Don Quixote, starting out on horseback to abolish misery in the world, had hardly a more comprehensive programme.

Nothing is said anywhere in the platform about international arbitration. As to the navy, the following sentence suffices to show where the party stands: "We therefore favor the continued enlargement of the navy, and a complete system of harbor and seacoast defences." 1

What was the attitude of the Democratic party? It will hardly be denied that Mr. Cleveland at the end of his term had lost touch and control of its political element. Many of his actions that towards the Hawaiian revolution, his bond sales, his restoration of order in Chicago had called forth approbation from at least a considerable proportion of independent thinkers; but his hardly concealed indifference to and contempt for Congress excited its hostility. His extension of the civil service rules probably appealed most to the public sympathy but least to that of his party. It was said that at the Chicago Convention more bitterness was shown towards the existing administration than towards the Republicans. If Mr. Cleveland had appealed from Congress directly to the people he might have laid the foundation of a movement in the future. But no President since Abraham Lincoln seems to have had any idea of the immense force to be drawn from the calm but profound reservoir of the mass of public opinion.

When the Chicago Convention met in July there were absolutely no leaders. The short period of Democratic rule after thirty years of exclusion had ended in failure, and, except the President, had not evolved even the semblance of a statesman. There was a strong contrast between this and the assembly at St. Louis. The latter was in the hands of a combination of political intriguers

1 Review of Reviews, July, 1896.

2 See Chap. XIX.

probably as powerful as ever existed. The Chicago Convention was in no hands at all. It was a flock of sheep without a shepherd and the only question was which ram should jump over what fence. Never was there a stronger illustration of the necessity of personality for controlling masses of men. Here was an assembly of fifteen thousand souls, not bad people, probably ready to respond to any sentiment of virtue or generosity or self-sacrifice, but charged to the brim with hero-worship, and hungering and thirsting for a man.

And no man was given to them. The pitiless roll of the Juggernaut car in the shape of impersonal government for generations by committees, commissions, and legislatures, had crushed out all individuality and left nothing even on the victorious side but skilled wire-pullers. A mass so charged with electricity must, however, strike somewhere, and the lightning-rod was furnished by a single speech, of which the glittering point in one sentence went the rounds of the papers: "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." The heated blast of enthusiasm rushed forth to convert the congressional lawyer of yesterday into the demigod of a party.

William J. Bryan of Nebraska is a lawyer by profession, at that time thirty-six years of age and said to be the youngest man ever nominated for President. As a statesman he was an unknown quantity, having come before the country only as an average member of Congress.

Mr. Bryan has a voice of great power and singular charm, which he has learned to use with a very high degree of elocutionary art. His great effort at Chicago was full of carefully phrased periods and of carefully studied arguments which had done service more than once in the speeches which he had been delivering elsewhere. . . . His task was to produce the largest possible oratorical effect, and he evidently knew how best to use his oratorical stock in trade.1

1 Op. cit., August, 1896.

VOL. II-2 K

No speech which he has since made can be said to contain any statesmanlike or constructive idea, and a formal address which he delivered in New York before a large audience was practically a death-blow to his campaign.

The platform adopted was not very revolutionary in character. It favored an income tax and criticised in rather mild terms the decision of the Supreme Court against it. It advocated local self-government and the rights of the States, protesting against arbitrary interference by the federal authorities in local affairs and against government by injunction by federal judges; protested against a protective tariff; favored restriction of immigration; opposed trusts and monopolies and lavish appropriations by Congress. Its attitude in foreign affairs was expressed in a single clause.

We extend our sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic struggle for independence.

The head and front of the offence was in the following:—

We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation; that the standard silver dollar shall be a full legal tender equally with gold for all debts, public and private, and we favor such legislation as will prevent for the future the demonetization of legal tender money by private contract [that is, stipulating for payment in gold].

The platform also called for the substitution of greenbacks for national bank notes.

The words 'gold' and 'silver' in this connection have far more than their apparent meaning. They form the banners under which the opposing hosts are advancing to conflict. Gold in the popular mind is the symbol of capital and wealth, of trusts and monopolies, of the influences which are supposed to corrupt and control Congress and the government. Silver typifies the toiling millions who are working themselves up, or are being worked up, to

believe that their hope rests upon combining to resist oppression. Probably nine-tenths of those who are acquainted with the subject, whether from study or practice, believe that the poor would be the worst sufferers from our abandoning the common money standard of the world. But for the multitude it is a matter of sentiment without any real knowledge at all.

Nor can the line be sharply drawn. That a government by declaring paper money a legal tender should make it equal to gold coin is a falsehood so palpable as to seem to many minds even more glaring than it really is. But in this country for a hundred years, not to speak of earlier history, gold and silver have circulated on equal terms. In 1873, when silver was demonetized in this country, it was if anything slightly more valuable than gold. It has never been demonstrated, in fact it is incapable of demonstration, that the relative fall of silver was not caused by the cessation of its use as money in other countries; and a great many intelligent men, among whom was conspicuous the late Francis A. Walker of Boston, believe that this disuse has caused much suffering in the past and threatens vastly more in the future. It was, therefore, a fine subject for declamation, which was certainly not discouraged by the owners of silver mines with one hundred per cent profit in view.

It was felt throughout the country, and mainly upon this ground, combined with the generally unsatisfactory aspect of the finances, that the conflict was taking the form of one between capital and labor, and general anxiety and depression of business were everywhere apparent. Failing confidence in the government and the visibly growing strife between classes were filling the minds of men with dread, none the less potent because undefined. The popular vote, 6,500,000 for Bryan against 7,100,000 for McKinley, showed how close the contest was and how

much depended upon the course of events before 1900. The state of the finances seemed to render necessary an extra session of the new Congress immediately succeeding the old one on the 4th of March, 1897, an event of itself sufficient to cause alarm throughout the country. The inaugural address of President McKinley related almost entirely to the finances. A settlement of the currency question is imperative. The severest economy must be practised and extravagance in public expenditures stopped wherever it is found. The government should not be permitted to run behind or to increase its debt in times like the present.

The conditions of business demand the consideration of Congress. ... The depression of the last four years has fallen with especial severity upon the great body of toilers of the country. ... The depressed condition of industry on the farm and in the mine and factory has lessened the ability of the people to meet demands upon them.... Business conditions are not promising.

It is worthy of notice that the address did not contain one word as to Cuba.

Congress sat in session for nearly five months, and it is literally true to say that on the points of the President's address it accomplished nothing. In the first place, the advocates of the gold standard differed among themselves so widely that it became at once evident that they could reach no result. Between those who advocated a currency of legal tender greenbacks redeemable in gold, and those who demanded a voluntary circulation of State bank notes based upon their assets, there were numerous groups, none of which would yield a step to the others, while over against them were the silver men, urging a theory, fallacious and dangerous indeed, but as to which they were agreed and had the advantage of knowing exactly what they wanted.

With regard to the deficit in the revenue the majority