Aside from the Scopes trial, three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan is best known for delivering his “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention.
Some say it was the greatest speech in American political history.
In 1896, the nation was still reeling from the Panic of 1893. The ensuing depression lasted until 1897. Bryan, “The Great Commoner,” wanted to relieve the consequent heavy debt burden of farmers, Western miners and workers generally. He believed using both gold and silver as legal tender (bimetallism) was the best way to do it.
David Haddad
Predictably, Wall Street and the Eastern banks objected.
‘Cross of Gold’ speech
All this led to the mesmerizing closing lines of Bryan’s 1896 address: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
Not that his speech did not have other memorable lines:
The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer.
When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.
There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.
Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
And so did Bryan forge his political reputation as the champion of rural America.
Another speech
But four years later, Bryan wrote another speech. A speech delivered in 1900, when he was again the nominee of the Democratic Party. A speech that not only reiterated Bryan’s economic ideas but outlined his foreign policy as well. A speech with even stronger rhetoric, which laid bare real differences between the two parties.
Consider these lines:
The contest of 1900 is a contest between democracy on the one hand and plutocracy on the other.
The Republican Party is dominated by those influences which constantly tend to substitute the worship of mammon for the protection of the rights of man.
Upon all important questions today, Republican legislation tends to make money the master and man the servant.
No one has a right to expect from society more than a fair compensation for the services which he renders to society. If he secured more, it is at the expense of someone else. It is no injustice to him to prevent his doing injustice to another. To him who would, either through class legislation or in the absence of necessary legislation, trespass upon the rights of another the Democratic Party says, “Thou shalt not.”
From here, Bryan shifted the focus of his speech to foreign policy. At that time, the question of the day was the future of the Philippines. Spain recently had ceded the Philippines to the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war. In true colonial fashion, the Filipinos themselves were not consulted.
President McKinley promised the Filipinos he would win their “confidence, respect and affection” through his policy of “benevolent assimilation.” He did, of course, mention that “there must be sedulously maintained the strong arm of authority, to repress disturbance and to overcome all obstacles to the bestowal of the blessings of good and stable government upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the free flag of the United States.”
What the Filipinos got was 200,000 deaths.
With respect to the Philippines and American imperialism, Bryan had this to say:
If it is right for the United States to hold the Philippine Islands permanently and imitate European empires in the government of colonies, the Republican Party ought to state its position and defend it, but it must expect the subject races to protest against such a policy and to resist to the extent of their ability.
It was God himself who placed in every human heart the love of liberty. He never made a race of people so low in the scale of civilization or intelligence that it would welcome a foreign master.
If this nation surrenders its belief in the universal application of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, it will lose the prestige and influence which it has enjoyed among the nations as an exponent of popular government.
“It was God himself who placed in every human heart the love of liberty.”
A large standing army is not only a pecuniary burden to the people, and, if accompanied by compulsory service, a constant source of irritation, but it is ever a menace to a republican form of government.
The army is the personification of force, and militarism will inevitably change the ideals of the people and turn the thoughts of our young men from the arts of peace to the science of war.
What is our title to the Philippine Islands? Do we hold them by treaty or by conquest? Did we buy them, or did we take them? Did we purchase the people? If not, how did we secure title to them? Were they thrown in with the land?
If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, it is impossible to secure title to people, either by force or by purchase.
William Jennings Bryan
The Democratic Party is in favor of the expansion of trade. It would extend our trade by every legitimate and peaceful means; but it is not willing to make merchandise of human blood.
Imperialism would be profitable to the army contractors; it would be profitable to the ship owners, who would carry live soldiers to the Philippines and bring dead soldiers back; it would be profitable to those who would seize upon the franchises, and it would be profitable to the officials whose salaries would be fixed here and paid over there; but to the farmer, to the laboring man and to the vast majority of those engaged in other occupations it would bring expenditure without return and risk without reward.
The “gun-powder gospel” — the idea that we ought to “thrash the natives until they understand who we (Christians) are.” Every bullet sent, every cannon shot, and every flag waved means righteousness.”
(Are we) commanded to civilize with dynamite and proselyte with the sword?
The command, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” has no Gatling gun attachment.
The Son of Man (did) not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.
Compare, if you will, the swaggering, bullying, brutal doctrine of imperialism with the Golden Rule and the commandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Bryan goes on to critique what was then known as manifest destiny but today might be referred to as American exceptionalism.
When our opponents are unable to defend their position by argument they fall back upon the assertion that it is destiny and insist that we must submit to it, no matter how much it violates our moral percepts and our principles of government. This is a complacent philosophy. It obliterates the distinction between right and wrong and makes individuals and nations the helpless victims of circumstance.
Destiny is the subterfuge of the invertebrate, who, lacking the courage to oppose error, seeks some plausible excuse for supporting it.
Bryan’s closing paragraph, too long to reprint here, is a breathtaking vision of the possibilities of the future of an America that stays true to its own founding principles.
Why overlooked?
Why has this speech been overlooked? Why has the Democratic Party abandoned the noble principles laid out in Bryan’s speech? Why is there now barely any difference between the two parties? Why has America twice elected a fascist oligarch? Why does the United States persist in its imperial foreign policy? How could Bryan have possibly lost after making yet another incredible speech?
Perhaps all this can be explained by the notion that the American people were not, and are not, as principled as Bryan. McKinley promised territorial expansion, economic growth and prosperity — all courtesy of the “gun-powder gospel.” It’s a message that worked then. It works today.
Bryan himself listed several reasons for his second loss: the fear of change, the intimidating threats by banks not to loan money to small businesses unless Republicans win, the opposition of the railroads to any increase in the regulatory power of the Interstate Commerce Commission, objections to a progressive income tax.
Bryan did not place the blame on the American people for again electing imperialist McKinley. But after the election, in December 1900, he offered this prophetic analysis: “Back of all the questions which have been referred to lies the deep and lasting struggle between human rights and inhuman greed. If greed triumphs, its victory will transform our government into a plutocracy and our civilization into barbarism.”
Perhaps this is why no one cares to remember Bryan’s “other” speech.
David Haddad is the author of the play The Scope of William Jennings Bryan. It has been staged in New York at the Chain Theater and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he currently resides. The play re-creates the last speech given by Bryan, in Winchester, Tenn., four days after the end of the Scopes trial. Bryan died the next day. Haddad has a degree in history from Michigan State University. His satirical play, Yahweh the Floorwalker, was awarded second prize in the 2024 New York International Theater Competition.
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