FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156  
157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   >>   >|  
h section of an act passed by the New Jersey Legislature in June, 1820 (1 Laws N. J. p. 741), expressly reenacted this same property qualification. By about the year 1840, however, nearly all the States had adopted manhood suffrage, so far as it applied to whites. The severest and most dramatic conflict took place in Rhode Island. In 1762 an act had been passed declaring that the possession of L40 was necessary to become qualified as a voter. This law continued in force in Rhode Island for more than eighty years. In the years 1811, 1819, 1824, 1829, 1832 and 1834 the workingmen (or the mechanics, as the official reports styled them), made the most determined efforts to have this property qualification abolished, but the propertied classes, holding the legislative power, declined to make any change. Under such a law it was easy for one-third of the total number of resident male adults to have the exclusive decisions in elections; the largest vote ever polled in Rhode Island, was in the Presidential election of 1840, when 8,662 votes were cast, in a total adult male population of permanent resident citizens of about 24,000. The result of this hostility of the propertied classes was a rising in 1840 of the workingmen in what is slurringly misdescribed in conventional history as "Dorr's Rebellion,"--an event the real history of which has not as yet been told. This movement eventually compelled the introduction in Rhode Island of suffrage without the property qualification. How did the propertied classes meet this extension of suffrage throughout the United States? CORRUPTION AT THE POLLS. A systematic corruption of the voters was now begun. The policy of bribing certain legislators to vote for bank, railroad, insurance company and other charters was extended to reach down into ward politics, and to corrupt the voters at the springs of power. With a part of the money made in the frauds of trade or from exactions for land, the propertied interests, operating at first by personal entry into politics and then through the petty politicians of the day, packed caucuses and primaries and bought votes at the polls. This was equally true of both city and rural communities. In many of the rural sections the morals of the people were exceedingly low, despite their church-going habits. The cities contained, as they always do contain, a certain quota of men, products of the industrial system, men of the slums and alleyways, so f
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156  
157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Island
 

propertied

 

property

 

suffrage

 

classes

 
qualification
 
passed
 

voters

 
workingmen
 

politics


history

 

resident

 
States
 

charters

 
company
 

bribing

 
insurance
 
railroad
 

extended

 

legislators


systematic

 

eventually

 

movement

 

compelled

 

introduction

 

corruption

 

extension

 

United

 

CORRUPTION

 

policy


exactions

 
morals
 

sections

 

people

 

exceedingly

 
industrial
 

communities

 
system
 

contained

 
cities

church
 

products

 
habits
 
equally
 

interests

 

operating

 
personal
 

springs

 
frauds
 

Rebellion