One of the benefits of being quarantined
is that we no longer have a choice between going to work, relax in a theater,
or finding excuses for why we don’t clean our closets and other concealed
spaces that begged to be organized for years. We can’t do the first two and we
find ourselves stuck engaging in the latter. During that process, I came across
a December 1890 edition of “The Cosmopolitan,” a periodical which, at the time,
was still being published as a literary magazine. Being curious, I perused its
content. Two articles stood out. Both offered a window into the political and
social issues of the time. Both were written by accomplished American authors,
Morat Halstead and Edward Everett Hale.
Halstead composed a “Review of Current
Events.” 1890 was the second year of the administration of Republican Benjamin
Harrison, our 23rd president, who had won the 1888 election with an
electoral majority, but losing the popular vote by more than 100,000 votes to
the Democrat Grover Cleveland, our 22nd president. While observing
the similarity with our 2016 election outcome, and struggling to read his essay
written in the style of prose of that time, I became aware of some other
resemblances to our current political experience.
The article opens with an assault on what
we would refer to today as “hate speech” and “fake news.” The “unrestraint
criticism that is given vast circulation relating to public matters, the
unsparing fault-finding and the incessant assaults to which our men of affairs
are subjected and … the vigor of the aggressive writings … cause an impression
of the extent of misgovernment that is misleading.” He went on to complain
about press coverage, and concludes that: “We should have a care not to allow
the character of the country to suffer in our understanding because it is
subjected to such an extraordinary sweep of unfriendly commentary.”
A hallmark of Benjamin Harrison’s
administration discussed and dissected in this essay as well was the passing of
the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890. This legislation was framed by Representative
William McKinley, who became president in 1897, and was known as the “Napoleon
of Protection.” Reminiscent of President Trump’s approach to tariffs, the Act
increased average duties to almost 50% and gave the president latitude to
manipulate the tariff structure if other countries treated “U.S. exports in a
reciprocally unequal and unreasonable fashion.”
Halstead suggested that even though it
was far from decided if Harrison would b the party’s candidate for a second
term, the president’s involvement in passing the tariff act should make him
more acceptable as a strong character, and that the “ready and rude
proclamations of personal dislike and disparagement of his individual
consequence were unjustifiable.” He concluded that: “If the country prospers
under the McKinley tariff … the president will get a large share of the credit
for it.” None of this seems too far removed from our current experience and
expectation.
The big moral issue of the time was
prohibition. While Halstead touches on it, Hale makes it the entire focus of
his contribution under the heading: “Social Problems.” He suggests that
“everyone except a hard-shell politician would say it is the most important as
it is the most difficult subject we have in hand.” He laments that, in
contemporary temperance meetings, the “physiological, ethical, social and
religious discussion about personal purity, prevalent during the temperance
movement of the 1830s an 1830s had been replaced by an “animated attack on the
people who make and sell liquor.”
Both authors display a strong xenophobic
disposition when contrasting American and European alcohol usage. Hale uses the
example of “the poor Irishman who arrives here, in a land where, if whiskey is
not cheap, money is, finds that he cannot keep up his old drinking habits. If
he does, nobody will employ him.” Halstead contested that the perception that
Europeans “having beer and wine to drink freely, and taught from childhood to
do it without misgiving … were somehow temperate.” He asserted: It is not true.
In all the great cities of Europe there is a frightful indulgence in liquors.
The leading idea of the European drunkard is not individual ostentation but
indulgence in the boozy luxury of utter stupidity. Intemperance is the wasting
scourge of Europe …” Although temperance and prohibition don’t register in our
current political climate, xenophobia certainly does. However, the language we
use today is generally more temperate.
Just like 2020, 1890 was a census year.
While we argued over language some of us wanted included in our current census,
those administering the 1890 census were much less concerned. Many of the
questions asked were very blunt: “Is the person able to read, write, speak
English? Is the individual naturalized, or has he or she taken out
naturalization papers? Is he a prisoner, convict, a homeless child, or a
pauper?” And, notably: “Is the person defective of mind, sight, hearing, or
speech” Is the person crippled, maimed or deformed? If yes, what was the name
of his defect?” It is clear that the politically correct use of language was
not terribly important to the folks in 1890.
During the presidential election of
November, 1892, in a rematch of the closely contested 1888 election, Democrat
Grover Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison, This was most like a result of the
growing unpopularity of the high tariff and high federal spending, which had
reached one billion dollars for the first time. Cleveland won both the popular
and electoral vote that year. During his first year in office, he was
confronted by the “panic of 1893,” a severe national depression that lasted
until 1897, affecting all aspects of the economy.
In 1919 Congress ratified the 18th
Amendment to our Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and
sale of intoxicating liquors. In 1933 the 21st Amendment was
ratified, repealing prohibition.
Theo Wierdsma
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
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