Currency, Labor and Politics: Nicaragua Canal and Tilden

The course of national politics has run no more smoothly than that of labor. The Presidential controversy of 1876 opened a period of sharp struggle over doctrines of great import to the commonweal. The Republican nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes, was declared elected by the Electoral Commission, though Tilden, the Democratic candidate, had the larger popular vote, which stood, Hayes, 4,033,950, Tilden, 4,284,885. The new administration commanded general respect for quality and character. "One of the first acts of President Hayes' administration was to remove a prominent cause of ill-feeling between the two sections of the country, in the withdrawal of the United States troops that had sustained the Republican State governments in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. With this withdrawal all distinction in the political relations of the States ceased, and the States named fell quickly under Democratic control." The President showed active sympathy with the movement for Civil Service reform. A commission had been appointed in 1871, whose report urged that fitness, and not political favoritism, should be the ground of appointment to government offices. The efforts of the President were loyally followed by his colleagues, and the merit system made substantial headway against the established practice by which the victors claimed the spoils. The public began to see the practical advantage of having and retaining servants who had proved their worth during four years of apprenticeship. The idea of swapping experienced for inexperienced officials for no better reason than the greed of political hangers-on was admittedly in contradiction to all the principles and practices that have made the nation so great, despite such survivals of crude politicianism. The matter assumed a larger phase when Garfield became President. He, too, favored the common-sense plan, and, whatever reasons outside this may have influenced him in the same direction, he raised a storm when he acted on his right to make appointments without consulting Conkling and Platt, the "boss" Senators from New York. Not being pleased, they resigned their seats, but were disappointed when their constituencies declined to re-elect them.

The assassination of President Garfield in the fourth month of his term by an aggrieved minor official out in the cold, may indirectly have sprung from the widespread hostility to reform. Two years later the merit system was embodied in an Act of Congress, and its operation, though slow, is gaining popular approval. Under the Administration of President Arthur a new tariff law was passed, increasing some duties, lowering others, and extending the free list. The Monroe doctrine had been raised by the effort to construct the Panama Canal. The later international discussion of the proposed Nicaragua Canal makes it of interest to note certain official utterances made by President Hayes and his successor. In a special message, 1880, President Hayes said: "The United States cannot consent to the surrender of control.. to any European power or to any combination of European powers.. An inter-oceanic canal across the American isthmus will be a great ocean thoroughfare between our Atlantic and our Pacific shores and virtually a part of the coastline of the United States. No other great power would under similar circumstances fail to assert a rightful control over a work so closely and vitally affecting its interest and welfare." The Clayton-Bulwer treaty virtually permits the control of such a canal by England. In Garfield's time, Blaine, as Secretary of the Interior, made a strong effort to have the treaty modified, and the English government made the objection that sole control by the United States would lead other powers to build fortifications to command the approaches to the canal in the interests of their commerce, in view of possible trouble. The discussion was continued by Secretary Frelinghuysen of Garfield's Cabinet but with no agreement upon vital points. The status of the proposed Nicaragua Canal, and recent related matters are considered more fully elsewhere.