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 19
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Two decisions of the supreme court heightened greenbackism's influence as a force in the silver movement. One of these, deliv- ered in the December, 1870, term, was that the greenbacks were a legal tender for all debts, whether contracted before or after the issue of these notes, unless where the debts were especially excepted. The other, delivered in 1884, set forth that congress has the constitutional power to issue legal tender notes in time of peace as well as in war.
An additional element of disturbance was injected into the situ- ation by the panie of 1873. About the same time the price of sil- ver declined so that the amount of the metal in the dollar dropped in value below the rooc gold mark. The panic lasted several years. The drop in silver also continued. Soon it was discov- ered that the act of congress of February 12, 1873, a few months earlier than the panic and the drop in silver discontinued the coinage of the silver dollar. The charge was made that the demonetization of silver was the cause of its decline. The coin- cident drop in the price of wheat and other articles was likewise laid to demonetization.
All this was an error. The panic and the increase in the wheat . supply sent wheat prices down. Prices of silver dropped because of the sudden and immense increase in silver production in Nevada's bonanza mines, which quickly doubled the entire coun- try's silver yield, and greatly increased the world's supply. Neither silver nor gold was in circulation in the United States in 1873. Both went out of circulation in 1862 when greenbacks came in. They did not return to the circulation until the resump- tion act went into operation in 1879. Moreover, under the ratio established by the coinage act of 1834 the amount of silver in the dollar was a httle greater than Tooc in gold, and but little silver was carried to the mints. Only a small fraction of eight million dollars in silver pieces was coined between the establishment
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of the mint in 1792 and 1873. The dropping of the silver dollar, therefore, in 1873 was merely the statutory recognition of some- thing which had been a physical fact for thirty-nine years. Never- theless, the "crime of 1873" began to figure a few years later in the political discussion of the day.
On November 5, 1877, Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, moved to suspend the rules of the house of representatives and pass a bill directing the coinage of silver dollars of the weight of 4121/2 grains of standard silver, to be a "legal tender at their nominal value for all debts and dues, public and private, except where otherwise provided by contract," and stipulating that any owner of silver bullion might deposit the same at the mints to be coined into such dollars for his benefit on the same terms as gold bullion. With this motion Mr. Bland became a national character, and the silver question was made an absorbing issue in American politics.
The bill which was for free coinage, passed the Democratic house, but was changed in the Republican senate into a limited coinage measure. It provided that not less than two million dol- lars nor more than four million dollars of silver bullion should be purchased each month and coined into dollars of the weight pre- scribed in the House bill, the profit from the coinage to go into the treasury, and not, as in the House measure, into the pockets of the silver bullion owners. Mr. Bland opposed this transforma- tion of his bill, but it was accepted by the house, was vetoed by President Hayes on February 28, 1878, and was passed by each branch of congress over the veto on the same day, and became a law.
Bland's free coinage bill of 1877, the modified Bland law of 1878, and his repeated and earnest attempts in the succeeding years, while the price of silver was steadily falling, to enact a law on the lines of his original measure, attracted international atten- tion, aroused an especial interest in Bland's state, profoundly affected its politics, and gave the state's name a world vogue. Bland's propaganda-for he was the leader in it and the most persistent champion of it, though he had many powerful sup- porters, Republicans and Democrats, among the statesmen of the time-led the Republicans, as a means of heading off free coinage, which had a strong hold on many of the Western members of their party, to pass the bullion deposit law of 1890, popularly called the Sherman law, which President Harrison sigued. This law directed the secretary of the treasury to purchase four million five hundred thousand ounces of silver each month at the market price, and to issue in payment for it treasury notes, these to be a
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legal tender for all debts, public and private, except where other- wise provided in the contract, the notes to be redeemable in gold or silver coin, at the discretion of the secretary.
Meanwhile hard times among the agriculturists incited the union of kindred societies into the National Farmers' Alliance in 1890, which elected a few persons to congress, and the alliance, with other elements, entered into a coalition in 1891 which adopted the name of People's, or Populist, party, which in 1892 nominated for president Gen. James B. Weaver, the Greenback party's candi- date of 1880. The Populists absorbed most of the surviving Greenbackers; adopted the Greenbackers' idea of unlimited full legal tender notes; assailed the banks; declared for free silver, and also for the purchase and operation of the country's railroads, telegraphs and telephones by the government ; and demanded the issue of loans by the government at low rates on deposits of farm products.
John S. Phelps was governor of Missouri when, in 1877, Mis- souri's and America's silver leader introduced his first free coin- age bill in congress. David R. Francis was governor when Bland's crusade forced the Republicans to pass the Sherman silver law of 1890. William J. Stone was to be governor at the time, in 1893, when congress, in President Cleveland's called session, repealed the purchase clause of that act.
In the campaign of 1892 Cleveland, who carried the country, had a lead of about 41,000 over President Harrison, the Repub- lican nominee, Missouri giving James B. Weaver, the Popu- list, a vote about equal to Cleveland's plurality. The Democratic candidate for governor, William J. Stone, beat ex -Congressman William Warner, Republican, of Kansas City, by a little less than 30,000. The vote for Leonard, Populist, was 37,000, and that for Sobieski, Prohibitionist, was 3,400. John B. O'Meara, Democrat, of St. Louis, was elected lieutenant governor.
Out of Missouri's fifteen congressmen (she gained one under the apportionment based on the census of 1890) the Democrats in 1892 elected thirteen and the Republicans chose two-Richard Bartholdt and Charles F. Joy, both of St. Louis. Mr. Bartholdt, then elected for the first time, has been chosen continuously ever since. In the legislature elected in 1892 the Democrats had a long lead in each branch.
Mr. Stone was born in Kentucky, was educated at the University of Missouri, was prosecuting attorney of Vernon county in 1873 74, was an elector on the Tilden and Hendricks ticket in 1876, served in congress from 1885 to 1891, and was forty-four
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years of age at the time of his election as governor in 1892.
The most important state legislation during Governor Stone's term comprised the corrupt practices law and that creating the office of excise commissioner, both enacted in 1893. The first named act provided that every person who offered a bribe or other- wise illegally attempted to influence a voter's conduct should be deemed guilty of a felony, and be punished by a fine of five hun- dred dollars and imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than five years. Under the law also the publication of all campaign disbursements, both by candidates and committees, was required under oath, maximum expenditures for candidates for the dif- ferent offices being prescribed. The law creating the excise com- missioner made that official appointive by the governor, and took the licensing power out of the hands of the collector at St. Louis.
But national politics exercised the minds of Missourians during Governor Stone's administration to a far greater degree than did the strictly home concerns, and national politics, and likewise the politics of Missouri, was profoundly affected by the panic of 1893.
In April, 1893, a month after President Cleveland entered office the second time, and three months after the beginning of Governor Stone's term, the net gold in the federal treasury, for the first time since the resumption of specie payments in 1879, dropped below the one hundred million dollar gold line. During the five months of 1893 ending with May the net gold exportation from the United States was sixty-one million dollars, and the outflow still continned. Alarm seized the people, "runs" were made on banks in many cities ; large numbers of banks suspended or collapsed; great business houses went down in the leading centers, carrying with them numerous smaller concerns in every state; mills and factories closed; wages were reduced, and a panic was "on."
The Republicans ascribed the panic to the Democratic victory of 1892, and to the fear of an attack on the tariff which that vic- tory rendered imminent, but some of the Republicans believed that the dilution of the currency by silver under the Bland-Allison law of 1878 and the Sherman law of 1890 was partly accountable for the cataclysm. The Cleveland administration Democrats attrib- uted it solely to these two silver laws. The free coinage Demo- crats said the panic was due to the discrimination against silver at the mints -- the refusal of the government to throw the mints open to silvia on the same terins as to gold.
In a message to congress on August 7, 1893, at the opening of the special session which he called to deal with the financial con-
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vulsion, Mr. Cleveland urged the repeal of the purchase pro- vision of the Sherman law, which the Republicans passed in 1890. Sherman and all the rest of the Republicans except the free coin- ers joined the Cleveland section of the Democrats, and a few of the free coinage Democrats who were coerced into line by the president's patronage club, and, after a hard fight, repealed this clause on November 1, 1893, and silver absorption by the govern- ment ceased and has never been resumed.
Beaten in their fight to save the Sherman act or to put a free coinage law in its place, and also defeated in their purpose to add a large sum to the silver element of the currency through the seigniorage coinage bill of March, 1894, which Mr. Cleveland vetoed, the silverite section of the Democracy, led by Mr. Bland, declared war on the president. Mr. Cleveland's veto message was a model of courage and clearness, and compared favorably with the one by which Grant killed the greenback inflation bill of 1874 and with Hayes's veto of the Bland-Allison bill of 1878, the Hayes barrier being overriden by congress, however.
In the canvass of 1894-for congress in the country at large and for minor state officers and members of the legislature in Mis- souri-the Democrats were seriously assailed by several influences. These were the panic of 1893,-for panics always hit the party in power in the national goverment, whatever that party may be ; by the hauling down of the United States flag, by Mr. Cleveland's order, in Hawaii in 1893, which act offended many Democrats as well as most of the Republicans ; by the wrangle among the Dem- ocrats on the Wilson Gorman tariff bill of 1801. which the presi- dent denounced as a "party perfidy and party dishonor" measure, and which he refused to sign, allowing it to become a law by the expiration of the ten days' time limit; and by the feud in the party on the silver issue. The Democrats had each branch of con- gress at that time, but in the election in 1894 they were over- whelmingly beaten, the Republicans regaining the senate and roll- ing up a majority of 142 in the house.
As a result of the Democratic wreck of 1894 the Republicans elected all the state officers who were chosen that year in Mis- souri, the Democratic vote, as compared with 1892, declining sharply. These were W. M. Robinson, for supreme court judge ; John R. Kirk, for superintendent of public instruction, and Joseph Flory, for railroad commissioner. The Republican lead was short in the case of each candidate. Judge Robinson's was 3,194, and Mr. Flory 6.337. In the lower branch of the legislature the Republicans gained a large majority, while the large number of
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holdover members which they had was all that saved the Demo- crats in the other branch. The Republicans elected ten of the state's fifteen members of the popular branch of congress. Among the defeated Democrats was Mr. Bland, who had been elected without interruption from his first canvass, that of 1872.
The election of 1894 in Missouri is notable because of the fact that it was the Republicans' only victory in a contest for state officers since 1868, when McClurg was chosen governor. In 1870 the Republican seceders ( the Liberal Republicans ), supported by the Democrats, elected B. Gratz Brown as governor, and in 1872 the Democratic chose Silas Woodson. Beginning with 1872 the Democrats have been in uninterrupted sway in Missouri to this day except in the case of the minor officers elected in 1894 and in one branch of the legislature chosen in that year.
Bland's defeat in 1804 did not injure his prestige, however, either in his state or in the free coinage section-which subsequent events proved was by far the larger section-of his party in the country at large. He was sent back to congress in 1896, and remained there until his death. In the two years in which he was out of congress he gained the most brilliant triumph in state politics which he ever won. This was in connection with the Pertle Springs convention of 1895, which started the series of events that ended the straddling of the Republicans and Demo- crats on the silver question in their national conventions, and forced a square fight on the issue of gold versus silver between the two parties in the canvass of 1896.
Not all of the Democratic party of Missouri favored free silver. A strong element, chiefly in the big business centers-St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Joseph and one or two other towns-whose most conspicuous leader was ex-Governor Francis, was hostile to that policy, and opposed it in and out of conventions. This ingredient of the Democracy was the lineal descendant of Benton and the "hards" who were powerful in Missouri in the divisions on the money issue in the days before the civil war.
The ex-governor was triumphant in the convention which met in Kansas City on May 15, 1894, to nominate candidates for minor state officers. Mr. Francis made his position plain from the outset. "Declare adherence to the double standard," he said ; "make your plank sustaining the integrity of the white metal as strong as you please ; but don't let us attempt to put the Missouri Democracy in advance of the party, and against the national administration, by insisting that we are for immediate free coinage at the ratio of 16 to 1." This determination he maintained
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throughout the convention. He compelled Mr. Bland to accept this view, and though the platform demanded free coinage, it did not do this so imperatively as Bland wanted ; it omitted all men- tion of 16 to 1 ; and it insisted that though silver and gold coinage should be free, they "should be coined at such ratio as will main- tain the two metals in circulation." That was the concession which the ex-governor forced into the platform which was adopted by the convention.
Mr. Bland's inability to get what he wanted in that assemblage, the widening divergence between the party's two wings, as shown by the contests in congress and in many states, and the growing strength of the silver wing in the South and West, impelled him to work for the holding of an off year convention, at which he could accomplish his purpose. This convention, which was opposed by the sound money men, chiefly because of its irregularity, no elec- tion taking place in the state in that year, met at Pertle Springs, near Warrensburg, on August 6, 1895, and was presided over by . Mr. Bland.
Comparatively few of the sound money men went to the Pertle Springs gathering. The convention added nineteen (one addi- tional member from cach congressional district and four at large) to the existing fifteen members of the state committee, thus putting the sound money element far in the minority in that body ; instructed the state committee to call a convention not later than April 15, 1896 (and the committee called it to meet in Sedalia on that date), to select delegates to the national gathering, which was to open in Chicago on July 7; and demanded the free coinage of silver at the 16 to 1 ratio, "without waiting for the action or approval of any other nation." The object in holding the state convention at such an early date was to make its radical free silver declaration a "keynote" for the other Democratic state gatherings of the West and South, so as to force the national con- vention to demand free coinage without waiting for any inter- national agreement on the question (which the national conven- tion did, indeed, do in very nearly the words used at Pertle Springs) ; to put Bland in the field for the presidential candidacy.
At a largely attended meeting of sound money Democrats, held at St. Louis on February 29, 1896, which was participated in by ex-Governor Francis, ex-Atty. Gen. Daniel H. McIntyre, Col. James (). Broadhead, R. Graham Frost, Sam M. Kennard, Frederick W Lehman, Frederick N. Judson, and other prominent members of thus clement of the party, an address to the Demo- cratic voters of Missouri was adopted, protesting against this
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course of the free silver majority. The address recited that: "This unprecedented action, calling for the election of delegates three months in advance of the meeting of the convention to which they are to be accredited has been had with the avowed purpose of influencing the party in other states and committing the national Democracy to the free and unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1 of gold, regardless of the relative commercial value of the two metals, and regardless of the action of the other com- mercial nations of the world."
The address also pointed out that : "The repudiation of the only Democrat elected and inaugurated to the presidency within forty years, and the lowering of the existing standard of values upon which public and private credit and all business prosperity are based, are sought to be made the tests of state and national Democracy, and every Democrat who refuses to submit thereto is to be proscribed," and it called upon the Democrats of the state to "make an open, active and organized opposition to the effort to commit the party to a policy which can only end in disaster."
The convention at Sedalia on April 15, 1896, in which the silver men were overwhelmingly in the predominance, adopted a resolu- tion drawn up by Governor Stone, reciting that the "Democracy of Missouri takes pride in presenting to the national convention at Chicago the name of Richard Parks Bland, a name known throughout the world, for nomination to the office of President of the United States; and the delegates from this state to said con- vention are instructed to use every honorable means to promote his nomination." Its platform declared for the free coinage of silver at "16 to 1, without waiting for the action or approval of any other government." Not only was all this in harmony with the views of Governor Stone, but it was favored by nearly every other Democratic state officer of Missouri, and also by Senators Cockrell and Vest, by most of her Democrats in the popular branch of congress, and by a large majority of the party in the legislature.
By holding its Democratic convention earlier than almost any other state, and by declaring for the immediate and unconditional opening of the mints to silver coinage at the 16 to I ratio, Mis- souri influenced most of the rest of the Western and Southern states in the same direction, and aided in nerving the silver dele- gates to the Republican national convention at St. Louis two months later, in June, 1896-the convention which nominated Mc- Kinky and Hobart-to stand out for free coinage, thus forcing a "walk-out" of the silver men when the Republican majority of the
0
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St. Louis assemblage demanded that the "existing gold standard must be preserved."
The Republican challenge at St. Louis was promptly accepted by the national Democracy in the convention which met in Chicago three weeks later, on July 7. Bland was defeated for the can- didacy, although he led all the other aspirants for several ballots, and Bryan was nominated. But Bland's policy was affirmed, and almost in the words,-"without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation"-proclaimed in Bland's convention at Pertle Springs eleven months earlier, which were followed in the con- vention at Sedalia.
In by far the most exciting canvass which the country saw since 1860 the Republicans in 1896 carried the presidency, gaining a majority of ninety-five for Mckinley over Bryan in the electoral college. Bryan's vote in Missouri, the Populists also supporting him, was 363,667, as compared with 304,940 for Mckinley, giving Bryan a lead of 58.727 in the state. The vote for Palmer and Buckner, the gold Democratic candidates, in the state was only 2,365, but this does not represent the actual voting strength of the sound money Democracy of Missouri in that year, a large majority of that element supporting Mckinley. The Democrats carried twelve of Missouri's fifteen congressmen chosen in 1896, the Republicans winning three, all in St. Louis,-Richard Bartholdt, Charles F. Joy and Charles E. Pearce.
Lon V. Stephens, the Democratic candidate for governor, received 351,062 votes, as against 307.720 for Robert E. Lewis, the Republican nominee, Stephens's margin being 43333. Trim- ble the sound money Democrat, had a vote of 1,809, many of his section of the Democracy doubtless supporting Lewis. August H. Bolte, Democrat, was elected lieutenant governor. The Demo- crats gained a large majority in each branch of the legislature.
Governor Stephens was born in Boonville, Mo., in 1857, held no political post until he was appointed to that of state treasurer by Governor Francis in 1900, to succeed an official who had been removed, and he was elected to that office in 1892, holding it till, through the election of 1896, he went to the governorship.
In 1806 a president of the United States once more went to Missouri to select a member of his constitutional advisers, Mr. Cleveland in that year appointing ex-Governor Francis as secre- tary of the interior, to succeed Hoke Smith, who had resigned. Mr. Francis held the post until the close of Cleveland's term, in 1897.
IV-14
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A tornado memorable for the devastation which it cansed visited St. Louis on May 27, 1896, killing one hundred and seventy-five persons, injuring scores of others, and destroying ten million dol- lars of property.
Richard P. Bland, who was one of the dozen Democrats elected by Missouri to congress in 1896, was re-elected in 1898, and died in 1899. He had been in congress from 1873 until that time, except during 1895-97, led in the movement for silver remoneti- zation from the time when it began, in 1877, until his deathı, gained international fame, and had the respect of his countrymen, irrespective of their attitude toward free coinage. No lost cause ever had a personally more upright or more intrepid champion.
The legislation during Governor Stephens's administration which attracted the widest attention was the police and the election acts, the latter being popularly known as the Nesbit law. Both were enacted in 1899, and both were restricted in their operation to "cities having three hundred thousand inhabitants and over," and therefore applied to St. Louis solely. The police act displaced the one passed on March 27, 1861, which was designed to take the control of the police of St. Louis out of the hands of the Unionist city government of that town and put it in the hands of the governor, who at that time was Claiborne F. Jackson, a Southern sympathizer, who went over to the confederacy soon afterward. The act of 1899 gave the governor still greater power over the St. Louis police than he had under the law of 1861.
Under the operation of the election law, by means of the board of commissioners appointed by the governor, the control of the elections in St. Louis was lodged in Jefferson City, and the prin- ciple of home rule, as in the case of the police act of 1899 and the one which it displaced, was assailed. The Republicans charged that the objects of the police and the election acts was to dis- honestly diminish the Republican vote in St. Louis and to dis- honestly increase the Democratic vote, so as to abolish the Repub- lican majorities in that city. Many of the Democratic leaders and newspapers denied this. Frauds on the ballot, however, have been shown to have been committed under this law. The Repub- lican preponderance in the city was cut almost to the vanishing point. In 1896, when Bryan's lead in the state as a whole was 58,727, Mckinley had a margin of 15,717 in St. Louis. In 1900, immediately after the Nesbit law went into operation, and when Bry:'s plurality in the entire state had fallen to 37,830, MeKin- ley's margin in St. Louis was only 666. One St. Louis congres- sional district which had been carried by the Republicans in
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