The Battle of the Standards
When the Republicans met in convention at St. Louis in the middle of
June, 1896, the monetary issue had already dwarfed all other political
questions. It was indeed the rock on which the party might have crashed
in utter shipwreck but for the precautions of one man who had charted
the angry waters and the dangerous shoals and who now had a firm grasp
on the helm. Marcus A. Hanna, or "Uncle Mark," was the genial owner of
more mines, oil wells, street railways, aldermen, and legislators than
any other man in Ohio. Hanna was an almost perfect example of what the
Populists denounced as the capitalist in politics. Cynically declaring
that "no man in public life owes the public anything," he had gone his
unscrupulous way, getting control of the political machine of Cleveland,
acquiring influence in the state legislature, and now even assuming
dictatorship over the national Republican party. Because he had found
that political power was helpful in the prosecution of his vast business
enterprises, he went forth to accumulate political power, just as
frankly as he would have gone to buy the machinery for pumping oil from
one of his wells. Hanna was a stanch friend of the gold standard, but he
was too clever to alienate the sympathies of the Republican silverites
by supporting the nomination of a man known to be an uncompromising
advocate of gold. He chose a safer candidate, a man whose character he
sincerely admired and whose opinions he might reasonably expect to
sway--his personal friend, Major William McKinley. This was a clever
choice: McKinley was known to the public largely as the author of the
McKinley tariff bill; his protectionism pleased the East; and what was
known of his attitude on the currency question did not offend the West.
In Congress he had voted for the Bland-Allison bill and had advocated
the freer use of silver. McKinley was, indeed, an ideally "safe"
candidate, an upright, affable gentleman whose aquiline features
conferred on him the semblance of commanding power and masked the
essential weakness and indecision which would make him, from Mark
Hanna's point of view, a desirable President. McKinley would always swim
with the tide.
In his friend's behalf Hanna carried on a shrewd campaign in the
newspapers, keeping the question of currency in the background as far as
possible, playing up McKinley's sound tariff policy, and repeating often
the slogan--welcome after the recent lean years--"McKinley and the full
dinner pail." McKinley prudently refused to take any stand on the
currency question, protesting that he could not anticipate the party
platform and that he would be bound by whatever declarations the party
might see fit to make. Even after the convention had opened, McKinley
and Hanna were reticent on the silver question. Finally, fearing that
some kind of compromise would be made, the advocates of the gold
standard went to Mr. Hanna and demanded that a gold plank be
incorporated in the platform. Hanna gracefully acceded to their demands
and thus put them under obligation to repay him by supporting McKinley
for the nomination. The platform which was forthwith reported to the
convention contained the unequivocal gold plank, as Hanna had long
before planned. Immediately thereafter a minority of thirty-four
delegates, led by Senator Teller of Colorado, left the convention, later
to send out an address advising all Republicans who believed in free
coinage of silver to support the Democratic ticket. The nomination of
William McKinley and Garret A. Hobart followed with very little
opposition.
There was nothing cut and dried about the Democratic convention which
assembled three weeks later in Chicago. The Northeastern States and a
few others sent delegations in favor of the gold standard, but free
silver and the West were in the saddle. This was demonstrated when, in
the face of all precedent, the nominee of the national committee for
temporary chairman was rejected in favor of Senator John W. Daniel of
Virginia, a strong silver man. The second day of the convention saw the
advantage pushed further: each Territory had its representation
increased threefold; of contesting delegations those who represented the
gold element in their respective States were unseated to make way for
silverites; and Stephen M. White, one of the California senators, was
made permanent chairman.
On the third day of the convention the platform, devoted largely to the
money question, was the subject of bitter debate. "We are unalterably
opposed to monometallism, which has locked fast the prosperity of an
industrial people in the paralysis of hard times," proclaimed the report
of the committee on resolutions. "Gold monometallism is a British
policy, and its adoption has brought other nations into financial
servitude to London.... We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both
gold and silver at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without
waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation." A minority of the
committee on resolutions proposed two amendments to the report, one
pronouncing in favor of a gold standard, and the other commending the
record of Grover Cleveland, a courtesy always extended to a presidential
incumbent of the same party. At the name of Cleveland, Senator Tillman
leaped to his feet and delivered himself of characteristic invective
against the President, the "tool of Wall Street," the abject slave of
gold. Senator David B. Hill of New York, who had been rejected for
temporary chairman, defended the gold plank in a logical analysis of
monetary principles. But logical analysis could not prevail against
emotion; that clamorous mass of men was past reasoning now, borne they
hardly knew whither on the current of their own excitement. He might as
well have tried to dam Niagara.
Others tried to stem the onrushing tide but with no better success. It
seemed to be impossible for any one to command the attention and respect
of that tumultuous gathering. Even Senator James K. Jones of Arkansas, a
member of the majority group of the committee on resolutions, failed
equally with Tillman to give satisfactory expression to the sentiments
of that convention, which felt inchoately what it desired but which
still needed a leader to voice its aspirations. This spokesman the
convention now found in William Jennings Bryan, to whom after a few
sentences Senator Jones yielded the floor.
Bryan appeared in Chicago as a member of the contesting silver
delegation from Nebraska. A young man, barely thirty-six years old, he
had already become a well-known figure in the West, where for years he
had been expounding the doctrine of free silver. A native of Illinois,
whither his father had come from Culpeper County, Virginia, Bryan had
grown up on a farm. His father's means had been ample to afford him a
good education, which he completed, so far as schooling was concerned,
at Illinois College, Jacksonville, and at the Union College of Law in
Chicago. While in Chicago Bryan was employed in the law office of Lyman
Trumbull, one of the stanchest representatives of independence in
politics--an independence which had caused him to break with the
Democratic party over the slavery issue, and which, as expressed in his
vote against the impeachment of President Johnson, had resulted in his
retirement to private life. To the young law student Trumbull took a
particular fancy, and his dominating personality exerted an abiding
influence over the character and career of his protégé.
After a brief period of law practice in Jacksonville, Illinois, Bryan
removed with his family to Lincoln, Nebraska. The legal profession never
held great attraction for him, despite the encouragement and assistance
of his wife, who herself took up the study of law after her marriage and
was admitted to the bar. Public questions and politics held greater
interest for the young man, who had already, in his college career,
shown his ability as an orator. Nebraska offered the opportunity he
craved. At the Democratic state convention in Omaha in 1888 he made a
speech on the tariff which gave him immediately a state-wide reputation
as an orator and expounder of public issues. He took an active part in
the campaign of that year, and in 1889 was offered, but declined, the
nomination for lieutenant governor on the Democratic ticket. In 1890 he
won election to Congress by a majority of seven thousand in a district
which two years before had returned a Republican, and this he
accomplished in spite of the neglect of party managers who regarded the
district as hopeless. In Congress he became a member of the Committee on
Ways and Means. On the floor of the House his formal speeches on the
tariff, a topic to which nothing new could be brought, commanded the
attention of one of the most critical and blasé audiences of the world.
The silver question, which was the principal topic before Congress at
the following session, afforded a fresher field for his oratory; indeed,
Bryan was the principal aid to Bland both as speaker and parliamentarian
in the old leader's monetary campaign. When Bryan sat down after a
three-hour speech in which he attacked the gold standard, a colleague
remarked, "It exhausts the subject." In 1894 a tidal wave of
Republicanism destroyed Bryan's chances of being elected United States
Senator, a consummation for which he had been laboring on the stump and,
for a brief period, as editor of the Omaha World-Herald. He continued,
however, to urge the silver cause in preparation for the presidential
campaign of 1896.
Taller and broader than most men and of more commanding presence, Bryan
was a striking figure in the convention hall. He wore the inevitable
black suit of the professional man of the nineties, but his dress did
not seem conventional: his black tie sat at too careless an angle; his
black hair was a little too long. These eccentricities the cartoonists
seized on and exaggerated so that most people who have not seen the man
picture Bryan, not as a determined looking man with a piercing eye and
tightset mouth, but as a grotesque frock-coated figure with the sombrero
of a cow-puncher and the hair of a poet. If the delegates at the
convention noticed any of these peculiarities as Bryan arose to speak,
they soon forgot them. His undoubted power to carry an audience with him
was never better demonstrated than on that sweltering July day in
Chicago when he stilled the tumult of a seething mass of 15,000 people
with his announcement that he came to speak "in defense of a cause as
holy as the cause of liberty--the cause of humanity," and when he
stirred the same audience to frenzy with his closing defiance of the
opponents of free silver:
If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other
nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard
because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England
have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come
out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we
will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses
of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the
laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their
demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down
upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify
mankind upon a cross of gold.
Meeting Senator Hill's careful arguments with a clever retort, blunting
the keenness of his logic with a well-turned period, polished to
perfection by numerous repetitions before all sorts of audiences during
the previous three or four years, Bryan held the convention in the
hollow of his hand. The leadership which had hitherto been lacking was
now found. The platform as reported by the committee was adopted by a
vote of more than two to one; and the convention, but for the opposition
of Bryan himself, would have nominated him on the spot. The next day it
took but five ballots to set aside all the favorite sons, including the
"Father of Free Silver" himself, Richard P. Bland, and to make Bryan the
standard bearer of the party.
Far different in character and appearance from the Republican group
which had assembled in the same building a few weeks before, was the
Populist convention which met in St. Louis late in July. Many of the
1300 delegates were white-haired and had grown old in the service of
reform in the various independent movements of preceding years; some of
them had walked long distances to save railroad fare, while others were
so poor that, having exhausted their small store of money before the
long-drawn-out convention adjourned, they suffered from want of regular
sleeping places and adequate food. All were impressed with the
significance of the decision they must make.
Gone were the hopes of the past months; the Populist party would not
sweep into its ranks all anti-monopolists and all silverites--for one of
the old parties had stolen its loudest thunder! It was an error of
political strategy to place the convention after those of the two great
parties in the expectation that both would stand on a gold platform. Now
it was for these delegates to decide whether they would put their
organization behind the Democratic nominee with a substantial prospect
of victory, or preserve intact the identity of the Populist party, split
the silver vote, and deliver over the election to a gold Republican.
The majority of the delegates, believing that the Democratic party had
been inoculated with the serum of reform, were ready for the sake of a
principle to risk the destruction of the party they had labored so hard
to build. Senator William V. Allen of Nebraska summed up the situation
when he said:
If by putting a third ticket in the field you would defeat free coinage;
defeat a withdrawal of the issue power of national banks; defeat
Government ownership of railroads, telephones and telegraphs; defeat an
income tax and foist gold monometallism and high taxation upon the
people for a generation to come, which would you do? ... When I shall go
back to the splendid commonwealth that has so signally honored me beyond
my merits, I want to be able to say to the people that all the great
doctrines we have advocated for years, have been made possible by your
action. I do not want them to say that the Populists have been advocates
of reforms when they could not be accomplished, but when the first ray
of light appeared and the people were looking with expectancy and with
anxiety for relief, the party was not equal to the occasion; that it was
stupid; it was blind; it kept "the middle of the road," and missed the
golden opportunity.
Although most of the members of the convention were ready to coöperate
with the Democrats, there was a very strong feeling that something
should be done, if possible, to preserve the identity of the Populist
party and to safeguard its future. An active minority, moreover, was
opposed to any sort of fusion or coöperation. This "middle-of-the-road"
group included some Western leaders of prominence, such as Peffer and
Donnelly, but its main support came from the Southern delegates. To them
an alliance with the Democratic party meant a surrender to the enemy, to
an enemy with whom they had been struggling for four years for the
control of their state and local governments. Passionately they pleaded
with the convention to save them from such a calamity. Well they knew
that small consideration would be given to those who had dared stand up
and oppose the ruling aristocracy of the South, who had even shaken the
Democratic grip upon the governments of some of the States. Further, a
negro delegate from Georgia portrayed the disaster which would overwhelm
the political aspirations of his people if the Populist party, which
alone had given them full fellowship, should surrender to the Democrats.
The advocates of fusion won their first victory in the election of
Senator Allen as permanent chairman, by a vote of 758 to 564. As the
nomination of Bryan for President was practically a foregone conclusion,
the "middle-of-the-road" element concentrated its energies on preventing
the nomination of Arthur Sewall of Maine, the choice of the Democracy,
for Vice-President. The convention was persuaded, by a narrow margin, to
take the unusual step of selecting the candidate for Vice-President
before the head of the ticket was chosen. On the first ballot Sewall
received only 257 votes, while 469 were cast for Thomas Watson of
Georgia. Watson, who was then nominated by acclamation, was a country
editor who had made himself a force in the politics of his own State and
had served the Populist cause conspicuously in Congress. Two motives
influenced the convention in this procedure. As a bank president, a
railroad director, and an employer of labor on a large scale, Sewall was
felt to be utterly unsuited to carry the standard of the People's Party.
More effective than this feeling, however, was the desire to do
something to preserve the identity of the party, to show that it had not
wholly surrendered to the Democrats. It was a compromise, moreover,
which was probably necessary to prevent a bolt of the
"middle-of-the-road" element and the nomination of an entirely
independent ticket.
Even with this concession the Southern delegates continued their
opposition to fusion. Bryan was placed in nomination, quite
appropriately, by General Weaver, who again expressed the sense of the
convention: "After due consideration, in which I have fully canvassed
every possible phase of the subject, I have failed to find a single good
reason to justify us in placing a third ticket in the field.... I would
not endorse the distinguished gentleman named at Chicago. I would
nominate him outright, and make him our own, and then share justly and
rightfully in his election." The irreconcilables, nearly all from the
South and including a hundred delegates from Texas, voted for S. F.
Norton of Chicago, who received 321 votes as against 1042 for Bryan.
Because of the electoral system, the agreement of two parties to support
the same candidate for President could have no effect, unless
arrangements were made for fusion within the States. An address issued
by the executive committee of the national committee of the People's
Party during the course of the campaign outlined the method of uniting
"the voters of the country against McKinley," and of overcoming the
"obstacles and embarrassments which, if the Democratic party had put the
cause first and party second," would not have been encountered: "This
could be accomplished only by arranging for a division of the electoral
votes in every State possible, securing so many electors for Bryan and
Watson and conceding so many to Bryan and Sewall. At the opening of the
campaign this, under the circumstances, seemed the wisest course for
your committee, and it is clearer today than ever that it was the only
safe and wise course if your votes were to be cast and made effective
for the relief of an oppressed and outraged people. Following this line
of policy your committee has arranged electoral tickets in three-fourths
of the States and will do all in its power to make the same arrangements
in all of the States."
The committee felt it necessary to warn the people of the danger of "a
certain portion of the rank and file of the People's Party being misled
by so-called leaders, who, for reasons best known to themselves, or for
want of reason, are advising voters to rebel against the joint electoral
tickets and put up separate electoral tickets, or to withhold their
support from the joint electoral tickets." Such so-called leaders were
said to be aided and abetted by "Democrats of the revenue stripe, who
are not yet weaned from the flesh-pots of Egypt," and by Republican
"goldbugs" who in desperation were seizing upon every straw to prevent
fusion and so to promote their own chances of success.
In the North and West, where the Populist had been fusing with the
Democrats off and on for several years, the combinations were arranged
with little difficulty. In apportioning the places on the electoral
tickets the strength of the respective parties was roughly represented
by the number of places assigned to each. Usually it was understood that
all the electors, if victorious, would vote for Bryan, while the
Democrats would cast their second place ballots for Sewall and the
Populists for Watson.
In the South much more difficulty was experienced in arranging fusion
tickets, and the spectacle of Populists coöperating with Republicans in
state elections and with Democrats in the national election illustrated
the truth of the adage that "politics makes strange bedfellows." Only in
Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina, of the
Southern States, were joint electoral tickets finally agreed upon. In
Tennessee the Populists offered to support the Democratic electors if
they would all promise to vote for Watson, a proposal which was
naturally declined. In Florida the chairman of the state committee of
the People's Party, went so far on the eve of the election as to advise
all members of the party to vote for McKinley; and in Texas there was an
organized bolt of a large part of the Populists to the Republican party,
notwithstanding its gold standard and protective tariff platform.
No campaign since that of 1860 was so hotly and bitterly contested as
the "Battle of the Standards" in 1896. The Republicans broke all
previous records in the amount of printed matter which they scattered
broadcast over the country. Money was freely spent. McKinley remained at
his home in Canton, Ohio, and received, day after day, delegations of
pilgrims come to harken to his words of wisdom, which were then, through
the medium of the press, presented to similar groups from Maine to
California. For weeks, ten to twenty-five thousand people a day sought
"the shrine of the golden calf."
In the meantime Bryan, as the Democrat-Populist candidate, toured the
country, traveling over thirteen thousand miles, reaching twenty-nine
States, and addressing millions of voters. It was estimated, for
instance, that in the course of his tour of West Virginia at least half
the electorate must have heard his voice. Most of the influential
newspapers were opposed to Bryan, but his tours and meetings and
speeches had so much news value that they received the widest publicity.
As the campaign drew to a close, it tended more and more to become a
class contest. That it was so conceived by the Populist executive
committee is apparent from one of its manifestoes:
There are but two sides in the conflict that is being waged in this
country today. On the one side are the allied hosts of monopolies, the
money power, great trusts and railroad corporations, who seek the
enactment of laws to benefit them and impoverish the people. On the
other side are the farmers, laborers, merchants, and all others who
produce wealth and bear the burdens of taxation. The one represents the
wealthy and powerful classes who want the control of the Government to
plunder the people. The other represents the people, contending for
equality before the law, and the rights of man. Between these two there
is no middle ground.
When the smoke of battle cleared away the election returns of 1896
showed that McKinley had received 600,000 more popular votes than Bryan
and would have 271 electoral votes to 176 for the Democrat-Populist
candidate. West of the Mississippi River the cohorts of Bryan captured
the electoral vote in every State except California, Minnesota, North
Dakota, Iowa, and Oregon. The South continued its Democratic solidity,
except that West Virginia and Kentucky went to McKinley. All the
electoral votes of the region east of the Mississippi and north of
Mason's and Dixon's line were Republican. The old Northwest, together
with Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota, a region which had been the
principal theater of the Granger movement a generation before, now
joined forces with the conservative and industrial East to defeat a
combination of the South with the newer agrarian and mining frontiers of
the West.
The People's Party had staked all on a throw of the dice and had lost.
It had given its life as a political organization to further the
election of Bryan, and he had not been elected. Its hope for independent
existence was now gone; its strength was considerably less in 1896 than
it had been in 1892 and 1894. ¹ The explanation would seem to be, in
part at least, that the People's Party was "bivertebrate as well as
bimetallic." It was composed of men who not long since had other
political affiliations, who had left one party for the sake of the
cause, and who consequently did not find it difficult to leave another
for the same reason. In the West large numbers of former Populists
undoubtedly went over completely to the Democracy, even when they had
the opportunity of voting for the same Bryan electors under a Populist
label. In the South many members of the party, disgusted at the
predicament in which they found themselves, threw in their lot with the
Republicans. The capture of the Democracy by the forces of free silver
gave the death blow to Populism.
¹ Of the 6,509,000 votes which Bryan received, about 4,669,000 were cast
for the fusion electoral tickets. In only seven of the fusion States is
it possible to distinguish between Democrat and Populist votes; the
totals here are 1,499,000 and 93,000 respectively. The fusion Populist
vote of 45,000 was essential for the success of the Bryan electors in
Kansas; and in California the similar vote of 22,000, added to that of
the Democrats, gave Bryan one of the electors. In no other State in this
group did the Populist vote have any effect upon the result. The part
played by the People's party in the other twenty-two of the fusion
States is difficult to determine; in some cases, however, the situation
is revealed in the results of state elections. The best example of this
is North Carolina, where the Democrat-Populist electors had a majority
of 19,000, while at the same election Fusion between Republicans and
Populists for all state officers except governor and lieutenant governor
was victorious. The Populist candidate for governor received about
31,000 votes and the Republican was elected. It is evident that the
third party held the balance of power in North Carolina. The Populist
votes were probably essential for the fusion victories in Idaho,
Montana, Nebraska, and Washington; but, as there was fusion on state
tickets also, it is impossible to estimate the part played by the
respective parties. The total Populist vote in the ten States in which
there were independent Democratic and Populist electoral tickets was
122,000 (of which 80,000 were cast in Texas and 24,000 in Alabama) and
as none of the ten were close States the failure to agree on electoral
tickets had no effect on the result. The "middle-of-the-road" Populist
votes, in States where there were also fusion tickets amounted to only
8000--of which 6000 were cast in Pennsylvania and 1000 each in Illinois
and Kansas.
The Populist vote as a whole was much larger than 223,000--the total
usually given in the tables--for this figure does not include the vote
in the twenty-two fusion States in which the ballots were not separately
counted. This is apparent from the fact that the twenty-seven electoral
votes from ten States which were cast for Watson came, with one
exception, from States in which no separate Populist vote was recorded.
It is evident, nevertheless, from the figures in States where
comparisons are possible, that the party had lost ground.