than a hundred settlements of similar character had been created to spread the happiness of modern life more uniformly among the people.

Charity was refounded upon a new theory. The giving to others for the benefit of the giver appeared to be inadequate. The interest of society in the welfare of all its members and in being protected against the underdevelopment of any of them was the foundation of new movements for charity organization and coöperation among the charitable agencies. The new science of sociology was studied for the light it might throw upon these problems. Social workers found themselves working for the same ends as the professed advocates of labor. In both groups there was steady development of a conviction that democracy on the old basis had had its day with the passing of the rural ideal, and that under the conditions of modern industry democratic freedom of opportunity would be lost unless the people as a whole intervened to save themselves as individuals. By 1890 the United States was no longer a nation of relative equality, but showed all the signs of approaching social stratification. The degree with which this fact was unrecognized by the spokesmen of reform is one of the measures of the survival of the belief in the doctrine of equal opportunity.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

John R. Commons, Documentary History of American Industrial Society (1911), is supplemented by his coöperative History of Labor in the United States (1918). Contemporary narratives are Terence V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor (1889), and George E. McNeill, The Labor Movement (1887). There is much testimony on labor conditions in the Report of the Industrial Commission (1900-02). The Aldrich Reports, compiled 189293, give detailed statistics on wages and prices and are printed in 52d Cong., Ist Sess., Sen. Rep. 986, and 52d Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Rep. 1394. There is an exhaustive report on immigration in 49th Cong., 2d Sess., House Ex. Doc. 157. Valuable biographies are Henry George, Life of Henry George (1904); Lillian D. Wald, The House on Henry Street (1915); and Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910).

CHAPTER XIV

THE ELECTION OF 1888

Ar no time between 1885 and 1889 did Grover Cleveland have both houses of Congress in political agreement with him. The Democrats failed to gain the Senate in 1884, and repeated the failure in 1886. The President never received the prestige that comes from the enactment of party measures. His own party came to regard him as less than a success, while the Republicans viewed him as the obstacle between themselves and full control of the Government. His tendency to rely upon his own judgment increased with his isolation. In December, 1887, he took all parties by surprise by devoting the whole of his annual message to the need for tariff reform.

The attack upon the protective tariff system advanced along three lines after the chance injection of the issue into the canvass of 1880, and the failure of Congress, The tariff under Arthur, really to revise it. The social issue reformers denounced it as class legislation that gave special privileges to the monopolies that were already menacing. Political economists, filled with the theories of Adam Smith, criticized it as an improper interference with free trade among the nations. Practical politicians saw in it the cause for a swelling surplus in the National Treasury that either tempted Congress into extravagance or took from the people funds not needed for the purposes of government. Cleveland was impressed by all three arguments, but most of all by the last. In his third annual message he called Congress to its duty and his party to leadership, in cutting down the revenues to the amount needed to maintain the Government.

Many of the wisest of the tariff reformers advised against an attempt at reduction at this time. There was no prospect that a bill could be passed against the opposition of a

Republican Senate. George W. Curtis, Carl Schurz, and E. L. Godkin believed that it was more important to reëlect Cleveland in 1888 than to force the tariff issue in 1887, and feared that the result of Cleveland's act would be to split the Democrats and improve the fighting spirit of the Republicans. Neither free trade nor tariff reform was accepted unanimously in the Democratic Party, which had recognized the protectionist Randall as its parliamentary leader until 1883.

The tariff reform message of Cleveland was accepted by the Republican leaders as a call to battle. James G. Blaine was abroad when it was read, but instantly an interview with him at Paris appeared in which he denounced free trade. The Republican National Committee met in Washington on December 8, 1887, to issue the call for its next convention. The committeemen welcomed the issue as one upon which they were ready to fight, and the chairman, B. F. Jones, announced that Blaine could have the nomination if he wanted it. The aggressive in the tariff debate had been conducted by Democrats thus far. It was now seized by Republicans, who held it for the next ten years.

Neo-Republicanism was a name suggested for the Republican Party as its leaders took up the movement for extreme protection, and advanced under the arguments formulated by Henry Clay for the American system. Throughout the debate over the tariff of 1883 the party leaders had conceded that the tariff as it existed was indefensible. There was no excuse for the "accidental" duties and it was imperative to reduce the surplus. The change in party attitude visible by 1888 was a natural result of the industrial changes since the panic of 1873, and the fall of prices.

The

Over-production and falling prices were among the results of railroad construction and mechanical invention. welfare of the wage-earner was improved; his wages were increased while prices fell. But the producing classes, farmers and manufacturers, watched with regret the declining market value of their output, and listened readily

to the suggestions for raising prices. The manufacturer connected his loss with European competition. When London Punch printed a cartoon describing Cleveland as "English, quite English, you know," on account of his tariff reform ideas, it strengthened the manufacturers' belief that free trade was un-American, and that the route to greater prosperity lay through protection. When Cleveland urged a tariff policy whose consequence would be to encourage the importation of more foreign goods, through lower duties, the manufacturers turned to their own party and financed the fight against him. Most of them lived in the North and East, and belonged to the party that was dominant in that region. The voice of the Republican tariff reformers was drowned by the noise of Republican protectionists. When a New York City convention nominated Roosevelt for mayor in 1886, a voice was raised against him charging that he had belonged to a college free trade club. Chauncey M. Depew, who presided, anointed the sore spot with a jest, and defended the young man's privilege to make mistakes and repent them. The Republican party organization was swung from apology for the tariff and promise of amendment to its affirmative advocacy.

Roger Q. Mills, of Texas, appointed chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means by Speaker Carlisle, was a tariff reformer, and approached, in his theoretical views, what the tariff advocates described as free trade. Under his direction the Democratic majority of the committee prepared a tariff bill that contemplated a reduction of $50,000,000 in the customs receipts. The House began to debate it in April, 1888, and Mills's attack upon the existing tariff situation as the result of Republican class legislation was met by William McKinley, of Ohio. McKinley was now minority leader on the committee, and was supported by Thomas B. Reed and "Pig Iron" Kelley, of Pennsylvania, in denouncing the bill as a "star chamber" measure which the majority members had drawn up in secret. "Neither employers nor employed could view with indifference the hasty manner in which modification

of a protective tariff, upon which depended their fortunes and their daily earnings, was made by men fitted neither by association nor experience for the task," wrote Walker Blaine in the North American Review. The six Southerners among the eight Democratic members of the committee were charged with a sectional attack upon the industrial life of the nation. Before the tariff passed the House, the national conventions were held to nominate candidates for the approaching election.

conventions

The Democratic Convention met in St. Louis on June 5, 1888, with the Administration forces in control, though Party not able to dominate it in every way. Cleveland was renominated without serious dissent, in spite of the opposition from his own State, where Governor David B. Hill had gained control of the Democratic machine and was using it for his own purposes. Allen G. Thurman was nominated for Vice-President, Hendricks having died in office. Cleveland was able to secure the election of his candidate for chairman of the convention, Patrick Collins, of Boston, a prominent Irish leader whose influence offset that of Patrick Ford and Patrick Egan who had led many Irish-Americans to Blaine in 1884. He was not able to force the convention to endorse the Mills Bill by name, although his friends overrode the objections of the Democratic protectionists, and adopted a plank approving tariff revision.

The Republican Party convened at Chicago two weeks after the Democratic meeting, with the new spirit of protection in the ascendant, and with no leader in sight except James G. Blaine. In the discussion of the tariff since the preceding December, Blaine had led the attack from Europe, and he was still abroad when the convention met. In 1884 he had embarrassed his campaign at the last moment by accepting a banquet at Delmonico's from Astor, Sage, Gould, and other money kings. He was now in Scotland on a coaching trip with Andrew Carnegie, from whose residence he kept up a cable correspondence with his friends in the Chicago Convention. He was not the most available