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The platform then gave Republicans credit for
passing and enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act, and advocated strengthening the
law. The document endorsed enhancing the Interstate Commerce Commission’s
authority and more legislation regulating the safety and working conditions of
railroad and federal employees. For “Wage-Earners Generally,” it offered
numerous promises, including an eight-hour day for those constructing federal
public works, a child labor law for Washington, D.C., congressional inquiries
into the working conditions of women, children, miners, and telephone and
telegraph company employees. At Taft’s request, the platform endorsed
limiting the circumstances under which injunctions (often used against strikers)
could be issued by judges. The moderate language proved unsatisfactory to
both labor and business leaders.
At Taft’s insistence, the 1908 platform dropped the
threat in the 1904 platform of reducing congressional representation for states
violating voting rights, but the 1908 document’s support of black civil rights
was much explicit and lengthier than in the previous one. It supported
“without reservation” enforcing the “letter and spirit” of the 13th,
14th, and 15th Amendments, and condemned disfranchisement
based on race. The platform praised the Roosevelt administration’s
handling of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the Panama Canal, reaffirmed
the Republican commitment to military preparedness, and endorsed the wider use
of arbitration to settle international disputes. The final section of the
platform reviewed the “fundamental differences” between the two parties,
including the Democrats recent trend “toward socialism” versus the GOP
allegiance to “wise and regulated individualism.”
On June 18, Taft won the Republican presidential
nomination by a landslide, with 702 votes to other candidates’ combined total of
274. Since Governors Hughes of New York and Herbert Hadley of Missouri
took themselves out of contention for the vice-presidency, and geography and
factionalism prevented the selection of Iowa’s Governor Albert Cummins or
Senator Jonathan Dolliver, second place on the ticket was awarded to Congressman
James “Sunny Jim” Sherman of New York. Besides bringing geographical
balance, he had a record of successful fundraising and considerable personal
wealth.
The Democratic Nomination
For a dozen years, the dominant presence in the
Democratic Party had been William Jennings Bryan, the former congressman from
Nebraska (1891-1895). Although he had been the party’s unsuccessful
presidential nominee in 1896 and 1900, few doubted that he planned to seek a
third nomination in 1908. In 1901, he began publishing a weekly newspaper
called The Commoner to espouse his political agenda: business
regulation; government reforms, such as ballot initiatives and referenda,
primary nomination system, one-term presidency, and the popular election of U.S.
senators; and, in foreign policy, greater self-government for America’s foreign
dependencies combined with more forceful application of the Monroe Doctrine in
Latin America.
With conservatives temporarily in control of the
party, Bryan chose not to run for president in 1904. Nevertheless, he
continued to play a leadership role, promoting his populist agenda and
relentlessly criticizing the party’s conservatives. President Theodore
Roosevelt’s resounding defeat of Democrat Alton B. Parker left Bryan poised to
reclaim the nomination four years later. After he left the United States
in September 1905 on a world tour, political events in America proved beneficial
to his presidential ambitions. Publisher William Randolph Hearst’s loss of
the New York mayoral race in November 1905 undercut his political aspirations,
and a trial balloon launched by Harper’s Weekly for President Woodrow
Wilson of Princeton University deflated. In early 1906, several Democratic
state conventions endorsed Bryan’s candidacy, to which he unconvincingly
expressed surprise. In order to attract support from conservative
Democrats, he tempered his rhetoric and called for a halt to the spread of
socialism in America.
When Bryan returned to the United States on
August 30, 1906, Democratic politicians from across the country gathered at a
reception in New York City to hail him as a conquering hero. He spoke for
over an hour, denouncing imperialism, arguing for tariff reform and stronger
antitrust legislation, while acknowledging that the issue of free silver was
finished. His most controversial stance was government ownership of major
railroad lines (interstate lines at the federal level and local feeder lines at
the state level). The position undermined support from conservative
Democrats who had been warming to him. Despite the publicity, Bryan
remained coy about his future intentions.
Governor John A. Johnson of Minnesota was Bryan’s
most serious challenger. He gained national attention in 1904 after
winning the governorship as a Democrat in a Republican state that gave President
Roosevelt a two-to-one majority. Johnson earned a reputation as an honest,
talented administrator free from ties to political machines or corporate
interests, and a moderate reformer. His rags-to-riches story made good
press, and he became very popular. In 1906, he ran an energetic campaign,
winning reelection by a landslide. In 1907, Harper’s Weekly
profiled him in a series on five possible Democratic presidential candidates,
and Louisville Courier-Journal
editor Henry Watterson became his major promoter. In early 1908, Johnson
topped the New York World’s list of 16 candidates better suited for the
Democratic nomination than Bryan. In March, the Minnesota Democratic State
Convention endorsed Johnson for president.
Popularity at home and favorable national press
were not enough for Johnson to overtake Bryan, who by the end of June had
amassed more than the requisite two-thirds of the delegates needed for
nomination. Tammany Hall threw its support to Bryan, Alton Parker said he
would back him if nominated, and even
World publisher Joseph Pulitzer admitted that Bryan was better than Taft, a
“Roosevelt type of candidate.” At the Democratic National Convention in
Denver on July 7-10, Johnson released his delegates to Bryan, who won a
first-ballot victory with 892½ votes. The remaining 105½ votes were
scattered among favorite-son candidates.
Bryan left the choice of vice-president to the
delegates, who nominated John Kern, a former state senator (1893-1897) from
Indiana. The New York Times
scoffed that the Democratic national ticket was consistent because “a man twice
defeated for the Presidency was at the head of it, and a man twice defeated for
governor of his state [in 1900 and 1904] was at the tail of it.” Angry
that the party had rejected his candidate, Woodrow Wilson, Harper’s Weekly
editor George Harvey responded, “The Democrats will now resume their customary
occupation of electing a Republican President.”
The Democratic platform began by declaring that
the national conscience had been “aroused to free the Government from the grip
of … favor-seeking corporations,” and that all issue could be reduced to the
question, “Shall the people rule?” It criticized the increased number of
federal officeholders and expenditures—“the heedless waste of the people’s
money”—and demanded “the strictest economy in every department compatible with
frugal and efficient administration.” Next, the platform dedicated an
entire section to condemning the “Arbitrary Power” of the speaker of the House,
Republican Joseph Cannon of Illinois (unnamed). That was followed by
criticism of President Roosevelt for using patronage to nominate “one of his
Cabinet officers” (i.e., Taft) as his successor.
At Bryan’s insistence, a plank called for federal
legislation requiring the publication of campaign contributions, limiting the
amount that individuals could donate, and banning contributions from business
corporations (via their officers), the last punishable by imprisonment.
The platform reiterated the party’s longstanding support of tariff reform and
welcomed Republicans’ “tardy recognition of the righteousness of the Democratic
position….” Labeling private monopoly “indefensible and intolerable,” the
trusts plank advocated three laws: banning directors from sitting on the
board of more than one competing business; federal licensing of any corporation
before it could control 25% of a market and prohibiting control of over 50%
market-share of an American-consumed product; and, requiring corporations to
sell to all purchasers on the same terms (except for transportation costs).
At Bryan’s direction, his previous endorsement of
government ownership of railroads was omitted from the platform, but it
advocated regulatory authority for the Interstate Commerce Commission, emergency
currency “issued and controlled by the Federal Government,” and an income tax on
individuals and corporations. Meeting most of the demands of American
Federal of Labor president Samuel Gompers, the labor plank criticized the unfair
use of injunctions against striking workers, affirmed the right of labor to
organize and not be charged with restraining trade, and favored an eight-hour
day for federal employees, a general employers’ liability law, and a separate
Department of Labor. The platform called for a homestead law for Hawaii,
territorial governments for Alaska and Puerto Rico, independence for the
Philippines once a stable government was established, and a ban on Asian
immigrants.
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