Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920

Peter Cooper. It was a suggestive proposal, that only a knave would call the visionary scheme of a fool. He was tireless in explanation and argument, the quality of which may be judged from the following passage from a letter to Hayes and Tilden written during the campaign of 1877: The worth or exchangeable value of gold is as uncertain as other products of human labor, such as wheat or cotton. The exchangeable value of anything depends on its _convertibility into something else_ that has value _at the option of the individual_. This rule applies to paper money as to anything else. But how shall Government give an exchangeable value to a paper currency? Can it be done by a standard which is beyond its control and which naturally fluctuates, while the sign of exchange indicated by the paper remains the same?... ... we must trust our Government with this _whole function_ of providing the standards and measures of exchange, as we trust it with the weights and measures of trade.... We must require the Government to make this currency, at all times, and, at the option of the individual, _convertible_. But the currency must be convertible into something over which the Government has entire control, and to which it can give a definite as well as a permanent value. This is its own _interest-bearing bonds_. These are, in fact, a mortgage upon the embodied wealth of the whole country. The reality of their value is as sound and as permanent as the Government itself, and the degree of their value can be determined exactly by the rate of interest the Government may think proper to fix.[762] The Jeffersonianism of Peter Cooper, like the Jeffersonianism of the Middle Border, had taken a bias from the confident nationalism that during the fifties so deeply colored American thought. To assure an adequate national economy, superior in its self-sufficiency to European--and especially English--policies, was a persuasive program that Henry C. Carey devoted his later life to formulating, and that men like Horace Greeley and Peter Cooper disseminated amongst their wide agrarian following. That such a program implied a paternalistic government did not trouble them. Peter Cooper accepted paternalism as a necessary governmental function. He would have the state build and own the great western railway systems; he would use the national domain for the benefit of the settler; he would not turn over the state to plunderers nor the resources of the nation to speculators. An honest man with a sensitive social conscience, he would have no hand in the great barbecue that wasted more than it consumed; but the times were heedless of the counsels of honest men, and he was loved and laughed at and ignored. Like Franklin in the Constitutional Convention, he had outlived his generation and was thrust aside by the new economy that was taking over the custodianship of America.[763] Footnotes [734] See Nevins, _The Emergence of Modern America_, pp. 163-164 [735] _The Statutes at Large: 7 & 8 Victoriae_, Vol. 84, pp. 188-189. [736] _Speeches and Reports on Finance and Taxation_, pp. 188, 190. [737] _Ibid._, p. 233. [738] “Speech of January 24, 1870,” _ibid._, pp. 225-226. [739] This laid him open to frequent and often bitter attack. See, among many, Mrs. Marion Todd, _Pizzaro and John Sherman_, Chicago, 1891. [740] _Practical Economics_, p. 54. [741] _The Cremation Theory of Specie Resumption_, p. 10. [742] _Ibid._, p. 10. [743] _Ibid._, p. 13. [744] J. A. Woodburn, _The Life of Thaddeus Stevens_, p. 573. [745] _Ibid._, p. 573. [746] _Ibid._, pp. 573-574. [747] See, amongst many, _Homo’s Letters on a National Currency_, Washington, 1817; _Currency Explosions, their Cause and Cure_, New York, 1858; _Our Currency: Some of Its Evils, and the Remedies for them_, by a Citizen of North Carolina, Raleigh, 1861. [748] His titles are: _Credit, Currency and Banking_, New York, 1828; _A Letter on the National Currency_, New York, 1861; _Six Letters on the Necessity and Practicability of a National Currency, etc._, New York, 1862; and _National Currency: A Review of the National Banking Law_, New York, 1863. [749] From what source Lord, and the other amateur economists, derived their theory is not clear. It is possible, of course, to assume that it was from Ricardo and the English economists. For an analysis and rejection of the quantity theory, see J. Lawrence Laughlin, _The Principles of Money_, Chapter VIII. [750] _A Review of the National Banking Law_, p. 8. [751] _Ibid._, p. 34. [752] Vol. I, p. 485. [753] _Ideas for a Science of Good Government_, p. iii. [754] _Political and Financial Opinions of Peter Cooper_, p. 23. [755] _Ideas for a Science of Good Government_, p. 272. [756] _Ibid._, p. 271. [757] _Ibid._, p. 261. [758] _Ibid._, p. 123. [759] _Ibid._, p. 117-118. [760] _Ibid._, pp. 109-110. [761] See _Ibid._, pp. 59-60. [762] _The Political and Financial Opinions of Peter Cooper_, pp. 22-23. [763] In his original plan Professor Parrington included here a discussion entitled “Bimetallism: A heritage of Jacksonian democracy; Ignatius Donnelly, ‘Coin’ Harvey,” but from the references in the next chapter it seems evident that as he worked out his plan he decided to omit this.--_Publisher._ Chapter II • The Democracy of the Age of Innocence I • Capitalistic Encroachments With its heritage of Jacksonianism it was natural for the agrarian movement to attempt to carry further the exploration of the democratic principle, seeking to complete the program that had been left unfulfilled by the Fathers. There were few as yet who questioned the finality of democracy as a political system or its adequacy to all social needs. The growing evils of American life were traced unhesitatingly to an imperfect democratic control of the forces of exploitation. If the plutocracy were making gains at the expense of the plain people it was due to defective governmental machinery, and the immediate problem was the readjustment of that machinery. There must be an extension of democratic control over the economics of society. The great principle of _laissez faire_, that had proved so useful in the earlier struggle against aristocratic paternalisms, was become a shield and buckler for the plutocracy that was rising from the freedoms of a let-alone policy. To curb the ambitions of that plutocracy and preserve the democratic bequest for the common benefit of all, was therefore the immediate problem of the times. To this end two things remained to be achieved: to wrest possession of the government from the hands of the plutocracy that was befouling it, and to use it for democratic rather than plutocratic ends. The difficulties in the way were many. Entrenched behind the checks and balances of a complex constitution the plutocracy could not easily be dislodged from power; even if it were driven out of the legislative and executive branches of government it would find aid and succor in the judiciary, where a masterful corporation law was interpreted by a bench tender toward all property rights, and jealous of its sovereign prerogative of reviewing all legislative enactments. A surprising change had come over the attitude of the governing class towards democracy. Having gained control of the machinery of government the plutocracy found no cause to quarrel with a situation wholly to its liking. It had mastered the gentle art of guiding the majority will, and secure--as it believed--in its control of the political state, it counted on an indefinite continuation of the policy of preëmption and exploitation. From such a group, whether in Wall Street or at Washington, no new theories of government were to be expected. Business men wanted to be let alone. They clung to the anarchism of the Enlightenment and were stout in defense of the principle of individual initiative. So late as 1916 a group of confirmed individualists reissued Spencer’s _Man Versus the State_, with an introduction by Elihu Root, to combat the rising spirit of governmental control. They regarded the American system of government as adequate and final, and wanted no subversive changes. The Constitution had been completed by the post-war enactments that fixed the status of the negro, and for a generation thereafter--except for the silent changes wrought by the judiciary--it remained static. East of the Allegheny Mountains popular interest in political theory had come to an end. A group of academic thinkers like John W. Burgess and Woodrow Wilson, an occasional intellectual like Brooks Adams, isolated radicals like Johann Most and small Marxian groups in Chicago and New York, and leaders of the new proletarian movement like Terence V. Powderly, were still acutely concerned about political theory; but these men and their theories counted for little in the stodgy mass of capitalistic America. The political phase had passed over into the economic; politics was wholly divorced from reality. But throughout the Middle Border and on to the Pacific Coast the spirit of political democracy was alive and vigorous. There the older frontier Jacksonianism still lingered. For upwards of a half a century creative political thinking in America was largely western agrarian, and from this source came those democratic ideas that were to provide the staple of a later liberalism. The conscious objective of this great movement was to complete the work begun by Jacksonianism, and create a political machinery that should enable the democracy to withstand the shock of the Industrial Revolution. Many thinkers contributed to the work--U’Ren of Oregon, Jerry Simpson of Kansas, Tom Watson of Georgia, “Coin” Harvey of Arkansas, General Weaver of Iowa, Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota, Henry D. Lloyd of Chicago, to name a handful out of the mass--homespun realists who have been forgotten by a later generation, but whose labors were given to the necessary work of refashioning the political machinery of America, and whose program provided the materials for the later Progressive party. They were commoners, men of the people, unversed in the dogmas of the schools, idealists who drew their inspiration from the Declaration of Independence; they spoke for an older America that feared the rising plutocracy, and they were casting about for ways and means to cut its claws. From their labors came the Greenback Movement, the Farmers’ Alliance, Populism; and from them came in turn the Progressive Movement that reaped what they had sown. II • Third-Party Movements It is, perhaps, not extreme to interpret the political history of America since 1790 as largely a struggle between the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the spirit of the Constitution, the one primarily concerned with the rights of man, the other more practically concerned with the rights of property. The humanitarian idealism of the Declaration has always echoed as a battle-cry in the hearts of those who dream of an America dedicated to democratic ends. It cannot be long ignored or repudiated, for sooner or later it returns to plague the councils of practical politics. It is constantly breaking out in fresh revolt. When the major parties have grown callous and indifferent to the wishes of the common people, it has reformulated its principles in third-party platforms. Without its freshening influence our political history would have been much more sordid and materialistic. With the exception of such sporadic outbursts as Antimasonry and Knownothingism, the third-party movements of the nineteenth century were democratic movements, inspired by a sense of social justice, founded on the