Original Document

RETURNING from the forests of Maine a couple of weeks ago, I learned that an announcement had been made in a quarter tolerably authoritative that I would make a canvass of the State.

Although such an idea had previously been suggested, it was not in the line of my thought, but it occurred to me that there would be no impropriety in my visiting the regions of the State heretofore unvisited to look my friends in the face, and when some in your county insisted upon my presence I gave a rather diffident assent. Therefore I am with you tonight, and I must ask the thanks of the audience for bringing with me the gentlemen who are here and who will speak to you upon the issues of the campaign. ...

I am not here to solicit the vote of the Republicans of Chester County for United States Senator. For that distinguished position I am not a candidate in the ordinary acceptation of that term. The Republican State Convention insisted upon the presentation of my candidacy to the people and I submitted with some reluctance to their judgment. To me that high office is no longer attractive. Its duties have occupied the last twelve years of my life and they were exceedingly vexatious and laborious. My career, as you all know, has not been exactly pleasure sailing upon summer seas, and advancing years admonish me that if peace and recreation are to ever find me, in the course of nature they must come very soon.

If the choice of the Republicans of Pennsylvania should fall upon another their judgment will be greeted by me, if not with satisfaction, at least with relief. If the issue could be presented to a popular vote of the Republicans of the State at the ensuing election, that course would tend very largely to subdue the ill-temper now manifest in certain distinguished quarters and would serve as a lightning rod for our

Republican local Legislative and Congressional tickets. If the gentlemen who hold almost daily conferences at the Hotel Stratford in the city of Philadelphia will agree to this plan for ascertaining public sentiment, they may name their candidate and my name shall go to the people with his. If they are fearful of fraud in the great centres of population, the counties of Philadelphia and Allegheny may be eliminated from the canvass. This seems to me to be a fair proposition, approximating the election of United States Senators by direct vote of the people.

The mention of possible fraud in the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburg naturally leads me to notice a very recent movement in favor of ballot reform.

In this State, as in other States, there has been occasional violation of the ballot to such an extent as to excite great popular indignation. In the autobiography of Richard H. Dana, fraudulent balloting is mentioned as having occurred in the city of Boston. Not many years have elapsed since the entire nation was excited by naturalization and other frauds in the city of New York. Some thirty or forty years ago, in my youth, in what was known as the Mann-Cassidy contest over the District Attorneyship in Philadelphia, there was developed something akin to the recent lawless proceedings in the Fifth and Seventh wards of the city of Philadelphia. There was also in later days the McClure-Gray Senatorial contest, in which gentlemen known as the "Flying Dutchman" and the "Educated Hog" became famous in the Quaker City. It is a remarkable evidence of the advancement of correct sentiment that the gentleman whose name headed a list famished by my friend. Col. McClure, of the Philadelphia Times to the District Attorney of Philadelphia for prosecution for atrocious crimes in connection with that contest is now conducting the campaign for fusion ballot reform and the Municipal League in that city.

These perversions of the public will were local and limited in extent, and, it must be, therefore, with something like horror that the public meets the proclamation that eighty thousand fraudulent votes are polled in the city of Philadelphia; that is to say, that more than one-half of the Republican vote in that city is fraudulent. It asserts that the voting lists and the census are also fraudulent, and the authorities of the nation and city, consequently, parties to a conspiracy with the ballot thieves. ...

Doubtless frauds are committed in the city of Philadelphia, as elsewhere in great centres of population, but no sane man will believe that they obtain in Philadelphia to a greater extent than elsewhere under like conditions, or to an extent sufficient to effect great results. It is difficult to perceive any motive for such crimes. No ballot law can be devised which will convert a minority into a majority, and no ballot law can be devised which will make Pennsylvania a Democratic State, or Philadelphia a Democratic city.

If the Republican majority could be reduced, that reduction of the Republican majority might indeed be a blessing in disguise; for a political party often becomes drunken in the consciousness of its own strength and commits excesses. It might be quite as well for the well-being of the Republican party, the State of Pennsylvania and the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburg if Philadelphia gave fifteen thousand Republican majority, rural Pennsylvania ten thousand and Allegheny county five thousand. In that event there would be caution in party practices and nominations, and little or no factional warfare, and political differences would be settled like strikes, by arbitration, and not with crossed swords at the polls. It is safe to aver that, except in the centres of population I have mentioned, the elections of Pennsylvania are conducted impartially and honestly and accordingly to law. ...

Year after year, satisfies me more of the wisdom of the people of Pennsylvania in accepting the Republican faith. Their political organization has grown from a handful of people, to be the greatest power of the Union. The State has advanced miraculously, in wealth and population, under its government Our great debt has been paid; our entire territory is belted with railroads and lighted with the fires of our furnaces and factories; our annual school and charitable appropriations have grown from hundreds of thousands into millions; our corporations have taken over the burden of taxation from the real estate of our fanners, and we are rich and happy beyond the hope or dream of a half century ago. AH this has come from the intelligence, thrift and industry of our people under the guiding hand of Republican administration. Our prosperity seems rock-founded and rock-ribbed, but Pennsylvanians must not forget that it is largely based upon the tariff, and that while there is a present lull in the warfare upon our protective system, the election of a. Democratic President and Congress will bring upon us a tariff bill worse than the Wilson tariff. Such a consummation I believe impossible, and I further believe that the best State of the Union will give the best majority in all the Union for the re-election of the best President God has vouchsafed to the Union since the death of Abraham Lincoln.





Credit: Matthew Quay, Excerpt from “Opening Speech at West Chester, October 1, 1900,” in Pennsylvania Politic: The Campaign of 1900 Set Forth in the Speeches of Hon., Matthew Stanley Quay . Philadelphia: William J. Campbell, 1901.