“Responding to their demand for reform”
Six months after Congress tried to close the books on the Credit Mobilier scandal, voters got the chance to weigh in.
We complain about non-stop campaigning in the era of cable television and social media, but in the days of the telegraph and steam engine it seemed as if voters were perpetually trekking to the polls. They had gone to the ballot box the previous fall in the presidential election and would return in mid-term elections in 1874.
Today, only New Jersey and Virginia hold state elections in odd-numbered years. In 1873, sixteen states held elections for statewide office and state legislatures.
The balloting that year offered the first test of voter anger over the scandal created by revelations of insider sweetheart stock sales involving members of Congress and Credit Mobilier, the hugely profitable – and controversial – construction subsidiary of the Union Pacific.
[image error]
James A. Garfield. Library of Congress.
Voters had other things on their mind too — fury over a last-minute retroactive pay increase that became quickly notorious as the “salary grab;” rising anger over the political and monopoly economic power of railroads; and alarm caused by a Wall Street panic whose impact was just beginning to be understood in the late summer and early autumn of 1873.
Much was at stake as voters from Maine to Oregon went to the polls. Before passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, state legislatures – not the voters – elected U.S. senators, giving otherwise local races national implications as a result.
During the summer, Republican platforms roundly denounced the Credit Mobilier scandal as the party attempted to get ahead of a story on which most of the leading figures came from the party of Lincoln. In terms very similar to those used by their partisan brethren in Iowa, Ohio, and Oregon, Minnesota Republicans denounced “all Credit Mobilier transactions, whatever be their form.”
The language is significant because it suggests party regulars were worried not only about Credit Mobilier but any suggestion of insider impropriety by lawmakers — especially if railroads were involved. Credit Mobilier had become a synonym for the nefarious influence of what Luke Potter Poland had called “great money power” in politics as the House debated the fate of Oakes Ames and James Brooks.
“Of the Credit Mobilier matter,” Ohio Republican Gov. Edward F. Noyes declared as he ran for re-election, “it is only necessary to say it was an unmitigated swindle of the government, without excuse or palliation.”
[image error]
A cartoon from March, 1873 shows “Brother Jonathan” talking to an eagle injured by, among other things, Credit Mobilier “and general dishonesty.” Library of Congress.
The vigor of Noyes’s denunciation points to another factor shaping the politics of 1873. Across the Midwest and the South, farmers furious with the monopoly economic power of railroads had mobilized to get relief from their state legislators and Congress. They turned to an ostensibly apolitical organization — the Patrons of Husbandry, known more informally as the Grange — to take on the Iron Rail.
“The movement of the western people against the great railroad monopolies begins to assume definite shape,” the Washington Evening Star noted in an editorial. The newspaper added: “it is pretty certain that the control of railroad fares and freight rates will be the issue on which the next legislatures of several western states will be chosen.”
The combustible political environment elicited varying responses. In northeastern Ohio, Rep. James Garfield — not only implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal but tied to the salary grab as the sponsor of the appropriations bill to which the bill was attached — acted nimbly to respond.
Addressing Credit Mobilier, he published a monograph laying out in great detail his insistence that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. On the salary grab, he returned his raise. Both moves helped disarm critics.
In Iowa, Gov. Cyrus Carpenter joined the Grange and the state party platform urged state and federal legislation to ensure cheap transportation. Republicans in Columbiana County, Ohio, warned legislators against voting for any Senate candidates linked to Credit Mobilier or the salary grab.
[image error]
Cadwallader Colden Washburn in 1860. Library of Congress.
Wisconsin Gov. Cadwallader Colden Washburn could be pardoned if he thought his record as a critic of Credit Mobilier and an advocate of railroad regulation provided some cover. But Democrats joined forces with anti-Monopolist forces and nominated Granger William R. Taylor to give Washburn an unexpectedly tough challenge.
The highly charged atmosphere of the early 1870s made for strange bedfellows. Farmers who favored state regulation of railroads and free-market liberal reformers (we would call them conservatives today) formed a temporary alliance. The New York Tribune gave voice to this sentiment when it urged farmers reluctant to get involved in politics to enter the fray. “We look to the Farmers, more than to any other class, to counteract the mischievous money influence which has filled our public offices with venality and selfishness.”
When the returns were counted, the public’s state of mind became clear. Voters were furious about Credit Mobilier, back-door pay raises, corruption, and the monopoly power of railroads. Noyes was narrowly defeated in Ohio and Washburn fell to Taylor in Wisconsin. Carpenter was re-elected but Iowa Republicans had to share control of the lower house of the legislature with a coalition of anti-Monopolist agrarians and Democrats.
In Washington, the implications were clear. “The ‘off-year and its results has made many a Congressman to feel the possibility, if not the probability, of his early retirement to public life,” the National Republican wrote on Dec. 1. Any member of Congress “who entertains such a fear will endeavor to place himself before his constituents in the attitude of responding to their demand for reform.”
I will be at Common Good Books in St. Paul, Minn., at 7 p.m. April 27 to talk about Congress and the King of Frauds: Corruption and the Credit Mobilier Scandal at the Dawn of the Gilded Age.” If you can’t make it, find the book at amazon.com
