Why Mr. Bryan Can Never Be President
In 1896, it cost the Republicans six million dollars to defeat Bryan; in 1900, it cost them four millions; in 1908, they “beat him to a frazzle” with less than two millions.
In 1896, every chance was in his favor; he was young, handsome, magnetic, eloquent, without a stain on his record. In the general enthusiasm aroused by his “crown-of-thorns, cross-of-gold” speech, people did not give heed to the craftiness and selfishness of the Bland delegate who used Bland’s name as a stalking horse to get the nomination for himself. For twenty years Richard P. Bland had labored for Bi-metallism. He had won the fight by sheer bulldog pluck. The Bland-Allison act of 1878 was a Bland triumph. The Sherman law of 1890 was a Bland victory, for Sherman himself said it must be passed to head off a free-coinage act. When the Congress of 1892 convened, the Bland forces had an overwhelming majority. Why then could we not make a law restoring the white metal to its constitutional place as the equal of gold? Because, in the contest for the Speakership, the Northern Congressmen got control of the Committees as an exchange for the office of Speaker.
But the tide of public feeling in favor of “Constitutional money” kept on rising, and there is no doubt whatever that a majority of our people in 1896, favored Bi-metallism. But Bryan, cunning and ambitious, used his opportunities as a Bland delegate to undermine Bland, and at the psychological moment treated Bland to what Garfield had treated Sherman.
What had Bryan done for Bi-metallism? Nothing. He did not even understand the true meaning of it. As for Bland, he had fought the battle of “Constitutional money” while Bryan was at school, and when, in the hour of Silver’s triumph, the hero of its struggle was cast aside by his ungrateful party, it broke the old man’s heart and he died.
When I think of the long series of years during which Mr. Bland was the unflinching, untiring leader of the forces of Bi-metallism, and when I think of the very substantial fruits of his labors, the manner in which Bryan and the Democratic party flung him aside—the old horse turned out to graze till he should drop—seems to me to be one of the most convincing illustrations of the fact that “politics is hell.”
Having captured the Democratic nomination, Bryan turned his attention to the Populists. They had proved that they could poll nearly two million votes. Bryan wanted them. Through Allen of Nebraska and Jones of Arkansas he laid his plans to get them. By as foul a trick as ever was played in American politics, the Populist Convention was inveigled into giving its Presidential nomination to Bryan. Having got what he sought, he broke the contract, turned a deaf ear to all appeals, underrated the measure of Mid-road Populist resentment, invaded “the enemy’s country,” cherished the delusion that he could win New England, hung on to the impossible Sewall, and so lost the Presidency.
It is a fact that the Republicans had no hope of success, after the action of the Populist Convention, until Bryan himself adopted the insane policy of making the race with two Vice-Presidential candidates swinging on to the ticket.
In that campaign, the whole money question was dwarfed to the discussion of “Free Silver.” The great issue of Constitutional, scientific Bi-metallism was shunted on to the spur track of Free Silver. In that campaign he lost the East and the North, irrevocably. Instead of making a strong, broad, easily understood plea for a restoration of the financial system of Jefferson, of Madison, of Monroe, of Jackson, of Benton, of Calhoun, he selected that detail of the money question which was of the least consequence, which was the most difficult to explain to the ordinary voter, and which,—on account of the selfish interests of the Silver Kings—lent itself most favorably to Republican assault.
This error was Bryan’s own folly, for the Greenbacker and the Populist had already demonstrated the advantage of treating the question in the broad, fundamental way. To this day, Mr. Bryan pays the penalty. To the business world, of every section of the Union, he is known as the “Free Silver” crank, and the business world is dead against him.
In 1900, the Spanish war had temporarily engulfed economic questions. Bryan was astute enough to feel this; consequently, he discovered a new Paramount Issue. It was Imperialism. But Bryan was not the man to derive any benefit from it, for the simple reason that he was as much responsible for it as the Republicans themselves. Tired of camp life at Tampa, Mr. Bryan hurried to Washington City, exerted his personal influence with certain Democratic Senators, and prevailed upon Senator Clay and others to vote with the Republicans to ratify the Treaty of Paris.
As our Imperialism grows out of this Treaty, Mr. Bryan’s political dishonesty in raising such an issue against the Republicans was so glaring that they had very much less trouble in defeating him in 1900 than they had had in 1896.
Then came the ugly affair of the Bennett will; of Bryan’s acceptance of gifts of money aggregating $12,000; of his efforts to secure, secretly, a legacy of $50,000; of his astonishing lack of delicacy in drawing up, in his home, a will for a doting old man who was Bryan’s guest; of his mercenary persistence in his struggle against Bennett’s widow; of his claim for a large fee as Executor of a will which he had drawn and which the courts had set aside.
Then came the revelation that while appearing to the public as the devoted, unselfish, patriotic champion of Free Silver, he had been in the pay of the Silvre Kings all the time. Then we could understand why he had narrowed the money question to that pitiful detail. Millionaire Silver Mine-owners, like Marcus Daly and William A. Clark, didn’t care a rap about Constitutional money. What they wanted was the personal profit to be gained by them in carrying fifty cents’ worth of the white metal to the U. S. Mints and having it turned into a dollar. Free Silver meant millions of dollars to these Silver Kings. Therefore they paid Bryan big prices to make speeches for Free Silver. And the Peerless orator stuck to his text. And when the Silver Kings discontinued the pay, Mr. Bryan discontinued the speeches.
Afterwards came the campaign against Parker’s nomination in 1904. Pretty much everything that could be said to prove that such a nomination would be a base betrayal of the Jeffersonian element of the Democratic party, Bryan said. In Chicago, notably, he hired a hall, collected the faithful around him, made an impassioned speech setting forth the shame of such a Ryan-Belmont candidacy as that of Parker, and said that a Democrat ought to be ready and willing to die rather than submit to such a surrender of principle as would be involved in the nomination of Parker.
Similar heroic declarations Mr. Bryan made against the Clevelandites, the Wall Street element of his party, the undemocratic advocates of the British gold standard which had chained the world to London. In his book, in his paper, in his speeches,—particularly at Birmingham,—he vowed that he would never support a gold standard candidate and that he would quit the Democrats if the party adopted a gold standard platform.
“Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?” That was the tone of Bryan’s indignant reply whenever he was asked whether he would follow his party if it deserted its principles.
Alas! The heroics sounded well—but where was the hero?
We admit that Bryan made a great fight against the Ryan-Belmont hirelings in the Democratic National Convention of 1904. His forensic powers are of a high order, and they were magnificently displayed in that debate. But he wasn’t true grit, wasn’t dead game,—did not prove himself a thoroughbred. No, he is not the kind of bird that dies in the cock-pit; he showed the “dominecker.”
Had he met Parker’s gold telegram with a defiant, “I accept the challenge! Let those who are true to Democratic principles follow me out of this Convention!” he would have smashed the Ryan-Belmont slate, forced Parker out of the lists, won the nomination for himself, and might have been President.
But he sunk the popular hero into the party hack,—let them put the harness on, hitch him up and drive him in a direction that his record, his vows and his convictions made it a disgrace for him to travel.
Then came the speeches in which he said as much in favor of Parker as he had said against him,—and Parker had not changed a bit. The change was there, and it was vast,—but it was in Bryan.
Then came the swing backwards to radicalism again. Bryan spoke at the Jefferson Day banquet in Chicago in 1906 and said that the time had come for the Democratic party to declare itself in favor of the Government Ownership of the railroads. He advanced the proposition that the states should own the local lines while Uncle Sam ran the trunk lines. This absurd plan was the burden of the Bryan talk and Bryan editorials for more than a year,—long enough for the whole country to realize what an impractical “statesman” he is. So ludicrous a “break” queered him still further with the men of the business world, and told heavily against him in the campaign of this year.
Then, after his home-coming speech in Madison Square Garden, he made his final declaration in favor of Government Ownership. Having toured Europe and witnessed the advantages of State-owned public utilities, his own convictions in favor of that system had been strengthened.
But Democratic editors and politicians raised a Bourbon outcry against Government Ownership, and Bryan, after shuffling about awhile, took to the woods.
Then he fell in love with the Initiative and Referendum. Mightily in favor of giving Direct Legislation to the people was Bryan. But again the Bourbons raised their hands in holy horror, and again Bryan flunked. “Willing to teach the children that the earth is flat, or that it is round, whichever a majority of the School Board prefer”;—that’s the kind of pedagogue partisan politics has made out of W. J. B.
Then we heard him endorse Roosevelt, and agree with the President that Congress ought to pay the campaign expenses of the two old twins,—Chang and Eng,—and that honest bankers should be punished for crimes they didn’t commit, and that the Government should not establish Postal savings banks but should perpetuate the National banks!
Then we saw him dictate the Denver platform which is more Hamiltonian than the Parker platform of 1904, and less favorable to the masses than the platform of Mr. Taft. We saw him choose a Standard Oil tool for the Chairmanship of his Finance Committee; we saw the Tobacco represented on the same Committee; we saw him courting David B. Hill, Judge Parker, Charles Murphy, Pat McCarren and “Fingy” Conners; we saw him yoke up with the liquor interests in Maine, Indiana and Ohio; we saw him change his whole political creed until Ryan, Belmont, Harriman and Rockefeller had nothing to fear from him, and we saw him conduct a campaign in which he stood for no distinct vital democratic principle, whatever. Then we saw him dodge when the President asked him, through the newspapers, how he stood on the Pearre bill which seeks to have Congress declare that a man’s business is not entitled to the same protection as his property. Impaled on that point, Bryan could do nothing but squirm.
Then indeed, he lost out with level-headed men of all parties.
II.
Burdened with the record of his own instability, Bryan this year lost, practically, everything excepting the South. True, he got Nevada (two electoral votes,) and Colorado (five votes,) and Nebraska, (eight votes,) but this state he carried by making a piteous, tearful personal appeal,—and even then he got only a plurality, not a majority, and ran far behind the Democratic State ticket; but the West has repudiated him, just as the South and East have done.
It would not be worth while to dwell upon the humiliation of that political serfdom which kept the South in the Bryan column.
The South voted for Bryan, and is glad he wasn’t elected. Everybody, who knows anything, knows that. The fact ought to be able to penetrate the conceit of Bryan himself.
But is the fact important? It is, for its first consequence will be the elimination of Bryan, and its second will be the restoration of the South to her historic position in the Republic. It is the beginning of Southern self-assertion; the end of her political nullity.
Never again can Mr. Bryan hope to secure the support of the South. His record makes it impossible for her delegates to acquiesce in his nomination.
This being so, the Bryanites of other sections will recognize the folly of nominating him—for without the Solid South no Democrat can hope to win the Presidency.
When Bryan adopted that policy of Africanizing the Democratic party, he drove nails into his political coffin. The facts were not aired by the Southern papers during the campaign, but Bryan will hear from them when he bobs up serenely and goes after a fourth nomination. Ever since the Civil War, the Democratic party in the South has claimed to be the white man’s party. Because it was feared that a division of the whites into two parties would result in giving to the negroes the balance of power, the Southern people have allowed the Democracy of other sections to legislate against our interests, to ignore our industrial existence, to rob our producers under forms of law, to foist upon us candidates not of our choosing, and platforms which we detested.
The Democrats of other sections were permitted to treat us as though we belonged to them, because we feared to divide into two competitive white parties,—feared Negro Domination.
For thirty years the South has been struggling to establish White Supremacy, and to diminish the political importance of the negro.
Yet in this campaign of 1908 we heard Bryan’s lieutenant, Henry Watterson, declare that the time had come for the Negroes to divide and thus increase their political importance. The whole Bryanite campaign was pitched to that key. “The time has come to increase the political importance of the negro!”
In other words, the Bryanites deserted the Democratic position on the negro question, and went over to the Thad Stevens-Sumner position, at the very time that the Republicans, led by Roosevelt and Taft, were coming over to the Southern view. We saw Bryan flirting with the negro leaders, and seeking to make a Democratic asset out of the resentment which they felt because of Roosevelt’s pro-Southern position on the matter of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We likewise saw Mr. Bryan witness with seeming approval, the parade of negro clubs on whose banners were displayed extracts from Foraker’s speeches denouncing the President for his dismissal from the army of the black brutes who on their way to Brownsville insolently declared “When we get there all the women will look alike to us, white, black and Mexican”; and who put a climax to a series of outrages and threats by shooting up the town—killing one man at his own gate, bringing down the Chief of police with a shattered arm, riddling hotel and private houses with bullets; and terrorizing men, women and children.
Yes, we saw Bryan receiving negro delegations who came to confer with him about the negro soldiers; we saw the colored delegations cordially met and hospitably entertained; and we heard them say, that they were perfectly satisfied with the assurances which Mr. Bryan had given them. They circulated, by the hundred thousand, a letter, bearing the names of the most prominent negroes of the land, in which the statement occurs that “We have been in communication with Mr. Bryan for weeks and have received satisfactory assurances from him” as to patronage, recognition, and the amendments.
Mr. Bryan must have been aware of the fact that this circular letter was being used in his behalf. It is highly probable that his Campaign Committee furnished the money which paid for the printing and the mailing of it; and there is no doubt that the negro speakers who went about asking for votes for Bryan, because of Brownsville and because of the Southern Disfranchisement laws, were paid by the Bryanite Committee.
It would have been a calamity to the country had the desperate tactics of the Bryanites met with success. The impression would have been made that the negro vote elected him, and there is no telling how far that would have influenced Mr. Bryan in his official dealings with the negro leaders.
We must remember that he earnestly supported the candidacy of a negro against a white man, in Nebraska. The negro got the office. It is said that no such thing had occurred in Nebraska before.
He educated his daughter and one of his sons at the Social Equality “University of Nebraska,” and another of his sons is a student there now. To this Social Equality College, Mr. Bryan annually donates two hundred and fifty dollars.
He has never uttered a word against the mixed schools of Nebraska wherein the negro children are educated on terms of Social Equality with the whites. He has never condemned the intermarriage of blacks and whites. There is no law against it in Nebraska, and miscegenation is common.
Born and reared in Illinois, Mr. Bryan holds the anti-Southern view of the race question. By birth, education and environment, he got the belief that Social Equality is right, and he practices what he believes when he sends his children to be educated along with the negroes.
How can the South, knowing these things as she now does, ever support Bryan again? To do so would be to reverse her position on that question which to her is the most important of all. During the heat of the campaign, Southern editors who knew of these things kept mum. It will not be so when Bryan seeks the fourth nomination.
In the next national convention of the Democratic party, the South will not be run over as the Bryanites ran over her at Denver.
If she demands the Vice-Presidency in 1912, it won’t go to the attorney of the Brewers’ Combine of Indiana. If Lincoln’s name should again be lugged into the Convention, it will again be honored, but when the name of Robert E. Lee is mentioned it will not be hooted and hissed. Democrats of the other sections may not be pleased by the attitude of Southern delegations, but we venture the prediction that no Haskell brass-bands will insult them by tauntingly playing, “Marching thro’ Georgia.”
III.
But it is not such a misfortune to Mr. Bryan that he will never be President. Several millions of very respectable men share that lot with him. He is rich,—the only man that ever got rich doing reform work. In Bryan’s case, indeed, there has been no reform work,—just floods of talk about it.
He has friends everywhere, has no personal enemies, is of sanguine temperament, is rounding out into a comfortable fatness, has no bad habits, no gentlemanly vices, and is so unconsciously self-righteous in all that he does that he fails to realize what bad taste he displays when he introduces his wife’s name into a public speech and sets forth at length her qualifications for the position of “First Lady in the land.”
Personally, we bear Mr. Bryan no ill will and wish him no harm, but it is our deliberate opinion that his inordinate ambition for office and his mistakes as a leader have done more immense injury to the cause of reform. He destroyed the Populist party, he has wrecked the Democratic party, he has driven thousands of Conservative men into the Republican ranks, and thousands of radical Democrats and Populists to the Socialists.
His career has been rich in substantial rewards to Mr. Bryan himself, but, on the whole, it has been the bane of Jeffersonian democracy.