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involved were fully fifty per cent. greater. It was computed that nine commercial houses out of every thousand doing business in the United States failed in 1873; in 1893, the similar reckoning showed thirteen failures. in every thousand."'*

The problem of the unemployed became general and many relief committees were organized in the large cities to provide food and other necessities. In several cities there were demonstrations of the unemployed. On April 21, 1894, 130,000 miners throughout the country stopped work. They were afterward joined by 25,000 more. An industrial army " under J. S. Coxey marched on Washington during the last half of April to demand help from the national government, in the form of an issue of $500,000,000 in non-interest-bearing notes to be used in the improvement of roads, thus giving work to the unemployed. Railway cars for transporting the army were appropriated and the advance guard reached Washington April 30. On May 1, they attempted a demonstration on the steps of the capitol but the leaders were arrested for "trespassing 99 on the capitol grounds. The strike ended June 18.

On June 26, 1894, the American Railway Union declared a boycott of Pullman cars, as an expression of sympathy with striking Pullman employees. The strike spread and railway traffic was almost entirely sus

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pended from Chicago to San Francisco. The United States courts in Chicago, July 2, issued sweeping injunctions against the strikers, and General Miles and a detachment of United States troops were ordered to Chicago to see that the mails were not delayed and to suppress rioting.

On the 8th, President Cleveland issued a proclamation calling upon the strikers to disperse and on the following day issued another proclamation against mob violence in California, where United States troops were fired on and a train carrying them wrecked. President Debs and several other officers of the Railway Union were placed under arrest on the 10th. The backbone of the strike was now broken and with military protection railway traffic was gradually resumed. The strike ended July 15.*

Labor troubles, however, continued to exist in many manufacturing towns, strikes occurring at New Bedford, Fall River and New York. In January, 1895, the employees of the Brooklyn electric railway system went on strike and during the following month much rioting occurred. The militia.

Wright, Industrial Evolution, pp. 313-317; William H. Carwardine, The Pullman Strike; W. F. Burns, The Pullman Boycott; E. A. Bancroft, The Chicago Strike of 1894; Senate Ex. Doc. No. 7, 53d Congress, 3d session; Andrews, Last Quarter-Century, vol. ii., pp. 330-346; Grover Cleveland, The Government in the Chicago Strike of 1894, in The Fortnightly, N. S. vol. lxxvi., pp. 1-19 (London, 1904), in McClure's Magazine, vol. xxiii., pp. 227-240 (New York, 1904), and in Presidential Problems, pp. 79-117; Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army, pp. 491509, giving official proclamations and dispatches regarding the use of government troops.

AGRICULTURAL DISASTER; WILSON-GORMAN TARIFF ACT.

was sent to restore order and the strikers quickly subsided.

In 1895, Carroll D. Wright, in the tenth Annual Report of the Department of Labor, made the following statements:

"In that time [1881-1894] there were in the United States 14,380 strikes, in which 69,167 establishments were involved, and the persons thrown out of employment numbered 3,714,406. The loss in wages is estimated to be $163,807,866 for strikes and $26,685,516 from lockouts; the loss to employers, $82,590,386 in strikes, and $12,235,451 in lockouts. To the losses of wages must be added $5,262,000 paid to strikers by labor organizations. The strikes were successful in 45 per cent. of the cases, and partly successful in 12 per cent. The effort to raise wages led to 25 per cent. of the strikes; to reduce the hours of daily labor 13 per cent.; to resist reduction of wages to 8 per cent.; both to raise wages and reduce hours to 6 per cent.; 7 per cent. were sympathetic; 4 per cent. to prevent employment of nonunion men, and 3 per cent. for recognition of trade unions." *

The year 1894 was also a year of agricultural disaster. A drought ruined the corn crop of Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, so that the yield was only 25 per cent. of what it had been in 1893. The yield of wheat was large, but the European crops had also been large, and thus as there was no market either abroad or at home, the price of wheat fell until it reached its lowest mark-forty-nine cents per bushel. This was the situation facing the government when the attempt to reform the tariff was being made. the administration was But as pledged to it the attempt was made. On December 19, 1893, the bill was in

See also Coman's Industrial History, p. 333 et seq.

† Annual Reports. Department of Agriculture, 1893 and 1894.

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troduced in the House.* This measure bore the name of William L. Wilson, of West Virginia, Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, and it provided for the import, free of duty, of raw sugar, lumber, coal, iron-ore, hides, cotton ties, binding twine, fresh fish and wool, and substantially reduced the duties. on many articles listed in the McKinley law. In January, 1894, a bill imposing a tax of 2 per cent. on incomes over $4,000 was introduced in the House, and consideration was given to other bills concerning internal revenue, all of which were incorporated in the tariff bill during the subsequent debate. The bill was then passed (February 1, 1894) in the House by a vote of 204 to 140. The Senate, however, under the leadership of A. P. Gorman, of Maryland, radically altered the bill, replacing the duty on iron-ore, coal and sugar,|| and on August 13 forced the House to accept the amended document. The bill as thus shaped became the Gorman-Wilson tariff law of 1894, but President Cleveland refused to sign the bill and it became a law without his signature on August 27, 1894.¶

Meanwhile the condition of the treasury was a continued source of * Record, 53d Congress, 2d session, vol. xxvi., p. 415. Stanwood, Tariff Controversies, vol. ii., p. 20. Record, p. 1796; Stanwood, pp. 321-326.

|| Record, pp. 1804, 3126, 3389-7136, 7188-7195. $ Ibid, pp. 7714, 7930, 8482.

Ibid, p. 8666; Stanwood, Tariff Controversies, vol. ii., pp. 327-359; Proctor, Tariff Acts, pp. 443-473; Dewey, Financial History, pp. 455–458; Noyes, American Finances, pp. 223–231; F. Pierce,

alarm. Gold continued to flow away, and to make matters worse the revenue from all branches of public revenue fell off, so that by October 19, 1893, the stock of gold had diminished to $81,551,385 and by January 1, 1894, had reached $65,000,000. Therefore, Therefore, on January 17, 1894 without special legislation but under authority of the Resumption Act of 1875, Secretary of the Treasury Carlisle invited bids on an issue of $50,000,000 of 5 per cent. ten-year bonds at $117.223, and the

The Tariff and the Trusts, pp. 291–294; Laughlin and Willis, Reciprocity, pp. 230-269; Sherman, vol. ii., pp. 1201-1208; Whittle's Cleveland, pp. 165-173; F. N. Thorpe, Constitutional History, pp. 318-319. Sections 27 to 30 of this act (those providing for the income tax) were subsequently declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the case of Pollock vs. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company (157 U. S. 429). The case was argued twice in April, 1895, and in May, 1895. After the first hearing the decision rendered was to the effect that a tax on the rents or income from real estate was a direct tax and that a tax on the interest on municipal bonds was a tax upon the power and means of the State to borrow money and therefore repugnant to the Constitution. But at this first hearing the court did not decide whether or not the tax upon personal property was constitutional, the court being evenly divided (one justice was absent). In May, however, when the cases were reargued before a full court the majority of the court, in an opinion rendered by Chief Justice Fuller (158 U. S. 601), held that in order to be constitutional a direct tax must be apportioned according to representation; that a tax on personal property or the income on personal property was a direct tax; that the tax imposed by the above act was a direct tax; and that as the method of imposing the tax was not according to representation the act was unconstitutional and void. On the internal revenue features of the bill, the income tax and the subsequent decisions see Howe, Internal Revenue System, pp. 231-252.

* White, Money and Banking, p. 210; Noyes, American Finance, pp. 203-205; Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1894.

subsequent sale netted a premium of $8,660,917 in gold.* But though this issue raised the total of gold up to $105,000,000, it did not stop the drain on the reserve. By August 7 "the redemption of legal-tender notes for export gold had reduced the treasury's gold reserve to $52,189,500," and by October "the monthly deficit had risen to thirteen million dollars, the largest of the year." In November, therefore, another issue of $50,000,000 of bonds was floated at $117.077 bringing in $58,538,500 in gold.‡

In both cases the sale of these bonds had called for subscriptions in gold, but fresh redemptions of notes quickly exhausted the new supplies. As a consequence of the bond sales the volume of gold in the treasury fluctuated as follows:

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GOLD RESERVE MEASURES; BLAND SILVER BILL.

through the regular channels. On January 28, 1895, President Cleveland sent a special message to Congress,* recommending that the Secretary of the Treasury be given authority to issue bonds at a low rate of interest to maintain the reserve and redeem the outstanding notes which had been issued for the purchase of silver, but this recommendation did not receive the approval of Congress, the resolution carrying this provision being defeated by a vote of 167 to 120, February 7.†

Secretary Carlisle on February 8 signed a contract with a syndicate of New York bankers for the purchase of 3,500,000 ounces of gold coin. In payment the government was to issue 30-year 4 per cent. bonds on condition that if 3 per cent. bonds should be authorized by Congress, the latter might be substituted for the 4 per cent. bonds within ten days. There was also a condition that one-half of this coin should be purchased in Europe. Secretary Carlisle under this contract received $65,116,244 in gold for $62,315,400 in bonds. On June 25 the treasury reserve of $100,000,000 was again intact and on July 8 it had reached $107,571,230.

* Richardson, Messages and Papers, vol. ix., pp. 561-565; Cleveland, Presidential Problems, pp. 143-146.

Whittle's Cleveland, pp. 165-180; White,

P. 212.

Dewey, Financial History, pp. 449-453; Noyes, American Finance, p. 235 et seq.; Hepburn, Contest for Sound Money, p. 382; White, Money and Banking, p. 211. See also Cleveland's message of February 8, 1895, and his annual message of December 2, Richardson, Messages and Papers, vol. ix., pp. 567, 641 et seq.; Cleveland, Presidential Problems, pp. 147-160.

57

On January 6, 1896, Secretary Carlisle was again forced, owing to the continued business depression and the export of gold (the reserve having gone down to $61,251,710 on that day) to issue a call for bids on an additional $100,000,000 of the 4 per cent. bonds. The total number of bids submitted was 4,600 and the amount of the subscriptions was several times the sum required. The premium yielded amounted to about $11,000,000* and the gold reserve was thus increased to $128,291,327 (April 9, 1896).†

In the meantime the silver question had again come up in Congress, when on February 7, 1894, the House Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures reported a bill directing that the silver held in the treasury vaults must be coined. Congressman Bland, however, introduced a substitute measure providing for the coinage of the seigniorage and this substitute was passed in the House by a vote of 168 to 129 with 56 not voting and in the Senate by a vote of 44 to 31, with 10 not voting. The President vetoed the bill March 29, 1894, and as it failed to pass over his veto it did not become a law.‡

In 1896 the Territory of Utah was admitted to the Union as a State, the President issuing a proclamation to that effect January 4.

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lumbian Exposition. On April 28, 1890, President Harrison signed a bill entitled: "An act to provide for celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, by holding an international exhibition of arts, industries, manufactures and the products of the soil, mine, and sea, in the City of Chicago, in the State of Illinois."

Though the exposition itself did not being until May, 1893, the preliminary celebration began in October, 1892. In New York there was a parade of school children, October 10, a naval parade on the 11th, and a military and civic parade and a night pageant on the 12th. In Chicago there was a large parade on the 20th and on the 21st the dedication exercises took place in the manufactures and liberal arts buildings.

The following were the principal buildings with their dimensions and costs:

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"

The most noted works of art were: the Columbia fountain, in the western section of the court of honor, designed by Frederick McMonnies; the statue of the Republic," in the eastern section of the court of honor, designed by Daniel C. French, of New York; the peristyle and colonnade, which inclosed the court on the east and south, designed by Charles B. Atwood, of New York; the Columbus quadriga, surmounting the central arch of the peristyle, designed by D. C. French and E. C. Potter, of New York; the statue of Columbus, in front of the administration building, by Mary T. Lawrence; the statue of Benjamin Franklin, in the portal of the electricity building, the work of Carl Rohl-Smith.

In the southern portion of the grand canal, fronting the colonnade, was a magnificent obelisk, surrounded by a group of lions, designed by M. A. Waagen. Adorning the bridges and overlooking the lagoons were the celebrated bulls, by E. C. Potter, the draught horses, by Potter and French, cowboy and pony and Indian and pony, by A. P. Proctor, and the buffaloes, bears, elks and panthers, by Edward Kemeys and A. P. Proctor. There was also a statue of Diana by Augustus St. Gaudens, adorning the dome of the agricultural building, beside hundreds of other groups,

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signed by such eminent artists as Karl

Bitter, Philip Martiny, Lorado Taft,
Johann Gelert, Larkin Mead, John J.
Boyle and others. There were 21,477,-
212 paid admissions and 6,052,188

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