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WindingRiver.com Note: Kansas City
Spirit described the growth and industry of the growing town in the
late 19th century. On April 4th, 1900, just a little over a year
from its completion and dedication, Kansas City's new Convention Hall was
burned to the ground. As terrible as the loss of the new structure,
was the fact that Kansas City was hosting the Democratic National
Convention in just 90 days and was counting on that exposure to build its
reputation as the center of commerce in the midwest. The Kansas
City Spirit was proven that day. While firefighters put out the
blaze, the leading citizens in the city began raising money to rebuild the
Convention Hall in time for the convention. Most Kansas City history
books tell the great story of this accomplishment. WindingRiver.com
is glad to reprint the story of what happened during the convention.
The enthusiasm of the great gathering, the youth of
the delegates, and the extraordinary number of new men in the body-the
fight between ex Senator Hill and Richard Croker, of New York, the most
striking feature of the convention, the former snatching victory out of
defeat.
The democratic national
convention at Kansas City was a thrilling and spectacular event. There
were changing color schemes that bewildered the eye, and magnificent
outbursts that stirred the most unemotional spectator. The auditorium was
full to overflowing at all times. In the highest gallery the spectators
were closely packed; men were perched on the trusses that spanned the
hall, reckless of danger when a gust of cheering swept across the human
field below them. The delegates were seated amid a forest of standards,
which were soon to be uprooted, as though by a cyclone, and swept in
confusion all over the place.
The gathering was a
reverent one. The silence of twenty thousand odd persons during the
opening prayer was well nigh perfect. The delegates were an earnest
looking set of men, as a rule, strenuous and aggressive. Many of them were
tanned by the sun from constant outdoor life. There were plenty of faces
new to national Democratic gatherings, men who had come prominently to the
front during the last four years.
As one looked at the
assemblage from the platform, the first impression was the average youth
of the delegates. There were few gray hairs. The first person of royal
blood to sit in the enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of a
delegate was there- Prince David of Hawaii, and it was his vote at the
meeting of the committee on resolutions that put the free silver plank
into the platform. No one knew his views as he sat in that meeting, which
lasted all night because of the opposition to incorporating the ratio
plank in the platform. By the time the vote reached him, it stood twenty
five to twenty four for silver. Had he joined the minority, the vote would
have been tied and the proposition lost. The youngest Territory of the
Union has thus, at the outset, played a conspicuous part in the history of
a great party and of the nation. This is most remarkable in view of the
attitude of the Democratic Party on the admission of Hawaii. President
Cleveland for a time prevented the annexation of the islands, and most of
the Democratic Members of Congress opposed it. By a strange turn of
events, the first representative from the Pacific islands to enjoy the
full rights of a delegate in a national political convention may change
the history of the party and the nation. Had it not been for him, the
sixteen to one plank would not have been made a part of the platform, and
the election may turn on that.
The prince is a fine
looking young man, with bright, smiling eyes, even, white teeth, and a
well trained mustache. He has the address of a man of the world, and is an
interesting talker. Where he sat was a silken banner inscribed on one side
with strange words.
The auditorium was
splashed all over with bright hues. The movement of fans was incessant.
They gave to the scene a vibration like that of a kinetoscope picture.
While action filled the
eye and tumult stunned the ear, there was in progress a fierce struggle of
men and measures. Richard Croker, the head of Tammany Hall, and ex Senator
David Bennett Hill, the Democratic leader of New York State, were fighting
desperately. All the craft and strength, all the fertility of resource,
that both of these political giants possess, were in full play. The action
was rapid, breathless, full of surprises, sudden attacks, and masterful
parries.
Here was a contest of
giants besides which all else was mere framework, a struggle far more
absorbing than any ever staged by the most skilful playwright. For here
were two men in flesh and blood, each with ambition to gratify, a motive
stronger even than love. The hazard of the day often hung on the smallest
trifle.
The story of Hill’s
repudiation in the caucus of the New York’s delegation as a member of the
committee on resolutions has so recently been told that it is familiar to
all readers of current events. It was the culmination of the hostile
feeling that has existed between the Tammany leader and the State leader
for more than a dozen years; but it was the first time that they had stood
squarely face to face in the open, with all pretense put aside, and given
blow for blow, sting for sting, mingling with the passage at arms all
their pent up bitterness, and it was strange that this stand up fight
should be in a national arena.
Hill was overborne. He
could have no hand in shaping the declaration of his party’s principles.
One of the strongest ambitions of his political life was to keep the ratio
plank out of the platform. A man less brilliantly equipped would have been
crushed. But in the convention hall Hill snatched honors from the depths
of defeat.
William Jennings Bryan,
of Nebraska, nominated for President of the United States for the second
time by the Democratic National Convention at Kansas City
Click On
Pictures For Larger View
Adlai E.
Stevenson, of Illinois, former Vice President of the United States, who
was again nominated for that office by the Democratic national Convention
at Kansas City
David Bennett Hill and
Richard Croker are two large figures in the public eye. Croker is massive,
direct, unyielding, blunt of speech, positive. Hill is agile, indirect in
method, elastic, resourceful, and possessed of a genius for intrigue.
Croker would rout his foe by strenuous frontal attack. Hill by a brilliant
combination of maneuvers, would suddenly beset the enemy at the most
unexpected point and capture his position. Croker believes in force, like
a fighter with thews of steel, who is confident in his own strength. Hill
rests his every issue on his skill and dexterity. He is ever a mental
machine, undisturbed by sentiment. He has reduced life in general, and
politics, which is all of his life, to a geometrical proposition. He works
at high pressure all the time. Croker is more deliberate, but no less
sure. He does not believe in throwing away energy, and every ounce of it
he expends goes to some definite purpose.
When Mr. Hill was in the
Senate, it was his custom to have his meals served in his own apartments.
So jealous was he of the minutes that he considered the time wasted during
which he would have to wait for his meals in the dining room. In his room
he often continued work while eating, and it is told that the visitors
have found him busy with knife and fork dictating to his stenographer. He
did the same in Kansas City.
Mr. Croker never has the
appearance of being busy or deeply engrossed in any matter. Even when the
convention was in delirium over Hill, the Tammany leader’s impassive face
never changed expression. And, for that matter, his eyes were unseeing. He
might have been deaf and blind for all the impression apparently made on
him. The demonstration almost equaled that which followed Bryan’s
nomination in 1896. It was started by a man with a clear, trumpet-like
voice who shouted, “Hill! Hill! Hill!” The effect was electric. Delegates
all over the hall were on their feet, yelling the name. The cheering
swelled in volume until it sounded like the sea breaking upon the shore.
Hats were thrown in the air, canes, fans, umbrellas. Hill’s loyal twenty
six of the New York seventy two stood up in a wall back of him, yelling
frantically, while the men from New York City sat sullen and unmoved. The
din was deafening, and the heavy strokes of Temporary Chairman Thomas’ big
gavel sounded like the faint boom of cannon. The delegates were Hill mad.
The convention was swept off its feet and was absolutely beyond control
for the time being.
“This is my answer to Mr.
Croker,” grimly said Mr. Hill to a friend, as he rose from his seat and
bowed. Delegates from other States ran to him, and, wringing his hands,
tried to force him towards the stage, but he resisted and sat down.
The same scenes, only more
intensified, were enacted when Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, read
the platform, and when William D. Oldham, of Nebraska, the boyhood friend
of Bryan, put him in nomination. Tillman, picturesque in looks, gesture,
and delivery, was a personality that held the attention. He was vehement
and aggressive in his delivery, and his words came as though they sprang
spontaneously from his own convictions. His single eye glowed like a live
coal, and to emphasize the most telling points, he struck the table before
him time and time again with his sinewy right fist. When he mentioned “the
paramount issue” there was an outburst of cheering. From the center of the
space occupied by the delegations there unfolded like the petals of a
great flower a hundred small flags. A shaft of sunlight made their colors
show vividly. They quickly spread until the whole expanse was aflutter.
Oldham is a short, sharp
featured man, clean shaven, nervous, and as full of energy as a dynamo.
His delivery is impetuous, and his address glowed with striking similes.
He is poet as well as politician. The sincere ring of his nominating
speech showed him to be a man of deep sympathies and a friend to grapple
to “with hooks of steel.” There had been an outburst when Permanent
Chairman James D. Richardson, of Tennessee, mentioned Bryan’s name, but it
was infantine compared with the demonstration when Oldham fairly shouted
the name of Bryan.
Even the impassive Mr.
Croker stood up to cheer and wave a flag. Hill was on his feet, too. The
entire New York delegation were up, some standing on chairs, yelling like
Indians.
The north side of the
auditorium had resembled a steep hillside, carpeted with white, pink,
yellow, blue, and purple flowers. It had never been quiet, but now it took
on the nature of a cataract. Hats, umbrellas, fans, handkerchiefs, and
flags danced above seething expanse. The sudden up throw of scores of
white shirted arms resembled jets of foam. Down in the great circular
basin where this mad torrent seemed to flow was a maelstrom, circling in
frantic lines, the center and sides a mad chaos of movement and color.
Only for a few moments,
however, was the fight between Croker and Hill overshadowed by the
enthusiasm for Bryan. The latter was the big man of the convention, which
had in it comparatively few men of national fame as leaders in the party.
The old war horses, those whose names have long been familiar, were not
there or kept in the background. Senator Daniels, of Virginia, and
Congressman Richardson, of Tennessee, were two of the exceptions, and
Hill, of course, was a third.
Governor Thomas, of
Colorado, is widely known, but not as a national Democratic leader. This
is true also of the picturesque ex Governor Stone, of Missouri, one of the
most earnest and forceful of the silverites. Carter Harrison, mayor of
Chicago, is one of the younger group. He looks too handsome and too
correctly dressed to be a successful politician. It was he who held the
Illinois delegation in line, and this did more than anything else to check
the stampede for Hill. Even John P. Altgeld ceased to stand out in strong
relief when Harrison took leadership of the Illinois men.
The situation was something like that
in Philadelphia. There was a popular demand for a certain man to be the
candidate for Vice President. Roosevelt did not want the nomination for
personal reasons. Hill likewise was determined, but for political reasons,
that he should not be nominated. Roosevelt was nominated, Hill was not,
and the fight he made is one of the most remarkable of convention
incidents. It showed this cold, calculating man, to whom politics has been
everything - wife, children, business, recreation, pleasure-to be one of the
great leaders, who had no equal as a strategist in the convention. For the
nomination of Adlai E. Stevenson for Vice Presidency was a victory for
Hill, perhaps the greatest of his militant life.
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