Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [31]
With the governor’s image tarnished by his association with the Republican machine, anti-Platt men organized clubs to promote William McKinley’s candidacy as an alternative to Morton. With only three months until the Republican convention, Platt tried to maintain control over choosing the state’s delegates in an attempt to counter the enthusiasm for McKinley and prove to the country that New York firmly supported Morton. Platt called a snap convention to meet in New York City, but his scheme backfired. Someone introduced a resolution supporting McKinley, and amid the frantic cheering a McKinley banner was unfurled from the top gallery, partially covering Morton’s banner. Platt’s men were unable either to take down the McKinley banner or to stop the wild demonstration in favor of McKinley. Although the resolution supporting the Major was defeated, it was a severe blow to the governor’s candidacy and heartened McKinley supporters across the nation.
The national convention itself held even more embarrassments for Platt. Six contested McKinley delegates from New York City were admitted against Platt’s wishes. Platt had claimed that sixty-eight of the seventy-two New York delegates were for Morton, but actually seventeen of those seventy-two backed McKinley on the first ballot. Aside from the remaining fifty-five New York votes, Morton received only three other votes, one from Alabama and two from Florida. Although Platt tried to save face and have Morton named as vice presidential nominee, McKinley’s overwhelming nomination on the first ballot gave the boss no leverage. In the vote for the vice presidential nominee, Morton received only one vote—and that single vote came from Maine, not even his home state. Platt returned from the St. Louis convention humiliated and largely shut out of the great national campaign about to take place.
AFTER THE VIOLENCE AMONG the striking tailors on Sunday, August 2, Theodore Roosevelt toured the precinct houses of the area. Newspapers singled out his Sunday saloon-closing crusade as the reason for the violence. Had the police not been preoccupied rousting Sunday drinkers, a larger police presence among New York’s laboring class might have kept the peace. Roosevelt, however, saw the Sunday closing law as in labor’s best interest.
Years before, Roosevelt had urged labor to make “war on the saloons that yearly swallow so incredibly large a proportion” of workers’ wages. Yet New York labor largely resented Roosevelt’s crusade against the saloons. The previous summer the Commercial Advertiser had noted that at a meeting of the Central Labor Union, the attitude was, “The workingman wants his beer on Sunday, and what are we here for if not to benefit the workingman?” The American Federation of Labor may have believed that if saloons were “not permitted to adjoin the mansions of the wealthy neither shall they be permitted to intrude upon the wage earners’ precincts.” But trade unionists in New York did not agree and focused much of their resentment on Roosevelt personally. Labor leaders noted that while there had been over 8,000 arrests annually for excise violations under Roosevelt, there were only 104 arrests for violations of the factory law in 1895 and only 21 arrests for violation of the law in 1896. Roosevelt might say he was acting in labor’s best interest, but the slight enforcement of a law prohibiting minors from working more than sixty hours a week, and stopping children under thirteen from working in factories, seemed to show otherwise.
Now, on Tuesday, Commissioner Roosevelt tried to take control of the situation on the Lower East Side, issuing orders to precinct captains on handling the strikers. He directed the captains to order their men “not to use harsh measures with the strikers unless actual violence