afford to degrade the common people of this land, for they are the
people who in time of prosperity and peace produce the wealth of the
country, and they are also the people who in time of war bare their
breasts to a hostile fire in defense of the flag. Go to Arlington or to
any of the national cemeteries, see there the plain white monuments
which mark the place ‘where rest the ashes of the nation’s countless
dead,’ those of whom the poet has so beautifully written:
‘On Fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread.’
Who were they? Were they the beneficiaries of special legislation? Were
they the people who are ever clamoring for privileges? No, my friends;
those who come here and obtain from Government its aid and help find in
time of war too great a chance to increase their wealth to give much
attention to military duties. A nation’s extremity is their opportunity.
They are the ones who make contracts, carefully drawn, providing for the
payment of their money in coin, while the government goes out, if
necessary, and drafts the people and makes them lay down upon the altar
of their country all they have. No; the people who fight the battles are
largely the poor, the common people of the country; those who have
little to save but their honor, and little to lose but their lives.
These are the ones, and I say to you, sir, that the country can not
afford to lose them. I quote the language of Pericles in his great
funeral oration. He says:
‘It was for such a country, then, that these men, nobly resolving not to
have it taken from them, fell fighting; and every one of their survivors
may well be willing to suffer in its behalf.’
That, Mr. Chairman, is a noble sentiment and points the direction to the
true policy for a free people. It must be by beneficent laws; it must be
by a just government which a free people can love and upon which they
can rely that the nation is to be preserved. We can not put our safety
in a great navy; we can not put our safety in expensive fortifications
along a seacoast thousands of miles in extent, nor can we put our safety
in a great standing army that would absorb in idleness the toil of the
men it protects. A free government must find its safety in happy and
contented citizens, who, protected in their rights and free from
unnecessary burdens, will be willing to die that the blessings which
they enjoy may be transmitted to their posterity.
“Thomas Jefferson, that greatest of statesmen and most successful of
politicians, tersely expressed the true purpose of government when he
said:
“’With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy
and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens: a wise and
frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another;
shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the
bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is
necessary to close the circle of our felicities.’
“That is the inspiration of the Democratic party; that is its aim and
object. If it comes, Mr. Chairman, into power in all of the departments
of this government it will not destroy industry; it will not injure
labor; but it will save to the men who produce the wealth of the country
a larger portion of that wealth. It will bring prosperity and joy and
happiness, not to a few, but to every one without regard to station or
condition. The day will come, Mr. Chairman—the day will come when those
who annually gather about this Congress seeking to use the taxing power
for private purposes will find their occupation gone, and the members of
Congress will meet here to pass laws for the benefit of all the people.
That day will come, and in that day, to use the language of another,
‘Democracy will be king! Long live the king!’” [Prolonged applause on
the Democratic side.]
THE RISE OF THE SILVER ISSUE
In every national campaign since the time silver was demonetized in 1873
the demand for bimetallism has been a platform plank always of one and
frequently of both of the two great political parties. The first
unequivocal renunciation of the policy and theory of bimetallism on the
part of any important national convention occurred in June, 1900, at
Philadelphia. In 1896 the Republican party, in its platform adopted at
St. Louis, pledged itself to the promotion of bimetallism by
international agreement. The Democratic party, both in 1896 and 1900,
expressed its conviction that bimetallism could be secured by the
independent action of the United States, and to that end demanded “the
free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver, at the present legal
ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other
nation.”
Previous to 1896 each of the great political parties made quadrennial
expressions of faith in the bimetallic theory, frequently demanded its
enactment into law, and generally condemned the opposing party for
“hostility to silver.” And yet, despite the universal belief in
bimetallism on the part of the American people; despite the general
demands for bimetallism made by both political parties; despite the many
and eloquent speeches for bimetallism delivered in Congress and out of
it by party leaders of all complexions, the hope of its becoming an
actuality seemed to wither and wane in inverse ratio to the fervency of
the expressions of friendship on the part of the politicians. Sometimes
those who were most vehement in their demands were most instrumental in
the passage of that series of legislative enactments that inevitably
broadened and deepened the gulf between gold and silver.
In explanation of this phenomenon it may be said that of all the
functions of government none is more important than the power to
regulate the quality and quantity of its circulating medium; none more
freighted either with prosperity or disaster to its people; and none
more liable to make demagogues of statesmen and knaves and hypocrites of
those in authority.
The first overt act in the fight against bimetallism, which theretofore
had been insidious, was the demand of the Cleveland administration and
the powers that were behind it for the repeal of the purchasing clause
of the Sherman Act. The clause which was aimed at provided for the
purchase by the government of bar silver sufficient for the annual
coinage of $54,000,000. With its repeal would disappear from the Federal
statute books the last vestige of authority for the coinage of silver
money other than subsidiary coins.
In the fight against the administration over this measure Mr. Bryan took
a leading part. He was one of the public men whose professions and
practices in the matter of financial legislation were not at variance.
In his first campaign for Congress, in 1890, he had inserted in his
platform this plank, written by himself:
“We demand the free coinage of silver on equal terms with gold and
denounce the efforts of the Republican party to serve the interest of
Wall Street as against the rights of the people.”
In 1891 he had secured the adoption of a free silver plank in the
Nebraska Democratic platform. In 1892 he made a hard fight for a similar
plank in the state platform, but lost by a very close vote. On the day
before the national convention which nominated Mr. Cleveland for
president, Mr. Bryan was renominated for Congress on a platform in which
free coinage was made the paramount issue, and throughout the campaign
he devoted to it the major portion of his time. In this way, from free
choice and impelling conviction, Mr. Bryan had committed himself to the
doctrine of bimetallism and had declared his plan for putting it into
practice.
Mr. Bryan made his first speech in Congress against unconstitutional
repeal on February 9, 1893. In it he said:
“I call attention to the fact that there is not in this bill a single
line or sentence which is not opposed to the whole history of the
Democratic party. We have opposed the principle of the national bank on
all occasions, and yet you give them by this bill an increased currency
of $15,000,000. You have pledged the party to reduce the taxation upon
the people, and yet, before you attempt to lighten this burden, you take
off one-half million of dollars annually from the national banks of the
country; and even after declaring in your national platform that the
Sherman act was a ‘cowardly makeshift’ you attempt to take away the
‘makeshift’ before you give us the real thing for which the makeshift
was substituted.... Mr. Speaker, consider the effect of this bill. It
means that by suspending the purchase of silver we will throw fifty-four
million ounces on the market annually and reduce the price of silver
bullion. It means that we will widen the difference between the coinage
and bullion value of silver and raise a greater obstacle in the way of
bimetallism. It means to increase by billions of dollars the debts of
our people. It means a reduction in the price of our wheat and our
cotton. You have garbled the platform of the Democratic party. You have
taken up one clause of it, and refused to give us a fulfilment of the
other and more important clause, which demands that gold and silver
shall be coined on equal terms without charge for mintage.
“Mr. Speaker, this can not be done. A man who murders another shortens
by a few brief years the life of a human being; but he who votes to
increase the burden of debts upon the people of the United States
assumes a graver responsibility. If we who represent them consent to rob
our people, the cotton-growers of the South and the wheat-growers of the
West, we will be criminals whose guilt can not be measured by words, for
we will bring distress and disaster to our people.”
In thus boldly and positively aligning himself against the policy of the
dominant wing of his own party, which would soon be backed by the
incoming Cleveland administration, Mr. Bryan acted with his
characteristic devotion to principle. He could not help seeing that all
the odds were apparently against that faction of his party with which he
threw in his fortunes. Mr. Cleveland and most of the old, honored, and
powerful leaders of democracy, it was known, would join in the fight
against silver. They would have the powerful aid of the great Republican
leaders and be backed by the almost united influence of the hundreds of
daily newspapers in all the large cities. Wealth, influence, experience,
and so-called “respectability” were all to be the property of the
Cleveland wing. Many trusted leaders of the old-time fight for silver
succumbed to the temptation and identified themselves with the dominant
faction. Not so Mr. Bryan. On the failure of the bill to pass he
returned home and devoted all his time to a thorough study of finance
and of money, making the most careful and complete preparation for the
fight which he saw impending.
The great struggle, which Mr. Bryan has termed “the most important
economic discussion which ever took place in our Congress” was
precipitated by President Cleveland when he called Congress to meet in
special session on August 7, 1893. Mr. Wilson, of West Virginia,
Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, introduced in the House the
administration measure for the unconditional repeal of the purchasing
clause of the Sherman Act.
[Illustration: CHAS. A. TOWNE]
The debate that ensued was one of the most brilliantly and ably
conducted in the annals of Congress. On August 16, near the close of the
debate, Mr. Bryan delivered an extended argument against the bill. His
speech in point of profound reasoning and moving oratory stands
prominent in the list of congressional deliverances. It concluded with
the following magnificent appeal:
“To-day the Democratic party stands between two great forces, each
inviting its support. On the one side stand the corporate interests of
the nation, its moneyed institutions, its aggregations of wealth and
capital, imperious, arrogant, compassionless. They demand special
legislation, favors, privileges, and immunities. They can subscribe
magnificently to campaign funds; they can strike down opposition with
their all-pervading influence, and, to those who fawn and flatter, bring
ease and plenty. They demand that the Democratic party shall become
their agent to execute their merciless decrees.
“On the other side stands that unnumbered throng which gave a name to
the Democratic party, and for which it has assumed to speak. Work-worn
and dust-begrimed they make their sad appeal. They hear of average
wealth increased on every side and feel the inequality of its
distribution. They see an overproduction of everything desired because
of an underproduction of the ability to buy. They can not pay for
loyalty except with their suffrages, and can only punish betrayal with
their condemnation. Although the ones who most deserve the fostering
care of Government, their cries for help too often beat in vain against
the outer wall, while others less deserving find ready access to
legislative halls.
“This army, vast and daily growing, begs the party to be its champion in
the present conflict. It can not press its claims mid sounds of revelry.
Its phalanxes do not form in grand parade, nor has it gaudy banners
floating on the breeze. Its battle hymn is ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ its war
cry ‘equality before the law.’ To the Democratic party, standing between
these two irreconcilable forces, uncertain to which side to turn, and
conscious that upon its choice its fate depends, come the words of
Israel’s second law-giver: ‘Choose you this day whom ye will serve.’
What will the answer be? Let me invoke the memory of him whose dust made
sacred the soil of Monticello when he joined
‘The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.’
“He was called a demagogue and his followers a mob, but the immortal
Jefferson dared to follow the best promptings of his heart. He placed
man above matter, humanity above property, and, spurning the bribes of
wealth and power, pleaded the cause of the common people. It was this
devotion to their interests which made his party invincible while he
lived, and will make his name revered while history endures.
“And what message comes to us from the Hermitage? When a crisis like the
present arose and the national bank of the day sought to control the
politics of the nation, God raised up an Andrew Jackson, who had the
courage to grapple with that great enemy, and by overthrowing it he made
himself the idol of the people and reinstated the Democratic party in
public confidence. What will the decision be to-day?
“The Democratic party has won the greatest success in its history.
Standing upon this victory-crowned summit, will it turn its face to the
rising or the setting sun? Will it choose blessings or cursings—life or
death—Which? Which?”
The bill passed the House by a considerable majority and went to the
Senate. In two months it came back with Senate amendments. So earnest
and determined was Mr. Bryan in his opposition to the measure that he
resorted to dilatory tactics, employing every legitimate parliamentary
weapon to obstruct its progress. When finally even the enemies of the
bill would no longer assist him in the fight for delay, Mr. Bryan
determined to abandon the fight in Congress to carry it before the
Democracy of the nation. In concluding his last speech on the bill he
said:
“You may think that you have buried the cause of bimetallism; you may
congratulate yourselves that you have laid the free coinage of silver
away in a sepulchre, newly made since the election, and before the door
rolled the veto stone. But, sirs, if our cause is just, as I believe it
is, your labor has been in vain: no tomb was ever made so strong that it
could imprison a righteous cause. Silver will lay aside its grave
clothes and its shroud. It will yet rise and in its rising and its reign
will bless mankind.”
Though defeated in the first great contest, the silver advocates were
far from dismayed. They began at once a systematic fight to wrest from
the administration the control of the party organization. The factional
fight within the ranks of Democracy gave early promise of becoming
exceedingly bitter. The feeling was accentuated from the start by the
personal efforts of President Cleveland in behalf of the repeal bill. In
the Senate the silver men had what was considered a safe majority, and
it was to overcome this and secure the passage of the bill that the
President had directed his energies. His great weapon was Federal
patronage, and he used it as a club. Never before in the history of
popular government in the United States had the executive so boldly and
so openly exerted the tremendous influence of his position in an attempt
to force a coordinate branch of government into unwilling compliance
with his wishes. Mr. Cleveland’s interference, which finally
accomplished its purpose, was angrily resented by the Silver Democrats,
and the lines between administration and anti-administration were early
closely drawn.
Mr. Bryan, while the repeal bill was still under discussion in the
Senate, attended the Nebraska State Democratic convention as a delegate,
on October 4, 1893. In the convention the administration wing of the
party was regnant, imperious, and arrogant. A platform endorsing the
President and his fight against silver was adopted by a large majority.
Bryan was even denied a place on the resolutions committee, although
endorsed therefor by his Congressional district, which almost alone had
sent silver delegates. His course in Congress was repudiated and himself
personally received with but scant courtesy or consideration on the part
of the great majority of the delegates. When the gold men, flushed with
victory, were about to complete their conquest, the discredited young
Congressman sprang to the platform to address the convention. His whole
person was quivering with emotion, and as he spoke he strode up and down
the platform with a mien of unconcealed anger and defiance. Never was he
more truly the orator, and never was tame beast so abject and so pitiful
under the scourge of the master as was that convention, mute and
defenseless, under his scathing excoriation. The following extract will
give an idea of the substance of the speech, though the flashing eyes of
the orator, the tense and quivering frame, the voice now ringing with
defiance, now trembling with emotion,—these may never be described.
“MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION—We are confronted to-day
by as important a question as ever came before the Democracy of the
state of Nebraska. It is not a personal question. It is a question that
rises above individuals. So far as I am personally concerned it matters
nothing whether you vote this amendment up or down; it matters nothing
to me whether you pass resolutions censuring my course or endorsing it.
If I am wrong in the position I have taken on this great financial
question, I shall fall though you heap your praises upon me; if I am
right, and in my heart, so help me God, I believe I am, I shall triumph
yet, although you condemn me in your convention a hundred times.
Gentlemen, you are playing in the basement of politics; there is a
higher plane. You think you can pass resolutions censuring a man, and
that you can humiliate him. I want to tell you that I still ‘more true
joy in exile feel’ than those delegates who are afraid to vote their own
sentiments or represent the wishes of the people, lest they may not get
Federal office. Gentlemen, I know not what others may do, but duty to
country is above duty to party, and if you represent your constituents
in what you have done and will do—for I do not entertain the fond hope
that you who have voted as you have to-day will change upon this vote—if
you as delegates properly represent the sentiment of the Democratic
party which sent you here; if the resolutions which have been proposed
and which you will adopt express the sentiments of the party in this
state; if the party declares in favor of a gold standard, as you will if
you pass this resolution; if you declare in favor of the impoverishment
of the people of Nebraska; if you intend to make more galling than the
slavery of the blacks the slavery of the debtors of this country; if the
Democratic party, after you go home, endorses your action and makes your
position its permanent policy, I promise you that I will go out and
serve my country and my God under some other name, even if I must go
alone.”
But Mr. Bryan was not destined to be driven from the Democratic party.
He returned to Washington to persistently fight the financial policy of
the administration until the Fifty-third Congress had adjourned. The
withdrawal of the greenbacks, the granting of additional privileges to
national banks, the Rothschild-Morgan gold-bond contract—these he
opposed with the full measure of his mental and physical powers. In the
meantime the Silver Democrats began the work of organization and
propaganda in every state in the Union. In 1894 Bryan triumphed over his
enemies in Nebraska in a convention whose platform declared, “We favor
the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of gold and
silver at the present ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or
consent of any other nation on earth.” The Gold Democrats bolted the
platform and the ticket. And until the last delegate was elected to the
National convention which was to meet at Chicago in July, 1896, the
Silver Democrats continued everywhere their efforts. They fought boldly
and outspokenly against the administration they had helped to elect, and
which was nominally Democratic. The result of their fight was the
instruction of almost two-thirds of the delegates for an unambiguous
free silver plank, with a certainty that the Gold Democrats, headed by
President Cleveland, Secretary of the Treasury Carlisle, and hundreds of
the leaders of the party, would bolt the action of the convention.
Thus torn and rent by dissentions, with little hope or prospect for
success, the Democracy faced that remarkable convention which was to
repudiate the administration itself had placed in power.
THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
(1896)
In the fall of 1896, within the period of one hundred days, William J.
Bryan traveled eighteen thousand miles. He delivered over six hundred
speeches to crowds aggregating five millions of people. Reduced to
figures more readily comprehended, he averaged each day one hundred and
eighty miles of railroad travel, interrupted by the stops necessary for
the delivery of six speeches to crowds of over eight thousand each and
fifty thousand in all. This was his personal service in the “first
battle” for the restoration of bimetallism, acting as the standard
bearer of three political parties.
The great presidential campaign of 1896 was in many respects the most
remarkable in the history of the United States. It turned upon an issue
which was felt to be of transcending importance, and which aroused the
elemental passions of the people in a manner probably never before
witnessed in this country save in time of war. It was an issue forced by
the voters themselves despite the unceasing efforts of the leading
politicians of both great parties to keep it in the background. Beneath
its shadow old party war cries died into silence; old party differences
were forgotten; old party lines were obliterated. As it existed in the
hearts of men the issue had no name. Bimetallism was discussed;
monometallism was discussed; these were the themes of public speakers,
editors, and street corner gatherings when recourse was had to facts and
argument. But when one partisan called his friend the enemy an
“Anarchist!” and when the latter retorted with the cry of “Plutocrat,”
then there spoke in epithets the feelings which were stirring the
American people, and which made the campaign significant. For the terms
indicated that for the first time in the Republic founded on the
doctrine of equality, Lazarus at Dives’ gate had raised the cry of
injustice, whereat the rich man trembled.