Читать книгу The New Democracy: A handbook for Democratic speakers and workers - Walter Vrooman - Страница 5

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An ominous example of the methods being used to capture Democracy by the money power was afforded by the lawless militarism brought into play by the gold bugs at the recent municipal Democratic convention of St. Louis, when, their fraud being discovered, and legitimately defeated by the people at the primaries and at the convention, they appealed to the last resort of despotism everywhere, the force of arms.

For many years a clique of unscrupulous politicians controlled St. Louis Democratic conventions. Early in the April campaign, Mr. Hugh Brady, for many years Chairman of the Democratic City Central Committee, stated in an interview published in the St. Louis papers that a clique of "machine" politicians had "fixed the machine" to nominate Mr. Edwin Harrison for Mayor. The street railway managers, who last fall knifed Bryan and the Chicago platform, came to the front as Mr. Harrison's supporters. Mr. C. C. Maffitt, who bolted the party last fall, headed his delegation, and in several other wards the Harrison delegations were led by gold boltocrats. The "machine" was for Harrison, and Hugh Brady declared the "machine" could nominate any man it wanted.

The men who supported Mr. Lee Meriwether for Mayor were all aggressive Bryan Democrats and opposed not only the gold standard, but also opposed street car domination in city affairs. They appealed from the "machine" to the people. They pointed out how the leading supporters of the "machine" candidate were gold boltocrats and street railway managers, who use their political influence to escape paying hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes legally due the City Treasury. They insisted that franchises to monopolize the public's streets ought to be sold, not given away, to private corporations. And on this platform they secured enough delegates to control the convention.

On the morning following the primary election, even the Republic, the organ of the "machine," admitted that Mr. Harrison had but 134 delegates, while the opposition had 153[1].

When the delegates opposed to Mr. Harrison united in supporting Mr. Meriwether, it was apparent that nothing short of fraud and force could prevent the defeat of the machine. Accordingly, Mr. Ed Devoy, Chairman of the Central Committee, called the convention to order and hurriedly announced as its governing officers Messrs. Lutz, Barrett and Wand, the three campaign managers of the "machine" candidate.

Scarcely was the announcement made when ex-Governor Norman J. Colman rose and protested against the attempt to muzzle the convention, and nominated for chairman Mr. Sterling P. Bond. Upon Devoy's refusing to put this motion, one of the delegates, R. T. Brownrigg, made the motion which was duly seconded, and Gov. Colman put the question to the convention and it was carried by a majority of the delegates. In a similar way secretaries and sergeants-at-arms were elected, the convention refusing to accept the slate prepared by the machine.

After the committees had been appointed and reported, nominations for Mayor were made, and on the second ballot Lee Meriwether received 155 votes, eleven more than a majority of all the delegates elected, and he was accordingly declared the nominee of the Democratic party.

Thereupon ensued a scene more worthy of Russia than of the American Republic. Foiled in the attempt to carry the primaries; foiled again in the effort to force their own tools upon the convention as governing officers, the gold men and the street railway managers who were present on the floor of the convention, played their last card in the game to defeat the candidate pledged to make them pay their taxes, and ordered their servant, Devoy, to do by force what he had failed to do by fraud. A Board of Police Commissioners lent themselves to this shameful assault upon American liberty, and ordered three hundred armed police to drive from the hall the delegates opposed to Mr. Harrison. Sterling P. Bond, John J. Fitzwilliam and W. A. Brandenburger, the duly elected chairman and secretaries of the convention, were brutally assaulted by the police. Mr. Bond was carted away to jail in a patrol wagon. Mr. Meriwether, who had been called on to address the convention after his nomination for Mayor, was thrown from the platform by two policemen, and, in company with a majority of the delegates, was forcibly expelled from the hall.

Since the 9th of November, 1799, when Napoleon's grenadiers drove the French deputies out of their convention hall at the point of the bayonet, history affords no parallel to this outrage by the St. Louis boltocratic politicians.

That in claiming a convention has no right to elect its own presiding officers the gold boltocrats were utterly wrong in custom as well as equity, will be seen by recalling the manner in which last year the Chicago Convention refused to accept Senator Hill, the National Democratic Committee's suggestion for chairman, and instead elected Daniel, a silver Senator from Virginia.

Although the St. Louis papers subsequently supported Mr. Harrison, whose nomination was only accomplished by the illegal use of three hundred police, those same papers did not hesitate to say, the morning after the convention, that the action of the machine was illegal and tyrannical:[2]