Hill.But even with this large block of votes to stand upon, Hill was able to get only 113 votes in all, while Cleveland received 616.Genuine acceptance of his leadership, however, did not at all correspond with this vote.Cleveland had come out squarely against free silver, and at least eight of the Democratic state conventions--in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, South Carolina, and Texas--came out just as definitely in favor of free silver.But even delegates who were opposed to Cleveland, and who listened with glee to excoriating speeches against him forthwith, voted for him as the candidate of greatest popular strength.They then solaced their feelings by nominating a free silver man for Vice-President, who was made the more acceptable by his opposition to civil service reform.The ticket thus straddled the main issue; and the platform was similarly ambiguous.It denounced the Silver Purchase Act as "a cowardly makeshift" which should be repealed, and it declared in favor of "the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination,"with the provision that "the dollar unit of coinage of both metals must be of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value." The Prohibition party in that year came out for the "free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold." A more significant sign of the times was the organization of the "People's party," which held its first convention and nominated the old Greenback leader, James B.Weaver of Iowa, on a free silver platform.
The campaign was accompanied by labor disturbances of unusual extent and violence.Shortly after the meeting of the national conventions, a contest began between the powerful Amalgamated Association of Steel and Iron Workers, the strongest of the trade-unions, and the Carnegie Company over a new wage scale introduced in the Homestead mills.The strike began on June 29, 1892, and local authority at once succumbed to the strikers.In anticipation of this eventuality, the company had arranged to have three hundred Pinkerton men act as guards.They arrived in Pittsburgh during the night of the 5th of July and embarked on barges which were towed up the river to Homestead.As they approached, the strikers turned out to meet them, and an engagement ensued in which men were killed or wounded on both sides and the Pinkerton men were defeated and driven away.For a short time, the strikers were in complete possession of the town and of the company's property.They preserved order fairly well but kept a strict watch that no strike breakers should approach or attempt to resume work.The government of Pennsylvania was, for a time, completely superseded in that region by the power of the Amalgamated Association, until a large force of troops entered Homestead on the 12th of July and remained in possession of the place for several months.The contest between the strikers and the company caused great excitement throughout the country, and a foreign anarchist from New York attempted to assassinate Mr.Frick, the managing director of the company.Though this strike was caused by narrow differences concerning only the most highly paid classes of workers, it continued for some months and then ended in the complete defeat of the union.
On the same day that the militia arrived at Homestead, a more bloody and destructive conflict occurred in the Coeur d'Alene district of Idaho, where the workers in the silver mines were on strike.Nonunion men were imported and put into some of the mines.The strikers, armed with rifles and dynamite, thereupon attacked the nonunion men and drove them off, but many lives were lost in the struggle and much property was destroyed.The strikers proved too strong for any force which state authority could muster, but upon the call of the Governor, President Harrison ordered federal troops to the scene and under martial law order was soon restored.
Further evidence of popular unrest was given in August by a strike of the switchmen in the Buffalo railway yards, which paralyzed traffic until several thousand state troops were put on guard.About the same time, there were outbreaks in the Tennessee coal districts in protest against the employment of convict labor in the mines.Bands of strikers seized the mines, and in some places turned loose the convicts and in other places escorted them back to prison.As a result of this disturbance, during 1892state troops were permanently stationed in the mining districts, and eventually the convicts were put back at labor in the mines.
Such occurrences infused bitterness into the campaign of 1892 and strongly affected the election returns.Weaver carried Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and Nevada, and he got one electoral vote in Oregon and in North Dakota; but even if these twenty-two electoral votes had gone to Harrison, he would still have been far behind Cleveland, who received 277 electoral votes out of a total of 444.Harrison ran only about 381,000 behind Cleveland in the popular vote, but in four States, the Democrats had nominated no electors and their votes had contributed to the poll of over a million for Weaver.The Democratic victory was so sweeping that it gained the Senate as well as the House, and now for the first time a Democratic President was in accord with both branches of Congress.It was soon to appear, however, that this party accord was merely nominal.
