United States

After 1877 hundreds of thousands of agricultural settlers went westward to the Plains, where they came into competition for control of the land with the cattlemen, who hitherto had dominated the open range. The pressure of population as it moved into the Plains called attention to the diminishing supply of good arable land still open to settlement, thus presaging the day when there would no longer be a vast reservoir of land in the West awaiting the farmer. It also drew attention to the fact that millions of acres of Western land were being held for speculative purposes and that other millions of acres had been acquired by questionable means or were still in the possession of railroads that failed to fulfill the obligations they had assumed when the land was granted to them. Upon assuming office, Cleveland was confronted with evidence that some of these claims had been fraudulently obtained by railroads, speculators, cattlemen, or lumbering interests. He ordered an investigation, and for more than a year agents of the Land Office roamed over the West uncovering evidence of irregularities and neglected obligations. Cleveland acted firmly. By executive orders and court action he succeeded in restoring more than 81,000,000 acres (33,000,000 hectares) to the public domain.

The Interstate Commerce Act

The railroads were vital to the nation’s economy, but, because in so many regions a single company enjoyed a monopoly of rail transportation, many of the railroads adopted policies that large numbers of their customers felt to be unfair and discriminatory. Before 1884 it was clear that the Granger laws of the preceding decade (state laws prohibiting various abuses by the railroads) were ineffective, and pressure groups turned to the federal government for relief. In this, Western farm organizations were joined by influential Eastern businessmen who believed that they, too, were the victims of discrimination by the railroads. This powerful political alliance persuaded both parties to include regulation of the railroads in their national platforms in 1884 and induced Congress to enact the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887.

This law, designed to prevent unjust discrimination by the railroads, prohibited the pooling of traffic and profits, made it illegal for a railroad to charge more for a short haul than for a longer one, required that the roads publicize their rates, and established the Interstate Commerce Commission to supervise the enforcement of the law. The rulings of the commission were subject to review by the federal courts, the decisions of which tended to narrow the scope of the act. The commission was less effective than the sponsors of the act had hoped, but the act in itself was an indication of the growing realization that only the federal government could cope with the new economic problems of the day.

The election of 1888

Cleveland’s plea for a reduction of the tariff in his annual message of 1887 made it certain that the tariff would be the central issue in the presidential campaign of 1888. The Democrats renominated Cleveland, although it was thought that he had endangered his chances of reelection by his outspoken advocacy of tariff reduction. The Republicans had their usual difficulty in selecting a candidate. Blaine refused to enter the race, and no other person in the party commanded substantial support. From among the many who were willing to accept the nomination, the Republicans selected Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, a Federal general in the Civil War and the grandson of Pres. William Henry Harrison.

Harrison, Benjamin Benjamin Harrison.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-73640)

Cleveland had won respect as a man of integrity and courage, but neither he nor Harrison aroused any great enthusiasm among the voters. One feature of the campaign noted by observers was the extensive use of money to influence the outcome; this was not a new phenomenon, but the spending of money to carry doubtful states and the apparent alliance between business and political bosses had never before been so open.

The results were again close. Cleveland had a plurality of about 100,000 popular votes, but the Republicans carried two states, New York and Indiana, which they had lost in 1884, and in the electoral college Harrison won by a margin of 233 to 168.

The Benjamin Harrison administration