The political results of the election of 1896 were important. It definitely fixed the attitude of the Republican party on the currency question; it gave the party control of the executive chair and of Congress at an important time; and it ensured the domination of the propertied classes and the laissez faire philosophy in the party organization. On the other hand, the Democratic party had incurred the suspicion and hostility of the East, with hardly a compensating increase of strength in the West; its principles had become radical for that day and had abruptly changed from those of previous years; its membership included more of the discontented classes than before; and its leadership had been snatched from the hands of an experienced and conservative leader and placed in the care of an untried radical. It remained to be seen whether the victors would attempt to study and meet the complaints of the farmer and the wage earner; whether the new Republican leaders would be able to preserve the laissez faire attitude toward the railroads and the corporations; and whether the forces of dissent represented in Populism and radical Democracy had received a death blow or only a rebuff.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Peck contains one of the most illuminating accounts of the rising in the West, together with the campaign of 1896. H. Croly, Marcus A. Hanna (1912), is one of the few critical biographies of leaders who have lived since the Civil War. W.J. Bryan, The First Battle (1897), is indispensable; C.S. Olcott, William McKinley (2 vols., 1916), is uncritical and eulogistic, but makes important material available; C.A. Beard, Contemporary American History (1914), contains a good chapter; W.H. Harvey, Coin's Financial School (1894), is mentioned in the text; Carl Becker's clever essay in Turner Essays in American History (1910), throws light on Kansas psychology; S.J. Buck, Agrarian Crusade (1920), is excellent. Consult also D.R. Dewey, National Problems (1907); J.A. Woodburn, Political Parties and Party Problems (1914); Quarterly Journal of Economics, X, 269; and F.E. Haynes, Third Party Movements (1916). The files of The Nation, and the New York Tribune and Sun well portray eastern opinion. The references to the rise of the populist movement under Chap. XII are also of service.
* * * * *
[1] I have drawn at this point upon Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 453-456.
[2] Peck, 451-453.
[3] For brief accounts of Tillman, see Leupp, National Miniatures, 117; N.Y. Times, July 4, 1918; N.Y. Evening Post, July 3, 1918.
[4] Cf. Whitlock, Forty Years of It, 64 ff.; Altgeld, Live Questions and The Cost of Something for Nothing.
[5] In connection with the following pages, consult Croly, Marcus A. Hanna, one of the few satisfactory biographies of this period.
[6] As finally adopted, the gold plank asserted: "We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be preserved. All our silver and paper currency must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor all measures designed to maintain inviolably the obligations of the United States and all our money, whether coin or paper, at the present standard, the standard of the most enlightened nations of the earth." Several leaders claimed to have been the real author of the gold plank. It seems more nearly true that many men came to the convention prepared to insist on a definite statement and that each thought himself the originator of the party policy.