On July 9, 1896 at the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, Democrat nominee William Jennings Bryan ended his acceptance speech with lines that have become famous in American political history:
If they [William McKinley and the Republicans] dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!
The burning issue of the day — indeed, the issue dominating the 1896 election — was how to end a trenchant recession that had begun in 1893 and had led to double-digit unemployment, labor unrest, and falling prices which hurt farmers and other debtors. Mr. Bryan, in an historical precursor, called for large government-directed stimulus, but solely of the monetary variety: interestingly, the social mores of the day still dictated broad bipartisan agreement on the sacred inviolability and sanctity of property, and hence progressive income taxation, let alone redistributive welfare spending, were still to be discovered by Mr. Bryan’s 20th century political descendants. But a monetarily-induced inflation, in the form of a move away from gold and toward bimetallism, would serve just as well: Bryan thought that introducing silver as money at an artificial 15:1 value ratio to gold would cheapen the currency by inflating the money supply, offering relief to burdened debtors in the Midwest farm belt at the expense of “Eastern Establishment” banking interests (by contrast, the current market-based, or currently “correct”, silver:gold ratio is 55:1; while not as divergent a century ago, the artificial 15:1 ratio would have devalued gold).
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