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of which have never been equalled before. The spectacle of millions upon millions of citizens of a great nation debating the intricacies of the currency question certainly has its curious aspects. Nothing like it was ever seen in any other great country before. Whatever questions may at one time or another disturb the minds of the mass of men who hold the franchise in England, France, Germany, or other European countries, the plain people have never for a moment believed it possible that they were competent to settle currency and banking questions on the plan of the popular referendum. These are matters involving scientific and expert knowledge. The intense discussion of 1896 in this country will not have resulted in making accomplished monetary scientists out of a majority of the population; nevertheless, the serious and honest effort of the voters to find out enough about these questions to act with reasonable intelligence and prudence, can only produce valuable results in the end. It is a part of our education as a democracy.

ever since July,-namely, in a group of States of which Illinois is at the centre. The Republicans now expect to carry that whole group by triumphant majorities.

THE ARGUMENT THAT TELLS.

If free coinage should prevail, and silver should refuse to jump up a hundred per cent. in the open bullion markets of the world, we should simply have cut the value of our dollar in two. The free-silver men declare that such a result is quite out of the question. But an overwhelming majority of those people who in our judgment are most competent to form an opinion as to what would happen, believe that free coinage would actually result in taking nearly or quite half of the purchasing power out of the dollar, so that bank deposits-including savings-bank accounts, fixed obligations of all kinds, such as mortgage debts, life insurance policies and pensions, and all other sorts of agreements to pay sums of money, would shrink to nearly or quite half of their present

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UNCERTAINTY AS TO THE RESULT.

It is reported that a shrewd political observer came across the continent from San Francisco to New York some days ago, making careful inquiries in every State through which he passed. He is said to have reported at one of the political headquarters that he was convinced the election would go pretty much one way;-which way, however, he had no idea! The signs as we go to press seem to us to point much more strongly than a month ago toward the carrying of the great central West for McKinley and sound money. If the people of the region extending from Ohio to Nebraska and from Wisconsin to Missouri have been won over to the opinion that the maintenance of the present monetary standard is the right and honourable and safe policy for the country, it is likely that they will express that conclusion very strongly and emphatically. The fighting ground between the two parties remained, at the end of the campaign, just where it had been

value. Perhaps those who believe that free coinage would have such a result are quite mistaken; but do the people of the United States really intend deliberately to try such an experiment for the sake of seeing what will happen? We must believe, unless the actual result of the balloting on November 3rd reluctantly convinces us to the contrary.-that the people of the United States are too conservative to do anything of that kind.

THE STUMP ORATOR OF THE CENTURY.

However strongly one may be convinced of the inherent feebleness of Mr. Bryan's cause, it would be a great pity to do injustice to the marvellously plucky and brilliant campaign he has made. We are nothing if not a record-breaking country; and whereas the Republican National Committee has broken all conceivable records for a campaign resting on the basis of educational literature, so Mr. William Jennings Bryan has immeasurably surpassed everything in the history

of oratorical political canvasses by his stumping tour of the United States. He has shown himself a man of magnificent endowments of physical strength and indomitable pluck. We publish a map on the preceding page showing the route followed by Mr. Bryan in his speech-making, from the opening of his campaign to the conclusion of it.

In the course of fourteen weeks Mr. Bryan has made four hundred speeches in twenty-nine States, and has travelled 13,046 miles. The average number of speeches has been about five per day. The New York World's estimate of the probable number of words is in excess of 600,000. All of these speeches have been reported and published in the newspapers. Some of them have been very long and elaborate, others have consisted of only a few sentences made from the rear platform of a train to a crowd gathered at some local station. In passing through some States, West Virginia for example, it is estimated that Mr. Bryan actually drew within the sound of

visiting Canton in great deputations-these bodies representing a locality or else belonging to some one craft or calling or interest-has held its own to the very end of the campaign period. The arrival of from ten thousand to twenty-five thousand strangers a day has been no uncommon experience for the town of Canton during the past twelve weeks. These classified audiences have given Mr. McKinley a great opportunity. Mr. Bryan's speaking has of necessity been done to general audiences, except upon a few occasions. Mr. McKinley, on the other hand, thanks to the marvellous methods of the modern newspaper, has, in speaking to a deputation of iron workers, for example, been able to address men of that class everywhere; while in speaking to a group of wool-growers le has had a chance to address the nation on the question of the wool tariff and the woollen industry. His speeches have been prepared in advance, and have been punctuated with statistics and precise statements of fact which a "whirlwind campaign"

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IT IS THE BIG HUMBUGS AND NOT THE GOLDBUGS THAT ARE BOTHERING OUR FARMERS.

his voice half of the electors. In the aggregate he has addressed several million voters. So great a test of endurance as Mr. Bryan has undergone would be extremely hard to match in any field of human endeavour. It must be remembered that he has had to discuss before vast audiencesin such a way as to hold their attention and win their applause-a class of subjects which lend themselves with the greatest difficulty to popular oratory. If Mr. Bryan had been making this marvellous speaking tour in favour of American intervention to help the Cuban patriots or save the doomed Armenians, or even if he had been making a campaign for free trade on broad principles, his subjects would have been far better adapted to his oratorical abilities. The speeches of Mr. Bryan as the campaign has progressed have seemed to grow more bitter, and to appeal more openly to class prejudice.

A CAMPAIGN FROM THE DOORSTEP.

Mr. McKinley, meanwhile, has been carrying on an oratorical campaign from his front doorstep which in its own kind has, as far as we are aware, never been paralleled. The fashion of

from a train platform would not allow. Mr. McKinley has always been fortunate in avoiding personal ill will.

II. HOW THE BATTLE HAS BEEN FOUGHT. Mr. W. B. Shaw describes in the same number of the Review how the campaign has been conducted:

A CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION.

The best bit of strategy on the Republican side in the whole campaign was the assumption that the voters in the great states of the middle West needed first of all clear and definite information on the questions at issue, and that this information must come to them in some way or another before any effort could be made to secure their votes for the gold standard in November. Accordingly, all the leaflets and pamphlets which were sent out from the Chicago headquarters were brief and clear expositions of the currency question phrased in direct and simple language, and remarkably free from the. ordinary bluff and bluster" of the traditional campaign

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Since the beginning of the campaign the Repub lican National Committee has issued the astounding total of over hundred millions of copies of documents. There were also issued, under the direction of the same committee, about fifty million copies of documents from the headquarters of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee at Washington. This year's literary output far exceeds any record viously made by the Republican National Committee.

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special classes of country weekly and daily papers were supplied with statements aggregating about 3,000,000 copies every week, and lastly, a special class of country newspapers

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MCKINLEY'S FIRST SPEECH OF THE CAMPAIGN AND THE SILVER KNIGHTS ANSWER.

From Sound Money, the Organ of Coxey's Commonweal (Massillon, Ohio).]

There have been prepared more than two hundred and seventy-five pamphlets and leaflets, besides scores of posters, sheets of cartoons, inscriptions and other matter touching on the various phases of the campaign issues. This number, it is said, exceeds by more than half the number of documents heretofore prepared and issued under the direction of that committee since the foundation of the party. The distribution of these documents was generally made through the state central committees. About twenty thousan 1 express packages of documents were shipped, nearly five thousand freight packages, and probably half a million packages by mail. These documents were printed in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch and Hebrew, as well as in English.

TUNING THE PRESS.

The duties of the editorial department of the Republican Literary Bureau at Chicago did not end with the preparation of the many documents to which allusion has been made, but some notion of the extent of those duties may be had when the fact is stated that a preferred list of country newspapers, with aggregate weekly circulation of 1,650,000, received three and a half columns of specially prepared matter every week; another list of country newspapers,

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with an aggregate weekly circulation of about 1,000,000, received plate matter;

[Drawn by Carl Browne.

THE USE OF POSTERS.

received "ready prints" the entire weekly circulation being about 4,000,000 copies. Hundreds of other newspapers depended in a large measure for their political matter during the campaign upon the Publication and Printing Bureau, and were circulated under the direction of this bureau. It is a safe estimate that every week 5,000,000 families received newspapers of various kinds containing political matter furnished by this bureau, probably three times the aggregate in volume and influence of newspaper ever before conducted by a national political committee.

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The Republican Committee also made large use of political posters, probably five hundred being circulated under the direction of the Publication and Printing Bureau. The most popular poster sent out from Chicago was the five-coloured, single-sheet lithograph, so widely circulated at the St. Louis convention, bearing a portrait of Mr. McKinley with the inscription underneath, "The Advance Agent of Prosperity." The number of copies of this poster circulated is said to have

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THE WHEEL OF INDUSTRY."

been almost beyond computation or comprehension. Another poster which had an immense run was in plain black and bore the title, The Real Issue." It represented McKinley addressing a multitude of labourers in front of factories, declaring that it was better to open the mills of the United States than the mints, while Mr. Bryan, on the other side in front of the United States mint, was welcoming the people of all races with their silver bullion for free coinage. The great volumes of factory smoke and the throng of eager workmen on McKinley's side were in strong contrast with the group of foreigners dumping their silver in front of the Bryan mints. Another popular poster in the same style was that entitled "Poverty or Prosperity." In the centre, on the Republican platform, stand McKinley and Hobart. has Mr. McKinley

three Emblem extensively circulated by the American Protective Tariff League. in his hand an unfurled sheet

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workmen. On the other side a black, lowering sky shows the words" Depression, 1892-1896," beneath which is a scene of utter desolation, with closed factories, idle railroads, farm implements lying idle in the fields, fences down, and hungry workmen and their families clamouring for bread. Another very effective poster was entitled "The Tariff is an Issue." This emphasised the same idea, as did also a popular fourcoloured poster of smaller size called "The Lockout is Ended; He holds the Key." Many smaller cartoons, some black and white and some in colours, were issued, but none aroused the enthusiasm inspired by the coloured posters suggesting industrial subjects.

III.-PROPHETS.

Ex-President Harrison enters the Presidential campaign in the pages of the Forum, and begins the October number with a solemn anathema upon the "compulsory dishonesty" which he finds to be the purport of Mr. Bryan's agitation. It is to him only another instance of the old tactics, "How much owest thou unto my lord?" And he said, "A hundred measures of oil." And he said unto him, "Take thy bill and sit down quickly and write fifty."

Mr. Bryan's speeches seem to the ex-President to "affirm the legal and moral right of the United States to degrade its money standard, to pay its obligations in the debased coins, and to give to its citizens the right to discharge their debts in the same way." Thus "dishonesty is not made optional, but compulsory." Debtors will be compelled to pay in the new and debased dollar. The argument that free coinage will raise the value of silver to the 16: 1 standard is not seriously put forward by Mr. Bryan, nor do his followers desire to pay their debts in full account to the present gold standard. Yet "if it had been suggested to Hamilton or to Jefferson that while the commercial ratio between silver and gold was 31 to 1 we should coin silver dollars at the rate of 16 to 1, they would have suggested the writ de lunatico inquirendo."

A PROPHET OF ANOTHER STRIFE.

In the North American Review for October Mr. Andrew Carnegie chirrups aloud for joy at the prospect of Mr. McKinley's victory. He says:

The United States stands to-day once more before the world seen and known of all men as a nation which depends not upon any one party to maintain unimpaired its conservative Con

stitution, which establishes law, holds contracts inviolable, and ensures the reign of peaceful government. Fortunately, the National Democratic and the Republican parties are at one in defence of the only three vital principles at issue in this portentous contest-the maintenance, in all their rights and powers, of the Supreme Court, the National Executive, the Gold Standard. The chief rock with which the citizen has now to concern himself are the assaults upon the Supreme Court. The great arbiter, whose decisions must be accepted by all, if there is to be peace, is not only assailed, but its independence, upon which just decisions depend, is to be swept away; its members are to be subjected to popular election, and dependent upon the number of votes for their places from time to time. This is a question compared with which even the standard of value cannot be classed.

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A PROPHET OF IMPENDING REVOLUTION.

A writer in the Progressive Review takes the gloomiest view of the probable result of the struggle in the United States. He dwells at great length upon the lawless violence of the plutocracy, and in the course of his observations tells the following startling story about the railway riot in Chicago in 1894:

The New England Magazine, in answer to the common charge that the railway strikers were the rioters who burned the cars, and committed the acts of violence, says the rioters were not the working men, but the "hoodlums," and continues: "Colonel Wright would tell our Boston newspapers that not even the hoodlums instigated the burning of the mass of cars, but that it was instigated by the railway managers themselves as the surest way to bring the Federal troops and defeat the strike.' The Colonel Wright referred to is the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the Bureau of Labour Statistics of the United States. The multitudinous echoes of this riot were flashed around the world to fire the heart of property against the people. But the editor of the New England Magazine, in his astounding declaration that Mr. Wright, who made an official investigation of this strike for the Government, became convinced that the riots were the work of the railway managers, is speaking by the card, as many people in Boston and elsewhere know. This strike is now two years gone. The City of Chicago is liable for damages to the last cent for injury done to the railroads. But those corporations have never pressed a single claim to trial. They do not dare to give a chance for the evidence to come out that the violence was theirs. The very name of the man who organised this anarchy for the railroads is said to be known.

If such things are possible, it is not very wonderful

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is becoming so intolerable, that many are beginning to question whether there is any necessity to have a President at all EFFECT ON THE CAUSE OF BIMETALLISM. Mr. Moreton Frewen writes enthusiastically from Chicago to the National Review. "The contending forces," he says, are the forces of Discipline against Enthusiasm; and of Money against Men." For the sake of the public tranquillity later on, he wishes Mr. Bryan a happy issue. He believes that free coinage in America will secure bimetallism. The editor seems to share the same hope, for in an "Episode" he says:

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If the United States declared for a ratio of 16 to 1, and opened her mints on those terms, she would probably fail to maintain it, and there would be a temporary premium on gold, but her action of remonetising silver would greatly appreciate that metal's value, and whereas it now stands at about 30 to 1, free coinage would probably raise it to 20 to 1. This would force open the Indian mints, and a further appreciation of silver would ensue, raising the market rate to about 18 to 1unless the law of supply and demand is to be banished to Saturn as the asylum of common-sense. France would probably be wise enough to jump at the opportunity thus afforded, and would come to terms with the United States: the only point to be discussed being whether the ratio of the Latin Union (15 to 1) should be restored, or whether the American ratio of 16 to 1 should be adopted. Englishmen may perhaps entertain the hope, should the question reach this stage, that a Cabinet containing Mr. Balfour and such open-minded men as Lord Salisbury, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Lord Lansdowne, would not allow itself to be cowed by the ignorant ravings of Lombard Street.

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A POPULAR SILVER POSTER.

inconclusive, as so far have been all the American agitations except that against slavery. On the tariff for one hundred years, paper money for thirty years, the banks for fifty-six years, silver for twenty-three years, railroad control, state and national, for twenty-five years, trusts for ten years-on all of these the people have been trying to get reform, and on none of them have they reached it. There must be more failures yet before the issue and the remedy become clear in the popular mind. Side by side with the practical failure of these merely political efforts is rising more unmistakably into view a very radical thought, spreading among the people. This becomes more manifest with each of these defeats. The issue is by more and more people seen to be a fundamental one between those who hold the social power of their wealth as a feudal and personal privilege, and those who insist that there is no social power not subject to social control. But if the Free Silver movement goes down in November, as now seems likely, there will be a re-alignment, on more radical lines than ever, of the forces that insist on social control of social power. The Free Silver movement will seem conservatism itself to that which will take its place.

WHY A PRESIDENT AT ALL

Rev. A. Holden Byles discusses in Cosmopolis how presidents are made. He reports that:

Not a few of the more thoughtful Americans are beginning to question whether it was not a mistake on the part of the framers of the Constitution to give their Presidents so short a term of office. This was indeed the opinion of the most clearsighted among their own number, and Hamilton went so far as to propose that the head of the State should be appointed for life, subject only to good behaviour. But though he was defeated, there was surely a middle course between his proposal and the four years' term that was finally adopted. Under present conditions, this term is evidently much too short. The country has scarcely recovered from one attack of fever before it becomes the victim of another. This quadrennial nuisance

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From the Press (New York).]

UNCLE SAM: "What! Get into a thing like that because you say it is all right? Not this year, my boy."

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