West Virginia is closing in on the 120th anniversary of a milestone achievement in the life of one of its most important figures. In early 1895, the West Virginia State Legislature chose Stephen Benton Elkins to represent the state in the United States Senate.
Elkins did not have to win in a popular vote. Before 1913, legislatures chose senators. His career, however, had been remarkable. Elkins had helped to build one of the most powerful coal companies in the United States, extended railroads deep into the West Virginia countryside, and had served under President Benjamin Harrison as Secretary of War. Since 1888, he had guided the once lowly state Republican Party to the brink of decades of political dominance.
He officially came to West Virginia in early 1888. The Republican Party paper Wheeling Intelligencer rhetorically rolled out the red carpet, announcing his arrival almost like royalty. Civil War veteran and POW Nathan Goff of Clarksburg had capably led the party through much of the 1880s while a congressman. Elkins' arrival coincided with a tightly contested Goff run for governor. When Goff lost, many state Republicans switched their allegiance to Elkins.
Goff handled the shift with grace, likely consoled by appointment to the federal bench and eventual elevation to the US Senate. Meanwhile, Elkins and his regional allies strained to make the party and county Republican committees and clubs more active and effective. Elkins recruited Preston County newspaper editor W. M. O. Dawson to help run the day to day affairs of the state party. With the onset of free public school in West Virginia in the 1860s, experience and knowledge of the new media environment was crucial to helping build coming Republican majority.
Not everyone supported the new party leadership. In 1890, rumors swirled of an Elkins run for Congress. One Preston County Republican promised future congressman Alston Gordon Dayton that "If Elkins is to be the nominee . . . there will be many 'stay at homes' when election day rolls around." Despite Goff's quiet acceptance and willingness to work with Elkins, his former allies resented the new guard. They expected to be ignored and rejected by the newly minted West Virginia, but more often than not Elkins extended his hand to former Goff men willing to accept it.
Elkins' businesslike administration of the state party built on the prior work of the charismatic Goff. By 1894, the GOP had gained ascendancy in voter registrations, fundraising, and elected offices. West Virginia remained a Republican state until 1932.
Unlike his father-in-law Henry Gassaway Davis who was a powerful Democrat from West Virginia, but spent most of his time at a Maryland residence, Elkins embraced his new state. In 1890, he built for himself and his family the beautiful mansion Halliehurst. Not long before construction, the site of the home was near wilderness. Starting in 1890, the Randolph County city bearing his name grew up around his home and the new railroad connection.
On reaching the Senate, Elkins kept his eye on both state and national issues. During the 1896 presidential campaign, Elkins resisted considerable pressure by William McKinley advocates on the West Virginia and national level. While he could have gained personally by joining the McKinley bandwagon, Elkins was trying to obtain federal funds to dredge the Monongahela River. Other presidential aspirants sat in the Senate and Elkins feared antagonizing them. He explained "You know what is pending here and the reasons that move me to my opinion . . . Hope you can trust my judgment." He won the improvements and also ensured that a new United States Weather Service tracking station would be built in the state.
In national and foreign affairs, Elkins also had influence. In 1898, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst conferred with Elkins on ideas about national war policy. Several years later, Elkins authored legislation that ended the use of free passes by railroads to buy influence with politicians, editors, and others.
Rivals in his day and leftist historians later harped on Elkins' origins. John Alexander Williams called him New York's senator in West Virginia. In his personal and public correspondence, however, Elkins demonstrated his love for the state, concern for its people, and willingness to work very hard for the betterment of his adopted home and its Republican Party. West Virginia owes Elkins for much of its early 20th century prominence and prosperity.
He was certainly no opportunistic carpetbagger, looking for short term gains with plans to abandon his new home. Elkins brought his family to West Virginia to serve his new state and to grow along with it.
Unfortunately, Democratic machine rule cancelled out many of his achievements.
But now it is a new century and a new day for West Virginia Republicans. It is only right to occasionally honor the transplant from New York who worked so hard and did so much good for the Mountain State.
Showing posts with label Henry Gassaway Davis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henry Gassaway Davis. Show all posts
Friday, January 31, 2014
Friday, August 2, 2013
Was West Virginia a Victim of the Free Market?
And now a rare first person commentary!
I have wrestled with the idea of the "robber baron" theory of West Virginia economic development since I was in college. Historians such as John Alexander Williams taught for decades that a once pristine and functional society fell victim to greedy and rapacious seizers of land and resources. They squeezed the land and people dry of wealth, then abandoned the state for greener pastures in the 20th century. This left the state with little to show for the sacrifices made.
Taking another look at this time is vital. Historians and the books they write almost uniformly blame the free market for all the evils that took place. This mainly comes from the fact that many of them fail to see that a truly competitive free market defended by rule of law is not synonymous with doing business. Many of the abuses done by business and described by historians are the opposite of the free market.
Williams grafted a colonial-periphery theory from studies of the Third World. In his explanation, West Virginia was a "colony" of New York based business interests. They recruited and used a comprador class of local lawyers and other professionals to advance their interests and to get the people behind them. This theory, advanced by many, portrays a naïve population duped, used, and left behind. They made little intellectual contribution, so they bear little responsibility.
Others, such as West Virginia University's Ron Lewis, have described more moderate ideas that do not reduce either the businessmen nor the state's people to caricatures. Lewis' works focus as much on the environmental sacrifices as well as the social and economic ones.
One cannot argue away the fact that West Virginia's environment was drastically changed by industrialization. Lewis in Transformation of the Appalachian Countryside describes how practices of getting timber to market caused eroded hillsides, made vast areas more vulnerable to both floods and fire, and annihilated river life. He also points out that the clear cutting actually worked to the economic detriment of the logging companies because the land could not renew its forests quickly.
So there was environmental sacrifice on the same lines as the rest of a country untutored in best practices. Interestingly, the example of West Virginia and other Appalachian states (clear cutting removed almost all of the virgin forest in the region) showed the resiliency of the environment instead of the fragility. Forests and streams rebounded fairly quickly.
And the environmental impact did not start with the Industrial Revolution, either. Traveling writer Anne Royall described the stripping of forests around the Kanawha Valley salt works in the first decade of the 19th century. She talked about the ugly, stump ridden hillsides and the black smoke hanging in the air. Before the salt industry, Indians and frontier farmers used rather wasteful methods to remove trees, farm a plot until the land wore out, then move on.
The crux of the economic argument discussed by historians (but rebutted by economists such as Russ Sobel) is that wealth was "stolen" from West Virginia.
Did greed and hatred for humanity cause businessmen to swindle the people from their land, then force them into unhealthy jobs that paid nothing? And did the state get nothing in return?
The record is mixed. Some focus on the amount of money paid to landowners for their property. Owners received a pittance compared to the value of resources removed. In many cases, this is true. The true market value of land isolated from centers of transportation and unsuitable for farming was very low. Company agents looking for coal lands offered market value. Some recognized the eagerness in the eyes of the agents and negotiated for more. Others savored the idea of getting more cash than they had likely ever seen in their lives for what they thought was worth very little and took the offer without question or counterproposal.
But other owners refused to sell. Companies then brought in the lawyers. Land claims in the mountains of what was once Virginia were a tangled mess. People established claims with boundaries marked by trees or moss covered rocks, laid out in paces. Different land offices granted the same land to separate people. Residents lived on the land they thought was theirs. Companies in Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere bought competing claims.
So naturally many cases ended up in court. With no clear ownership of the land established, judges had to fall back on legal principle. Here is yet another example where government meddling in the private sector creates social problems. Before the Industrial Revolution, courts in Western Virginia used natural rights and common law principles. The rights of the individual were more important than those of collective society. With all else equal, a court would usually use the maxim "possession is 9/10 of the law." The person living on the land, all else being equal, gets to keep the land.
After industrialism took hold, courts moved to a collectivist social justice approach. The maxim now was to advance the common good. In any era, the common good is usually defined by entities trying to take resources from the less powerful individual for some other purpose. Collectivism was on the side of big business. So instead of advising the companies to make better offers or go elsewhere, courts ruled in favor of the companies "for the common good."
The common good was also supposedly advanced by a law allowing railroads to be built without permission on private land if the owners did not notice the construction of the rail line.
Common good arguments are just as nefarious when done in favor of modern causes as they were when done to advance crony capitalist interests. Every time used, the common good argument hurts the common individual man. They are rarely appropriate in a free society, even if the common good is advanced.
And the common good did advance. It could have advanced just as far, if not farther, had the rights of individuals remained respected. But advance, it did. Railroads connected most towns and county seats. Mind you, sometimes the county seats were moved by force to the rail lines in some cases. But it happened.
Satellite industries grew up around timber and coal extraction. Paper mills, coke ovens, glassware, and other products were churned out of towns and cities across the state. Trains and river traffic carried products to domestic markets and port cities. The free public school system advanced farther and faster after the Civil War than nearly anywhere else south of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers.
At the time of the industrial revolution, dredged rivers, expanding rail networks, and establishment of free schools were all marks of progress. West Virginia got those and a government weather station.
The argument that naïve or greedy natives sold out to big city interests falls flat. Henry Gassaway Davis of Piedmont was a mover in politics and business, not one who was moved. Elkins, who politically advised presidents and would-be presidents, chose to move to the state. Johnson Camden did sell out his oil and gas interests to John Rockefeller in a Godfather-like "offer you can't refuse." But that was under pressure of riches or ruin and was the aberration instead of the rule.
Employment of the people also created a mixed result. Abuses did happen, particularly in the southern counties. Some companies took advantage of the isolation, using debt and low wages to create near serfdom style conditions in company towns. The company owned the houses, stores, schools, and even churches. Running afoul of the company meant a blacklisting from almost any job in the region.
Again, government and business worked too closely in unison in these areas. Many sheriff's deputies worked double duty as law enforcement and company guards. Law enforcement broke up the free association of union organizers and workers while also intimidating journalists. The stifling hand of government allied with business perpetuated these abuses. It is a sin of business, but not one of the free market.
On the other hand, those now working for cash money had more access to the benefits of industrialism. Historians bemoan the move from self-sufficiency to the market economy. But they do not consider the price of items compared to the value of the time spent in making them oneself. Factory made clothes could be bought for cash earned in less time than it took mom or grandma to make homespun. Food was cheaper when considered in this way. People also had access to medicine, newspapers, and other products rarely seen in some areas prior to the coming of industrialization. Standards of living rose for most people.
Of course the downside lay in the fact that a cash paying job provided less security. What happened to people laid off, too old, or too injured to work was a real social problem.
Overall, it is hard to see how one could find that business as a collective whole abused or stole from the state and people of West Virginia. Then, as before and later, individual malefactors took advantage of people and the laxity of the laws. But they do as much or more harm now by lobbying to use the power of government to eliminate competitors, or infringe on the rights of the people.
Revisiting the interpretation of industrial history in West Virginia is necessary. The perceived sins of the past are used against those trying to develop for the future. We have all been raised to wrongly blame the free market system when many of the real problems stemmed from government help. Except for the environmental destruction, which a more educated society and legal system has addressed adequately, the free market ideal is just not responsible
The lesson of West Virginia's past is not that the free market failed, it is that the failure to maintain a free market hurt the people.
I have wrestled with the idea of the "robber baron" theory of West Virginia economic development since I was in college. Historians such as John Alexander Williams taught for decades that a once pristine and functional society fell victim to greedy and rapacious seizers of land and resources. They squeezed the land and people dry of wealth, then abandoned the state for greener pastures in the 20th century. This left the state with little to show for the sacrifices made.
Taking another look at this time is vital. Historians and the books they write almost uniformly blame the free market for all the evils that took place. This mainly comes from the fact that many of them fail to see that a truly competitive free market defended by rule of law is not synonymous with doing business. Many of the abuses done by business and described by historians are the opposite of the free market.
Williams grafted a colonial-periphery theory from studies of the Third World. In his explanation, West Virginia was a "colony" of New York based business interests. They recruited and used a comprador class of local lawyers and other professionals to advance their interests and to get the people behind them. This theory, advanced by many, portrays a naïve population duped, used, and left behind. They made little intellectual contribution, so they bear little responsibility.
Others, such as West Virginia University's Ron Lewis, have described more moderate ideas that do not reduce either the businessmen nor the state's people to caricatures. Lewis' works focus as much on the environmental sacrifices as well as the social and economic ones.
One cannot argue away the fact that West Virginia's environment was drastically changed by industrialization. Lewis in Transformation of the Appalachian Countryside describes how practices of getting timber to market caused eroded hillsides, made vast areas more vulnerable to both floods and fire, and annihilated river life. He also points out that the clear cutting actually worked to the economic detriment of the logging companies because the land could not renew its forests quickly.
So there was environmental sacrifice on the same lines as the rest of a country untutored in best practices. Interestingly, the example of West Virginia and other Appalachian states (clear cutting removed almost all of the virgin forest in the region) showed the resiliency of the environment instead of the fragility. Forests and streams rebounded fairly quickly.
And the environmental impact did not start with the Industrial Revolution, either. Traveling writer Anne Royall described the stripping of forests around the Kanawha Valley salt works in the first decade of the 19th century. She talked about the ugly, stump ridden hillsides and the black smoke hanging in the air. Before the salt industry, Indians and frontier farmers used rather wasteful methods to remove trees, farm a plot until the land wore out, then move on.
The crux of the economic argument discussed by historians (but rebutted by economists such as Russ Sobel) is that wealth was "stolen" from West Virginia.
Did greed and hatred for humanity cause businessmen to swindle the people from their land, then force them into unhealthy jobs that paid nothing? And did the state get nothing in return?
The record is mixed. Some focus on the amount of money paid to landowners for their property. Owners received a pittance compared to the value of resources removed. In many cases, this is true. The true market value of land isolated from centers of transportation and unsuitable for farming was very low. Company agents looking for coal lands offered market value. Some recognized the eagerness in the eyes of the agents and negotiated for more. Others savored the idea of getting more cash than they had likely ever seen in their lives for what they thought was worth very little and took the offer without question or counterproposal.
But other owners refused to sell. Companies then brought in the lawyers. Land claims in the mountains of what was once Virginia were a tangled mess. People established claims with boundaries marked by trees or moss covered rocks, laid out in paces. Different land offices granted the same land to separate people. Residents lived on the land they thought was theirs. Companies in Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere bought competing claims.
So naturally many cases ended up in court. With no clear ownership of the land established, judges had to fall back on legal principle. Here is yet another example where government meddling in the private sector creates social problems. Before the Industrial Revolution, courts in Western Virginia used natural rights and common law principles. The rights of the individual were more important than those of collective society. With all else equal, a court would usually use the maxim "possession is 9/10 of the law." The person living on the land, all else being equal, gets to keep the land.
After industrialism took hold, courts moved to a collectivist social justice approach. The maxim now was to advance the common good. In any era, the common good is usually defined by entities trying to take resources from the less powerful individual for some other purpose. Collectivism was on the side of big business. So instead of advising the companies to make better offers or go elsewhere, courts ruled in favor of the companies "for the common good."
The common good was also supposedly advanced by a law allowing railroads to be built without permission on private land if the owners did not notice the construction of the rail line.
Common good arguments are just as nefarious when done in favor of modern causes as they were when done to advance crony capitalist interests. Every time used, the common good argument hurts the common individual man. They are rarely appropriate in a free society, even if the common good is advanced.
And the common good did advance. It could have advanced just as far, if not farther, had the rights of individuals remained respected. But advance, it did. Railroads connected most towns and county seats. Mind you, sometimes the county seats were moved by force to the rail lines in some cases. But it happened.
Satellite industries grew up around timber and coal extraction. Paper mills, coke ovens, glassware, and other products were churned out of towns and cities across the state. Trains and river traffic carried products to domestic markets and port cities. The free public school system advanced farther and faster after the Civil War than nearly anywhere else south of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers.
At the time of the industrial revolution, dredged rivers, expanding rail networks, and establishment of free schools were all marks of progress. West Virginia got those and a government weather station.
The argument that naïve or greedy natives sold out to big city interests falls flat. Henry Gassaway Davis of Piedmont was a mover in politics and business, not one who was moved. Elkins, who politically advised presidents and would-be presidents, chose to move to the state. Johnson Camden did sell out his oil and gas interests to John Rockefeller in a Godfather-like "offer you can't refuse." But that was under pressure of riches or ruin and was the aberration instead of the rule.
Employment of the people also created a mixed result. Abuses did happen, particularly in the southern counties. Some companies took advantage of the isolation, using debt and low wages to create near serfdom style conditions in company towns. The company owned the houses, stores, schools, and even churches. Running afoul of the company meant a blacklisting from almost any job in the region.
Again, government and business worked too closely in unison in these areas. Many sheriff's deputies worked double duty as law enforcement and company guards. Law enforcement broke up the free association of union organizers and workers while also intimidating journalists. The stifling hand of government allied with business perpetuated these abuses. It is a sin of business, but not one of the free market.
On the other hand, those now working for cash money had more access to the benefits of industrialism. Historians bemoan the move from self-sufficiency to the market economy. But they do not consider the price of items compared to the value of the time spent in making them oneself. Factory made clothes could be bought for cash earned in less time than it took mom or grandma to make homespun. Food was cheaper when considered in this way. People also had access to medicine, newspapers, and other products rarely seen in some areas prior to the coming of industrialization. Standards of living rose for most people.
Of course the downside lay in the fact that a cash paying job provided less security. What happened to people laid off, too old, or too injured to work was a real social problem.
Overall, it is hard to see how one could find that business as a collective whole abused or stole from the state and people of West Virginia. Then, as before and later, individual malefactors took advantage of people and the laxity of the laws. But they do as much or more harm now by lobbying to use the power of government to eliminate competitors, or infringe on the rights of the people.
Revisiting the interpretation of industrial history in West Virginia is necessary. The perceived sins of the past are used against those trying to develop for the future. We have all been raised to wrongly blame the free market system when many of the real problems stemmed from government help. Except for the environmental destruction, which a more educated society and legal system has addressed adequately, the free market ideal is just not responsible
The lesson of West Virginia's past is not that the free market failed, it is that the failure to maintain a free market hurt the people.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Where Have You Gone Henry Gassaway Davis?
Our state needs help. About four years ago someone promised us that it was on the way, but we did not get as much as we expected. Despite the competitive advantages West Virginia enjoys in terms of location, natural beauty, and relatively low costs, our state squanders it away with a burdensome tax system and a lawsuit lottery mentality egged on by ridiculous judges.
Certainly some Democrats in the state understand what Republicans have known for years. Get rid of the corruption, fix the tax system, reform the judiciary and give business a reason to locate here. However none of them have truly stepped forward and demanded the changes that will give the people what they want, opportunities.
It takes courage to buck the party and support what is right. After the Civil War, a Union supporting Democrat named Henry Gassaway Davis gained influence. He successfully built up his business in Piedmont, then expanded his operations into mining and railroads. With his son-in-law Stephen Elkins, Davis helped to construct north central West Virginia into an industrial power.
Davis also exercised political power, serving in the West Virginia State Legislature and the United States Senate. For much of his life he remained a loyal Democrat. However he did not fear supporting Republicans when he saw their platform benefiting his state. One such issue was when the nation almost tore itself apart over the issue of whether or not to have sound or inflated currency. Davis supported the stable economy that sound currency would establish, giving Republicans assistance and support because he saw their stand as being better for the state. When his party returned to his values, Davis once again supported them and was the Democratic vice presidential candidate when he was in his 80s.
In our time, some Republicans think Joe Manchin is one of them. Sure he has advanced a few reforms here and there, but they often stop short of the decisive measures necessary to really bring change to this state. That being said, he supports the guru of nebulous change promises, Barack Obama. Some say that Manchin is a possibility for vice president. Because of this, the governor must associate himself with a pro-abortion candidate whose regulatory plans will severely damage the coal industry, and who has acted in the past against a person's right to defend their own home and family with a firearm. Murdering babies, killing the coal jobs vital to so many families, but wanting homicidal criminals to get the upper hand against law abiding homeowners. Those are definitely not West Virginia values.
Somewhere, somehow, Henry Gassaway Davis must be changing his registration.
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