USA > Louisiana > The province and the states, a history of the province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the territories and states of the United States formed therefrom, Vol. IV > Part 18
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MISSOURI FROM PHELPS TO FRANCIS.
In the election of 1880 Missouri cast, in round figures, 208,000 votes for Hancock, the Democratic presidential candidate ; 153,000 for Garfield, Republican, and 35,000 for Gen. James B. Weaver, Greenbacker. As compared with the Hayes-Tilden canvass in Missouri, this was a gain of 5,000 votes for the Democrats, of 8,000 for the Republicans, and of 31,000 for the Greenbackers, Peter Cooper, the Greenback nominee of 1876, getting about 4,000 votes in the state.
The vote for the heads of the respective state tickets in Mis- souri in 1880 varied but slightly from that of the presidential candidates. Thomas T. Crittenden, Democrat, had a plurality of 54,000 for governor over D. P. Dyer, Republican. Robert A. Campbell, Democrat, was chosen lieutenant governor. The Democrats won a large majority in each branch of the legisla- ture. Of the state's thirteen members of the popular branch of congress chosen in 1880 the Democrats elected eight, the Greenbackers four and the Republicans one.
Governor Crittenden was a native of Kentucky and a nephew of John J. Crittenden, who was a conspicuous figure on the national stage for almost half a century; removed to Missouri at an early age; served in the militia on the Union side during part of the civil war ; was attorney general of the state in 1864-65 under an appointment by acting provisional governor, Willard P. Hall; was in the national house of representatives subsequently. and was forty-eight years of age when elected governor in 1880.
The national census of 1880 showed that Missouri had 2,168,380 inhabitants, an increase of 447,000 in the decade, holding the fifth place on the roll of states in population, as it did in 1870, and as it has ever since. The true valuation of Missouri's property was one billion five hundred thirty million dollars, the per capita of the state's wealth being seven hundred twenty dol- lars. As the per capita was placed at seven hundred forty-six dollars in 1870, a jump from four hundred twenty-four dollars in 1860, in the decade in which forty-six million dollars repre- sented by slaves was swept away and a vast amount of other property destroyed by the ravages of the war, there is a proba- bility that the census bureau's estimate of aggregate wealth in Missouri in 1870 was too high. Under the apportionment based on the census of 1880, Missouri gained one member of congress, its total being raised to fourteen. St. Louis's population, the census figures being 310,864 in 1870 and 350,518 for 1880, showed the smallest proportionate increase for the ten years ever made by that rity in a decade, before or since.
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Industrially the growth of Missouri and St. Louis was greater than was the increase in population. . The state's coal, iron, lead and zinc mines made heavy gains in their output in the decade. The production of the city's mills and factories gave it a promi- nent place among the country's manufacturing communities. Steamboating was on the decline, but the transportation by rail was growing at a speed not previously touched. There were were 4,000 miles of railway in Missouri in 1880, as compared with 2,000 in 1870. Every county north of the Missouri had a road, but the counties south of the river were not so well supplied. The gross earnings of the railroads of the state in 1880 was twenty-one million dollars, a figure not far short of the taxable valuation of the roads. The opening of the Eads bridge at St. Louis on July 4, 1874, which was the first structure span- ning the Mississippi at that point, and which ranks to this day as one of the greatest pieces of engineering of its class in the world, added much to the state's railroad facilities and to the extent of the traffic.
Among the important legislation during Governor Crittenden's terin were the Downing high license law; the establishment of a state board of health and the creation of a commission of three judges to relieve the supreme court, all enacted during 1883. The Downing act fixed the maximum state and county tax on licenses for dram shops at twelve hundred dollars a year, and required that a petition should be signed by two-thirds of the taxpayers of the community before it became mandatory on the county court to issue the license. One of the notable financial transactions of the term was the payment, principal and interest, of the three million dollars on bonds due by the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad to the state, for the loan of the state's credit to that amount just before the civil war to aid the railroad com- pany in constructing that line.
A feat which attracted much attention throughout the coun- try at the time was the overthrow.of the James gang of train and bank robbers and murderers in 1881-82. Jesse James, the leader of the band, was killed by one of the Ford brothers, mem- bers of his gang, at St. Joseph, on April 3, 1882, to get the reward which was offered. Others of the gang had been killed previously, and the survivors surrendered soon afterward and were tried. The Meyers, the Mason and the Lewis bands of outlaws, who had operated in different parts of the state, were also overthrown in those years. Referring to the discredit which these gangs of bandits had inflicted on the state, Governor Crit-
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tenden, in a message to the legislature in 1882, said: "Missouri is today one of the most peaceful states in the Union. Fewer crimes are committed within her borders than in those of sur- rounding states."
The Democratic national tidal wave year of 1884, in which Cleveland gave his party the first victory which it had gained in a presidential contest since Buchanan's election in 1856, brought triumph to the Democrats in Missouri. In the state Cleveland led Blaine, the Republican candidate, by 33,000 votes, and the Democrats carried twelve of the state's fourteen members of congress, the Republicans getting two-William Warner, of Kansas City, and William H. Wade, of Springfield, nicknamed "Farmer" Wade, who was re-elected afterward several times. This, however, was a gain for the Republicans, as the Democrats had carried all the state's districts in 1882.
Gen. Jolin S. Marmaduke, the Democratic candidate for gov- ernor, beat Nicholas Ford, the nominee of the Republican-Green -. back coalition by 11,000 votes in 1884. Albert P. Morehouse, Democrat, was elected lieutenant governor. Governor Marma- duke was the well-known Missouri confederate soldier, who operated actively in and out of the state during. 1861-65. He was a native of Missouri, was a son of Meredith M. Marma- duke, the lieutenant governor who became governor on the death of Thomas Reynolds in 1844; was a graduate of West Point in the class of 1857; served under Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston in the Utah campaign; resigned from the army and entered the confederate service in 1861 ; rose to the rank of a brigadier gen- eral; became commission merchant and proprietor of a farm- ers' journal in St. Louis after the war; was chosen railroad commissioner in 1876, and at the time of his election as governor in 1884 he was fifty-one years of age.
As was the case during the term of Mr. Chittenden, the regula- tion of the liquor traffic excited much interest throughout Mis- souri through the service of Governor Marmaduke. Under a local option law enacted in 1887, fifty counties of the state voted in favor of prohibition, and twenty-eight declared against it and for the sale of liquors under the terms of the Downing law of 1883. Though the number of dramshops in the state fell off, as compared with the period before the enactment of the Downing law, the revenue from the sales of liquor largely increased.
The strike on the Missouri Pacific Railway system in 1886, which began in March of that year, which lasted till May, which IV-13
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involved nine thousand persons, which interrupted transportation for several weeks, and in which the strikers lost, was one of the important events in Missouri during the Marmaduke administra- tion. As the militia had to be called out to suppress the disorder and to enforce the laws the governor's military education and experience showed him some serions defects in the statutes relating to the citizen solliery, particularly the lack of any provision to pay them while in the state's service, and the absence of methods for enforcing discipline. These he pointed out to the legislature, and urged remedies.
In 1887 the law began to assail the bands of secret, oath-bound, night-riding regulators, known as the Bald Knobbers, who had been whipping, burning and killing in Christian, Douglas, Taney and Ozark counties, in Southwestern Missouri. For a murder in Christian county in March of that year several suspects were arrested, some of whom confessed, and on the strength of this information many persons were indicted. Some were tried on the charge of attending unlawful assemblages, and were fined. Oth- ers were tried for whippings and murders, and severer punishment was inflicted on them, the leading spirits being sentenced to death. Stays of proceedings and appeals to the supreme court put off the execution for a time, and meanwhile a band of friends of the condemned men, on the night of November 14, 1888, in Christian county, seized five of the witnesses in the case, and hanged them, and an attempt was made to rescue the prisoners, some of whom did get away. Appeals for clemency were made to Governor Francis, when he entered office at the beginning of 1889, by many prominent citizens of the state, including a majority of the legis- lature. He refused, however, to interfere, directed that the ver- dict of the court be carried out, and David Walker, William Walker and Jolin Matthews suffered the death penalty on May 10 of that year. This broke up the organization, and nothing like it has appeared in Missouri since then.
An interesting social event for Missouri was the visit of Presi- dent and Mrs. Cleveland to St. Louis in October, 1887. This was Mr. Cleveland's first glimpse of the region on the sunset side of the Alleghenies. Their stay in St. Louis was made especially pleasant, and on the trip they went as far west as Kansas City and Omaha, and as far north as St. Paul and Minneapolis,
On December 28, 1887, a few days before the completion of three years in the governorship, General Marmaduke died. He was a capable and popular official, and gave his state a very cred- itable administration. Lieutenant Governor Morchouse suc-
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ceeded him, and served out the remaining twelve months of the term. Mr. Morehouse, who was an Ohioan by birth, was a lawyer of ability, and was in the legislature several years before his elec- tion on the Marmaduke ticket in 1884.
In the canvass of 1888 President Cleveland, who had been renominated at St. Louis in that year, won Missouri, as against General Harrison, by a plurality of twenty-five thousand, Harri- son, however, carrying the country. The Democrats elected ten of the state's fourteen congressmen, the Republicans got one, and the fusion of Republicans and Labor party men elected three.
There were three tickets -- the Democratic, the Republican and the Labor party-in the canvass for state officers, exclusive of the Prohibitionists who polled a few votes. The Democratic can- didate for governor, David R. Francis, led E. E. Kimball, the Republican nominee, by thirteen thousand two hundred and thirty- three votes. Stephen II. Claycomb, Democrat, was elected lieu- tenant governor. The Democrats won large majorities in each branch of the legislature.
Mr. Francis carried a high reputation with him when he entered office. Born in Kentucky in October, 1850, but a resident of Mis- souri from his boyhood days, a graduate of Washington Univer- sity in St. Louis, a successful merchant, and mayor of St. Louis from 1885 to his accession to the higher post nearly four years later, he was the youngest man (thirty-eight years of age) except Thomas C. Fletcher, ever elected as governor of Missouri. As mayor he did much for the interest of the people of St. Louis. Hle succeeded in getting the price of gas lowered from $2.50 per 1,000 feet to $1.25; obtained from the Municipal Assembly an appropriation of one million dollars which was placed at his dis- posal for the purchase of the ground now owned by the city at the Chain of Rocks and for a right of way for a conduit from there to the present settling basins at Bissell's Point ; and devoted much time and effort to the refunding at a greatly reduced rate of interest of the bonded debt which matured during his administra- tion, the outstanding 3.65 per cent bonds of the city also, through his personal efforts, being placed among the financial institutions of St. Louis.
One of Governor Francis's first public acts after he entered office in January, 1889, was to send four hundred of Missouri's national guard, at his own expense, to New York city, to take part, in April of that year, in the centennial celebration of Wash- ington's inauguration as the country's first president, the legis- lature having refused to provide any money therefor. Realizing,
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THIE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
however, the service which the governor had thus rendered the state, that body soon afterward passed an appropriation reim- bursing him. This demonstration of a well disciplined military force had an effect at home and abroad. It enabled the governor, at the next session of the legislature, to get an appropriation of forty thousand dollars for the maintenance of the state militia, which was the first provision for that purpose since the close of the civil war. Coming just after the suppression of the James gang and the Bald Knobbers, the appearance of its militia in the New York celebration showed the country that Missouri was well equipped for the maintenance of the law within its limits, and thus advanced the state's prestige and gave it new attractions for settlers and for the investment of capital.
When the federal government in 1891 refunded to the states the direct tax collected from them in the civil war, Governor Francis recommended that the sum to be returned to Missouri, which was six hundred forty-seven thousand dollars, should be given to the state university as a permanent endowment instead of devoting it to the reduction of the state debt, then about nine million dol- lars, and although the proposition aroused much opposition, it was finally adopted . In 1892, when fire destroyed the state uni- versity's main buildings the governor called the legislature in special session, and on his urgent recommendation, the money collected from the insurance companies, together with forty thou- sand dollars transferred from the state insurance fund, and fifty thousand dollars contributed by the city of Columbia, was expended for the restoration of the buildings. The expansion of the university since then, and largely as a consequence of these two pieces of legislation, has greatly increased the number of its students, that of 1902-03 being one thousand six hundred and eighty-one, and vastly extended its usefulness.
In carrying out the policy of his administration to encourage the building of railroads through the state, Governor Francis induced the Missouri, Kansas and Texas road to buy the Mis- souri Central, which was projected from St. Charles to Kansas City, when it was abandoned for want of funds after being con- structed for about twenty miles. He himself negotiated the transfer of the road from those who had bought it under fore- closure to the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, and all without any compensation for his services. The new owners extended the line west to Boonville and south and cast to St. Louis, and it is now the main line of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas.
In 1800, in the second year of his service, Governor Francis,
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learning that the state treasurer was a defaulter, removed him from office, had him prosecuted and punished, and compelled his bondsmen to make good his shortage, about thirty-two thousand dollars, within thirty days after its extent was officially ascertained. The governor appointed Lon V. Stephens ( who was to be gover- nor from 1897 to 1901) in place of the deposed state treasurer, to serve out the remainder of the term, which was to end in January, 1893.
Among the legislation of importance during that governor's term was the enactnient of a law in 1889 establishing the Aus- tralian ballot in all the towns of the state of five thousand inhabit- ants or over, which was extended in 1891 to all the rest of the state, Missouri being one of the earliest of the states to adopt this reform; the creation of a bureau of geology and mines ; the form- ing of a board of mediation and arbitration for the settlement of disputes between employers and employes, to consist of the com- missioner of labor statistics and of two members of each of these clements engaged in similar occupation to that in which the dis- pute exists ; and the passage of a bill appropriating one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to defray the expense of a Missouri exhibit at the Columbian fair of 1893 at Chicago.
As ascertained in 1890, Missouri's population in that year was 2,679,184, as compared with 2,168,380 in 1880, an increase of 510,804 in the decade. Its wealth, as estimated by the census authorities, was two billion three hundred ninety-seven million nine hundred two thousand nine hundred forty-five dollars, an expansion of eight hundred sixty-eight million dollars from that of ten years earlier. Its wealth per capita was eight hundred ninety-five dollars, an advance from seven hundred twenty dollars in 1880. The state had 8,977 miles of railroad in that year. Its industries were growing with great rapidity. St. Louis's popula- tion in 1890 was 451,770, an increase of almost 100,000 in the decade. Kansas City, St. Joseph, Springfield, Sedalia, Hannibal and the rest of the state's important towns, showed, by the figures of 1890, that Missouri was in a highly flourishing condition.
Missouri's social and industrial importance was recognized in 1889 by two presidents, a Democrat and a Republican. Mr. Cleveland, shortly before his retirement in that year appointed Norman J. Colman head of the newly created Department of Agriculture, and he had the honor of being the first incumbent of that office. Mr. Cleveland's successor, General Harrison, selected Gen. John W. Noble for the post of secretary of the inte- rior, which he held till the close of the term in 1803.
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The state's work as a path breaker was shown in 1892 when the street car mail service, the invention of Maj. John B. Harlow, then postmaster at St. Louis, was put in operation in that city, the mails being collected, sorted and distributed in transit. The innovation has since then been introduced in all the important cities of the United States, and in some of those of Europe.
Before the end of Governor Francis's term, which closed at the opening of 1893, Missouri began, as more than once in the past, to furnish an issue on which the nation was compelled to divide. This was the silver question, which had a Missourian for its first and best known champion, which incited the silver coinage act of 1878 and the silver bullion deposit law of 1890, which split all the parties, great and small, in the canvass of 1896, and which con- tinued to dominate the country until after the election of 1900. The story of the evolution of this issue, in its national phase and in its connection with the politics of Missouri, will be told in the next chapter.
MISSOURI DURING TIIE SILVER MOVEMENT.
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CHAPTER XX
The State During the Silver Movement
S EVERAL things-silver demonetization by the United States government ; the panic ; the vast increase in production by Nevada's bonanza mines of Mackay, Fair, Flood and . O'Brien ; the drop in silver's commercial value, which sent it below the rooc gold level at the '16 to I ratio ; and the entrance of Richard P. Bland of Missouri into congress-converged in 1873, which, isolated, the one from the other, at the time, were forced by subse- quent events into a close relationship. Out of these things, plus the influences which incited the Greenbackers' crusade of the previous half a dozen and the succeeding dozen years, was evolved the silver movement which afterward convulsed American poli- tics.
The tracing of the genesis of the greenback idea in politics com- pels a glance backward to the civil war days. The war, which increased the demand for agricultural products, which prevented a proportionate expansion in supply by putting hundreds of thou- sands of farm workers into the army, and which cheapened the country's currency by injecting hundreds of millions of dollars of legal tender notes, or greenbacks, into it, thus forcing gold and silver out of circulation, sent prices far upward, as expressed in the money of the period. This created an appearance of pros- perity, some of which was real, but most of which was fictitious. When the war closed and the armies were disbanded the demand for farm products shrank, the supply swelled, a retirement of greenbacks was started, prices of farm products fell, and the pros- perity, fictitious and real, ended, or seemed to end. The con- junction of an expanding currency and prosperity on the one side, and of a contracting currency and hard times on the other, made
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the former in each case appear to bear to the latter the relation of cause to effect. Therefore, it was assumed, the way to regain prosperity, and to make it perpetual, was to resume the issue of the greenbacks, and to continue it without cessation.
The farmers are selected here for especial mention because their products were affected more quickly than were other commodities by the rise and fall in prices, because they constituted then, and constitute still, the largest single interest in the country, and because the greenback expansion idea seized them before it did any other element, and held them longest and tightest. In the farming region, especially in the West, greenbackism had its principal habitat, though Maine, throughout the whole agitation, was a radiating center for this aspiration, and furnished several of the most prominent spirits in the party which it created.
Both the great political organizations were affected by the green- back crusade, but it swayed fewer Republicans than it did Demo- crats. The Republican was the country's dominant party. It had greater discipline and coherency than did its rival, which was demoralized by the discord and the disaster inflicted upon it by the war. As the element chiefly intrusted with the welfare of the nation the Republican party was obliged to practice the conserva- tism which responsibility commonly brings.
In the Republican state of Ohio -- which, however, was carried by the Democrats oftener for state officers and the legislature then than it has been in the past dozen years-the "more greenbacks" propaganda was early and active. The leading exponent of the so-called "Ohio idea," George HI. Pendleton, made a strong run for the presidential nomination in the Democratic convention, of 1868, and through Iloratio Seymour, a hard money man, was nominated, the soft money demand forced itself into the platform. As Democratic state conventions began to reject the soft money propositions the inflationists in 1874 started to take steps to form a distinct party. This determination was strengthened by the passage by the Republican congress in 1875 of the resumption act, which committed the country to the redemption of the greenbacks in specie in 1879. The new party took definite shape in 1876 when the Democrats nominated the hard money man Tilden. At first it called itself the Independent, and then the National, but it soon became popularly known as the Greenback party. For presi- dent it nominated Peter Cooper in 1876, James B. Weaver in 1880, and Benjamin F. Butler in 188.1, after which it disappeared. A year before Weaver's nomination, or in 1879, the resumption act brought all the country's currency up to the gold level, and all of it has been held up to that line ever since.
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MISSOURI DURING THE SILVER MOVEMENT.
Greenbackism had a profound influence, ultimate as well as immediate, on the politics of the country, and this was especially potent in Missouri. Weaver in 1880 had a larger vote in Mis- souri, thirty-five thousand, than he had in any other state. Mis- souri in that year furnished four of the eight congressmen elected by the Greenbackers in the country at large. Greenbackism's immediate effects have been outlined here. Its ultimate conse- quences were that it re-enfored the influences which incited the silver propaganda, and practically all of its adherents, even while its own party was active, joined hands with the silver element in every fight in congress in which silver was an issue.
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