Contemporary American History, 1877-1913

by Charles A. Beard

On the first ballot, fourteen candidates were voted for, but Mr. Bland and Mr. Bryan were clearly in the lead. On the fifth ballot, Mr. Bryan was declared nominated by a vote of 652 out of 930. Throughout the balloting, most of the eastern states abstained from voting. Ten delegates from Connecticut, seventeen or eighteen from Massachusetts, a majority from New Jersey, all of the delegates from New York, and a majority of the delegates from Wisconsin refused to take any part at all. Pennsylvania remained loyal throughout to the nominee from that state, Pattison, although it was a forlorn hope. Thus in the balloting for candidates, we discover the same alignment of the East against the West and South which was evident in the vote on the platform. In the vote on the Vice President which followed, the eastern states refused to participate—from 250 to 260 delegates abstaining during the five ballots which resulted in the nomination of Sewall. New York consistently abstained; so did New Jersey; while a majority of the delegates from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts refused to take part.

In the notification speech delivered by Mr. Stone at Madison Square Garden in New York on August 12, the Democratic party was represented as the champion of the masses and their leader as "a plain man of the people." He defended the men of the Chicago convention against the charge of being cranks, anarchists, and socialists, declaring them to be the representatives of the industrial and producing classes who constituted "the solid strength and safety of the state" against the combined aggressions of foreign money changers and Anglicized American millionaires—"English toadies and the pampered minions of corporate rapacity." Against the selfish control of the privileged classes, he placed the sovereignty of the people, declaring that within both of the old parties there was a mighty struggle for supremacy between those who stood for the sovereignty of the people and those who believed in "the divinity of pelf." He took pride in the fact that the convention represented "the masses of the people, the great industrial and producing masses of the people. It represented the men who plow and plant, who fatten herds, who toil in shops, who fell forests, and delve in mines. But are these to be regarded with contumely and addressed in terms of contempt? Why, sir, these are the men who feed and clothe the nation; whose products make up the sum of our exports; who produce the wealth of the republic; who bear the heaviest burdens in times of peace; who are ready always to give their lifeblood for their country's flag—in short, these are the men whose sturdy arms and faithful hands uphold the stupendous fabric of our civilization."

Mr. Bryan's speech of acceptance was almost entirely devoted to a discussion of the silver question. But he could not ignore the charge, which had then become widespread throughout the country, that his party meditated an attack upon the rights of property and was the foe of social order and national honor. He repudiated the idea that his party believed that equality of talents and wealth could be produced by human institutions; he declared his belief in private property as the stimulus to endeavor and compensation for toil; but he took his stand upon the principle that all should be equal before the law. Among his foes he discovered "those who find a pecuniary advantage in advocating the doctrines of non-interference when great aggregations of wealth are trespassing upon the rights of individuals." The government should enforce the laws against all enemies of the public weal, not only the highwayman who robs the unsuspecting traveler, but also the transgressors who "through the more polite and less hazardous means of legislation appropriate to their own use the proceeds of the toil of others."

In his opinion, the Democratic income tax was not based upon hostility to the rich, but was simply designed to apportion the burdens of government more equitably among those who enjoyed its protection. As to the matter of the Supreme Court, there was no suggestion in the platform of a dispute with that tribunal. For a hundred years the Court had upheld the underlying principle of the income tax, and twenty years before "this same Court sustained without a dissenting voice an income tax law almost identical with the one recently overthrown." The platform did not propose an attack on the Supreme Court; some future Court had as much right "to return to the judicial precedents of a century as the present Court had to depart from them. When Courts allow rehearings they admit that error is possible; the late decision against the income tax was rendered by a majority of one after a rehearing."

Discussing the monetary question, Mr. Bryan confined his argument to a few principles which he deemed fundamental. He disposed of international bimetallism by questioning the good faith of those who advocated it and declaring that there was an impassable gulf between a universal gold standard and bimetallism, whether independent or international. He rejected the proposition that any metal represented an absolutely just standard of value, but he argued that bimetallism was better than monometallism because it made a nearer approach to stability, honesty, and justice than a gold standard possibly could. Any legislation lessening the stock of standard money increased the purchasing power of money and lowered the monetary value of all other forms of property. He endeavored to show the advantages to be derived from bimetallism by farmers, wage earners, and the professional classes, and asked whether the mass of the people did not have the right to use the ballot to protect themselves from the disastrous consequences of a rising standard, particularly in view of the fact that the relatively few whose wealth consisted largely in fixed investments had not hesitated to use the ballot to enhance the value of their investments.

On the question of the ratio, sixteen to one, Mr. Bryan declared that, because gold and silver were limited in the quantities then in hand and in annual production, legislation could fix the ratio between them, simply following the law of supply and demand. The charge of repudiation he met with an argument in kind, declaring it to come "with poor grace from those who are seeking to add to the weight of existing debts by legislation which makes money dearer, and who conceal their designs against the general welfare under the euphonious pretense that they are upholding public credit and national honor." He concluded with a warning to his hearers that they could not afford to join the money changers in supporting a financial policy which destroyed the purchasing power of the product of toil and ended with discouraging the creation of wealth.

In a letter of acceptance of September 9, 1896, Mr. Bryan added little to the speeches he had made in the convention and in accepting the nomination. He attacked the bond policy of President Cleveland and declared that to assert that "the government is dependent upon the good will or assistance of any portion of the people other than a constitutional majority is to assert that we have a government in form but without vital force." Capital, he urged, was created by labor, and "since the producers of wealth create the nation's prosperity in time of peace and defend the nation's flag in time of peril, their interests ought at all times to be considered by those who stand in official positions." He criticized the abuses in injunction proceedings and favored the principle of trial by jury in such cases. He declared that it was not necessary to discuss the tariff at that time because the money question was the overshadowing issue, and all minor matters must be laid aside in favor of united action on that moot point.

A few of the advocates of the gold standard in the Democratic party, who could not accept the Chicago platform and were yet unwilling to go over to the Republicans, held a convention at Indianapolis in September, and nominated a ticket, headed by John M. Palmer for President, and Simon Buckner for Vice President. This party, through the address of its executive committee calling the convention, declared that Democrats were absolved from all obligations to support the Chicago platform because the convention had departed from the recognized Democratic faith and had announced doctrines which were "destructive of national honor and private obligation and tend to create sectional and class distinctions and engender discord and strife among the people." The address repudiated the doctrine of majority rule in the party, declaring that when a Democratic convention departed from the principles of the party, no Democrat was under any moral obligation to support its action.

The principles of the party which, the address declared, had been adhered to from Jefferson to Cleveland "without variableness or a shadow of turning" were summed up in a policy of laissez faire. A true Democrat, ran the address, "believes, and this is the cardinal doctrine of his political faith, in the ability of every individual unassisted, if unfettered by law, to achieve his own happiness, and therefore that to every citizen there should be secured the right and opportunity peaceably to pursue whatever course of conduct he would, provided such conduct deprived no other individual of the equal enjoyment of the same right and opportunity. He stood for freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of trade, and freedom of contract, all of which are implied by the century-old battle cry of the Democratic party 'Individual Liberty!' ... Every true Democrat ... profoundly disbelieves in the ability of the government, through paternal legislation, or supervision, to increase the happiness of the nation."

In the platform adopted at the convention, the "National Democratic party" was pledged to the general principles enunciated in the address and went on record as "opposed to all paternalism and all class legislation." It declared that the Chicago convention had attacked "individual freedom, the right of private contract, the independence of the judiciary, and the authority of the President to enforce Federal laws." It denounced protection and the free coinage of silver as two schemes designed for the personal profit of the few at the expense of the masses; it declared in favor of the gold standard, indorsed President Cleveland's administration, and went to the support of the Supreme Court by condemning "all efforts to degrade that tribunal or to impair the confidence and respect which it has deservedly held."