Chapter 2
CHAPTER IV. There had been a strange prophecy put forth by someone, and it had made its way into daily journals, and had been laughingly or seriously commented upon, according to the political tone of the paper, or the passing humor of the writer, that the fourth of March, 1897, would never dawn upon the American people.
There was something very curious and uncanny about the prediction, and what actually happened was not qualified to loosen the fearful tension of public anxiety, for the day literally and truly never dawned upon the city of Washington, and well deserves its historical name, the dawnless day. At six o'clock the hour of daybreak such an impenetrable pall of clouds overhung the
city that there came no signs of day. The gathering crowds could plainly hear the plaintive cries and lamentations put up in the negro quarters of the city. Not until nearly nine o'clock did the light cease to shine in darkness, and the darkness begin to comprehend it.
But although it was a cheerless gray day, even at high noon, its heaviness set no weight upon the spirits of the jubilant tens of thousands which completely filled the city and its public parks, and ran over into camps and hastily improvised shelters outside the city limits. Not until the day previous had the president announced the names of those selected for his cabinet.
The South and far West were fairly beside themselves with joy, for there had been from their standpoint ugly rumors abroad for several days. It had been hinted that Brian had surrendered to the money changers, and that the selection of his constitutional advisors would prove him recreant to the glorious cause of popular government, and that the reign of the common people would remain but a dream of the struggling
masses. But these apprehensions were short-lived. The young president stood firm and fast on the platform of the parties which had raised him to his proud eminence. And what better proof of this thorough belief in himself and in his mission could he have
given than the following? Secretary of State William M. Stewart of Nevada Secretary of Treasury Richard P. Bland of Missouri Secretary of War John P. Altigald of Illinois Attorney General Roger Q. Mills of Texas Postmaster General Henry George of New York
Secretary Navy John Gary Evans of South Carolina Secretary Interior William A. Peffer of Kansas Secretary Agriculture Leif Pence of Colorado The first thing that flashed across the minds of many upon glancing over this list of names was the omission, therefrom, of Tillman's.
What did it mean? Could the young president have quarreled with his best friend and most powerful coadjutor? But the wiser ones only shook their heads and made answer that it was Tillman's hand that filled the blank for Secretary of the Navy, left there by the new ruler after the people's own heart.
Evans was but a creation of this great commander of the South, an image graven with his hands. The inaugural address was not a disappointment to those who had come to hear it. It was like the man who delivered it, bold, outspoken, unmistakable in its terms, promising much, impatient of precedent, reckless of result. A double confirmation that this was to be the reign of the common people, that much
should be unmade and much made over. And no matter how the rich man might cry out in anger or amazement, the nation must march on to the fulfillment of a higher and nobler mission than the impoverishment and degradation of the millions for the enrichment and evalution of the few. Scarcely had the young president, his large eyes filled with a strange light and his smooth
visage radiant as a cloudless sky, his wife's arm twined around his and their hands linked in those of their children, passed within the lofty portal of the White House, then he threw himself into a chair and, seizing a sheet of official paper, penned the following order and directed its immediate promulgation. Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., March 4, 1897.
Executive Order No. 1. In order that there may be immediate relief in the terrible financial depression now weighing upon our beloved country, consequent upon and resulting from the unlawful combination of capitalists and moneylenders both in this republic and in England, and that the ruinous and inevitable progress toward a universal gold standard may be stayed, the president
orders and directs the immediate abandonment of the so-called Gold Reserve and that, on and after the promulgation of this order, the gold and silver standard of the Constitution be resumed and strictly maintained in all the business transactions of the government. It was two o'clock in the afternoon when news of this now world-famous Executive Order was flashed into the great banking centers of the country.
Its effects in Wall Street beggars description. On the floor of the stock exchange, men yelled and shrieked like painted savages and in their mad struggles tore and trampled each other. Many dropped in fainting fits or fell exhausted from their wild and senseless efforts to say what none would listen to.
Ashen power crept over the faces of some while the blood threatened to burst the swollen arteries that spread in purple network over the brows of others. When silence came at last, it was a silence broken by sobs and groans. While others stood dumb-stricken as if it was all a bad dream and they were awaiting the return of their poor distraught senses to set them right again.
Ambulances were hastily summoned and fainting and exhausted forms were borne through hushed and whispering masses wedged into Wall Street to be whirled away uptown to their residences, there to come into full possession of their senses only to cry out in their anguish that ruin, black ruin stared them in the face if this news from Washington should prove true.
Chapter 5. By proclamation bearing date the fifth day of March 1897, the president summoned both houses of Congress to convene in an extraordinary session for the consideration of the general welfare of the United States and to take such action as might seem necessary and expedient to them on certain measures, which he should recommend to their consideration, measures
of vital importance to the welfare and happiness of the people, if not to the very existence of the Union and the continuance of their enjoyment of the liberties achieved by the fathers of the Republic. While awaiting the day set for the coming together of the Congress, the great friend of the common people came suddenly face to face with the first serious business of his
administration. Fifty thousand people tramped the streets of Washington without bread or shelter. Many had come in quest of office, lured on by the solemn pronouncement of their candidate that there should be at once a clean sweep of these barnacles of the ship of state, and so complete had been their confidence in their glorious young captain that they had literally
failed to provide themselves with either purse or script or shoes and now stood hungry and foot-sore at his gate begging for a crust of bread. But most of those making up this vast multitude were the unarmed warriors of peaceful armies, like the one once led by the redoubtable Cokese, decoyed from farm and hamlet and plantation by some nameless longing to go forth to stand in the presence of this new savior of society
whose advent of power was to bring them double pay for all their toil. While on the march all had gone well, for their brethren had opened their hearts and their houses as these unarmed warriors had marched with flying banners and loud hussars through the various towns on the route. But now the holiday was over, they were far from their homes, they were in danger of perishing
from hunger. What was to be done? They are our people, said the president, their love of country has undone them. The nation must not let them suffer for they are its hope and its shield in the honor of war and its glory and its refuge in times of peace.
They are the common people for whose benefit this republic was established. The kings of the earth may desert them, I never shall. The secretary of war was directed to establish camps in the parks and suburbs of the city and to issue rations and blankets to these luckless wanderers until the government could provide for their transportation back to their homes.
On Monday, March 15, the president received the usual notification from both houses of Congress that they had organized and were ready for the consideration of such measures as he might choose to recommend for their action. The first act to pass both houses and receive the signature of the president was an act repealing the Act of 1873 and opening the mints of the United States to the free coinage
of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 with gold and establishing branch mints in the cities of Denver, Omaha, Chicago, Kansas City, Spokane, Los Angeles, Charleston, and Mobile. The announcement that reparation had thus been made to the people for the crime of 1873 was received with loud cheering on the floors and in the galleries of both houses. And the great North heard these cheers and trembled.
The next measure of great public import brought before the House was an act to provide additional revenue by levying a tax upon the incomes substantially on the lines laid down by the legislation of 1894. The Republican senators strove to make some show of resistance to this measure, but so solid were the administration ranks that they only succeeded in delaying it for a few weeks.
This first skirmish with the enemy, however, brought the president and his followers to a realizing sense that not only must the Senate be shorn of its power to block the new movement of regeneration and reform by the adoption of rules cutting off prolonged debate, but that the new dispensation must at once proceed to increase its senatorial representation, for who could tell what moment some one of the northern silver states might not slip
away from its allegiance to the friend of the common people. The introduction of a bill repealing the various civil service acts passed for the alleged purpose of regulating and improving the civil service of the United States, and of another repealing the various acts establishing national banks and substituting United States notes for all national bank notes based upon interest bearing bonds, opened the eyes of the Republican
opposition to the fact that the president and his party were possessed of the courage of their convictions and were determined, come good report or evil report, to wipe all conflicting legislation from the statute books. The battle in the Senate now took on a spirit of extreme acrimony. Scenes not witnessed since the days of slavery were of daily occurrence on the floors of
both the House and the Senate. Cuts of secession came openly from the North only to be met with jeers and laughter of the silver and populist members. We're in the saddle at last, exclaimed a Southern member, and we intend to ride on to victory.
The introduction of bills for the admission of New Mexico and Arizona and for the division of Texas into two states to be called East Texas and West Texas, although each of these measures was strictly within the letter of the Constitution, fell among the members of the Republican opposition like a torch in a house of tinder. There was a fire at once, and the blaze of party spirit leapt to such dangerous heights
that the whole nation looked on in consternation. Was the Union about to go up in a great conflagration and leave behind it but the ashes and charred pedestals of its greatness? We are the people, wrote the president in lines of dignity and calmness. We are the people, and what we do, we do under the holy sanction of law.
And there is no one so powerful or so bold as to dare to say, we do not do well in lifting off the nation's shoulders the grievous and unlawful burdens which preceding Congresses have placed upon them. And so the long session of the 55th Congress was entered upon, fated to last through the autumn chill and until winter came again, and the Constitution itself set limits to
its lasting. And when that day came and its speaker, amid a wild tumult of cheers, arose to declare it ended not by their will, but by the law of the land, he said, the glorious revolution is in its brightest bud. Since the president called upon us to convene in last March, we have with the strong blade
of public indignation and with a full sense of our responsibility erased from the statute books the marks of our country's shame and our people's subjugation. Liberty cannot die. There remains much to be done in the way of building up. Let us take heart and push on.
On Monday, the regular session of this Congress will begin. We must greet our loved ones from the distance. We have no time to go home and embrace them. Number 6. When a Republican member of the House arose to move the usual adjournment for the holidays,
there was a storm of hisses and cries of, no, no, said the leader of the House amid deafening plunders. We are the servants of the people. Our work is not yet complete. There must be no play for us while coal barons stand with their feet on the ashes of the
poor man's hearthstone and weeds and thorns cumbers the fields of the farmer for lack of money to buy seed and implements. There must be no play for us while railway magnates press from the pockets of the laboring men 6 and 8 percent return on thrice-watered stocks and rapacious landlords enriched by inheritance grind the faces of the poor.
There must be no play for us while enemies of the humankind are by means of trust and combination and corners engaged in drawing their unholy millions from the very lifeblood of the nation, paralyzing its best effort and setting the blight of intemperance and indifference upon it, by making life but one long struggle for existence without a gleam of rest and comfort in old age.
No, Mr. Speaker, we must not adjourn, but by our efforts in these halls of legislation let the nation know that we are at work for its emancipation, and by these means let the monopolists and money changers be brought to a realizing sense that the reign of the common people has really been entered upon, and then the bells will ring out a happier, gladder new year than has ever dawned upon this republic.
The opposition fairly quailed before the vigor and earnestness of the new dispensation. There were soon before the House, and pressed well on toward final passage, a number of important measures calculated to awaken an intense feeling of enthusiasm among the working classes. Among these was an act establishing a Loan Commission for the loaning of certain monies
of the United States to farmers and planters without interest, an act for establishment of a permanent department of public works, its head to be styled Secretary of Public Rank as a Cabinet Officer and supervise the expenditure of all public monies for the construction of public buildings and the improvement of rivers and harbors, an act making it a felony punishable with imprisonment for life for any citizen or combination of citizens to
enter into any trust or agreement to stifle, suppress, or in any way interfere with full, open, and fair competition in trade and manufacture among the States or to make use of any interstate, railroads, waterways, or canals for the transportation of any food products or goods, wares, or merchandise, which may have been cornered, stored, or withheld with a view to enhance the value thereof. And most important of all, a preliminary act having for its object the appointment of commissioners
for the purchase by the federal government of all interstate railway and telegraph lines and in the meantime the strict regulation of all fares and charges by a government commission from whose established schedules there shall be no appeal. On Washington's birthday, the President issued an address of congratulation to the people of the United States from which the following is extracted.
The malicious prognostications of our political opponents have proven themselves to be but empty sound and fury. Although not quite one year has elapsed since I, agreeable to your mandate, restored to you the money of the Constitution, yet from every section of our nation comes the glad tidings of renewed activity and prosperity.
The workman no longer sits cold and hungry beside a cheerless hearthstone. The farmer has taken heart and resumed work. The wheels of the factory are in motion again. The shops and stores of the legitimate dealer and trader are full of bustle and action. There is content everywhere, save in the counting room of the money changer, for which thank
God and the common people of this Republic. The free coinage of that metal which the Creator in His wisdom stored with so lavish a hand in the subterranean vaults of our glorious mountain ranges has proven a rich and manifold blessing for our people. It is in every sense of the word the people's money, and already the envious world looks
on in amazement that we have shown our ability to do without foreign cooperation. The Congress of our Republic has been in almost continuous session since I took my oath of office, and the administration members deserve your deepest and most heartfelt gratitude. They are rearing for themselves a monument more lasting than chiseled bronze or polished monolith.
They knew no rest. They ask for no respite from their labors until, at my earnest request, they adjourned over to join their fellow citizens in the observance of this sacred anniversary. Fellow citizens, remember the bonds which a wicked and selfish class of usurers and speculators fastened upon you, and on this anniversary of the birth of the father of
Let us renew our pledges to undo completely and absolutely their infamous work, and in public assembly and family circle, let us by new vows confirm our love of right and justice so that the great gain may not slip away from us but go on increasing so long as the statute books contain a single trace of the record of our enslavement. As for me, I have but one ambition, and that is to deserve so well of you that when you
come to write my epitaph, you set beneath my name the single line, here lies a friend of the common people.
