Watershed 1900 Elections (Addendum to N. Baters on AC)

Footnotes on the 1900 US Presidential Elections

I was pleasantly surprised to see the history-friendly article by N. Baters; it is an account of a US election from more than a century ago. Despite its apparently academic slant, that article and the 1900 election are critical to an understanding of the USA, especially its foreign policy since the 1890s. For that reason, I was disappointed that the otherwise excellent article by N. Baters did not focus on the short- and long-term significance of the general election of 1900. It was the last gasp - or threat to the established parties - from a serious third party, in 1896-1900 from an "upstart" Populist Party!

The Populists had been mounting an agrarian revolt since the 1870s, leading first to the struggle on behalf of farmers and silver interests at the state level, and in state courts. In Illinois, the western and southern farmers won a victory in 1877 against the railroads and the higher rates (discriminatory) they assessed small farmers (while big business won many discounts) for transporting and storage of their crops. The Munn v. Illinois case of 1877 declared the State Governments had a role as referee when public interest was impacted by private business. There was the expectation that farmers and sharecroppers might retain a larger share of their earnings rather than pay discriminatory fees to the railroads, the Northeastern bankers and the farm equipment and seed sellers. The Populists turned to William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic Party after the 1886 when the Illinois victory was overturned by the Supreme Court (Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois) with the argument that individual states could not regulate (the rates, fees and behavior of) companies that crossed state lines, only Congress might regulate interstate commerce. This was also the beginning of that dangerous ideology that says corporations are "legal persons" and enjoy all the rights of human beings according to the Fourteenth Amendement (passed, ironically perhaps, for enfranchising former slaves and preventing discrimination against them on any basis, for instance, past servile status). The election of 1900 was unique in that Williams Jennings Bryan was on TWO presidential tickets simultaneously, on the Populist AND for the Democratic Party, albeit with different vice-presidential candidates. Bryan lost narrowly in the popular vote count, but decidedly in the electoral college. Republican William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt (Republican vice-residential nominee) changed elections forever by emphasizing foreign policy and the "victories" of the Spanish-American War of 1898. They may have won on the post-1893 economic recovery; however the Spanish-American war and its aftermath pushed former Populists and Democrats into the more glamorous Republican camp that talked of America's "civilizing mission" in the world.

A related significance of the elections of 1900 showed that when incumbency is accompanied by an election during "war time," the peace, anti-war or anti-imperialistic candidate or party has a mightier mountain to climb. The nation had been ambivalent about building "an American empire" until 1900. After the election, and especially after McKinley was assassinated (by Leon Czolgosz in September 1901) the larger-than-life figure of T. R. Roosevelt, of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill fame, affaected American minds and hearts. Unlike the relatively easy take-over of Puerto Rico from Spain, the people of the Philippines did not welcome the "civilizing" or imperial project of McKinley's partisans and they fought a guerilla war (Vietnam 1?) for four years, resulting in thousands of deaths on both sides.

The greatest significance of the 1900 Presidential Elections pertains to the marginalisation of minorities, both women and African-Americans. Neither dominant party worked hard for the African-American votes or sought to enfranchise women. In fact the Party of Lincoln had failed to pass the Force Bill of 1890 in deference to white southerners and western interests that were less beholden to the Radical Reconstruction tradition. Some of the western mineowners joined the Republicans, whereas they had flocked to the Democrats and Populists in 1892 and in 1896. The Republican hold on the cities (14 of the15 largest were in the hands of their city bosses) ensured such big prizes as the electoral votes of New York. This election ended the role the Party of Jefferson had sought against financial and city interests since the anti-federalist campaigns, that had preferred small farmers and small towns shaping the American character and politics. Hereafter, the cities would invariably determine the winners in national politics. The Populists and Democrats had failed to see the emergence of the middle class as the real "independents" and swing voters. A program dominated by rural and silverite interests (populist or southern preference for silver money and coinage over gold) did not grab the attention or deliver anything attractive enough for middle class and wage-earning voters to look beyond the Republican Party. Nevertheless, eminent Populist demands were coopted by the dominant parties and popular election of senators (rather than by state legislatures) became law by amendment to the Constitution, as did a graduated income tax in the nineteen-teens.

In an interesting aside, the silver dollar also lost in the lections of 1896 and 1900; it was on the way out. The silver dollar was relegated to history much as Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Republican Party premised on a rural coalition of voters and political allies that would shape American character and the nation's limited involvement in world affairs.
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