Every Trade Has Its Tricks—I Play One on William McKinley—Far Away Party Politics and Political Issues

I

There are tricks in every trade. The tariff being the paramount issue of the day, I received a tempting money offer from Philadelphia to present my side of the question, but when the time fixed was about to arrive I found myself billed for a debate with no less an adversary than William McKinley, protectionist leader in the Lower House of Congress. We were the best of friends and I much objected to a joint meeting. The parties, however, would take no denial, and it was arranged that we should be given alternate dates. Then it appeared that the designated thesis read: “Which political party offers for the workingman the best solution of the tariff problem?”

Here was a poser. It required special preparation, for which I had not the leisure. I wanted the stipend, but was not willing—scarcely able—to pay so much for it. I was about to throw the engagement over when a lucky thought struck me. I had a cast-off lecture entitled Money and Morals. It had been rather popular. Why might I not put a head and tail to this—a foreword and a few words in conclusion—and make it meet the purpose and serve the occasion?

When the evening arrived there was a great audience. Half of the people had come to applaud, the other half to antagonize. I was received, however, with what seemed a united acclaim. When the cheering had ceased, with the blandest air I began:

“In that chapter of the history of Ireland which was reserved for the consideration of snakes, the historian, true to the solecism as well as the brevity of Irish wit, informs us that ‘there are no snakes in Ireland.’

“I am afraid that on the present occasion I shall have to emulate this flight of the Celtic imagination. I find myself billed to speak from a Democratic standpoint as to which party offers the best practical means for the benefit of the workingmen of the country. If I am to discharge with fidelity the duty thus assigned me, I must begin by repudiating the text in toto, because the Democratic Party recognizes no political agency for one class which is not equally open to all classes. The bulwark and belltower of its faith, the source and resource of its strength are laid in the declaration, ‘Freedom for all, special privileges to none,’ which applied to practical affairs would deny to self-styled workingmen, organized into a coÖperative society, any political means not enjoyed by every other organized coÖperative society, and by each and every citizen, individually, to himself and his heirs and assigns, forever.

“But in a country like ours, what right has any body of men to get together and, labelling themselves workingmen, to talk about political means and practical ends exclusive to themselves? Who among us has the single right to claim for himself, and the likes of him, the divine title of a workingman? We are all workingmen, the earnest plodding scholar in his library, surrounded by the luxury and comfort which his learning and his labor have earned for him, no less than the poor collier in the mine, with darkness and squalor closing him round about, and want maybe staring him in the face, yet—if he be a true man—with a little bird singing ever in his heart the song of hope and cheer which cradled the genius of Stephenson and Arkwright and the long procession of inventors, lowly born, to whom the world owes the glorious achievements of this, the greatest of the centuries. We are all workingmen—the banker, the minister, the lawyer, the doctor—toiling from day to day, and it may be we are well paid for our toil, to represent and to minister to the wants of the time no less than the farmer and the farmer’s boy, rising with the lark to drive the team afield, and to dally with land so rich it needs to be but tickled with a hoe to laugh a harvest.

“Having somewhat of an audacious fancy, I have sometimes in moments of exuberance ventured upon the conceit that our Jupiter Tonans, the American editor, seated upon his three-legged throne and enveloped by the majesty and the mystery of his pretentious ‘we,’ is a workingman no less than the poor reporter, who year in and year out braves the perils of the midnight rounds through the slums of the city, yea in the more perilous temptations of the town, yet carries with him into the darkest dens the love of work, the hope of reward and the fear only of dishonor.

“Why, the poor officeseeker at Washington begging a bit of that pie, which, having got his own slice, a cruel, hard-hearted President would eliminate from the bill of fare, he likewise is a workingman, and I can tell you a very hard-working man with a tough job of work, and were better breaking rock upon a turnpike in Dixie or splitting rails on a quarter section out in the wild and woolly West.

“It is true that, as stated on the program, I am a Democrat—as Artemus Ward once said of the horses in his panorama, I can conceal it no longer—at least I am as good a Democrat as they have nowadays. But first of all, I am an American, and in America every man who is not a policeman or a dude is a workingman. So, by your leave, my friends, instead of sticking very closely to the text, and treating it from a purely party point of view, I propose to take a ramble through the highways and byways of life and thought in our beloved country and to cast a balance if I can from an American point of view.

“I want to say in the beginning that no party can save any man or any set of men from the daily toil by which all of us live and move and have our being.”

Then I worked in my old lecture.

It went like hot cakes. When next I met William McKinley he said jocosely: “You are a mean man, Henry Watterson!”

“How so?” I asked.

“I accepted the invitation to answer you because I wanted and needed the money. Of course I had no time to prepare a special address. My idea was to make my fee by ripping you up the back. But when I read the verbatim report which had been prepared for me there was not a word with which I could take issue, and that completely threw me out.”

Then I told him how it had happened and we had a hearty laugh. He was the most lovable of men. That such a man should have fallen a victim to the blow of an assassin defies explanation, as did the murders of Lincoln and Garfield, like McKinley, amiable, kindly men giving never cause of personal offense.

II

The murderer is past finding out. In one way and another I fancy that I am well acquainted with the assassins of history. Of those who slew CÆsar I learned in my schooldays, and between Ravaillac, who did the business for Henry of Navarre, and Booth and Guiteau, my familiar knowledge seems almost at first hand. One night at Chamberlin’s, in Washington, George Corkhill, the district attorney who was prosecuting the murderer of Garfield, said to me: “You will never fully understand this case until you have sat by me through one day’s proceedings in court.” Next day I did this.

Never have I passed five hours in a theater so filled with thrills. I occupied a seat betwixt Corkhill and Scoville, Guiteau’s brother-in-law and voluntary attorney. I say “voluntary” because from the first Guiteau rejected him and vilely abused him, vociferously insisting upon being his own lawyer.

From the moment Guiteau entered the trial room it was a theatrical extravaganza. He was in irons, sandwiched between two deputy sheriffs, came in shouting like a madman, and began at once railing at the judge, the jury and the audience. A very necessary rule had been established that when he interposed, whatever was being said or done automatically stopped. Then, when he ceased, the case went on again as if nothing had happened.

Only Scoville intervened between me and Guiteau and I had an excellent opportunity to see, hear and size him up. In visage and voice he was the meanest creature I have, either in life or in dreams, encountered. He had the face and intonations of a demon. Everything about him was loathsome. I cannot doubt that his criminal colleagues of history were of the same description.

Charlotte Corday was surely a lunatic. Wilkes Booth I knew. He was drunk, had been drunk all that winter, completely muddled and perverted by brandy, the inheritant of mad blood. Czolgosz, the slayer of McKinley, and the assassin of the Empress Elizabeth were clearly insane.

III

McKinley and Protectionism, Cleveland, Carlisle and Free Trade—how far away they seem!

With the passing of the old issues that divided parties new issues have come upon the scene. The alignment of the future will turn upon these. But underlying all issues of all time are fundamental ideas which live forever and aye, and may not be forgotten or ignored.

It used to be claimed by the followers of Jefferson that Democracy was a fixed quantity, rising out of the bedrock of the Constitution, while Federalism, Whiggism and Republicanism were but the chimeras of some prevailing fancy drawing their sustenance rather from temporizing expediency and current sentiment than from basic principles and profound conviction. To make haste slowly, to look before leaping, to take counsel of experience—were Democratic axioms. Thus the fathers of Democracy, while fully conceiving the imperfections of government and meeting as events required the need alike of movement and reform, put the visionary and experimental behind them to aim at things visible, attainable, tangible, the written Constitution the one safe precedent, the morning star and the evening star of their faith and hope.

What havoc the parties and the politicians have made of all these lofty pretenses! Where must an old-line Democrat go to find himself? Two issues, however, have come upon the scene which for the time being are paramount and which seem organic. They are set for the determination of the twentieth century: The sex question and the drink question.

I wonder if it be possible to consider them in a catholic spirit from a philosophic standpoint. I can truly say that the enactment of prohibition laws, state or national, is personally nothing to me. I long ago reached an age when the convivialism of life ceased to cut any figure in the equation of my desires and habits. It is the never-failing recourse of the intolerant, however, to ascribe an individual, and, of course, an unworthy, motive to contrariwise opinions, and I have not escaped that kind of criticism.

The challenge underlying prohibition is twofold: Does prohibition prohibit, and, if it does, may it not generate evils peculiarly its own?

The question hinges on what are called “sumptuary laws”; that is, statutes regulating the food and drink, the habits and apparel of the individual citizen. This in turn harks back to the issue of paternal government. That, once admitted and established, becomes in time all-embracing.

Bigotry is a disease. The bigot pursuing his narrow round is like the bedridden possessed by his disordered fancy. Bigotry sees nothing but itself, which it mistakes for wisdom and virtue. But Bigotry begets hypocrisy. When this spreads over a sufficient area and counts a voting majority it sends its agents abroad, and thus we acquire canting apostles and legislators at once corrupt and despotic.

They are now largely in evidence in the national capital and in the various state capitals, where the poor-dog, professional politicians most do congregate and disport themselves.

The worst of it is that there seems nowhere any popular realization—certainly any popular outcry. Do the people grow degenerate? Are they willfully dense?