A Peek into the Voting Booth in 1896

In 1896 Mary Elizabeth Lease delivered her famous speech at Cooper Union Hall in New York City.  It was a time of great anomosity between the wealthy and the working people.  The Democrats and the People's Party had nominated the same Presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, and his campaign was focused on replacing the Gold Standard with bimetallism, a monetary standard supported with gold and silver.  If you did not read last week's blog about the 1896 election, you may want to scroll down to "A Documentary Treasure," posted 11-8-2018, to read what has been one of the most popular blogs I have posted.  This week I provide a peek into what some of your farming and other laboring ancestors may have been thinking when they marked their ballots. 

Mary Elizabeth Lease was a Kansan and one of the most popular speakers of that time.  Although women did not have the vote, she appeared before cheering crowds to hold them spellbound for 2 or 3 hours, or more.  On August 11, 1896, according to the New York World newspaper, the crowd was "charmed by the seductive oratory of Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease."  Among the targets of her criticism were "the name of Whitney and Cleveland, of Vanderbilt and Rothschild" which were "hailed with hisses and cat-calls" from the crowd.  She declared, "...here in this country we find in place of an aristocracy of royalty an aristocracy of wealth."

It was a time when farmers in Kansas like Isaac Werner had gone into debt to buy horses and oxen (the tractors of their time) and equipment when the prices for their crops were high and the interest on their loans was low, only to be crushed by debt when crop prices fell and interest rates soared.  Added to that were the rising fares Railroads imposed to ship farmers' crops to Eastern markets.  To the farmers, Wall Street, Speculators, and Railroad Tycoons were the villains. Populists wanted (1) government regulations to control the power of the wealthy and (2) bimetallism to curtail the hoarding of gold by the wealthy at the expense of the government and the American people.  As Mary Elizabeth Lease said, "They say this question is so deep that the common people are not fit to decide it.  They say 'leave it to the financiers.'  We have left it to them too long, and while we have been sinking into bankruptcy our financiers have been growing millionaires."

Some of these American milliionaires had grown so wealthy they sought to connect their families to royalty by marrying their daughters to royalty in Europe, paying a considerable 'dowery' to secure the match.  Lease didn't think much of that, describing the shame of "...an American to pay $10,000,000 for the cast-off, disreputable rags of old world royalty, for the scion of a house that boasts the blood of a Jeffreys and a Marlborough."  Winston Churchill's mother was an example, and Downton Abbey fans know that Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, is a fictional example.

Hanna was the president's advisor, looking for gold from war bonds.

Mary Elizabeth Lease also railed against the profits made by the wealthy when the government issued bonds to fight the Civil War, as they did for the later Spanish-American War.  "...we have arrived at a point when there is not enough money to carry on the business of the country. ...When the war broke out the Government was compelled to beg for men and money.  You [the American workers] responded nobly to that cry, but the men who had been crying, 'on to Richmond!' refused to answer.  They locked up their gold or sent it to Europe.  They held their gold more sacred than your lives, your liberty, your wives and children, while the Government was compelled to mortgage itself to get that sneaking cowardly yellow metal.  And if war was to break out again to-morrow gold would disappear as suddenly again."

It is always enlightening to look back at history in reflecting on today's issues.  The year Mary Elizabeth Lease was making this speech in 1896 was the same year some of your ancestors were voting on a ballot similar to the ballot that was the subject of last week's blog.  Those voters, called populists, were farmers and other laborers angry with the influence and special treatment of the wealthy in this country.  A few days ago, many Americans voted, and while voters from varying backgrounds and economic groups could be found in both the Republican and the Democratic parties, it is interesting that those voters today identified as Populists and Progressives tend to vote with the Republicans.  What would Mary Elizabeth Lease think?!

I thought this would be an interesting bit of history to follow last week's blog about the 1896 election.  I hope you enjoyed both of them.

Remember, you can click on the images to enlarge them.

Echoing Voices from the Past

Political cartoon from the 1890s

"They say this question is so deep that the common people are not fit to decide it.  They say 'leave it to the financiers.'  We have left it to them too long, and while we have been sinking into bankruptcy our financiers have been growing millionaires."  Mary Elizabeth Lease from her speech of 11 August 1896 to a mass meeting at Cooper Union Hall, New York City

 

When I began my blog, the first post was titled:  I Love History.  I wrote, "It gives us such a road map of achievements to emulate and mistakes to avoid.  When I am discouraged by things happening in the world in which I live, I am heartened by reading history.  If they made such a mess of things--and they often did--and their world survived, then perhaps our own mixed-up world can survive the problems we have created."  (You may read that blog in the archives at 3 January 2012.)

 

One of the reasons I decided to write a book about Isaac B. Werner, his community, and the People's Party movement of the late 1800s was that I saw so many similarities with our own times.  In particular, they were going through a time of great disparity between average working people and the wealthy corporate tycoons, railroad magnates, and Wall Street speculators.  When you began reading the words quoted at the beginning of this blog, did you initially realize they were spoken over a century ago?

 

This past week I read through the Forbes list of America's 100 most highly compensated CEOs of 2012, and it reminded me of the complaints made by laborers during the late 1800s, who called themselves "Wage Slaves." Today's wage earners might share some of the same feelings when they compare CEO compensation with their hourly wages.  Forbes reported that the most highly compensated CEO in 2012 was John H. Hammergren, who received 131.19 million dollars, (including salary, bonus,"other" and stock gains)!  Some of the names on the list might be more familiar to you:  Ralph Lauren, who received 66.65 million dollars, and Howard D. Schultz of Starbucks, who received 41.47 million dollars.  (To read the full list of CEO Compensation for 2012 visit http://www.forbes.com/lists/2012/12/ceo-compensation-12_rank.html.)

 

A political cartoon from the 1890s

Contrast those CEO compensation numbers with the current minimum wage standards in the U.S.  An employee earning the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would make $15,000 a year, which would put him $7,000 below the federally defined poverty line.  The minimum wage for employees who derive part of their income from tips is only $2.13.

 

A little bit of math will offer the following comparison between Mr. Hammergren's earnings and those of a minimum wage worker.  At $7.25 an hour the weekly wage for a 40 hour work week is $290, but Mr. Hammergren makes $2,522,884.61 a week, although I don't really know how many hours he works.  Assuming a 40 hour work week for Mr. Hammergren, he makes $60,572.11 an hour--more or less.  Of course, Mr. Hammergren's compensation is extraordinary, even among his corporate peers.

In the USA Today article published March 28, 2013, "Back in the high (pay) life again," the authors' observed, "[B]ig raises continue even as many companies are laying off employees."  Even CEO Eleanor Bloxham is quoted as admitting, "The continual disconnect between CEO and worker pay is just creating more of a gulf."  ("Special Report:  CEO Compensation," Matt Krantz and Barbara Hansen, B1-2)  Several news sources published reports on this topic, and rankings of the highest paid executives varied, perhaps because compensation often includes such a variety of "other" benefits, such as use of corporate jets and other "perks", as well as stock options and bonuses.  

 

In her 1896 speech at Cooper Union Hall, Mrs. Lease deplored such extremes of compensation in a nation which was formed to avoid an aristocracy among its citizens.  She said, "But here in this country we find in place of an aristocracy of royalty an aristocracy of wealth.  Far more dangerous to the race is it than the aristocracy of royalty.  It is the aristocracy of gold that disintegrates society, destroys individuals and has ruined the proudest nations."

 

A political cartoon from the 1890s

The political cartoons published in the County Capital to which Isaac subscribed and whose editor was a friend illustrate the themes of Mrs. Lease's speech.  The "Golden Empire" stresses the greed of capitalists growing fat by reducing wages to allow workers barely enough to purchase clothing, food, and lodging, often making those purchases at company stores so that their wages were little more than "tickets."  The cartoon with Columbia, as a symbol of the nation, attempting to awaken feelings for the suffering of a poor family in a man clutching his bags of money is an obvious illustration of the disparity in wealth and the difficulty in bridging mutual understanding across the chasm that separates their very different lives and opportunities.  The cartoon showing a group of wealthy Wall Street men sitting on their money is especially reminescent of recent criticism of banks to whom taxpayer money was given in 2007 to avoid a national financial collapse who chose to sit on the loaned assets from taxpayers rather than putting it in circulation to speed the recovery.  The political cartoons I have posted have been particularly popular with visitors in the past, and these three seem to me good examples that we have much in common with the concerns of our ancestors. 

 

The United States has always been a nation that admires success and that believes in the possibility for anyone to work hard and build a better life for him- or herself.  We do not condemn the successful for the money they have earned through their hard work and clever ideas.  Yet, as these cartoons show, our nation has long struggled with the difficulties of preserving the American dream for everyone without allowing a disparity between the fortunate and the unfortunate to mock the idea of this country as a land of opportunity for all its citizens.