The Big Business Republicans, capitalizing on President Benjamin Harrison's victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888, passed the highly protective McKinley Tariff in 1890. It wiped out the troublesome surplus by putting sugar on the free list. It also supplemented Harrison's lavish pension program, which further depleted dwindling Treasury reserves. Reacting unfavorably to these extravagant Republican policies, the voters reinstated Cleveland in 1893. The panic that burst that year led to violent labor disturbances, notably the Pullman strike centering in Chicago. Cleveland incurred much abuse by sending federal troops there to restore order and by making a secret bond deal with Wall Street to stem the alarming leakage of gold from the Treasury. To his unconcealed annoyance, all attempts at genuine tariff reform were frustrated by entrenched lobbyists in 1894. As the depression deepened, the underprivileged clutched desperately at the cure-all of free silver. It became the overshadowing issue in the class-struggle presidential campaign of 1896, in which the Republican McKinley emerged victorious over the Democratic (and allegedly demagogic) William Jennings Bryan.

Congressman McKinley Pleads for Protection (1890)
The amiable Republican congressman McKinley, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, sponsored the tariff bill that bears his name. It carried protection to a new extreme. It not only protected infant industries, but, in the case of tinplate, it extended protection to an industry yet unborn. The free list was delusively large, for it contained such inconsequential items as arsenic, stuffed birds, bladders, fossils, broken glass, salted guts, orchids, turtles, and manufactured teeth. As a sop to the farmer, new duties--largely unneeded--were levied on agricultural products. It has been said that for McKinley the tariff was a religious rather than an economic issue. Comment in the light of this excerpt from his speech in the House. What is the fallacy in his argument in behalf of a tariff for U.S. grain producers?

It has been asserted in the views of the [Democratic] minority that the duty put upon wheat and other agricultural products would be of no value to the agriculturists of the United States. The committee, believing differently, have advanced the duty upon these products.

As we are the greatest wheat-producing country of the world, it is habitually asserted and believed by many that this product is safe from foreign competition. We do not appreciate that while the United States last year raised 490,000,000 bushels of wheat, France raised 316,000,000 bushels, Italy raised 103,000,000 bushels, Russia 189,000,000 bushels, and India 243,000,000 bushels. . . . Our sharpest competition [in the world market] comes from Russia and India . . . and if we will only reflect on the difference between the cost of labor in producing wheat in the United States and in competing countries, we will readily perceive how near we are, if we have not quite reached, the danger line so far even as our own markets are concerned. . . .

It is also to be noted, Mr. Chairman, that having increased the duties on wools we have also increased the duties on the product--the manufacturers of wool--to compensate for the increased duty on the raw product. . . .

If our trade and commerce are increasing and profitable within our own borders, what advantage can come from passing it by, confessedly the best market, that we may reach the poorest by distant seas? In the foreign market the profit is divided between our own citizen and the foreigner, while with the trade and commerce among ourselves the profit is kept in our own family and increases our national wealth and promotes the welfare of the individual citizen. Yet in spite of all the croaking about foreign trade, our exports were never so great as they are today. We send abroad what is not consumed at home, and we could do no more under any system. . . .

Experience has demonstrated that for us and ours, and for the present and the future, the protective system meets our wants, our conditions, promotes the national design, and will work out our destiny better than any other.

With me this position is a deep conviction, not a theory. I believe in it, and thus warmly advocate it because enveloped in it are my country's highest development and greatest prosperity. Out of it come the greatest gains to the people, the greatest comforts to the masses, the widest encouragement for many aspirations, with the largest rewards, dignifying and elevating our citizenship, upon which the safety, and purity, and permanency of our political system depend.

Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess. (May 7, 1890), pp. 4249, 4255.

Roger Mills Challenges McKinley (1890)
Colonel Roger Q. Mills of Texas, twice severely wounded during his service in the Confederate army, had recently been chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. A lawyer, a Democrat, and long an earnest advocate of a lowered tariff, he here contradicts the Republican McKinley in the simple yet eloquent style for which he was famous. What are his arguments against higher duties on agricultural products? How convincingly does he meet McKinley's allegation that a higher duty was needed to protect U.S. grain?

The [Republican members of the] committee are greatly alarmed about our wheat-growers. That great industry is imperiled by "a most damaging competition." . . . They have increased the duty on wheat and that great product is safe.

How many bushels of wheat are imported into this country? We exported last year 90,000,000 bushels in wheat and flour . . . and last year . . . imported the inconsiderable amount of 1,946 bushels of wheat. And that duty has been put on to protect America's farmers against the damaging foreign competition from India and Russia.

What did that 1,946 bushels of wheat cost? Our wheat was at an average price of 89 cents per bushel, and the average price of the 1,946 bushels which we imported was $2.05. . . . What do you suppose that wheat was imported for? Do not all speak at once, please.

It was seed wheat, imported by the wheat-grower of the West to improve his seed. Does not every man know that? And you have made it cost him that much more to improve his agricultural product so that he can raise a better character of wheat and better compete in the markets of the world, where he has to meet all comers in free competition. . . .

We exported 69,000,000 bushels of corn last year and we imported into this country 2,388 bushels, an amount, we are told, that imperils the market of those who raise 2,000,000,000 bushels. . . .

How much rye did we import last year? Sixteen bushels! It could all have been raised on a turnip patch. . . .

The Germans, French, English, Spaniards, Austrians, and others with whom we are trading are dissatisfied with our discriminations against their products, and they have been taking steps to retaliate upon us. They have increased the duty on wheat in Germany two or three times since 1880. . . .

Why have we not the prices of 1881? Because we have cut off importation from our European customers, and they have cut off importation from us. Our surplus is increasing with our population, and we have no markets to consume it. What ought we to do?

We should reduce the duties on imports, put all raw materials on the free list, increase our importation four or five hundred millions more if we could, and thus increase our exports to that extent. That would raise the prices of agricultural products and the aggregate value of our annual crops $1,500,000,000 or $2,000,000,000 per year. That would distribute a large amount of wealth that would be expended in the employment of labor, and thus unbounded prosperity would be brought to the whole country.

Instead of this the committee have prepared a bill increasing taxes, raising duties, restricting importations, shutting in our farm products, and decreasing prices. They are going in the opposite direction and struggling to intensify the distress of the country.

Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess. (May 7, 1890), pp. 4260-4261.

The Sugar Trust Lobby (1894)
The high-duty McKinley Tariff of 1890 boomeranged against the Republicans, and the Democrat Grover Cleveland returned triumphantly to the White House in 1893. An attempt to put sugar on the free list provoked powerful opposition from the lobby of the so-called sugar trust, and the "sugar senators" succeeded in forcing a protective duty into the new Wilson-Gorman tariff bill of August 1894. Ugly charges that the giant American Sugar Refining Company was exerting improper influence to secure tariff changes led to a grilling, by a Senate committee, of its president, the multimillionaire Henry O. Havemeyer. What is surprising about his relevations?

Senator Allen.

I do understand you, however, to say and repeat that in states where you have a financial interest, at least where the sugar refining company has an interest as refiners, you do contribute to either the Democratic or Republican Party as one or the other may be in the ascendancy in that state?

Mr. Havemeyer.

We do for local and state purposes, but not national.

Senator Allen.

You never contribute to the campaign fund of a party in the minority?

Mr. Havemeyer.

We may; I will not say we do not.

Senator Allen.

Your policy, however, is to stand in with the ruling power?

Mr. Havemeyer.

Not to "stand in" but to contribute to the campaign expenses of that party, for the reason that, they being in power and control, it could give us the protection we should have.

Senator Allen.

And by that means you placate--

Mr. Havemeyer.

Oh, no; there is no placation or obligation at all; nothing more than we consider the proper thing to do; everybody does it.

Senator Allen.

Does any other corporation in these same states do the same thing, that you know?

Mr. Havemeyer.

I understand every individual, corporation, and firm in existence does it in their respective states.

Senator Allen.

So the American Sugar Refining Company's politics, so far as its contributions to the campaign fund are concerned, is controlled by the political complexion of the state in which it happens to have a particular refinery?

Mr. Havemeyer.

The American Sugar Refining Company has no politics of any kind.

Senator Allen.

Only the politics of business?

Mr. Havemeyer.

Only the politics of business.

Senator Lindsay.

You say the company is separate and distinct from the officers and stockholders; each man has his own politics?

Mr. Havemeyer.

We have nothing to do with politics in any shape or manner. Our business is the refining of sugar at a slight profit that is consistent with a reasonable return on the industry.

[The scandalous pressures of the various lobbies ("the third house of Congress") became so notorious that President Cleveland refused to sign the new Wilson-Gorman tariff bill. Additional scandals were aired in response to rumors that certain U.S. senators had speculated in sugar stocks while the duty on sugar was under consideration. After an investigation, Senators John R. McPherson of New Jersey and Mathew Quay of Pennsylvania admitted the charge. Senator Quay, a powerful and unsavory political boss, declared defiantly: "I do not feel that there is anything in my connection with the Senate to interfere with my buying or selling the stock when I please; and I propose to do so." Contrast this stance with present-day conflict-of-interest practices.]

Senate Reports, 53d Cong., 2d sess., vol. 10 (June 13, 1894), pp. 656-657.

A Populist Condemns George Pullman (1894)
George M. Pullman, who invented the popular upper-and-lower-berth Pullman Palace Car, made a fortune in manufacturing and controlling his brainchild. A generous philanthropist with his millions, he built for his employees the model town of Pullman (now in Chicago). But when the depression came and the company slashed wages about 25 percent, the workers struck. They were joined by Eugene V. Debs's powerful American Railway Union. According to Debs, the management had said, "There is nothing to arbitrate." Senator William A. Peffer, a Populist from Kansas who combed his long whiskers with his fingers while delivering even longer speeches, here presents his views. What are the two main grievances of the Pullman workers? How legitimate are they?

Without going into all the details, I will state by way of preface that the Pullman Company established what most people in this world believed to be an ideal community, in which all the citizens should have equal rights, in which none should have special privileges. The object was to build a community where the best modern scientific principles of hygiene, drainage, sewerage, grading, lighting, watering, and every other convenience should abound.

But while the company was doing that, while the world was looking on applauding, the company, like every other corporation of which I have ever known anything, held all of the power, all of the reins within its own grasp. That is to say, while there was sewerage, while there was light, while there was water, while there were parks, and all those desirable things, at the end of every month or of every week, as the case might be, when pay day came around, the charges that were set up against the residents of the town of Pullman for their lots and for their conveniences were deducted from their pay (just as the clothing of a soldier or extra rations or a lost gun were deducted from his pay) and the balance found to be due was paid to these people. Among these charges were rents and stated dues for the purchase of property.

After a while hard times began to pinch the company as it did everybody else, and it began to reduce the pay of the men. The men submitted patiently. Another reduction came and the men again submitted, only asking, however, that their rent charges should be reduced, that their taxes should be reduced, to correspond to the amount of reduction in their wages.

Then it was found that these poor people were absolutely defenseless, absolutely powerless in the hands of a corporation that had no soul. They asked to have a reduction of their rent charges and of other charges; they asked for a little time to turn around.

All these things were denied them. Finally, the Pullman citizens came to the conclusion that they might as well starve in defense of their rights as to starve while the proprietors of the town, the organizers and controllers of the corporation, were feasting on the fat things that these men had made for them. Now the trouble is on hand, and the leader of this great corporation [George M. Pullman] is off at the seashore, or on a lake, or on an island, or somewhere, refusing to entertain even a newspaper man, except to say, "I have nothing to say; the company at Chicago will look after the company's interest there"--heartless, soulless, conscienceless, Mr. President, this tyrant of tyrants.

Congressional Record, 53d Cong., 2d sess. (July 10, 1894), p. 7231.

Pullman Defends His Company (1894)
The bloody disorders attending the Pullman strike led to an investigation by the U.S. Strike Commission. George M. Pullman took the stand and testified that his company had undertaken to manufacture cars at a loss so as to keep his men employed. But he conceded that it was better to operate at a slight loss than to incur the larger losses resulting from idle factories. He also testified that the salaries of management (including his own) had not been cut; that the Pullman Company still had about $25 million in undivided profits; and that the dividends paid to stockholders had ranged from 12 percent to the current 8 percent. U.S. Commissioner Worthington extracted the following information from Pullman. How sound is Pullman's position on arbitration? How does his general business philosophy square with that prevalent in the United States today?

Commissioner Worthington.

Now, let me ask you right there, Mr. Pullman, what do you see that is objectionable, in a business point of view, under the existing state of affairs, . . . in submitting to disinterested persons the question as to whether under all the circumstances wages might not be increased somewhat of your employees?

Mr. Pullman.

I think I have made that as plain in this [written] statement as I can make it if I should repeat it a thousand times.

Commissioner Worthington.

Is that the only reason you can give?

Mr. Pullman.

What do you mean by that, "The only reason"?

Commissioner Worthington.

The reason you give here (in the statement), "It must be clear to every businessman and to every thinking workman that no prudent employer could submit to arbitration the question whether he should commit such a piece of business folly." Is that the only answer to it?

Mr. Pullman.

Well now, I have a little memorandum here which is practically the same thing on the question of arbitration. Of course there are matters which are proper subjects of arbitration--matters of opinion.

Commissioner Worthington.

What are those matters that are proper subjects for arbitration?

Mr. Pullman.

A matter of opinion would be a proper subject of arbitration, as, for instance, a question of title, or a disagreement on a matter of opinion. . . . But as to whether a fact that I know to be true is true or not, I could not agree to submit to arbitration. Take the case in hand: the question as to whether the shops at Pullman shall be continuously operated at a loss or not is one which it was impossible for the company, as a matter of principle, to submit to the opinion of any third party; and as to whether they were running at a loss on contract work in general, as explained to the committee of the men in my interview with them--that was a simple fact that I knew to be true, and which could not be made otherwise by the opinion of any third party.

Commissioner Worthington.

You use the expression, "Impossible to be submitted." Why is it impossible?

Mr. Pullman.

Because it would violate a principle.

Commissioner Worthington.

What principle?

Mr. Pullman.

The principle that a man should have the right to manage his own property.

Commissioner Worthington.

The decision of arbitrators would not be compulsory, would it?

Mr. Pullman.

I still think, having managed the property of the Pullman Company for twenty-seven years, that I am perhaps as well calculated to manage it for the interests of its stockholders and for the interests of the public--for the general interest--as some man who is not interested, who comes in to arbitrate certain points.

Senate Executive Documents, 53d Cong., 3d sess., vol. 2, no. 7, pp. 555-556.

Starvation at Pullman (1894)
The Pullman strike was finally broken by federal bayonets, and the company allegedly imported more docile workers to replace those who had struck. A group signing themselves "The Starving Citizens of Pullman" appealed to Governor John Altgeld of Illinois for relief. After examining conditions personally, the governor wrote the following letter to George M. Pullman. Does the evidence here given support the charge of discrimination?

Sir: I examined the conditions at Pullman yesterday, visited even the kitchens and bedrooms of many of the people. Two representatives of your company were with me and we found the distress as great as it was represented. The men are hungry and the women and children are actually suffering. They have been living on charity for a number of months and it is exhausted. Men who had worked for your company for more than ten years had to apply to the relief society in two weeks after the work stopped.

I learn from your manager that last spring there were 3,260 people on the payroll; yesterday there were 2,220 at work, but over 600 of these are new men, so that only about 1,600 of the old employees have been taken back, thus leaving over 1,600 of the old employees who have not been taken back. A few hundred have left, the remainder have nearly all applied for work, but were told that they were not needed. These are utterly destitute. The relief committee on last Saturday gave out two pounds of oatmeal and two pounds of cornmeal to each family. But even the relief committee has exhausted its resources.

Something must be done and at once. The case differs from instances of destitution found elsewhere, for generally there is somebody in the neighborhood able to give relief; this is not the case at Pullman. Even those who have gone to work are so exhausted that they cannot help their neighbors if they would. I repeat now that it seems to me your company cannot afford to have me appeal to the charity and humanity of the state to save the lives of your old employees. Four-fifths of those people are women and children. No matter what caused this distress, it must be met.

[Mr. Pullman turned a deaf ear to appeals for relief, and humane citizens were forced to help the destitute. "Mr. Dooley" (F. P. Dunne) referred to the time "whin God quarried his heart." Reconcile Pullman's attitude in this instance with his large private philanthropies, including a bequest of $1.2 million for a free manual training school in Pullman.]

John P. Altgeld, Live Questions (1899), pp. 422-423. The letter was written on August 21, 1894.

Coin's Financial School (1894)
By the 1880s and 1890s indebted Americans, especially farmers, were caught in a deflationary pinch. A cry arose for inflating the currency by abandoning the single gold standard and restoring the bimetallic gold-silver standard, dropped by Congress in 1873 ("the Crime of '73"). The silverites specifically demanded the free and unlimited coinage of silver in the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold, despite Britain's adherence to the gold standard. William Hope Harvey, a frustrated silver-mine operator from Colorado, came to Chicago and in 1894 published his best-selling tract, Coin's Financial School. His fictional account tells how Coin, the boy wizard of Chicago, conducted a six-day financial school attended by many leading figures, whom he converted to the gospel of free silver. The 174-page booklet, cleverly but deceptively illustrated, sold upwards of a million copies and was a major propaganda weapon in the free-silver crusade. Why was Harvey bitter against England? Why did the proposed international agreement on bimetallism have little prospect of realization?

His [Coin's] appearance upon the platform was the signal for an ovation. He had grown immensely popular in those last five days.

He laid his silk hat on the table, and at once stepped to the middle of the platform. He raised his eyes to the audience, slowly turned his head to the right and left, and looked into the sea of faces that confronted him.

"In the midst of plenty, we are in want," he began. "Helpless children and the best womanhood and manhood of America appeal to us for release from a bondage that is destructive of life and liberty. All the nations of the Western Hemisphere turn to their great sister republic for assistance in the emancipation of the people of at least one-half the world.

"The Orient, with its teeming millions of people, and France, the cradle of science and liberty in Europe, look to the United States to lead in the struggle to roll back the accumulated disasters of the last twenty-one years [since "the Crime of '73"]. What shall our answer be? [Applause.]

"If it is claimed we must adopt for our money the metal England selects [gold], and can have no independent choice in the matter, let us make the test and find out if it is true. It is not American to give up without trying. If it is true, let us attach England to the United States and blot her name out from among the nations of the earth. [Applause.]

"A war with England would be the most popular ever waged on the face of the earth. [Applause]. If it is true that she can dictate the money of the world, and thereby create world-wide misery, it would be the most just war ever waged by man. [Applause.]

"But fortunately this is not necessary. Those who would have you think that we must wait for England, either have not studied this subject, or have the same interest in continuing the present conditions as England. It is a vain hope to expect her voluntarily to consent. England is the creditor nation of the globe, and collects hundreds of millions of dollars in interest annually in gold from the rest of the world. We are paying her two hundred millions yearly in interest. She demands it in gold; the contracts call for it in gold. Do you expect her to voluntarily release any part of it? It has a purchasing power twice what a bimetallic currency would have. She knows it. . . .

"Whenever property interest and humanity have come in conflict, England has ever been the enemy of human liberty. All reforms with those so unfortunate as to be in her power have been won with the sword. She yields only to force. [Applause.]

"The moneylenders in the United States, who own substantially all of our money, have a selfish interest in maintaining the gold standard. They, too, will not yield. They believe that if the gold standard can survive for a few years longer, the people will get used to it--get used to their poverty--and quietly submit.

"To that end they organize international bimetallic committees and say, 'Wait on England, she will be forced to give us bimetallism.' Vain hope! Deception on this subject has been practiced long enough upon a patient and outraged people."

W. H. Harvey, Coin's Financial School (New York: American News Company 1894), pp. 130-133, passim.

A "Gold Bug" Defends Britain (1895)
"Coin" Harvey's pamphlets inspired both imitations and rebuttals. Among the more prominent critics was a New York international lawyer, Everett P. Wheeler, who, despite an interest in a silver mine, attacked Harvey. He had served as counsel for a company doing business in Central America, where the silver standard had caused his clients inconvenience and loss. How convincing is his argument that the ruin of England would not operate to the benefit of the United States?

Coin [Harvey] resorts to the familiar and well-worn appeal to the prejudice which some people in this country are supposed to feel against England.

The people of that country have the same religion, the same laws, and the same language as ourselves. We did fight in years gone by, but we are now united by the close ties of business and friendship. The English octopus, as Coin calls it, is really a country that is our best customer for wheat, for cotton, for beef, for petroleum, and for Yankee notions.

He says it "feeds on nothing but gold." In fact, however, it feeds on the wheat, the coffee, the sugar of South America, the tea of China; in short, the natural or manufactured products of every part of the world, all of which it pays for. Along its arms, steamers ply, freighted with the merchandise which is the subject of this mutual trade, which benefits both parties. Telegraphic cables thread the bottom of the sea to its head, carrying messages of business and of friendship. American investors draw great sums in royalties from this "octopus." . . .

In short, the whole octopus business, like the other delectable illustrations in Coin's school, is a delusion and a snare. The worst thing that could happen to this country would be the ruin of England. No merchant would look with satisfaction on the ruin of his best customer or want to quarrel with him.

Another favorite argument of the free-silver advocates is that England first adopted the gold standard and has grown rich by it, and that therefore it must be bad for other countries.

Let us note two things in this connection.

1. England first adopted trial by jury, and the writ of habeas corpus. She first enforced the principle of freedom that no man should be deprived of life, liberty, or property but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land. Shall we discard these sacred muniments of liberty because they are of English origin?

2. If England has prospered under the gold standard, why not the United States? Certainly no country ever became really prosperous by the ruin of its neighbors. In the great commonwealth of nations, the prosperity of one makes trade with all, and helps to enrich all.

E. P. Wheeler, Real Bi-Metallism or True Coin versus False Coin (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons 1895), pp. 69-70, 73.

Benjamin Tillman Repudiates Grover Cleveland (1896)
Racist demagogue Benjamin R. Tillman (see Chapter 24, Benjamin Tillman's Antiblack Tirade, 1907), who was rabidly opposed to President Cleveland's conservative gold policy, emerged as the champion of the poor white farmers of South Carolina. Tillman had run successfully for the U.S. Senate in 1894, shouting, "Send me to Washington and I'll stick my pitchfork into his [Cleveland's] old ribs!" He was vehement in denouncing Cleveland's secret bond deal with the Wall Street bankers. Although he aspired to the Democratic presidential nomination as a silverite, he ruined his chances at the Chicago convention by the following violent speech attacking the Cleveland administration. During this harangue he paced the platform like a madman. What are his grievances against Cleveland, and which one seems to rankle the deepest?

When this convention disperses, I hope my fellow citizens will have a different opinion of the man with the pitchfork from South Carolina. I am from South Carolina, which was the home of secession. [Great hissing.] Oh, hiss if you like. There are only three things on earth which can hiss--a goose, a serpent, and a man, and the man who hisses the name of South Carolina has no knowledge whatever of its grand history.

But I tell you I do not come from the South Carolina of 1860, which you charge brought about the disruption of the Democratic Party. The war there declared was for the emancipation of the black slaves. I come now from a South Carolina which demands the emancipation of the white slaves. You charge that in 1860 South Carolina brought about the disruption of the Democratic Party. I say to you now that I am willing to see the Democratic Party disrupted again to accomplish the emancipation of the white slaves.

New York for twenty years or more has been the one dominant factor and dictator of the National Democratic Party. While we want to thank New York and Connecticut and New Jersey for the aid extended to us in the past, I want to say to you here that we have at last recognized in the South that we are mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, while the great states I have named have eaten up our substance. My friends say this is not a sectional issue. I say it is. . . .

[Great scenes of disorder then ensued, and quiet was restored with difficulty. Many times the senator was interrupted, but he went on:]

As Grover Cleveland stands for gold monometallism, we have repudiated him. We are diametrically opposed to his policy, and why should we write ourselves down as asses and liars? They ask us to say that he is honest. Well, in reply I say he signed a contract for bonds in secret, with one of his partners as a witness. Nobody disputes his boldness or obstinacy. He had the courage to overthrow the Constitution of the United States when he overrode the rights of the citizens of Illinois [during the Pullman strike] and sent federal troops into this state. You ask us to indorse his fidelity. In reply, I say he has been faithful unto death--the death of the Democratic Party. We have denounced him in South Carolina as a tool of Wall Street, and what was prophecy then is history now. . . .

I tell you that the Democratic Party of the United States will turn out the party in this fall's election if it dares indorse Grover Cleveland here. I tell you you dare not go before this country after indorsing the Cleveland administration. We of the South have burned our bridges behind us so far as the Eastern Democrats are concerned. We have turned our faces to the West and they have responded.

Public Opinion 21 (July 16, 1896): 69-70. The speech was delivered on July 9.

Senator David Hill Urges Sanity (1896)
The gold-standard Democrats, supporting Cleveland, were clearly outnumbered in the wildly shouting Chicago convention. The ranks of the silverite majority were swelled by Populists and by free-silver delegates who had deserted the gold-standard Republican party. The Chicago "assembly of lunatics"--so called by the Republican New York Tribune--uproariously endorsed the platform reported by a majority of the resolutions committee. It endorsed the well-known Populist scheme of freely coining, at a ratio of 16 to 1, all silver mined. Dissenting Senator David B. Hill of New York, an adroit machine politician bitten by the presidential bug, here speaks logically but in vain for the gold-standard minority on the resolutions committee. After the convention, he reputedly said, "I am a Democrat still--very still." What is his solution to the problem, and why does he propose it?

I am a Democrat, but I am not a revolutionist. My mission here today is to unite, not to divide--to build up, not to destroy--to plan for victory, not to plot for defeat. The question which this convention is to decide is: What is the best position to take at this time on the financial question? In a word, the question presented is between international bimetallism and local bimetallism. If there are any different points in it, they are not represented either in the majority or in the minority report.

I therefore start out with this proposition, that the Democratic Party stands today in favor of gold and silver as the money of the country; that it stands in favor neither of a silver standard nor of a gold standard, but that we differ as to the means to bring about the result.

Those whom I represent and for whom I speak--the sixteen minority members of the committee--insist that we should not attempt the experiment of the free and unlimited coinage of silver without cooperation of other great nations. It is not a question of patriotism, it is not a question of courage, it is not a question of loyalty, as the majority platform speaks of it. The minority has thought it was simply a question as to whether we were able to enter on this experiment. It is a question of business. It is a question of finance. . . .

I think, Mr. President, that the safest and best course for this convention to have pursued was to take the first step forward in the great cause of monetary reform by declaring in favor of international bimetallism. I know that it is said by enthusiastic friends that America can mark out a course for herself. I know that that idea appeals to the pride of the average American, but I beg to remind you that if that suggestion be carried out to its legitimate conclusion, you might as well do away with our international treaties. . . .

Be not deceived. Do not attempt to drive those Democrats out of the party who have grown gray in its service, in order to make room for a lot of Republicans and Populists who will not vote your ticket at all. My friends, I speak more in sorrow than in anger.

[A resolution backed by Hill and approving the Democratic administration of President Cleveland was voted down by a face-slapping vote of 564 to 357.]

Public Opinion 21 (July 16, 1896), p. 70. The speech was delivered on July 9.

William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold (1896)
The dramatic assignment of replying to Senator Hill and closing the debate on the platform fell to William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. Although a well-known ex-congressman and free-silver orator, he was not then regarded as one of the front-runners for the presidential nomination. Tall, lean, smooth-shaven, hawk-nosed, and wide-mouthed, "the Boy Orator of the Platte" hushed the vast assemblage of some fifteen thousand with his masterful presence. The "cross of gold" analogy to the crucifixion of Christ was one he had already used a number of times, but never before so effectively. Projecting his organlike voice to the outer reaches of the vast hall, he had the frenzied crowd cheering his every sentence as he neared the end. The climax swept the delegates off their feet and won Byran the presidential nomination the next day. How do you account for the success of his memorable speech? To what different kinds of prejudice does Bryan appeal?

I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities. But this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty--the cause of humanity. . . .

We [silverites] do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them! . . .

The gentleman from New York [Senator Hill] . . . says he wants this country to try to secure an international agreement. Why does he not tell us what he is going to do if he fails to secure an international agreement? . . . Our opponents have tried for twenty years to secure an international agreement, and those are waiting for it most patiently who do not want it at all. . . .

We go forth confident that we shall win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue of this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. If they [the Republicans] tell us that the gold standard is a good thing, we shall point to their platform and tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of the gold standard and substitute bimetallism. If the gold standard is a good thing, why try to get rid of it? . . .

Mr. Carlisle* said in 1878 that this was a struggle between "the idle holders of idle capital" and "the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country"; and, my friends, the question we are to decide is: upon which side will the Democratic Party fight--upon the side of "the idle holders of idle capital" or upon the side of "the struggling masses"? That is the question which the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as shown by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. We reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth; and upon that issue we expect to carry every state in the Union. I shall not slander the inhabitants of the fair state of Massachusetts nor the inhabitants of the state of New York by saying that, when they are confronted with the proposition, they will declare that this nation is not able to attend to its own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers?

No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. 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.

[The Cleveland Democrats, with their devotion to the gold standard, were appalled by the nomination of Bryan. "What a burlesque on a Democratic convention," wrote Postmaster General Wilson in his diary. "May God help the country!" He stressed the youth, ambition, and Populist leanings of the candidate, while noting that Bryan's "utter ignorance of the great diplomatic, financial, and other questions a President has constantly to dispose of, will be lost sight of in the fanaticism of the one idea he represents." (F. P. Summers, The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896-1897 [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957], p. 116.) Conservatives, then and later, generally agreed that Bryan was strong on sound but weak on substance.]

*John G. Carlisle of Kentucky, formerly a distinguished member of Congress, was Cleveland's secretary of the treasury in 1896.

C. M. Depew, ed., The Library of Oratory (New York: The Globe Publishing Company 1902), vol. 14 pp. 415, 418, 420-425, passim.

Tom Watson Supports a Black-White Political Alliance (1892)
Populism in the South seemed to offer the prospect of a political alliance of poor farmers, black as well as white, that would be strong enough to overthrow the conservative "Bourbon" regimes holding power in the southern states. Some forward-looking Populist leaders, among them Georgia's Tom Watson, tried to overcome the racial differences that, they argued, irrationally overshadowed the common economic interests of black and white agrarians and that kept the Bourbons in control. On one occasion in 1892, Watson summoned dozens of armed white farmers to his home to protect a black colleague who had taken refuge from a lynch mob. Only a few years later, when the Populist dream of an interracial political alliance had died, Watson reversed his views and emerged as one of the South's premier racists. In the selection below, whom does Watson blame for the racial tensions of the postbellum South? What are the limits of his program for interracial cooperation?

The Negro Question in the South has been for nearly thirty years a source of danger, discord, and bloodshed. It is an ever-present irritant and menace.

Several millions of slaves were told that they were the prime cause of the civil war; that their emancipation was the result of the triumph of the North over the South; that the ballot was placed in their hands as a weapon of defence against their former masters; that the war-won political equality of the black man with the white, must be asserted promptly and aggressively, under the leadership of adventurers who had swooped down upon the conquered section in the wake of the Union armies.

No one, who wishes to be fair, can fail to see that, in such a condition of things, strife between the freedman and his former owner was inevitable. In the clashing of interests and of feelings, bitterness was born. The black man was kept in a continual fever of suspicion that we meant to put him back into slavery. . . .

Quick to take advantage of this deplorable situation, the politicians have based the fortunes of the old parties upon it. Northern leaders have felt that at the cry of "Southern outrage" they could not only "fire the Northern heart," but also win a unanimous vote from the colored people. Southern politicians have felt that at the cry of "Negro domination" they could drive into solid phalanx every white man in all the Southern states.

Both the old parties have done this thing until they have constructed as perfect a "slot machine" as the world ever saw. Drop the old, worn nickel of the "party slogan" into the slot, and the machine does the rest. You might beseech a Southern white tenant to listen to you upon questions of finance, taxation, and transportation; you might demonstrate with mathematical precision that herein lay his way out of poverty into comfort; you might have him "almost persuaded" to the truth, but if the merchant who furnished his farm supplies (at tremendous usury) or the town politician (who never spoke to him excepting at election times) came along and cried, "Negro rule!" the entire fabric of reason and common sense which you had patiently constructed would fall, and the poor tenant would joyously hug the chains of an actual wretchedness rather than do any experimenting on a question of mere sentiment.

Thus the Northern Democrats have ruled the South with a rod of iron for twenty years. We have had to acquiesce when the time-honored principles we loved were sent to the rear and new doctrines and policies we despised were engrafted on our platform. All this we have had to do to obtain the assistance of Northern Democrats to prevent what was called "Negro supremacy." In other words, the Negro has been as valuable a portion of the stock in trade of a Democrat as he was of a Republican. Let the South ask relief from Wall Street; let it plead for equal and just laws on finance; let it beg for mercy against crushing taxation, and Northern Democracy, with all the coldness, cruelty, and subtlety of Mephistopheles, would hint "Negro rule!" and the white farmer and laborer of the South had to choke down his grievance and march under Tammany's orders.

Reverse the statement, and we have the method by which the black man was managed by the Republicans.

Reminded constantly that the North had emancipated him; that the North had given him the ballot; that the North had upheld him in his citizenship; that the South was his enemy, and meant to deprive him of his suffrage and put him "back into slavery," it is no wonder he has played as nicely into the hands of the Republicans as his former owner has played into the hands of the Northern Democrats.

Now consider: here were two distinct races dwelling together, with political equality established between them by law. They lived in the same section; won their livelihood by the same pursuits; cultivated adjoining fields on the same terms; enjoyed together the bounties of a generous climate; suffered together the rigors of cruelly unjust laws; spoke the same language; bought and sold in the same markets; classified themselves into churches under the same denominational teachings; neither race antagonizing the other in any branch of industry; each absolutely dependent on the other in all the avenues of labor and employment; and yet, instead of being allies, as every dictate of reason and prudence and self-interest and justice said they should be, they were kept apart, in dangerous hostility, that the sordid aims of partisan politics might be served!

Not completely has this scheme succeeded that the Southern black man almost instinctively supports any measure the Southern white man condemns, while the latter almost universally antagonizes any proposition suggested by a Northern Republican. We have, then, a solid South as opposed to a solid North; and in the South itself, a solid black vote against the solid white.

That such a condition is most ominous to both sections and both races, is apparent to all.

If we were dealing with a few tribes of red men or a few sporadic Chinese, the question would be easily disposed of. The Anglo-Saxon would probably do just as he pleased, whether right or wrong, and the weaker man would go under.

But the Negroes number 8,000,000. They are interwoven with our business, political, and labor systems. They assimilate with our customs, our religion, our civilization. They meet us at every turn,--in the fields, the shops, the mines. They are a part of our system, and they are here to stay. . . .

The People's Party will settle the race question. First, by enacting the Australian ballot system. Second, by offering to white and black a rallying point which is free from the odium of former discords and strifes. Third, by presenting a platform immensely beneficial to both races and injurious to neither. Fourth, by making it to the interest of both races to act together for the success of the platform. Fifth, by making it to the interest of the colored man to have the same patriotic zeal for the welfare of the South that the whites possess. . . .

The white tenant lives adjoining the colored tenant. Their houses are almost equally destitute of comforts. Their living is confined to bare necessities. They are equally burdened with heavy taxes. They pay the same high rent for gullied and impoverished land.

They pay the same enormous prices for farm supplies. Christmas finds them both without any satisfactory return for a year's toil. Dull and heavy and unhappy, they both start the plows again when "New Year's" passes.

Now the People's Party says to these two men, "You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both."

This is so obviously true it is no wonder both these unhappy laborers stop to listen. No wonder they begin to realize that no change of law can benefit the white tenant which does not benefit the black one likewise; that no system which now does injustice to one of them can fail to injure both. Their every material interest is identical. The moment this becomes a conviction, mere selfishness, the mere desire to better their conditions, escape onerous taxes, avoid usurious charges, lighten their rents, or change their precarious tenements into smiling, happy homes, will drive these two men together, just as their mutually inflamed prejudices now drive them apart. . . .

The question of social equality does not enter into the calculation at all. That is a thing each citizen decides for himself. No statute ever yet drew the latch of the humblest home--or ever will. Each citizen regulates his own visiting list--and always will.

The conclusion, then, seems to me to be this: the crushing burdens which now oppress both races in the South will cause each to make an effort to cast them off. They will see a similarity of cause and a similarity of remedy. They will recognize that each should help the other in the work of repealing bad laws and enacting good ones. They will become political allies, and neither can injure the other without weakening both. It will be to the interest of both that each should have justice. And on these broad lines of mutual interest, mutual forbearance, and mutual support the present will be made the stepping-stone to future peace and prosperity.

Thomas Watson, "The Negro Question in the South," The Arena 6 (October 1892): 540-550.

A Black-Alliance Man Urges Interracial Cooperation (1891)
The Reverend J. L. Moore, author of the selection below, was the superintendent of the Colored Farmers' Alliance in Putnam County, Florida. In the selection reprinted here, a reply to a newspaper editorial, he urges congressional passage of a civil-rights bill, sometimes called the force bill, to ensure black political participation in the South. In what ways does his position resemble that of Tom Watson, described in the previous selection?

I notice you,* as others, call it the force bill, and you remarked, "How the force bill could benefit the Negro even in the slightest degree passes comprehension. . . ." But our object was to have protection of the ballot boxes, because none sees the need of reform more than we do. How is that reform to be brought about while the present parties have control of the ballot boxes (unless it comes through the now existing parties, which is not likely if their past history argues anything)? . . .

In all the discussions of the whites in all the various meetings they attend and the different resolutions, remarks, and speeches they make against the Negro, I never hear you, Mr. Editor, nor any of the other leading journals, once criticize their action or say they are antagonizing the races, neither do you ever call a halt. But let the Negro speak once, and what do you hear? Antagonizing races, Negro uprising, Negro domination, etc. Anything to keep the reading public hostile toward the Negro, not allowing him the privilege to speak his opinion, and if that opinion be wrong show him by argument, and not at once make it a race issue . . . as members of the Colored Farmers' Alliance we avowed that we were going to vote with and for the man or party that will secure for the farmer or laboring man his just rights and privileges, and in order that he may enjoy them without experiencing a burden.

We want protection at the ballot box, so that the laboring man may have an equal showing, and the various labor organizations to secure their just rights, we will join hands with them irrespective of party, "and those fellows will have to walk." We are aware of the fact that the laboring colored man's interests and the laboring white man's interests are one and the same. Especially is this true at the South. Anything that can be brought about to benefit the workingman, will also benefit the Negro more than any other legislation that can be enacted. . . . So I for one have fully decided to vote with and work for that party, or those who favor the workingman, let them belong to the Democratic, or Republican, or the People's Party. I know I speak the sentiment of that convention, representing as we do one-fifth of the laborers of this country, seven-eighths of our race in this country being engaged in agricultural pursuits.

Can you wonder why we have turned our attention from the few pitiful offices a few of our members could secure, and turned our attention toward benefiting the mass of our race, and why we are willing to legislate that this must be benefited? And we ask Congress to protect the ballot box, so they may be justly dealt with in their effort to gain that power. We know and you know that neither of the now existing parties is going to legislate in the interest of the farmers or laboring men except so far as it does not conflict with their interest to do so. . . .

Now, Mr. Editor, I wish to say, if the laboring men of the United States will lay down party issues and combine to enact laws for the benefit of the laboring man, I, as county superintendent of Putnam County Colored Farmers' Alliance, and member of the National Colored Farmers, know that I voice the sentiment of that body, representing as we did 750,000 votes, when I say we are willing and ready to lay down the past, take hold with them irrespective of party, race, or creed, until the cry shall be heard from the Heights of Abraham of the North, to the Everglades of Florida, and from the rock-bound coast of the East, to the Golden Eldorado of the West, that we can heartily endorse the motto, "Equal rights to all and special privileges to none."

*The editors of the Jacksonville, Florida, newspaper to whom Moore was replying.

J. L. Moore, "The Florida Colored Farmers' Alliance, 1891," National Economist, March 7, 1891.

The Wilmington Massacre (1898)
In 1894 white Populists and black Republicans in North Carolina formed a successful anti-Bourbon coalition and gained control of the state government. Four years later, conservative Bourbon Democrats overturned the Populist-Republican "fusion" government in a campaign marked by flagrant fraud and intimidation. The climax came in Wilmington, North Carolina, on November 11, 1898, when a mob murdered several African-Americans and deposed by force the elected city administration. The following eyewitness account describes the uprising in detail. In what ways does this account shed light on the death of the Populist dream of interracial political action? How does the speaker draw on the contemporary developments in the Spanish-American War to drive home his point?

Nine Negroes massacred outright; a score wounded and hunted like partridges on the mountain; one man, brave enough to fight against such odds would be hailed as a hero anywhere else, was given the privilege of running the gauntlet up a broad street, where he sank ankle deep in the sand, while crowds of men lined the sidewalks and riddled him with a pint of bullets as he ran bleeding past their doors; another Negro shot twenty times in the back as he scrambled empty handed over a fence; thousands of women and children fleeing in terror from their humble homes in the darkness of the night, out under a gray and angry sky, from which falls a cold and bone-chilling rain, out to the dark and tangled ooze of the swamp amid the crawling things of night, fearing to light a fire, startled at every footstep, cowering, shivering, shuddering, trembling, praying in gloom and terror: half-clad and barefooted mothers, with their babies wrapped only in a shawl, whimpering with cold and hunger at their icy breasts, crouched in terror from the vengeance of those who, in the name of civilization, and with the benediction of the ministers of the Prince of Peace, inaugurated the reformation of the city of Wilmington the day after the election by driving out one set of white office holders and filling their places with another set of white office holders--the one being Republican and the other Democrat. . . . All this happened, not in Turkey, nor in Russia, nor in Spain, not in the gardens of Nero, nor in the dungeons of Torquemada, but within three hundred miles of the White House, in the best State in the South, within a year of the twentieth century, while the nation was on its knees thanking God for having enabled it to break the Spanish yoke from the neck of Cuba. This is our civilization. This is Cuba's kindergarten of ethics and good government. This is Protestant religion in the United States, that is planning a wholesale missionary crusade against Catholic Cuba. This is the golden rule as interpreted by the white pulpit of Wilmington.

Over this drunken and blood-thirsty mob they stretch their hands and invoke the blessings of a just God. We have waited two hundred and fifty years for liberty, and this is what it is when it comes. O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name! A rent and bloody mantle of citizenship that has covered as with a garment of fire, wrapped in which as in a shroud, forty thousand of my people have fallen around Southern ballot boxes. . . . A score of intelligent colored men, able to pass even a South Carolina election officer, shot down at Phoenix, South Carolina, for no reason whatever, except as the Charleston News and Courier said, because the baser elements of the community loved to kill and destroy. The pitiful privilege of dying like cattle in the red gutters of Wilmington, or crouching waist deep in the icy waters of neighboring swamps, where terrified women give birth to a dozen infants, most of whom died of exposure and cold. This is Negro citizenship! This is what the nation fought for from Bull Run to Appomattox!

What caused all this bitterness, strife, arson, murder, revolution and anarchy at Wilmington? We hear the answer on all sides--"Negro domination." I deny the charge. It is utterly false, and no one knows it better than the men who use it to justify crimes that threaten the very foundation of republican government; crimes that make the South red with blood, white with bones and gray with ashes; crimes no other civilized government would tolerate for a single day. The colored people comprise one-third of the population of the State of North Carolina; in the Legislature there are one hundred and twenty representatives, seven of whom are colored. There are fifty senators, two of whom are colored--nine in all out of one hundred and seventy. Can nine Negroes dominate one hundred and sixty white men? That would be a fair sample of the tail wagging the dog. Not a colored man holds a state office in North Carolina; the whole race has less than five per cent of all the offices in the state. In the city of Wilmington the Mayor was white, six out of ten members of the board of aldermen, and sixteen out of twenty-six members of the police force were white; the city attorney was white, the city clerk was white, the city treasurer was white, the superintendent of streets was white, the superintendent of garbage was white, the superintendent of health was white, and all the nurses in the white wards were white; the superintendent of the public schools was white, the chief and assistant chief of the fire department, and three out of five fire companies were white; the school committee has always been composed of two white men and one colored; the board of audit and finance is composed of five members, four of whom were white, and the one Negro was reported to be worth more than any of his white associates. The tax rate under this miscalled Negro regime was less than under its predecessors; this is Negro domination in Wilmington. This is a fair sample of that Southern scarecrow--conjured by these masters of the black art everywhere. . . .

The Good Samaritan did not leave his own eldest son robbed and bleeding at his own threshold, while he went way off down the road between Jerusalem and Jericho to hunt for a man that had fallen among thieves. Nor can America afford to go eight thousand miles from home to set up a republican government in the Philippines while the blood of citizens whose ancestors came here before the Mayflower, is crying out to God against her from the gutters of Wilmington.

Charles S. Morris, speech to the Interdenominational Association of Colored Clergymen, Boston, January 1899. From the papers of Charles H. Williams, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin.

The "Anarchists" Lose Out (1896)
Bryan's whirlwind campaign for free silver gained such momentum in its early stages that he might have won if the election had been held two months earlier. But frightened "gold-bug" Republicans opened wide their purses, and the subsequent deluge of propaganda helped bring victory to William McKinley, the Republican candidate. Many of the gold-standard Cleveland Democrats spurned Bryan and contributed actively to McKinley's victory. The gold-bug East stressed the presence in Bryan's camp of such radicals as Eugene V. Debs, who had headed the Pullman strike of 1894, and Governor John Altgeld of Illinois, who had pardoned the three surviving Haymarket Riot anarchists. In what respects is this editorial in the New York Nation least fair?

We have escaped from what a large number of people supposed was an immense danger, the danger of having our currency adulterated and our form of government changed, and a band of ignoramuses and anarchists put at the head of what remained of the great American republic. Probably no man in civil life has succeeded in inspiring so much terror, without taking life, as Bryan. Attila and Tamerlane frightened more people, but they killed or threatened to kill them; they hardly destroyed more property.

Bryan succeeded in persuading hundreds of thousands that the great fabric of government which was built up by the wisdom of experience of a thousand years, and cemented by hundreds of thousands of lives, was, almost in the first century of its existence, about to be handed over by the vote of its own people to a knot of silly, half-taught adventurers and anarchists. We were to exchange the Constitution and the Supreme Court for the decrees of Altgeld and Debs and Bryan and Teller, whose principal occupation was to be striking off "cheap money for the poor man."

The whole episode has been utterly discreditable to our politics, as conducted by politicians. Could anything better reveal the character of our nominating system than the fact that the nominating convention of one of our two great parties could be taken possession of by a few adventurers, that the platform could be drawn, in the main, by a noted anarchist [Altgeld], and an unknown young man nominated on it simply because the audience was pleased with one of his metaphors, and that it should drive away from it all the party's men of light and leading before going to the country?

The Nation (New York) 63 (November 5, 1896), p. 337.

Bryan's Afterthoughts (1896)
While his memory of the campaign was still fresh, Bryan recorded his impressions. His then-unprecedented six hundred speeches and his eighteen thousand miles of sweaty travel must have left him in something of a daze. What does his account suggest about the ethics of the opposition, the intellectual level of the campaign, and the assumption that the canvass was a crusade rather than a campaign?

The reminiscences of the campaign of 1896 form such a delightful chapter in memory's book that I am constrained to paraphrase a familiar line and say that it is better to have run and lost then never to have run at all. . . .

Unless I am mistaken, the deep awakening among the people during the campaign just closed will result in a more careful study of political questions by both men and women, and in a more rigid scrutiny of the conduct of public officials by those whom they serve. No matter what may be the ultimate outcome of the struggle over the financial question, better government will result from the political interest which has been aroused. . . .

During the campaign I ran across various evidences of coercion, direct and indirect. One of the most common means of influencing voters was the advertising of orders placed with manufacturers, conditioned upon Republican success at the polls. The following is an illustration. Tuesday morning, November 3rd, there appeared at the head of the last column of the first page of the Morning News, of Wilmington, Del.:

Contingent Orders

The Harlan and Hollingsworth Company, of this city, have received a contract for a boat costing $300,000. One clause in the contract provides that in the event of Bryan's election the contract shall be canceled. If the boat is built here, $160,000 of its cost would be paid to Wilmington workmen for wages. The corporation wanting the boat feel that it would not be justified in having it constructed if Bryan should become President. . . .

I may mention a still more forcible means adopted by many employers. The workingmen were paid off Saturday night before election and notified that they might expect work Wednesday morning in case of Mr. McKinley's election, but that they need not return if I was elected. Whether the employers themselves were actually afraid or whether they merely intended to frighten their employees, the plan worked admirably and exerted a most potent influence on election day. . . .

The ratio of 16 to 1 was scrupulously adhered to during the campaign, and illustrated with infinite variety. At one place our carriage was drawn by sixteen white horses and one yellow horse; at any number of places we were greeted by sixteen young ladies dressed in white and one dressed in yellow, or by sixteen young men dressed in white and one dressed in yellow. But the ratio was most frequently represented in flowers, sixteen white chrysanthemums and one yellow one being the favorite combination. . . .

It is impossible to chronicle all the evidences of kindly feeling given during the campaign; in fact the good will manifested and the intense feeling shown impressed me more than any other feature of the campaign. When the result was announced my composure was more endangered by the sorrow exhibited by friends than it was during all the excitement of the struggle. Men broke down and cried as they expressed their regret, and there rises before me now the face of a laboring man of Lincoln, who, after he dried his tears, held out his hand from which three fingers were missing, and said: "I did not shed a tear when those were taken off."

People have often lightly said that they would die for a cause, but it may be asserted in all truthfulness that during the campaign just closed there were thousands of bimetallists who would have given their lives, had their lives been demanded, in order to secure success to the principles which they advocated. Surely, greater love hath no man than this. . . .

I am proud of the character of my support. Those who voted for me did so of their own volition; neither coercion nor purchase secured their suffrages; their confidence and good will robbed defeat of all its pangs.

W. J. Bryan, The First Battle (Chicago: Conkey, 1896), pp. 612-624, passim.

The London Standard Rejoices (1896)
William McKinley, the high priest of high protection, had expected to emphasize the tariff in the campaign, but Bryan took the play away from him with free silver. The business world on both sides of the Atlantic, unwilling to be paid off in fifty-cent silver dollars, rejoiced over the Republican triumph. London reported that millions of dollars' worth of orders from the United States had been placed in England contingent on Bryan's defeat. Why is the London Standard, in the following selection, not altogether happy?

The complete rejection of Bryan's tempting program, addressed to indolence, incapacity, and cupidity, shows that these qualities are less widely distributed in the United States than Bryan would have us believe. There has been a revolt of the honest and loyal citizens, who are solicitous for the fair name and fame of the Republic, and the Bryanites astonished the world by the comparative paucity of their numbers. The hopelessly ignorant and savagely covetous waifs and strays of American civilization voted for Bryan, but the bulk of the solid sense, business integrity, and social stability sided with McKinley. The nation is to be heartily congratulated. The victory has drawbacks for Englishmen, and, indeed, for every country in Europe engaged in manufacturing industries. It is a triumph of good faith, but also a triumph of [tariff] protection.

Quoted in Public Opinion 21 (November 12, 1896): 623.