1896

Awakening - 1896 - The Cross of Gold

As the American Presidential election of 1896 approached, the Democratic party was in the throes of a revolt.  The party leaders on the East coast had agreed in principle with tying the nation’s money supply to its reserves of gold. This possibility was not seen favorably in the South and Midwest. The young and fierce orator William Jennings Bryan  (born 1860) had joined with farmers and miners on the use of silver as an equivalent well of money.  Since recent mines in Nevada had made millions of ounces of silver available, coining that silver into dollars was naturally a good and reasonable way to allow farmers to more easily exchange their goods for equipment, necessities, and luxuries. 

The use of both gold and silver for coining money (bimetallism) had been officially supported by the United States government since 1792. It had been effectively dropped when Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1873, which eliminated the silver dollar.  While one could chart the effective flow of gold and silver into and out of the nation's borders, a more worthwhile view may be to consider the division between those rich enough to pay using gold, and those who were not. It was the latter group that Bryan championed. Thus was the stage set for a showdown between Bryan’s Free Silvers and the moneyed interests - first of the Democrats, later of the Republicans.

When Bryan rose to speak in Chicago at the 1896 Democratic Convention, he was 36 years old  - only a year more than the Constitutional minimum to be president. He was known to be a exceptional orator, but  being able to give an effective speech was not itself a sufficient reason to pick someone as party leader. Bryan, however, knew how to take advantage of his skills and the spirit of the times. He fully expected that, at the end, he would win the nomination.

Bryan spoke of how the free silver movement had grown in the small towns of the West, and how there the nation’s strength lies. He made pointed remarks at the expense of the richer areas of the country - the North, the cities, delegates from Boston or New York. He expanded the concept of a "businessman" to include laborers, farmers, retailers, and miners:

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 farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day—who begins in the spring and toils all summer—and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.

From the start, it uses religious allusions:

I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.......if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands....

And it ends by invoking fundamentally Christian imagery that would later give the speech its name:

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 showdown with the Democrats fell in Bryan's favor: On the fourth ballot of the convention, Bryan was selected as the Democratic nominee for President. Against the Republicans, he was not so lucky. He suffered defeat to the gold standard-waving Republicans and William McKinley. In 1900, he would face McKinley again, with much the same result. 

The gold standard would soon be supported by the Federal government, but with limited success. Roughly 40 years later, it would be effectively ended by Franklin Roosevelt, as part of attempts to stave off the effects of the Great Depression.