580 8886 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCCLXXXII. JANUARY, 1897. THE MEANING OF THE VOTES. BY SENATOR HENRY CABOT LODGE, OF MASSACHUSETTS. NOTHING is more unprofitable than the "might have beens " of history or politics. The computations by which it is shown that, if a few thousand votes had been changed in one place and a few thousand more somewhere else, then the result of the Presidential election would have been different, are not only meaningless but harmful. The single statement that it is no easier but actually more difficult to change votes when the margin is narrow and political lines tightly drawn than when the margin is wide and party ties loose really disposes of the whole thing. They are harmful because they are able by a certain fallacious picturesqueness to disturb and agitate many people who do not stop to analyze them. This calculation and solemn setting forth of practically impossible hypotheses is a favorite amusement after elections. It was indulged in in 1892, and has had its run again in 1896. But these computations and imaginings are not worth a moment's serious thought nor the paper used to print them. But while the" might have beens" are flat and unprofitable, it is both useful and profitable to examine the actual facts dis closed by the votes after a national election and especially after an election as momentous as that through which we have just passed. Such an examination seems especially desirable at this time, when many persons who in October would have found complete joy and salvation in the election of McKinley by a majority of one VOL. CLXIV.-NO. 482. 1 Copyright, 1896, by THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved. electoral vote are now grumbling and shaking their heads because he did not have a hundred and fifty. Such utterances and such a state of mind are especially undesirable now when the business confidence, for which at last we have good ground, should be stimulated and not checked and depressed. My purpose here, therefore, is to sketch briefly the situation which led up to the political campaign just concluded, and then by a few simple tables to show what the votes which decided that campaign really meant and what they represented. The elections of 1893, 1894, and 1895 were fought exclusively upon the tariff, and their overwhelmingly Republican results made it obvious that the people were not only convinced that the Democrats were a failure in office, but that they were also against low tariffs and in favor of protection. When a party elected to power on a distinct declaration in favor of free trade found itself unable to frame or pass anything but a tariff protective in principle, it became clear that the vast majority of the American people adhered to protection. This was confirmed by the election results of three successive years. The voters clearly did not want free trade, and were sick of the attempts made in that direction under the guise of tariff reform. Thus it became plain to everybody, except to those few persons whose horizon was so small that it was completely filled by the figure of Mr. Cleveland, that on the tariff issue the party of protection would carry the country, and win a sweeping victory. In the question of free silver some of the Southern Democratic leaders saw a means of escape, not only from national defeat, but what was far more important to them, from the loss of their own States to the Populists. In the election of 1892, Mr. Cleveland, although he had a plurality of nearly 400,000, was in a minority on the total popular vote of close on to a million. If by free silver the Populists could be united to the Democrats, victory was certainly possible if not probable. The plan of these leaders was to confine the campaign to the silver issue, but when they got to Chicago they found it was easier to light a fire than to control it. They had broken down the old leadership of the Democratic party in the North and a new element had come in. This new element cared little for the silver question except as a means to an end. What they desired was to make a general attack on all existing institutions. Under the able lead of Governor Altgeld they embodied in the platform a demand for repudiation, for the overthrow of the powers of the Court, for making the courts a mere mouthpiece of the victorious political party, and for the destruction of the Executive power of enforcing law. When this platform was first published, these clauses struck the country as merely wild declarations put forward without consideration in the hope of catching certain bodies of voters. But, as the campaign proceeded, it became clear to every one that, instead of being a collection of reckless and crazy utterances without cohesion or plan, it was a well-drawn and carefully thought out scheme based on socialistic and anarchistic theories imported from Europe and involving, if successful, nothing short of a revolution in our form of government. As the discussion went on and the weeks passed, the silver question dropped more and more into the background. The theatrical declaimer who won the nomination by arresting at a critical moment the wandering fancy of the Convention first dropped from his repertoire the question of the tariff. Four years before he had been proclaiming to all who would listen that free trade would bring the millennium and the overthrow of all those wicked persons and combinations engaged in the criminal pursuit of earning and saving money. In 1896 he had forgotten the panacea of 1892. In all his miles of talk and acres of words there is hardly an allusion to tariff. At the beginning his speeches were devoted almost exclusively to the money question. He even tried at Madison Square to discuss it seriously and he never wholly abandoned it, but gradually it assumed a less and less important place in his declamation. More and more he was impelled by the forces which had put the revolutionary clauses into the Democratic platform to devote himself to passionate appeals along these lines. His action, which was the result not of thought but of the governing forces of the contests, illustrates the single point I desire to make, which is that the real question finally developed during the campaign was whether we should hold to the principles of government and the traditions of law and order which have been characteristic of the American people, or whether we should break down all these principles and traditions and enter upon a new line of experiment and probably of revolution. No graver question was ever submitted to any people for decision at the ballot box at a single election. The result of the voting therefore becomes of the utmost importance, and its true significance should be rightly understood so that we may know what it means and what it portends in the future. Let us note, first, exactly what the result of the voting was on the popular vote, which is much more instructive than the electoral vote, and see how it compares with the previous elections. The following table gives these statistics: It will be observed from this table, which is made up of official returns in all except two or three of the smaller States, that McKinley received the largest plurality and the largest majority over all ever given to a President except in 1872, when Grant defeated Greeley. It must be remembered that in the latter case the Republican vote of the South was still polled, and that the Democratic vote |