On July 9th, 1896 William Jennings Bryan accepted the Democratic
nomination for President in Chicago and gave one of the most famous orations
in American political history, the so-called cross of gold speech.
Bryan's nomination and speech marked both the high point and imminent
decline of Populism–a movement of agricultural interests that had rocked
American life in the 1890s.
In the aftermath of the Civil War and attendant triumph of industrial
capitalism, the agricultural sector was reeling. Family farms were being
replaced by Commercial farming, with specialization and production for
the market, not subsistence. Huge numbers of farmers lost their land and
had to work for others, thus developing into a rural proletariat. And the
self-image of farmers as producers, responsible for the making of vital
commodities, gave way to the scourge of agri-business.
The agricultural economy was in distress as well with recession
and depression typical. The biggest problem facing farmers was actually
deflation, as the prices of manufactures, interest rates, good, wages and
farm products was falling. The agricultural market was highly competitive
so farmers, needing to raise incomes but unable to raise prices, had to
produce MORE goods, thus leading to a crisis of overproduction, debt and
more deflation.
Believing that their hard work should pay off and their role as producers
should be rewarded, farmers began to vent their frustration and anger.
Mary Lease, an agrarian radical, told farmers to "raise less corn and more
hell" while a Nebraska newspaper urged farmers to fight against the "the
wealthy and powerful classes who want to control the government to plunder
the people."
In analysing the situation, farmers saw many villians, especially
monopolists, railroad operators, and bankers.
They also, importantly, targeted the power of the gold standard
for particular criticism. Because farmers were suffering from Deflation,
they looked for ways to inflate the money supply, conservatively based
on the gold standard. Silver was their solution.
For most of American history, the economy had been on a bimettallic,
silver and gold, standard. By the early 1870s, however, the market price
of silver was much higher than the price one would receive from the U.S.
mint and holders of silver simply quit bringing their specie to the mint,
and in 1873, the government quit minting silver altogether.
Farmers saw this move as a form of class war, believing that eastern
bankers were trying to impose the gold standard on the whole nation to
the detriment of landholders and farmers in the south and west who needed
access to credit and wanted higher commodity prices.
So they took action, forming into groups such as the Grange and the
National Farmers Alliances, and, most importantly, the People's Party,
which became the populists.
The populists' mantra was "free coinage of silver." They wanted
the government to again begin coining silver, thus flooding the economy
with new currency and causing inflation. Inflation, though condemned by
the eastern financial elite, was seen as a way out of economic distress
by debtors, who would have access to money and who would be paying back
loans at a rate lower than they secured.
By the 1890s, the economy was in deep trouble, with gold reserves dropping and little silver in circulation. Farmers began to act politically and the Populists made steady headway. Remarkably consisting of both black and white activists and officers, the Populist Party won several governorships and legislative seats in farm states in the early 1890s and seemed poised to become a major national force in the election of 1896.
At that time, the best-known populist was the young mayor of Omaha,
Neb, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was the likely Populist candidate for
President, but he attended the Democratic Convention in June with other
ideas on his mind. With the Dems deadlocked on a candidate, Bryan went
to the podium and spoke passionately about the farm and class crisis in
America. He closed his speech with some of the more powerful words in political
history:
"If they dare to come out in the open and defned the gold standard
as a good thing, we will fight them to the uppermost. 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." Then, speading his arms
out as if he were on the cross, he thundered, "you shall not crucify mankind
upon a cross of gold."
Bryan's speech stunned the crowd and the Democrats made his their presidential nominee, essentially accepting the populists' program. However, this merger of Populism with traditional politics, know as fusion at the time, was the undoing of farm radicalism. The Democrats were still principally a party of southern planters so the racial harmony that had existed between black and white farmers was thrown away, and Democrats continued to play the race card in electoral politics. Populist radicalism too gave way to the safer and more "responsible" politics of the Democrats.
Farm issues faltered and the greatest challenge to the dominant class
party system in U.S. history was met and contained. Bryan's rhetoric, though
powerful, was politically suicidal for agricultural interests. However,
to this day, his cross of gold speech stands as a testimony to a bright
moment when farmers and workers, black and white, urban and rural, stood
together and tried to make a better world, a world envisioned by William
Jennings Bryan on June 9th 1896.