USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina since 1860, Volume III > Part 17
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The session was unimportant. Jarvis again urged a rail- road commission but the time was not ripe although each house passed a bill creating one which the other refused. Ransom was re-elected to the Senate over William John- ston who received the liberal and republican support.
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The alliance of the republicans and liberals thus made endured through the next campaign, at the end of which most of the liberal leaders had become republicans. In 1884 the republican and liberal conventions met in Raleigh at the same time and while there was pretended separation, to all intents and purposes they were only two divisions of the same body, acting together in all things and adopting a com- mon platform.
The liberal convention was presided over by William Johnston. The former democrats already mentioned were in evidence reinforced by a number of republicans including P. H. Winston and Thomas P. Devereux. The platform ad- vocated a county government law which would restore the election of all officials to the people. It condemned the in- ternal revenue laws, endorsed the Blair Bill and a moderate protective tariff, demanded the elimination of sectional strife and closed with a declaration in favor of equal political rights to all.
The republicans agreed to this and a joint conference committee then chose the ticket. It was as follows : governor, Tyre York, attorney-general, C. A. Cook, both liberals; lieu- tenant-governor, W. T. Faircloth; secretary of state, G. W. Stanton; treasurer, Washington Duke; auditor, F. M. Law- son; superintendent of public instruction, Francis D. Wins- ton; associate justice, D. L. Russell, all republicans. Mott's scheme had again been successful and the republicans had the best of the bargain. But there was much open bitterness in the convention over the nomination of York and it con- tinued and spread during the campaign. The democratic party was suffering more from division, but the republicans were by no means united in spirit, although they had as al- ways a wonderful knack of forgetting their quarrels by elec- tion day. The comment of one prominent republican in this campaign is interesting:
The republican party as now managed in this state is a mere political machine controlled by a few for the oppression of the many, and so regulated as to register the will of a combination of bosses for boss rule. * * * The administration at Washington-every ad- ministration since the war-has been criminally careless in regard to the selection of these [federal] officials. The administration of
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federal affairs in the state for the entire period of fifteen years has been an outrage upon the people and a reflection upon the general government.
The democratic convention met late in June. An active pre-convention campaign had been going on between A. M. Scales, Octavius Coke, Thomas Holt, and Charles M. Sted- man, and Scales won on the first ballot over Coke, the names of the others not being presented. Partly because of a de- mand for rotation in office and partly in answer to the liberal movement, Worth, Scarborough, and Kenan, who had held respectively the offices of treasurer, superintendent of pub- lic instruction, and attorney-general, were dropped and re- placed by Donald W. Bain, S. M. Finger, and T. F. David- son. The platform as usual was profuse in its congratulations to the people upon democratic rule and challenged the repub- licans to a comparison. Federal interference at the ballot box was denounced, the repeal of the internal revenue laws and the protective tariff were demanded, federal aid to edu- cation, if under state control, was advocated, an improved system of public schools was promised, and the East was guaranteed the maintenance of the county government law.
The campaign was interesting but not pleasant. Prob- ably the character of the national campaign affected it, but, whatever may have been the cause, it was full of personal- ities and unpleasant incidents. York was of rather a rough type who had been, like a great many of the western demo- crats in strong republican communities, inclined to be a reac- tionary, and had been profanely bitter against the negroes and the republicans whose candidate he now was. He and Scales conducted a joint compaign which was rather stormy, abounding in charges and counter-charges, and in which the lie was passed more than once. At Wilmington the demo- cratic candidates were stoned by negroes who were having a republican parade.
Republican dislike of York's candidacy continued and op- erated unfavorably against him. Two prominent republi- cans, S. L. Patterson and W. A. Smith, the "Blow-Your- Horn-Billy" of reconstruction fame, left their party and became democrats. The democrats, as they saw before them
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victory in both state and nation, recovered unity and be- came more aggressive than they had been since 1876. The money for the Western North Carolina Railroad had been paid and had been used for current expenses, so there was no collection of state tax in 1884, a fact which added to the popularity of the administration and the party.
By 1884 whites and negroes in North Carolina were living in peace and without collision or confusion. This was due to the genius and characteristics of the people. North Caro- lina white people in general treated the negroes with fair- ness and kindness and the negroes, racially, were when un- disturbed, amiable and unaggressive. For political purposes an attempt was now made to change all this. The republicans, with a democratic presidential victory in sight, poured into the ears of the negroes wild tales of what would happen to them in the event of democratic victory. Three words sum up the threatening prophecy, Confiscation, Disfranchisement, Slavery. Fortunately the attempt failed to do more than make the negroes, for the last time, rather anxious about the continuance of their freedom. That, however, does not ex- cuse the method. It was simply an example of the opportun- ist politics which had damned the party in reconstruction, and which was later to damn it again, and lead finally, thanks to the evil effects upon the negroes, to the fulfillment of one of the republican prophecies-the disfranchisement of the negro.
Cleveland carried the state by 17,000, Scales by 20,000. The democratic majority in both houses of the legislature was increased, and the republicans carried only the black district with J. E. O'Hara.
The legislative session was not in any respect notable, except for a manifestation of an increasing interest in edu- cational matters. Governor Jarvis's last message laid its chief emphasis there as he plead in behalf of the future of the commonwealth for greater opportunity for the youth of the state. Scales in his inaugural continued the emphasis. Both urged support of the schools and the proper maintenance of the University which had reached a point where unless state aid, greater than $5,000 a year, was given it could go no
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further. Accordingly the legislature, over the bitter oppo- sition of members of certain of the religious denominations who claimed that the state had no right to tax them to sup- port a state institution when they supported colleges of their own, began the policy of real state support by appropriating $15,000 for the annual maintenance fund. Later in the ses- sion the first steps were taken in the organization of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, by a law authorizing and directing the board of agriculture to establish an indus- trial school. On account of the lack of funds, however, noth- ing was done until the following session. The senators and representatives in Congress were requested to support some plan of distribution of the surplus revenue among the states for public education, provided the control of the fund was in the hands of the states. Scales in his inaugural, after seeking to quiet the fears of the negroes, as to democratic policy in respect to them, had advocated Federal aid for their education.
The glaring defects of the system of assessment and tax- ation were beginning to attract attention and the governor was directed to appoint a tax commission to investigate and report to the next legislature. A bill for a railroad commis- sion was introduced in the Senate but failed to pass and the House was not sufficiently interested to consider the ques- tion. The grip of the railroads was as yet unbroken. The beginning of Confederate pensions came with the provision for the payment of $30 annually to indigent and disabled sol- diers and the widows of soldiers. Vance was re-elected to the Senate over Tyre York who was the republican nominee. Of course if there had been any chance of election, neither he nor William Johnston in 1883 would have been supported by the republicans.
The democrats had practically no opposition in the leg- islature, so small was the minority in each house. On the surface in 1884 and 1885 it seemed as though the difficulties of the party were over and that it had a new lease of life and power. Such, however, was not the case. The discontented elements were growing and when 1886 came it found the party badly disorganized. It was a fact no longer to be de-
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nied that the county government law was bitterly unpopular with democrats, outside the East, as well as with republicans. It became now a live question, the democratic party being committed still to its maintenance. Anti-railroad feeling was growing and the failure to create a railroad commission in- tensified it. The beginning of the farmers' movement in- creased political tension. The truth of the matter is that while the state as a whole was unprogressive,-as indeed it had always been and as it was doomed to be with so great a proportion of ignorance,-the democratic leaders in the main were more so, and while as yet there was no progressive pro- gram in opposition, discontent was prevalent largely because of the failure of the leaders really to lead.
There was little of interest in democratic politics in this campaign. A movement to replace Chief Justice Smith with Merrimon, who was now an associate justice soon died and the convention nominated the entire court as it was consti- tuted, and adopted no platform.
The republican executive committee met and decided against holding any convention but a large number of the party were dissatisfied and a self-constituted committee, headed by T. B. Keogh and J. C. L. Harris, proceeded to call one. It met with 146 delegates representing fifty-four coun- ties mostly in the west. The platform adopted condemned the democratic policy of using convicts in competition with free labor, declared the democratic party one of broken prom- ises, opposed the existing road system, denounced the county government law, endorsed the Blair Bill and the protective tariff and demanded a free ballot and a fair count. The convention then nominated W. P. Bynum for chief justice and J. W. Albertson and R. P. Buxton for associate justices. Judge Bynum declined the nomination and Judge Buxton replaced him, V. S. Lusk, taking the latter's place on the ticket. A full ticket for the Superior Court was also se- lected. The convention deposed Mott and the old executive ticket and elected a new one headed by Keogh. The bolters had clearly captured the organization and a bitter quarrel with Mott, which really began before the convention, followed. Mott was highly contemptuous of the movement and openly
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declared some of the nominees for judge "no more fit for the place than mountebanks are for soothsayers."
The campaign was devoid of interest. There were many independent democratic candidates, whom the regulars damned as traitors who were jeopardizing democratic rule and with it good government. There was considerable dis- cussion of the Blair Bill and twenty-six of the newspapers of the state strongly opposed it fearing Federal control of education. All the North Carolina senators and representa- tives, however, favored it and voted for it.
The election was closer than any for years. The demo- cratic judicial ticket was easily elected and the republicans won only two seats in Congress, although interestingly enough, they lost the "black second" where F. M. Simmons was elected. But in the legislature, while the democrats re- tained control of the Senate, they lost the House which was in the hands of republicans and independents. John R. Web- ster, one of the latter, was chosen speaker over Lee S. Over- man, the democratic caucus nominee. Webster was an opponent of the county government law although he did not favor unconditional repeal. Of course an immediate at- tempt was made to secure the repeal of the law and a bill for the purpose passed two readings in the House only to be ta- bled on the third. Later another similar bill passed all three readings and failed in the Senate.
Similarly a bill for a railroad commission passed the Senate and was defeated in the House to the bitter chagrin of its advocates.
The work of the legislature worthy of mention was the establishment of the Agricultural and Mechanical College at Raleigh, the passage of a constitutional amendment provid- ing for two additional associate-justices of the Supreme Court, the passage of resolutions asking for the passage of the Blair Bill and the repeal of the internal revenue laws, and the reduction of the state tax 5 cents on the $100. The last was regarded as a great achievement. Most of the time of this and all succeeding sessions of the legislature for years was given to local and special legislation which has since
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served as a terrible block to progress. It was a growing evil which was a real menace to the state.
The campaign of 1888 was the last under the old régime. Great changes were impending in leaders and issues. The farmers' movement was beginning to be felt, a new group of leaders in both parties were demanding a hearing for their views and plans and recognition for themselves and it was certain that they would not long be denied.
The republicans met in May and nominated O. H. Dockery for governor and Jeter C. Pritchard, of Madison, for lieu- tenant-governor. The latter had served in the legislature in 1885 and 1887 and had won for himself by his force of character and ability a place of leadership in his party. D. L. Russell, R. P. Buxton, and D. M. Furches were nominated for associate justices. Russell declined and W. A. Guthrie took his place. The platform contained the usual demand for the repeal of the county government law and the pas- sage of a new election law.
The democrats met in June. There was a long contest for the nomination for governor between D. G. Fowle, Charles M. Stedman, and S. B. Alexander. Fowle was finally nominated on the twenty-third ballot, and after Alexander had been nominated for lieutenant-governor and declined, Thomas M. Holt was chosen. J. J. Davis, James E. Shep- herd. and A. C. Avery were nominated for associate justices. The platform was the usual one differently phrased.
There was a prohibition ticket in the field, headed by W. T. Walker, but it received only about 3,000 votes in the election.
The campaign had in it nothing of interest. Both parties had ceased to advocate anything progressive and had lost all vitality. The republicans wanted to get in and the democrats wanted to stay in but apart from that neither was looking to the future. Of the two the democrats were the more list- less and apathetic and many people thought that Fowle would be defeated. He was, however, successful with a majority of 14,000 while Cleveland carried the state with a majority of 15,000. The democrats elected the judicial ticket, carried the legislature with safe majorities in each house, and elected
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six members of Congress, the republicans thus gaining one seat.
The legislature was like its immediate predecessors. Ransom was re-elected to the Senate over O. H. Dockery, the election law was so largely amended as to change it ma- terially, certain new provisions and requirements being added which made it simpler for election officials to disfranchise voters. The railroad commission was once more defeated, this time by the Senate, and a new grievance thereby given the people who had come at last to demand the law.
During the years following the close of Reconstruction which have just been politically described, a wonderful de- velopment was under way, one which was transforming the state. The cotton mill and the tobacco factory, followed rap- idly by other industrial plants of lesser importance, were revolutionizing industrial life. Agriculture, it is true, re- mained the central interest of the state, but it was largely un- changed in this period with the one exception that trucking was a developing factor of increasing importance which, apart from its high profits, served as a most enlightening influence in bringing in new methods and encouraging new experiments. Manufacturing, though, was bringing in capi- tal, and giving remunerative employment to a rapidly in- creasing class, which from contact with new associates and new ideas, coupled with the possession of ready money, was gaining new standards of life and of living. In the same way, it was building up thriving towns, which were to prove a tre- mendous asset to the state, laying the foundations of a new and real prosperity, and transforming the life and thought of the people. It had its evils of course, not the least of whichi was a marked tendency, which manifested itself in some classes of the people, to a crass materialism, but the benefits far outweighed them. Along with industrial development the steady increase of railway mileage brought opportunity, economic and intellectual, nearer to many to whom it had been hitherto denied. Industrialism and the railroads were great educational factors in North Carolina.
Thus rapidly and still unconsciously the old commonwealth was being rebuilt into a new structure which resembled but
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little the one it replaced. No such thing is ever accom- plished in human beings or human society without shock and disturbance of some kind, usually both physical and mental, and the new North Carolina was due something on the order of growing pains. It could not escape. Also it would have to find itself.
The changes being wrought in the fabric of the common- wealth had been made possible only by the peace and quiet of the state under democratic rule. The conservative-demo- cratic party of Reconstruction undoubtedly deserves muclı credit for what it accomplished. It saved the state, gave peace and good order, solved, temporarily, at least,-for there was no permanency in the solution,-the negro ques- tion as it existed at the close of Reconstruction, kept expenses down and thus gave a desperate and largely poverty- stricken people a breathing spell, and was along some lines moderately progressive. Its chief defects were the timidity of its leaders and its lack of social responsibility. The state was crippled by an inequitable, dishonest, and inefficient sys- tem of taxation and the party did not want, or feared, to correct it. It slowly improved educational conditions, but it had no passion for the education of all the people and did not unwaveringly take its stand on the platform of universal uplift through public education. There were exceptions among the leaders, like Governor Jarvis, but he was, biologi- cally speaking, a political sport in North Carolina. As a consequence of these defects the day of the party was almost done. Crystallization had set in and there was little hope of its being able to carry the state forward under the exacting requirements of modern civilization unless it should be trans- formed and greatly socialized, and it was beyond the point where that could be done by quiet and natural growth and development. A re-birth was necessary and that could come only in labor and travail.
On the other hand there was no hope in the republican party which was as unsocialized and unprogressive as its opponent, with the additional handicap of having ignorant negroes compose more than half its voting membership. That single fact determined the place and character of the party.
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It was manifest that before it could offer progress to the state it must be reconstructed and, like the democratic party, born again.
Two things explain the political condition in the state, namely, ignorance among the people and the presence of the negro. Both had from the beginning cursed the community and condemned it to poverty and inaction that was in effect reaction.
Ignorance and slavery, in the period before the war, had debased free labor and forced upon the masses poverty and ignorance; they had destroyed freedom of speech and of thought; they had made possible the rule of politicians who thought in terms of national politics and were ignorant of and indifferent to the needs of the state, until national poli- tics became the curse of the state; they made the state inert and unprogressive to the point that thousands and hundreds of thousands of its sons became exiles that their children might not endure the bonds which shackled those who re- mained.
In the period following the war, ignorance and the negro accomplished no less of evil. The negro was the basal fact of Reconstruction, judged from either the angle of its pur- poses or results. Reconstruction past, the negro remained as a menace which lowered political morals, caused political stagnation, and, along with these, blocked the progress of public education, and was a social evil of the greatest magni- tude. It was not the fault of the negro and but for the curse of ignorance he would not have been such an obstacle to progress. But ignorance was present. In 1890 more than 23 per cent of the native white people of North Carolina over ten years of age were unable even to read and write. Only New Mexico in the United States was worse off. Of its total population nearly 36 per cent were illiterate. As Walter Page phrases it:
One man in every four was wholly forgotten. But illiteracy was not the worst of it; the worst of it was that the stationary social con- dition indicated by generations of illiteracy had long been the general condition. The forgotten man was content to be forgotten. He be- came not only a dead weight, but a definite opponent of social progress. He faithfully heard the politicians on the stump praise him for
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virtues he did not have. The politician told him he lived in the best state in the Union, told him that the other politician had some hare- brained plan to increase his taxes, told him as a consolation how many of his kinsmen had been killed in the war, told him to distrust anybody who wished to change anything. What was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him. Thus the forgotten man became a dupe, became thankful for being neglected.
Education, then, was the primary requirement of the state for the future because from that alone would grow the other things needed. A movement for it was inevitable for leaven- ing influences of several sorts were at work which, combined, would finally begin the first and most difficult part, the edu- cation of the people to the need of education. The existing parties having failed, because of political timidity and so- cial indifference of political leaders, to grasp opportunity, would in the end, in self-defense,-really in self-preservation, -be forced to grasp it or give place to a new party having its foundations in the awakening of the people, animated either by the simple natural desire to give their children a better chance in life, or else looking forward to a new and better day for North Carolina, when one in every eight peo- ple born there would not find it "a good State to come from."
CHAPTER XII
THE RISE OF POPULISM
The late eighties saw in North Carolina, as in many other Southern and Western states, a vast and steadily growing unrest and discontent. Economic and social in its origins, this feeling was translated into a political movement-a re- volt at first but shortly to become an attempted revolution- which imperiled the foundations of the social and govern- mental structure in North Carolina. Beginning as an agri- cultural movement, as it gained momentum it gathered to its standard those who were for any reason dissatisfied with existing conditions, a group of idealists-some of whom were radical fanatics-who saw in the movement the beginning of the millennium, and a considerable number of political adven- turers of a demagogie sort who saw in it the opportunity for advancement for themselves which had been hitherto denied for reasons more or less obvious.
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