The Crime of Caste in Our Country
Benjamin Rush Davenport
9781465657282
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Had a Johnstown flood, a Charleston earthquake, a war with Chili, or a Homestead strike occurred on November 8, 1892, instead of an election, those Napoleons of journalism, James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, and Whitelaw Reid, of the Tribune, would have had a score of representatives on the scene at once, without thought of expense; would have had every detail in its most minute particular investigated, and reproduced every statement, embellished by the pencils of a host of artists, utterly regardless of expense, keeping, as these magnificent journals ever have, good faith with the public and their readers, making lasting monuments of their wonderful papers for coming generations of journalists to gaze upon. But a revolution occurred on November 8, 1892, a revolution of the American people, so overwhelming, so decisive, and so pronounced as to absolutely stupefy even the genius of the press. Instead of corps of reporters, artists, special correspondents, speeding over the land to ascertain the cause—not the result; the cause, the origin,—of this stupendous surprise, all the great journals of the country, having each nailed to its flag-staff some theory or text utterly inconsistent with the result, utterly disproportioned to the overwhelming revolution, that they have sought by vain endeavor to make an overwhelming result compatible with and agreeable to some one part or portion of the cause thereof. To loudly proclaim, as did the New York Sun, that an exhibition of the will of the people, so pronounced as that of November the 8th, was occasioned by the Force Bill, is as utterly unreasonable as to ascribe the magnificent volume within the banks of the Mississippi to some little trickling rivulet flowing from the plains of Nebraska. To say, with the Tribune, that the grand result pronounced in the mighty voice of the people was produced by the misunderstanding of the McKinley Bill, is as groundless as to ascribe the echoing thunder tones of heaven to the swelling throat of a canary bird. To herald over the land, “Pauper emigration did it,” with the New York Herald, is about as pregnant with truth as would be the assumption that the foundation and everlasting strength of Christianity has for its basis the misguided vaporings of a negro preacher in Richmond, who proclaims, “The sun do move.” To announce, as did the World, that “Tariff reform and WE, the Democrats, achieved this victory,” is entitled to as much respect as would be given the utterances of a drummer boy of the Federal Army at Gettysburg. It was not any one nor all of these causes that moved the people. Each newspaper, Democratic or Republican, has selected some nail upon which it hangs the laurel wreath of victory, inscribed with its own puny text for which it has fought its little battle, and each newspaper of the Republican press has covered, with the tattered garments of defeat, its little text wherein it had proclaimed that the Republican party would be victorious, and labeled its tattered garment of lack of judgment with some phrase like, “Disloyalty of Platt,” “Incapacity of Carter,” “Want of Organization,” “Lack of Popularity and Magnetism of our Candidate,” “The Voters didn’t come out.” Had the press no part of its own reputation at stake, they would have searched and delved into the bosoms of men; yes, neither space nor distance, time nor expense, would have been spared by the magnates of the newspaper world to ascertain the true cause. But in ascertaining that true cause, it would have been necessary, in announcing the same, to stultify themselves in what they had been predicting, proclaiming, foretelling, and advising, for months and years.
