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Political Economy in the Gilded Age: The Republican Party's Industrial Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Charles W. Calhoun
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Extract

The nature of party contention and public discourse in the late nineteenth century is one of the least understood and most elusive subjects in American history and historiography. In the period itself many critics condemned the intense partisanship of the two major parties as a sham battle, aimed more at filling offices than fulfilling ideals, and all too often tainted with corrupt motives and methods. In the classic formulation of Englishman James Bryce, “neither party has any principles…. [P]oints of political doctrine … have all but vanished …. All has been lost except office or the hope of it.”

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Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 291 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1996

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References

Notes

1. Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth, 2 vols. (London, 1889), 1:653Google Scholar.

2. Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston, 1918)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For twentieth-century interpretations, see, for example, Parrington, Vernon Louis, Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920, 3 vols. (New York, 1927, 1930), vol. 3Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A. and Beard, Mary R., The Rise of American Civilization: Vol. 2: The Industrial Era (New York, 1930)Google Scholar; Josephson, Matthew, The Politicos: 1865–1896 (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948)Google Scholar; Ginger, Ray, Age of Excess: The United States from 1877 to 1914 (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Marcus, Robert D., Grand Old Party: Political Structure in the Gilded Age, 1880–1896 (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; Keller, Morton, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For historiographic treatments, see De Santis, Vincent P., “The Political Life of the Gilded Age: A Review of the Recent Literature,” The History Teacher 9 (1975): 73–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Gilded Age in American History,” Hayes Historical Journal 7 (1988): 38–57Google Scholar; Calhoun, Charles W., “Late Nineteenth-Century Politics Revisited,” The History Teacher 27 (1994): 325–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. See, for example, Morgan, H. Wayne, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (Syracuse, 1969)Google Scholar; Williams, R. Hal, “‘Dry Bones and Dead Language’: The Democratic Party,” in Morgan, H. Wayne, ed., The Gilded Age (revised and enlarged ed., Syracuse, 1970), 129–48Google Scholar; Lewis L. Gould, “The Republican Search for a National Majority,” in Morgan, ed., The Gilded Age, 171–87; Welch, Richard E. Jr., George Frisbie Hoar and the Half-Breed Republicans (Cambridge, Mass., 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence, Kan., 1988); Peskin, Allan, Garfield (Kent, Ohio, 1978)Google Scholar; Williams, R. Hal, Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Gould, Lewis L., The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence, Kan., 1980)Google Scholar; Salisbury, Robert S., “The Republican Party and Positive Government: 1860–1890,” Mid-America 48 (1986): 15–34Google Scholar; McGerr, Michael E., The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Hoogenboom, Ari, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Lawrence, Kan., 1988)Google Scholar.

4. Contemporaneously with the revisionists' work, several cliometricians invoked quantification methods to assert that voters' party affiliations derived principally from their religious and ethnic group associations. National questions, these scholars asserted, particularly economic issues, had little impact. See, for example, Kleppner, Paul, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850–1900 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar, and idem, The Third Electoral System, 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill, 1979); Jensen, Richard J., The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar; McSeveney, Samuel T., The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893–1896 (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Kleppner, Paul et al. , The Evolution of American Electoral Systems (Westport, Conn., 1981)Google Scholar, chap. 4. An example of this approach for the early years of the Republican party is Gienapp, William, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York, 1987)Google Scholar. For the recent comments of a historian who once placed great stress on the ethnic and religious determinants of voting behavior earlier in the nineteenth century but who now finds “this approach woefully inadequate, if not utterly wrongheaded,” see Michael F. Holt, “Rethinking Nineteenth-Century American Political History,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Fort Worth, November 14, 1991, quotation, p. 8.

5. Moss, George Donelson, The Rise of Modern America: A History of the American People, 1890–1945 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1995), 14Google Scholar; Geoffrey Blodgett, “Reform Thought and the Genteel Tradition,” in Morgan, ed., The Gilded Age, 69; Silbey, Joel H., The American Political Nation, 1838–1893 (Stanford, 1991), 232Google Scholar.

6. Bryce, American Commonwealth 1:657; Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, 184.

7. Morgan, Hayes to McKinley, 120–21, 165–70; Williams, “‘Dry Bones and Dead Language’”, 136–38; Gould, “Republican Search,” 176–80.

8. Huston, James L., “A Political Response to Industrialism: The Republican Embrace of Protectionist Labor Doctrines,” Journal of American History 70 (1983): 35–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Huston focuses on the 1850s and 1860s but notes a persistence of Republicans' labor-oriented tariff arguments in the post–Civil War period. Reitano, Joanne, The Tariff Question in the Gilded Age: The Great Debate of 1888 (University Park, Pa., 1994)Google Scholar. Reitano sees in 1888 a transformation in the Republicans' approach to protectionism from a reactive, defensive position to a more aggressive, activist stance. Focusing on a single year, this treatment tends to overlook that Republicans had developed and articulated their industrial policy long before. The transformation Reitano sees in 1888 may be explained by the switch the Republicans made from reacting to and attacking the Democratic Mills Bill to advocating a bill of their own sponsored in the Republican Senate. In any event, Reitano is to be commended for placing the Republican and Democratic positions in the broader context of political economy. See also a recent overview of trade policy throughout U.S. history, Eckes, Alfred E. Jr., Opening America's Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776 (Chapel Hill, 1995)Google Scholar.

9. Summers, Mark Wahlgren, “History of Congress: The Age of the Machine (1872–1900),” in Bacon, Donald C., Davidson, Roger H., and Keller, Morton, eds., The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress, 4 vols. (New York, 1995), 2:1005Google Scholar.

10. Graham, Otis L. Jr., Losing Time: The Industrial Policy Debate (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 3, 24–25Google Scholar; Schwarz, Jordan A., “Policy and Ideology,” Reviews in American History 22 (1994): 519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Stephen Colwell, Report upon the Relations of Foreign Trade to Domestic Industry and Internal Revenue, Special Report No. 10, Exec. Doc. 68, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 15, 19, 21, 23; Boyd, T. B., comp., The Blaine and Logan Campaign of 1884 (Chicago, 1884), 147Google Scholar; Congressional Record, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 2351; 51st Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 767. In 1876 James M. Swank, secretary of the American Iron and Steel Association, published a report contrasting American tariff protectionism with Britain's trade policies, entitled The Industrial Policies of Great Britain and the United States (Philadelphia, 1876)Google Scholar. Connecticut Congressman Henry Starkweather argued that “the true policy is to create diversified and profitable industry in all sections of the country.” As Jones's colleague William M. Stewart put it, “It is the duty of a nation to act for its own prosperity, and it is the duty of the Legislature of a nation to pass such laws as will produce prosperity. Nothing can produce prosperity like home industry.” Congressional Globe, 42d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 679; Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., 7904.

12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975), 1104.

13. William D. Kelley to Nelson Aldrich, 7 May 1883, Robert P. Porter to Benjamin Durfee, 30 October 1883, Nelson Aldrich Papers (Library of Congress); Justin Morrill to Horace Greeley, 15 January 1870, Horace Greeley Papers (Library of Congress); Howard Kennedy to John Sherman, 28 January 1888, George A. Baker to Sherman, 6 August 1888, John Sherman Papers (Library of Congress); Joseph Wharton to Justin Morrill, 11 May 1875, J. Lawrence Laughlin to Morrill, 14 April 1882, M. H. Buckham to Morrill, 23 November 1894, Justin Morrill Papers (Library of Congress); Delmer H. Hawkins to Benjamin Harrison, 11 December 1893, Benjamin Harrison Papers (Library of Congress); Thomas H. Dudley to William M. Evarts, 17 February 1883, William M. Evarts Papers (Library of Congress).

14. In some instances senators and representatives later revised their remarks or inserted whole speeches into the Congressional Record, and, hence, on occasion, what appears in the Record may never have actually been uttered on the floor. Reprinted congressional speeches provided congressmen with a vital means of communication with their constituents during campaigns and at other times. In the case of tariff debates, Republicans (and Democrats too) sometimes polished their theoretical and practical arguments for mass distribution. Taking such care to explain their positions did not necessarily make those positions less sincerely held.

15. J. Medill to John A. Logan, 6 March 1870, John A. Logan Papers (Library of Congress); J. Medill to Richard Oglesby, 1 May 1874, Richard Oglesby Papers (Illinois State Historical Library); Joseph Wharton to William E. Chandler, 15 December 1883, William E. Chandler Papers (Library of Congress); Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Year 1882 (Washington, D.C., 1882), xxxii–xxxiii; William B. Allison to Edward L. Adams, 27 February 1888, William B. Allison Papers (State Historical Society of Iowa); Blaine, James G., Twenty years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield. With a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860, 2 vols. (Norwich, Conn., 1884, 1886), 2:669Google Scholar; Boyd, comp., Blaine and Logan Campaign; James G. Blaine to Whitelaw Reid, 27 July, 17 September 1884, Whitelaw Reid Papers (Library of Congress); H. C. Jones to John Sherman, 7 August 1883, Willard Warner to Sherman, 7 March 1884, James H. Nutt to Sherman, 2 March 1885, Mahlon Chance to Sherman, 4 March 1887, Sherman Papers; Theron P. Keator to Edward McPherson, 16 August 1884, Edward McPherson Papers (Library of Congress); B. Rogers to Henry L. Dawes, 14 December 1886, Henry L. Dawes Papers (Library of Congress).

16. James D. Richardson, comp., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1903), 8:580–91; Nevins, Allan, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (New York, 1932), 379–82Google Scholar; Merrill, Horace Samuel, Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party (Boston, 1957), 121Google Scholar; Summers, Festus P., William L. Wilson and Tariff Reform (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), 70–71Google Scholar; Reply to the President's Message. Speech of Hon. John Sherman, of Ohio, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 4, 1888 (Washington, D.C., 1888), 7, 18Google Scholar; John C. Spooner to W. S. Stanley, 9 December 1887, John Coit Spooner Papers (Library of Congress); Wm. R. Baldwin to John Sherman, 9 January 1888, Sherman Papers.

17. Robert G. Proctor, Tariff Acts Passed by the Congress of the United States from 1789 to 1897 (U.S. Congress. House, 55th Cong., 2d sess., House Document 562), 9; Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 2d sess., 2047, 2228; 42d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 679; Congressional Record, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 57; 47th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 217; 51st Cong., 1st sess., 8531; Johnson, Donald Bruce and Porter, Kirk H., comps., National Party Platforms, 1840–1972 (Urbana, 1975), 87Google Scholar; Benjamin H. Bristow, “Delivered at Cooper Union, March 29/94,” typescript, p. 5–6, Benjamin H. Bristow Papers (Library of Congress).

18. Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 2d sess., 2046; 42d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 567; Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 139; 51st Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 759; David H. Mason to the Editor of the Inter-Ocean, 17 December 1886, in Chicago Inter-Ocean, 18 December 1886.

19. Justin S. Morrill to Horace Greeley, 15 January 1870, Greeley Papers; Justin Morrill to J. Lawrence Laughlin, April 1883, Morrill Papers; Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 2d sess., 555; 45th Cong., 2d sess., 4099–4100.

20. Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 775; Justin Morrill to J. Lawrence Laughlin, April 1883, Morrill Papers; Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., 4431, 9839.

21. Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., 8531–33.

22. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, 1:189–214; Blaine, James G., Condensed History of American Tariff Acts and Their Effects upon Industries, Speech … New York, September 29, 1988 (Boston, 1892)Google Scholar (quotation, p. 4); Thompson, R. W., The History of Protective Tariff Laws (Chicago, 1888)Google Scholar; Stebbins, Giles B., The American Protectionist's Manual (Detroit, 1883), 179–83Google Scholar; L. T. Michener to Albert J. Beveridge, 23 April 1893, Albert J. Beveridge Papers (Library of Congress); William E. Chandler to Asa W. Tenney, 12 July 1893, Chandler Papers; Benjamin Harrison to E. W. Halford, 20 November 1893, Harrison Papers; Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., 4255.

23. David H. Mason to John Sherman, 28 December 1886, Sherman Papers; Congressional Record, 45th Cong., 2d sess., 2551–52; 46th Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 300; 51st Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 110.

24. Carroll D. Wright to Nelson Aldrich, 15 July 1892, Aldrich Papers; Congressional Globe, 42d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 140, 343; Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 1st sess., 3517; 45th Cong., 2d sess., 3340; 47th Cong., 1st sess., 2669.

25. Congressional Record, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 2820; 47th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 151–52; A. M. Burnes to John Sherman, 12 February 1884, Sherman Papers. Although Republicans did not propose anything akin to the welfare state, interesting recent research suggests ways in which their support for Civil War veteran's pensions foreshadowed assistance programs of the twentieth century. Salisbury, “Republican Party and Positive Government,” 22; Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 102–51Google Scholar.

26. Boyd, comp., Blaine and Logan Campaign, 174, 197; Spooner to H. C. Payne, 11 October 1888, Spooner Papers; Richardson, comp., Messages and Papers, 9:8.

27. Ohio Governor Joseph B. Foraker wrote privately, “I believe in a protective tariff for the sake of protection, and I wonder how anybody who is intelligent and without bias can believe anything else.” Joseph B. Foraker to W. M. Dickson, 30 January 1888, Joseph B. Foraker Papers (Cincinnati Historical Society); Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 2d sess., 2046, 2049; 42d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 369; Congressional Record, 45th Cong., 2d sess., 2554; 47th Cong., 1st sess., 1053, 2390, 2393; 50th Cong., 1st sess., 3414–15; 51st Cong., 1st sess., 4474, 4518, 4531; 51st Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 658, 732; Boyd, comp., Blaine and Logan Campaign, 123; John D. Defrees to Whitelaw Reid, 7 November 1874, James G. Blaine to Reid, 17 May 1888, Reid Papers; Jonathan Chace to Nelson Aldrich, 23 January 1883, Aldrich Papers; William B. Allison to Thomas P. Cleaves, 21 March 1883, S. J. Kirkwood to Allison, 9 February 1890, Allison Papers; Nathaniel McKay to Henry L. Dawes, 31 July 1890, Dawes Papers; John Sherman to Abram S. Hewitt, 15, 19 February 1883, Justin Morrill to Sherman, 7 September 1885, Sherman Papers.

28. E. E. Farnam to William M. Evarts, 21 January 1886, Evarts Papers; Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 2d sess., 2048; 41st Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 208; 42d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 367; Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 1st sess., 3519; 47th Cong., 1st sess., 2004–5; 51st Cong., 1st sess., 7895, 9839; Nelson W. Aldrich, “The McKinley Act and the Cost of Living,” Forum 14 (October 1892): 242–54.

29. Whitelaw Reid to R. B. Hayes, 20 October 1887, Rutherford B. Hayes Papers (Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Library); The Tariff Bill of 1888. Report of N. W. Aldrich of Rhode Island from the Committee on Finance, to the Senate of the United States, October 4, 1888 (Washington, D.C., 1888), 23–25Google Scholar; Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 1st sess., 3519; 50th Cong., 1st sess., 3365; 51st Cong., 1st sess., 4532; 51st Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 630; Justin Morrill to Carroll S. Page, 27 December 1887, Morrill Papers; S. J. Kirkwood to William B. Allison, 23 April 1888, Allison Papers; S. M. Cullom, “Protection and the Farmer,” Forum 8 (September 1889), 136–47; Porter, Robert P., Protection and Free Trade To-Day at Home and Abroad in Field and Workshop (Boston, 1884), 37Google Scholar; Stebbins, American Protectionist's Manual, 102. For a discussion of tariff policy as it related to foreign markets, see Terrill, Tom E., The Tariff, Politics, and American Foreign Policy, 1874–1901 (Westport, Conn., 1973)Google Scholar. In portraying the Republicans as market expansionists through reciprocity, Terrill underestimates their stress on the home market for farmers.

30. Congressional Record, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 2714, 2933; 51st Cong., 1st sess., 4534–35; John Sherman, Proof sheets of speech, Republican State Convention, Columbus, 6 June 1883, Sherman Papers.

31. Congressional Globe, 42dCong., 2d sess., Appendix, 365; Congressional Record, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 2397; “A Word for Woman,” in Porter, Protection and Free Trade To-Day, 41–43.

32. Thos. S. Brown to John Sherman, 1 August 1888, Sherman Papers; Hedges, Charles, ed., Speeches of Benjamin Harrison (New York, 1892), 186Google Scholar; Congressional Globe, 42d Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 368; Congressional Record, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 1048.

33. Stoddard, Henry L., As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), 242Google Scholar; McKinley speech, 20 June 1896, in Smith, Joseph P., comp., McKinley, the People's Choice (Canton, Ohio, 1896), 15Google Scholar; Williams, Years of Decision, 123–25.

34. O. H. Platt to Wharton Barker, 29 May 1885, Wharton Barker Papers (Library of Congress); Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 316; J. R. Hawley to George William Curtis, 3 March 1884, George William Curtis Papers (Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Library).