The Political Disagreement
with Father Edward McGlynn
over the Presidential Candidates
Henry George
[Reprinted from The Standard, 18 February
1888]
The discussion at the meeting of the Brooklyn county committee of the
united labor party on Tuesday evening of last week, Dr. McGlynn's
speech at the meeting of the down-town branch of the Anti-poverty
society on the following Thursday evening, and various utterances and
expressions which have since been made through the press, make it
necessary, in justice to myself and to my friends, that I should speak
of matters thus brought up with greater frankness than I have hitherto
cared to use, either in talking through these columns with the readers
of THE STANDARD, or in replying by letter to those who have written me
on the subject of the coming presidential campaign.
For some little time past an effort has been made, rather by
insinuation and innuendo than by direct statement , to put me in the
position of abandoning principle, for the purpose of helping the
democratic party. In THE STANDARD of the last issue but one I printed
two letters from the west , in which I was remonstrated with for
turning away from principle, and it was intimated in the "they
are saving" style that I was engaged in "making a deal"
with the democratic party. I did not feel it necessary in commenting
upon these intimations to go further than the obvious considerations
which were suggested by their face. In the general review of the
political situation from our standpoint , of which I made these
letters the text , I merely pointed out that -
"If it be assumed that our not running a ticket
will be to the advantage of the democrats, it must also be assumed
that our running a ticket will be to the advantage of the
republicans. If, then, our refusal to run a ticket is to give rise
to charges that we have sold out to the democrats, how much more
certain is it that, if we do run a ticket, we will be charged with
having been paid by the republicans to do so, and thus in the eyes
of those who at other times might be disposed to act with us, be
placed in the same contemptible position in which the Butler
campaign landed the greenback labor party, that of being a mere
jackal and catspaw for the republicans?"
This was as far as I cared to go, even under considerable
provocation, in alluding to a matter that has been an important
consideration in my thought and in the thought of some of us here in
New York who have been in a position to really understand what lay
beneath the proposition to run a candidate on a
don't-touch-the-tariff-question platform. This was as far as I had
expected in any event to go, or to be compelled to go, for I felt, not
merely an indisposition to anything like the public "washing of
dirty linen," but a very strong reluctance to assume an attitude
that should savor of unfriendly opposition to Dr. McGlynn.
That same reluctance I feel now. But since the charges to which the
letters of Mr. Williams and Mr. Bailey gave me opportunity in some
sort to reply have not only been put in more direct and more tangible
form by the gentleman who is managing secretary of the committees that
constitute all the state and general organization which the united
labor party has, but have been vehemently re-echoed in the
Anti-poverty society and through the press by Dr. McGlynn himself, I
should do injustice not only to myself but to others if I did not
speak more freely and frankly.
Of Mr. Barnes's asseverations of a friendship and intimacy, which,
however much they may have existed for a while, have for some time
ceased to exist, and of the fly-on-the-chariot-wheel egotism which
leads him to claim credit for my nomination for mayor or for my
refusal of the offer of a seat in congress, it is not worth while to
speak. The statement to which all this was intended to give weight and
point , was that in response to a question from him, I had declared
that if a united labor party candidate were nominated this year on the
Syracuse platform I would not support him. In form this is not true.
In spirit it is untrue. For what Mr. Barnes sought to convey, and did
convey, to the Brooklyn committee, was the same idea which has since
been substantially repeated by Dr. McGlynn - that I was primarily bent
on the support of Mr. Cleveland, and for this reason had deliberately
turned away from the principles of the Syracuse platform.
With the exception of a few casual words on one of the days
immediately succeeding the election, in which I understood Mr. Barnes
to express the belief that the result of that election had made
hopeless any idea of our entering the presidential campaign, the only
conversation in which he could have heard anything like this from me
was a conversation in which a number of gentlemen took part. In a
communication published in the Herald, Mr. Barnes, reiterating the
statement, says I made the declaration to him in the presence of Mr.
John McMackin and others. Thus there can be no doubt that it was this
conversation he had in mind. And since Mr. Barnes in his course in
this matter has the support of Dr. McGlynn and Mr. McMackin, whatever
tacit obligation I might otherwise have been under as to speaking of
such a conversation is now removed.
There were present at this conversation, which took place at 28
Cooper Union, about five or six weeks after the election, Dr. McGlynn,
Mr. Barnes and Mr. McMackin, who constitute the land and labor
committee, and (as the majority of the five) virtually the executive
committee of the state committee; and Mr. Louis F. Post , Mr. W. T.
Croasdale, Mr. J. W. Sullivan and myself. It was a little informal
conference or "talk over," called by Dr. McGlynn, at my
request, made as soon as I found the serious divergence as to policy
that existed between us. If any of us last named have any claim to be
considered "leaders" of the united labor party or
anti-poverty movement, this is the only conference or consultation
that has yet taken place between these "leaders" on this
most important matter. If any other consultations have been held, they
have not included any of us.
At this informal conference, the talk ran not so much on nominating a
presidential candidate, as on what was really the more fundamental and
primary question of platform, and on the manner and terms of the call
for the nominating assemblage. The plan of the members of the
committee as then developed to us was to ignore the tariff question -
to declare in the platform and assume on the stump that the masses of
the people had no concern either with protection or free trade. It was
after my protest against this that I was asked - not by Mr. Barnes,
but by Dr. McGlynn - not whether I would support a presidential
candidate of the united labor party if he were nominated on the
Syracuse platform, but, whether I would be satisfied to go into the
national campaign on the Syracuse platform. To this I responded that I
would not . I am not in the habit of sailing under false colors, or of
hiding from friend or foe my real sentiments on important public
questions; and even if I had deemed the Syracuse platform sufficiently
explicit on all points for a national campaign, it would have become
unsatisfactory the moment it was proposed to use it to straddle a
vital issue.
The plan of the committee as developed to us was, further, to call,
not a conference, but a convention, and to make the terms of the call
such as would exclude any but those prepared to go into the
presidential contest. There was no objection on our part to the
calling of a national conference, but there was strong objection to
forestalling the proper function of that conference by calling at once
a convention, and especially to the proposed exclusion in the terms of
the call. It was further intimated that the states in which it was
proposed to make a vigorous campaign were New York. New Jersey,
Connecticut and Indiana - the four states namely in which we might
help to give electoral votes to the republicans. The object of this
was not denied. It was asserted that the democratic party was our
bitter enemy, and that what we ought to try to do in practical
politics was to aid the republicans to beat it. And, lastly, it was
suggested that the word labor ought to be retained in the name of the
party-the significance of which, while we had some inkling of it at
the time, has more fully appeared since.
Instead of reconciling differences, this conversation merely showed
the irreconcilable nature of the difference that existed. Messrs. Post
, Croasdale, Sullivan and myself left with the clear conviction that
what the central committee of the land and labor party were thinking
of really amounted to nothing more nor less than the Butlerizing of
the united labor party and the turning of the political side of the
anti- poverty movement into a republican annex, which might in the
coming campaign help to assure protectionism a new lease of plunder
and a new opportunity to rivet its bonds on the people of the United
States.
I am not to be understood as questioning motives, and especially the
motives of a man for whom I have so sincere a respect as I have for
Dr. McGlynn. He has no bias toward protectionism and no special love
either for Mr. Blaine or for the republican party. He is a free
trader, with clear convictions of the absurdity and impolicy of
protection, and was a political friend and efficient supporter of Mr.
Cleveland in his first election. What is mainly influencing him, as
was obvious from his remarks in this conversation, is his not
unnatural hostility toward the "ecclesiastical machine,"
which he seems to think is identified, in our cities at least , with
the democratic party, and his belief that a presidential campaign
during which, in at least the four states named, means might be found
to hold meetings and keep speakers traveling, would afford a good
opportunity to preach the doctrine of the "land for the people."
I do not question Dr. McGlynn's motives, but for my part I claim the
right to take a different view. There are, to my mind, things of much
more importance than the "ecclesiastical machine," and I am
not ready to sacrifice principle for the opportunity to preach
principle. I am not ready to do what I clearly feel to be evil in the
hope that good may come. I am not ready to eat my words and to
stultify my record. I am not ready to become the stalking horse and
decoy duck of any political combination. I have never quarreled with
nor denounced Dr. McGlynn because of his opinions. Yet it is because I
have refused to surrender not merely my opinions but my firm
convictions that he has assumed to excommunicate me from the united
labor party and to declare that, if ever permitted to come back, it
must be to take a much humbler position. If the doctor will think he
will find it difficult to imagine a much humbler position than that
which, out of deference to him and an indisposition to have any
difference with him, I have for some time occupied - that of an
ostensible leader in a party in whose managing counsels I have been
utterly ignored.
The protest of Messrs. Post , Croasdale, Sullivan and myself, made at
the conversation of which I have spoken, against the programme of the
committee - and especially the emphatic denials on the part of Messrs.
Post and Croasdale of any authority on the part of the committee to
issue a call for a nominating convention instead of a conference or to
prescribe a test that would exclude those not in favor of nominating -
seemed to give the committee pause; and the call, which we were
informed was to have been issued in a few days, has not yet to my
knowledge appeared. I have had no further information of the plans of
the committee or of what they have been doing, but it has been plain
from what has since occurred that the disposition to thus turn the
united labor party into a republican side show has strengthened, not
weakened, though our refusal to lend ourselves has made it much more
difficult, and opinions adverse to any attempt to enter national
politics this year have been gaining ground. It has been evident from
the columns of THE STANDARD that the more thoughtful and influential
men of the party all over the country have, even without any knowledge
of the inside purpose of the committee, been coming to the conclusion
that it would be impolitic for the united labor party to run a
presidential campaign this year , and that a very great number even of
those who are disposed to stand up and be counted are not prepared to
ignore the tariff question. The recent letter of Judge Maguire, who
has been much talked of as an available presidential candidate, in
which he declared against going into the presidential campaign, must
have been to the committee especially indicative of the drift of
opinion. It is this consciousness of losing ground which I think led
to the open and deliberate attack which was begun in the Brooklyn
county committee last Tuesday night . At a previous meeting of the New
York county committee a resolution drawn by Mr. Barnes declaring the
determination of the party "not to be diverted by any issue of
tariff tinkering from exclusive and unswerving support of the
fundamental reforms set forth in the Syracuse platform," was
railroaded through without the members seeing its real import , and
before the committee had, in fact , organized. In the Brooklyn
committee, where Mr. Barnes has a seat and Mr. Wilder, a staunch
Blaine protectionist , is chairman, it was evidently determined to put
forth this policy in stronger form, and to back it up by a formal
reading of me out of the party. Mr. Barnes having begun, Dr. McGlynn
followed at the branch anti-poverty meeting on Thursday night.
Mr. Barnes and Dr. McGlynn have assumed to put me in the position of
one who has turned aside. But is it not really they who have changed?
Up to the time when the election returns showed that we had but
70,000 votes when we had expected 150,000, it was assumed almost as a
matter of course that we would enter the national field in the
presidential campaign; but whatever might have been thought by such
half converts as Mr. Wilder, no one intelligently acquainted with the
principles we had asserted ever dreamed of ignoring the tariff
question in a national campaign. I, certainly, never heard such an
idea breathed. On the contrary it was expected that we would be THE
free trade party, and as it was assumed that the democratic party
would still try to shirk the tariff issue, we believed that by raising
the standard of unqualified free trade in the national campaign we
would call to its support many from both old parties that we could not
at first attract in any other way.
As for the Syracuse platform, I was the chairman of the committee
that drafted it and reported it , and no one who knows me will dream
that I would have been a party to anything which was in the nature of
a compromise between protectionism and free trade in a national
campaign. The principle of free trade is stated in abstract in the
Syracuse platform, but the campaign for which it was made being purely
a state campaign, no one thought it necessary when no question of
principle was involved to run any risk of offending any protectionist
who might be disposed to act with us by using the terms "protection"
or "free trade." It was not supposed at Syracuse that the
platform itself was to be made the platform of a national party, but
merely that the great principles therein laid down were to be made the
framework of a national platform. The notion of ignoring the tariff
question in a national campaign was never thought of, even at 28
Cooper Union until some time after the election, since one of the
first suggestions talked of (and for a time at least, as I am informed
by Mr. Croasdale, received favorably by Mr. Barnes himself),was that
of joining forces with the free traders in running presidential
candidates, and I was invited to make an address before the
Anti-poverty society on the tariff question - something which could
hardly have occurred if Mr. Barnes and Dr. McGlynn had at that time
taken their present view of the tariff question.
The proposition to ignore the tariff question arises from the desire
to have a party, not from the desire to advance a principle. And to
this desire to have and to run a party all things, it is evident, are
to be made to bend. Just after the last election Dr. McGlynn made a
very strong speech at an anti-poverty meeting at the Academy of Music,
in which, with great emphasis, he declared that we must get rid of the
word "labor" in our political designation, and declared his
preference for the "commonwealth party." Now, what his
committee are waiting and hoping for is the formation of one of these
"labor parties," composed of politically incongruous
elements which have time and again proved utter failures.
Last spring we of the united labor party of New York steadily refused
to have anything to do with the attempt to form another "union of
all the labor elements," which at a conference of all sorts of "reformers"
held in Cincinnati, resulted in the formation of what is called the "union
labor party." We (the committee included) not only refused to
have anything to do with this attempt to manufacture a party, but we
derided its method and the inconsequential platform which was the
result of the compromises of such a mixture of heterogeneous "ists"
and "isms. Now, in their desire to get up a party of some kind,
there are various significant indications that the committee of which
Dr. McGlynn is head are planning to make a mergement of what they
would call the united labor party with the union labor party, the
socialists and all the other so-called "labor elements,"
upon some sort of a hodge-podge platform, giving if necessary the
presidential candidate to the union labor party, but of course
retaining the position of secretary - one of much greater practical
importance in a party when anything might befall the presidential
candidate except that he should get an electoral vote.
I have never said that I would support Mr. Cleveland, and whatever
report may have been made to this effect is false. What I have said is
that IF Mr. Cleveland in the next campaign stands for the free trade
side of the tariff issue I will support him. And I say so in advance,
as I think every man who so feels ought to say, because the
protectionists within the democratic party are striving to def eat Mr.
Cleveland's renomination, on the ground that he cannot be elected
because of the free trade of his message.
I have no personal acquaintance with Mr. Cleveland; I never even set
eyes on him. I have had no communication with him or any of his
friends directly or indirectly. In the last presidential campaign I
refused to make speeches for him when asked to. I would have worked
and voted for Butler had it not been evident that he was in the field
only to help the republican ticket . As it was , I did not stay at
home to vote for any body, but a few days before the election went off
to Scotland, where our friends wanted me. But I first got a Blaine man
to agree that if I went he would not vote -because I believed that the
quicker the party that had been so long in power was ousted the
quicker would the economic question come up and party lines be drawn
on new issues. This choice between the parties - that one was in and
the other was out - was all I could see in that election.
This year the hope I see of bringing on a general discussion of
economic or social questions (for the social questions are at bottom
economic) is far clearer and nearer. It lies in doing the utmost that
can be done to widen the breach that the tariff question is beginning
to make in the lines of both the old parties, and in pushing on the
free trade fight even though at first it takes the shape of mere
half-hearted tariff reform. That is the reason I shall, under the
conditions mentioned, support Mr. Cleveland. I shall support any other
man in his stead who shall fulfill this condition, for my support will
have in it no personal element . I shall support Mr. Cleveland from
the same motives that induced me to run for mayor and for secretary of
state -because I see in the pushing forward of the tariff question the
best way at present of using national politics, of clearing the way
for the great principle which I regard as of most importance, and of
moving toward a recognition of the equal rights of American Citizens
in their native land.
I would, of course, very much rather support a presidential candidate
who should stand on the principles of the united labor party as I
understand them. But, to go no further, it now seems to me idle to
hope that if we were to put up such a candidate we could poll our real
strength for him; and the very attempt on the part of so many to enter
the national field on the basis of ignoring the most important
national issues, is, to my mind, evidence that the process of
education has not yet gone far enough to enable us to act together in
national politics.
Under these circumstances I will support Mr. Cleveland, not as the
thing I would best like to do, but as the best thing I can do. When
the wind is ahead the sailor does not insist on keeping his ship to
the course he would like to go. That would be to drift astern. Nor yet
for the sake of having a fair wind does he keep his yards square and
sail anywhere the wind may carry him. He sails "full and by,"
lying as near the course he would like to go as with the existing wind
he can. He cannot make the wind, but he can use it.
In supporting Mr. Cleveland, if he shall stand against protection,
and the struggle between him and the republican nominee shall be made
on the tariff issue, I shall not be joining the democratic party nor
in any way interfering with my liberty to oppose that party any where
else or in any other thing. Nor for my support of Mr. Cleveland as the
representative of the free trade side of the tariff fight will I
expect any thanks . The spoils hunting democratic politicians who will
have to be kicked into that fight, and who will try to protest that no
real harm is meant to the sacred white elephant of protection, will
have no thanks for the support of those whose declared object it is to
abolish protection entirely, and not merely to abolish protection
entirely but to abolish the tariff entirely, and to bring about with
the whole world as perfect freedom of trade as now exists between the
states of the American Union. It may perhaps even be that the support
of radical free traders like myself will not help Mr. Cleveland's
election. But I shall care very little for Mr. Cleveland's election.
What I care for is to bring on the tariff discussion. For I regard the
general discussion of the tariff question as involving greater
possibilities of popular economic education than anything else. And as
I have often said when myself standing as a candidate, what I care for
is not how men vote, but how they think.
In all this I speak only for myself. I never proposed that the united
labor party should indorse Mr. Cleveland or any other candidate of any
other party. I have never presumed to control any vote but my own or
to lead any one, who stands with me on state issues, in any direction
on national issues in which he is not inclined of himself to go. My
position is and has been this : When we are agreed let us act together
. When we disagree let us agree to disagree without prejudice to our
acting together at such times and in such fields as we can act
together. I shall not accuse Mr. Wilder of going back on the position
he took last fall if on the tariff question he supports what I oppose,
nor will any opposition in which we may thus be placed on this
question of national taxation prevent me from striking hands with him
when he comes again into the field where the issue is of state
taxation. And so far from wishing Mr. Wilder to make any compromise
that will prevent him from advocating protection, I hope, since he
cannot yet see his way to oppose protection, that he will do his best
to defend and advocate it, and make as many and as strong
protectionist speeches as he can. Free discussion sets men thinking
and thus brings out the truth. I myself was a protectionist until I
heard an honest and able protectionist explain and advocate the
system. That made me a free trader.
The same right which I freely accord to others I claim for myself.
When I participated in the formation of the united labor party in the
state of New York, and accepted its nomination as head of its ticket,
I did not surrender my rights as a man and a citizen and agree to
allow Dr. McGlynn, Mr. Gaybert Barnes and Mr. John McMackin to do my
thinking for me. Nor am I to be forced by any threat of being
denounced as an abandoner of principles into submissive acquiescence
in a policy which is opposed alike to my judgment of what is wise and
my convictions of what is right , and which would practically make of
me but a stalking horse and decoy duck for the benefit of what I would
not and could not openly support . If any one has thought this he may
have been acquainted with me, but he did not know me. There is a
superficial plausibility in the motive of "going straight on"
that at first captivates the impulsive. But when it is seen that what
is meant by going straight on is to make a national campaign on what
are really state issues; to ignore the issue that is likely to divide
the people, and to run off to the territories for some excuse for
appearing in a national campaign; and when it is seen that what is to
be achieved practically by this is to help one of the two great
parties in doubtful states, and to land the united labor party in the
same ignominious death trap into which Butler led the greenback labor
party, I have no question of what will be the verdict of the majority
of our friends.
We have with us those to whom party is everything - those who wish a
party on any terms and at any cost, because their connection with it,
even if it be a little, wee bit of a party, may give them position and
influence that they would not have without it. But to the great body
of our friends party is not an end but a means. They are not to be led
to sacrifice principle by any pretended necessity of keeping up a
party. Nor are they to be used as tools. When they want to help a
republican president they will vote the republican ticket.
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