Hidden History of Tennessee Politics by James B. Jones Jr

Author:James B. Jones Jr. [Jones, James B. Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Civil Rights, History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9781625853745
Google: NxUfCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2015-07-06T05:05:37+00:00

Portrait of Henry Clay Evans.

7

EDITORIAL CARTOONS V. MONOPOLY

THE NASHVILLE DAILY AMERICAN AGAINST THE ST. LOUIS AND NASHVILLE RAILROAD

In September 1887, the voters of Davidson County and the city of Nashville were asked to approve a bond issue aimed at building the Tennessee Midland Railroad. It promised competition with the existing Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad and its nominal competitor the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad, a regional monopoly. The ensuing battle over the subsidy was fought in the editorial columns in both the pro-Midland Nashville Daily American and the advocate for the L&N, the Nashville Banner. A unique characteristic of this fight was the use of the contemporary editorial cartoons by the Daily American.3

Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad gained a reputation as one of the most efficient and profitable railroads in the South, if not in the nation. Partly, this was the result of its business practices, which resulted in an absolute monopoly between its two termini and in turn allowed it to effectively engage and halter rival economic competition, the curse of monopoly. According to one author, after 1900, the L&N’s tendency toward waging public, large-scale political efforts in such southern states as Alabama and Kentucky is well illustrated.4 Yet at least once before 1900, the L&N carried out an effective campaign to thwart the development of a rival railroad, the Tennessee Midland, in 1887 in Nashville and Davidson County. It is not going too far to suggest that its actions served as a model defining action in similar efforts in the future. This was carried out in a political context in which the anti-railroad monopoly Farmers’ Alliances were evolving into the nation’s third-largest political organization, the Populist Party. The positive values inherent in that shift included individualism, economic freedom and competition and a strategy to link rural, urban and black workers to obtain economic justice.5 The 1887 issue revolved around the question of whether public support should be translated into a public subscription to fund competition for the L&N. The narrative has been unnoticed in Tennessee historiography until now.

The L&N had gained its monopoly stature by the close of the 1860s. Its initial success was partly a matter of gaining public support for the road before the Civil War. It ran along what was essentially a north-to-south axis. The Midland, on the other hand, had not one mile of track laid by 1887, although it had completed its survey of what was basically an east–west route. It was breaking new ground, although the idea of such a railroad had been discussed for decades before the outbreak of war. The construction relied on public support. The actual building of the road represented a dangerous threat to the L&N—and to a lesser extent the Nashville and Chattanooga (N&C)—and could not be allowed to proceed. Moreover, the actual fight for public subscription took on clear tones of moneyed power versus the common man. The effort in Davidson County and Nashville occurred in

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