Richard Pettigrew
Triumphant Plutocracy
It is not easy to characterize a complex political situation in a brief and comprehensive manner. If such a thing can be done at all, I believe that it can be done most successfully through the personality of two men who typify the two extremes of American political life. One of these men that I shall select for the purpose is William Jennings Bryan. The other is Joe Cannon of Illinois. The first is a Democrat—the second a Republican.
I have known both of these men for many years. Neither is a statesman in any sense of the word. Both are lawyers and suffer from the disqualifications that go with the study and practice of the law. Bryan has integrity, of a sort ; Cannon has a keen mind. Both understand the political game, and both play it according to their lights. Bryan plays prohibition politics ; Cannon plays plutocratic politics. Neither has any real grasp of the meaning of the phrase “ the public welfare.”
In the previous chapter, I have referred to the support which I gave Mr. Bryan in his fight against the eastern bankers and trust magnates. The fight ended in failure because Mr. Bryan was very weak while the trusts were very strong. Since that fight, Bryan has showed himself for what he is—an American politician, vacillating, uncertain, overlooking the fundamental things, ignorant of the forces that are shaping American public life, incapable of thinking in terms of reality, but making phrases as a substitute for thought.
Mr. Bryan is weak, not corrupt. That is why I wish to describe some of his public activities during the past few years. He is a type of the “good man” that so often fools the American people. By way of illustration, let me refer to two incidents which show Mr. Bryan’s attitude toward public questions and his method of judging matters of personal conduct.
When the Spanish Treaty was pending in the Senate of the United States and we believed that we had it defeated beyond a question, Bryan came to Washington from his home in Nebraska and urged a ratification of the treaty. He saw several Senators, before he came to me, and urged them to vote for ratification. Bryan knew the grounds upon which I was opposing the ratification of the treaty and yet he had the temerity to come and ask me to vote for ratification of the treaty. He argued that the treaty would entirely end our troubles with Spain and that, once it was ratified, the nation would have an opportunity to perform a great moral duty—the granting of freedom, under a wise and generous protectorate, to the people of the Philippines. His chief argument was that should the Republicans not give the people of the Philippines their independence, but, instead, should undertake to conquer the islands and annex them to the United States, such a course would and ought to drive the Republican party from power. The Filipinos had been our allies in the war with Spain, and he held that our repudiation of an alliance by such an act of bad faith as that implied in the conquest of the islands would wreck any administration that attempted it.
Bryan thus made the ratification of the Spanish Treaty an act of political expediency, and did not seem to realize that every person who voted to ratify the treaty at the same time endorsed the doctrine of purchasing a country and its people without their consent—the very doctrine on which he proposed to pillory the Republican administration before the country. Neither did he understand that a Senator holding my views and voting for ratification would be guilty of the most outrageous moral turpitude and depravity.
I called Mr. Bryan’s attention to the fact that, if we voted for the treaty, it would be fair for the administration to assume that the Senate sympathized with the spirit of the document which, as I pointed out, besides violating every principle of free government, contravened the Constitution which I had sworn to support. I told him that I would sooner cut off my right arm than cast my vote for the treaty. I was so incensed by his effort to induce me, on the score of expediency, to change front on a matter of principle and stultify myself, that I finally told him emphatically that he had no business in Washington on such an errand ; that his stand reflected on his character and reputation as a man, and indicated a lack of knowledge of human affairs which must make his friends feel that he was not a suitable person to be President of the United States.
Despite the vigor of my statement, I doubt if Bryan understood what I was driving at. He was seeking political capital and he was willing to take it where he found it, without paying too much attention to nice questions of principle.
The treaty was ratified by one more vote than was necessary. I do not believe Mr. Bryan’s visit changed the result, although several Democrats, who made speeches against it, voted for the treaty. The only effect of his visit was to give an excuse for Democrats, for a cash consideration, to sell out to Aldrich and vote for the treaty.
Andrew Carnegie, in his autobiography, on page 364, refers to this subject as follows :
“ Mr. Bryan had it in his power at one time to defeat in the Senate this feature of the Treaty of Peace with Spain. I went to Washington to try to effect this, and remained there until the vote was taken. I was told that when Mr. Bryan was in Washington he had advised his friends that it would be good party policy to allow the treaty to pass. This would discredit the Republican party before the people ; that ‘ paying twenty millions for a revolution’ would defeat any party. There were seven staunch Bryan men anxious to vote against Philippines annexation.
“ Mr. Bryan had called to see men in New York upon the subject, because my opposition to the purchase had been so pronounced, and I now wired him at Omaha, explaining the situation and begging him to write me that his friends could use their own judgment. His reply was what I have stated—better have the Republicans pass it and let it then go before the people. I thought it unworthy of him to subordinate such an issue, fraught with deplorable consequences, to mere party politics. It required the casting vote of the Speaker to carry the measure. One word from Mr. Bryan would have saved the country from the disaster. I could not be cordial to him for years afterwards. He had seemed to me a man who was willing to sacrifice his country and his personal convictions for party advantage.”
This is a significant verification of my conclusions, but it is rather amusing to read Carnegie’s comments on the perfidy of Bryan. The facts in his own case do not permit him a great deal of latitude in criticizing others. Carnegie was a very active opponent of the treaty and of the doctrine of imperialism. He was a member of the conference which met at the Plaza Hotel (New York) on the 6th of January, 1900, and he took a prominent part in its discussions (see Chapter XXIII). The conference was called by the New England Anti-Imperialist League, to organize an Anti-Imperialist political party for the purpose of compelling the old parties to agree to the independence of the Philippines, and for the purpose of opposing the acquisition of tropical countries.
The conference was called ostensibly to discuss the annexation of the Philippines and the Spanish West Indies and Hawaii. Its real purpose was to meet the broader question as to whether we should start on the course of empire. In a vigorous speech Mr. Carnegie urged upon the conference the necessity of a new political party for the purpose of opposing the imperial policy of both the old parties, and said that he would give as much money, dollar for dollar, as all the rest of us could raise toward promoting the campaign. As a pledge of good faith, he subscribed twenty-five thousand dollars on the spot. Afterward, he withdrew completely from the movement because the organizers of the steel trust served notice on him that he must choose between a comfortable berth with them and an Anti-Imperialist party, which threatened the whole success of the steel trust movement ; and the organizers of the steel trust told Carnegie that, unless McKinley was elected, they would not attempt to form the trust, as they needed a McKinley tariff in order to justify its great overcapitalization. It was a case of imperialism and a tariff or no trust and Carnegie lined up with the imperialists.
Despite Mr. Carnegie’s comments, he and Bryan measure up very much alike. Bryan was willing to sell his convictions for a supposed political advantage ; Carnegie sold his for gold. Bryan’s act was one of intellectual stupidity. Carnegie’s act was prompted by what big business calls enlightened self-interest.
Bryan has the point of view of an ordinary American business man. His ruling passion is “safety first”—not the financial safety of a manufacturer, but the political safety of a visionless manipulation of party machinery. This trait appeared very clearly in his activities during the Baltimore Convention of 1912, where Woodrow Wilson was nominated for President of the United States, with Champ Clark, Speaker of the House, as his chief opponent. The custom in Democratic conventions had always been to disregard the two-thirds rule and give a candidate the nomination when he had secured a majority and held it for several ballots.
At Baltimore, after Clark had for several ballots received the votes of a majority of the delegates, Bryan, who had been instructed at the primaries to vote for Clark and use all honorable means to secure his nomination, arose in the convention and said that he would abandon him and violate the instructions of the Democrats of Nebraska as long as the Democratic delegates in the convention from the state of New York continued to vote for Clark. This occurred after the delegations from New York, Virginia and Illinois had voted in the convention with Bryan to seat the Wilson delegates and oust the Clark delegates from South Dakota, although Clark had carried South Dakota in the primaries by twenty-five hundred majority.
Bryan could vote with Roger Sullivan of Chicago, and Ryan of Virginia, and the Tammany Democrats of New York, to throw Clark delegates out of the convention and seat Wilson delegates, but his pure soul would not permit him to vote for Clark while New York delegates were voting for him. This whole performance branded Bryan as not only a hypocrite, but also as a man lacking in character and in intellect.
Immediately upon Bryan making the announcement, I gave out the following interview which was published in all the leading newspapers of the United States :
“ Mr. Bryan’s statement that he will support no candidate for President who has the support of New York is the rankest hypocrisy. It is the excuse of the demagogue who believes that such a statement will be popular among the western voters, and has been seized upon by Mr. Bryan as an excuse for doing what he has intended to do ever since he was elected as a delegate to this convention by the Democrats of Nebraska.
“ He was not only instructed by the Democrats of Nebraska to vote for Mr. Clark, but instructed by the State Convention to use all honorable means to secure his nomination. After that, he stumped Ohio, Maryland and Florida in Wilson’s interest. While claiming that he maintained strict neutrality between Clark and Wilson, during the last week in May, Wilson’s managers sent a letter to every Democratic voter in South Dakota saying that Mr. Bryan had endorsed Wilson and made speeches in Ohio and Maryland in support of him.
“ This letter was circulated with Mr. Bryan’s knowledge and consent. Mr. Bryan was thoroughly familiar with the campaign made in South Dakota. He was familiar with the primary law of that state and knows that there were two Clark tickets in the field and that one of these was put up by Wilson’s managers to divide the Clark vote, hoping to give Wilson a plurality.
“ He knows that this bogus ticket was not supported by the men who put it into the field, and he is fully aware that Clark carried the state by over twenty-five hundred majority over Wilson. Yet he voted to seat the Wilson delegates in this convention, joining with the ninety votes from New York and the fifty-eight from Illinois and the Virginia delegation, of which Mr. Ryan is a member, to oust the Clark delegates from South Dakota. Yet Mr. Bryan would now have us believe that no honest Democrat can co-operate with New York, Illinois and Virginia in this convention.”
The publication of this interview regarding Bryan’s hypocrisy and the other facts connected with the Baltimore Convention ended his political career, and yet he still hopes that he will be nominated four years from now, for he honestly believes that he was predestined from his birth to be President of the United States.
This is the William Jennings Bryan, who “led” the Democratic party until he was succeeded by Woodrow Wilson—the Bryan of political expediency and political chicanery. He has traveled around the world, yet he knows little of international affairs. He has been from one end of the United States to another, yet he is ignorant of America.
Furthermore, this is Bryanism—a fluent tongue, a resonant voice, the plausible statement of half truths, an appeal to the passions and prejudices of the moment, a mediocre mind, and a verbal fealty to “right,” “justice,” “liberty” and “brotherhood.” An ignorant electorate has always followed after such superficial qualities.
Bryan has never told any of the real truths of modern life, because he does not know them. He has never made a fight on an issue of principle because he has no abiding principle. He listens. He watches his audience. He gauges its intelligence and then he makes his point. Mr. Bryan is reputed to be one of the best speakers in the United States. His reputation in this regard has been won not by what he says but by the way in which he says it. Nothing in his public career, with the possible exception of his resignation as Secretary of State, has been based on a hard-fought or hard-won principle. Rather he has yielded to the necessity of the moment, trusting that in the end all would be well, but without foreseeing the end or understanding its import.
Bryanism carries with it no taint of corruption—no suggestion of wilful wrongdoing. It is the politics of an ignorant, unimaginable and of a rather vain mind that is quick in trifles and impotent before major issues. Reform politics in the United States has never existed on any other basis, and therefore reform politics has always proved an easy mark for the machinations of big business.
So much for the weak Mr. Bryan. Now for the corrupt Joe Cannon. Bryan never knowingly served the vested interests. He fought them to the extent of his ability and interspersed his political battles by giving lectures on “Prohibition” and “Immortality.” Joe Cannon, on the other hand, was one of the most faithful servants that the vested interests of the United States ever had in either house of Congress. He is a type of those all-too-numerous public men who are the political body-servants of big business.
Joe Cannon is still in Congress. For over forty years he has been a member of the House of Representatives, and, as chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and, as Speaker, has had more to do with shaping legislation than any other man in the House. In fact, he was one of the leaders of the band of plunderers that, in both Houses of Congress, for two generations dominated the public affairs and made the Government of the United States one of the most corrupt in the world.
Under the guidance of this clique of men all legislation was directed to the granting of special privileges to corporations, giving them power to tax and exploit the people of the United States. The tariff became the chief vehicle for the robbery of the public and its beneficiaries were the chief contributors to the great campaign funds collected by the Republican party to demoralize the voters of the nation. Under the regime of Cannonism concessions and privileges of every sort, not only for the public service and industrial corporations, but for the financial institutions of the country, received the chief attention of Congress, and these privileges were so profitable that the halls of the House and Senate swarmed with innumerable lobbyists whose vocation it was to appeal to the ordinary members of both branches with whatever argument was necessary, being assured in advance of the ardent and powerful support of Joe Cannon and the other leaders.
The granting of these concessions and privileges, by which the few planned to plunder the many, is the essence of Cannonism. Elected to office of trust by the franchise of their fellow-citizens, Cannon and his like utilize their position to serve, not the people who elected them, but the great interests which provide the campaign funds and other forms of compensation.
Thus a new profession arose—the profession of public lackeying to the plutocracy. To enter this profession it was necessary, first, to buy or fool the people, and, second, to convince the leaders of the plutocracy of your sincere intention to serve their interests. Thus was perfidy coupled with venality by these “public servants” who had taken an oath to support the Constitution and then busied themselves in robbing the people.
Most of the leaders among the political spoilsmen were content with a reasonably extravagant living, but Cannon in the House and Aldrich in the Senate were not thus easily satisfied. The powerful positions which they held enabled them to become enormously rich. These men became rich because, through their positions of public trust, they were able to betray the Government and the people into the hands of the exploiters. Let me cite a few illustrations of the way in which this was done.
During the nineties there was much talk about the “land frauds.” These frauds were the product of legislation especially secured by Cannon and some of his aids in order that the railroads might secure valuable forest and mineral lands in the West and Northwest without paying anything for them beyond the cost of securing the legislation. I was the author of the law for the regulation and control of the forest reservations of the United States. (See Chapter II.) It was adopted by the Senate and, as adopted, contained a clause which permitted any homesteader, whose homestead was embraced within a forest reservation, to release his homestead to the Government and be accredited with the time he had lived upon it, and allowed to take land from the Government in some other locality. Mr. Cannon was chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the House, and chairman of the Conference Committee, and he inserted the words, “or any other claimant,” so that, if the lands of a land grant railroad were embraced within a forest reservation, the railroad company could exchange them for any other lands the Government might possess. I did not observe this interlineation in the conference report, which was read rapidly and approved without first being printed. Afterward I found that the Northern Pacific Railroad was receiving scrip for the sections of land of its grant which were on the top of Mount Tacoma in Washington. Lands that were absolutely worthless were exchanged in this way for lands of the greatest value.
I stated these facts in the Senate and suggested an appraisal of those lands that were embraced in the forest reservations on top of snow-capped mountains, and proposed that the exchange be made according to value. If they exchanged a section on top of one of these mountains that wasn’t worth over a cent an acre for land worth ten or twenty dollars per acre, they should not get acre for acre, but exact value after appraisal ; and I also moved that all operations under the law be suspended pending an investigation by the Interior Department. The Senate passed my amendments, but with a full knowledge of all the facts, showing just what frauds had been practiced and how they were practiced ; the House refused to agree to the Senate amendments, and, as is customary, the bill was thrown into conference. Cannon was chairman of the Committee on Conference, and chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in the House, and he insisted upon standing by the railroads and continuing the frauds, and so refused to agree to the Senate amendment, but inserted a provision that thereafter railroads could only exchange for surveyed lands. However, as the law provided that, when three settlers in a township petitioned for the survey of the township the Government was bound to make the survey if the settlers deposited money enough to pay for the work, these railroad thieves would send three men into a township, would have them file three homestead entries, and then make affidavit that they were residing there and wanted the township surveyed ; would deposit the money necessary—four or five hundred dollars to get the survey made—and then the railroads would locate their scrip upon these lands all over the township, and when this was done the three men would move on and locate in another township, and so continue the fraud.
Cannon and his henchmen in the House and Senate made the frauds possible, and thus enabled the railroads to secure many millions of dollars worth of the best land in the West for a small fraction of their true value. Thus the timber and mineral wealth of the public domain was turned over to the great corporations whose handymen were maintained in Congress for just such purposes.
Cannonism is the profession of selling the country to the rich so that they may be enabled to grow still richer by the exploitation of the poor.
Another instance of Cannonism is found in the armor-plate scandals.
For several years the Senate of the United States limited the price to be paid for armor-plate. The armorplate manufacturers were in a trust. Everybody admitted that. There were only two plants in the United States that could manufacture armor-plate. One was the Carnegie Steel Company ; the other the Bethlehem Steel Company. The Carnegie Steel Works and Bethlehem Steel Works were in a combination, and each always bid for just half of what the Government wanted, and always bid the same price.
The Senate passed a bill limiting the price of armorplate to $300 per ton, and under that provision no armor-plate was purchased because the companies refused to sell at that price. Two years afterwards the Senate passed an amendment to the Navy Appropriation Bill limiting the price of armor-plate to $425 per ton. The Carnegie and Bethlehem companies were asking the United States Government $550 per ton, and were selling the same plate to the Russian Government for $240 per ton. The Senate amendment therefore provided that if the Secretary could not buy armorplate for $425 per ton, the Government should immediately commence to construct an armor-plate plant and make its own armor-plate. Joe Cannon was chairman of the Committee on Conference in the House, and he absolutely refused to submit to the Senate amendment, but insisted that the armor-plate makers should have their price, although they were in a trust and in collusion. These facts were well known to him and to every member of both Houses.
I could go into the details of the Congressional Record with regard to the duty on white pine. The Senate reduced the duty from $2, the price fixed by the House, to $1 per thousand. Cannon refused to agree to the Senate amendment, but insisted upon $2, which was finally allowed. Under it, the lumber dealers of the whole country formed a combination and plundered the consumers, according to their own statement, of thirty-five millions per year.
These facts were known to Cannon and to both Houses when this duty was put on white pine. It was well known that the duty would not furnish any revenue to the Government or any protection to the building up of an infant industry, but it simply put $2 a thousand into the pockets of the owners of the white pine timber. The statement of Mr. Winchester and other lumbermen that if they could get $2 on lumber it would be worth thirty-five million dollars each year was read in the Senate. And yet Mr. Cannon stood pat on the tariff.
When the tariff was revised, it was revised in the interest of the plutocracy and not in the interest of the people of the United States. Cannon’s work in Congress was done in the interest of the scheming jobbery that has cursed and controlled the Republican party for the last thirty years.
I have used Cannon’s name, not because I wish to discredit him as an individual, but because his story is so typical of the record of the many who are today holding offices of trust under the Government, and faithfully serving the American plutocracy.
At a number of points in this discussion I have suggested that business men used politicians for the advancement of their interests, and the politicians served the business interests first and the public afterward. My experience showed this to be true in a general way, but there were times when the combination of business and politics rose to the surface of public events and became a gross and scandalous plundering of the public treasury in the interest of some specially favored business group. One such instance, involving the sale of Government bonds to a New York syndicate, is especially deserving of notice.
Grover Cleveland, a New York state lawyer, was closely associated with the big business interests before he became President of the United States. During his second term as President, the gold reserve in the public treasury fell to a very low point. To meet this emergency, the President, through Carlisle, his Secretary of the Treasury, issued bonds which were to be exchanged for gold and thus keep up the Federal gold reserve.
The Wilson Tariff Bill was passed on August 14, 1894, for the purpose of saving the situation, but the mischief had been done. On November 14, 1894, the Secretary of the Treasury issued a call for $50,000,000 five per cent, ten-year bonds under the Resumption Act.
The bonds sold in January, 1894, had been absorbed at home. The Stewart syndicate, which handled these bonds, had been treated fairly by the Government, and there was a disposition on the part of these bankers freely to subscribe for the new issue.
Mr. Stewart and Mr. J.P. Morgan visited Washington in the interest of the syndicate, and it is represented, and generally believed, that Mr. Stewart, at least, had a distinct understanding with the President and with Mr. Carlisle that nothing would be done by the administration in any way whatever to interfere with the marketing of the bonds. These bankers, therefore, went back to New York and forwarded a bid for the whole amount of the bonds at $117.
The total offers for these $50,000,000 of bonds amounted to $58,500,000. The award was made to the Stewart syndicate on the understanding that the gold to be paid for the bonds would not be taken from the treasury. Payment for the bonds was made promptly, $20,000,000 having been turned into the Sub-Treasury by the end of November.
The syndicate immediately arranged to sell the bonds they had bought, and offered a lot of $5,000,000 at 119. It is believed that this amount was sold at the price named, but, before they had an opportunity to dispose of any additional bonds, the President’s message and the report of the Secretary of the Treasury recommending changes in the currency law effectually stopped the marketing of Government bonds.
This act, which was very apparently one of bad faith on the part of the administration, resulted in the dissolution of the syndicate and a great depression in the prices of bonds. When it came to subsequent bond issues, the administration turned over the bonds to certain financial groups in New York at a price far below their true value and thus enabled the new syndicate to make millions of dollars without taking any risk, investing any capital or importing any gold.
Senator Peffer, of Kansas, introduced a resolution to investigate the Cleveland bond sales. No sooner had this resolution appeared than David Bennett Hill, of New York, began a fight to prevent its passage. In the course of this struggle he attacked everyone that advocated it, and defended the bond sales with great vigor.
I would not mention Senator Hill in this connection were it not for the fact that his brief career is such a typical illustration of the relation between business and politics.
Hill (a Democrat) came to the Senate with the reputation of being a lawyer of decided ability, and a political manipulator of some cunning and skill, having served as Governor of the state of New York.* He remained in the Senate only one term, for, at the end of his six years, Tom Platt—Boss Platt, as he was called—took Hill’s place.
Among the private jobs which Hill undertook to put through was an amendment to the Indian Appropriation Bill, which practically confiscated the reservation of the Seneca Indians. He made the effort to rob the Indians of their homes under the guise of an old agreement of some sort with the Ogden Land Company, by offering an amendment to the Indian bill, in which it was provided that $300,000 should be paid to the Ogden Land Company out of the sale of the land of the reservation. He was exceedingly persistent, and offered this amendment on the floor of the Senate. The amendment was clearly subject to a point of order and, after a considerable discussion, I stated in the Senate that there was present a lobby of adventurers who were interested in this claim, and that the only result would be that they would divide this money among them ; and I finally told Hill that, unless he accepted my amendment which specifically provided that the lands of the Indians of New York should not be sold or any part of them, or any of their property whatever appropriated for the purpose of paying this claim, I would insist upon a point of order and let it go to the House of Representatives for their consideration. He accepted the amendment and it was adopted in conference. Afterwards, the Indians in council passed a resolution thanking me for preventing Hill from plundering them from their property.†
After a careful study of the facts and an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the Cleveland bond sales, I made a series of charges against the administration. (May 5, 1896, Cong. Record.)
I charged that the President, through the Treasury officials, sold sixty-two millions of bonds at private sale for $104¾, to his former clients, and that on the day of such sale the market price of these bonds, as quoted in the New York papers, was $117.
I charged that the purchaser and others associated with them, the plutocrats and autocrats of New York, sold these bonds to the public in a short time at a profit of $8,418,000.
I charged that the syndicate was to pay in gold for these bonds sixty-two million dollars, and that one-half of the gold was to be imported and that part of the contract requiring the gold to be imported was not carried out and that less than fifteen millions of gold was imported.
I charged that a secret agreement was made with the syndicate by which they were released from importing the gold and allowed to sell exchange against the gold received for the bonds in England to the great profit and advantage of the syndicate.
I charged that negotiations were completed to sell this same syndicate one hundred millions of bonds at $104¾, and it would have been carried out but for the protests of the public.
I charged that after the public and the Senate had protested against the sale of any more bonds at private sale, the administration delayed action until the syndicate of bankers could get together and corner the gold so that the public could not bid, and then the President offered the bonds at a pretended public sale, and that the bonds were sold at about $111, mostly to the syndicate, while, if there had been an honest effort before the gold had been cornered they would have brought $117 at least.
I charged that about five millions of the bonds were not taken by the bidders and the Secretary of the Treasury could have sold these bonds for $117, but that he gave them to Morgan & Company for $110.68, causing a loss to the Treasury of several hundred thousand dollars.
I had summarized the matter, as I understood it, in the following words (April 29, 1896, Cong. Record, p. 5004) :
“ Mr. President, the plain statement of the facts connected with the several bond issues by the present administration constitutes an arraignment which no eloquence could make stronger. First, there was the attack upon the credit of the United States by the inspired object lesson from the banks of New York ; then the extra session of the Fifty-third Congress ; then the passage of the Wilson tariff for a deficit ; the further depreciation of the national credit by the demonstration that the revenues were not equal to the necessary expenditures of the Government ; then the endless chain—the first bond issue of $50,000,000 of five per cent ten-year bonds at a fixed price of $117.077 ; the depreciation of the market value of these bonds by the recommendation to Congress that a bill be passed discontinuing the use of them as a basis of bank-note circulation ; then the secret contract with the Belmont-Morgan syndicate for the sale of $62,000,000 of thirty-year four per cent bonds at $104¾, which bonds were quoted last December at 121 ; finally the attempt to give to the Morgan syndicate the last loan of $100,000,000 at the same figure, and the actual award to them at their bid of $110.6877 of about $5,000,000 upon which default was made in payment, for which other parties offered 116, and which were quoted in open market at a higher price.
“ Upon this record, Mr. President, the administration and the Democratic party must go before the people next November, and the verdict of the people will be even more emphatic in condemnation than it was in 1894 and in 1895.”
Nor was I alone in making a fight to have the facts regarding this infamous transaction brought to light. A number of western senators, backed by Populist constituencies, were as eager as I was to have the facts placed before the country. And in their case, as well as in mine, it was David Bennett Hill that “talked back.”
In the debate over the Seneca Indian Reservation I had characterized the claim which Hill was supporting as robbery. This had very much offended Mr. Hill, who waited about three months and, in the meantime, having sent to Dakota for information, he secured some Sioux Falls newspapers containing editorials by J. Tomlinson, Jr., attacking me personally and politically in the most outrageous manner. In the course of a speech on the Cleveland bond sales Hill read these editorials into the record. After reading several of the editorials himself, he asked the clerk to do the reading. As the clerk read, Hill stopped him frequently with such exclamations as “ What’s that ? Read that over.” By this trick he had each abusive statement read twice. Throughout the episode he behaved like an endman in a minstrel show.
I had said in my speech in regard to the bond sales that the President and the Secretary of the Treasury were evidently enriching their favorites, for the purchasers of these bonds were all prominent New York people, and they cornered all the gold there was in the country, and were giving for the bonds from ten to fifteen per cent less on the dollar than they would sell for in the open market, and I charged that they had thus made about eighteen millions of dollars, and that it looked like a very disreputable and dishonest job. And so, when Hill had finished his attack upon me by reading these editorials, I simply arose and said that I had charged the administration and the financiers of New York with acting in collusion to plunder the people of the United States in connection with this bond transaction, and that Mr. Hill seemed to think that the complete answer to charges was to read scurrilous political editorials with regard to myself. I said if he was satisfied with the answer I was entirely satisfied, and that Hill had honored me by this attack in the only way he could honor anybody—he had convinced the Senate and the country that we had nothing in common.
Senator Peffer’s resolution to appoint a special committee to investigate the bond sale was finally amended to request the Committee on Finance of the Senate to make the investigation through a sub-committee of four senators, that is, Harris of Tennessee, Walthall of Mississippi, Vest of Missouri and Platt of Connecticut, all lawyers, three of them Democrats and in sympathy with the administration. This committee made some investigation, but never made a report to the Senate.
Who were the chief actors in this scandalous bond transaction ? First, the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, a Buffalo lawyer ; second, John Carlisle, a lawyer from Kentucky, who had been a great advocate of bi-metallism and who sold his convictions in order to get Cleveland to appoint him Secretary of the Treasury ; David Bennett Hill, a lawyer from New York, who was the champion on the floor of the Senate ; John Sherman, a Republican and a lawyer from Ohio. During the twelve years that I was in the Senate, two-thirds of both Houses of Congress were lawyers and the Presidents were all lawyers—Harrison, Cleveland and McKinley. The consequence was that all legislation was framed in the interests of the exploiters of the people of the United States, whether it dealt with bond sales, armor-plate, railway mail pay, land grants of the public domain, ship bounties—the rights and interests of the people of the United States were never considered. In fact, we have become a government administered by lawyers who were acting as the attorneys and representatives of the great exploiting combinations of banks, railroads and industries.
I have gone into the question of these bond sales because they illustrate one of the methods by which the people of the United States are exploited in the interests of the capitalists. Several millionaires were made as the result of the transaction and the American people footed the bill. It was a comparatively small deal—probably thirty millions were made out of it—but it illustrates very well the operations of the system, and the way the machinery of government is manipulated to accumulate the wealth of the country in the hands of the few.
Before leaving the subject of American political life and its control by big business, I want to refer to one more incident—the election that cost me my place in the United States Senate.
Mark Hanna managed the campaign of 1900 and after McKinley took office Hanna managed the President even more successfully than he had managed the campaign. Through ten strenuous years I had fought Hanna and all that he stood for. I had opposed him on the gold standard issue ; I had led the opposition to the schemes of the imperialists for annexing Hawaii ; I had opposed the acquisition of the Philippines and the other Spanish colonies. I had opposed the trusts, the extortion of the railroads, the armor plate thieves, and had tried to save the public domain for the people. Consequently, when it came to the election of 1900, Mark Hanna spared no pains to insure my elimination from public life.
The incident which inspired Hanna with a particularly strong desire to have me out of the way arose out of a charge concerning a campaign contribution to the Republican party.
In 1895 I went to Europe and stayed several months. I returned on the American Line steamship “St Louis” in company with Cramp, the shipbuilder and owner of the line of ships. During the voyage I became well acquainted with Mr. Cramp and we talked a great deal together.
One day he told me that he had paid $400,000 to Tom Carter, chairman of the Republican National Committee, to re-elect Harrison in 1892. He said that he was assured by Carter that his $400,000 would certainly elect Harrison. Carter told him where he was going to spend the money, and that he “could get it back out of building ships for the Government after Harrison was elected.” “Harrison was defeated,” said Cramp, “and I lost my money. I have since looked the matter up and have found that Mr. Carter did not spend the money where he said he would spend it, and I feel that I am a victim of misrepresentation.”
Mr. Cramp wanted to know of me how he could recover the $400,000, and I told him I knew of no way except to make terms with the next administration and increase his contribution.
In December, when the Senate had convened, I went one day over to Tom Carter’s seat and told him what Cramp had said to me. Carter smiled and replied, “Well, we did hit the old man pretty hard.”
Some time afterward, in a discussion with regard to the building of an armor-plate factory, I told on the floor of the Senate what Cramp had said to me about the $400,000. Carter, ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Mark Hanna, then chairman of the committee, were both in their seats, but neither of them made any reply or took any notice of my statement. Some time afterwards Senator Bacon, of Georgia, interrupted a speech by Senator Hanna to say :
Mr. BACON : “ In this connection I want to call the attention of the Senate to the most remarkable thing I ever heard and the most remarkable thing I ever saw in the Senate. I fancy that the country has never been the witness to what we saw and heard in this chamber a few days ago.
“A senator in his place in this chamber stated as a fact that the manufacturer of ships, a prominent and the most prominent firm engaged in the manufacture of warships for the Government, had stated that in 1892 he was approached by the officers of the Republican party and induced to give $400,000 to the campaign fund of that party upon the assurance that the money would be returned to him or made good to him in the contracts which he should have in the building of warships.
“ Now, Mr. President, the remarkable thing that I want to call the attention of the Senate to is this : I heard that statement. I did not doubt that it would then and there be promptly challenged. I did not believe that such a statement could be made in the Senate of the United States in the presence of the leaders of the Republican party and no one deny it or call it in question.
“ Now, that was not made in a thin Senate ; it was made in a full Senate. It was made when the chairman of the National Committee of the Republican party in the campaign of 1892 was in his seat and heard it, as well as the chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time, Mr. Hannah, and yet no one either challenged it or denied it.
“ Mr. President, in the absence of such a challenge and such a denial, the country must believe it is true.”
And Mr. Hanna made the following reply :
Mr. HANNA : “ Mr. President——
THE PRESIDING OFFICER : “ Does the Senator from Georgia yield to the Senator from Ohio ? ”
Mr. BACON : “ I do, with pleasure.”
Mr. HANNA : “ The Senator alludes to the fact that the chairman of the Republican Committee was in his seat and did not deny the statement made.”
Mr. BACON : “ If I am incorrect in that, I certainly made it in good faith. I think I saw the Senator present.”
Mr. HANNA : “ If I undertook to reply to all such statements made upon this floor, I would occupy more time than the Senator from Georgia does in the Senate. I considered it unworthy of notice and declined to dignify it by a reply.”
It may well be noticed that Mr. Hanna did not undertake to deny my statement and for this reason : Immediately after I had made the statement in the Senate several of the prominent Republican members of the Senate and a number of newspaper men went to see Cramp, and Cramp told them that what I had said was true ; that he did tell me that he made a contribution of over four hundred thousand dollars to Harrison’s campaign ; that he made it upon the misrepresentations of Tom Carter ; that he consulted with me as to how to get the money back ; that he had not told it to me in confidence, but for the purpose of securing my assistance in getting the money returned to him. One of the newspaper men reported what Cramp said. Of course, Cramp’s statement to these Senators and newspaper men left the Republicans where it was impossible for them to meet my charge except by ignoring it.
After Hanna had said that if he answered such statements he would take more of the Senate’s time than was occupied by the Senator from Georgia, and that the source from which the report came was unworthy of notice, I rose and said that perhaps I had something that would be of interest to the great man from Ohio and that did come from a source worthy of his notice. I thereupon stated to the Senate that I had in my hand a petition from the Ohio State Senate, signed by four out of the five members of the Committee on Elections of the Ohio State Senate, asking the United States Senate to investigate the election of Mr. Hanna to that body. I said that this petition charged that Mr. Hanna, to secure his election to the United States Senate, had purchased the votes of two members of the Ohio Legislature from the city of Cincinnati ; that the purchasing was done by Hanna agents under Hanna’s direction ; that the sum of ten thousand dollars had been paid to one of the legislators ; and I said that this petition had been referred to the Committee on Elections to the United States Senate. After I called the attention of the Senate and the country to this venal and corrupt practice on the part of Mr. Hanna in purchasing his seat on the Senate, the majority of the Senate Committee on Elections made a report and stated that, as no official person came from the Ohio legislature to present and to prosecute the case against Mr. Hanna before the Committee on Elections, they had concluded not to look into the matter. But the minority of the Committee on Privileges and Elections in the Senate made the following report :
“ We cannot concur in the report of the majority of the Committee on Privileges and Elections in the matter of the report of the committee appointed by the Senate of the State of Ohio to investigate the charges of bribery in the election of the Hon. M.A. Hanna to the Senate of the United States.
“ The charge is that early in January, 1898, an attempt was made by H.H. Boyce and others to bribe John C. Otis, a member of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio to vote for Marcus A. Hanna for the Senate of the United States.”
Among other things, the majority of the committee had reported :
“ Moreover, it seems clear to this committee that it would not be justified in recommending any action to be taken by the Senate without further testimony to be taken by the committee. The question whether additional evidence should be taken has been the only difficult question which the committee has considered. It is clear that Mr. Otis never had any intention of yielding to bribery. He encouraged Mr. Boyce by the advice of others only in order to entrap him. Then he carefully withdrew and substituted his attorney, Mr. Campbell, to continue the negotiations. Mr. Campbell labored to induce Mr. Boyce to offer money and, finally, as he says, obtained $1,750 from him as part payment on $3,500 to be paid for Mr. Otis’ vote for Mr. Hanna, leaving $6,500 to-be paid if Mr. Hanna was elected. At this point, public exposure, through Mr. Otis, Mr. Campbell and their associates, took place, Mr. Boyce disappeared, and the incident was closed.
“ That Mr. Boyce, operating in Cincinnati, where Mr. Otis lives, has relations with Mr. Hanna’s representatives at Columbus, the state capital, the State Committee undertook to prove by the evidence of various detectives, professional and amateur, who listened at telephone wires and shadowed Mr. Boyce, Mr. Hollenbeck and others. The effort of the committee was carefully and skilfully made. It was not wholly devoid of results ; it raises pregnant suspicions that Mr. Hanna’s representatives at Columbus knew what Mr. Boyce was doing. But this whole line of inquiry would require verification by testimony to be taken by the Committee on Privileges and Elections before that committee would be willing to found conclusions thereon.”
The quotation is from the report of the majority of the committee. Now we will see what the minority further say :
“ The attempt on the part of Boyce to buy Otis’ vote for Mr. Hanna is clearly proven by Campbell who, from his testimony, seems to have been a lawyer of large practice. One thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars was paid in cash by Boyce to Campbell as attorney for Otis. Boyce agreed to pay $1,750 more when Otis reached Columbus, and a balance of $6,500 if Mr. Hanna was elected. . . .
“ We think that the evidence to which we have already referred, standing as it does uncontradicted and unexplained, shows that certain of Mr. Hanna’s managers at Columbus not only knew the purposes which Boyce had in view in Cincinnati, but also that they aided, abetted, and advised him in carrying out these purposes, and that this state of affairs existed while Mr. Hanna was present at his headquarters.
“ First, That many of the witnesses, whose testimony apparently would have thrown much light upon the subject under inquiry, denied the jurisdiction of the the committee and refused to testify under the advice of counsel, who stated that they represented the interests of Majors Rathbone and Dick and Senator Hanna ; and,
“ Second, That Mr. Hanna and his representatives had subpoenas.
“ The report of the majority says they ‘ do not doubt that if facts appeared from the report of the committee of the State Senate requiring the United States Senate, out of a proper regard for its own reputation, to take further testimony concerning Mr. Hanna’s election, it would be the duty of the Senate to proceed without waiting for further prosecution of the case coming from residents of the state of Ohio.’
“ We think such facts do appear from the report of the committee of the State Senate, and that this body should direct further inquiry and investigation to be made.”
The minority who signed this report was composed of Senators Tubley, Pettus and Caffery.
After reading this and much more of the same kind of evidence to the Senate, I said :
“ Mr. President, these things are known to the American people. It will not do for the Senator from Ohio to stand up here and say that charges of this sort—if he answered all that were made he could not do much else—are unworthy of consideration or notice. From the Senate of his own state come these charges ; from a minority of the committee of this body come these charges, and yet the Senator from Ohio says they are unworthy of his notice—that they are little things.”
This report of the Senate Committee is rather a remarkable document ; all who signed the majority report were Republicans and Mark Hanna was chairman of the Republican National Committee, and the general factotum of the whole Republican party. He represented the interests of great business and was a business man. He had collected vast sums of money to corrupt the voters of this country and elect McKinley in 1896. So accustomed had the Republicans of the Senate become to the use of money that it did not disturb them at all that Mr. Hanna had purchased his seat in that body. The facts which I presented did not cause even a ripple of interest, and the Senators did not seem to care if the public knew all about it. During the quarter-century that has elapsed since this episode the purchase of seats in the Senate has become so common that it attracts no public attention. Why should it when even the presidency of the United States is put up at auction in the Republican National Convention and knocked down to the highest bidder ?
Mr. Hanna was furious at what I had said about him and he determined that he would have revenge ! My term in the Senate would expire in 1901, and Mark Hanna made up his mind to prevent my re-election.
I was not running as a stalwart Republican in the election of 1900, for I had walked out of the St. Louis Republican Convention in 1896. I was running as a Bryanite on the Bryan Free Silver Republican ticket in South Dakota. Mr. Hanna raised a vast sum of money to corrupt the voters of South Dakota, and put up charge of the work Henry Payne, of Milwaukee, one of the well-known hangers-on of every Republican campaign.
Payne came out to South Dakota with $30,000 and in conjunction with the Republican organization of the state and the help of A.B. Kittridge, a Sioux Falls lawyer, afterwards a Republican United States Senator, they polled the state of South Dakota on the probability of my election. This task was not a great one. The total population of the state at that time was only 401,570, with a total vote in 1900 of 96,124. Payne sent out 200 teams and visited every farmer and voter in the state. When they had finished the canvass they found that I had the state by several thousand majority.
This greatly alarmed Mr. Hanna and the Republican campaign managers, for they considered it of great political importance to get rid of me.
Senator Allison, of Iowa, came to Dakota to see how the campaign was going on. He made no speeches, but simply looked over the possibilities of eliminating me from public life. He was being entertained in my home town, when C.C. Bailey, a prominent attorney, asked him about me. Allison replied that I had the greatest power for making trouble of any man he ever knew, and that the interests of the party and the people of this country would be best served by getting me out of the Senate. Senator Nelson of Minnesota also came to South Dakota and canvassed the State and in his speeches said Mr. Pettigrew should be defeated because he had opposed the great business interests that controlled the Government and the Republican party and therefore, if South Dakota wanted to get anything out of the Government, they should elect a man that would train with the gang.
Theodore Roosevelt also joined in the contest against me as the candidate of the Republicans for vice president on the ticket with McKinley, and sent the following telegram to Senator Platt in October, 1900 :
“ Good Lord, I hope we can beat Pettigrew for the Senate. That particular swine seems to me, on the whole, the most obnoxious of the entire drove.”
Why was Roosevelt opposed to my election ? Because he was the candidate of the predatory interests that own the Government of the United States. Charles Edward Russell answered my question.
Asserting that many public men of value to the country have been cried down by the clamor of subsidized newspapers, Mr. Russell says further :
“ I have seen this happen a thousand times. Every observer, particularly if he has been a newspaper man, must be familiar with it. Years ago there was a man in the United States Senate that certain newspapers did not like, because he had attacked the interests that owned these newspapers. The newspapers covered that man with ridicule by misrepresenting everything he did or said. They convinced a large part of the country that he was a wild, erratic, absurd, visionary ; when, as a matter of fact, he had one of the coolest, clearest and steadiest minds I have ever known in a long acquaintance with public men and affairs. Yet the news columns drove him out of public life, to the great interest of the public interests. I have no objection to mentioning his name. It was R.F. Pettigrew.
“ He was ahead of the times, for his vision was clearer than most men now occupying positions of public trust, and he realized then that the interests were weaving the web of autocratic control about the several departments of the Government.
“ Possessing the courage of his convictions, he stood almost alone as a target for the shafts of mendacious newspapers, many of them instigated by the sullen command of great wealth. They were merciless and the people believed them rather than the man who had interceded in their behalf.”
After Henry Payne’s canvassers had reported the result of their poll of the people of the state of Dakota, Hanna went out among the railroad interests, the trust interests and the financial interests of this country, and raised a special fund of $500,000 to be expended in the purchase of Dakota votes. I did not believe that it could be done because I had great confidence in the farmers of Dakota and I had underestimated the resources of the business interests, overestimated the possibilities of ordinary human nature. Hanna himself came to South Dakota and stumped the state with Senator Fry, of Maine. The railroads furnished a special train. The State Committee had been lavish with its publicity and great crowds met the Hanna special at every station.
At Midson, where there is a normal school, Hanna began his speech by taking off his hat and saying, “You see, I have no horns.”
The next day I addressed the same crowd—largely composed of farmers—and said, “Of course Mark Hanna has no horns, I dehorned him in the Senate.” And then I told the story of how he had bought his seat in that body. A day or two after my speech at Midson, Hanna came to Sioux Falls and addressed a large outdoor meeting and someone in the crowd yelled to Hanna to take off his hat and show the crowd where Pettigrew dehorned him.
I was very badly beaten in the election. After it was over I made an investigation to determine how the work had been done. The Republicans had visited every banker in every country town in the State ; had deposited a sum of money with him, and had given him minute instructions as to the part that he was to play in the campaign.
The local representatives of the Republican party would then take a list of the farmers, and watch for each man. When he came into town they would take him over the bank and the banker would hand him ten dollars in cash.
“ That is yours,” the representative of the Republican party would state, “and if Pettigrew loses this township (or county) in the election there is ten dollars more for you at the bank that you can get by coming in and asking for it after election.”
In some cases, in several cases of which I know personally, the sum was twenty dollars before election and twenty dollars after election.
Hanna boasted, after the election, that my name was never mentioned in any of his campaign speeches by either himself or Senator Fry. But his statement is false in this respect, for a Roberts County paper published the following just after Mark Hanna’s visit :
“ Mark Hanna at Sisseton Indian Agency, South Dakota, in an address to Two Stars, chief of the Sissetons, chaperoned by Mr. Sapackman, chairman of the Roberts County Republican Committee :
“ ‘ I understand that half of you Indians are going to vote for Bryan and Pettigrew. I understand that your annuities from the Government, due in about six weeks, are $22 per capita. That is enough for Indians who vote against the Great Father. If all the Sisseton Indians will vote the Republican ticket, I will have the Government increase their annuities $75 per head. This will give to the Sisseton Indians $75 apiece instead of $22 apiece. Do you tumble ?’
“ They tumbled and God did not forbid that citizen Mark Hanna should attempt to divert the will of the sovereign people or tamper with the sanctity of their ballots.”
I have since talked with many of these Indians who heard Mark Hanna’s statement to them, and who corroborate this story from the local newspaper. They also told me that Mark Hanna never made any effort to secure for them seventy-five dollars per capita which he had promised them if they would vote against me.
I also learned that, during the campaign, the Republican Committee of South Dakota had trunkfuls of blank passes from every railroad in the country. Upon these passes they could send a man and his family to any point in the United States or the adjacent countries and return, free of cost and at the expense of the railroad. I know of several prominent Democrats who made long excursions after the election, one of them taking his family to the Hawaiian Islands.
Mark Hanna had secured these passes by appealing to the railroads when they made their effort to swindle the Government out of the money which had been advanced to build the roads. He had also cited my bills for the Government ownership of all the roads in the United States, as well as my exposures of the swindles in connection with the Railway Mail Pay. Consequently the railroads not only furnished transportation, but a considerable amount of the money used against me. James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Road, told me afterwards that Mark Hanna had assessed him fifty thousand dollars, and he told Hanna that he not only would not give a single dollar towards trying to defeat me in South Dakota, but he would not give the Republican National Committee any money whatever if they were going to undertake the purchase of the voters of South Dakota.
After the election, I was in the Auditorium Hotel, in Chicago, getting lunch one day, when a young man came in and asked, “ Is this ex-Senator Pettigrew ? ” “ Yes,” I said, “it is.”
“ Well,” said the young man, “ I want to tell you of an incident that might be of interest to you. I was Mark Hanna’s private secretary in 1900, and on election day Hanna left Chicago and went back to Cleveland to vote, leaving me in charge of the Republican headquarters. About ten o’clock election night, Hanna called me up over the phone and wanted to know about the election. I told him that McKinley was undoubtedly elected, and Hanna replied, ‘ Oh, I know that ; but how about Pettigrew ? ’ I thereupon replied, ‘ Pettigrew is undoubtedly beaten,’ and Hanna said, ‘ If you are sure of that I can go home and go to bed and to sleep. I wanted to accomplish two things in this election—to elect McKinley and to beat Pettigrew, and I did not know which I wanted the worst.’ ”
I think that was the most striking compliment that was ever paid to my work in the Senate. I had kept up my attacks upon the plutocracy until their spokesman was as anxious to defeat me as he was to elect a president. I sent thousands of copies of the following letter to the voters of South Dakota in my campaign for re-election to the United States Senate in 1900 :
“ Sioux Falls, S.D., July 24, 1900.
“ Dear Sir :
“ I enclose herewith a copy of the platform adopted at Kansas City. It is a new Declaration of Independence. It is the platform upon which I am running for re-election to the United States Senate. I have been twice elected to the Senate from South Dakota, receiving the united support of the Republicans of the state, and in both instances also of very many of the Democrats and Populists.
“ I am now a candidate for re-election upon the platform which I enclose, because I think it embraces the best settlement of the great principles involved in the coming political contest that I have seen. I am not therefore a candidate for re-election as a Republican, for the reason that I believe this contest is not one between political parties, but is a contest between those who wish to preserve Republican institutions in this country and prevent the Republic from becoming an aristocracy. It is a battle between the Man and the Dollar ; between concentrated wealth in the hands of a few people and the great mass of the people who have produced the wealth, but who are unable, owing to a pernicious system of transportation and combination of capital, to enjoy that which they produce.
“ The Republican party has been captured by the evil elements, by the great transportation companies, the great money trusts, and the great combinations of capital which have gained control of our manufacturing industries. It is therefore for the interest of the Republican party to perpetuate that legislation which has produced the condition in regard to the distribution of wealth in this country, against which I protest.
“ I have not changed my views upon these great issues since I ceased to act with the Republican party politically. My votes in the Senate on all these questions have been the same during the past four years as they were during the previous seven years. If I had changed my position on these questions my enemies would have ample proof of the fact in the Record of the Senate ; but the votes which I have recorded show that my position has not been changed, but the position of the Republican party has changed completely—so much so that, when I offered an amendment to the last Republican Tariff Bill, refusing protection to articles controlled by the trusts unless they dissolved the trusts, and allowed free competition within our own country, every Republican Senator voted against it and defeated the measure.
“ When the War Revenue Bill, to pay the expenses of carrying on the war with Spain, was under consideration, I offered an amendment to tax the products of the trusts as a means of raising revenue, or compelling the dissolution of the trusts, and every Republican Senator voted against my amendment.
“ We offered an amendment to levy a tax upon incomes to support our armies in the contest with Spain, and all the Republican members of the Senate voted against it, and the bill was so framed as to lay the entire burden of taxation upon the individual—upon consumption—so that the poor man would pay just as much as the man of enormous wealth.
“ Against this unequal and unfair distribution of the burdens of taxation I protested, on the ground that it tended to the unequal distribution of wealth ; and that where the wealth of a country was once gathered into the hands of a few men the manhood of the masses was destroyed and the institutions of our country endangered. But the Republican party, controlled by evil influences and headed by Mark Hanna, persisted in their policy, which has made it impossible for me to act with them politically.
“ I left the Republican party in 1896 for the reason that I felt that the party had left the side of the people in its abandonment of bimetallism ; but, above all, because of the fact that it omitted from its platform at St. Louis all allusion whatever to the trusts. Since that time, its course has been more and more in the direction of plutocracy, more and more in the direction of the government of the few to the disregard of the many, and their interests ; and it has culminated in an effort to conquer people living in the tropics, and to annex to this country territory that will never be organized into states, and in the establishment of a colonial policy in violation of the Constitution of the United States and of the Declaration of Independence, and of every theory of Government we have advocated as a people.
“ I believe that colonial possessions mean a standing army of great proportions, and a vast horde of officeholders serving a long distance from home, governing an unwilling people, which must result in constant conflict, and end in the curtailment of the right to vote among our own people, and a suppression of all protest by the armed forces assembled and equipped in the first instance for the purpose of conquering these distant possessions.
“ Under these circumstances, no matter what may be the consequences to me personally, I feel it my duty to do everything in my power to overthrow at the polls the dominion and control of the Republican party, and thus restore this country in letter and in spirit back to the principles and doctrines of its founders, so that it may continue to be an example to all people who believe in the doctrine of self-government, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
“ I thus write you this long letter, hoping to make my own position clear, and stimulate you to greater activity and effort in the coming campaign. I should like very much to hear from you on this subject.
“ Yours truly,
“ R.F. PETTIGREW.”
* Some idea of Hill’s position in New York State politics may be gained from the following article appearing in a Democratic paper (The Times), February 23rd, 1896 :
“ Senator Hill is a Democratic statesman of high degree, as statesmen go in that party. His term as senator will close next March and, during his nearly six years in the Senate, he has been responsible for but one bill, and that has not yet become a law, although it has passed the Senate and had been favorably reported from the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. And what think you is this great and momentous piece of legislation that is to be the only reminder to posterity—that is, if it becomes a law—that David B. Hill served six years in the Senate ? It authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to detail a revenue cutter to control excursion and other boats which attend yacht races. Now, doesn’t that prove the statesmanship of Hill ? ”
† The following is a copy of the Resolution of the New York Indians :
“ At a council of the Seneca Nation of New York Indians, assembled at the Council Home at Cold Springs, on the Allegheny Reservation, on the twelfth day of April, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five, the following resolution was adopted :
“ RESOLVED : That we sincerely tender our thanks to the Honorable Richard F. Pettigrew, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States Senator, for his valuable services rendered to our delegates while on their visit to the United States Congress at Washington, D.C., and for the deep interest he has taken in the welfare of his red brethren in opposing the passage of the amendment to the Indian Appropriation Bill relative to the claims of the so-called Ogden Land Company to the lands of the Senecas on the Cataraugus Reservations.
“ A true copy.
“ William C. Hoag,
President, Seneca Nation of Indians.
“ Alfred L. Jimson,
Clerk, Seneca Nation of Indians.
“ Great Seal of the Seneca
Nation of New York, 1876.”