1900; or, The last President
increasing so long as the statute books contain a single trace of the
record of our enslavement. As for me, I have but one ambition, and that
is to deserve so well of you that when you come to write my epitaph, you
set beneath my name the single line:
“Here lies a Friend of the Common People.”
CHAPTER VII.
This first year of the Silver Administration was scarcely rounded up,
ere there began to be ugly rumors that the Government was no longer able
to hold the white metal at a parity with gold. “It is the work of Wall
Street,” cried the friends of the President, but wiser heads were shaken
in contradiction, for they had watched the sowing of the wind of
unreason, and knew only too well that the whirlwind of folly must be
reaped in due season.
The country had been literally submerged by a silver flood which had
poured its argent waves into every nook and cranny of the Republic,
stimulating human endeavor to most unnatural and harmful vigor. Mad
speculation stalked over the land. People sold what they should have
clung to, and bought what they did not need. Manufacturers heaped up
goods for which there was no demand, and farmers ploughed where they had
not drained and drained, where they were never fated to plough. The
small dealer enlarged his business with more haste than judgment, and
the widow drew her mite from the bank of savings to buy land on which
she was destined never to set foot. The spirit of greed and gain lodged
in every mind, and the “Common People” with a mad eagerness loosened the
strings of their leather purses to cast their hard-earned savings into
wild schemes of profit. Every scrap and bit of the white metal that they
could lay their hands upon, spoons hallowed by the touch of lips long
since closed in death, and cups and tankards from which grand sires had
drunken were bundled away to the mints to be coined into “people’s
dollars.”
At the very first rumor of the slipping away of this trusted coin from
its parity with gold, there was a fearful awakening, like the start and
the gasp of the miser who sees his horded treasure melting away from
before his eyes, and he not able to reach out and stay its going.
Protest and expostulation first, then came groans and prayers, from
which there was an easy road to curses. The working man threw off his
cap and apron to rush upon the public square, and demand his rights.
Mobs ran together, processions formed, deputations hurried off to
Washington, not on foot like the Coxey Army, but on the swift wings of
the Limited Express.
The “common people” were admitted to the bar of the house, their plaints
patiently listened to, and reparation promised. Bills for increased
revenue were hurriedly introduced, and new taxes were loaded upon the
broad shoulders of the millionaires of the nation;—taxes on checks,
taxes on certificates of incorporation, taxes on deeds and mortgages,
taxes on pleasure yachts, taxes on private parks and plaisances, taxes
on wills of all property above $5,000 in value, taxes on all gifts of
realty for and in consideration of natural love and affection, taxes on
all passage tickets to foreign lands, and double taxes on the estates of
all absentees on and after the lapse of six months.
There was a doubling up too of the tariff on all important luxuries, for
as was said on the floor of Congress, “if the silks and satins of
American looms and the wines and tobacco of native growth, are not good
enough for ‘my Lord of Wall Street,’ let him pay the difference and
thank heaven that he can get them at that price.”
To quiet the murmurs of the good people of the land, additional millions
were placed to the credit of the Department of Public Works, and harbors
were dredged out in one month only to fill up in the next, and new
systems of improvement of interstate waterways were entered upon on a
scale of magnitude hitherto undreamt of. The Commissioners for the
distribution of public moneys to farmers so impoverished as to be unable
to work their lands, were kept busy in placing “Peffer Loans” where the
need of them seemed to be the greatest, and to put a stop to the
“nefarious doings of money-changers and traders in the misfortunes of
the people,” a statute was enacted making it a felony punishable with
imprisonment for life, for any person or corporate body to buy and sell
government bonds or public funds, or deal in them with a view to draw
gain or profit from their rise and fall in value.
But try never so hard, the Government found itself powerless to check
the slow but steady decline in value of the people’s dollar. By
midsummer, it had fallen to forty-three cents, and ere the fair
Northland had wrapped itself, like a scornful beauty, in its Autumn
mantle of gold, the fondly trusted coin had sunk to exactly one-third of
the value of a standard gold dollar. People carried baskets in their
arms, filled with the now discredited coin, when they went abroad to pay
a debt or make purchase of the necessaries of life. Huge sacks of the
white metal were flung at the door of the mortgagee when discharge was
sought for a few thousand dollars. Men servants accompanied their
mistresses upon shopping tours to carry the necessary funds, and leather
pockets took the place of the old time muslin ones in male habiliments,
least the weight of the fifteen coins required to make up a five dollar
gold piece should tear the thin stuff and spill a dollar at every step.
All day long in the large cities, huge trucks loaded with sacks of the
coin rolled and rumbled over the pavement in the adjustment of the
business balances of the day. The tradesman who called for his bill was
met at the door with a coal scuttle or a nail keg filled with the
needful amount, and on pay day, the working man took his eldest boy with
him to “tote the stuff home” while he carried the usual bundle of
firewood. And strange to say, this dollar, once so beloved by the
“common people,” parted with its very nature of riches and lay in heaps
unnoticed and unheeded on shelf or table, until occasion arose to pay it
out which was done with a careless and contemptuous toss as if it were
the iron money of the ancient Spartans, and Holy Writ for once at least,
was disproven and discredited for the thief showed not the slightest
inclination to “break in and steal” where these treasures had been laid
up on earth, although the discs of white metal might lie in full view on
the table, like so many pewter platters or pieces of tinware. Men let
debts run, rather than call for them, and barter and exchange came into
vogue again, the good housewife calling on her neighbor for a loan of
flour or meal, promising to return the same in sugar or dried fruit
whenever the need might arise.
And still the once magic discs of silver slipped slowly and silently
downward, and ever downward in value and good name, until it almost
seemed as if the people hated the very name of silver.
CHAPTER VIII.
The “Fateful year of ’99” upon its coming in, found the Republic of
Washington in dire and dangerous straits. The commercial and industrial
boom had spent its force, and now the frightful evils of a debased
currency, coupled with demoralizing effects of rampant paternalism, were
gradually strangling the land to death. Capital, ever timid and
distrustful in such times, hid itself in safe deposit vaults, or fled to
Europe. Labor, although really hard pressed and lacking the very
necessities of life, was loudmouthed and defiant. Socialism and
Anarchism found willing ears into which to pour their burning words of
hatred and malevolence, and the consequence was that serious rioting
broke out in the larger cities of the North, often taxing the capacities
of the local authorities to the utmost.
It was bruited abroad that violent dissensions had arisen in the
Cabinet, the young President giving signs of a marked change of mind,
and like many a man who has appealed to the darker passions of the human
heart, he seemed almost ready to exclaim: “I stand alone. The spirits I
have called up are no longer obedient to me. My country, oh, my country,
how willingly would I give my life for thee, if by such a sacrifice I
could restore thee to thy old time prosperity.”
For the first he began to realize what an intense spirit of sectionalism
had entered into this “revolutionary propaganda.” He spoke of his fears
to none save to his wise and prudent helpmate.
“I trust you, beloved,” she whispered, as she pressed the broad, strong
hands that held her enclasped.
“Ay, dear one, but does my country?” came in almost a groan from the
lips of the youthful ruler.
Most evident was it, that thus far the South had been the great gainer
in this struggle for power. She had increased her strength in the Senate
by six votes; she had regained her old time prestige in the House; one
of her most trusted sons was in the Speaker’s chair, while another
brilliant Southron led the administration forces on the floor. Born as
she was for the brilliant exercise of intellectual vigor, the South was
of that strain of blood which knows how to wear the kingly graces of
power so as best to impress the “common people.” Many of the men of the
North had been charmed and fascinated by this natural pomp and inborn
demeanor of greatness and had yielded to it.
Not a month had gone by that this now dominant section had not made some
new demand upon the country at large. Early in the session, at its
request, the internal revenue tax which had rested so long upon the
tobacco crop of the South, and poured so many millions of revenue into
the national treasury, was wiped from the statute books with but a
feeble protest from the North.
But now the country was thrown into a state bordering upon frenzy by a
new demand, which, although couched in calm and decorous terms, nay,
almost in the guise of a petition for long-delayed justice to
hard-pressed and suffering brethren, had about it a suppressed, yet
unmistakable tone of conscious power and imperiousness which well became
the leader who spoke for “that glorious Southland to which this Union
owes so much of its greatness and its prestige.”
Said he: “Mr. Speaker, for nearly thirty years our people, although left
impoverished by the conflict of the states, have given of their
substance to salve the wounds and make green the old age of the men who
conquered us. We have paid this heavy tax, this fearful blood money
unmurmuringly. You have forgiven us for our bold strike for liberty that
God willed should not succeed. You have given us back our rights, opened
the doors of these sacred halls to us, called us your brothers, but
unlike noble Germany who was content to exact a lump sum from “la belle
France,” and then bid her go in peace and freedom from all further
exactions, you have for nearly thirty years laid this humiliating war
tax upon us, and thus forced us year in and year out to kiss the very
hand that smote us. Are we human that we now cry out against it? Are we
men that we feel no tingle in our veins after these long years of
punishment for no greater crime than that we loved liberty better than
the bonds of a confederation laid upon us by our fathers? We appeal to
you as our brothers and our countrymen. Lift this infamous tax from our
land, than which your great North is ten thousand times richer. Do one
of two things: Either take our aged and decrepit soldiers by the hand
and bless their last days with pensions from the treasury of our common
country, for they were only wrong in that their cause failed, or remove
this hated tax and make such restitution of this blood money as shall
seem just and equitable to your soberer and better judgment.”