From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: How Capitalists Rule/Pt.22
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 23:48:12 GMT


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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