This paragraph reminds me that Mr. Bryan was likewise a candidate in the year 1904.
He ran for the United States Senate in the State of Nebraska, and he got no votes to speak of. Out of 133 members of the Legislature, he captured less than a dozen.
The small vote which he received—a vote much smaller than Populists, Democrats and even Republicans expected him to receive—shows either that there are few who agree with him as to the course of action to be pursued, or that they did not have confidence in his leadership. “It is not only more charitable, but”—and so forth.
Mr. Bryan says that “reforms are not to be secured all at once.” Quite right; and they will never be secured at all by leaders who change front as often as Mr. Bryan has done within the last twelve months. Neither will they be secured by a political party which preaches a certain creed for eight years and then throws it aside like a worn out garment. Nor will reforms ever be secured by a party which contains so many different sorts of Democrats that nobody knows which is the genuine variety.
Let the Greenbacks Alone!
To the right, to the left, in front, in the rear, we are beset by problems, abuses, critical conditions, wrongs crying for redress, victims of legislative injustice demanding relief. That a President of the United States should be blind to so many self-evident conditions, deaf to so many sounds of suffering, and should go out of his way to strike at the Greenback currency is a fact to cause astonishment.
What harm is the Greenback doing to anybody? What evil has it ever wrought?
The approval of Lincoln gave it life; the soldier who fought for the Union, when Roosevelt was in the cradle, was paid with it; the Union armies were fed and clothed with it when gold had run off and hid. The Greenback saved the Government in its hour of need, and it has done good each day of its life ever since. If we had five times as much of it as now exists, the country would be twice as well off.
Who is it that hates the Greenback?