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- From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
- Subject: How Capitalists Rule/Pt.22
- Message-ID: <1992Nov16.234812.25099@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
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- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 23:48:12 GMT
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- Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
-
- How Capitalists Rule/Part 22
-
- THE REPUBLOCRATS:
- RELUCTANT TAFT MEETS RADICAL BRYAN
- By Vince Copeland
-
- 1908: A NEW KING-MAKER CHOOSES TAFT
-
- Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican, was so popular he could name
- the next president--William Howard Taft--and get him elected. The
- only other president who has come even close to this was Lyndon
- Johnson, the Democrat, who pushed the convention to nominate his
- vice president, Hubert Humphrey, even though Humphrey hadn't won a
- single primary. But he couldn't get Humphrey elected. (Other
- presidents have also supported their deputy commanders, but usually
- with less enthusiasm and effect.)
-
- Taft was another member of the country's moneyed elite. His
- brother, Charles P. Taft, was among the wealthiest dozen or so
- people in the United States. He gave $800,000 to the Republican
- campaign fund in 1908--about $10 to $15 million in today's money.
- That did not make Roosevelt's choice more difficult.
-
- Aside from a few generals, Taft was probably the only president who
- never held a previous elective office.
-
- He began political life as a judge in Ohio. He was then appointed
- Solicitor General by Republican President Benjamin Harrison, who
- also appointed him to the Federal Circuit Court bench, where he
- served from 1892 to 1900. Taft was dean of the Cincinnati law
- school from 1896 to 1900. Roosevelt made him governor general of
- the Philippines and then secretary of war after he had served a
- hitch as provisional governor of Cuba.
-
- He seems to have really wanted to be Chief Justice of the Supreme
- Court more than chief executive of the U.S. And he did wind up with
- that position some years after being president.
-
- Taft was a first-class example of how a political personality can
- be created simply by virtue of receiving appointments from friends
- in high places. The great mass of voters never heard about anybody
- else--at least, not in the then-popular Republican Party--and were
- thus compelled to vote for someone who didn't represent them at
- all.
-
- There were other candidates--in the Socialist and Populist
- parties--who really stood for something. But they were so
- mercilessly attacked in the press, or in some cases ignored, that
- most voters were frightened away from them.
-
- Nevertheless, it is significant that over 420,000 people voted for
- Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate, and there was little talk of
- the "lesser evil." According to one analysis, in the 1896 election
- no more than 14,000 additional votes "properly distributed" among
- key states would have resulted in the election of the Democratic
- candidate, William Jennings Bryan. The more political voters who
- voted Socialist in 1908 must have been very aware of this analysis,
- but voted their convictions regardless of the negative effect on
- Bryan.
-
- DEMOCRATIC REBELLION STILL SHAKING THE TREE
-
- The Democratic Party was not quite back in the lap of Wall Street.
- After running Judge Alton Parker, a well-known conservative, in
- 1904, it turned leftward in 1908 with Bryan once again as its
- standard-bearer. The wave of anti-Wall Street feeling swept over a
- tremendous number of people--including many who did not vote for
- Bryan because they were intimidated into supporting Taft, just as
- they had been intimidated into voting for McKinley in 1896 and
- 1900.
-
- Bryan was still anti-monopoly and anti-Wall Street and refused to
- accept donations from any corporations. He also directed that no
- individual be allowed to donate more than $10,000. His total
- election fund was not much more than it had been in 1896. He still
- fought for the eight-hour day and demanded an end to anti-labor
- injunctions.
-
- But he gave up the demand for nationalization of the railroads,
- while letting it be known that he still favored it at a future
- time. This let down his supporters without winning over any of his
- wealthy opponents. In addition, he gave up the struggle against
- imperialism as such, but delivered lectures on the "Prince of
- Peace."
-
- He advocated international peace treaties and arbitration between
- nations--things which have become commonplace and somewhat
- cynically manipulated as slogans today, but were shining lights of
- idealism in 1908, being counterposed to the frank imperialism of
- the Republican leaders.
-
- The truth is that being for an anti-imperialist plank in 1900 had
- been easier--although unsuccessful--than raising some of the other
- issues. Many prominent and wealthy people had joined the
- Anti-Imperialist League, and the majority of them supported Bryan
- and the Democrats. The eight-hour day, however, raised the hackles
- of the respectable employers of labor and frightened the wheelers
- and dealers who really make presidents.
-
- RESPECTABLE ANTI-IMPERIALISTS
-
- Anti-imperialism in 1900 was in fact almost a respectable issue in
- spite of the chauvinism and "America first"-ism generated by the
- Republicans. There was no talk of "politics stopping at the water's
- edge," etc. And it still seemed possible to turn foreign policy
- around in a less aggressive direction.
-
- This was an illusion flowing from another illusion about the nature
- of business and big business. The Democrats of the time never saw
- the connection between "small" business and big business. (Some
- economists today regard any business grossing less than $50 million
- a year as "small.") Nor did they see that the inevitable drive of
- big business into foreign markets would be the engine of the modern
- imperialist chariot, although they did indeed, unlike their modern
- descendants, see that business and imperialism were interlinked in
- one way or another.
-
- Even the Socialists did not spell this out. But they did have a
- fundamentally different view. They were for eliminating the market
- altogether and producing for "use" instead of for profit. Their
- approach was to just put everybody to work making things and then
- let everybody have the product as a result of their work. This
- would end "overproduction" and depression. But to do this, of
- course, they would have to expropriate big business and nationalize
- not just the railroads but the factories, mines, mills,
- transportation equipment--in a word, eliminate capitalism.
-
- The Democratic Bryan was definitely not one of the many socialists
- of this period and in fact drew a line between himself and them. He
- let it be known that he opposed government ownership in general.
- Nevertheless, he articulated what the majority of people were
- thinking and saying at the time. And in that sense he was a true
- U.S. politician--a follower of his followers.
-
- Thus there was no mystery about the fact that many formerly
- conservative politicians began to support Bryan, at least far
- enough to vote for him. The whole cabinet of the second Cleveland
- administration declared for him and the conservative Judge Parker
- was photographed shaking hands with him in a mood of
- reconciliation.
-
- ANOTHER FEAR CAMPAIGN
-
- Whatever bourgeois respectability the Democrats achieved from this
- was entirely negated by the radicalism of the candidate. Big
- business again conducted a fear campaign in the East and Midwest.
-
- Naturally, it was difficult to prove open intimidation on the part
- of employers. But a Bryan biographer carefully documented the
- following:
-
- "In Philadelphia, a separator works with a thousand employees
- announced it would move away if Bryan won. The Atchison, Topeka and
- Santa Fe Railroad disclosed that in the same contingency it would
- abandon a $3 million program of extensions and improvements and the
- New York Central Railroad threatened its employees with reductions
- in wages." (Louis W. Koenig, "Bryan," p. 452)
-
- At the same time, the reactionary white rulers of the South voted
- for Bryan as a part of their Home Rule and Solid South strategy.
- The anti-Wall Street sentiments of this reactionary anti-Black
- section were genuine enough, however. And since Bryan had no
- concrete program for Black Liberation, they saw no contradiction in
- supporting him.
-
- The majority of Eastern working class voters voted for Taft, but
- only partly because of intimidation. Big business had a certain
- ideological hold over the workers from early times. And in
- addition, many city workers were convinced by the "trickle down"
- theory and the fear of "rocking the boat" of capitalist prosperity.
-
- In this sense, Bryan had the same problem as the socialists, even
- though he was against socialism. His opposition to big business's
- high tariffs, his demand for bank deposit guarantees and income tax
- on the rich, and even the eight-hour day probably seemed like
- things that would require much fighting and self-sacrifice. They
- were looked on as "pie in the sky" demands.
-
- Furthermore, the Republican Roosevelt was adopting much of this
- program. And since his party was the beloved of Wall Street, and
- Roosevelt's good friend William Howard Taft was the Republican
- candidate, it would be safer to support them than the Democrats.
- Only much later, during Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the
- workers' own amazing militancy of the 1930s, was this hypnosis by
- the Republicans to be broken--at least temporarily.
-
- The election results of 1908 give some testimony to the temper of
- the times: Republican Taft, 7,678,008; Democrat Bryan, 6,409,104;
- Socialist Debs, 420,793; Prohibition Chafin, 253,890; Peoples
- Watkins, 29,100; Socialist Labor Gillhus, 14,021.
-
- The minor parties did not have to contend as much with today's
- argument that one has to vote for "the lesser evil." This was
- always an element in the two-party system, but never so strong as
- today, when it means so much less.
-
- (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
- source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21 St.,
- New York, NY 10010; "workers" on PeaceNet; on Internet:
- "workers@mcimail.com".)
-
-
-
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