My friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses?
–William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold.”
Three men held a realistic chance of capturing the 1912 Democratic nomination: Wilson, Clark, and House Majority Leader and Ways and Means Chair Oscar Underwood. Looming over them lay forces whose struggles, like those of a Homeric epic, would write the odyssey of the twentieth century.
Wilson staffer Joseph Tumulty characterized the conflict as a “recrudescence of the old fight of 1896-Bryan assuming, of course the leadership of the radicals of the West, and Charles Murphy and his group acting as spokesmen of the conservative East” At the root of these differences lay not so much geographic conflicts, which by the end of the century would evolve into quite different allegiances, but opposing views of government.
The conservatives had earned the nickname Bourbons (for the French royal family) because they favored an accommodation with the tycoons of the Gilded Age. Like the end of twentieth century, the Republican Party controlled the White House for much of the end of the nineteenth, causing many Democrats to believe they must move to the right. A 1896 Campaign Text-book of the National Democratic Party issued by the Bourbons stated the principles of their leader, ex-President Grover Cleveland:
He profoundly disbelieved in the ability of government, through paternal legislation or otherwise, to increase the happiness of the nations.
He believed in the greatest measure of freedom of trade and industry compatible with the necessity to obtain by constitutional means an adequate revenue for the support of the government.
Republican nominee William McKinley could have made these statements.
Arrayed against the Bourbons stood the forces lead by William Jennings Bryan. Known to his admirers as “The Great Commoner,” Americans today might style him “The Great Crackpot,” a feeling shared by many of his contemporaries. His fellow Nebraskan Willa Cather termed him the “white elephant of his party.” Mark Hanna called him a “demagogue” and “an enemy to this republic.” H. L. Mencken is well-known for his venomous portrait of Bryan’s performance at the Scopes Trial. Scopes remains at the heart of the contemporary stereotype of Bryan as the zealot portrayed by Frederick March in Stanley Kramer’s pretentious 1960 Inherit the Wind.
Many Americans know Bryan ran for President three times, but they have forgotten that he played a role in four constitutional amendments: women’s suffrage, the income tax, direct election of senators and prohibition. He opposed our intervention in the Philippines as “imperialism,” defended collective bargaining and fought for a minimum wage, demanded that candidates reveal the source of their campaign contributions, proposed a cabinet position for labor, championed the idea of insured bank deposits and the federal reserve system, attempted to implement a foreign policy based on arbitration which anticipated the League of Nations and the United Nations, and spoke out for the public financing of campaigns, government subsidizing of farm prices, an end to the gold standard, limiting Presidential terms, and the perils of a large military establishment.
Despite these ideas, Bryan himself was a throwback, a prime exhibit for David Noble’s “paradox of progressive thought,” for Bryan’s tragedy lay in his fervent defense of a fading agrarian vision which blinded him from seeing a possibility which in hindsight seems so logical–to form an alliance with the rising labor movement of the large cities. The metaphor often used to describe Bryan’s rise is “meteoric.” Mary Bryan captures the ascension of “the Boy Orator of the Platte” in a chapter that moves not unlike the Hollywood visual cliché of a hero’s rapid ascent as a montage of quick cuts. By the time he delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the age of 36 Bryan had become a public attraction whose rise recalls the Beatles or Elvis Presley.
In 1912, after three unsuccessful runs for the White House, Bryan still controlled a bloc of delegates that could veto any nomination and possibly endorse a fourth Bryan candidacy. Many of these delegates were friends and supporters who had enlisted in Bryan’s “army” after the Nebraskan gave his first extended speech in Congress on March 16, 1892. Even more than “Cross of Gold,” this speech remains Bryan’s most spectacular, for it has few parallels in American history. In three hours, the New York Times proclaimed, Bryan “Jumped at once to the front rank among speakers of the House.”
The rules allotted Bryan only an hour, but Michigan Republican Representative Julius Burrow, whom Bryan biographer Michael Kazin describes as “bedazzled,” moved to give him more time. Several times Bryan attempted to conclude only to have the crowd shout, “Go on! Go on!” These reactions characterized Bryan’s speeches, for he could charm even those who opposed him. The New York Times acknowledged:
Search The Record during the two sessions of Congress he was entitled to occupy its pages, and not an instance can be found where he made a reply to an antagonist that would prevent him from meeting his opponent face to face in a moment after the debate.
When her husband took the floor Mary Bryan anxiously looked upon a half-empty chamber, because most representatives had left the floor during one of those arcane discussions-this one on how much to spend on copies of speeches– that still has people muttering about Congress. Perhaps Hollywood best captured the spirit of Bryan’s debut in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, for like Jimmy Stewart’s famous filibuster, Bryan’s speech began as a seemingly minor matter only to strike sparks that would flame across America, with Mary Bryan playing the Jean Arthur role which, if the transcript is any indication, included relaying him information as he spoke.
Bryan’s subject was the tariff, which at that time had all the flammability that taxes do today. Instead of arguing over tariffs on particular goods, which had been the main Democratic strategy, Bryan reframed the issue in a way that marks a major watershed in American history:
You can impose no tax for the benefit of the producer of raw material which does not find its way, through the various forms of manufactured product, and at last press with accumulated weight upon the person who uses the finished product.
Bryan moved on articulate the philosophical foundation of an American Century:
We are demanding for this people equal and exact justice to every man, woman and child. We desire that the laws of this country shall not be made, as they have been, to enable some to get rich while many get poor.
With a conclusion that anticipates “Cross of Gold,” Bryan had even his opponents mesmerized:
The day will come when those who annually gather about this Congress seeking to use the taxing power for private purposes will find their occupation gone, and the members of Congress will meet here to pass laws for the benefit of all the people. That day will come and in that day, to use the language of another, “Democracy will be king! Long live the king!”
As Mary remembered it, the speech began uncertainly, but it did not take long for Will to find his voice. As Bryan continued to speak, those in the chamber began streaming down the halls of the Capitol to summon their colleagues, their excitement testifying that something extraordinary was taking place. Calling the speech “a beam of sunlight” the New York Times, wrote, “To those who had not heard him before, he was indeed a prodigy. Few men so young ever had held the House so long and so intent.
The 1892 speech is even more remarkable than “Cross of Gold” because most of the second half of it is a stirring debate with his Republican rivals, the likes of which have become all but extinct on CSPAN. Speaking without notes, Bryan recited long passages of poetry and the Bible, quoted at length from documents such as Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures and cited data from the census and manufacturing reports. One exchange with New York Representative John Raines captures the spirit of that memorable afternoon:
RAINES: I want to say to the gentleman that no trade paper was ever printed that could contain a list of all the tinplate liars of the United States.
BRYAN: I suppose that paper, then, has no biographical sketch of my friend from New York
Bryan would serve a second term in the House, even though the Republicans purposely gerrymandered his district to prevent him from winning. Bryan won that election through a clever device worthy of Lincoln: he would prominently carry onstage a valise of items he and Mary had purchased in Mexico, whose contents he would dump on the platform, reciting their prices to illustrate the absurdity of the Republican tariff. To dramatize his support for the popular election of senators he ran for the Senate in 1984 in a state where Republicans controlled the legislature, tallying an astonishing 73% of the non-binding popular vote, which the legislature chose to ignore.
What those delegates in that steamy Baltimore stone armory feared three decades after Bryan’s memorable debut was a replay of the most famous convention speech of all–the “Cross of Gold.” Contrary to the myth, Bryan knew he had all but secured the nomination before he delivered the speech. The stem-winding conclusion which recalls Henry V’s “St. Crispin’s Day Speech,” rallied an army that had already mustered and now awaited the words that would send them into one of the most contentious battles in American political history.
If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands 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.
To punctuate the final sentence, Bryan theatrically raised his hand to his head at the mention of the crown of thorns and then spread his arms wide, holding the pose so no one would miss its meaning. A New York Times reporter captured the scene.
Under the oratory of the gifted blatherskite from Nebraska, the convention went into spasms of enthusiasm, Amid roars of cheers, rising and falling like the noise of a tremendous storm, they lavished attentions upon him.
Bryan, who noted the audience behaved liked “trained seals,” realized the significance of his speech, writing, “the situation was so unique and the experience unprecedented that I have never expected to witness its counterpart.”
Although at the time tradition dictated candidates did not actively seek the nation’s highest office, Bryan knew that the only strategy to overcome McKinley’s political machine and its considerable financial advantage was to use the most powerful weapon he had-his voice, becoming the first presidential candidate to openly campaign for office. In his typical over-the-top style, Bryan embarked on a whistle stop campaign that would anticipate Harry Truman’s 1948 effort.
Like a rock star who the crowd demands play his greatest hits over and over again, Bryan would deliver “Cross of Gold” over two thousand times. The speech would be widely circulated in newspapers across the country and can still be found at
Amazon.com. Bryan would record the ending of the speech in 1923, after his vocal powers had diminished, but there is still enough electricity crackling through that primitive recording to provide some idea of the thunderbolts Bryan could ignite.
NOTE: A brief recording of the conclusion of “Cross of Gold” made in Bryan’s later years is available several places online and on YouTube.
http://www.historicalvoices.org/earliest_voices/bryan.html#recordings
This essay a short excerpt from “Part One: The Fourteenth Ballot” of my next book Transforming America from Bryan to Obama. Reactions would be much appreciated.
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