THE RISE OF THE SILVER ISSUE
In every national campaign since the time silver was demonetized in 1873 the demand for bimetallism has been a platform plank always of one and frequently of both of the two great political parties. The first unequivocal renunciation of the policy and theory of bimetallism on the part of any important national convention occurred in June, 1900, at Philadelphia. In 1896 the Republican party, in its platform adopted at St. Louis, pledged itself to the promotion of bimetallism by international agreement. The Democratic party, both in 1896 and 1900, expressed its conviction that bimetallism could be secured by the independent action of the United States, and to that end demanded “the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver, at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation.”
Previous to 1896 each of the great political parties made quadrennial expressions of faith in the bimetallic theory, frequently demanded its enactment into law, and generally condemned the opposing party for “hostility to silver.” And yet, despite the universal belief in bimetallism on the part of the American people; despite the general demands for bimetallism made by both political parties; despite the many and eloquent speeches for bimetallism delivered in Congress and out of it by party leaders of all complexions,the hope of its becoming an actuality seemed to wither and wane in inverse ratio to the fervency of the expressions of friendship on the part of the politicians. Sometimes those who were most vehement in their demands were most instrumental in the passage of that series of legislative enactments that inevitably broadened and deepened the gulf between gold and silver.
In explanation of this phenomenon it may be said that of all the functions of government none is more important than the power to regulate the quality and quantity of its circulating medium; none more freighted either with prosperity or disaster to its people; and none more liable to make demagogues of statesmen and knaves and hypocrites of those in authority.
The first overt act in the fight against bimetallism, which theretofore had been insidious, was the demand of the Cleveland administration and the powers that were behind it for the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman Act. The clause which was aimed at provided for the purchase by the government of bar silver sufficient for the annual coinage of $54,000,000. With its repeal would disappear from the Federal statute books the last vestige of authority for the coinage of silver money other than subsidiary coins.
In the fight against the administration over this measure Mr. Bryan took a leading part. He was one of the public men whose professions and practices in the matter of financial legislation were not at variance.In his first campaign for Congress, in 1890, he had inserted in his platform this plank, written by himself:
“We demand the free coinage of silver on equal terms with gold and denounce the efforts of the Republican party to serve the interest of Wall Street as against the rights of the people.”
In 1891 he had secured the adoption of a free silver plank in the Nebraska Democratic platform. In 1892 he made a hard fight for a similar plank in the state platform, but lost by a very close vote. On the day before the national convention which nominated Mr. Cleveland for president, Mr. Bryan was renominated for Congress on a platform in which free coinage was made the paramount issue, and throughout the campaign he devoted to it the major portion of his time. In this way, from free choice and impelling conviction, Mr. Bryan had committed himself to the doctrine of bimetallism and had declared his plan for putting it into practice.
Mr. Bryan made his first speech in Congress against unconstitutional repeal on February 9, 1893. In it he said:
“I call attention to the fact that there is not in this bill a single line or sentence which is not opposed to the whole history of the Democratic party. We have opposed the principle of the national bank on all occasions, and yet you give them by this bill an increased currency of $15,000,000. You have pledged the party to reduce the taxation upon the people, and yet, before you attempt to lighten this burden, youtake off one-half million of dollars annually from the national banks of the country; and even after declaring in your national platform that the Sherman act was a ‘cowardly makeshift’ you attempt to take away the ‘makeshift’ before you give us the real thing for which the makeshift was substituted.... Mr. Speaker, consider the effect of this bill. It means that by suspending the purchase of silver we will throw fifty-four million ounces on the market annually and reduce the price of silver bullion. It means that we will widen the difference between the coinage and bullion value of silver and raise a greater obstacle in the way of bimetallism. It means to increase by billions of dollars the debts of our people. It means a reduction in the price of our wheat and our cotton. You have garbled the platform of the Democratic party. You have taken up one clause of it, and refused to give us a fulfilment of the other and more important clause, which demands that gold and silver shall be coined on equal terms without charge for mintage.
“Mr. Speaker, this can not be done. A man who murders another shortens by a few brief years the life of a human being; but he who votes to increase the burden of debts upon the people of the United States assumes a graver responsibility. If we who represent them consent to rob our people, the cotton-growers of the South and the wheat-growers of the West, we will be criminals whose guilt can not be measured by words, for we will bring distress and disaster to our people.”
In thus boldly and positively aligning himself against the policy of the dominant wing of his own party, which would soon be backed by the incoming Cleveland administration, Mr. Bryan acted with his characteristic devotion to principle. He could not help seeing that all the odds were apparently against that faction of his party with which he threw in his fortunes. Mr. Cleveland and most of the old, honored, and powerful leaders of democracy, it was known, would join in the fight against silver. They would have the powerful aid of the great Republican leaders and be backed by the almost united influence of the hundreds of daily newspapers in all the large cities. Wealth, influence, experience, and so-called “respectability” were all to be the property of the Cleveland wing. Many trusted leaders of the old-time fight for silver succumbed to the temptation and identified themselves with the dominant faction. Not so Mr. Bryan. On the failure of the bill to pass he returned home and devoted all his time to a thorough study of finance and of money, making the most careful and complete preparation for the fight which he saw impending.
The great struggle, which Mr. Bryan has termed “the most important economic discussion which ever took place in our Congress” was precipitated by President Cleveland when he called Congress to meet in special session on August 7, 1893. Mr. Wilson, of West Virginia, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, introduced in the House the administration measure for the unconditional repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman Act.
CHAS. A. TOWNE
CHAS. A. TOWNE
CHAS. A. TOWNE
The debate that ensued was one of the most brilliantly and ably conducted in the annals of Congress. On August 16, near the close of the debate, Mr. Bryan delivered an extended argument against the bill. His speech in point of profound reasoning and moving oratory stands prominent in the list of congressional deliverances. It concluded with the following magnificent appeal:
“To-day the Democratic party stands between two great forces, each inviting its support. On the one side stand the corporate interests of the nation, its moneyed institutions, its aggregations of wealth and capital, imperious, arrogant, compassionless. They demand special legislation, favors, privileges, and immunities. They can subscribe magnificently to campaign funds; they can strike down opposition with their all-pervading influence, and, to those who fawn and flatter, bring ease and plenty. They demand that the Democratic party shall become their agent to execute their merciless decrees.
“On the other side stands that unnumbered throng which gave a name to the Democratic party, and for which it has assumed to speak. Work-worn and dust-begrimed they make their sad appeal. They hear of average wealth increased on every side and feel the inequality of its distribution. They see an overproduction of everything desired because of an underproduction of the ability to buy. They can not pay for loyalty except with their suffrages, and can onlypunish betrayal with their condemnation. Although the ones who most deserve the fostering care of Government, their cries for help too often beat in vain against the outer wall, while others less deserving find ready access to legislative halls.
“This army, vast and daily growing, begs the party to be its champion in the present conflict. It can not press its claims mid sounds of revelry. Its phalanxes do not form in grand parade, nor has it gaudy banners floating on the breeze. Its battle hymn is ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ its war cry ‘equality before the law.’ To the Democratic party, standing between these two irreconcilable forces, uncertain to which side to turn, and conscious that upon its choice its fate depends, come the words of Israel’s second law-giver: ‘Choose you this day whom ye will serve.’ What will the answer be? Let me invoke the memory of him whose dust made sacred the soil of Monticello when he joined
‘The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still ruleOur spirits from their urns.’
‘The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still ruleOur spirits from their urns.’
‘The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still ruleOur spirits from their urns.’
‘The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.’
“He was called a demagogue and his followers a mob, but the immortal Jefferson dared to follow the best promptings of his heart. He placed man above matter, humanity above property, and, spurning the bribes of wealth and power, pleaded the cause of the common people. It was this devotion to their interests which made his party invincible while he lived, and will make his name revered while history endures.
“And what message comes to us from the Hermitage? When a crisis like the present arose and thenational bank of the day sought to control the politics of the nation, God raised up an Andrew Jackson, who had the courage to grapple with that great enemy, and by overthrowing it he made himself the idol of the people and reinstated the Democratic party in public confidence. What will the decision be to-day?
“The Democratic party has won the greatest success in its history. Standing upon this victory-crowned summit, will it turn its face to the rising or the setting sun? Will it choose blessings or cursings—life or death—Which? Which?”
The bill passed the House by a considerable majority and went to the Senate. In two months it came back with Senate amendments. So earnest and determined was Mr. Bryan in his opposition to the measure that he resorted to dilatory tactics, employing every legitimate parliamentary weapon to obstruct its progress. When finally even the enemies of the bill would no longer assist him in the fight for delay, Mr. Bryan determined to abandon the fight in Congress to carry it before the Democracy of the nation. In concluding his last speech on the bill he said:
“You may think that you have buried the cause of bimetallism; you may congratulate yourselves that you have laid the free coinage of silver away in a sepulchre, newly made since the election, and before the door rolled the veto stone. But, sirs, if our cause is just, as I believe it is, your labor has been in vain: no tomb was ever made so strong that it could imprison a righteous cause. Silver will lay aside itsgrave clothes and its shroud. It will yet rise and in its rising and its reign will bless mankind.”
Though defeated in the first great contest, the silver advocates were far from dismayed. They began at once a systematic fight to wrest from the administration the control of the party organization. The factional fight within the ranks of Democracy gave early promise of becoming exceedingly bitter. The feeling was accentuated from the start by the personal efforts of President Cleveland in behalf of the repeal bill. In the Senate the silver men had what was considered a safe majority, and it was to overcome this and secure the passage of the bill that the President had directed his energies. His great weapon was Federal patronage, and he used it as a club. Never before in the history of popular government in the United States had the executive so boldly and so openly exerted the tremendous influence of his position in an attempt to force a coordinate branch of government into unwilling compliance with his wishes. Mr. Cleveland’s interference, which finally accomplished its purpose, was angrily resented by the Silver Democrats, and the lines between administration and anti-administration were early closely drawn.
Mr. Bryan, while the repeal bill was still under discussion in the Senate, attended the Nebraska State Democratic convention as a delegate, on October 4, 1893. In the convention the administration wing of the party was regnant, imperious, and arrogant. A platform endorsing the President and his fight against silver was adopted by a large majority. Bryan waseven denied a place on the resolutions committee, although endorsed therefor by his Congressional district, which almost alone had sent silver delegates. His course in Congress was repudiated and himself personally received with but scant courtesy or consideration on the part of the great majority of the delegates. When the gold men, flushed with victory, were about to complete their conquest, the discredited young Congressman sprang to the platform to address the convention. His whole person was quivering with emotion, and as he spoke he strode up and down the platform with a mien of unconcealed anger and defiance. Never was he more truly the orator, and never was tame beast so abject and so pitiful under the scourge of the master as was that convention, mute and defenseless, under his scathing excoriation. The following extract will give an idea of the substance of the speech, though the flashing eyes of the orator, the tense and quivering frame, the voice now ringing with defiance, now trembling with emotion,—these may never be described.
“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention—We are confronted to-day by as important a question as ever came before the Democracy of the state of Nebraska. It is not a personal question. It is a question that rises above individuals. So far as I am personally concerned it matters nothing whether you vote this amendment up or down; it matters nothing to me whether you pass resolutions censuring my course or endorsing it. If I am wrong in the position I have taken on this great financial question, I shallfall though you heap your praises upon me; if I am right, and in my heart, so help me God, I believe I am, I shall triumph yet, although you condemn me in your convention a hundred times. Gentlemen, you are playing in the basement of politics; there is a higher plane. You think you can pass resolutions censuring a man, and that you can humiliate him. I want to tell you that I still ‘more true joy in exile feel’ than those delegates who are afraid to vote their own sentiments or represent the wishes of the people, lest they may not get Federal office. Gentlemen, I know not what others may do, but duty to country is above duty to party, and if you represent your constituents in what you have done and will do—for I do not entertain the fond hope that you who have voted as you have to-day will change upon this vote—if you as delegates properly represent the sentiment of the Democratic party which sent you here; if the resolutions which have been proposed and which you will adopt express the sentiments of the party in this state; if the party declares in favor of a gold standard, as you will if you pass this resolution; if you declare in favor of the impoverishment of the people of Nebraska; if you intend to make more galling than the slavery of the blacks the slavery of the debtors of this country; if the Democratic party, after you go home, endorses your action and makes your position its permanent policy, I promise you that I will go out and serve my country and my God under some other name, even if I must go alone.”
But Mr. Bryan was not destined to be driven from the Democratic party. He returned to Washington to persistently fight the financial policy of the administration until the Fifty-third Congress had adjourned. The withdrawal of the greenbacks, the granting of additional privileges to national banks, the Rothschild-Morgan gold-bond contract—these he opposed with the full measure of his mental and physical powers. In the meantime the Silver Democrats began the work of organization and propaganda in every state in the Union. In 1894 Bryan triumphed over his enemies in Nebraska in a convention whose platform declared, “We favor the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.” The Gold Democrats bolted the platform and the ticket. And until the last delegate was elected to the National convention which was to meet at Chicago in July, 1896, the Silver Democrats continued everywhere their efforts. They fought boldly and outspokenly against the administration they had helped to elect, and which was nominally Democratic. The result of their fight was the instruction of almost two-thirds of the delegates for an unambiguous free silver plank, with a certainty that the Gold Democrats, headed by President Cleveland, Secretary of the Treasury Carlisle, and hundreds of the leaders of the party, would bolt the action of the convention.
Thus torn and rent by dissentions, with little hopeor prospect for success, the Democracy faced that remarkable convention which was to repudiate the administration itself had placed in power.