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 THIRD
EDITION

Plan Graphics for

the

Landscape Designer
with Section-Elevation and Computer Graphics
Tony Bertauski
 THIRD EDITION

Plan Graphics for

the

Landscape Designer
with Section-Elevation and Computer Graphics

Tony Bertauski
Trident Technical College
For information about this book, contact:
Waveland Press, Inc.
4180 IL Route 83, Suite 101
Long Grove, IL 60047-9580
(847) 634-0081
[email protected]
www.waveland.com

Copyright © 2019, 2007, 2003 by Tony Bertauski

10-digit ISBN 1-4786-3726-9

13-digit ISBN 978-1-4786-3726-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

7  6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Introduction   vii
Acknowledgments   viii

1 The Landscape Design Process

and Presentation Graphics · · · · · · · · · · ·   1
Landscape Designers’ Communication Tools· · · · · · 1
Hand Drawings Are Still Relevant · · · · · · · · · · 2
Presentation Graphics· · · · · · · · · · · · · · 3
The Design Process · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 6
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 15

2 Tools  · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 17
Drawing Surface · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 18
Paper · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 19
Printing· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 20
Drafting Tape · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 22
T-Square · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 23
Triangles· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 25
Pencils· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 25
Lead for Mechanical Pencils · · · · · · · · · · · 26
Pencil Sharpener· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 27
Sandpaper Block · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 28
Erasers · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 28
Eraser Shield· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 29
Markers and Ink Pens · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 30
Circle Template· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 32

iii
iv  Contents

Compass · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 33
Beam Compass· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 34
Scale· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 35
Ames Lettering Guide · · · · · · · · · · · · · 37
Dry Cleaning Pad · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 37
Brush · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 38
Protractor· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 38
Curves · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 38
Parallel Glider · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 39
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 39

3 Line   · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 43
Line Quality · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 43
Free Hand vs. Straight Edge · · · · · · · · · · · 44
Line Weight · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 48
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 54

4 Lettering· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 55
The Art of Lettering · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 55
Guidelines to Good Lettering· · · · · · · · · · · 56
Lettering Styles· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 64
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 67

5 Symbols · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 69
The Basic Elements of Symbols · · · · · · · · · · 71
Drawing Symbols · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 77
Symbols Reflecting Plant Material· · · · · · · · · 80
The Role of Symbols in the Design · · · · · · · · · 95
Adding Shadows to Symbols· · · · · · · · · · · 102
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 108
Symbol Appendix· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 110

6 Ground Plane   · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 121

Textures Representing the Ground Plane · · · · · · 121
Textural Drawing Techniques· · · · · · · · · · · 124
Ground Plane Components · · · · · · · · · · · 131
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 144
Ground Plane Textures Appendix · · · · · · · · · 145
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 Contents v

7 The Plan Drawing   · · · · · · · · · · · · · 149

Plan Drawing Elements· · · · · · · · · · · · · 149
Plan Drawing Layout· · · · · · · · · · · · · · 154
Labeling · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 163
Plant List · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 171
Sketches and Details· · · · · · · · · · · · · · 172
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 172

8 Color   · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 175
Colored Pencils· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 175
Markers · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 183
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 188

9 Section Drawing   · · · · · · · · · · · · · 191

Vertical Elements· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 192
Locating a Section Drawing on the Plan Drawing · · · 192
Section-Elevation · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 195
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 207

10 Computer Graphics   · · · · · · · · · · · · · 209

A Brief History of Computer Graphics· · · · · · · 209
When to Make the Switch to Computer Design · · · 210
Advantages of Landscape Design Software · · · · · 211
Imaging Software· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 212
The Imaging Process and Techniques· · · · · · · · 213
Creating the Ground Plane with Imaging · · · · · · 223
Plan Drawing Software· · · · · · · · · · · · · 228
Three-Dimensional Modeling · · · · · · · · · · 232
Plant Database· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 232
Cost-Estimator Software · · · · · · · · · · · · 238
Printing· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 238
Software Products· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 239
Summary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 240

Appendix A Portfolio 243

Project Files· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 243
Photography· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 244
Copying the Plan Drawing · · · · · · · · · · · 246

Appendix B Student Design 247

Preliminary and Master Plans · · · · · · · · · · 248
Master Plans· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 260

Index 267
 Introduction

With the advancement of computers, drafting skills have dropped in demand. Design software has
made it quick and easy to draw a design and make revisions. This is certainly the case with large, com-
mercial landscape designs that often go through many changes. Software has made changing a design
into a very simple, quick process that would require long hours of redrawing for a hand-drafted design.
However, there are still many landscape designs drawn by hand and embraced by many landscape
architects and designers as an art form. Drawing is closely related to art, which itself is a designing pro-
cess. Thus, learning an artistic approach to creating a design helps support one’s understanding of the
design process. In this book, students learn to develop a successful, functional landscape design with a
loose, aesthetic appeal that will communicate to the client effectively as well as artistically.
Many students come to an introductory landscape design class knowing very little about the design
process, not to mention how to draw. To assume that they know what a T-square is and how to use it
would be a mistake. Because many of the tools and techniques are simple, they are often overlooked for
explanation. An introductory class has to start with the very basics so that students can build on the fun-
damentals in advanced classes. These skills are taught by instructors providing demonstrations and stu-
dents completing exercises. However, a thoroughly illustrated guide would help students work without
the assistance of the instructor, catch up on assignments they have missed, and also serve as a reference.
Much of the feedback I have gotten from students has been for a good drawing text for class. Much
of the drawing instructions are provided in the lab by the instructor with personal feedback. However,
a text that students can refer to would greatly improve assignments done outside of class in addition to
preparing students for the next class. In essence, what many students wanted was a clear guide show-
ing how the tools work, how to create symbols and textures, and a stepwise approach from start to
finish in the design process.
This book starts at the beginning of the landscape design process and proceeds with a simplicity that
will help beginning students. It also serves as a reference for symbols and textures, and provides students
with the skills needed to create an aesthetically appealing plan drawing that communicates effectively.

vii
viii  Introduction

New in This Edition

Since the second edition, I have made note of techniques or concepts that students have difficulty
grasping and areas I’ve felt need to be expanded, clarified, or included. I’ve added text and illustrations
within each chapter, as well as:
• Tips on working with digital copies
• Additional drawing techniques for line, lettering, and texture
• An expanded symbol library
• Updated computer design techniques and products
• Additional color development examples

This edition includes additional student drawings at the end of the book illustrating many good (and
some bad) techniques. This is to give you a concise overview of examples that implement the content
of this text.
Best of luck!

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank those who made this book possible, including the following reviewers:
Anne Spafford, North Carolina State University; Karen Midden, Southern Illinois University; and Patricia
Lindsey, North Carolina State University. Also Doug Hihn, Monet’s Gardens in Charleston, for all the
time, insight, and drawings he volunteered. Thom Hood, Good Earth Inc., who has been unselfish with
his time for input. All the students who have given invaluable feedback and drawings. Mack Fleming
and Sharon Coke of the Horticulture Program at Trident Technical College, who have been integral to its
success. Tom Riccardi at Visual Impact software for allowing the use of software. And my wife, Heather,
who has always supported this project; and my kids, Ben, the builder, and Maddy, the storyteller, who
have kept things fun.
 1
The Landscape
Design Process and
Presentation Graphics

Objectives
• Understand the role of presentation graphics in the landscape design process
• Identify the different phases of the landscape design process
• Understand the ultimate goal of landscape design

Landscape Designers’ Communication Tools

Before discussing graphics in a landscape design, let’s examine the purpose of the designer’s drawings.
A landscape designer sketches ideas, draws plans, and in some cases creates elevated drawings in order
to get his or her ideas across clearly to the audience. Most of the time, designing typically occurs in
the form of a plan drawing. A plan drawing is a two-dimensional drawing of the design viewed from
a bird’s-eye view, directly overhead. Above all else, the plan drawing serves as a tool to communicate
the designer’s ideas.
A copy of the plan drawing will be given to the client and the installation contractor. The client is
the person(s) paying for the design services; the landscape contractor is the company implementing
the ideas. The landscape contractor may or may not be affiliated with the designer. Therefore, the plan
drawing has to be clear and concise as well as accurate.
Sketches, section drawings, or computer images may accompany the plan drawing to present a more
detailed portrayal of vertical design elements. Sketches and elevations often convey the visual aspects
of a design to clients better than plan drawings.

1
Other documents randomly have
different content
 314 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION in Washington,
if elected. With Tilden at their head, they almost captured the
presidency in a contest with a “darkhorse” Republican of Ohio,
Rutherford B. Hayes. Indeed, the Democrats asserted that they had
in truth carried the country, pointing to the records which gave
Tilden a plurality of the popular vote and claiming for him a majority
of the electoral college. But, citing documents equally impressive,
the Republicans asserted that Hayes was lawfully elected,
precipitating on that account a dispute over the returns which raged
for months while the fate of the candidates hung uncertain in the
balance. On any view of the case, the merits of the controversy were
confused owing to the peculiar condition of several southern states,
still disorganized from the effects of the Civil War. By both sides
frauds were probably committed — or at least irregularities so
glaring that long afterwards a student of the affair who combined
wit with research came to the dispassionate conclusion that the
Democrats stole the election in the first place and then the
Republicans stole it back. Whatever the virtues of the contestants,
the countrv was in an ugly temper for several weeks and civil strife
again seemed imminent, when suddenly the managers in Congress
agreed to submit the issues to a commission of fifteen. This special
body, embracing eight Republican members who voted solidly on all
crucial questions, surveyed the disputed election and awarded the
palm to Hayes. Having had enough strife for the time being, the
Democrats acquiesced in a verdict which they detested, hoping that,
on appeal, the voters would condemn it at the polls in succeeding
elections. In due time they were permitted to rejoice over what
seemed to be a rebuke to the Republicans, when in 1878 the people
returned a Democratic House of Representatives and the state
legislatures a Democratic Senate. But the emotions which produced
this result were short lived; for two years later the same people,
riding on a high tide of economic prosperity, elected to the
presidency the Republican candidate, James A. Garfield, with a plu 
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 315 rality that could not
be questioned in any tribunal, indicating that if any wrong had been
done in 1876 it was hardly grave enough to demand reparation in
the form of a political revolution. At that juncture, however, fate
turned the iron leaves in her book. Garfield was assassinated by a
disappointed office-seeker and his place was taken by the Vice-
President, Chester A. Arthur, a machine politician of New York who
did not understand the Valley of Democracy and who could not keep
in lockstep the federal office holders in the South, the “bread and
butter brigade,” as they were called at the time. When the campaign
of 1884 approached, the Republican directorate was in a dilemma.
Arthur was impossible ; Grant lay upon his deathbed; and Blaine’s
public record, after every defense had been made and every apology
uttered, was distressing for the reformers to contemplate.
Nevertheless on the plea that Blaine had “earned the nomination,”
the coveted prize was given to him. Now for the first time in their
history, the Republicans in the quest for a leader had turned away
from the Mississippi basin and selected as their candidate a man
closely associated with that ancient demon — the money power.
Besides that departure from tradition, they chose a statesman whose
mercantile affiliations in politics had aroused the distrust of those
reputable citizens whom Roosevelt styled the “most virtuous and
desirable men of the great seaboard cities.” The signs of the
Republican zodiac were far from propitious. At that very moment the
Democrats were at last favored by fortune, in finding for their
standard bearer a man of peculiar availability, Grover Cleveland.
Though not born in a log cabin, Cleveland had made his way upward
from poverty and could drink beer from the bar in a fashion
approved by any mechanic in his party. Though his “moral character”
had been impugned by Roosevelt, he had a general reputation for
sterling honesty. He knew the ways of politics and had displayed his
talents in that line as
 316 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION sheriff and
mayor of Buffalo and as governor of his state, one of the strategic
commonwealths of the Union. Beyond all question Cleveland was
conservative — and from New York, where dwelt most of the
mercantile and financial Democrats. His respect for acquired rights
had been demonstrated by his refusal to sign a bill fixing a five cent
fare on the elevated railway in New York City; and men of substance,
especially those with no investments in protected industries, believed
that Cleveland would prove trustworthy in most emergencies and
conduct public business with due regard for proprieties. At any rate
he was not associated with a demand for radical changes in the
common run of usage; rather was he wholly innocent of convictions
on that score. To complete the list of his political virtues, he had
never held a post in the federal government and so had no
irreconcilable enemies in the national sphere. The whole burden of
the argument for Cleveland could therefore be summed up in the
ancient and persistently popular slogan, “Turn the rascals out,” an
appeal which Republicans answered in a manner fitted to the gage.
From the beginning to the end the campaign was primitive in its
tactics. Without respect for parlor etiquette, Republicans attacked
the personal character of Cleveland, who was not devoid of frailties
of course, who in fact confessed them; while in behalf of the
Democracy a famous cartoonist drew a horrible picture of Blaine
which in the eyes of decent citizens must have damned the author
rather than the victim. And when the dust, smoke, and stench died
down, it was found that Cleveland was elected President by a slight
plurality, owing his success to a victory won in New York by methods
which the Republicans called fraudulent — methods none too dainty
even when viewed in the light of vulgar custom. At best the popular
verdict was dubious, for the state legislatures kept an opposition
majority in the United States Senate during Cleveland’s entire
administration. Much to the chagrin of Republicans, the country
survived
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 317 the shock of having a
Democrat in the White House again after the lapse of twenty-four
years, and the mills of the gods continued to grind as of yore. If the
new President had cherished any plans for unique and constructive
legislation, the Republican Senate would have checked him, making
the security of the status quo doubly sure; but as a matter of fact
Cleveland’s attitude toward the state was that of classical negation
with respect to business and his conduct of public affairs bore the
stamp of his philosophy. Vetoes were the most significant feature of
his presidency; he killed more than two hundred pension bills, thus
destroying the hopes of many thousand Republican applicants; he
struck down a great river and harbor bill, therewith snatching from
contractors and commercial communities benefits which they had
been taught to expect by longestablished practice. From the
Republican standpoint, Cleveland’s administrative acts were also
mainly negative; for, within two years of his inauguration, he had
removed four-fifths of the fourthclass postmasters, all the internal
revenue collectors, and ten-elevenths of the collectors of customs —
a veritable army of Republican politicians who, to use the language
of the trade, had long “battened at the public crib” — and had
appointed in their places deserving Democrats, to the great sorrow
of the civil service reformers who had supported him at the polls.
Broadening the range of his activities, the President wrested from
corporations and private persons more than eighty million acres of
public lands illegally obtained from the generous land office of the
federal government during the benevolent regime of his
predecessors. It did not entirely destroy the merit of such actions to
point out, as his enemies were fond of doing, that they represented
virtues exercised chiefly at the expense of Republican mesne lords.
In any case Cleveland soon accumulated a host of foes among those
who lived by politics and near the end of his term he aroused
consternation, real or feigned, in the hearts
 318 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION of industrial
captains, by assailing the moral principles of the protective tariff
itself. That was the last straw; apparently the violation of a long-
standing truce. In spite of more or less tinkering with the tariff
schedules, the rates on the average had not been cut below the high
levels established in the crisis of the Civil War. On their part,
Republicans had been content to let well enough alone; while the
Democratic national directorate, in its thirst for political power in
Washington, had avoided making a direct attack on the whole
system, after the manner of the forefathers in the day of Calhoun.
So things stood in 1887 when Cleveland, taking a fresh view of the
matter, announced in his annual message that the protective tariff,
besides being vicious and inequitable, taxed every consumer in the
land “for the benefit of the manufacturers.” If New York importers of
capital and merchandise now rejoiced, the great industrial barons
shouted for help like drowning men and the Republican managers
made the most of the occasion. Putting aside Blaine, who was
thoroughly weary of politics, they nominated Benjamin Harrison of
the Middle West, a shrewd Indiana lawyer and a reticent politician
who had committed no known indiscretions. To expedite his
candidacy, they selected an efficient collector of campaign funds,
who with charming simplicity asked manufacturers to contribute to
the party war-chest on the basis of the benefits to accrue from
Republican insurance against a tariff reduction. As expectations were
large, the free-will offerings were generous. Cleveland was defeated.
Imagining that the old mandate had now been definitely renewed,
Republicans set to work under the leadership of William McKinley in
the House of Representatives to raise many notches the tariff which
Cleveland had so recently condemned as exorbitant. Expecting for
this achievement a chorus of approval, they were much astounded
to find their work rejected of the populace. While the ink was still
wet on the McKinley bill, they lost the congressional campaign in the
autumn of 1890, and, two years later, they saw Har 
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 319 rison overwhelmed at
the polls by his old antagonist, the author of the terrifying message
of 1887, Grover Cleveland. They were even more amazed to learn
that over a million citizens in the same election had repudiated both
established parties — had voted the populist ticket and demanded
something more drastic in the line of political action than the
observance of obvious decencies in the process of acquisition and
enjoyment, indicating that the end of a period had come. If, at the
close of thirty years of campaigning in the upper range of American
politics, any Herodotus had inquired into the grand measures of
national policy consistently advocated by the victorious candidates
previous to their nominations, he would have met disappointing
results. Grant had been a grim and silent soldier who knew little
about politics before he took office in 1869; his opinions on the
subject, such as they were, rather inclined him to the Democratic
side; at least he voted the Democratic ticket in 1856 and would have
done it again in i860 if he could have acquired a residence in Illinois
in time to cast a ballot against Lincoln. Hayes and Garfield were
“dark horses,” that is, they were nominated, not for their outspoken
championship of noteworthy measures, but because the prominent
figures in the party so split the convention vote that only politicians
of the second order could be chosen. Cleveland had been sheriff of
Buffalo county, mayor of Buffalo, and governor of New York but he
had given little thought to national questions and with genuine
feeling distrusted his capacity to fill the office of President. Harrison’s
chief asset was his descent from William Henry Harrison, the hero of
Tippecanoe. Not one of these men was elevated to the presidency
because he had formulated and defended in the theater of national
politics a large or definite program of measures and policies. Indeed
it was the very leaders associated with positive ideas and practices
in the House and Senate who were deemed by party managers
unavailable for a national campaign.
 320 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION Surface
indications afforded by party platforms, official orations, and
statistics of presidential elections did not, however, accurately reveal
the political state of the Union in detail. The people were not as
contented with the operations of party captains as superficial
appearances seemed to imply; nor was the triumph of the
Republicans entirely unmixed with bitterness. It is true that they
carried every presidential campaign in this period except two and,
saving two brief interruptions, commanded a majority in the Senate
continuously; but they were by no means fortunate in the popular
congressional tourneys. In that sphere — the lower range of federal
politics — they lost more elections than they won. Between the
restoration of the last southern state in 1870 and Bryan’s first battle
twenty-six years later, the Democrats triumphed in eight of the
twelve contests for the possession of the House of Representatives.
And through all those years the Republican directorate was made
still more nervous by the agitations of recalcitrant members on the
left wing of the party, especially by the spokesmen of the agrarian
West where the original union of capitalism and agriculture effected
in Chicago in i860 was attacked, first by the Greenbackers and then
by the Populists. In short, in the lower ranges of politics, nearest the
electorate, the old currents of agrarian and labor unrest continued to
run as before the. Civil War, now sluggishly, now swiftly, with the
ebb and flow of business prosperity. Although that armed conflict
and the prosperity associated with it in the North for a time
obscured former economic antagonisms and silenced insurgency in
many quarters, what seemed to be a political peace was after all
only a partial truce. The philosophy and sentiments of Jackson’s
farmer-labor party never vanished completely and when, in the
garnering of the war’s aftermath, the high prices of agricultural
produce collapsed — while the interest and principal of
 321 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION farm mortgages
remained as before — and industrial workers were compelled to face
severe wage reductions, historic schisms reappeared so plainly that
all could see them. Everywhere among distressed farmers and
suffering laborers in the cities, advocates of change and apostles of
revolt once more raised their voices against the prevailing order of
the rich, if not the well-born. In the councils of both established
parties, in independent agitations, and especially in elections to the
House of Representatives, where the popular influence more easily
became effective, the spiritual descendants of humble Jacksonian
leaders made their voices and their creeds count in the tussles of
political life. If most of the restless politicians who came to the front
in this new age could find comfortable quarters and occasionally
official berths in the left wing of an accredited party, there were
always extreme innovators content with nothing less than a
complete declaration of independence; and from 1872 forward at
each successive presidential election one or two minor parties
appeared: Labor Reformers in 1872; Greenbackers in 1876 and in
the two following campaigns; United Laborites in 1888; and
Socialists and Populists in 1892. In every case leaders of these
factions made their appeal to farmers and laborers unhappy about
their share in the annual output of wealth. Even the Prohibitionists
who advanced a presidential candidate in 1872 on a single issue
soon found themselves making professions of faith on economic
matters and finally hopelessly split into petty fragments over the
currency question. But none of the minor parties ever succeeded in
establishing a permanent organization among farmer-labor
constituents. The Greenbackers whose vote in the congressional
elections of 1878 rose to the million mark and the Populists who
fourteen years later cast more than a million ballots for their
presidential candidate were equally powerless to effect a revolution
in the American two-party system. Against all efforts of new factions
to get a firm foothold on the political stage many forces operated. As
such in 
 322 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION surgents
usually rose in periods of economic depression, so they were
generally overwhelmed by returning tides of prosperity. Subsisting
on temporary distress and having no spoils of political preferment on
which to maintain a skeleton army of officers in lean years, their
capacity to resist adversity was pitifully inadequate to the demands
of party warfare. Often their most princely leaders fell under the lure
of comfortable jobs in the departments at Washington; Terence V.
Powderly, for example, head of the Knights of Labor and once the
terror of respectables gathered over their tea cups, was at last
brought into the fold and lived to a ripe old age on a government
salary. Others, less prominent, were frequently accommodated in
state and municipal offices. This process of attrition was also
hastened by concessions from one or both of the canonical parties.
True to the traditions of Jackson, the Democrats always made
special efforts, particularly in congressional elections, to win votes in
farmer-labor circles, while stalwart Republicans were sometimes
stained green or red according to the favorite color of the current
independency. Blaine, for instance, was accused by righteous
eastern papers of wanting to inflate the currency for the benefit of
farmers and McKinley was an ardent bi-metallist in his early days.
Nor were the oblations from regular shamans always perfunctory.
From time to time significant pieces of legislation were granted at
state capitals and grand overtures were made at Washington, for
reasons patent and unavoidable. As a matter of fact, in a country so
closely divided between Republicans and Democrats all political
leaders had to walk warily ; a few thousand, nay a few hundred,
votes shifted here and there meant the gain or loss of the
presidency with all the honors, profits, and emoluments thereunto
attached. So the astute managers of independent fragments were
occasionally able to wrest substantial discounts from the harassed
and anxious directors of the main spectacles and, still more
prophetically, to set the issues for the coming decades.
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 323 Whatever their
fortunes as organizations or political traders, the third parties as a
rule included in their professions of faith certain large assumptions
and a number of concrete items. Orthodox rebellion always required
from them of course a condemnation of both old parties. “We
denounce,” exclaimed the United Labor party in 1888, “the
Democratic and Republican parties as hopelessly and shamelessly
corrupt and by reason of their affiliation with monopolies equally
unworthy of the suffrages of those who do not live upon public
plunder.” The Greenbackers broke a lance on the august Senate of
the United States, declaring it to be composed “largely of aristocratic
millionaires who according to their own party papers generally
purchased their elections in order to protect the great monopolies
which they represent.” While condemning the major parties and their
practices, the sectaries advanced from time to time specific articles
of salvation. Collectively their programs embraced standard elements
: the earliest possible extinction of the national debt ■ — that
ancient bugbear of Jeffersonian Democracy; the abolition of the
national banking system — after the fashion of Jacksonian
Democracy; the substitution of notes issued by the government —
awakening echoes as old as 1765; the unlimited coinage of silver as
well as gold to enlarge the volume of currency — a new statement
of the ancient plan for easy money; the reduction of the tariff
particularly on articles bought by farmers — a return to the state of
things on the eve of Lincoln’s fateful election; the regulation of
railway and other public utility rates by government action — a
departure from Democratic laissez faire for obvious reasons; the
recovery of public lands from railway and other corporations that
had been negligent in observing the law — to be turned over free of
charge to farmers and laborers; inheritance and income taxes
tapping the wealth of those who had come to the top in the struggle
for existence — lightening the taxes on goods consumed by the
masses; the popular election of United States Senators with a view
to chang 
 324 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ing the
economic composition of that body; woman suffrage as an act of
tardy justice in keeping with the national creed; the defense of labor
against the use of the injunction and military force in time of
industrial disputes; and certain pieces of social legislation, such as
the prohibition of the contract labor system and the exclusion of
Chinese coolies. To such professions of faith must be added of
course the larger generalities of the Socialist Labor party which
made its appearance on the national stage in 1892 with a
declaration that “man cannot exercise his right of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness without the ownership of the land and tools
with which to work.” If these proposals, which seemed so
revolutionary when first advanced in “thunders on the left,” found
little or no favor in the upper sphere of American politics during this
period, if they were not approved by Presidents, Senators, or Federal
Judges, they were none the less popular in the lower range, in
congressional elections and legislative debates. In fact, the record of
orations delivered in the House of Representatives shows a
continuous division over economic issues along the lines of the
cleavage which existed in Jackson’s day, often without respect for
the symbols of established parties. In that “people’s forum,” under
various guises, the old struggle of farmers and laborers to get a
larger share of the golden stream which flowed from industry was
waged with all the rancor that had marked the controversies in the
middle period and the Hamiltonian age. It is true .that the battles
usually ended in smoke; the contest over the Mills tariff bill in 1888,
for example, evoked a flood of speeches which if printed in full
would occupy at least twenty massive volumes and yet modified not
a line in the statutes; but it was the debate, not the lawbook, that
revealed the prevailing tempers of the multitude.
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 325 If the English
parliamentary system had been in vogue in the United States, the
Democratic masses that dominated the House of Representatives for
sixteen out of the twentyfour years between 1872 and 1896 would
have ruled the upper works — the Senate, the President, and the
Judiciary — as well as the chamber of loquacity and effected more
than one radical change in the Jacksonian direction. Under the
American system of checks and balances, however, they could do
little more than elect spokesmen to give vent to their feelings on the
tariff, trusts, railways, currency, and other economic issues involved
in the distribution of the annual national income. In these
circumstances nothing disruptive could be done in the way of tariff
reform. With the power of the federal government often divided
between the two parties and with both organizations suffering from
vexation on the wings, it was difficult to move the rates up or down.
There were, to be sure, reductions in duties in 1872 — quickly offset
by increases — and there was another revision in 1883 when the
Republicans, finding the treasury loaded with a surplus, decided to
forestall action too sweeping on the part of the opposition. But
Calhoun’s historic doctrines had not a ghost of a show among the
directors of the upper range of federal politics. When the Democrats
won the presidency and the House of Representatives in the election
of 1884 and after long debates put a tariff-reduction bill through the
lower chamber, their measure was promptly killed by the Republican
majority in the Senate. Then emboldened by a swing of the polk tical
pendulum, the advocates of protection under the leadership of
William McKinley tried an upward push. This new champion, as his
biographer states, had become “the guardian angel, in the halls of
Congress, of the industries of the country. . . . His father and
grandfather were both manufacturers of iron, an industry which
depended heavily
 326 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION upon the
protective tariff,” and his district was full of 'industries that “had been
started under the fostering care of protective duties.” Carefully
engineered by the “guardian angel,” the bill of 1890 bearing
McKinley’s name carried the rates to a point far above the Civil War
tariffs. Against what they were pleased to call the Republican levy on
their toil, importing merchants, angry planters, and discontented
farmers now made a great outcry and in the elections of 1892 the
Democrats captured both the executive and legislative departments.
On the assumption that they had at last a clear mandate from the
country, their left wing leaders in the House of Representatives
drove through a bill that frightened manufacturers more than any
tariff measure since the crisis of 1857 — a project putting sugar,
lumber, coal, iron, and wool on the free list while subjecting the
duties on cotton, woolens, and linen to severe cuts. Going still
further, they imposed a tax on the incomes of the rich for the
avowed purpose of easing the burdens of the masses. Amplifying the
sentiments of their proposed statute, the Democrats, in supporting
the measure, made speeches that sounded like echoes from the
tomb of Calhoun. Exultant over their victory, they laid the fruits of
their labor before the Senate, transferring the business to the higher
sphere of American politics. When the performance was concluded in
that chamber, the result was a measure — the Wilson bill of 1894 —
that resembled the design of McKinley rather than the patterns of
McDuffie and W alker. Completely disappointed with this outcome,
President Cleveland, who had now advanced to the point of
declaring that “a tariff for any other purpose than public revenue is
public robbery,” refused to sign the bill, allowing it fo become a law
without his approval. Soon afterward a congressional inquiry into the
pressure of interests on specific schedules spread an unsavory odor
over the whole affair, convincing the left-wing Democrats that a
revolution would have to be accomplished in the upper realm by
establishing the popular election of United States Senators. This
revision of the
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 327 _ work handed down
by the Fathers was to be achieved in time. If little could be done
with the tariff by champions of reduction, still less could be
accomplished in the enterprise of forcing down what the Populists
called “the annual tribute levied by the trusts upon the people of the
country.” Although the directorates of both parties, in formulating
national platforms, were either silent or inscrutable on the issues
afforded by the new economic leviathans, the left-wing factions, true
to form, were both vociferous and assertive. They filled acres of
print with denunciations of corporate wealth and they offered a
prescription which they deemed a remedy for the disease — the
dissolution of all great industrial associations into competing parts,
cutting prices for consumers. In fact they were able to frighten the
right wing into concessions with reference to this proposal and to
force through Congress, in 1890, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which,
in impenetrable language, forbade all combinations in restraint of
foreign and interstate trade. As a plainspoken Senator from
Connecticut remarked, no one knew what the bill would do to the
trusts, but a majority agreed that something must be flung out to
appease the restive masses. In the general attack on corporate
wealth which ran true to Jacksonian formulas, the managers and
owners of railways came in for more than their share. They had
made swollen fortunes in building, operating, and manipulating
systems of transportation; they had granted rebates and privileges
to favored persons and corporations; and they had fixed freight and
passenger rates with an eye to large returns. By obvious methods of
learning and reasoning, western farmers reached the opinion that
the railway companies had received doles too generous from the
government, had fallen into the hands of promoters bent on quick
profits rather than efficiency, and were in fact heartless enterprises
engaged in garnering “all the traffic would bear.”
 328 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION By the same
logical route they arrived at the conviction that the shippers of grain
were the chief tributaries to the strong boxes of the “railway
magnates,” especially in the West where “the long haul” was the
significant feature of transportation. From idea to action the road
was not long. During the general upheaval of the seventies, farmers,
already extensively organized in benevolent lodges known as
Granges, managed to capture the legislatures of several states,
notably Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, in campaigns waged largely on
railway issues. Once in possession of the local strongholds they
enacted laws fixing rates for carrying freight and passengers and
charges for warehousing grain, thus making known their
determination to use political weapons in the contest over the
distribution of wealth. Immediately a shrill chorus of rage arose from
the ranks of railway security holders. Speaking for their interest, the
editor of the New York Nation, doubtless regarding rate regulation as
an unforeseen tendency of democracy, declared such legislation to
be in principle “confiscation, or, if another phrase be more
agreeable, the change of railroads from pieces of private property,
owned and managed for the benefit of those who have invested
their money in them, into eleemosynary or charitable corporations,
managed for the benefit of a particular class of applicants for
outdoor relief — the farmers. If ... we are going back to a condition
of society in which the only sort of property which we can call our
own is that which we can make our own by physical possession, it is
certainly important to everyone to know it, and the only body which
can really tell us is the Supreme Court at Washington.” For a time,
that is, until competent adjustments could be made in the personnel
of the judiciary, that eminent tribunal failed to make the expected
answer. In fact in the first cases presented for hearing, it upheld the
local rate legislation against the most vehement pleas of skilled
railway lawyers. It refused, however, to sanction state laws
hampering the
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 329 course of interstate
commerce, thereby forcing the farmers to carry their agitation to
Washington. At the national capital, as indeed in their own
communities, the agrarians received aid and comfort from
manufacturers and business men of the middling order who had
suffered from rebates, secret rates, and other discriminations at the
hands of the railway companies. In a grand rush this powerful
economic combination carried through Congress the Interstate
Commerce Act of 1887 — a measure couched in uncertain terms
which were soon hopelessly buried in the glosses of the Supreme
Court and rendered practically innocuous to those who had invested
their money in railways. 1 In this endless contest over the annual
output that flowed from mill, mine, and farm, the battle over the
currency loomed far larger than did the struggle over tariffs, trusts,
or railways. This was entirely natural. From the uprising of Daniel
Shays, indeed from colonial times to the latest hour, debt-burdened
farmers with their eyes fixed on the volume of currency had sought
to control it to their own advantage. If it was enlarged in generous
proportions through the agency of a government in their hands, they
could expect rising prices and the easy discharge of their obligations
in interest and principal. About this reasoning there was no mystery.
On the other hand, capitalists who held mortgages and bonds
drawing a fixed rate of interest were equally concerned over the
amount and character of the money in circulation If the volume was
restricted and the basis sound, they could count on receiving their
interest and principal in dollars of the same purchasing power as
those they had originally lent to their debtors. If, however, the
volume was contracted or at all events not made adequate to the
swelling currents of business, so the theory ran, prices would fall
and the bondholder would reap the advantage of a return in dollars
of
 330 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION a greater
buying power than those originally lent. There was no mystery about
this exploit in logic either. So the one party held that the government
itself should issue all money and make the volume generous, if not
immense; only on mathematical measurements did the gentlemen of
this school have differences of opinion. With kindred inferences the
other party looked favorably upon a steady currency, or at least one
not too expansive, and declared that the emission of paper notes
should be confined principally to national banks for the benefit of
those who invested their money in that form of business enterprise.
Whatever the intrinsic merits of the respective arguments, it was
made manifest that in the struggle over the distribution of wealth a
considerable stream could be deflected one way or another through
the use of the government’s power over the issue of money. Until
the eve of the Second Revolution, as we have seen, the party of
easy money, with varying fortunes, had waged a contest that was on
the whole highly gratifying to its leaders. The national banking
system had been destroyed a second time and state banks were
issuing currency with a more than generous regard for the
requirements of the occasion. Then in a moment victory was
snatched from the agrarians and all aspects of public finance
transformed. During the Civil War, as noted above, the Republicans
in Congress wiped out state banks of issue by one stroke and
established on their ruins a national banking system. At the same
time, however, the exigencies of war, as often happens in such
cataclysms, made it imperative for the national government itself —
still compelled to be tender to agrarian interests — to float immense
quantities of paper money, not founded on gold, known as
“Greenbacks.” Thus, in spite of protests from advocates of sound
money, the currency was inflated, prices were enhanced, and the
northern farmers could rejoice. When the internecine struggle was
over, however, grave questions arose as to the future of this paper
money. Was
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 331 it to be kept on its fiat
basis, maintained in its existing volume or enlarged on the original
principles? Was it to be ultimately cancelled or placed on a metallic
basis? Naturally the agrarian section gave one answer; the investing
section another, the latter with increasing influence in party councils.
After a long and bitter struggle, Congress enacted in 1875 a law
providing that, at the end of four years, the legal tender notes then
outstanding should be redeemed in specie when presented to the
treasury in sums of not less than fifty dollars. “Now we know,”
remarked a political wag, “that our redeemer liveth.” The captains of
business enterprises and the financiers heaved a sigh of relief. “By
five o’clock,” noted the Secretary of the Treasury on the day when
resumption began, “the news was all over the land and the New
York bankers were sipping their tea in absolute safety.” This news
about the bankers happy at tea was by no means pleasing to the
debt-burdened farmers who saw in resumption an act that forced
them to yield a larger share of produce in paying each coupon due
on their mortgages. With no little heat, therefore, they refused to
accept the verdict as final and cast about for another method of
attaining their ends. Fortunately for them there was upon the carpet
at that very moment a second phase of the same issue, namely, the
free coinage of silver into dollars. In this matter also, legal as well as
economic points were involved, for the Constitution gave Congress
power to coin money and evidently contemplated the use of gold
and silver. On this theory Congress had operated for many years
without ever being able to get into the gold and silver coins the
exact proportion of precious metal necessary to keep them
circulating equally. If the gold in a gold dollar exceeded in market
value the silver in a silver dollar, the former was hoarded and the
latter alone used in business. If the balance tipped the other way,
silver went into hiding and gold held the field. Frustrated by this
problem in higher accountancy after more than one attempt to reach
a precise
 332 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION poise,
Congress stopped the coinage of the standard silver dollar altogether
in 1873, just as new mines were being discovered in the West and
the volume of the world’s silver was rising to an unprecedented
level. For one reason or another the price of the precious white
metal was now borne steadily downward until by 1890 silver was
worth in gold only about half the price it commanded twenty years
before. This course of events led the advocates of easy money,
defeated on the resumption issue, to begin a desperate fight to
restore the silver dollar by compelling the federal government to
adopt the free and unlimited coinage of silver at its old ratio to gold,
sixteen to one, the proportion in force when the so-called “crime of
’73“ was committed. In making their demand, they denied that there
had been an actual decline in the value of silver and alleged that in
reality gold had risen because it had been given a monoply in the
mints of all the leading governments of the world. Applying the
argument, they contended that the contraction of the currency —
the elimination of silver and the adoption of specie payments for
Greenbacks — had in effect lowered the price received for all
products of labor and in that way had increased the real income of
all who held mortgages, bonds, and other investments yielding a
fixed return. With persistent' reiteration they pointed out that the
holder of such securities had been able to buy less than half a
bushel of wheat in 1865 with each dollar of interest received and
then, in the course of years, without any labor on his part, had seen
his coupon dollar rise to the purchasing power of more than a
bushel. In the meantime intense business depressions had added to
the misery of the farmers during those troubled decades and when
the crisis of 1893 arrived, their desperation, especially in the heavily
mortgaged sections of the West and South, reached the breaking
point. A matter of such acute economic strife inevitably became a
prime issue in the political arena, raising up advocates of free silver
in the councils of both parties, especially in the
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 333 left wings. Naturally
most of them came from the West and South — from agrarian
districts far removed from the seats of the mighty; but even in the
East some of the political observers thought they saw a certain
justice in the plaintive argument of the farmer. Blaine, with the
presidential aspirant’s feeling for the temper of the West, once
declared that the single gold standard would be ruinous for all forms
of property except investments yielding a fixed return, and McKinley,
who was later to march to battle for gold, clad in righteousness, was
a bi-metallist until he was shown the rescript of those who directed
his party. In fact, there was no lack of moderate men who believed
that the gold standard was too narrow, tending to enrich the rich
while bringing adversity to debtors of every class. By 1878 those
who held this view had become so numerous that the silver faction
mustered a majority in the House of Representatives and,
notwithstanding obstacles put in its way by a Republican Senate,
carried a bill providing for a huge monthly purchase of silver to be
coined into standard dollars and given a legal tender quality, even
though lower than gold in value. Amplifying this measure, the same
faction later enacted additional legislation requiring the Secretary of
the Treasury to purchase a certain amount of silver monthly for
coinage and issue for it notes redeemable in either metal at his
discretion. But in spite of these halfhearted efforts to placate the
agrarian faction, silver with some fluctuations continued its
downward course, or to use the language of the bi-metallists, “gold
went soaring to the sky,” making the circulation of the two metals on
a parity increasingly difficult. Opposed to inflation in any form,
President Cleveland hastened the oncoming crisis by insisting, during
his second administration, on the redemption of silver notes, as well
as all other paper, in gold, though not legally required to do so,
making it impossible to keep an adequate gold reserve in the federal
treasury. Then powerless to stem the current which he had himself
helped to set in motion, Cleveland
 334 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION adopted the
policy of selling interest-bearing bonds for the purpose of bringing
gold to the reserve; only to see the precious metal brought in by
bond sales immediately withdrawn by bankers in exchange for notes,
creating a vicious circle. In the language of the silver orators, the
President of the United States was as clay in the hands of New York
bankers directed by J. P. Morgan ; in the language of reputable
economics both the politician and the financier bowed to natural
laws. This spectacle aroused deep interest in Congress. The populist
faction demanded that, at least, the bond sales should be thrown
open to the general public instead of being negotiated behind closed
doors with the gentlemen of high finance — a petition which was
granted, after considerable uproar, and with decided advantage to
the government. Encouraged by this concession, the radicals then
went on to urge that the existing law providing for the redemption of
notes in either gold or silver be enforced and that the two metals be
freely coined at the old ratio of sixteen to one, notwithstanding the
disparity in their market price. To this extreme proposal, the
conservatives replied by calling for the total repeal of the silver
purchase acts and by condemning free silver as a form of
confiscation made at the expense of bondholders and creditors in
general. Beset on both sides by determined sectaries and forced to
make a choice, Cleveland threw in his lot with the party of “sound
money.” And supported by right-wing Republicans, he induced
Congress to erase from the statute books the troublesome provisions
for the purchase of silver, bringing to a sudden end the business of
selling bonds to get gold. For this action, Cleveland was immediately
denounced by partisans of the left wing as a traitor to the
Democracy, a supine servant of high finance, the storm of criticism
raging with increasing force when it became perfectly clear that the
repeal of the silver clauses would bring no permanent relief to the
panic-stricken country. In fact with the passing months, the intensity
of the business depression deepened
 335 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION and the falling prices
of farm produce or, as the radicals contended, the rising value of
gold coupons heaped still greater treasure in the chests of creditors.
All over the South and West where the sound of the sheriff’s
hammer was heard thumping off the sale of farms and stock to meet
mortgages foreclosed, farmers’ families, driven from their
homesteads, piled maledictions on the heads of those who sat
comfortably veiled at the feast. The flame of popular wrath licked
the very doors of Congress. Meanwhile in the dreary wastes of the
industrial cities another cyclical paralysis was sending regiments of
men and women into the streets unemployed and embittered,
adding the discontent of the working classes to the unrest of debtor
farmers. Falling wages exasperated labor and this in turn involved
Cleveland’s administration. The Pullman strike, we have seen,
culminated in the dispatch of federal troops to Chicago by the
President, armed intervention in the contest, and the imprisonment
of the trade union leader, Eugene V. Debs, for disobeying a blanket
injunction issued by a district judge. In vain did Debs invoke the
Constitution and the right of trial by jury. The Supreme Court at
Washington answered his appeal by declaring that in injunction
cases a federal judge could issue orders, command the arrest of
offenders, try without jury, and sentence to prison at pleasure;
drawing down upon that puissant tribunal the wrath of organized
labor. During the very same year, the protection of the same
Constitution was invoked by gentlemen in high places who objected
to paying the new federal income tax laid upon them by Democrats
and Populists in 1 894. On their behalf, the Hon. Joseph H. Choate,
who had recently steered John D. Rockefeller through the sinuosities
of legislative inquiries, was employed to defend the rights of those
who received large portions in the annual distribution of national
wealth. In an eloquent plea the advocate warned the judges
 336 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION that it was
“now or never”; that the “communist march” must be stopped; that
property demanded immediate and unconditional security in its
rights. After some vacillation a majority of the Court came to agree
w7ith the eminent counsel and, looking into the sacred letter, found
indisputable justification for blocking the communist march. “The
present assault upon capital,” said Justice Field in his opinion, “is but
the beginning,” such a fearful beginning that, in his judgment, it
promised the arrival of a terrible day on which boards of walking
delegates would be fixing taxes for the rich. The very thought was
shocking to the judicial conscience and five of the judges united on
rulings that substantially destroyed the income tax law. A paean of
approval greeted their solemn determination — at least in certain
quarters. “The wave of the socialist revolution had gone far,”
exclaimed the editor of the New York Sun, “but it breaks at the foot
of the ultimate bulwark set up for the protection of our liberties. Five
to four the Court stands like a rock.” If the figure of speech was
somewhat awry, the news was good. Equally jubilant, the editor of
the Tribune saw, in “the influence behind this attempt to bring about
a communistic revolution in modes of taxation,” an un-American and
unpatriotic effort to destroy domestic industries in the interest of
foreigners — foreshadowing the day when the responsibility for such
untoward incidents could be ascribed to the Russian Bolsheviks.
“Thanks to the Court,” the editor gravely continued, “our
government is not to be dragged into a communistic warfare against
the rights of property and the rewards of industry.” In this light the
incident gleamed from one angle. But there was dissent. Four judges
out of nine, looking just as carefully into the Constitution, failed to
discover there the general justification so clearly visible to the
majority of their brethren. One of the doubters, Justice Harlan, was
venturous enough to remark that the decision was without warrant
and calculated to give to “aggregated wealth”
 THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION 337 a position of
favoritism as objectionable as the dominion of the lawless. And the
populistic press, supported by some metropolitan journals, including
the New York World, Hayed the majority of the Court in language
that seemed horrible to those who had so recently received the
benefits of its thoughtful protection — to say nothing of the old
Republicans who but dimly remembered what they had said forty
years before when the same Court had rendered the Dred Scott
decision so pleasing to the slavocracy. In the West, Governor John P.
Altgeld, in keeping with his principles, declared in so many words
that the income tax judgment was on all fours with the Dred Scott
opinion and that the Supreme Court and the other branches of the
federal government were dominated by capitalists in 1895 just as
they had been by slave owners before the revolution of 1861. That a
great campaign of education or a foreign war, or both, were required
to allay the distemper of the time was now apparent to persons of
conservative inclination. The Populists had polled more than a million
votes four years before and were making impressive gains among
the masses of the Democratic party, disclosing an unflagging
discontent with the empire of business enterprise which promised
embarrassments for those at the center of things. Forewarned by
flashes on the horizon, the directors of the Republican party made
ready for the domestic fray by choosing the gold issue as the central
theme and the protection of industries and the Constitution as the
other grand object of desire. At this juncture Marcus A. Hanna, a
retired business man, weary of the routine of the counting house
and enamored of Warwick’s role, entered the lists in full panoply. By
a liberal expenditure of money, judicious publicity, and an early
management of Negro politicians from the South, he made William
McKinley the man of the hour. On the
 338 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION otherwise
stainless shield of his hero there was only one fleck: McKinley had
voted in Congress for the free coinage of silver and was widely
known as a bi-metallist. But by prudent negotiation that conviction
was overcome, and McKinley was nominated as the Republican
candidate for the presidency on a platform favoring the gold
standard and opposing the free coinage of silver except by
international agreement. With the gravity that was his wont McKinley
now appealed to the country to support him as the foe of the whole
populist program — “that sudden, dangerous, and revolutionary
assault upon law and order.” When the Democratic convention met in
Chicago the nerves of the politicians in attendance were taut with
excitement. For months the agrarian radicals of the West and South
had been seeking delegates of their own kind and their labors had
been crowned with success. Even the opening prayer of the vast
assembly vibrated with “sympathy for our toiling multitudes,
oppressed with burdens too heavy for them to bear.” Every roll call,
every vote revealed a triumphant majority for the left wing. In vain
did the faithful old guard on the right seek to stem the tide. David B.
Hill of New York, whom the cartoonists loved to picture with a
feather in his hat, labelled “I am a Democrat,” marched into the
arena, looking more like Robert G. Ingersoll’s plumed knight than
Blaine ever did, and with fitting eloquence stormed against free
silver, income taxes, and criticism of the Supreme Court. Senator
Vilas of Wisconsin stretched the tension almost to the breaking-point
when he hinted at a possible repetition of the atrocities which had
stained the French Revolution and with dark solemnity warned the
convention that “in the vastness of this country there may he some
Marat unknown, some Danton or Robespierre.” But the gentlemen of
the right addressed ears that were deaf, appealed to hearts that
were as flint. The climax came when William Jennings Bryan, “that
Tiberius Gracchus of the West,” as he was called, flung
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