History of the United States Volume V Part 7

TEMPLE OF MUSIC BY ELECTRIC LIGHT.

GROUP OF BUFFALOS--PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION.

ELECTRIC TOWER AT NIGHT.

TRIUMPHAL BRIDGE AND ENTRANCE TO THE EXPOSITION, SHOWING ELECTRIC DISPLAY AT NIGHT.

THE ELECTRICITY BUILDING.

PRESIDENT McKINLEY AT NIAGARA--ASCENDING THE STAIRS FROM LUNA ISLAND TO GOAT ISLAND. (Copyright photograph, 1901, by C. E. Dunlap).

THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF THE LATE PRESIDENT McKINLEY--TAKEN AS HE WAS ASCENDING THE STEPS OF THE TEMPLE OF MUSIC, SEPTEMBER 6, 1901.

THE MILBURN RESIDENCE, WHERE PRESIDENT McKINLEY DIED--BUFFALO, N. Y.

(Copyright photograph, 1902, by Underwood & Underwood).

ASCENDING THE CAPITOL STEPS AT WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., WHERE THE CASKET LAY IN STATE IN THE ROTUNDA.

PRESIDENT McKINLEY'S REMAINS Pa.s.sING THE UNITED STATES TREASURY, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C. (Copyright photograph, 1901, by Underwood & Underwood).

THE HOME OF WILLIAM McKINLEY AT CANTON, OHIO. (Copyright photograph, 1901, by Underwood & Underwood).

INTERIOR OF ROOM IN WILc.o.x HOUSE WHERE THEODORE ROOSEVELT TOOK THE OATH OF PRESIDENCY.

PERIOD VI.

EXPANSION

1888-1902

CHAPTER I.

DRIFT AND DYE IN LAW-MAKING

[1890]

Race war at the South following the abolition of slavery, new social conditions everywhere, and the archaic nature of many provisions in the old laws, induced, as the century drew to a close, a pretty general revision of State const.i.tutions. New England clung to instruments adopted before the civil war, though in most cases considerably amended.

New Jersey was equally conservative, as were also Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. New York adopted in 1894 a new const.i.tution which became operative January 1, 1895. Of the old States beyond the Mississippi only Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Oregon remained content with ante-bellum instruments. Between 1864 and 1866 ten of the southern States inaugurated governments which were not recognized by Congress and had to be reconstructed. Ten of the eleven reconstruction const.i.tutions were in turn overthrown by 1896. In a little over a generation, beginning with Minnesota, 1858, fourteen new States entered the Union, of which all but West Virginia and Nebraska retained at the end of the century their first bases of government. In some of these cases, however, copious amendments had rendered the const.i.tutions in effect new.

As a rule the new const.i.tutions reserved to the people large powers formerly granted to one or more among the three departments of government. Most of them placed legislatures under more minute restrictions than formerly prevailed. The modern doc.u.ments were much longer than earlier ones, dealing with many subjects previously left to statutes. Distrust of legislatures was further shown by shortening the length of sessions, making sessions biennial, forbidding the pledging of the public credit, inhibiting all private or special legislation, and fixing a maximum for the rate of taxation, for State debts, and for State expenditures.

South Dakota, the first State to do so, applied the initiative and referendum, each to be set in motion by five per cent. of the voters, to general statutory legislation. Wisconsin provided for registering the names of legislative lobbyists, with various particulars touching their employment. The names of their employers had also to be put down. Many new points were ordered observed in the pa.s.sing of laws, such as printing all bills, reading each one thrice, taking the yeas and nays on each, requiring an absolute majority to vote yea, the inhibition of "log-rolling" or the joining of two or more subjects under one t.i.tle, and enactments against legislative bribery, lobbying, and "riders."

While the legislature was snubbed there appeared a quite positive tendency to concentrate responsibility in the executive, causing the powers of governors considerably to increase. The governor now enjoyed a longer term, was oftener re-eligible, and could veto items or sections of bills. By the later const.i.tutions most of the important executive officers were elected directly by the people, and made directly responsible neither to governors nor to legislatures.

The newer const.i.tutions and amendments paid great attention to the regulation of corporations, providing for commissions to deal with railroads, insurance, agriculture, dairy and food products, lands, prisons, and charities. They restricted trusts, monopolies, and lotteries. Modifications of the old jury system were introduced. Juries were made optional in civil cases, and not always obligatory in criminal cases. Juries of less than twelve were sometimes allowed, and a unanimous vote by a jury was not always required. Growing wealth and the consequent multiplication of litigants necessitated an increase in the number of judges in most courts. Efforts were made, with some success, by combining common law with equity procedure, and in other ways, to render lawsuits more simple, expeditious, and inexpensive.

Restrictions were enacted on the hours of labor, the management of factories, the alien owners.h.i.+p of land. The old lat.i.tude of giving and receiving by inheritance was trenched upon by inheritance taxes. The curbing of legislatures, the popular election of executives, civil service reform, and the creation of a body of administrative functionaries with clearly defined duties, betrayed movement toward an administrative system.

A stronghold of political corruption was a.s.saulted from 1888 to 1894 by a hopeful measure known as the "Australian" ballot. It took various forms in different States yet its essence everywhere was the provision enabling every voter to prepare and fold his ballot in a stall by himself, with no one to dictate, molest, or observe. Ma.s.sachusetts, also the city of Louisville, Ky., employed this system of voting so early as 1888. Next year ten States enacted similar laws. In 1890 four more followed, and in 1891 fourteen more. By 1898 thirty-nine States, all the members of the Union but six, had taken up "kangaroo voting," as its foes dubbed it. Of these six States five were southern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: About twenty men in a room with tables, some voters, and others officials.]

A New York Polling Place, showing booths on the left.

An official ballot replaced the privately--often dishonestly--prepared party ballots formerly hawked about each polling place by political workers. The new ballot was a "blanket," bearing a list of all the candidates for each office to be filled. The arrangement of candidates'

names varied in different States. By one style of ticket it was easy for the illiterate or the straight-out party man to mark party candidates.

Another made voting difficult for the ignorant, but a delight to the discriminating.

The new ballot, though certainly an improvement, failed to produce the full results expected of it. The connivance of election officials and corrupt voters often annulled its virtue by devices growing in variety and ingenuity as politicians became acquainted with the reform. Statutes and sometimes const.i.tutions therefore went further, making the count of ballots public, ordering it carried out near the polling place, and allowing munic.i.p.alities to insure a still more secret vote and an instantaneous, unerring tally by the use of voting machines.

In the North and West the tendency of the new fundamental laws was to widen the suffrage, rendering it, for males over twenty-one years of age, practically universal. Woman suffrage, especially on local and educational matters, spread more and more, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah women voted upon exactly the same terms as men, In Idaho women sat in the legislature. There was much agitation for minority representation. Illinois set an example by the experiment of c.u.mulative voting in the election of lower house members of the legislature.

Nearly everywhere at the South const.i.tutional reform involved negro disfranchis.e.m.e.nt. The blacks were numerous, but their rule meant ruin.

It was easy for the whites to keep them in check, as had been done for years, by bribery and threats, supplemented, when necessary, by flogging and the shotgun, But this gave to the rising generation of white men the worst possible sort of a political education. The system was too barbarous to continue. What meaning could free inst.i.tutions have for young voters who had never in all their lives seen an election carried save by these vicious means! New const.i.tutions which should legally eliminate most of the negro vote were the alternative.

In Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, proof of having paid taxes or poll-taxes was (as in some northern and western States) made an indispensable prerequisite to voting, either alone or as an alternative for an educational qualification. Virginia used this policy until 1882 and resumed it again in 1902, cutting off such as had not paid or had failed to preserve or bring to the polls their receipts. Many States surrounded registration and voting with complex enactments. An educational qualification, often very elastic, sometimes the voter's alternative for a tax-receipt, was resorted to by Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Georgia in 1898 rejected such a device. Alabama hesitated, jealous lest illiterate whites should lose their votes. But, after the failure of one resolution for a convention, this State, too, upon the stipulation that the new const.i.tution should disfranchise no white voter and that it should be submitted to the people for ratification, not promulgated directly by its authors as was done in South Carolina, Louisiana, and later in Virginia and Delaware, consented to a revision, which was ratified at the polls November, 1901, not escaping censure for its drastic thoroughness. Its distinctive feature was the "good character clause,"

whereby an appointment board in each county registers "all voters under the present [previous] law" who are veterans or the lawful descendants of such, and "all who are of good character and understand the duties and obligations of citizens.h.i.+p."

In the above line of const.i.tution-framing, whose problem was to steer between the Scylla of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Charybdis of negro domination, viz., legally abridge the negro vote so as to insure Caucasian supremacy at the polls, Mississippi led. The "Mississippi plan," originating, it is believed, in the brain of Senator James Z.

George, had for its main features a registry tax and an educational qualification, all adjustable to practical exigencies. Each voter must pay a poll-tax of at least $2.00 and never to exceed $3.00, producing to the election overseers satisfactory evidence of having paid such poll and all other legal taxes. He must be registered "as provided by law"

and "be able to read any section of the const.i.tution of the State, to understand the same when read to him, or to give a reasonable interpretation thereof." In munic.i.p.al elections electors were required to have "such additional qualifications as might be prescribed by law."

This const.i.tution was attacked as not having been submitted to the people for ratification and as violating the Act of Congress readmitting Mississippi; but the State Supreme Court sustained it, and was confirmed in this by the United States Supreme Court in dealing with the similar Louisiana const.i.tution.

As a spur to negro education the Mississippi const.i.tution worked well.

The Mississippi negroes who got their names on the voting list rose from 9,036 in 1892 to 16,965 in 1895. This result of the "plan" did not deter South Carolina from adopting it. Dread of negro domination haunted the Palmetto State the more in proportion as her white population, led by the enterprising Benjamin R. Tillman, who became governor and then senator, got control and set aside the "Bourbons."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Benjamin R. Tillman.

So early as 1882 South Carolina pa.s.sed a registration act which, amended in 1893 and 1894, compelled registration some four months before ordinary elections and required registry certificates to be produced at the polls. Other laws made the road to the ballot-box a labyrinth wherein not only most negroes but some whites were lost. The multiple ballot-boxes alone were a Chinese puzzle. This act was attacked as repugnant to the State and to the federal const.i.tution. On May 8, 1895, Judge Goff of the United States Circuit Court declared it unconst.i.tutional and enjoined the State from taking further action under it. But in June the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Goff and dissolved the injunction, leaving the way open for a convention.

The convention met on September 10th and adjourned on December 4, 1895.

By the new const.i.tution the Mississippi plan was to be followed until January 1, 1898. Any male citizen could be registered who was able to read a section of the const.i.tution or to satisfy the election officers that he understood it when read to him. Those thus registered were to remain voters for life. After the date named applicants for registry must be able both to read and to write any section of the const.i.tution or to show tax-receipts for poll-tax and for taxes on at least $300 worth of property. The property and the intelligence qualification each met with strenuous opposition, but it was thought that neither alone would serve the purpose.

The Louisiana const.i.tution of 1898, in place of the Mississippi "understanding" clause or the Alabama "good character" clause, enacted the celebrated "grandfather" clause. The would-be voter must be able to read and write English or his native tongue, or own property a.s.sessed at $300 or more; but any citizen who was a voter on January I, 1867, or his son or his grandson, or any person naturalized prior to January 1, 1898, if applying for registration before September 1, 1898, might vote, notwithstanding both illiteracy and poverty. Separate registration lists were provided for whites and blacks, and a longer term of residence required in State, county, parish, and precinct before voting than by the const.i.tution of 1879.

North Carolina adopted her suffrage amendment in 1900. It lengthened the term of residence before registration and enacted both educational qualification and prepayment of poll-tax, only exempting from this tax those ent.i.tled to vote January 1, 1867. In 1902 Virginia adopted an instrument with the "understanding" cause for use until 1904, hedging the suffrage after that date by a poll-tax. Application for registration must be in the applicant's handwriting, written in the presence of the registrar.

White solidarity yielding with time, there were heard in the Carolinas, Alabama, and Louisiana, loud allegations, not always unfounded, that this side or that had availed itself of negro votes to make up a deficit or turned the enginery of vote suppression against its opponents' white supporters.

Most States which overthrew negro suffrage seemed glad to think of the new regime as involving no perjury, fraud, violence, or lese-const.i.tution. Some of Alabama's spokesmen were of a different temper, paying scant heed to the federal questions involved. "The const.i.tution of '75," they said, "recognized the Fifteenth Amendment, which Alabama never adopted, and guaranteed the negro all the rights of suffrage the white man enjoys. The new const.i.tution omits that section.

Under its suffrage provisions the white man will rule for all time in Alabama."