Michael Hodder and Q. David Bowers
Silver and Politics
Political life in Salt Lake City was aligned along the major social distinction among its inhabitants, namely, whether Or not one was a Mormon or a "gentile;' as the Mormons called nonbelievers. The Mormon Church at first took a non-involvement attitude toward "gentile" political affairs, but as the territory began to attract national attention through reports and finds of silver, the Church was forced to acknowledge the importance of "gentile" political concerns. Accordingly, the Mormons adopted a two-party system of their own, which involved splitting their People's Party of the Mormon Church into two parts and arbitrarily naming one Democrats and the other Republicans. Membership was, as might be expected, confined to Mormons only. Gentiles desiring membership were placed in a third category, the "Liberal Party" which had no political influence in the city. Mormon domination of the so-called Democratic and Republican Parties was later to be challenged by some Church members who felt that acceptance by mainstream America was more important, in the long run, than preservation of Church dominance in local political affairs. These were the dissidents, few in number, who formed a faction in the Democratic Party of the time and who would form the cadre for the reorganization of the Democrats later on.
As the owner of Utah's oldest silver mine, as well as one of the richest men in Salt Lake City, it was inevitable that Liberty Holden would be looked to for leadership in political affairs as he had already been in social and educational ones. As a member of the First Congregational Church, which met in Independence Hall, Liberty took an active role in his church's condemnation of polygamy and Mormon domination of local politics. The Deseret News of March 13, 1896 reported in an article touching upon history that in 1881, as Liberty was driving ex-President Benjamin Harrison, Senator John Sherman (a friend of Liberty's and later author of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act), and Judge Strong around Salt Lake City on a sight-seeing tour, Holden declared, "Polygamists should not vote, sit on juries, or hold office:' Senator Sherman agreed with Liberty and invited him to Washington to assist in drafting legislation to that effect. Liberty was in Washington the following year, on another assignment, but found that Senator George Edmunds of Vermont had already sent similar legislation to the floor. The Vermont senator's bill became the basis of future laws that disenfranchised and resulted in the arrest of some 1,200 Mormons who refused to give up the practice of polygamy.
Liberty first took an active role in politics in 1882, when he was chosen to travel to Washington as a delegate of the Utah Mine Protective Association to argue against a reduction in the protective tariffs then in effect on imports of industrial raw materials. The lobbying effort was successful, resulting in passage of the so-called "Mongrol Tariff" of March 3, 1883, which reduced duties on some consumer goods (including some in short supply in the West) but retained or increased duties on articles already tariffed by the Act of 1875.
In 1884 Liberty joined with the dissident group in the Mormon Democratic Party and spoke out against Church domination of local politics. At a meeting of the Utah Democratic Club he gave a speech in support ofGrover Cleveland's presidential candidacy. After Cleveland's election the regular Democrats, as the dissidents now called themselves, met at Walker's Opera House to signal their victory after a rousing torchlight parade through the city. The chairman of the party drove all polygamists from the Democratic party, which renamed itself the Party of the Right. Liberty Holden gave a speech in support of the break.
The following year Liberty was chosen as a delegate to the National Bimetallic Association's meeting in Washington, where he was selected as chairman of the executive committee. The Association, later called the National Bimetallic League, was organized to fight against the de facto gold standard createdby the Coinage Act of 1873. Its goal was the remonetization of silver. Naturally, the western silver interests took a leading part in Association activities, underwriting its costs and publication of pamphlets supporting its cause. Nicholas Veeder's important Cometallism, Gold, Silver, and Paper Money (1885) was one of the pamphlets whose composition was encouraged by the Association. The famous "Republic of Eutopia" cometallic "dollar" of 1886 put the Association's goals into coinage form. It featured a gold center weighing 12.9 grains surrounded by a silver band weighing 206.25 grains, the total value of the metals being equivalent to that of a United States dollar of the day. A "half dollar" of similar pattern was also manufactured at this time, bearing a silver shell of 109.68 grains enclosing a gold center weighing 6.856 grains, the total value of the metals being 59 cents. Both privately-made "patterns" are very rare today and were probably originally made for presentation to important delegates to the annual meetings of 1885 and 1886.
In politics Liberty has been called "a bred in the bone Jeffersonian Democrat" by one author (Archer Shaw, The Plain DealerThe First One Hundred Years in Cleveland, 1942), but his political leanings were more pragmatic ones than determined by any system of beliefs. His advocacy of the remonetization of silver and his support of Senator Sherman's campaign to push the Silver Purchase Act through Congress were based largely upon the self interest of a mine owner. His membership in the Democratic Party in Salt Lake City was based mainly upon his moral and religious beliefs that Mormonism as a political and social institution should be suppressed in Utah. Later, as a newspaper owner and publisher, he proclaimed that "all government should be for the good of the governed;'
Twice elected as a delegate from Ohio to the Democratic National Convention, in 1888 and 1896, Liberty Holden supported William Jennings Bryan on the national ticket in the latter year because of the candidate's advocacy of the free coinage of silver, while privately condemning the "anarchists" and other opponents of capitalism with whom Liberty found himself in company within the party. Back home in Cleveland his newspaper would refuse editorial support of the Democratic candidate for mayor in the election of 1899; and its chief rival, the Leader, accused Liberty of being a national Democrat but a local Republican. Liberty made only one public address on the subject of free trade and protectionism, written following President Grover Cleveland's message advocating free trade in 1883. Published in pamphlet form at Liberty's own expense for further circulation, the speech included this ringing exhortation:
"What we want is protection, fixed, decided, and permanent, to be known and sustained as a national policy ... To protection we owe our prosperity, our strength, and our credit;' Titled Tariff for Protection. An Address Before the Workingmen at Cleveland, Ohio, February 17, 1883, the message was so "un-democratic" that it was picked up and published by the Republican Leader as an editorial! Whatever his beliefs of the moment, he held them strongly. On the subject of the free coinage of silver he was most strong.
The Plain Dealer
After Liberty Holden moved with his family from Utah back to Cleveland, in 1885, he purchased an ailing Democratic newspaper, the Herald, which he merged with his purchase of the Plain Dealer the following year. Both papers were to provide a forum for his political and social ideas.
Today, the Plain Dealer newspaper (earlier called the Cleveland Plain Dealer; we shall use the paper's current name) is one of the most respected and authoritative dailies in America, having changed from a mainly Midwestern focus by expanding its cover-age of national and international stories. When Liberty Holden purchased the paper, in the spring of 1885, the Plain Dealer was a small but vociferous city newspaper with a very colorful past but an uncertain future. It was 43 years old then, and despite the financial difficulties its new owner faced, Liberty could point with pride to the national attention it had already garnered.