Free Silver Movement Analysis

Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, farmers organized collectively, at first locally, and eventually nationally into the Farmers Alliance, an organization that promoted economic cooperation and broad economic reform to protect the interests of farmers. Both of these movements helped to create the People’s Party, and Populist Party, which officially established its party platform in Omaha, Nebraska. With the economy still poor, there was widespread discontent with the two existing major political parties. Democrats had held the White House for the previous four years and were widely blamed for the severe economic depression of 1893. Before the democratic convention Bryan had traveled through the west, speaking passionately for the unlimited coinage

of silver and against president Cleveland’s do nothing response to the depression. Bryan was the first since Andrew Jackson to champion the poor, the discontented, and the oppressed against the financial and industrial titans. He also was the leader of a major party to call for the expansion of the federal government to promote the welfare by providing subsidies for farmers, legalizing labor strikes, regulating railroads, taxing the rich, and breaking up financial and industrial monopolies. The Populists had the choice of Bryan or running their own candidate. After great infighting at their St. Louis convention, they decided to endorse Bryan but with their own vice presidential nominee, Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. Watson was cautiously open to cooperation, but after the election he recanted any hope in the possibility of cooperation as a viable tool. Bryan's strength was based on the traditional Democratic vote. The Populists would reach the high water mark of their political power in 1896, when the Democratic Party nominated William Jennings Bryan as its candidate for President of the United States. In 1896, Bryan faced an uphill battle as the Democratic and Populist nominee.
Bryan thought it was not necessary for the United States to hold in reserve an amount of gold equal in value to all the paper money in circulation.

Bryan wanted the United States to use silver to back the dollar at a value that would inflate the prices farmers received for their crops, easing their debt burden. This position was known as the Free Silver Movement. Free silver was a major issue in the late 19th century; it advocated an inflationary monetary policy using the “free coinage of silver” as opposed to the deflationary of gold. Its supporters were Silverites, many were in the West where silver was mined. They advocated “free silver” the unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1 against gold coins. The debate pitted the pro-gold financial establishment of the Northeast, along with railroads, factories and businessmen, who would benefit from disinflation. Resulting from demand pressures on the relatively fixed gold money supply against a backdrop of economic expansion against poor farmers who would benefit from higher prices for their crops resulting from the prospective expansion of the money supply by allowing silver to also circulate as

money.
William Jennings crossed Bryan was the first major-party leader, a godly hero, to advocate the expansion of federal powers to promote the welfare of ordinary Americans.

He said that strikes by labor unions should be legalized; farmers should be given federal subsidies, the rich should be taxed, corporate campaign contributions should be banned, and liquor should be outlawed. McKinley knew he could no compete with bryan as an orator, so he conducted a traditional “front porch campaign” receiving select delegations of Republican supporters at his home in canton, Ohio and giving only prepared responses to the press. McKinley’s campaign manager Marcus Hanna, shrewdly betrayed Bryan as a “popacrat, a radical whose communistic sprit would ruin the capitalist system and create a class war. Hanna convinced the Republican Party to proclaim that it was unreservedly for sound money. Theodore Roosevelt, a rising star among the Republicans was aghast at the thought of Bryan becoming president. By preying upon fears, the McKinley campaign raised vast sums of money from corporations and wealthy donors to finance an army of 1,400 republican speakers who traveled the country in his support. It was the most expensive and sophisticated presidential campaign up to the point in history. In the end, Bryan and the democratic populist-silverte candidates were over whelmed by the better organized republican campaign. McKinley won the popular vote by 7.1 million to 6.5 million and the Electoral

College vote by 271 to 176.