The pens of many writers would not suffice to describe with anything
like historical fullness and precision, the wild scenes of excitement
which, on the morning after election day, burst forth on the floors of
the various exchanges throughout the Union. The larger and more
important the money centre, the deeper, blacker and heavier the despair
which sank upon them after the violent ebullitions of protest, defiance
and execration had subsided. With some, it seemed that visions of their
swift but sure impoverishment only served to transform the dark and
dismal drama of revolution and disintegration into a side-splitting
farce, and they greeted the prospective loss of their millions with loud
guffaws and indescribable antics of horseplay and unseemly mirth.
As the day wore on, the news became worse and worse. It was only too
apparent that the House of Representatives of the Fifty-fifth Congress
would be controlled by the combined vote of the Populists and Free
Silver men, while the wild joy with which the entire South welcomed the
election of Bryan and Sewall left little doubt in the minds of the
Northern people that the Southern Senators would, to a man, range
themselves on the Administration side of the great conflict into which
the Republic was soon to be precipitated. Add to these the twenty
Senators of the Free Silver States of the North, and the new President
would have the Congress of the Republic at his back. There would be
nothing to stand between him and the realization of those schemes which
an exuberant fancy, untamed by the hand of experience, and scornful of
the leading-strings of wisdom, can conjure up.
Did we say nothing? Nay, not so; for the Supreme Court was still there.
And yet Justice Field had come fully up to the eightieth milestone in
the journey of life and Justice Gray was nearly seventy, while one or
two other members of this High Court of Judicature held to their lives
with feeble grasp. Even in due and orderly course of events, why might
there not come vacancies and then?...
In spite of the nameless dread that rested upon so many of our people,
and chilled the very blood of the country’s industries, the new year ’97
came hopefully, serenely, almost defiantly in. There was an
indescribable something in the air, a spirit of political devil-me-care,
a feeling that the old order had passed away and that the Republic had
entered into the womb of Time and been born again. This sentiment began
to give outward and visible signs of its existence and growth in the
remote agricultural districts of the South and Far West. They threw
aside their working implements, loitered about, gathered in groups and
the words Washington, White House, Silver, Bryan, Offices, Two for One,
the South’s Day, Reign of the Common People, Taxes, Incomes, Year of
Jubilee, Free Coinage, Wall Street, Altgeld, Tillman, Peffer, Coxey,
were whispered in a mysterious way with head noddings and pursing up of
mouths.
As January wore away and February, slipping by, brought Bryan’s
Inauguration nearer and nearer, the groups melted into groups, and it
was only too apparent that from a dozen different points in the South
and North West “Coxey Armies” were forming for an advance on Washington.
In some instances they were well clad and well provisioned; in others,
they were little better than great bands of hungry and restless men,
demoralized by idleness and wrought up to a strange degree of mental
excitement by the extravagant harangues of their leaders, who were
animated with but one thought, namely, to make use of these vast crowds
of Silver Pilgrims, as they called themselves, to back up their claims
for public office.
These crowds of deluded people were well named “Silver Pilgrims,” for
hundreds of them carried in hempen bags, pieces of silverware, in
ninety-nine cases of a hundred, plated stuff of little value, which
unscrupulous dealers and peddlers had palmed off upon them as sterling,
with the promises that once in Washington, the United States Mint would
coin their metal into “Bryan Dollars” giving “two for one” in payment
for it.
While these motley “armies” marched upon the capitol of the Republic,
the railway trains night and day brought vast crowds of “new men,”
politicians of low degree, men out of employment, drunken and
disgruntled mechanics, farmer’s sons, to seek their fortunes under the
Reign of the People, heelers and hangers-on of ward bosses, old men who
had not tasted office for thirty years and more, all inspired by Mr.
Bryan’s declaration that “The American people are not in favor of life
tenure in the Civil Service, that a permanent office holding class is
not in harmony with our institutions, that a fixed term in appointive
offices would open the public service to a larger number of citizens,
without impairing its efficiency,” all bearing new besoms in their hands
or across their shoulders, each and every one of them supremely
confident that in the distribution of the spoils something would surely
fall to his share, since they were the “Common People” who were so dear
to Mr. Bryan, and who had made him President in the very face of the
prodigious opposition of the rich men, whose coffers had been thrown
wide open all to no purpose, and in spite too of the satanic and truly
devilish power of that hell upon earth known as Wall Street, which had
sweated gold in vain in its desperate efforts to fasten the chains of
trusts and the claws of soulless monsters known as corporations upon
these very “Common People,” soon to march in triumph before the silver
chariot of the young Conqueror from the West.