by H. W. Brands
In the end, though, the platform spoke the pregnant word. “The existing gold standard must be maintained,” the currency plank asserted. McKinley accepted the statement as the will of the convention, Hanna as the cost of solidifying the party behind his man.15
THOSE FATEFUL FOUR letters gave William Jennings Bryan the opening he needed. Sooner than some of his Democratic colleagues, the Nebraska congressman had seen the tsunami of Republicanism rising in 1894, and he declined to defend his House seat that year. Whether the Republicans or the Cleveland Democrats were the happier to see him go was a fair question; Bryan excoriated the president on the money issue more consistently and vehemently than he ever assailed the Republicans. He made himself the spokesman of silver and the tribune of the ordinary people of the American heartland, arriving at the former position by virtue of his ambition for the latter. “I don’t know anything about free silver,” he said as late as 1892. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later.” But once converted and informed, he spoke ceaselessly on behalf of silver as the people’s money. “You may make fun of the West and South if you like. You may say that their people are not financiers,” he told the Eastern members of the House. “But these people have just as much right to express their ideas and to guard their interests as you have to guard yours, and their ideas are as much entitled to consideration as yours.”16
Bryan retired to Omaha to edit the World-Herald, which provided a forum for his silverite views without demanding much of his energy. For the next eighteen months he traveled the lecture circuit, thumping for populist—and occasionally Populist—candidates, reiterating the virtues of easy money in hard times, and castigating the capitalists for subverting democracy. As the 1896 Democratic convention neared, the gold men and the silverites prepared to battle for the soul of the party. Cleveland stood for gold, but no one stood with Cleveland. “Any man with even the smallest knowledge of the conditions which surrounded my second administration knows that I could not have commanded the support of half a dozen delegates in the whole country,” he admitted afterward. Yet on good days he still hoped to influence the choice of his successor. He would have been happy with Richard Olney or John Carlisle, the Treasury secretary, or even William Whitney, the former navy secretary whose ties to the Rockefeller trust prompted jokes that he would “pour Standard Oil upon the troubled waters.”17
By the time the Democrats gathered in Chicago, three weeks after the Republicans nominated McKinley on the gold platform, the conservatives were deeply discouraged. David Bennett Hill of New York would deliver the keynote but could hardly mount the dais. “Senator Hill, why don’t you ever smile and look pleasant?” a reporter inquired. “I never smile and look pleasant at a funeral,” Hill replied. Critics of the administration raged from the start. “We of the South have burned our bridges behind us so far as the Eastern Democrats are concerned,” Ben Tillman of South Carolina declared. “We denounce the administration of President Cleveland as undemocratic and tyrannical!” The silverites seized control of the platform committee, whose handiwork lashed Cleveland for clinging to gold, for siding with the capitalists in the Pullman strike, and for acting in general more like a Republican than the Republicans themselves.
Most portentously, the draft platform called for silver. “We are unalterably opposed to monometallism, which has locked fast the prosperity of an industrial people in the paralysis of hard times,” the money plank asserted. “We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation.”
The conservatives tried half-heartedly to arrest the runaway train. “I speak more in sorrow than in anger,” David Hill said. “You know what this platform means to the East.” Summoning the spirits of the party’s founders, Hill declared, “We want the principles of Jefferson and Jackson.”18
So did the silverites, who interpreted those principles rather differently. As the whole convention considered whether to adopt the platform committee’s draft, Bryan stepped forward. Just thirty-six years old, Bryan was a boy beside the veterans of the party. His youth showed as he sprang from his seat among the delegates and ascended the stage two steps at a time. He acknowledged his callowness in his opening words. “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,” he said. “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.”
The delegates cheered, catching Bryan’s mood. He let the cheering swell and then subside before he continued. The advocates of gold contended that silver would disturb the business interests of the country, he said. This misrepresented the business of America. “You have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York.” The farmers who grew the nation’s grain were businessmen as fully as the brokers who sold it. The miners who dug precious metals from the earth were in business beside the financiers who gambled on the rise and fall of those metals. “We come to speak for this broader class of business men,” Bryan said.
Their foes branded them as belligerent. Yet if belligerence marked their tone, it did so with cause. “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 gold men decried silver as a sectional issue. “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.”
The gold men said silver couldn’t be adopted without the consent of Britain and the other great powers. Bryan refused to believe it. “It is the issue of 1776 all 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? … That will never be the verdict of our people.”
The gold men—the bankers and all the big capitalists—had thrown down the gauntlet. The people would take it up.
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!19
For a long moment the delegates stood silent, raptly viewing Bryan, his head bowed and arms outstretched, the image in silhouette of the crucified Christ. Then, as they realized he’d reached the end, they roared their approval, sending wave after wave of bedlam crashing about the coliseum. John Peter Altgeld, who would have contended for the nomination but for his foreign birth, declared, “That is the greatest speech I ever listened to.” The convention might have nominated Bryan on the spot, but Bryan insisted that protocol be observed. “If my boom won’t last overnight,” he said, “it won’t last until November.”
The convention proceeded to adopt the silver plank and, t
he next day, to nominate Bryan. The silverites were delirious, the gold men morose. “Lunacy having dictated the platform,” Joseph Pulitzer’s World grumbled, “it was perhaps natural that hysteria should evolve the candidate.”20
AFTER THE HYSTERIA of the Democrats, if such it was, came the puzzlement of the Populists. Since the elections of 1894 their most potent issue had been silver, and now Bryan and the Democrats had stolen it. Where that left the Populists was what the party had to decide as it gathered in St. Louis. To nominate a candidate other than Bryan might preserve the party’s identity, but it would split the silver vote and diminish the chances of seeing silver soon cross the counters of banks and stores and fill the pockets of farmers and laborers. To back Bryan could have the opposite effects: boosting silver’s prospects but dooming the Populists.
Jerry Simpson of Kansas judged the issue more important than the party. “I care not for party names,” he said. “It is the substance we are after, and we have it in William J. Bryan.” James Weaver agreed, as did many others from the Midwest.
But Tom Watson couldn’t have disagreed more. The Georgia Populist warned his fellows to “avoid fusion as they would the devil.” Henry Demarest Lloyd summarized the Populists’ dilemma: “If we fuse, we are sunk; if we don’t fuse, all the silver men will leave us for the more powerful Democrats.”
In the end the Populists tried to have it both ways. They nominated Bryan for president, but in place of Arthur Sewall, the Democratic nominee for vice president, they forwarded the anti-fusionist Watson, who accepted the nomination under the duress of believing that his candidacy alone could prevent a fatal fracture in the party.
The result satisfied no one but Bryan’s foes. “Wall Street bankers and McKinley managers wild with delight over convention’s action,” a reporter wired from New York. “They felt crushed at prospect of silver forces being combined. Today they bet 10 to 1 on McKinley and gold.”21
“MR. BRYAN IS an optimist,” a journalist who observed the candidate in action explained. “He believes the world is getting better all the time, and it is impossible to be around him a great deal without sharing his hopeful view of things.”22
Given the power and wealth of the forces arrayed against him, Bryan had scant alternative to optimism. The economic depression disposed voters to punish the incumbent Democrats, and the predominantly Republican press portrayed Bryan as irresponsible, even fanatic. Mark Hanna’s campaign machine facilitated such portrayals by writing news articles and editorials for distribution to papers all around the country. Some papers simply got the text, sufficient to fill more than three columns per week. Others received prints ready for circulation, still others the plates to print their own. The Republican national committee, which Hanna headed, commissioned cartoons, posters, and buttons. Hundreds of millions of pamphlets and flyers blanketed the country, courtesy of the committee, which also mobilized an army of some fourteen hundred campaign speakers whose trips were scheduled and expenses paid by the committee.
The Republicans lavished more money on the 1896 campaign than had ever been spent in American political history, and supplying that money required novel methods of fund-raising. Hanna had ties to industry, but not especially to finance, and so required help from people with Wall Street links. Railroader James J. Hill personally introduced Hanna around the banking community. Hanna impressed the bankers with the efficiency of his organization; they impressed him with the amount of cash they had on hand. Quickly warming to his audience, Hanna harped on the threat Bryan and silver posed to the capitalist class, and he proceeded to assess each bank a campaign tax, so to speak, of one-quarter percent of its capital. Some of the bankers complained but most paid up. Other corporations contributed in similar proportion to their size. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil donated a quarter million dollars. Estimates of the total raised ran as high as $12 million; a postelection audit, which certainly missed much, put the figure at $3.5 million.23
Whatever the precise figure, it was far more than Bryan and the Democrats commanded. Against the Hanna money machine, Bryan threw himself and his personal charisma. He toured the Ohio and Mississippi valleys by train, making scores of stops and giving hundreds of speeches. People turned out by the many thousands to see and hear him: 10,000 in Springfield, 30,000 in Toledo, 50,000 in Columbus, 70,000 in Louisville. They applauded him; they shouted his name; they pumped his hand. They sang his praises, literally:
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,
Marching on to victory.
And we’ll vote for Billy Bryan
And we’ll show the British lion
That they’d better keep their goldbugs o’er the sea.
He maintained his murderous pace by force of will, lack of sleep, and enormous quantities of food. The farm boy’s appetite hadn’t diminished after the boy became a man and left the farm; he ate six times a day during the campaign, each meal sufficient to plow five acres or speak ten thousand words. (Even so, he lost weight.) His marvelous voice grew husky by the end of the campaign, but still it reached the back of the largest crowds without appearing to strain. Though he didn’t drink, neither did he forswear alcohol entirely; he freshened himself between whistle stops by stripping off his shirt and rubbing himself with gin.
Everywhere he preached the gospel of the people against the plutocrats, of democracy against big capital. His opponents accused him of fomenting class warfare; he turned the charge against them. “They have tried to array the money loaner against the man who borrows money; they have tried to array the financiers against the rest of the people.… There is not a class to which they have not appealed.” Yet on occasion he did resort to the language of combat. “We ask no quarter; we give no quarter. We shall prosecute our warfare until there is not an American citizen who dares to advocate the gold standard.”
Bryan’s campaign concluded with a massive parade and demonstration in Chicago. Hundreds of thousands of supporters and onlookers filled the streets of the city. Bryan rode in an open carriage; he stood, acknowledged the adulation, and in a weary voice urged his people to carry the fight to the bitter end. Some responded by beating up Republican hecklers and torching McKinley posters.24
BRYAN’S BRAVURA PERFORMANCE alarmed Hanna. “Things are going against us, William,” he told McKinley. “You’ve got to stump or we’ll be defeated.” The candidate knew better. “I will not try to compete with Bryan,” he said. “I am going to stay here”—in Canton, Ohio, his hometown—“and do what campaigning there is to be done. If I took a whole train, Bryan would take a sleeper; if I took a sleeper, Bryan would take a chair car; if I took a chair car, he would ride a freight train. I can’t outdo him, and I am not going to try.”25
Hanna, as usual, bent to McKinley’s will. But he determined that if Canton wouldn’t go to the country, the country must come to Canton. McKinley’s famous “front porch” campaign featured an endless stream of visitors to his home. They arrived by horse and wagon, in buggies and early automobile, but especially by train. Hanna persuaded the railroads that their future profits depended on a McKinley victory and therefore that they should offer discount fares to eastern Ohio. Many did, till visiting Canton became “cheaper than staying at home,” as the Cleveland Plain Dealer remarked. The pilgrims were ushered, delegation by delegation, to the front yard of the candidate, who on cue would step forth. The spokesmen of the delegations would read scripted speeches avowing the enthusiasm of their counties and business sectors for McKinley and sound money. McKinley would reply with equal unspontaneity. The visitors would return to their trains, happy for this brush with celebrity, and be headed home by supper. Even happier were the reporters who covered the McKinley campaign. Unlike their brethren chasing Bryan, the McKinley contingent kept regular hours, slept in the same beds each night, learned which restaurants to patronize and which to avoid.26
While McKinley manned the front porch, Hanna took the back stairs. He sent agents to shadow Bryan and memorize his speeches; these operatives
would then beat Bryan to the next stop and give his speech for him. When Bryan himself arrived, his jokes fell flat and his applause lines elicited blank stares. Hanna reportedly encouraged merchants to place conditional orders with vendors—if McKinley won, the goods would be shipped; if Bryan won, the orders would be canceled—and factory owners to tell their employees not to bother to report for work in the event of a Bryan victory. The reports were doubtless exaggerated; the merchants and factory owners already believed that a Bryan victory would be bad for business, and the workers didn’t need Hanna to inform them that what was bad for business endangered their jobs.27
As the election neared the race seemed close. The underdog Democrats were hopeful; the Republican favorites were worried. “Most of my friends think Bryan will be elected,” John Hay told Henry Adams. “And we shall be hanged to the lampions of Euclid Avenue.”28
Hanna took no chances. The Saturday before the election he staged an enormous parade in New York, essentially commanding clerks, brokers, bankers, and directors to march for McKinley. On election day itself he mobilized tens of thousands of Republican precinct chairmen and foot soldiers to get friendly voters to the polls by any means necessary. Republican employers gave workers time off to vote—and to ponder those termination warnings trailing Bryan.
The dueling campaigns elicited a record turnout. Bryan’s popular total topped that of every previous candidate in American history. But McKinley’s total topped Bryan’s: 7.1 million to 6.5 million. The electoral vote favored McKinley by 271 to 176. The result was strongly sectional. McKinley carried the Northeast, the Ohio Valley, and the Great Lakes; Bryan swept the South, the Plains but for North Dakota, and the West except California and Oregon.
For those who knew how to interpret the results, their significance could hardly have been greater. Coming after the Republican congressional landslide of 1894—an outcome confirmed if not entirely reproduced in the 1896 legislative races—McKinley’s triumph indicated that the Republicans had secured control of America’s industrial base. Urban workers, confronted with a choice between job security and class solidarity, crossed class lines to vote with their employers rather than with the farmers of the South and West. Though none could know it in 1896, they would continue to do so for decades; McKinley’s election inaugurated an era of Republican dominance of the federal government that lasted till the Great Depression of the 1930s.
