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And a similar security against the risk of civil strife or revolution is to be found in the fact, already explained, that the American parties are not based on or sensibly affected by differences either of wealth or of social position. Their cleavage is not horizontal according to social strata, but vertical. This would be less true if it were stated either of the Northern States separately, or of the Southern States separately: it is true of the Union taken as a whole. It might cease to be true if the new labour party were to grow till it absorbed or superseded either of the existing parties. The same feature has characterized English politics as compared with those of most European countries, and has been a main cause of the stability of the English government and of the good feeling between different classes in the community.1

1 At the present moment the vast majority of the rich, a proportion probably larger than at any previous time, at any rate since 1827, belong in England to one of the two historic parties. But this phenomenon may possibly pass away.

CHAPTER LVI

FURTHER OBSERVATIONS ON THE PARTIES

BESIDES the two great parties which have divided America for thirty years, there are two or three lesser organizations or factions needing a word of mention. Sixty years ago there was a period when one of the two great parties having melted away, the other had become split up into minor sections.1 Parties were numerous and unstable, new ones forming, and after a short career uniting with some other, or vanishing altogether from the scene. This was a phenomenon peculiar to that time, and ceased with the building up about 1832 of the Whig party, which lasted till shortly before the Civil War. But De Tocqueville, who visited America in 1831-32, took it for the normal state of a democratic community, and founded upon it some bold generalizations. A stranger who sees how few principles now exist to hold each of the two great modern parties together will be rather surprised that they have not shown more tendency to split up into minor groups and factions.

What constitutes a party? In America there is a simple test. Any section of men who nominate candidates of their own for the presidency and vice-presidency

1 The same phenomenon reappeared at the break-up of the Whigs between 1852 and 1857, and from much the same cause.

of the United States are deemed a national party. Adopting this test we shall find that there are now two or three national parties in addition to the Republicans and Democrats.

The first is that of the Greenbackers, who arose soon after the end of the war. They demand a large issue of greenbacks (i.e. paper money, so called from the colour of the notes issued during the war), alleging that this will be a benefit to the poorer classes, who will obviously be richer when there is more money in the country. It may seem incredible that there should still be masses of civilized men who believe that money is value, and that a liberal issue of stamped paper can give the poor more bread or better clothes. If there were a large class of debtors, and the idea was to depreciate the currency and let them then pay their debts in it, one could understand the proposal. Such a depreciation existed during and immediately after the Civil War. As wages and prices had risen enormously, people were receiving more money in wages, or for goods sold, than they had received previously, while they were paying fixed charges, such as interest on mortgage debts, in a depreciated paper currency. Thus the working classes were on the whole gainers, while creditors and persons with fixed incomes were losers. It is true that the working men were also paying more for whatever they needed, food, clothes, and lodging; still they seem to have felt more benefit in receiving larger sums than they felt hardship in paying out larger sums. Those who now call for greenbacks do not profess to wish to depreciate the currency: nor are those who have supported them to any very great extent a debtor class to which a depreciated currency would be welcome, as a debased coinage served the momentary occasions of

mediæval kings. But the recollections of the war time with its high wages cling to many people, and are coupled with a confused notion that the more money there is in circulation so much the more of it will everybody have, and so much the better off will he be; so much the more employment will capital find for labour, and so much the more copious will be the fertilizing stream of wages diffused among the poor.1

The Greenback party, which at first called itself Independent, held a national Nominating Convention in 1876, at which nineteen States were represented, and nominated candidates for president and vice-president, issuing an emphatic but ungrammatical denunciation of the financial policy of the Republican and Democratic parties. They again put forward candidates in 1880 and 1884, but made a poor show in the voting in most States, and of course came nowhere within a measurable distance of carrying a State.

The Labour party has of late years practically superseded the Greenbackers, and seems to have now drawn to itself such adherents as that party retained. It is not easy to describe its precise tenets, for it includes persons of very various views, some who would

be called in Europe pronounced socialists or communists, others who wish to restrain the action of railway and telegraph companies and other so-called "monopolists," and of course many who, while dissatisfied with existing economic conditions, and desiring to see the working classes receive a larger share of the good things of the world, are not prepared to say in what way these con

1 The matter is further complicated by the fact that the national bank-notes issued by the national banks are guaranteed by government bonds deposited with the U.S. treasury, bonds on which the national government pays interest. The greenbackers desire to substitute greenbacks, or so-called "fiat money," for these bank-notes as a circulating medium.

VOL. II

2 B

Speak

ditions can be mended and this result attained. ing generally, the reforms advocated by the leaders of the Labour party include the "nationalization of the land," the imposition of a progressive income tax,' the taking over of railroads and telegraphs by the National government, the prevention of the immigration of Chinese and of any other foreign labourers who may come under contract, the restriction of all so-called monopolies, the forfeiture (where legally possible) of railroad land grants, the increase of the currency, the free issue of inconvertible paper, and, above all, the statutory restriction of hours of labour. But it must not be supposed that all the leaders adopt all these tenets; and the party is still too young to make it easy to say who are to be deemed its leaders. It shows a tendency to split up into factions. Its strength has lain in the trade unions of the operative class, and particularly in the enormous organization or league of trade unions known as the Knights of Labour: and it is therefore warmly interested in the administration of the various State laws which affect strikes and the practice of boycotting by which strikes often seek to prevail. Besides the enrolled Knights, whose political strength seems to be less feared now than it was a year or two ago, it has much support from the recent immigrants who fill the great cities, especially the Germans, Poles, and Czechs.

The Labour party has never yet run a presidential candidate, unless we are to consider General B. F. Butler, who was nominated in 1884 by the Greenbackers and Anti-monopolists, as having been practically its

1 This was demanded by the Greenback national convention in its platform of 1880, and again in 1884; but one hears very little about it in America. Its recent adoption in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland had the effect of causing some of the wealthier inhabitants to quit the

canton.

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