Download Wyatt Wells RHETORIC OF THE STANDARDS: THE DEBATE OVER

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 14 (2015), 49–68
doi:10.1017/S153778141400053X
Wyatt Wells
RHETORIC OF THE STANDARDS: THE DEBATE
OVER GOLD AND SILVER IN THE 1890S
Abstract
In the 1890s, questions about whether to base the American currency upon gold or silver dominated
public discourse and eventually forced a realignment of the political parties. The matter often confuses modern observers, who have trouble understanding how such a technically complex—even
arcane—issue could arouse such passions. The fact that no major nation currently backs its currency with precious metal creates the suspicion that the issue was a “red herring” that distracted from
matters of far greater importance. Yet the rhetoric surrounding the “Battle of the Standards” indicates that the more sophisticated advocates of both sides understood that, in the financial context of
the 1890s, the contest between gold and silver not only had important economic implications but
would substantially affect the future development of the United States.
In the 1890s, the Battle of the Standards convulsed American politics. One of the chief
combatants, William Jennings Bryan, wrote, “Business partnerships were dissolved on
account of political differences; bosom friends became estranged; families were
divided—in fact we witnessed such activity of mind and stirring of heart as this nation
has not witnessed before for thirty years.”1 At the heart of this bitter conflict was a technical, even arcane financial question: should the United States maintain the gold standard
or go to “free silver” at sixteen-to-one, in effect adopting a silver standard? From later
perspectives, the focus on such a narrow issue seems strange, and some dismiss it altogether. Historian Lawrence Goodwyn describes the Battle of the Standards as a “triumph
of form over substance.”2 Yet hindsight is not infallible. The people of the day considered
the issue central, and in many cases, their concerns still resonate.
THE FINANCIAL CONTEXT
Under the gold standard, the United States redeemed dollars on demand, in gold, at the
rate of $20.64 to the ounce. Americans thereby anchored their currency to those of other
gold standard countries—France; Germany; and most important, Britain—which were
their chief trading partners and a major source of investment capital.3 To maintain the
gold standard, however, the United States pursued a restrictive monetary policy that
forced prices down. Between 1873 and 1896, prices fell by roughly one-third. This
decline particularly hurt farmers, who were often in debt and saw the prices of their
Wyatt Wells, Auburn University at Montgomery; email: [email protected]
© Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
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crops sink even more than average—in the case of the most important crops, cotton and
wheat, by 50 percent. Persistent deflation kept the currency issue at the forefront of politics. Initially, inflationists focused on greenbacks, the paper currency issued during the
Civil War.4 Yet the discovery of huge deposits of silver in the American West made it an
increasingly attractive vehicle for inflation. By the 1880s, those squeezed by falling
prices were demanding the “free coinage” of silver at $1.29 an ounce. Because the
market price of silver was well below $1.29, free coinage would almost certainly lead
to a substantial increase in the money supply, inflation, and devaluation. The results
would probably help farmers but might well disrupt international trade and investment.5
The currency issue cut across party lines. Democrats from the South and Republicans
from the Great Plains, who represented cotton and wheat farmers, respectively, were
amenable to inflation. Democrats from New York and Republicans from Massachusetts,
centers of commerce and industry, preferred gold. An all-out fight over the currency
threatened to splinter both parties, giving political leaders a strong incentive to compromise. In the late 1870s, the government forged a workable accommodation between gold
and silver. In 1879, the United States adopted the gold standard, replacing the paper currency forced upon it by the Civil War; but at the same time, it began to coin a limited but
significant amount of silver.6 This policy expanded the money supply, even as buoyant
growth and a substantial federal budget surplus allowed the government to keep silver
money at par with gold. This compromise failed to mollify the most committed partisans
of either metal, popularly known as silverites and goldbugs, but most Americans seemed
satisfied with it as long as the compromise worked financially, which it did for almost a
decade.
This equilibrium began to unravel in the late 1880s when, after several years of relative stability, farm prices began falling again, generating new calls for inflation.
Deflation encouraged the rise of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party (the Populists)—both of which challenged the existing political structure. Once again, politicians devised a compromise, having the government purchase all the silver mined in
the United States with Treasury Bills that it promised to redeem, on demand, in
gold. This expedient collapsed in 1893. A devastating financial crisis and an alarming
drop in the U.S. government’s gold reserve convinced President Grover Cleveland that
compromise was no longer realistic, and he rammed through Congress legislation
ending the purchase of silver. Victory came at a high price, however. The president’s
policy alienated much of his own Democratic Party, and he had to rely on Republicans
to get his measure through the Senate. Cleveland believed that the affirmation of the
gold standard would dispel the financial panic, but instead depression settled on the
country, lasting into 1897.7 Between them, the bitter debate over silver coinage in
1893 and the Depression destroyed the middle ground and inaugurated the Battle of
the Standards, which dominated national politics through the 1896 presidential election, when Republican William McKinley’s victory over Democrat William Jennings
Bryan settled the matter in favor of gold.
Yet the question remains: why did free silver and the gold standard arouse such passions? As William Dillon, a prominent Chicago journalist and lawyer, put it, “This is a
question of enormous complexity about which men of the highest capacity, who have
made a special study of the subject, are still at variance. But to read the gold papers in
the country one would conclude that no man who was not a born idiot could see any
Rhetoric of the Standards 51
merit on the silver side. And to read the silver papers one would suppose that no man not
fit subject for the penitentiary could advocate the single gold standard.”8
THE CRIME OF ‘73
According to silverites, the course of American history pivoted on events in 1873. As
they saw it, silver coinage constituted part of the fabric of the American Republic. In
1792, at the urging of Alexander Hamilton, Congress authorized the free coinage of
both gold and silver. As Senator John Daniel (D-VA) insisted, “The great men who
framed our institutions were bimetallists. Our system was designed by Hamilton and
Jefferson and approved by Washington; and it existed, flourished, and fulfilled its function from 1793 to 1873 … We flourished as no one nation has ever flourished since time
began.”9 Even the Civil War could not permanently halt the country’s progress. After
that conflict, as one silverite wrote, “hope sang is the hearts of America’s millions; the
nation, despite the terrible ravages of the late war, was springing in unparalleled
prosperity.” The reason was simple: “Money was plentiful.” Unfortunately, “there
were … two classes disturbed over the prosperity of the people. One was England’s
capitalists, and the other was the usurer class in our country—the drones in the hive
of civilization.”10
In 1873, Congress demonetized silver. An otherwise routine piece of legislation standardizing the coinage dropped the silver dollar from the list of authorized coins. Because
this coin was the only silver money subject to free coinage, the omission effectively left
gold as the sole basis for the currency. At the time, few commented on the measure, and
many then in Congress would later insist that they did not recall the bill. The record
clearly shows that the measure went through the usual procedures and that some senators
and congressmen did discuss it, but most lawmakers probably paid little attention to what
was apparently a technical measure without policy implications.11 The country was still
on a paper standard—neither silver nor gold coins circulated in the normal course of business.12 Given the many issues competing for the attention of legislators, it is easy to
imagine that few studied the bill carefully.
Silverites considered this measure an epic piece of deceit. In Seven Financial Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the American People, one of the seminal texts of the Populist
movement, Sarah Emery claimed, “In 1872, silver being demonetized in France,
England, and Holland, a capital of $500,000 was raised, and Ernest Seyd of London
was sent to this country with the fund, as agent of the foreign bond holders and capitalists,
to effect the same object (demonetization of silver), which was accomplished.”13 Although few other silverites were as specific as Emery, a large portion of them saw the
1873 act as the product of conspiracy. A report issued in 1890 by silverite members of
the House of Representatives asserted, “The conspiracy formed in the Old World,
planned and so successfully carried through there and here, was aimed to confine the
debt-paying medium of the nations concerned to the single metal, gold … Gold
decreed to rapidly rise in value, thus adding fifty percent to the value of credits, enriching
creditors, public and private, at the expense of debtors and taxpayers.”14 This was the
“Crime of ‘73.” The results were disastrous. Sen. Wilkinson Call (D-FL) asserted,
“There have been tyrants, there have been desolating armies, there has been scourges
of disease, but at no period in the history of the world have a larger proportion of the
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great mass of people been placed, even in the midst of the splendid inventions and progress of civilization, in greater conditions of suffering and poverty.”15
Silverites saw the conspiracy’s success as marking a deeper shift in political power. In
1893, Representative Thomas Stockdale (D-MO) insisted, “A truthful history of the last
thirty years of legislation touching finances would disclose a continuous, vigilant and
powerful (and I may say successful) organization of the money interests of the country
to dominate the currency to private interests. Those people have been most remarkably
successful and have continuously grown strong and made their opponents correspondingly weaker.”16 During the 1896 campaign, William Jennings Bryan stated, “With all
laws in favor of trusts and monopolists, the coercion of the government has allowed
the few to tax and absorb the entire earnings of the common people. All the wealth
created by the ingenuity of the masses in mechanical arts, in industrial and agricultural
pursuits, has gone into the coffers of the few.”17 As Frank Parsons, an engineer and
educator with a broad interest in social reform, declared in 1896, “It is a question not of
the remonetization of silver, but of the remanitization of government—a question of entrusting the federal power to men in hearty sympathy with the great common people, or to
men in sympathy with Wall Street and the whole army of parasites and monopolies.”18
Silverites viewed the history of the Republic as an ongoing struggle between the
wealthy—particularly bankers and other financiers—and the great mass of ordinary
people for control of the government. They considered Thomas Jefferson’s resistance
to the First Bank of the United States and Andrew Jackson’s war against the Second
Bank as precedents for their own campaign. Silverites also enlisted the foremost saint
in the nation’s secular pantheon, Abraham Lincoln, citing a letter attributed to him in
late 1864: “As a result of the war corporations have been enthroned and the era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor
to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment, more
anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.”19 In
1873, these fears became fact, and the country fell under the control of a financial
oligarchy.
Silverite history did considerable violence to the facts. No silver dollars circulated in
the United States in 1873, so demonetization did not reduce the supply of money.20 Most
legislators who voted to eliminate the silver dollar believed they were doing away with an
obsolete coin that no one had used for twenty-five years. Financial sophisticates such as
Senator John Sherman (R-OH), who managed the bill in the Senate and would, as Treasury Secretary from 1877 to 1880, engineer the American return to the gold standard, did
understand that this measure committed the United States to gold. Sherman, and most
others who had studied the question carefully, expected silver prices to fall as a result
both of Germany’s shift to the gold standard and the discovery of huge deposits of
silver in the American West, but even they did not anticipate the scale of the collapse.21
Nor is there evidence that foreign interests ever lobbied the U.S. Congress about the currency. The charge of bribery against Ernest Seyd, for example, was a complete fabrication. Seyd, a noted expert on coinage, did not visit the United States in 1872 or 1873. At
the request of one of the representatives managing the 1873 coinage bill, he did write a
lengthy memo on the legislation, but this document strongly criticized the decision to
drop silver coinage.22 The oft-cited letter from Lincoln was a forgery. Silverites had a
Rhetoric of the Standards 53
legitimate claim to the political legacy of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, but
Lincoln had signed legislation creating the national banking system, a bête noire of
silverites.
This mixture of conspiracy theory and pseudo-history has led many to discount silverites entirely. In his Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1955 study, The Age of Reform, Richard Hofstadter wrote, “Populist thought showed an unusually strong tendency to account for
relatively impersonal events in highly personal terms,” and was driven by “a common
fear of an impending apocalypse.” He considered such thinking typical of “those who
have obtained only a low level of education, whose access to information is poor, and
who are … completely shut out from access to the centers of power.”23 Yet conspiracy
theories have a long if not exactly honorable history in American politics. Even Thomas
Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln sometimes blamed conspiracies for political developments that alarmed them. As historian Jeffrey Ostler convincingly argues, silverites
merely tapped into some of the less attractive language and habits of thought of the political culture to which they belonged to justify their attack on the existing political
parties.24 Moreover, political corruption was pervasive in the Gilded Age, as most silverites (and many goldbugs) recognized. Their error was to conflate many small, varied conspiracies into one vast, focused one.
However overwrought, this rhetoric points to debt as a basic cause of unrest, as well as
to the regional animosities that undergird conflict. In the recently settled West, mortgages
were ubiquitous, and chattel loans (short-term credits) were common as well, while most
Southern farmers depended on the crop lien simply to get through the year. Lindley
Keasbey, an economist living in the West, wrote, “The settler of this region has ever
been a borrower of eastern capital. He needed the money at the outset to redeem the
barren lands stretching out before him. He has needed extra funds ever since to
enlarge his original holdings. With his face turned resolutely toward the setting sun,
for years the western farmer has toiled assiduously, striving to save enough to pay off
his eastern debt after providing at least a decent living for his family. The harder he
labored, and the greater the amount of produce he sent to eastern markets, just so
much more difficult it seemed to him to keep up with the ever-increasing interest on
his eastern farm mortgage.”25 As even Hofstadter grudgingly conceded, silverites had
a respectable financial argument.26 The price of silver fell below the official price of
$1.29 an ounce in 1876, and it continued to fall, bottoming out around $.63 an ounce
in the mid-1890s. Under the old coinage law, this decline would have led to the
minting of silver dollars in huge quantities, increasing the supply of money and at
least limiting the fall in prices that caused such hardship among farmers. The 1873 legislation foreclosed this possibility.27 Silverites never made a convincing case that this
measure was a crime, but they could reasonably argue that it was an error.
MONETARY JUSTICE
Those on both sides of the money question agreed that debtors had a moral as well as a
legal obligation to repay their creditors in money with value roughly equal to that
lent. The question was how to reckon that value. Here, silverites had a strong case
because they could point to the substantial fall in prices since 1873. William Harvey,
perhaps the foremost propagandist for silver, produced a table demonstrating that
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cotton and wheat prices had closely followed that of silver since 1870, with all falling by
half.28 Senator William Stewart (R-NV) insisted, “An ounce of silver in any part of the
world will buy as much of labor and property as it would twenty years ago, and no more.
An ounce of gold will buy twice as much of the necessities of life as it would twenty years
ago.”29 Free silver would simply return prices to their previous level and require lenders
to accept dollars with the same purchasing power as those they had lent.
Defenders of the gold standard focused on the cost of labor. Sen. George Gray (D-DL)
insisted, “I find measured by labor, … measured by the wages of artisans and the toiling
people of this country as well as Europe, that gold has not appreciated, and I have yet to
hear why that test is not the best test which can be applied to ascertain, whether it [gold]
be appreciated or no.”30 Frank Taussig, one of the country’s outstanding economists,
found this argument persuasive. He wrote, “In such a state of things, there can hardly
be said to be any real hardship for the debtor. It is true that prices have fallen, and that
the money he repays the creditor will buy more goods than it did when the loan was contracted; but his own money income has risen, or at least not fallen, and the repayment of
the loan can cause him no special hardship.”31
Although other prices had fallen relative to labor, defenders of the gold standard contended that this phenomenon reflected great advances in productivity that allowed producers to sell for less while enjoying the same money income. David A. Wells, a
distinguished scientist and former Special Commissioner of Revenue for the federal government, argued, “Man, within the last thirty or fifty years, has attained such a degree of
control over the forces of nature, and has so compassed their use, that he has been able to
do far more work in a given time and produce far more product, measured by quantity in
ratio to a given amount labor, than ever before … We have, therefore, a natural, sufficient, and non-disputable cause of the remarkable decline in prices under consideration.”32 Technological advances also accounted for the fall in the price of cotton and
wheat. Railroads opened the American prairies and the Argentine pampas to the cultivation of wheat, while steamships linked these regions to the markets of Europe. Likewise,
the development of steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal facilitated India’s
growing exports of cotton and wheat. Together, these factors had created a worldwide
glut of those two commodities. As a campaign pamphlet supporting McKinley noted,
American wheat production had doubled between 1870 and 1895, and “nobody pretends
there were twice as many people in the country to eat up the flour.” Meanwhile, other
grower nations had tripled their exports. “I don’t see,” the author wrote, “how any
amount of silver coined at our mints is going to stop these fellows raising wheat and shipping it to Liverpool.”33 Silverites reacted angrily to the idea that farmers were suffering
from their own efficiency. One widely circulated pamphlet written by a veteran of the
Union Army stated, “This is devilish doctrine! … If overproduction brings down
values, let us try an overproduction of money, to bring that down within the reach of
the common people.”34
The issue of monetary justice and fair repayment also depended on when loans were
made. Prices had declined substantially since 1873, but as Senator William Allison
(R-IO) said in 1893, “When you come to the question of debts of twenty years ago
they are very few indeed. It is stated by those who have examined the matter that
debts on the average are only nine months old. I appeal to the experience of Senators
around me. How many of them owe a debt that they owed in 1873?”35 As one report
Rhetoric of the Standards 55
issued by representatives favorable to the gold standard put it, “Substantially all obligations now existing in this country … have been incurred since this nation resumed specie
[gold] payments [in 1879] … The gold dollar is, therefore, not only the best, but the only
honest dollar in which obligations can now be discharged.”36 Silverites and goldbugs
wrangled over the average age of debts—a debate perpetuated by the absence of reliable
statistics on the matter. Yet even accurate statistics probably would not have resolved the
question, because debtors and creditors saw debts differently. For instance, farm mortgages generally ran five years, but when they matured, farmers usually paid off only
part of the loan and rolled over the rest into a new mortgage, often with a different
lender. The same was often true of short-term credits. Farmers—understandably—
dated such debts from when they first took out a loan, while lenders—just as understandably—dated the obligation from when they extended the current loan.
Despite the ambiguities, defenders of the gold standard emphasized honest repayment.
In his 1896 letter accepting the Republican nomination, William McKinley wrote, “The
American people hold the financial honor of our country as sacred as our flag, and can be
relied to guard it with the same sleepless vigilance.”37 Goldbugs seethed at what they
considered the dishonesty of Free Silver, which they referred to as “repudiation.”
They thought of money as a sort of contract that the government and population were
honor bound to support. Many silverites, including Harvey “Coin” and Bryan, acknowledged this concern by vehemently insisting that the free coinage of the white metal would
not entail devaluation.38 The content of the debate suggests that many Americans shared
the goldbugs’ moral understanding of money, which helps account for McKinley’s
victory.
THE PRODUCING CLASSES
Silverites never doubted that they represented the great mass of working people, who
were the victims of the gold standard. The “producing classes” of the country,
however, had different interests when it came to the currency. Rising prices would no
doubt benefit farmers, but urban workers would probably suffer. A combination of
steady wages and falling prices had substantially increased the real income of workers
since the 1870s, and that class naturally looked askance at any scheme to raise the
cost of what they bought.39 Defenders of the gold standard certainly emphasized the
point, contending that, because the silver in a silver dollar had a market price of only
about $.50, under free silver the dollar would be worth only half as much as the
current (gold) dollar. One McKinley campaign pamphlet insisted, “The answer from
the American wage-earner to the proposition to reduce his wages by one-half should
be prompt and unhesitating … The American laborer is entitled to the best dollar at all
times.”40 Silverites had trouble refuting this charge because the point of free silver
was inflation. William Harvey took refuge in semantics, insisting that a dollar was
always a dollar, be it silver or gold, ignoring the possibility that a silver dollar, while
still a dollar, might buy less than a gold one.41 More thoughtful silverites contended
that free silver would benefit workers by stimulating the overall economy. Frank
Parsons argued, “When prices go up wages will also rise, and employment will
become more continuous and secure. The first effect will be that a day’s wages will
buy somewhat less than at present—prices will be lifted first—then the resulting
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stimulation of business will call for more labor, mills and factories will run full time
instead of half or a third of the time, men at work will have work for a larger part of
the year, and many not at work at all will be able to get work; the result will be that a
year’s wages will buy a good deal more than at present.”42 To later observers, steeped
in Keynesian economics, Parsons’s argument seems almost intuitive, but his contemporaries were not so sure. The editors of the New England Magazine, who were sympathetic
to reform in general and to labor unions in specific, warned that free silver would create
“an inflated, depreciated currency. The workingmen of the country, whose wages never
rise in proportion to the rise of general prices under an inflated currency, would be the
quickest, the acutest and the longest sufferers.”43 The experience of the Civil War,
during which prices rose substantially but wages followed only after a lag of several
years, seemed to bear out such warnings.44 McKinley’s strong showing in workingclass districts indicates that the goldbugs’ argument had traction.
Bryan had another explanation for his poor showing among workers. After the election, he wrote, “Many employees were either directly or indirectly compelled to
support the Republican ticket.”45 This claim became an article of faith among silverites,
and many historians picked it up. In his 1931 classic, The Populist Revolt, John D. Hicks
asserted that, in 1896, “Probably also there was much intimidation of voters.”46 Some
businessmen did harangue their employees about the evils of free silver, warning that
it would force companies to close plants, but however heavy handed, such rhetoric
stopped short of threatening to fire workers who opted for Bryan.47 Moreover, by
1896, most states had adopted the secret or “Australian” ballot, which made it very difficult to identify how a citizen voted.48 Outside the solidly Democratic South, intimidation
and fraud did not play a decisive role in the 1896 election. More recently, historians have
focused on the cultural gap between silverite farmers and the working class. As Lawrence
Goodwyn wrote, “What could a Protestant agrarian organizer say to an Irish Catholic
factory worker in Boston?”49 This argument has merit, but it still does not explain
why so many Catholic workers ended up supporting the Republican Party, which was
first and foremost the party of the Protestant middle class. The answer almost certainly
lies in economics, as the gold standard promised to protect the interests of workers
better than did free silver.50
CURRENCY AND CREDIT
Defenders of the gold standard often argued that instead of focusing on minting more currency, silverites should focus on expanding credit. They insisted that roughly 95 percent
of business transactions occurred without cash changing hands: through bank drafts, bills
of exchange, or similar devices. James Eckels, the Comptroller of the Currency, wrote,
“Currency becomes efficient to the extent that it is passed from hand to hand and to
the extent it discharges the largest number of different obligations. With better
banking facilities the country over … the complaint now so frequently heard of the scarcity of currency would no longer be made.”51 The most perceptive defenders of the gold
standard recognized that farmers’ demand for more money often reflected a bad experience with credit. As Thomas Shearman, a prominent New York attorney, wrote, “The
bulk of transactions in the rural districts, especially in the South and Southwest, are
carried on with even less use of money than is usual in the great cities of the north
Rhetoric of the Standards 57
and east … Everyone keeps an account at the country store, and everything is done upon
credit.”52 Rates on such loans were high, and “it is needless to say that the vast class of
producers are fully convinced that they would obtain far better prices for what they sell,
and would pay much lower prices for what they buy, if they could be supplied with
money … instead of depending upon store trading.”53 Nevertheless, better banking facilities could meet the need for credit at lower rates without upsetting the gold standard.
Silverites would have none of it. A Kansan wrote, “We have unbounded confidence in
the dollars which jingle in our pocket, but very little in those which exist only in the imagination, and are represented by stocks, bonds, checks, drafts, clearing-house certificates,
and other devices, which always fail to perform the function of money in the last extremity, when money is most needed.”54
The silverite indictment of banking had two sides. First, advocates of silver insisted
that the credit system was inherently unstable. No bank ever had enough money to
pay all its depositors if they demanded their money at once, and in a panic that was
exactly what happened. Sen. William Allen (P-NE) asserted, “Another prolific source
of evil contributing … in large measure to produce the distress we are now experiencing,
lies in over expanding bank credit, making money panics probable, or at least possible, by
sudden and extreme inflation or contracting of the volume of currency. We have too
much credit … and not enough actual money.”55
Many silverites went further, denouncing finance and banking as a whole. They believed not simply that corruption existed in financial circles—which no one could
deny—but that the essence of finance itself was corrupt. Senator James George
(D-MS) insisted, “Bank paper and bank contrivances for minimizing the use of money
are the means by which the power of the moneyed class is made absolute.”56 Silverites
focused their particular ire on the system of national banks, which could issue currency
(national banknotes) against U.S. government bonds lodged with the Treasury.
The author of Seven Financial Conspiracies complained, “Of all the villainous
schemes of robbery ever practiced upon any people our national banking system
stands preeminent … On the one hand, he draws interest from the government; on the
other, from the same investment he draws interest from his individual debtors.”57 National banks were merely the most rancid organs of a rotten system, however. One silverite
wrote, “The radical and fundamental defect of the present banking system is the theory of
‘doing business upon the money of depositors, with a minimal capital.’ Why indeed
should not banks, like individuals, do business upon their own resources?”58
Few silverites understood finance. For instance, it was true that the national bank
system allowed bankers to make money coming and going, drawing interest both on
their bonds and from loaning out notes backed by the bonds. Yet the returns from this
business were no greater than from taking deposits and making loans. In fact, during
the 1890s, many national banks actually got out of the business of issuing notes
because they could use the capital more profitably in other areas. Even a relatively sophisticated silverite such as Frank Parsons would grouse, “Gold is not in circulation; it
is hoarded in bank and Treasury and private nook.”59 The gold in banks and the Treasury,
however, supported bank deposits and notes far greater than the amount of gold in question. Senator Daniel complained, “It would require all of our currency, greenback, gold,
and silver, more than ten times over, to discharge our private indebtedness. It would
require all of our gold three times over to pay interest on it at 6 percent.”60 Yet debts
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were usually not paid in cash, but by offsetting credits. New England textile mills sold
cloth to Midwestern farmers, and Midwestern farmers sold flour to New England mill
hands. Every year, vast numbers of such transactions simply cancelled each other out
through the banking system without any exchange of currency, saving the considerable
time, trouble, and expense of shipping money back and forth.
Their hostility to banking led silverites to forego opportunities to expand credit that
might have helped their constituents. Many defenders of the gold standard were open
to schemes to extend credit in the South and rural areas either by increasing the
number of national banks, allowing national banks to organize branches, or relaxing
restrictions on the issues of notes by state banks. Such measures probably would not
have raised the price of cotton and wheat, which international markets set, but they
could have reduced interest rates. The benefits might well have been substantial, particularly in the South, where the farmer who paid 15 percent for money counted himself
lucky. In the 1890s, the Cleveland administration proposed several reforms to extend
credit and make the money supply more “elastic”—that is, amenable to seasonal shifts
in the demand for money.61 These proposals foundered on the indifference of Republicans, who were reluctant to give the Cleveland administration a major victory, and the
hostility of silverites, who refused to consider any solutions to the country’s financial
problems other than Free Silver. As Senator George argued, “We are asked to take
these ingenious contrivances as substitutes for real money, and therefore demonetize
silver, which is real money.”62
As Gretchen Ritter notes in her book Goldbugs and Greenbacks, proposals to expand
banking were a double-edged sword. They “would have improved circulation with
minimum government regulation,” but the issue of more banknotes would have
reduced the role of government-issued greenbacks and Treasury notes, shifting the
balance of power in the financial sector toward private banks.63 At the same time, proposals for banking reform indicate that many supporters of the gold standard were
aware of at least some of the problems confronting farmers and willing to address
them—as long as doing so did not threatened the gold standard. They had not given
up hope of finding a middle ground.
If silverites poorly understood how banks managed current transactions, they rarely
thought at all of the financing of long-term projects such as railroads, which only paid
off over many years. The gold standard facilitated such investments, primarily by attracting foreign capital. During the late nineteenth century, foreign investors (chiefly British)
put several billion dollars into the country. Because the United States was on gold,
British, French, and German investors were sure of getting back the same amount of
money—in pounds, francs, or marks—as they lent, which allowed Americans to
borrow much more cheaply. Mira Wilkins, the foremost historian of foreign investment
in the United States, provides figures that suggest that, in 1890, British investment in
American railroad securities alone was over $1.4 billion, equal to roughly 10 percent
of the country’s entire output. Likewise, she presents statistics indicating that in the
1870s, before the United States adopted the gold standard, American railroads had to
pay 2.5 percentage points more than British railroads for money, but that by the early
1890s, under the gold standard, the gap had fallen to 1.25 percent.64 On $1.4 billion,
the savings came to $17.5 million, or almost as much as the United States earned from
the export of tobacco. This fact explains the support of most railroad executives for
Rhetoric of the Standards 59
the gold standard, even though their organizations were among the country’s largest
debtors. As Judge George Aldredge of Texas put it, “England has loaned us money at
a lower rate of interest than anybody else would. This is the very head and front of all
her offendings, and the violent 16 to 1 people want to punch her in the head for doing
this. There is an old adage that runs this way, ‘If you want to lose a friend, lend him
money.’”65
By effectively devaluing the dollar, free silver would have disrupted this relationship.
In the short run, free silver would, as a House report issued by supporters of the gold standard claimed, “invite foreign holders of our securities to sell at any price to escape loss by
repudiation [devaluation].”66 Foreigners held several billion dollars’ worth of American
securities, the sudden liquidation of which could well spark a disastrous financial panic.
In the long run, “The effect of this repudiation upon future attempts to borrow money will
be disastrous to the borrower. Money is loaned at rates which accord with risk, and
repudiation will raise the rates of interest and a fluctuating standard of value will
burden the borrower.”67 Such concerns penetrated the population as a whole. One periodical cited a man who worked as a printer saying, “When things are in a more settled
state, we are assured that large sums of money will be put into productive enterprises
in this country by small investors in Europe if they can be sure of getting three and
one half or four percent.”68
Silverites made a common mistake, confusing money with capital. Senator William
Stewart insisted, “We are a debtor nation with unbounded resources to develop and
with mines of gold and silver sufficient to supply a basis for all the circulating
medium required.”69 The United States did have immense potential, but its development
required investment. Simply increasing the number of dollars in circulation would not
increase the resources available for capital spending, and—by deterring foreign investment—might actually decrease such resources.
For historians intent on rehabilitating the late nineteenth century’s many movements
for currency reform, silverite ignorance of finance represents a major obstacle. Reformers
frequently offered cogent objections to the financial system in general and to the gold
standard in specific, but that was not the same as providing a realistic alternative.
Gretchen Ritter insists, “There was a politically significant and economic reasonable alternative to the development of financial conservatism,” which she identifies with the
gold standard and, more broadly, the centralization of financial power in cities like
New York and Chicago.70 Charles Postel writes in The Populist Vision, “The Populists
soft-money treatises were usually superior to the formalistic arguments about the alleged
virtues of gold.”71 The most articulate silverites did discuss money as intelligently as
their critics did, but their grasp of banking and credit was much weaker, and the historians
who champion them too often repeat the silverites’ mistakes. Notably, Ritter and Postel
largely ignore the vital question of foreign investment, which loomed particularly large in
the discussion of money in the 1890s.
INTERNATIONAL BIMETALLISM
In the 1890s, many goldbugs occupied a middle position known as “international bimetallism.” The generation-long drop in prices concerned them, and they hoped to remonetize silver in concert with the other leading commercial nations: Britain, France, and
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Germany. Together, these countries would be strong enough to impose a fixed ratio
between gold and silver that would allow silver to supplement gold as the basis for international trade and finance. The supply of money would increase without disrupting international finance and trade because countries would retain a common basis for their
money. The idea first gained currency in the late 1870s, and hard times in the 1890s
renewed interest.
The odds were always against the project. Strong support existed in France, Germany,
and particularly Britain for the gold standard. Even an agreement in principle might not
lead to an accord because each country wanted the others to assume the risk of rehabilitating silver. Yet neither was the cause hopeless. Widespread concern existed over both
the decline in prices, which was worldwide, and the precipitous fall of silver, which was
still the basis of the currencies of India, China, Japan, and Mexico. Many would agree
with the statement, sometimes attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck,
that gold was “a too scanty blanket on a bed occupied by more than one person, each
trying to pull as much of the blanket as possible over himself.”72 Some leading politicians
in each country were open to an agreement on silver—for instance, Arthur Balfour, the
leader of Britain’s Conservative Party in the House of Commons and, later, Prime Minister, embraced bimetallism.73 In 1892, the United States sponsored a well-attended,
though ultimately unsuccessful, international conference on the matter, and in 1897,
the McKinley administration dispatched a delegation to Europe led by Sen. Edward
Wolcott (R-CO) to explore possibilities for agreement.74
In the 1896 election, however, international bimetallists supported William McKinley
almost to a man. The Democratic platform demanded free coinage “without waiting for
the aid or consent of any other nation,”75 whereas McKinley himself was sympathetic to
international bimetallism, and the Republican platform endorsed negotiations to remonetize silver—the only exception to its otherwise staunch defense of the gold standard. In
his 1897 inaugural address, William McKinley said, “The question of international
bimetallism will have early and earnest attention. It will be my constant endeavor to
secure it by cooperation with the other great commercial powers of the world.”76 McKinley pushed for the legal consolidation of the gold standard only after it was clear that talks
on silver had failed. Despite their reservations about the gold standard, however, international bimetallists believed a unilateral policy of free silver would sever the country from
the international financial system, with disastrous results. The cure was worse than the
disease. As Senator George Hoar (R-MA) said, “There should be no further coinage of
silver, except by unanimous consent of commercial nations. Upon that policy … we
can stand.”77
Support for international bimetallism indicates how complex the politics of money
were, but historians have largely overlooked two-metal advocates. Gretchen Ritter
writes, “The monetary philosophy of the financial conservatives was founded on their
commitment to gold. To the faithful, belief in the value and stability of gold made any
other position a heresy.”78 This statement would have surprised men such as John
Sherman and William McKinley. Economist Laurence Laughlin of the University of
Chicago and journalist Edwin Godkin of The Nation considered gold the only legitimate
basis of money, but many defenders of the gold standard were more flexible, believing
that an international agreement on silver might secure the benefits of the gold standard
without its disadvantages. As a telegram sent by several prominent American lawmakers
Rhetoric of the Standards 61
to a meeting of British bimetallists stated, “The free coinage of both gold and silver by
international agreement at a fixed ratio would serve to maintain the blessings of a sufficient volume of metallic money, and, what is hardly less important, would secure to the
world of trade immunity from violent exchange fluctuations.”79 International bimetallists
understood the choice facing the United States: tolerate deflation or risk losing access to
foreign capital. Uniting hard-core goldbugs and international bimetallists was not an
adamant commitment to gold but a shared vision of economic development financed
by foreign capital. Hal Williams expressed an opinion common among historians
when, pointing to the rapid increase in the supply of gold after the mid-1890s because
of improvements in mining technology and new discoveries, he asserted, “The result
was an inflation of the currency, exactly what Bryan called for.”80 It would be more accurate to state that the increase provided exactly what international bimetallists wanted:
an increase in the money supply within an international framework.
EXPERTISE AND DEMOCRACY
Supporters of the gold standard included the vast majority of the country’s bankers,
and many goldbugs considered their opinion decisive. The Nation insisted, “In all civilized countries bankers are consulted about public finances, engineers are consulted
about roads and tunnels, soldiers are consulted about war, lawyers about law, and
electricians about electricity. This is the only way, in fact, in which government in
our day can be carried on … The Bryanites have started the theory, however, that
all you need in order to be a political philosopher is to be short of money and to
honor silver.”81
The weight of authority did not impress silverites. Coin’s Financial School, by
William Harvey, embodied this attitude. The book purported to describe a series of lectures on the silver question by a “youth” named Coin. Coin’s defense of silver stumped
his many critics, including some real figures such as economist Laurence Laughlin (who
was not amused about being bested in absentia). Coin made no secret of his contempt for
conventional economics. “Combined capital all over the world,” he said, “has been using
political economy to instruct the minds of young men to a belief in the gold standard. This
is not hard to do, as these students, being young, their minds are easily molded. The error
is planted deep and strong.”82 The book enjoyed enormous popularity, with a circulation
of as much as a million, and many of its readers apparently did not realize that the lectures
were fictional. Its success spawned a variety of responses from supporters of the gold
standard, though none approached the popularity of their target. The author of one
of the better of these rejoinders insisted, “The science of finance does not come by
nature … It requires a considerable amount of study. The suggestion in here thrown
out that a boy can drop his marbles and spinning top and deliver valuable lectures on
this science is likely to prove captivating, however, to persons who would be glad to
acquire it without any antecedent effort, although they would not attempt to play the
bones at a minstrel show without previous practice.”83
Although reasonable enough when applied to Harvey, this charge was unfair to many
silverites. As Charles Postel writes, “Farm reformers believed that through their efforts at
statistical calculations, research, and investigation, they could put the nation’s governance on a secure footing of rapid and equitable development.”84 Unfortunately, in a
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field as complex as finance, even conscientious amateurs operated at a significant
disadvantage.
Silverites had identified a basic problem of democracy. Effective government requires
technical expertise, but experts have their own interests, consideration of which shapes
their advice. Bryan said, “We go to the doctors when we are sick, to the lawyers when
we seek redress in legal rights; but when we want our ship of state steered to harbors prosperous and safe for the whole people, we must not call to the helm the professional financial wreckers nor officer the craft of our welfare with financial parasites.”85 Yet beyond
ignoring the experts—a dangerous course in any technically complex field—silverites
had no solution to the problem.
GOLD AND PROGRESS
Supporters of the gold standard wrapped themselves in the mantle of progress. At the
simplest level, their case turned on weight. Because gold had greater value than silver
per ounce, it was more convenient for large transactions, and as the economy grew
and became more sophisticated, transactions became progressively larger. Economist
Laurence Laughlin wrote, “When new and lighter plows come into competition with
the heavy and cumbrous machines of the last century, the latter will go out of use and
decline in value. So will it be with the heavier and more cumbrous metal.”86 From this
mundane point, however, supporters of the gold standard leapt to almost metaphysical
heights, linking gold to material and moral progress. Nineteenth-century intellectuals
tended to see progress as linear, moving from lower to higher levels in clear stages,
and many viewed money in this light. The Nation insisted, “The tyranny of gold is of
the same nature of the tyranny of railroads in comparison with lumber wagons, of telegraphs and telephones in comparison with postboys, of gas and electric lights in comparison with tallow dips, of the United States in comparison with Mexico and China, of
coined money as against wampum, of civilization in general as against savagery.”87
Goldbugs’ willingness to invoke racial hierarchies demonstrates how deeply ingrained
were the ideas of Social Darwinism in the United States in the 1890s. Historian Michael
O’Malley writes, “The triumph of the gold standard represents that same impulse as the
triumph of segregation.” “The economic arguments of the 1890s,” he concludes, “make
no sense considered away from their similarities to arguments about the about the nature
and authenticity of the self.”88 This analysis would have surprised farmers worried that
the prices they received for their crops were too low to cover the interest on their mortgages. O’Malley overreaches. Americans on both sides of the currency issue shared
roughly the same assumptions about race—in fact, the most consistent and virulent
racists in the United States, white Southerners, overwhelmingly supported Bryan and
Free Silver.89 The discussion of people in the 1890s on the currency dealt chiefly with
economics and finance. Writers invoked race to support their economic preferences,
not the other way around. A selective reading of this vast literature can yield whatever
the reader desires, but the emphasis was on the economic implications of the gold standard and free silver.
The identification of gold as an agent of civilization and progress was silly—metals do
not possess such qualities. Nor was the argument about the convenience of gold particularly strong. Americans rarely used coins for anything more than small change—they
Rhetoric of the Standards 63
preferred paper money. As Edward Ross, a professor of economics at Stanford University, trenchantly observed, “A $1000 silver certificate weighs no more than a $1000 gold
certificate.”90
In the context of the late nineteenth century, however, the link between the gold standard and progress was plausible. The gold standard tied together the currencies of the
world’s leading commercial and manufacturing nations, greatly facilitating trade and investment among them. As one historian of banking summed it up: “Trade would enrich
the world; anything which hindered trade was detrimental to the growth of civilization;
fluctuating exchange rates hindered trade; therefore all nations must accept a single monetary standard.”91 The argument was simplistic, but not irrational. Certainly, the gold
standard had helped secure capital for America’s economic development. As one
defender of the gold standard wrote, “Here we have the case in a nutshell. Does the
United States want to part company with the other great nations of the world?”92
Silverites responded that the United States should not follow European precedents.
According to Senator William Allen, “This great nation made its struggle for liberty,
its struggle against the political institutions of Europe, its struggle for the establishment
of a republic in the New World, and established it, based upon different political principles and different social conditions, based upon the equality of every man, woman, and
child before the law.”93
Some silverites argued that free silver would actually increase American trade. Many
contended that the devaluation of India’s silver currency relative to gold accounted for its
growing exports of cotton and wheat. A report from a House Committee shrewdly observed, “As silver falls below gold, so also our articles of export trade, especially farm
products, fall in price … Free silver would put … the American farmer on equality
[when competing] with the Hindoo [of India] and other silver-using people.”94 Many silverites understood that devaluation could spur exports.
Defenders of the gold standard replied that any such success would depend on depressing wages. The Speaker of the House, Thomas Reed (R-ME), thundered, “Oh, but China
and Japan, India and Mexico [all silver standard countries] are prosperous just now! …
Manufacturers there may be prosperous, and traders may be prosperous, but the people
are not prosperous at all. In silver countries labor is cheap and kept cheap by the silver
dollar.”95 Many defenders of the gold standard recognized that devaluation forces
people to accept less, in real terms, for what they produce. Such arguments had an
impact. A factory foreman in one eastern city stated, “Look at the countries were
silver prevails—what is their condition? Democrats are now endeavoring to bring us
to a pass where a laborer will get only twenty cents a day, as they do in Mexico.”96
Though he avoided metallic metaphysics, William McKinley contended that the gold
standard was an agent of progress. In his letter accepting the Republican nomination, he
stated, “During all the years of Republican control following the resumption [of the gold
standard in 1879] there was a steady reduction of the public debt, while the gold reserve
was sacredly maintained, and our credit preserved without depreciation, taint, or suspicion … This policy … brought us unexampled prosperity.”97 During the 1880s, the
number of Americans living in towns with more than ten thousand people increased
61 percent; capital invested in manufacturing doubled; steel production increased twoand-a-half times; and the country laid a staggering 92,000 miles of new railroads.98
The urban population, including the working class, enjoyed a substantial increase in
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real income.99 The gold standard helped underwrite this growth by attracting foreign
capital. True, the depression that began in 1893 hit the country hard, but it seemed
only a temporary interruption of a long upward trend.
Bryan doubted claims of progress. During the 1896 campaign, he said, “Thomas Jefferson, in his immortal inaugural, after summing up the true principles of government,
said, ‘Should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to
retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety.’
The supremacy of the bondholders in our government shows that we have neither
peace, liberty, nor safety before us. We have reached Jefferson sign-board of danger.
It is time to turn back.”100 Since the mid- to late 1880s, farmers in the vast cotton and
wheat belts had seen their incomes decline in absolute and (in most cases) real terms.
Bryan spoke for this last group, and from their perspective, the painful depression of
the 1890s was but the culmination of trends long under way. The progress touted by supporters of the gold standard was, to them, no progress at all.
Historians have long debated whether silverites were forward or backward looking.
Richard Hofstadter saw in the movement’s rhetoric a longing for a half-imagined agrarian past, while Charles Postel sees a group seriously interested in applying the latest developments in the social and hard sciences to public questions. In Progressivism, A Very
Short Introduction, Walter Nugent contends that the campaign for free silver presaged
Progressive reforms.101 All these views are undoubtedly correct. Like McKinley,
Bryan led a diverse coalition. The 1896 Democratic platform called for the popular election of U.S. senators, an income tax, and the regulation of the railways—all staples of
Progressive reform. Most of Bryan’s supporters subsequently voted for Progressive candidates. Yet the crusade for free silver itself was more reminiscent of Jackson’s assault on
the Second Bank of the United States, with its promise to destroy a monstrous conspiracy
at a stroke and to allow “natural” forces to reassert themselves, than of the various Progressive campaigns. Future Progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt and Robert Lafollette staunchly opposed Bryan in 1896. The late nineteenth century was a period of rapid,
often disconcerting economic transformation. Some silverites hoped that free silver
would undo change, restoring the independent, yeoman farmer to his rightful position
at the center of national life. Others saw it as the thin edge of a wedge of reforms like
those ultimately enacted during the Progressive Era.
CONCLUSIONS
First and foremost, the Battle of the Standards concerned finance. The combatants produced volumes on credit, interest rates, prices, exchange rates, and the money supply.
The language was sometimes archaic, but the concepts and concerns were sophisticated
and, for the most part, familiar. For instance, should the United States tolerate deflation at
home to maintain its access to international capital markets, or should it devalue the
dollar and risk alienating foreign investors? The stakes were high. During the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, the U.S. economy grew rapidly, and the country established itself as the world’s leading industrial nation. The change involved not simply the
expansion of existing capabilities but a reorganization of economic life. New industries
developed and new institutions emerged—most notably huge, bureaucratic corporations.102 The process created immense wealth, but it entailed costs as well, with
Rhetoric of the Standards 65
communities and individuals losing autonomy as American life became more centralized
and bureaucratic. Even many who benefited economically from change sometimes found
its social and political effects disconcerting. The gold standard played a significant role in
this transformation by attracting foreign investment.
Because the gold standard facilitated economic development, the Battle of the Standards served as a sort of referendum on the new order. Voters understood that, on the
whole, supporters of the gold standard such as McKinley approved of change,
whereas silverites such as Bryan were, on balance, skeptical. Through this lens, the
more extravagant rhetoric of the Battle of the Standards becomes understandable. For
those who embraced a future dominated by railroads, factories, and cities, gold was
the stuff of progress. For those who feared that economic change was debasing American
life, silver was the essence of tradition. Of course, shades of opinion existed. Both candidates counted among their supporters many who would become Progressive reformers.
Nor can we know what would have happened had Bryan won. Nevertheless, the election
of 1896 was as decisive as such events can be in a democratic society. By electing McKinley by a substantial majority, voters endorsed the economic and social changes underway in the late nineteenth century, allowing the new order to consolidate and flourish.
Progressive reform, although it humanized the emerging system in important ways,
would not overthrow it. The Battle of the Standards stirred such deep emotions
because the stakes were so high.
NOTES
1
William Jennings Bryan, “Has the Election Settled the Money Question?,” The North American Review
163 (December 1896): 704.
2
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America
(New York, 1978), 312.
3
Technically, countries on the gold standard fixed their currencies not relative to each other, but to gold.
Yet because all had a common denominator, the relative value of gold standard currencies fluctuated less than 1
percent.
4
The standard history of the politics of money in the 1870s is Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social
and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (Princeton, 1964).
5
Under free coinage, anyone could bring bullion to the Treasury and have it made into legal tender coins,
free of charge. Gold had this privilege under the gold standard, and silverites wanted to extend this rule to silver
—hence the term “bimetallists,” which silverites often used to describe themselves. The problem lay in the ratio
between the two metals. If both gold and silver coins were to serve as legal tender, there had to be a legal ratio
defining their relative value. Yet gold and silver were both commodities that traded in the open market, and if the
market price of the two differed from the legal ratio by more than 3 or 4 percent, an irresistible opportunity for
arbitrage presented itself. Traders would buy the undervalued metal and have it coined while melting the coins
of the overvalued metal and selling the product on the free market. Through this process, coins of the more expensive metal vanished from circulation. In the early 1850s, when the California Gold Rush flooded the market
for the yellow metal, silver coins disappeared. By the 1890s, the situation had reversed. In the 1870s, large discoveries of silver in the American West and the decision of France and Germany to adopt the gold standard
flooded the market for silver, and by the 1890s its price had fallen as low as $.63 an ounce, half the official
price of $1.29. By this time, silver no longer enjoyed free coinage, and so gold remained in circulation.
There seems little doubt, however, that free coinage of silver would speedily lead to the disappearance of
gold and put the United States on a de facto silver standard. See Frank Taussig, The Silver Situation in the
United States, 2nd edition, reprint (Freeport, NY, 1969); Henry Russell, International Monetary Conferences
(New York and London, 1898); J. Laurence Laughlin, The History of Bimetallism in the United States,
4th edition (New York, 1900). For a view of gold and silver over the (very) long term, see Fernand Braudel,
66
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Civilization & Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, Volume I, The Structures of Everyday Life (New York, 1979),
457–470.
6
Most of the notes issued during the Civil War remained in circulation, but starting in 1879, the government
stood ready to redeem them, on demand, in gold, at $20.64 an ounce.
7
Taussig, The Silver Situation.
8
William Dillon, “The Battle of the Standards in America: Suggestions for a Compromise,” The Nineteenth
Century 40 (August 1896): 207.
9
Speech of Senator John Daniel, September 14, 1893, 31. This speech was one of the many delivered
during the Senate filibuster against the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in the fall of 1893. Senators
often had these printed up and mailed out to constituents, and Google Books has collected many of them together as Silver Speeches in the U.S. Senate.
10
“Notes by the Editor,” The Arena 16 (July 1896): 338.
11
Laughlin, History of Bimetallism, 95–101.
12
The federal government collected tariff revenue and paid interest on its debts in gold, and gold was the
currency of foreign trade, so there was an active market in which participants bought and sold gold for paper
money. The United States did have $13.6 million in subsidiary silver coins in circulation, which had less
than the legal weight of silver and were legal tender for only small transactions. Most of the silver dollars
coined by the U.S. government before 1873 had been melted down because the market value of the silver in
them was greater than their face value, and none were in circulation. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975), 995, Series X424–432.
13
Sarah Emery, Seven Financial Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the American People, 3rd edition
(Lansing, MI, 1896), 52, reprinted in Kenneth Carpenter, ed., Gold and Silver in the Presidential Campaign
of 1896 (New York, 1974).
14
U.S. Congress, 52nd Congress, 1st session, Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, Free
Coinage of Gold and Silver, 1893, 3.
15
Speech of Senator Wilkinson Call, October 4 & 6, 1893, 19, Silver Speeches.
16
U.S. Congress, 52nd Cong., 2nd session, Committee on the Judiciary, National Money System, Views of
the Minority, 1893, 6.
17
Address of William Jennings Bryan to Bland Club of Chicago, reproduced in Charles Stevans, Free Silver
and the People (New York, 1896), 13.
18
Frank Parsons, “The Issue of 1896,” The Arena 16 (November 1896): 881.
19
Emery, Seven Conspiracies, 59.
20
Since the Civil War, the United States had had a paper currency, known as greenbacks, that was worth
what it could buy in the marketplace.
21
France’s decision to close its mints to silver also had a great impact on the relative value of gold and silver,
but the French reacted to events after the United States demonetized silver. Steven P. Reti, Silver and Gold: The
Political Economy of International Monetary Conferences, 1867–1892 (Westport, CT, 1998), 83–84.
22
U.S. Senate, 53rd Congress, 1st session, Letter from Ernest Seyd to Samuel Hooper on the Subject of
Coinage, 1893.
23
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform from Bryan to FDR (New York, 1955), 67, 71, 73.
24
Jeffrey Ostler, “The Rhetoric of Conspiracy and the Formation of Kansas Populism, Agricultural
History 69 (1995): 1–27.
25
Lindley Keasbey, “The New Sectionalism: A Western Warning to the East,” The Forum 16 (1894): 580;
Jeffrey Ostler, Prairie Populism: The Fate of Agrarian Radicalism in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, 1880–1892
(Lawrence, KS, 1993), 12–36.
26
Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 58–59, 104–105.
27
Milton Friedman, “The Crime of ‘73,” Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 1159–1194.
28
William Harvey, Coin’s Financial School (Chicago, 1894), 108.
29
William Stewart, “The Struggle in the Senate: Misrepresentation of the Senate,” North American Review,
Nov. 1893, 520.
30
Speech of Sen. George Gray, September 20, 1893, 19, Silver Speeches.
31
Taussig, The Silver Situation in the United States, 109.
32
David A. Wells, Breakers Ahead: Cause of the Present Crisis (New York, 1896), 7, reprinted in Gold and
Silver in the Presidential Campaign of 1896.
Rhetoric of the Standards 67
33
A Farmer’s Letter on the Silver Question, [1896], 8, reprinted in Gold and Silver in the Presidential Campaign of 1896.
34
Wallace Bartlett, A Union Soldier to His Comrades, August 28, 1896, 3, reprinted in Gold and Silver in
the Presidential Campaign of 1896.
35
Speech of Sen. William B. Allison, September 16, 1893, 9, Silver Speeches.
36
U.S. Congress, 52nd Congress, 1st session, Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, Free
Coinage of Gold and Silver, 1893, 20, 26.
37
Printed in the Cleveland Gazette, August 8, 1896.
38
Harvey, Coin’s Financial School, pp. 28–30; William J. Bryan, Speeches of William Jennings Bryan, Vol.
1 (New York, 1912), 274–282. Bryan and Coin argued that, by increasing the demand for silver, free coinage
would raise its market price to one-sixteenth that of gold. Free silver would undoubtedly have raised the relative
price of the white metal, which in 1896 stood at one thirty-second that of gold, but probably not enough to
restore the sixteen-to-one parity. Certainly, the record of government efforts to prop up the price of silver
was not encouraging. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act, under which the U.S. government had purchased
the entire output of silver mines in the United States, failed to prevent the fall of silver relative to gold in
1890–1893.
39
Between 1873 and 1897, the average wage of non-agricultural workers in the United States fell from $466
to $442, or 5 percent. Adjusted for prices, however, wages increased from $407 to $529 (1914 dollars), or 30
percent. The jump is particularly remarkable because the period in question includes two severe depressions,
1873–1879 and 1893–1897. Not surprisingly, most of the increase came in the 1880s, but wages did not fall
(in real terms) during the depressions, although workers did suffer severely from unemployment. U.S.
Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial
Edition, Washington, D.C., 1975, 165, Series D735–738.
40
To American Bread-Winners: A Word on Wages in Silver Countries, [1896], 5, reprinted in Gold and
Silver in the Presidential Campaign of 1896.
41
Harvey, Coin’s Financial School, 27–29.
42
Parsons, “The Issue of 1896,” 884.
43
“Editor’s Table,” New England Magazine 15 (1896): 256.
44
Between 1860 and 1865, the nominal wages of urban workers increased, on average, from $363 to $512,
or 41 percent. Prices, however, went up even faster. In constant (1914) dollars, average wages fell from $457 to
$328, or 28 percent. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition,
165, Series D 735–738.
45
Bryan, “Has the Election Settled the Money Question?,” 710.
46
John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt (Minneapolis, 1931), 375.
47
See, for example, “To the Employees of the Chicago, Peoria, & St. Louis Railroad” [September 1896],
William McKinley Papers, Library of Congress, reel 1.
48
R. Hal Williams, Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 (Lawrence, KS, 2010), 6.
49
Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, 100.
50
McKinley’s enthusiastic support for the protective tariff—he was the author of the 1890 bill substantially
raising it—also helped him among workers.
51
James Eckels, “How to Prevent a Money Famine,” North American Review, January 1894, 56.
52
Thomas Shearman, “Need, Not of ‘More Money,’ But of Better Exchange,” The Forum 16 (December
1893): 463.
53
Ibid., 460.
54
Charles Millard, “An Open Letter to Eastern Capitalists,” The Arena 18 (August 1897): 215.
55
Speech of Senator William Allen, August 24, 1893, 17, Silver Speeches.
56
Speech of Senator James George, Sept. 20, 22, 1893, 32, Silver Speeches.
57
Emery, Seven Financial Conspiracies, 25.
58
Albert Roberts, “Bank Monopoly—Specie Contraction—Bond Inflation,” The Arena 15 (May 1896): 1005.
59
Frank Parsons, “The Issue of 1896,” 883.
60
Speech of Sen. John Daniel, September 14, 1893, 26, Silver Speeches.
61
See, for instance, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1894. Washington, 1894, 68–70;
Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1895. Washington, 1895, 83–85.
62
Speech of Sen. James George, 59, Silver Speeches.
68
Wells
63
Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenback (New York, 1997), 175.
Mira Wilkins, The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914 (Cambridge MA, 1989),
197, 202.
65
George Aldredge in The White Elephant: Silver as Seen by Prominent Statesmen (Boston, 1896), 17,
reprinted in Gold and Silver in the Presidential Campaign of 1896.
66
U.S. Congress, Free Coinage of Gold and Silver, 8.
67
Ibid., 26.
68
Overland Monthly 28 (October 1896): 481.
69
Steward, “The Struggle in the Senate,” 520.
70
Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbacks, 280.
71
Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (New York, 2007), 152.
72
Quoted in Henry B. Russell, International Monetary Conferences (New York, 1898). 266.
73
E.H.H. Green, “Rentiers versus Producers: The Political Economy of the Bimetallic Controversy,
c. 1880–1898,” The English Historical Review 103 (1988): 588–612.
74
Reti, Silver and Gold, 131–136, 149–152.
75
Democratic Platform, July 9, 1896, http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/chicagoplatform.html.
76
Quoted in Williams, Realigning America, 189.
77
Speech of George Hoar, August 15, 1893, 27, Silver Speeches.
78
Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbacks, 83.
79
John Sherman et al. to bimetallist meeting in London, 1894, Grover Cleveland Papers, reel 88, Library of
Congress.
80
Williams, Realigning America, 163.
81
The Nation, October 8, 1896, 2.
82
Harvey, Coin’s Financial School, 82.
83
Horace White, Coin’s Financial Fool: The Artful Dodger Exposed (New York, 1895), 8.
84
Postel, The Populist Vision, 150.
85
Address of William Jennings Bryan to Bland Club of Chicago, reproduced in Charles Stevens, Free Silver
and the People (New York, 1896), 12.
86
Laughlin, History of Bimetallism, 153.
87
The Nation, February 3, 1898, 83.
88
Michael O’Malley, Face Value: The Entwined Histories of Money & Race in America
(Chicago, 2012), 161.
89
Wyatt Wells, “Silver and Segregation,” Historically Speaking 14 (Nov. 2013): 2–5.
90
Edward Ross, Honest Dollars (Chicago, 1896), 51, reprinted in Gold and Silver in the Presidential Campaign of 1896.
91
Frank H. H. King, The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Vol. II, The Hongkong Bank in the Period of Imperialism and War, 1895–1918 (Cambridge, UK, 1988), 221.
92
To American Breadwinners: A Word on Wages in Silver Countries, [1896], 5, in Gold and Silver In the
Presidential Campaign of 1896.
93
Speech of Senator William Allen, August 24, 1893, 25, Silver Speeches.
94
U.S. Congress, Free Coinage of Gold and Silver, 5–6.
95
White Elephant, 7.
96
Overland Monthly, 28 (October 1896): 480.
97
Cleveland Gazette, August 8, 1896.
98
Historical Statistics of the United States, 12, 684, 694, 731, 734, Series A57–72, P123–176, P231–300,
Q321–8.
99
Between 1880 and 1890, the average wage of non-agricultural workers increased from $386 to $475, or 23
percent. In constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, the increase was even more, from $395 to $519 (1914 dollars),
or 31 percent. Historical Statistics of the United States, 165, Series D735–738.
100
Quoted in Stevens, Free Silver and the People, 14–15.
101
Walter Nugent, Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction (New York, 2010).
102
The best broad studies on this process remain Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920
(New York, 1967); and Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
(Cambridge, MA, 1977).
64