1908's hot ticket was to DNC

Denver's mayor welcomed delegates to the frontier's 'Paris on the Platte'

By Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 31, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Clockwise from left, Jim McNally, Daniel Lowenstein, Gregorio Alcaro, and Trini Gonzalez H. , production team for Celebrate 1908, highlight the 100th anniversary of the Democratic National Convention held in Denver in 1908, by getting into costume.

Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Memorabilia and artifacts from the 1908 Democratic National Convention in Denver, including campaign buttons and press and delegate badges, from the collection of Auraria Casa Mayan Heritage.

Bunting of red, white and blue lined 17th Street from Union Station all the way up to Broadway.

Lady Denver handed the city's key to a Democratic donkey in a light display shining brightly atop the roof of the Gas and Electric Building at Tremont Place.

Oom-pah bands met each state delegation, then marched the delegates to their hotels - the Albany at 17th and Stout streets, the Metropole on Broadway, the Plaza, the Interocean, the Shirley and the Savoy.

Trains chugged up Corona Pass to the Continental Divide, where snow was packed into hopper cars and then brought back and dumped on city streets for the amusement of hot and weary conventioneers.

A troupe of city-hired Indians met the New York delegation from Tammany Hall. And 40 Apaches from a New Mexico reservation were paid to camp in City Park.

It was the Fourth of July Weekend in 1908, and the brash young city at the foot of the Rockies welcomed the biggest political event it had ever seen - the Democratic National Convention.

Famed Rocky Mountain News writer Damon Runyon wrote that the main difference between the wild Indians and the Democrats was that the Democrats wore more badges.

A hundred years later, the Democrats are making a return trip for their national convention at the end of August. And they will find a city whose growth upward and outward might surprise even the visionary political boss of the day, Mayor Robert Speer, who wanted the 1908 convention to serve as an anchor for his program to make 50-year-old Denver the nation's next big city.

Familiar issues

As much as things have changed in the past century, the Democrats will be debating some familiar issues.

The Democratic platform of 1908 dealt with corporate influence in government, the role of labor, free trade versus protectionism, equal rights, campaign finance reform and other debates of contemporary politics.

"If you changed a few words here and there, you'd think it was today," said Myron Vallier of the Denver Public Library's Western History Department. "It's scary to think we haven't come very far."

In 1908, Denver was on the cusp of a rapid transformation from frontier town to Speer's pretentious vision of "Paris on the Platte."

A new strong-mayor consolidated city-county government had been launched in 1904. With Boss Speer at the helm, Denver rushed headlong into a City Beautiful campaign of planting trees, building parkways, buying up parks, landscaping gardens and turning on fountains.

The year 1908 saw the Auditorium open, along with the Natural History Museum in City Park, Lakeside Amusement Park and the prismatic fountain in City Park Lake.

Denver leaders hoped the big convention would firmly mark its spot on the world map.

"They saw this as kind of a capstone to the first 50 years of development," said John Steinle, historian and administrator at Hiwan Homestead Museum. "They saw a national political convention as really putting Denver on the map and gaining a reputation as a first-class city."

"In fact, they didn't care if it was the Republicans or the Democrats, they wanted to be able to show their city and their state to the rest of the world," said Trini Gonzales.

She and her cousin, Gregorio Alcaro, are in a group putting on a theatrical re-enactment for the centennial of the convention, called Celebrate 1908.

Celebrate 1908 will have exhibits, music, performances and discussion forums at the Turnhalle, in the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus, July 25 and 26. Discussions will focus on issues including those populist stances championed by the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan.

Bryan, the emerging soul of the progressive wing of the party, had carried Colorado's electoral votes in 1896 and 1900, in his first unsuccessful campaigns against William McKinley. He was a spot-on favorite for the 1908 nomination and looked to win after Republican Teddy Roosevelt announced he would not run for a third term.

Colorado leaders tried to present a united front to Republican and Democratic national organizers. But state Democrats were warring among themselves with Speer, the machine Democrat, on one hand and reformers like former Rep. John Shafroth on the other.

"The press and the reform Democrats didn't like Speer, but the people embraced him; he was just so popular," said Bill Convery, state historian at the Colorado Historical Society.

What sealed the deal

Getting the Democrats to gather and assemble in Denver at all took a bit of bribery.

In December 1907, city leaders traveled to Washington to pitch their city to the national party.

Charles Franklin, chairman of the Denver Convention League, disabused them of the idea that Denver residents were still fighting off hostile Indians and that people walked around in buckskins and frontier dresses.

As one newspaper wag wrote: "Why yes, we can read and write, lots of us, and I don't know a woman in Denver who carries more than one revolver when she comes down town shopping."

Franklin called Denver "the most beautiful city on the planet" - just as pretty, he assured the Democrats, as Washington and Cleveland.

However, what sealed the deal was free rent on the new Auditorium and $100,000 in cold hard cash.

Denver's competitors - Chicago, Louisville, St. Paul and Atlantic City - couldn't touch it.

The stage was set, and the city prepared.

Populist movement

At the time, Democrats were the party of southern racial segregation and generally supportive of big business. But the populist movement had brought more farming and labor interests into the ranks.

Bryan fit that emerging picture of the party. The Great Commoner, he was one of the most prolific orators and writers of the day. From his Nebraska farm he published his newsletter, The Commoner. His voice could be heard on Edison wax cylinders, but his greatness was in the words themselves.

"Bryan could give a speech that was not only spellbinding in person, but translated well into print," Convery said.

Because Bryan's nomination was assured by June, Denver's attention turned to putting on a great party. Added security for the city amounted to 16 extra policemen.

The convention opened July 7, but Bryan did not attend. He listened over a long-distance line to Lincoln, Neb., sometimes urging the action along, so he could resume cutting alfalfa on his farm. His brother, Charles Bryan, was his convention manager in Denver.

The theme of the convention was "Equal rights to all, special privileges to none."

That didn't apply evenly, though.

A delegation of black Republicans met with the platform committee to ask for a civil rights plank. But South Carolina Sen. Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman killed any such notion.

The convention speeches rolled on, with the Auditorium's brilliant acoustics drawing rave reviews.

When Sen. Thomas Gore, of Oklahoma, casually mentioned Bryan's name, the assembly erupted into applause, screaming and wild demonstration.

The celebration continued for a record-setting one hour and 27 minutes, egged on by flag-waving women near the stage and a band playing There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight and a song written specially for Bryan, William the Conqueror March.

Party workers stoked the celebration in an effort to surpass the time set by Republicans four years earlier in their cheering for Roosevelt.

In the Auditorium's seats watching all this was Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the 24-year-old wife of Ohio Rep. Nicholas Longworth. "Princess Alice," whose sarcasm and outspoken lifestyle would intrigue the nation for decades, "spied" on the Democrats as a guest of Bryan's daughter, Ruth.

It would be like Jenna Bush coming to Denver this August as a guest of Chelsea Clinton.

"When the demonstration went on and on, Alice joined in, and it was kind of embarrassing for Teddy Roosevelt," said Steinle.

On adjournment, attendees of the Denver convention spread to all corners of the nation believing this third run by Bryan was his to lose. They saw Roosevelt's hand-picked successor, William Taft, as vulnerable.

"The tenor of the country was so anti-monopoly and anti-trust that the Democrats thought they were going to win," Convery said.

But the loose coalition of populists, labor, old line Bourbon Democrats, Southerners and farmers didn't coalesce into a winning team. Taft easily won two-thirds of the electoral vote.

"The world that Bryan was defending was starting to fade away even as he was defending it, rural small town America and the country store and church social on Sunday afternoon," Steinle said.

Most popular venue

Denver's convention performance had solidified its status as a meeting place, Convery said, and validated Speer's City Beautiful program - its future works included Civic Center Park, Pioneer Fountain, and the City and County Building.

The Auditorium remained the city's convention focus even as it wore thin around the edges. For more than a half-century, it was the most popular meeting, sporting and entertainment venue in the city.

Not until Currigan Hall was built in 1969 did the Auditorium and its 1940s companion Arena next door get a rest.

Today, the Arena is the Temple Hoyne Buell Theater. The Auditorium, scene of the greatest 1908 festivities, is the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

And the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad yards, on the far edge of town 100 years ago, have been reincarnated as the Pepsi Center - site of the 2008 Democratic National convention.

Cast of 'characters'

Many notables of the day attended the 1908 Democratic National Convention, including Colorado's biggest names.

Among them:

* Mary C.C. Bradford. A prominent activist for women's suffrage in a state that had given women the right to vote locally, she was one of the first five female delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 1908. She was Colorado's state education commissioner from 1913 to 1920.

* Samuel Gompers. Founder of the American Federation of Labor, he was part of a labor delegation that lobbied the 1908 convention to include more labor issues in its platform; support for an eight-hour workday was included in the final platform.

* Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Oldest daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, the flamboyant and feisty 24-year- old wife of future House Speaker Nicholas Longworth watched the rival Democrats meet in Denver and stayed in her private rail car behind Union Station.

* John Mitchell. A founding member of the United Mine Workers and an officer in the American Federation of Labor, he was part of the labor delegation that met with the Democratic platform committee.

* Damon Runyon. The quintessential wise-guy journalist of his day, Runyon grew up in Pueblo and started at a newspaper there, but at the time of the 1908 convention he was covering it for the Rocky Mountain News. Two years later he left for the Hearst- owned New York American and developed his career in covering the town's gangsters and underworld "Guys and Dolls."

* John Shafroth. Originally a Republican representative in Congress from Denver, he bolted the party during the split over silver monetization and became a reform Democrat and political foe of Denver Democratic boss Robert Speer. He won the Colorado governorship in the 1908 election and went on four years later to the U.S. Senate.

* Robert Speer. A real estate speculator who once worked with Horace Tabor and developed the Country Club neighborhood, he organized a political machine that gave him control of patronage. As mayor, he pushed for many of the improvements that elevated Denver to a modern city, including the Auditorium.

* Henry Teller. One of Colorado's initial two senators in 1876, Teller was the state's longest-serving senator. Secretary of the interior for President Chester Arthur, Teller returned to the Senate and became a Democrat during the Republican split over the silver issue.

* Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman. The South Carolina senator had been a fighter against Republican Reconstruction in his state following the Civil War and was one of the most outspoken racists in the Congress. He worked against black suffrage and, at the Denver convention, helped squelch talk of a civil rights plank.

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