The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (23 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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LIKE ANY CANDIDATE, William McKinley wanted to campaign on his own terms, and anyone who knew him understood that to mean that he would run on a platform trumpeting protective tariffs as the key to renewing American prosperity. Protective tariffs were what McKinley knew best. He had never mastered or taken a hard stand on another issue. He had capped his fourteen-year congressional career by lending his name to a massive tariff hike. He was called “The Napoleon of Protection,” and there was indeed a slight physical resemblance.
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By some combination of shrewdness and luck, McKinley’s one great issue was the key to Republican fortunes in the late nineteenth century. The party promoted protective tariffs for three reasons. First, they shielded American industry from cheap imports, which was appreciated by the party’s base in the industrialized sectors of the Northeast and Midwest. Second, they were thought to create jobs and to preserve the highest possible wages for American workers, which played well among the burgeoning urban labor vote in those same regions. Finally, they also supplied the free-spending Republicans in Congress with the funds to introduce popular social programs, such as veterans’ pensions. For three decades the Republicans had enjoyed the firm support of vast contingents of Union army vets. The Northeast, the Midwest, and the vets were key components for a GOP victory.
As far as the
Journal
and most Democrats were concerned, Republican tariffs merely shielded the party’s Wall Street cronies from normal competitive pressures, aiding in the proliferation of trusts and monopolies and saddling the American public with higher prices for protected goods. As the party of small government and decentralization, the Democrats also complained that high tariffs led to a larger, more corrupt, and more meddlesome federal state. They told their faithful that the Republicans would use tariff proceeds to put their friends on the Washington payroll and to introduce expensive and paternalistic social legislation that would undermine individual enterprise and befoul the national character. The Democrats were strong among farmers, laborers, and merchants in the South, the West, and pockets of the Midwest; they also attracted working-class votes in such commercial centers as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.
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Journal
and most Democrats were concerned, Republican tariffs merely shielded the party’s Wall Street cronies from normal competitive pressures, aiding in the proliferation of trusts and monopolies and saddling the American public with higher prices for protected goods. As the party of small government and decentralization, the Democrats also complained that high tariffs led to a larger, more corrupt, and more meddlesome federal state. They told their faithful that the Republicans would use tariff proceeds to put their friends on the Washington payroll and to introduce expensive and paternalistic social legislation that would undermine individual enterprise and befoul the national character. The Democrats were strong among farmers, laborers, and merchants in the South, the West, and pockets of the Midwest; they also attracted working-class votes in such commercial centers as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.
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The brutal depression together with the mere fact that the dead hand of the Cleveland Democrats had lowered tariffs were sufficient to win broad support for raising tariffs again. McKinley did seem the man for the moment. If he was able to fight the election on tariffs, he was unbeatable. The
Journal
analyzed the results of recent Republican state conventions and on April 2 declared McKinley the nominee, two months in advance of the convention. The next day it printed a full page of telegrams from Republican worthies, all of whom said that McKinley would build his campaign around the tariff. Then, on April 15, the
Journal
’s chief political correspondent, Julius Chambers, reported that another issue entirely was rumbling over the horizon and threatening to dominate the election.
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Journal
analyzed the results of recent Republican state conventions and on April 2 declared McKinley the nominee, two months in advance of the convention. The next day it printed a full page of telegrams from Republican worthies, all of whom said that McKinley would build his campaign around the tariff. Then, on April 15, the
Journal
’s chief political correspondent, Julius Chambers, reported that another issue entirely was rumbling over the horizon and threatening to dominate the election.
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The so-called silver craze surprised a lot of observers in 1896, but monetary issues were never far from the top of the political agenda in the Gilded Age. The U.S. currency had been on a gold standard since 1873, with some limited provisions for the coinage of silver. Through much of that time, gold stocks were low and the money supply was tight. Some currency experts (and a great many amateurs) had been agitating for the full and free monetization of silver to offset the dearth of gold and bring more liquidity to the financial system. Leaders of the silver movement wanted a return to a pre-1873 regime in which silver was freely coined at a ratio of sixteen units to each one of the more valuable gold.
By 1896, the battle lines were drawn. Most economists and financiers, along with most New York newspapers, opposed the free coinage of silver. They believed the gold standard guaranteed an “honest dollar” and a secure and stable economic order. They claimed that the gover nment would never be able to support the price of silver at sixteen to one, given its abundant supply. The full reintroduction of bimetallism (the coinage of silver and gold) would lead to a devalued currency, runaway inflation, and economic mayhem. Gold’s adherents also suspected the motives of the silver movement: they saw it as a conspiracy of indebted farmers, who hoped cheap money would ease the burden of their improvident debts, and greedy western silver producers hell-bent on higher prices for their metal regardless of the consequence for the national economy.
Silverites, predominant in the South and West, bridled at the suggestion that the gold standard provided a stable economy. The previous three decades, they pointed out, had been marked by prolonged bouts of deflation. The economy and the population had grown faster than the supply of gold. Dollars had become increasingly scarce and expensive, making debts increasingly difficult to service—what was “honest” about that? The gold standard and the scarcity of the dollar were also believed to have scuppered prices for agricultural products and other commodities, some of which had dropped by more than half between the early 1880s and the early 1890s (eastern manufacturers were less sensitive to pricing matters because they were protected by Republican tariffs). Farmers and small producers were thus getting it both ways: their debts were becoming more expensive because of deflation, while their incomes were shrinking because of low prices. They believed the remonetization of silver would increase the money supply, restore price stability and the integrity of the dollar, and alleviate the economic distress brought by the depression of 1893. While most economists opposed the free silver movement, there was hardly unanimity. Indeed, the newly formed American Economic Association was divided not only on bimetallism but also on such basic questions as the relationship between tight money supply and low farm prices.
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Nineteenth-century voters were remarkably conversant with the arcana of monetary policy, but they recognized that much more than policy was at stake in the currency debate. The struggle between gold and silver exposed class and regional tensions in American life. The metals were proxies in a larger contest for control of the government and the national economy between the urban, industrialized East and the agrarian and resource-dependent states of the South and West. Thus voters would come to care as much about monetization of silver as they had any other issue since the Civil War. Adding still more significance to the debate were partisan considerations: the Republicans, strongest in the lending states of the East, largely supported the gold standard, while the Democrats, strongest in the borrowing regions of the West and South, were keener on silver, but neither side was united—some of the fiercest fighting would occur within parties.
Three days after its April 15 report, describing how pro-silver sentiment was taking the Democrats by storm, the
Journal
published a canvass of delegates to the party’s July convention correctly forecasting that a majority would be pledged to free (that is, unlimited) coinage of silver at a ratio of sixteen to one against gold.
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A pair of editorials published April 16 and 18 foresaw the Democrats fracturing on regional lines, with the relatively small but influential northeastern wing of the party holding firm for gold. The paper spanked the Cleveland administration for allowing the schism to develop. The president’s sympathies were with gold, but instead of seeking compromise with the growing legion of silverites in his own party, Cleveland dismissed them as cranks. He also reneged on promises to seek agreement with other industrialized nations to jointly pursue the remonetization of silver (it was thought that international cooperation would take some of the risk out of such a move). The
Journal
argued that the silverites deserved better: bimetallism was “the proper Democratic creed,” and the silver movement was “real, vital, [and] urged largely by men of convictions.” The only bright side the
Journal
could find in the silver craze was that it promised to elbow out tariffs as the main issue of the election, forcing McKinley and the Republicans onto unfamiliar ground.
14
Journal
published a canvass of delegates to the party’s July convention correctly forecasting that a majority would be pledged to free (that is, unlimited) coinage of silver at a ratio of sixteen to one against gold.
13
A pair of editorials published April 16 and 18 foresaw the Democrats fracturing on regional lines, with the relatively small but influential northeastern wing of the party holding firm for gold. The paper spanked the Cleveland administration for allowing the schism to develop. The president’s sympathies were with gold, but instead of seeking compromise with the growing legion of silverites in his own party, Cleveland dismissed them as cranks. He also reneged on promises to seek agreement with other industrialized nations to jointly pursue the remonetization of silver (it was thought that international cooperation would take some of the risk out of such a move). The
Journal
argued that the silverites deserved better: bimetallism was “the proper Democratic creed,” and the silver movement was “real, vital, [and] urged largely by men of convictions.” The only bright side the
Journal
could find in the silver craze was that it promised to elbow out tariffs as the main issue of the election, forcing McKinley and the Republicans onto unfamiliar ground.
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Pulitzer’s
World,
seeing itself as the guardian of all things Democratic, was also monitoring the rise of silver sentiment, but Hearst and Pulitzer were pulling in different directions on the issue. Pulitzer had no patience for farm-belt currency cranks and he detested the silverites as a “menace.”
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He may have broken into New York as an establishment-baiting friend of the people, but the
World
’s publisher had grown comfortable over the years. He now enjoyed a station in New York society, and he had toned down his earlier democratic radicalism. He firmly believed that the gold standard was smart policy.
World,
seeing itself as the guardian of all things Democratic, was also monitoring the rise of silver sentiment, but Hearst and Pulitzer were pulling in different directions on the issue. Pulitzer had no patience for farm-belt currency cranks and he detested the silverites as a “menace.”
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He may have broken into New York as an establishment-baiting friend of the people, but the
World
’s publisher had grown comfortable over the years. He now enjoyed a station in New York society, and he had toned down his earlier democratic radicalism. He firmly believed that the gold standard was smart policy.
In an increasingly shrill series of commentaries leading up to the convention, Pulitzer argued that his party’s blind and fatuous silver obsession would lead to certain ruin. Any movement away from gold would bring panic and distress to the economy. Americans would have to get used to fewer jobs, meager wages, and a lower standard of living—“There is no measuring the calamity that will overtake the people.” His editorials accused silver advocates of anarchistic tendencies and of threatening violence against pro-gold forces: “this is not politics—it is lunacy. It is not campaigning—it is suicide.”
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Hearst, too, had his connections among the New York Democratic elite. His paper was promoting for the party’s nomination his acquaintance William Collins Whitney, a Harvard-trained lawyer and Democratic reformer who had fought the Tweed ring and served as Cleveland’s secretary of the navy. Whitney leaned toward gold, but Hearst presented him as more flexible than Cleveland and a man capable of finding a compromise on the money question that would unite their party.
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Notwithstanding its preference for a middle way, the
Journal
was clearly sympathetic to the free silver advocates. It chided the
World
and the
Sun
for attributing ignorance and base motives to silver advocates: “Except for their one financial fad, the Western and Southern silver Democrats are the salt of the political earth. Their leaders have given their lives to the public service in honorable poverty. [They] are men of fastidious honor in all their personal and official relations. . . . They have always formed the backbone of every force that has resisted schemes of public plunder. They have stood inflexibly for economical government, just taxation and equality of opportunities.” No good Democrat could part with such comrades over one plank, “however serious.” The
Journal
’s recommendation of a fair-minded Democratic dialogue applied to the silverites as well. They were advised to disown their rumored plans to use force of numbers to muzzle gold supporters in Chicago and push through their own platform and candidate without debate.
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Notwithstanding its preference for a middle way, the
Journal
was clearly sympathetic to the free silver advocates. It chided the
World
and the
Sun
for attributing ignorance and base motives to silver advocates: “Except for their one financial fad, the Western and Southern silver Democrats are the salt of the political earth. Their leaders have given their lives to the public service in honorable poverty. [They] are men of fastidious honor in all their personal and official relations. . . . They have always formed the backbone of every force that has resisted schemes of public plunder. They have stood inflexibly for economical government, just taxation and equality of opportunities.” No good Democrat could part with such comrades over one plank, “however serious.” The
Journal
’s recommendation of a fair-minded Democratic dialogue applied to the silverites as well. They were advised to disown their rumored plans to use force of numbers to muzzle gold supporters in Chicago and push through their own platform and candidate without debate.
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While their differences were becoming clear, Hearst and Pulitzer were not yet in direct opposition to one another on the issue. In fact, their advice was remarkably similar in the weeks leading up to Chicago. Neither wanted the Democrats to split over currency. Neither wanted to have to chose between the gold-minded Democrats in their home base of New York and what would likely be a pro-silver ticket. So each advocated compromise, coaxing the party to explore the middle ground of limited rather than free coinage of silver. Each saw merit in adopting bimetallism in the company of other major Western financial powers such as England and Germany. Pulitzer beseeched Cleveland to use his remaining months in office in pursuit of an international treaty to that effect. But Cleveland wasn’t interested, and besides, it was too late—the silverites were fed up with Washington’s lack of action and disinclined to settle for anything short of free coinage of silver at a rate of sixteen to one. There would be no compromise. Hearst and Pulitzer would be driven to take sides.
Hearst sent a huge delegation to Chicago, led by Julius Chambers, regular correspondents Alfred Henry Lewis and Henry George, and artists Homer Davenport and M. de Lipman. He also signed up a long string of Democratic luminaries to provide on-the-spot commentary, including California senator Stephen Mallory White, former New York governor Roswell Pettibone Flower, and the wild-eyed John Altgeld, governor of Illinois, and John R. McLean, the man who had sold Hearst the
Journal.
Most of these gentlemen not only would comment on the convention but would play roles in the proceedings—four
Journal
contributors (David B. Hill, John McLean, Stephen M. White, John W. Daniel) were considered candidates for either the presidential or vice-presidential nomination.
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Journal.
Most of these gentlemen not only would comment on the convention but would play roles in the proceedings—four
Journal
contributors (David B. Hill, John McLean, Stephen M. White, John W. Daniel) were considered candidates for either the presidential or vice-presidential nomination.
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Hearst’s corps would fill a newspaper now running at sixteen pages a day in two eight-page sections, with most of the first section given over to political news. The correspondents worked out of the
Journal
’s headquarters and reception room, a rented storefront under the magnificent facade of the Palmer House block. Decorated with bunting and posters and a dazzling combination of mirrors and electric lights, it became an unofficial Democratic headquarters during the convention, filled at all hours with hacks and delegates of every description. Hearst also erected in Chicago, New York, and Brooklyn giant billboards on which his lightning sketch artists presented for the public continuously updated scenes from the action unfolding on the floor of “the most important convention ever held by the Democracy of the United States.”
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Journal
’s headquarters and reception room, a rented storefront under the magnificent facade of the Palmer House block. Decorated with bunting and posters and a dazzling combination of mirrors and electric lights, it became an unofficial Democratic headquarters during the convention, filled at all hours with hacks and delegates of every description. Hearst also erected in Chicago, New York, and Brooklyn giant billboards on which his lightning sketch artists presented for the public continuously updated scenes from the action unfolding on the floor of “the most important convention ever held by the Democracy of the United States.”
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