding and the Republicans denouncing the disposition he made of the offices, and his use of the veto power, which he exercised with unexampled freedom. Inasmuch as a large number of the bills returned to Congress without the approval of the President were private pension bills, the effort was made, not without a measure of success, to represent Mr. Cleveland as but a half-hearted sympathizer with the soldiers; and the accusation that the interests of the former defenders of the flag were regarded by him in a too calculating spirit was used against him in the ensuing can

vass.

But all other political questions were thrust completely out of sight by the unusual and startling act of the President at the beginning of the Fiftieth Congress. The question of the tariff had been brought forward during the Forty-ninth Congress in the so-called "Morrison bill," - Mr. Morrison, of Illinois, was the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, but the division in the ranks of the Democratic party on this issue had been deep enough to prevent the passage of the bill even by the House of Representatives, in which the Democrats had a clear majority of forty members. At the beginning of the first session of the Fiftieth Congress, in December, 1887, the President, in disregard of unbroken precedent, omitted altogether from his annual message a review of government operations and a statement of international relations during the year past, and devoted the whole document to a plea for a revision of the tariff. The party lines were formed at once. The Republicans detected in Mr. Cleveland's message an attack upon the principle of a protective tariff, and closed up their ranks to defend the system of which they had been the champions for a quarter of a century. Mr. Blaine, who was making a long sojourn in Europe, in an "interview" with an American newspaper correspondent examined Mr.

Cleveland's argument in detail, and set forth the Republican side of the discussion in a way which made his "Paris message," as it was called, the "keynote" of the Republican defence of the protective tariff. The Democrats recognized in the President's message a summons to move forward to the attack. They responded to the call. The leaders resolved to be no longer tolerant of differences. Those who would not fight the battle of the Democracy must be coerced, or treated as enemies and driven out of the camp. The measure which the Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee prepared under the leadership of Mr. Mills, the chairman, after long deliberation and consultation, was made a quasi test of party loyalty. Support of its main features, and support of the bill itself after the work of amendment was completed, was required of all Democrats in the House of Representatives. Those who refused to give it their votes forfeited the favors which it was in the power of the administration and the party to bestow. The party became so well united in the support of the Mills bill that when that measure came up on its passage in the House of Representatives, four Democrats only voted against it. When that vote was given, on July 21, 1888, the great conventions had already been held, and the candidates were before the people.

Six months before the meeting of the nominating conventions it seemed to be certain that the presidential contest of 1888 would be between the same candidates who had been pitted against each other in 1884,- Cleveland and Blaine. The President made no public manifestation of his wish to be nominated for reëlection, but it was not necessary that he should do so. It appeared to be the well-nigh universal wish of his party that he should be again the leader of their forces, and he was understood to be entirely willing to accept the position.

On the other hand, the desire of the Republicans that Mr. Blaine should head the ticket once more found overwhelming expression among them. The unanimity of sentiment was surprising. It is probably safe to say that had the delegates to the convention been elected in December, 1887, there would not have been chosen a dozen in all the country who would have preferred any other candidate to Mr. Blaine. Great, therefore, was the confusion into which the party was thrown by the withdrawal of Mr. Blaine from the contest. On Jan

uary 25, 1888, he addressed, from Florence, Italy, a letter to the chairman of the Republican national committee, in which, on account of "considerations entirely personal to myself," he announced that his name would not be presented to the national convention. At the same time he congratulated the party upon its cheering prospects, foretold that the tariff was to be the great issue of the canvass, and expressed confidence that the result could not be in doubt. Republicans were surThey saw that it was

prised and disappointed by this letter.

a genuine and sincere refusal to accept the nomination, yet many of his friends, in the earnestness of their wish that he should be again the candidate, persuaded themselves that he would accept the mandate of the party if it were expressed with great unanimity. But while these excessively zealous champions persisted in their purpose to choose and send to the convention delegates who were for Mr. Blaine, "first, last, and all the time," the acceptance of his withdrawal as a finality by the party at large resulted in the coming forward of many candidates. The unwillingness of Mr. Blaine's most ardent friends to give up the hope of nominating him placed that gentleman in a position of embarrassment from which he extricated himself by a second letter, dated at Paris, May 17. He had learned that some of his former supporters had not taken his Florence letter as 66 absolutely conclusive in ultimate and possible contingencies," as he had intended it to be; and on the strength of it canvasses had been begun for other candidates. Therefore, if the nomination could by any chance be offered to him, "I could not accept it without leaving in the minds of thousands of these men [friends of other candidates] the impression that I had not been free from indirection; and therefore I could not accept it at all." Even after this there were some men who did not abandon hope that Mr. Blaine might be nominated; but the canvass within the Republican party proceeded on the theory that the leading favorite was entirely out of the contest.

Two conventions were held simultaneously in Cincinnati, beginning on the 15th of May. These conventions were held by two factions of the Labor party, known respectively as the Union Labor" and the "United Labor " party.

The Union Labor convention was made up of about two hundred and twenty delegates, representing twenty States. S. F. Norton was the temporary chairman, and John Seitz the

permanent president. The following platform was reported by the committee on resolutions, and adopted after a long discussion:

General discontent prevails on the part of the wealth-producer. Farmers are suffering from a poverty which has forced most of them to mortgage their estates, and the prices of products are so low as to offer no relief, except through bankruptcy, and laborers are sinking into greater dependence. Strikes are resorted to without bringing relief, because of the inability of employers in many cases to pay living wages, while more and more are driven into the street. Business men find collections almost impossible, and, meantime, hundreds of millions of idle public money, which is needed for relief, is locked up in the United States Treasury, or placed without interest in favored banks in grim mockery of distress. Land monopoly flourishes as never before, and more owners of the soil are daily becoming tenants. Great transportation corporations still succeed in extorting their profits on watered stock through unjust charges. The United States Senate has become an open scandal, its membership being purchased by the rich in open defiance of the popular will. Various efforts are made to squander the public money, which are designed to empty the Treasury without paying the public debt. Under these and other alarming conditions we appeal to the people of our country to come out of old party organizations, whose. indifference to the public welfare is responsible for this distress, and aid the Union Labor party to repeal existing class legislation, and relieve the distress of our industries by establishing the following principles: :

Land. While we believe that the proper solution of the financial question will greatly relieve those now in danger of losing their homes by mortgages and foreclosures, and enable all industrious persons to secure a home as the highest result of civilization, we oppose land monopoly in every form, demand the forfeiture of unearned grants, the limitation of land ownership, and such other legislation as will stop speculations in land, and holding it unused from those whose necessities require it.

We believe the earth was made for the people, and not to enable an idle aristocracy to subsist, through rents, upon the toil of the industrious, and that corners in land are as bad as corners in food, and that those who are not residents or citizens should not be allowed to own lands in the United States. A homestead should be exempt, to a limited extent, from execution or taxation.

Transportation. The means of communication and transportation should be owned by the people, as is the United States postal service.

Money. The establishment of a national monetary system in