22 - Reluctant taft meets radical Bryan
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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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