THE NOMINATION OF MR. McKINLEY.
THE victory of Mr. McKinley, if he is to win at the Presidential election in November, will be, in one way at all events, something of a triumph for the advocates of democracy. It will show that an enormous mass of voters, most of them poor men, and a large section of them struggling with a heavy burden of indebtedness, are able to resist strong temptations to better their position by voting for dishonesty. Mr. McKinley's name repre- sents to Englishmen only Protection, but his programme will represent to Americans . a refusal to make silver, which is, roughly speaking, one-thirtieth of the value of gold, legal tender in payment of debts at a ratio of one- sixteenth. It will be a vote for creditors given by debtors under the ballot. That is such pleasant hearing for all who have to live under the despotism of a majority that it is worth while to look for a moment a little closely into the facts. The first of those facts is that bimetallism is not in the United States precisely what it is here, that is, a currency dispute with which only experts and a. minority of dealers who are affected by the exchanges greatly concern themselves. Our people produce no silver, they have never been accustomed to silver as a standard, and they are, owing to their want of fixed property, comparatively little harassed by debt. They bother themselves about wages rather than mortgages. The American, on the other hand, produces in parts of his country silver in large quantities, he has always regarded silver dollars as entitled to be " money," and as he usually, when not a workman of the cities, owns his house or his farm, he is apt in bad years to mortgage them, and to find the payment of interest a, heavy burden, as heavy as rent is here. The fall of prices has affected him as much as our own agriculturists, Protection has made every- thing dear except produce, and as he considers himself, because he lives in a Republic, entitled to happiness, he listens eagerly to teachers who declare that all his misery arises from insufficient currency and the appreciation of gold. If silver were made " money " again, he is told, all prices for produce would rise, all debts would be halved in weight, and the capitalists who live on him would be compelled to make money cheap and plentiful. He would have cash in his pocket instead of bills to pay. So successful have been these teachers that there are hundreds of thousands, especially in the West, who have a "prejudice " against the very word " gold," who sincerely believe that they are plundered in the interest of bankers, and who hate the Eastern States and England because they believe that the " gold-spinners " abide there. and are intent, through a, factitiously narrowed currency, on robbing them. They actually talk—of course it is only talk—of secession to " be rid of their Eastern task- masters." This kind of belief has been deepened by the great fact that, as experts assure us, the volume of currency in the United States does not expand as rapidly as either business or population ; and by the curious fallacy that English statesmen have admitted that they only uphold a gold standard in order to allow to creditor States, of which England is chief, and creditors generally, an unfair advantage. So widely spread were these opinions that it was believed that both parties would be pulverised by them, that cross-voting would be universal, and that the Conventions or Grand Caucuses absolutely must avoid offending both gold men and ,ilver men, or their candidates would be destroyed. it was even believed to be possible that the whole West might " rise " for silver, and reject any candidate who would not pledge himself to accept any Bill making silver legal tender to any amount at a ratio of one to sixteen. Mr. McKinley himself was under this belief, and his manager, Mr. Hanna, pressed it with his whole energy, so that it was thought that the result of the Convention would be a " platform," or profession of faith so worded that voters could read into it a. preference either for gold or silver as they pleased. Nevertheless, this was not the idea of the body of the people, at least on the Republican side. Whether they were convinced by the economic argument we cannot say—we should doubt it, never having yet seen a crowd, even of educated men, who quite under- stood the rationale of the currency—but they saw quite clearly that the double standard would either be fatal for the moment to credit, that all mortgages, for instance, would be called in, in order that they might be altered into specific contracts for interest in gold, or that, if credit did not collapse, the new currency would cut debts nearly in halves, all debts being paid in the inferior metal. The people thirsted for less adversity, but they wanted to be honest too, and when the Republican Convention met it was found that a clear majority of the delegates were for gold, a further large section were for " straddling," either as an election dodge or to leave the matter open, and a, small minority only were " dead for silver." A. very little argument convinced the " straddlers " that they were playing a cowardly part, Mr. Hanna. yielded to the pre- valent feeling, and, by the latest advices received, the Convention has agreed to a. platform in which the follow- ing words occur :—" We are, therefore, opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver except by international agreement between the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote ; and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be preserved, and all our silver and paper currency now in circulation must be maintained at a parity with gold. We favour all measures designed to maintain inviol- able the obligations of the United States of America and all our money at the present standard of the most enlightened nations of the earth." That does not prove, of course, that " America" intends to keep up the gold standard. We have still to see what the Democrat Convention will do, sorely tempted as it must be to adopt silver—the " poor man's money," as the orators of the silver States describe it— and then to see to which side the general majority in- clines. There may be a mass of latent feeling in favour of partial repudiation which will find expression only under shelter of the ballot. Still the action of the Republican Convention does show that the party which is supposed to be most numerous in the union is not prepared to secure votes by debasing the currency, but rather is ready to endure what scores of thousands within its ranks deem to be an oppression. " The contracts hurt us, but we made them "—that is the conclusion. and it must be admitted by all fair men that it is creditable to the masses.
We make the admission because it is just, and with no particular pleasure. To us the whole system of managing an American election is to the last degree offensive. The voter is worshipped, cossetted, and, we are afraid, very often cheated. Nobody seems to think it necessary to enlighten him, or to stand upon principle, or to adhere to an opinion because it is entertained. The "straddlers" in the Republican Convention, that is, the men who openly desire a platform which will adroitly conceal their opinions from the voters, are counted in the Republican Conven- tion by the hundred. There are no leaders, only "bosses," and " bosses " entertain only the opinions, or rather, for some of them have minds, they profess only the opinions, which will bring in votes. The strongest of them, Mr. Hanna, is reported to be a convinced advocate of gold, and he expended his utmost energy in an effort to keep gold out of the platform, only yielding at last to the con- viction that the majority was on that side. Mr. Platt, the most experienced of them, stood consistently for gold, but then the State of New York, which he manages, is for gold, and even his friends acknowledge that if the majority in New York "went for" iridium he would read up the qualities of that metal in an encyclopaedia, and declare that it was essential to national prosperity that iridium should be the standard. Mr. McKinley himself is re- ported to have admitted that he intended to accept the currency policy which would bring most votes, and though Mr. Morton, who was his strongest rival, has more backbone, it is recognised that that is the very quality which has cost him the nomination. The politicians are just as subservient to the masses as courtiers ever were to a King, worshipping them, in fact, with a sort of Oriental stoop. This is the more remarkable because currency is not one of the subjects on which the " favour of the people " may fairly be considered the test of wisdom or unwisdom, as it might for instance be in regard to many measures of taxation, but is one of the controversial subjects upon which opinions are almost passionately firm. It is not too much to say that of all those who have attended to the currency dispute at all, 70 per cent. think their opponents idiots, and the remaining 30 per cent. hold them to be thieves, yet in the Convention all the managers are ready to swerve either way, according to the votes to be obtained. The majority is, in fact, treated as the Pope is treated by fervent Catholics, as a Sovereign whose decrees ought to produce not only obedience but mental adhesion. The effect of that, of course, is that the -Sovereign is never enlightened, and ultimately comes to think his own self-generated ideas absolutely wise and right, and never really learns from anything except perhaps experience of disaster. The Americans, we do not doubt, think it very servile of leading Russians to avoid certain expressions which they know the Czar dis- likes ; but what are we to say of a whole body of repre- sentative men, who anxiously recommend that the word " gold " should be kept out of a currency resolution because it excites a " prejudice " among voters ? One would think they had all adopted the theory defended this week in a very suggestive though muddled book pub- lished by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, in which the author, "Gus- tave Le Bon," maintains that no multitude ever follows any ideas but those which race, circumstances, &c., have evolved in its own mind. The theory is wholly incon- sistent with facts, for men constantly reverence, as Mr. Kidd recently pointed out, ideas directly opposed to their own interests and prejudices, but we should not wonder if Mr. McKinley, delighted to find his action philosophically accounted for, declared the book a miracle of thought. There is something pitiable about such a spectacle, which can be justified only by the fancy that the view of a thousand minds must be wiser than the view of one, and indeed cannot be justified then, the duty of the individual being to press his own view as a. contribution to help the thousand in forming theirs. If that is not so, why debate, or write, or speak publicly at all ? It is this servility to the million which is the temptation of democracy, as servility to the Sovereign is the temptation of Monarchy, and some day or other it will produce both in America, and England big disasters. That the mass must be obeyed we admit, because that is the present experiment in organisation, and it ought to be honestly tried, but for that very reason there is a heavier obligation to guide the mass aright. The " bosses " in America would pronounce Mr. Balfour, who, in the midst of a monometallist majority, avows that he is a bimetallist, and yet is a candidate for the Presi- dency, an impracticable fool, who must be left out of every combination. St. Paul, in their idea, should have " straddled " between Jesus of Nazareth and Diana of the Ephesians, or at all events have left the word "God" carefully out of his discourse. Our system of evolving a Government is imperfect enough, but at all events every leader among us, except Sir William Harcourt, is expected to speak as he believes. We tolerate one poli- tician who is an advocate, but in the Union every poli- tician is apparently expected to be an advocate with the populace for his client.
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