Origins of the New South, 1877–1913: A History of the South

XIV: Progressivism—for Whites Only

C H A P T E R X I V PROGRESSIVISM—FOR WHITES ONLY HE crusade forCuba broke theSouth's preoccupation with reform and scotched the radicalism of the nineties. Southerners responded with customary impetuosity to the upsurge of martial spirit and put aside sectional grievances. Silverites were among the most prominent jingoes. "We are crusaders again, as we were in 1861 and in 1846," wrote an Alabama Congressman who opposed the war.1 Senator Tillman celebrated the newly imposed unity of war and nationalism in a jingle he recited to his colleagues: Populists, Democrats, Republicans are we, But we are all Americans to make Cuba free.* "The Spanish War finished us," declared Tom Watson. "The blare of the bugle drowned the voice of the Reformer." 8 After a blast at imperialism and war, he retired from public life for six years. No other Populist was available to assume leadership of the moribund party. Polk of North Carolina and Nugent of Texas were dead. Reuben Kolb was making his peace with the old party in Alabama, and Cyclone Davis was spellbinding Western states with war speeches. Senator Marion Butler of North Carolina was vying with conservative patriots in support of the war. Even Milton Park, editor of the Southern Mercury, and most undaunted Populist of them all, confessed his discouragement in 1898. The election of that year, he wrote, proved that "the Democratic party can declare for anything it likes and win. It shows, too, that the people of Texas are suffering from a state of mental lethargy." He fretted 1 Willis Brewer to McKee, April 23, 1898, in McKee Papers. 2 Congressional Record, 55 Cong., 2 Sess., 3888. * Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine, V (1910), 817. 369 T ORIGINS OF THE NEW SOUTH peevishly about "the kind of cattle reformers have to deal with in Texas/' and raged at the prevailing reactionism of Southerners: "Had they lived in the old colonial days," he continued, "they never would have rebelled against King George or kicked against the stamp tax. . . . To them Patrick Henry would have been a crank and Sam Adams an incendiary. They would have all been Tories in 1776. They are all Tories now/'4 Park veered off toward the Socialist party the following year, taking with him an element of the Populists. While Park exaggerated the depth of the reactionary trend in the South, the tendency toward it was undoubtedly strong. Texas reverted to the control of a succession of conservative governors. Former Governor Hogg, firebrand of 1890, was touring Northeastern states in 1898 seeking to convince capitalists that Texas was the safest possible place for investment and corporate enterprise.5 A few years later he was amassing a fortune as an oil-company promoter . The contemporary rulers of Georgia, from 1898 to 1906, were probably as conservative as any of their predecessors in the eighties.6 The victory of the silver faction of the old party in the South had worked no profound regeneration in its nature. The new men were frequently of a familiar type. Joseph F. Johnston, elected governor of Alabama in 1896, described himself as "a silver man from tail to snout/' yet he wasa Birmingham banker and a former president of the Sloss Iron and Steel Company, owned by a New York syndicate.7 Under his administration the Alabama compromise of Birmingham industrialists and Black-Belt conservatives thrived unimpaired. South Carolina retained Tillman in the Senate but sent John L. McLaurin to join him in 1897. Unlike the senior Senator, McLaurin defended the gold standard, the ship subsidy, and the annexation of the Philippines, and contended that "business men must fill the offices and administer affairs of government in the South as in the East, the North, and the West."8 * Southern Mercury, XVI (November 17, 1898), 9. 6 Hogg to House, May 16, 1898, House Films, Roll 111. • John C. Reed, "The Recent Primary Election in Georgia," in South Atlantic Quarterly, VI (1907), 27-36. T Armes, Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama, 248-50. s Quoted in Wallace, History of South Carolina, III, 387. 37° PROGRESSIVISM FOR WHITES ONLY If the South fell into the mood of McKinleyism for a season, it also developed its own variety of progressivism in the era that followed hard upon McKinley. The latter phenomenon has been pretty universallyignored—or misconstrued. "I don't know of any progressive sentiment or any progressive legislation...