mills and factories, the commercial houses and the big shops, gathered the population into cities. When the first census was taken only 3.4 per cent of our people lived in communities of 8000 or over; by the census of 1880 the proportion had increased to 22.6 per cent. Already organized labor was facing organized capital with the consciousness of its interests as a class. Railway engineers, conductors, and firemen, bricklayers, cigar-makers, ironworkers, were gathered into unions, to oppose capital's "right to own and control labor for its own greedy and selfish ends." The Knights of Labor, a loose federation of workers with the motto "The injury of one is the concern of all," had nearly 150,000 members through the country. The Grangers, or Patrons of Husbandry, championed the cause of the farmer in the West and passed laws in the grain states (notably Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota) regulating the freight rates on the railroads. The miners were demanding shorter hours and higher pay.

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

577. The Difficult Position of President Hayes. It was high time for our government to have done with the old questions of the war and reconstruction, with petty partisan politics and sectional animosities, and to face seriously the great problems of the new industrial age. None realized this better than President Hayes, but he was hampered at every step. A Democratic House opposed him during his entire administration, and a Democratic Senate also during the last two years of it. For this opposition party he was a "usurper," occupying the seat rightfully belonging to Tilden. Nor was he the choice of the leaders of the Republican party. He had been nominated in the convention of 1876 only because the deadlock between the supporters of Blaine and the supporters of Grant could not be broken. His face appeared in the Democratic press with the word "fraud" written across his brow, while the men of his own party who were still devoted to the methods of "machine politics" sneered at his efforts for reform, called him a "goody-goody," a hypocrite,

and a "Granny Hayes." Upright, industrious, and public-spirited, he lacked the genial and winsome traits of character which could conciliate political opponents; and, like John Quincy Adams, he pursued his lonely path of duty, confiding to his diary the rectitude of his conduct.

578. His Excellent Administration. In spite of personal unpopularity, and in the face of political and economic turmoil, Hayes gave the country one of the cleanest and most courageous administrations in its history. He immediately withdrew the Federal troops that were still upholding the negro Republican governments in Louisiana and South Carolina, letting these states revert to the Democratic column. He still further incurred the wrath of the Republican machine by dismissing from their important offices Chester A. Arthur (collector of the port of New York) and Alonzo B. Cornell (naval officer), who with Thomas Platt and Roscoe Conkling made up the "big four" who ruled the politics of New York State. He sent a commission to China to prepare the way for the negotiation of a treaty which would protect the workers of our Pacific coast against the invasion of cheap Mongolian labor.1 He strove earnestly to repair the faith of the nation in the eyes of the Indian tribes of the Far West, who had been fed on rotten rations, deceived by false promises, robbed by unscrupulous agents, and goaded into uprisings that had cost our government over $22,000,000 and the lives of nearly 600 men since the Civil War.2

579. The Railroad Strikes of 1877. Hayes had been in office but a few months when railroad strikes of unprecedented violence

1 Between 1850 and 1860 the Chinese immigrants to our shores had increased from 10,000 to 40,000. The work on the western end of the Union Pacific Railroad attracted tens of thousands more in the next decade. As these Chinese laborers lived on a few cents a day and were content with dirty quarters and poor food, they were a menace to the American laborer of the Pacific coast, who demanded "four dollars a day and roast beef." Mobs in California and Oregon organized to "run out of town" the Chinese coolies, in spite of the fact that our government, by the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, had guaranteed the Chinese visiting our shores protection in trade, religion, and free travel. In 1879 Congress repealed parts of the Burlingame Treaty, but Hayes vetoed the bill. Finally, through the efforts of the Hayes commission, an arrangement was made with China by which that country agreed to our regulation of labor immigration from her shores.

2 The most disastrous of these Indian uprisings was the resistance of the Sioux, under their chief Sitting Bull, to the orders of the government bidding them leave their hunting grounds in southern Montana and move further west. The gallant Colonel George A. Custer, with a force of 262 men, trying to surprise Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn River, was defeated and killed with every soul of his little army, June 25, 1876.

broke out. The trouble started with a 10 per cent reduction in the wages of the trainmen on the Baltimore and Ohio and the laying off of train crews on the Pennsylvania. By midsummer of 1877 a number of roads in the states from the Atlantic coast to the Missouri River were tied up by strikes, and the anthracite mining region of eastern Pennsylvania was terrorized by lawless mobs. Chicago, Baltimore, Reading, Scranton, and Pittsburgh were the scenes of riots and bloodshed. The President was forced to call on the militia of several states and even to dispatch United States troops to certain points to quell the disorder. In Pittsburgh, where the rioting was at its worst, $10,000,000 worth of property in cars, buildings, and freight was destroyed and over 50 men were killed or wounded before order was restored.

580. Financial Measures of Hayes's Administration. Two financial measures of importance were carried in Hayes's mid-term,— the Bland-Allison Act for the coinage of silver and the bill for resumption of specie payments. From Washington's administration till long after the close of the Civil War comparatively little silver had been coined into money at the United States mints. The business of the country was not large enough to demand more currency for its transactions than the supply of gold could furnish. The government stood ready to receive silver bullion at its mints for coinage at the established rate of fifteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold before 1834 and approximately sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold after that date. But such was the comparative scarcity of silver in the middle years of the century that the mine owners could sell it to the jewelers and artisans at a higher price than the government paid. Between 1850 and 1873, therefore, almost no silver was brought to the mints, and in the latter year Congress quietly passed a law stopping the coinage of silver dollars.1 Just at that moment enormous deposits of silver were discovered in our Western states. One mine, whose product in 1873 was worth but $645,000, increased its output to $16,000,000 in two years. The

1 This law simply recognized the state of affairs which existed. Since the amount of silver which went into a silver dollar could be sold to the silversmiths for $1.02 in 1873, the mine owners naturally disposed of their product in the market where it brought the highest price. It was they, and not the government, that discontinued silver coinage. In later years the advocates of the free coinage of silver spoke of this act as the "crime of 1873,"—as if the government had repudiated silver and cheapened it by refusing to coin it.

famous Comstock lode in Nevada yielded $42,000,000 in three years. Our total production of silver, which was $1,000,000 annually in 1861, rose to $30,000,000 in 1875. The market was flooded. The price of silver fell, and the mine owners were anxious again to have their product coined at the old rate. In 1874, for the first time in a generation, the silver in a dollar was worth more than the same weight of silver in a napkin ring or an umbrella handle. The mine owners, therefore, clamored for the repeal of the law of 1873 and the resumption of silver coinage. They were joined in their demand by the large class of Western farmers, who, being obliged to borrow money for the development of their farms and the transportation of their crops, had to pay high rates of interest to the bankers of the East, who controlled the nation's gold.

581. The Bland-Allison Act. Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri therefore introduced into Hayes's first Congress a bill for the unlimited, or "free," coinage of silver at the old rate of approximately 16 to 1. The bill was modified in the Senate by Allison of Iowa. Instead of accepting unlimited amounts of silver presented at its mints for coinage, the government was to agree, by the Allison Amendment, to purchase, for coining into silver dollars, not less than $2,000,000 worth nor more than $4,000,000 worth of silver a month. In this form the bill passed both Houses of Congress in February, 1878, and, although wisely vetoed by President Hayes, commanded the necessary two-thirds vote to override his veto. By the Bland-Allison Act, then, our government pledged itself to take from the mine owners at least $24,000,000 worth of silver every year to coin into "dollars" which were worth, in 1878, less than ninety cents apiece. We shall see in a later chapter some of the results of this policy of trying, simply by stamping the United States eagle upon coins, to make them more valuable than the worth of the metal they contain.

582. The Resumption of Specie Payments. The other financial measure of the Hayes administration was the resumption of specie payments, that is, the decision of the United States to pay its obligations in "specie," or coin. The "greenbacks," or legal-tender notes issued to the amount of about $450,000,000 during the Civil War, were simply pieces of paper on which were printed the government's promise to pay the bearer the amount specified. When the

government began to "redeem," or cancel, these notes the debtor classes in the West protested and even asked that more greenbacks be issued. They had borrowed paper money and did not want to have to pay back their debts in gold. But Congress refused to heed their demand. In order to maintain the honor of the government and uphold its credit in the eyes of foreign nations, Congress passed a law in 1875, fixing January 1, 1879, as the date when the Treasury of the United States would redeem in coin1 all the outstanding greenbacks (about $347,000,000). During the years 1877-1878, John Sherman, Hayes's able Secretary of the Treasury, had accumulated some $140,000,000 worth of gold by the sale of bonds at home and abroad; and when resumption day came, so perfect was the faith of the people in the credit of the government that greenbacks to the amount of only about $135,000 were presented at the Treasury to be exchanged for gold.

583. The Republican Convention of 1880. No president ever deserved a second term more than Hayes. But the shadow cast on his title in 1876, combined with his uncompromising independence of the leaders of the party, and his failure, through a certain aloofness of manner, to appeal to the popular imagination, made his nomination in 1880 out of the question. General Grant had just returned from a world-circling tour in which he had been received with royal honors by the sovereigns of Europe and Asia. A branch of the Republican party, called the "stalwarts,"2 led by Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, boomed Grant for a third term, chiefly with the hope of reëstablishing under the cover of his popularity the rule of the Republican machine, which had been somewhat damaged by President Hayes. Grant's chief rivals in the convention were Senator James G. Blaine of Maine and Hayes's Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman of Ohio. After the convention had balloted thirty-five times without giving the necessary majority vote to either Grant or Blaine, the Wisconsin delegation led a "stampede "

1 Since the government practically recognized gold as the standard "coin" in 1875, by demanding gold in payment of customs dues and paying in gold the interest on its bonds, specie payment was taken to mean gold payment.

2 The " stalwarts," in opposition to the reforming "half-breeds,” stood for uncompromising partisan rule, for a high protective tariff, for distribution of offices as spoils of political victory, for the assessment of officeholders for party contributions, and for the continued use of federal troops to coerce the Southern states and of federal inspectors to guard the polling places.