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A Party System Perspective on the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887: The Democracy, Electoral College Competition, and the Politics of Coalition Maintenance*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Scon C. James
Scon C. James
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

The literature on the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is curiously at odds with our understanding of the politics of the Gilded Age. Labels like “the party period” and phrases such as “the triumph of organizational politics” and the “full flowering of the American party state” attest to the vibrant partisan life of the late 19th century. Stephen Skowronek offers one important reason for this state of affairs: The nature of electoral competition in these years further extended the hegemony of party concerns over governmental operations. More than ever before, the calculations of those in power were wedded to the imperatives of maintaining efficiency in state and local political machines and of forging a national coalition from these machines for presidential elections.

Type
Forum: on Railroad Regulation
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Spring 1992 , pp. 163 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1. McCormick, Richard L., The Party Period and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);Google ScholarKeller, Morton, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1977);Google Scholar and Skowronek, Stephen, Building A New American Slate (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

2. Skowronek, New American State, p. 39.

3. Buck, Solon J., The Granger Movement: A Study of Agricultural Organization and Its Political, Economic and Social Manifestations, 1870–1880 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913);Google ScholarBenson, Lee, Merchants, Farmers and Railroads: Railroad Regulation and New York Politics, 1850–1887 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955);Google ScholarNash, Gerald D., “Origins of the Inter-state Commerce Act of 1887,” Pennsylvania History 24 (07 1957): 1811–90;Google ScholarKolko, Gabriel, Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965);Google ScholarPurcell, Edward A., “Ideas and Interests: Businessmen and the Interstate Commerce Act,” Journal of American History 54 (12 1967): 561–78;Google ScholarAri, and Hoogenboom, Olive, A History of the ICC (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976);Google ScholarSanders, Elizabeth, “Industrial Concentration, Sectional Competition, and Antitrust Politics in America, 1880–1980,” Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 142–214;Google Scholar Sanders, “Farmers, Workers and the State in the U. S. 1890–1916” (Paper presented at the Conference on State Change: University of Colorado, 1988); Sanders, “Farmers, Railroads and the State: A Political Economy Approach” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1990); Gilligan, Thomas G., Marshall, William J., and Weingast, Barry R., “Regulation and the Theory of Legislative Choice: The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887,” Journal of Law and Economics 32 (04 1989): 35–61Google Scholar; Skowronek, New American State; Fiorina, Morris P., “Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?” Public Choice 39 (1982): 33–66;Google ScholarFiorina, , “Group Concentration and the Delegation of Legislative Authority,” in Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences, ed. Noll, Roger G. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 175–97;Google Scholarand Fiorina, , “Legislator Uncertainty, Legislative Control, and the Delegation of Legislative Power,”. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 2 (1986): 33–51Google Scholar.

4. See, for example, Fiorina, “Legislator Uncertainty,” p. 47; and Sanders, “Industrial Concentration,” p. 144.

5. Congressional Record, 49th Congress, Ist sess., 1886, 17, pt. 3: 2966.

6. Frank Hiscock, along with William McKinley (R-Oh) and Thomas Reed (R-Me), had formed the backbone of Republican party leadership during its brief stint as majority party in the 47th Congress (1881–83).

7. Ignored by the literature on the ICA, the vote on the Hiscock amendment requires some background. The Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, created in the final weeks of the 48th Congress, had been mandated to conduct hearings on the railroad problem and recommend to the Senate remedial legislation. The bill passed by the Senate on May 12, 1886, was referred to the House Committee on Commerce. There, under the leadership of Chairman Reagan, the committee voted to recommend that the Reagan bill be substituted for the Senate bill. Both the Senate bill and its committee-sponsored substitute were reported back to the full House for consideration on May 22. On July 27, as action on the interstate commerce question appeared imminent, Republicans, led by Frank Hiscock of New York, attempted to turn the tactics of the Commerce Committee against it. Hiscock moved to amend the substitute bill of the Commerce Committee (the Reagan bill) by substituting for it the Senate bill. Hiscock wanted “a direct vote on the Senate bill.” The Speaker of the House, Democrat John G. Carlisle of Kentucky, replied that the pending vote to substitute the Reagan bill for the Senate bill was to be “a direct vote as between the substitute and the Senate bill.“ But Hiscock understood the underlying electoral dynamics of the railroad question. Much of the country was demanding some type of regulatory legislation, and the party that could control the agenda in such a way as to force House members to cast a “yes” vote for its regulatory bill and to cast a “no” vote for the partisan alternative would place supporters of the alternative proposal at a distinct disadvantage, as to the eyes of many of their constituents it might look as if they were casting a vote against regulation per se. Thus by framing the vote in this manner Hiscock hoped to maximize Democratic defections and obtain a majority for the Senate bill. Hiscock asked the Speaker whether it was in order to offer an amendment to the committee's substitute, and Carlisle responded in the affirmative. Specifically, Carlisle ruled that since both the Senate bill and the committee's substitute were before the House, it was in order “to move an amendment to either one before the vote is taken on agreeing to the substitute.” With this, Hiscock moved “to amend the substitute offered by the gentleman from Texas by substituting the Senate bill with an additional clause that it shall take effect on the 1st of January.” Reagan objected to this “evasive measure,” asking whether such an amendment was in order. Carlisle replied in the affirmative. After more questions and protestations, the previous question on the Hiscock substitute was ordered (Congressional Record, 49th Congress, 1st sess., 1886, 17 pt. 7: 7615).

8. The measure used is as sensitive to nonvoting as it is to voting: the larger the amount of nonvoting, the lower the overall score. A perfect party unity score would be either 100 or – 100, depending on the party stance toward a given issue. A more detailed explanation of the construction of the scores presented in Tables 2 and 3, as well as a breakdown of the states that comprise each regional category, can be found in the Appendix.

9. Sanders, “Farmers, Railroads and the State: A Political Economy Perspective,” p. 24.

10. For ease of discussion, votes cast by third-party members are not reported in the analyses that follows.

11. Considerations of space preclude the presentation of more detailed examinations of this and subsequent votes. However, I have also analyzed these votes by occupation (manufacturing and farming), as well as by party and region. Concerning the Hiscock vote, the results show, among other things, that Midwestern Republican districts located in the top one-third of all districts in terms of agricultural output (measured in dollars) were 56 percentage points more likely to support than oppose the Hiscock amendment, while similar Midwestern Democratic districts were 57 percentage points more likely to oppose Hiscock. Northeastern Republican districts in the top one-third of all districts in terms of manufacturing output (measured in dollars) were 67 percentage points more likely to support than oppose Hiscock, while comparable Northeastern Democratic districts were 35 percentage points more likely to oppose Hiscock.

12. Midwestern Republican districts located in the top one-third of all districts in terms of agricultural output (measured in dollars) were 58 percentage points more likely to support than oppose recommittal, while like Midwestern Democratic districts opposed recommittal by 61 percentage points. Northeastern Republican districts in the top one-third of all districts in terms of manufacturing output were 47 percentage points more likely to support the motion to recommit, while comparable Northeastern Democrats were 21 percentage points more likely to oppose recommittal.

13. Midwestern Democratic districts located in the top one-third of all districts in terms of agricultural output were 47 percentage points more likely to oppose than support the deletion of section 4, while similarly located Republican districts were 42 percentage points more likely to support deletion. Northeastern Republican districts in the top one-third of all districts in terms of manufacturing output were 39 percentage points more likely to support than oppose deletion of section 4, while comparable Democratic districts were 24 percentage points more likely to oppose deletion.

14. Midwestern Democratic districts located in the top one-third of all districts in terms of agricultural output were 53 percentage points more likely to oppose than support the creation of a commission, while similarly located Republican districts supported the commission proposal by 42 percentage points. Northeastern Republican districts in the top one-third of all districts in terms of manufacturing output were 55 percentage points more likely to support than oppose the commission plan, while comparable Northeastern Democratic districts were 21 percentage points more likely to oppose the commission amendment.

15. Midwestern Democratic districts located in the top one-third of all districts in terms of agricultural output were 55 percentage points more likely to support than oppose the state court provision, while similar Midwestern Republican districts were 32 percentage points more likely to oppose the inclusion of the provision. Northeastern Democratic districts in the top one-third of all districts in terms of manufacturing output were 42 percentage points more likely to support than oppose the inclusion of the state court provision, while their Northeastern Republican counterparts were 63 percentage points more likely to oppose its inclusion.

16. Republicans supported recommittal of the 1886 Reagan bill 64 to 30 with 46 abstentions; on the final vote, they sided with Reagan 66 to 35 with 39 abstentions. By contrast, Democrats opposed the motion to recommit 6 to 127 with 48 abstentions supporting Reagan 125 to 6 with 50 abstentions on the final vote (see Congressional Record 49th Congress, 1St Sess., 1886, 17, pt. 8: 7752–53). A final word: Recognition of the role of party in shaping the several votes discussed above should urge caution on those who might accept too readily arguments dismissing the party variable from their analyses of the ICA—arguments for which the most damning evidence is the weak partisan cast of the final vote on the compromise ICA in January, 1887. As examination of the January, 1885, and July, 1886, House votes shows, partisan activity is often heaviest prior to the final vote, by which time most of the important choices have been made and the relative strength of the opposing forces has been revealed. The difficulty with applying this observation to the analysis of the final compromise bill (ICA) is that no preliminary votes were taken by the House prior to the final vote. Consequently one must look elsewhere—to the activity of the conference committee itself and to the activities of party elites—to demonstrate the influence of a party effect. Such an endeavor is beyond the scope of this essay.

17. The smooth operation of the country's railroad system was crucial to the overall health of the national economy and thus for the health of the national Democratic party. For, then as now, the state of the economy was perceived by political leaders to be an important determinant of the presidential vote. Such an awareness is apparent in the letter written to President Grover Cleveland by Augustus Schoonmaker, a long-time advisor to Cleveland and one of the president's first appointments to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887. Schoonmaker, in New York on Interstate Commerce Commission business in August, 1887, took the occasion to report to Cleveland on the satisfactory state of business affairs, observing that “[i]in the popular mind business prosperity or depression is always associated, justly orunjustly, with the Administration and its policies” (Augustus Schoonmaker to Grover Cleve-land, August 27, 1887, Grover Cleveland Papers, microfilm, reel 52).

18. A couple of problems attend these assumptions. First, if we assume that the railroads dominated the Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce it is difficult to explain why the bill developed and passed in the upper House failed to include the one provision the railroads were truly interested in: a provision to legalize pooling. Second, the House Commerce Committee showed considerable variation in the bills it produced. On the one hand, the Reagan bill as reported by the committee in the 49th Congress was, as we have seen earlier, sympathetic to the plight of short-haul shippers. On the other hand, the Commerce Committee bill fashioned in the 48th Congress was more consistent with the interests of long-haul shippers, for, while the bill continued to outlaw pooling, it failed to include a prohibition against long-haul-short-haul price discriminations. This combination could only keep long-haul rates low and falling, and put pressure on the railroads to increase short-haul rates. The bill also contained a greatly qualified antirebating provision—rebating tended to favor the large shipper—as well as a provision for an interstate commerce commission.

19. The authors use of the vote to recommit to measure House support for the Reagan and Senate bills is itself problematic. The motion to recommit included instructions to report back a modified Senate bill, one with a different commission structure, and, most importantly, one that gave to its commission responsibility for arbitrating labor disputes between the railroads and their employees and imposing awards. These changes were apparently included by the Republican minority on the Commerce Committee in an attempt to obtain a majority vote for recommittal, a goal that would be frustrated if the vote broke down along party lines. As I argued earlier, the Hiscock vote is the most appropriate vote for assessing the structure of support and opposition between the two regulatory alternatives.

20. For a more detailed discussion of these and other variables used in the LOGIT analyses that follows, see the discussion of data and methodology in the Appendix.

21. The farm interest variable I employ is a district-level measure of the value of agricultural production. That employed by Gilligan, Marshall, and Weingast is a state-level measure, based on the value of “pure” farmland (excluding buildings, fences, and land improvements).

22. Skowronek, New American Stale, p. 131.

23. Skowronek, New American State, ch. 5.

24. In the literature on congressional elections there is some debate over whether 5 or 10 percent victory margin is a better measure of competitiveness. When used in the analysis of contemporary elections, the 10 percentage point cutoff is justified on the grounds that the decline of partisanship in the electorate, and the resulting instability in the partisan direction of the vote from election to election, has increased uncertainty among congressmen even as their victory margins have grown. It is because of the strength of partisanship in the Gilded Age electorate, and the smaller swings in the partisan direction of the vote that accompanied it, that I have chosen the 5 percentage point cutoff as the more reasonable of the two.

25. This would put a crimp in the often-cited and underanalyzed assumption that the Supreme Court's decision in Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway v. Illinois (118 U.S. 557) was the crucial catalyst in the compromise that produced the ICA. The Wabash decision, handed down in October, 1886, struck down as unconstitutional state legislation regulating the rate-making activities of railroads engaged in interstate commerce.

26. Washington, Evening Star, 08 4, 1886, p. 1Google Scholar.

27. Fiorina, “Legislative Choice,” “Group Concentration,” and “Legislator Uncertainty.”

28. Fiorina, “Group Concentration,” p. 176.

29. Fiorina, “Legislative Choice,” p. 47.

30. The issue of legislative uncertainty over the district-level impact of regulation is developed by Fiorina in the context of a broader discussion of uncertainty models of delegation. Distinct in its conception from the SR model, expected and actual levels of regulation in the uncertainty model are assumed to be equivalent when court implementation is employed; administrative implementation widens the gap between expected and actual levels. As a result, a congressman whose preferred policy solution is similar to the expected legislative solution is more likely to prefer courts to commissions—i. e., to prefer a more certain to a less certain form of implementation. On the other hand, a congressman whose preferred policy solution is distant from the expected legislative solution is more likely to prefer commissions to courts—i.e., to prefer more uncertain administrative forms on the chance that implemented levels of regulation will be closer to the legislator's preferred level. While SR and uncertainty models of delegation are logically independent of each other, Fiorina explicitly intends his models to be cumulative (“Legislative Choice,” p. 41). More-over, the dimensions of uncertainty I employ in my analysis have clear implications for legislative behavior within the framework of the SR model. For a more extensive treatment of the uncertainty model of delegation see Fiorina, “Legislator Uncertainty.”

31. Fiorina, “Legislative Choice,” p. 55.

32. Elsewhere Fiorina argues that the creation of new bureaucratic institutions also yields additional political benefits for vulnerable congressmen, through increased opportuni-ties for position taking and constituency service. See his Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).

33. Likewise, on the vote to amend the 1885 Reagan bill by providing for an interstate commerce commission it was again safe Democrats, not marginal Democrats, who threw their support behind the Reagan demand for strict court enforcement, voting against the amend-ment,—;54 to —27 percentage points. Republicans articulated a more unified position on the matter, though safe Republicans still exhibited a higher rate of net support for the commission amendment than did marginal Republicans, 53 to 48 percentage points. Finally, on the Hepburn motion to recommit the 1885 Reagan bill with instruction to report back a commission bill, safe Democrats exhibited a higher rate of net support of the Reagan position than did marginal Democrats of Reagan, voting against recommittal, —58 to —43 percentage points. Republicans again showed a more unified front, though safe Republicans manifested a slightly higher rate of net support for Hepburn than did marginal Republicans, though not by much, 56 to 52 percentage points.

34. Burnham, Walter Dean, Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955), p. 249Google Scholar.

35. Exactly who were the New York mugwumps? This question has not been fully answered, but one study of the socioeconomic characteristics of 410 mugwumps in New York State found over 60 percent to have been either entrepreneurs or lawyers. Ninety-nine of the 410 were businessmen, with over two-thirds of these members of the mercantile profession. And while the empirical links still need to be made, these were most likely members of the same New York mercantile community shown by Lee Benson to have been active in the fight for state-level and national railroad regulation. On the characteristics of New York mugwumps, see McFarland, Gerald W., “The New York Mugwumps of 1884: A Profile,” Political Science Quarterly 78 (1963): 40–58Google Scholar. For a discussion of the motivations behind the bolt of New York mugwumps, see Dobson, John M., “George William Curtis and the Election of 1884: The Dilemma of the New York Mugwumps,” Mew York Historical Society Quarterly 52 (1968): 215–34Google Scholar.

36. The final vote on the Reagan bill is chosen as the base for comparison with the vote on the compromise ICA precisely because both were final votes. Because neither were party-line votes, such a comparison is as close as we can get, utilizing roll-call analysis, to identifying changes in the pattern of support and opposition to an interstate commerce act among district-level interests with a minimum of confounding party effects.

37. For a more detailed explanation of this analysis, see the discussion on data and methodology in the Appendix. My thanks to Pradeep Chhibber for first suggesting this particular analysis.

38. See Table 6.

39. Similarly, a look at the transcripts of the testimony taken in New York before the Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce reveals a general consensus among the representatives of the railroads, merchant organizations, and railroad experts in favor of an interstate commerce commission—albeit with considerably less agreement on the structure and powers of a commission—and in favor of a flexible long-haul-short-haul provision. On the other hand, a majority of witnesses before the Select Committee in New York seem to have opposed the proposition that the pooling of freight and revenue by the railroads should be made legal, although important dissents were registered in favor of pooling by suchnotables as railroad executive Albert Fink, railroad expert Arthur T. Hadley, and counsel to the New York Board of Trade Simon Sterne. See Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, Report 46, 49th Congr., 1st sess., 1886, 2.

40. Glad, Paul W., The Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy, 1896–1912 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960), p. 141Google Scholar; and Koenig, Louis W., Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Putnam, 1971), p. 125Google Scholar.

41. Koenig, Louis W., The Chief Executive, 5th ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986)Google Scholar, ch. 10.

42. For the period under examination the House had 325 members and the Senate had 76. In the 48th Congress, 2nd session, this broke down to 200 Democrats, 119 Republicans, 4 Independents, and 2 Greenbacks in the House; and 40 Republicans and 36 Democrats in the Senate. In the 49th Congress, first session, there were 184 Democrats, 139 Republicans, and 2 Greenback-Labor members in the House; and 41 Republicans and 35 Democrats in the Senate. Finally, the 49th Congress, second session, was comprised of 180 Democrats, 138 Republicans, 2 Greenback-Labor members, and 5 vacancies; while in the Senate the Republi-cans had 42 members to the Democrats 34 members.

43. Three different cutoff points—$100 million, $75 million, and $50 million—were tested in order to minimize the problem of arbitrariness in the selection of a cutoff point. While there was some variation in the magnitude of the coefficient, the statistical significance of the coefficients varied uniformly.

44. Clubb, Jerome M. and Allen, Howard W., “Party Loyalty in the Progressive Years,1909–1915,” Journal of Politics 29 (1967): 568CrossRefGoogle Scholar.