Read Ebook: The Crime of Caste in Our Country by Davenport Benjamin Rush

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Ebook has 767 lines and 101802 words, and 16 pages

Benjamin Harrison 131

American Queen 136

American Duchess 137

Jay Gould 143

Abe, "The Rail-Splitter" 154

"Chappie" on Fifth Avenue 155

Andrew Carnegie 160

Henry C. Frick 162

The Mistake at Homestead 182

William H. Vanderbilt 219

W. Seward Webb 223

Andrew Jackson 240

Thomas Jefferson 248

INTRODUCTION.

But a revolution occurred on November 8, 1892, a revolution of the American people, so overwhelming, so decisive, and so pronounced as to absolutely stupefy even the genius of the press. Instead of corps of reporters, artists, special correspondents, speeding over the land to ascertain the cause--not the result; the cause, the origin,--of this stupendous surprise, all the great journals of the country, having each nailed to its flag-staff some theory or text utterly inconsistent with the result, utterly disproportioned to the overwhelming revolution, that they have sought by vain endeavor to make an overwhelming result compatible with and agreeable to some one part or portion of the cause thereof.

It was not any one nor all of these causes that moved the people. Each newspaper, Democratic or Republican, has selected some nail upon which it hangs the laurel wreath of victory, inscribed with its own puny text for which it has fought its little battle, and each newspaper of the Republican press has covered, with the tattered garments of defeat, its little text wherein it had proclaimed that the Republican party would be victorious, and labeled its tattered garment of lack of judgment with some phrase like, "Disloyalty of Platt," "Incapacity of Carter," "Want of Organization," "Lack of Popularity and Magnetism of our Candidate," "The Voters didn't come out." Had the press no part of its own reputation at stake, they would have searched and delved into the bosoms of men; yes, neither space nor distance, time nor expense, would have been spared by the magnates of the newspaper world to ascertain the true cause. But in ascertaining that true cause, it would have been necessary, in announcing the same, to stultify themselves in what they had been predicting, proclaiming, foretelling, and advising, for months and years.

A scene that has been described in Washington just prior to the late Civil War best illustrates the condition of the people. The city of Washington was filled with silent, sullen, suspicious men. A sombre air pervaded the Capital. South Carolina had seceded; the Union was disintegrating. All that had been, was being forgotten. Old ties were breaking; old friendships becoming strange. Each man viewed his neighbor and his friend of yesterday, with a doubt in his mind as to whether they would fight side by side, or beat each other's throats to-morrow. Men paced their rooms in the various hotels, anxious and careworn, sleepless and fearful. Yet, the surface was still, a dangerous state of general apathy obtained, if silence and murmuring, without action, can be called apathy.

It was night, yet the streets were not deserted. Suddenly a window of the Ebbitt House was raised, a man stepped on to the balcony out of the window, and in clear, vigorous, and manly tones began to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Windows were raised; the crowd collected around the Ebbitt House. It was the signal for the breaking of a dam. A flood of patriotism burst from the hearts of the hearers; it was the bugle note, calling upon Americans to save their country. Where there had been silence, were now outspoken vows of fidelity and loyalty to the Union. The battle was won that night; not at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

Just so with the people of America in 1892; for years they have endured in silence, murmuring and thinking, heart to heart speaking by responsive heart throbs; not by word. The rich, who had accumulated their wealth by reason of monopolies which were the necessary consequence of the Civil War, men who had laid the foundation of their fortunes by speculating upon the necessities of the government while contending for the very existence of the Union, had, year by year, by a stealthy, yet ever-increasing presumption, begun to assume the possibility of a class distinction, presuming that the possession of wealth entitled them to privileges, and arrogating to themselves mannerisms of the titled classes of Europe, adopting crests, coats of arms, claiming descent from titled foreigners, an exclusiveness in their social relations, disregarding the laws of morality. The women of this would-be aristocratic class, flaunting their jewels and laces in the faces of their poorer sisters, with elevated noses, and garments drawn aside, feared to touch or gaze at the poor but honest mothers and wives of America.

It was not much: it was rank presumption; it was nonsense, absurd. "There's no such thing possible in America as class distinction; in fact, it does not exist, cannot exist; the 'Four Hundred' of New York is a joke, a by-word, a stupendous folly."

But, good people of the said "Four Hundred," remember that while the American is neither a Socialist nor an Anarchist, when you presume to make a distinction, socially, between the poor man, his wife, children, and mother, you touch him in the most sensitive part of his being. You may have your villas at Newport, you may ape the English fashionable season in London by a similar one in New York; you may have your steam yachts; you may ride to hounds; your women may marry divorced dukes and puppified sons of lords; but, mark you, claim no privilege, attempt no distinction between yourselves and the poorest honest man and woman in the land. Equality is the jewel that every true American holds most dear. No free son of our Republic will sell this treasure for gold, whether it be offered directly as a bribe or shrewdly tendered under the guise of "protected" wages.

It did not do for the Republican press of the country to demonstrate that Protection brought higher wages to the workingman. They might have proved that by voting the Republican ticket the workingman's pay would have been a hundred dollars a day; they might have shown him that in point of pocket he would be eternally blest by supporting the party which he deemed identified with those who attempted to force "caste" upon our country. It is not a question of money; the equality of man is the American's birthright. For it, our fathers sought these shores, contending with privation, enduring untold labor, dangers, and death. For it, our forefathers fought the most powerful nation on earth, when they were but a scattered handful of colonists, scattered from Massachusetts to Georgia. When the attempt was made--that it was attempted, there can be no doubt--to buy the American's birthright by preaching to him "increased wages," it failed.

Take every speech of every Republican orator, every bit of Republican literature, every editorial in the Republican papers, all speak from but one text, viz.: "Workmen, farmers, in fact, all ye good people of America, you can make more money under Protection;" which plainly means, "Let Protection and the Republican party continue in power, accumulating wealth, creating class distinctions, and you can have better wages."

In other words, "Sell us the right to create a Republic like that of Venice, wherein the rich became the privileged class, and we will give you better pay."

The Democratic press, orators, and literary bureau were no better. They no more understood the feeling of the people, for their continual cry was, "Free Trade, and you will be better off in pocket." They excoriated trusts, monopolies; they talked of corruption and what would be done to benefit, IN POCKET, the poor man, if the Democratic party came in power; just as blind as their brothers of the Republican party, they appealed to the American pocketbook.

While every Democratic orator knew that he felt the sting of the venomous and growing reptile, "caste," in no place in the literature of the Democratic party, in no paper, can be found one single reference to the pride of the American in his citizenship, in his equality. It seemed as if each man thought that he alone endured a pang upon the subject of "caste" and social distinction; for, bear in mind, the man with one million will feel the slight and attempted distinction between his family and the family with ten millions, just as keenly as the cashier of a bank will feel the distinction that the president attempts to make between their social positions; the farmer with ten acres feels towards the farmer with a hundred acres, exactly the same as the farmer with a hundred does towards the farmer possessed of a thousand acres.

This disease was not confined to the horny-handed sons of toil; the heart in the hovel was not the only one that ached. It was not confined to the follower of the plow; but its pestilential breath pervaded every home in the land, leaving everyone below the multi-millionaire unhappy. The clerk of the dry-goods store was hurt because the floor walker assumed a superiority; the floor walker, because the proprietor assumed it; the proprietor, because the importer from whom he purchased goods assumed a distinction; and so it continued, from the longshoreman up, until it reached our millionaire would-be princes, who ape and mimic English life and manners, leaving, as it arose, a sting of increasing bitterness; but each man felt too proud to give utterance to what he thought it shamed him even to recognize as a sensation.

Hence the apathy on the surface, the sentiment confessed only to themselves and in the closet of the voting booth. Because the people had identified the Republican party with the class of men who were striving to create this class distinction, and because of the very charm of the word Democracy to their aching hearts, they voted the Democratic ticket--not Democrats alone in a political sense, but men who believe in democracy in the broad sense that St. Paul preached on Mars Hill at Athens, in the broad sense that Christ's life demonstrated.

It was useless, against this first overmastering, powerful emotion in the American breast, to call upon the old veterans of the Civil War, to whom the Republican party had given increased pensions. It was useless to cry even to the negro, to whom the Republican party had given freedom. He, too, had become imbued with the spirit of equality. The wealthy could not purchase the birthright of the veteran by appealing to his pocketbook, any more than they could that of the laborer. He had shed his blood in the cause of equality, resisting then the assumed superiority of blood and birth so often flaunted in his face by gentlemen from the South.

In 1861, the "mudsills" of the North and West, the tillers of the soil, had shouldered their muskets at the call of that great man of the people, Abraham Lincoln, leaving home and loved ones to face unknown dangers and diseases in the cause of EQUALITY. Down in their hearts then was a sentiment which is revived in 1892. That thing which had been the hardest to bear, for the laboring settler of the West and the workman of the North, was the existence of "caste" in the South, and the supposed superiority of the Southerners in the halls of Congress. Love of the Union was the outspoken, pronounced cause of their coming at Lincoln's call; but there was something behind and beneath all of that, that had been growing for years; it was resentment, because of the South's assumption of "caste" in our country.

The question was settled, by these very veterans, from 1861 to '65 with bullets, and it was utterly unavailing to call upon them for ballots in 1892 against the cause for which they fought in 1861.

The very negro said to himself: "You gave us freedom, the Republican party, but the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln was purely a Democratic party, in a broader sense." To the negro's mind, no three Presidents of the past will more thoroughly represent a picture pleasing to the eye of the enslaved or the lower classes, than Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln. All were Democrats--men who believed in the people and labored for the people, leading lives of pure simplicity, affecting no superiority of rank or position. It was useless to attempt to hold the negro vote.

The very name of the "People's Party," so strongly did it indicate and describe this sentiment of the people; enabled that party, with all its incongruous doctrines, to carry the electoral votes of some States of the Union.

How frivolous seemed the claim of the Democratic papers and politicians, that the popularity of Grover Cleveland, and the confidence that people had in his rectitude and honesty, caused this revolution. How it appears to be trifling with truth to ascribe the victory of the people, the true Democracy, to the "masterly manner in which Mr. Harrity managed the campaign." Mr. Whitney's diplomacy, Mr. Dickinson's energy and ability, Mr. Sheehan's shrewdness, sink into utter insignificance, and become as a grain of sand upon the seashore, where they have happened to be tossed by the mighty wave of the ocean of feeling, full of resentment, that filled the hearts of the people. Their little all was but the piping of a penny whistle in a gale of wind. W. H. Vanderbilt's four words, "The public be damned," uttered from the pedestal of 0,000,000, made a greater impression, and became more indelibly impressed upon the minds of the whole people, ranging in wealth from ,000,000 to less than a cent, than all the management of Harrity, the diplomacy of Whitney, the skill of Sheehan, or the energy of Dickinson. The reported expression of Mr. Russell Harrison, when asked, while in London, what his position was in America, as son of the President,--"Oh, about what the Prince of Wales is here,"--was thought of and resented to greater purpose than was produced by all the speeches of the eloquent Cockran.

The women of the land made more speeches, and effective speeches, to the voters of the land when they thought of the much-advertised American Duchess. They had felt most keenly--for woman's life is social much more than man's--the attempted social distinction; and, strange as it may appear to some of the skillful politicians that they had never recognized it, the women of America had become largely Democratic, and in them the Democratic party had its most powerful orators; for even the most brutal, neglectful, and unloving husband resents in a vigorous manner the least slight or insult offered to his wife. Upon every occasion, gathering, entertainment, charitable undertaking, some wife had been slighted. Because of the attempted creation of "caste," she became a powerful factor, at once, in the campaign of the people. It mattered not whether her husband was a millionaire or not, no matter in what portion of society,--the clerk in a dry-goods store, the farmer, the banker, the millionaire,--the same result would follow. Some would attempt to arrogate to themselves a better position, and claim certain superiority over her. The banker's wife feels as keenly the slight of the wife of a railroad president, as the wife of a longshoreman does any assumed difference in social position on the part of the wife of the retail grocer.

This all-prevailing crime of "caste" does not, like most crimes are supposed to do, originate in the gutter, but it permeates the mass of the population, like the source of a great river, starting at the very top of the mountain, and dripping constantly downward.

Another of the disgusting apings of foreign vices, along with the foolish claim of "caste," is exhibited in the delightful Deacon assassination in France. Another representative of American aristocracy, so-called, would play the part of a French Countess. Fortunately for the world, the man Deacon had left remaining a few drops of American blood in his veins, and rid the world of a brute, as any honest American laboring man would have done. The class which the shameless imitators pretend to represent in America assumed the privilege abroad to indulge in drunkenness, debauchery, gambling, and general immorality; leaving the virtues, sobriety, honesty, and purity to the lower classes. In America, there being but one class, those who assume to imitate the manners of the immoral, to carouse and debauch, render themselves obnoxious to the mass of the people, and that political party which becomes identified in the minds of the people with any set, or "caste," possessing such distorted principles, becomes correspondingly objectionable. There can be but one law of morals in America. Debauchery, drunkenness, and dishonesty, though sheltered by a palace, are as odoriferous to the senses of the people as the polluted air from a sewer.

There are many able and learned men of America who think seriously and have thought intently for years upon this subject, but hesitated to utter sentiments that falsely and absurdly are called socialistic and anarchical. There is no desire upon the part of Americans to deprive any citizen of his property and his freedom to enjoy the same as he will, so long as he has due appreciation of and respect for the rights of others. No man in the Republic can possess any right, by reason of his wealth, greater than the poorest in the land. Each citizen of a republic, in consideration of the liberty that he enjoys, surrenders all claim to be anything except one of the people, and any assumed immunity from the consequences of his acts is objectionable, and will be visited upon his head. The roistering sons of millionaires, though clad in evening dress and drunk with champagne, are no less disgusting rowdies than the sons of the laborer, hilarious as the result of gin drunk in a groggery. Unfortunately for the Republican party, in looking over the row of America's money princes , we find "Republican" written behind almost every name. The villa at Newport, the castle in Scotland, the Tally Ho coach, is generally owned by a Republican. In fact, our would-be aristocrats began to assume that it was almost a disgrace to be anything else than a Republican; one would lose "caste" thereby.

The Republican party, of course, is not responsible for this. The Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison, than whom there is no better example of a patriotic, earnest, honest American, Christian, father, husband, son, gentleman, and soldier, is worthy to be an example to the young men of our country. He was not responsible for the impression made by this excrescence that has grown like some hideous and poisonous fungus upon the stalwart oak planted by Abraham Lincoln. The decay has arisen from this polluting attachment. The McKinley Bill and Protection, while possessing many points of excellence it behooves the country to examine with care before erasing from the statute-books, are not responsible for the natural animosity of the people toward this child, deformed, misshapen, Sham Aristocracy, clinging to the skirts of the Republican party. The attack was upon this hideous tumor, and, by its amputation by the people, the life-blood of the Republican party has become exhausted; for the operation necessarily was made painful, deep-felt, and severe. The Democratic party derived all the benefit from the defeat of the Republican party, at the hands of the people, without having contributed thereto to any amazing extent.

The result of the election of 1892 should be as the warning written on the wall was to Belshazzar. The rich must understand, and learn now in time, that they hold their lives, their liberty, and their property in this Republic only by the will of the people; that the people, Democratic always in the broad sense of democracy, are long-suffering; but retribution, as surely as night doth follow day, may come, if this warning be not heeded, in some more terrible shape than an overwhelming defeat, at the polls, of that party to which the rich attach themselves. It is not well to flaunt riches or claim privileges or "caste" before the face of a free people.

It has been taught in every nation--Rome, Greece, Egypt. The people will suffer long and much, but the resentment occasioned by "caste" and social distinction far outweighs any advantages that money can buy them.

November 8, 1892, showed that the workmen couldn't be bought, the farmer couldn't be bought, the veteran couldn't be bought, the negro couldn't be bought, by all the fair promises held out by the party of Protection, because this cup of nectar was poisoned by the deadly essence of "caste," which means extinction of all that the people hold dear. Should the Democratic party create, cause, or have arise under its administration, and become attached to that party, any set, or "caste," claiming any superiority over their fellow-citizens, the Democratic party would be killed, though the eternal sun might never shine again upon America should that party be defeated.

"Is there, for honest poverty That hangs his head, and a' that; The coward-slave, we pass him by. We dare be poor, for a' that; For a' that, and a' that, Our toil's obscure, and a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp; The man's the gowd for a' that.

"What though on homely fare we dine, A prince can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might Guid faith he manna fa' that, For a' that, and a' that, The pith o' sense and pride o' worth Are higher ranks than a' that.

"Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May hear the gree, and a' that, That man to man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that."

FOOTNOTE:

This story has frequently been related, verbally, but the Author has never seen it in print. Its authenticity, however, is fully established.

The voice of the people, is indeed, the voice of God, and in grand and tremendous tones has that voice resounded through the land. The 8th of November, 1892, will long be remembered in the history of our country as one which stands in the annals of time as a monument to the might of the people, upon which might be carved in letters of everlasting durability, "Do not tread on me." The tidal wave, so often referred to by the newspapers, has come with unexpected momentum, washing aside the puny politicians as thistledown on the mighty stream of the Mississippi.

That mirror of public opinion, so generally correct, so apt to be accurate, is absolutely stupefied by the tremendous character of the uprising of the people. Even those who fondly hoped for victory, among the Democratic journalists, stand in reverential awe before the stupendous results so noiselessly and irresistibly effected by the masses. They vainly seek, like one bereft of sight, for the delusive cause of this great outpouring of Democratic sentiment.

"Meanwhile the victory of Mr. Cleveland is the most signal since the re-election of Lincoln in the last year of the war for the Union."

It is perfectly plain to be seen that, from a source where the wreath of victory dangles, inscribed with but one word, and that "Cleveland," one could hardly expect to find information as to the cause that brought about this revolution in the minds of the people. Not that there is any objection to the praises of Cleveland, because all that they say of him is believed by thousands throughout the country, and the same thing is believed to be true of thousands of other men whom the Democratic party might have nominated. Horace Greeley, could he have been taken from his tomb and reanimated, would just as surely have been elected upon the Democratic ticket, had the people believed, as they did, that that ticket represented that "caste," moneyed aristocracy, to which they were bitterly in their heart of hearts opposed.

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