MR. BRYAN'S CAMPAIGN.* Mn. BRYAN has done his very best
to make his book on the Presidential campaign of 1896 as forbidding as possible. He puts before us a ponderous tome of some six hundred odd pages, which proves on examination to contains a mass of speeches, addresses, and pamphlets, dumped together roughly in chronological order, but with no regard to logical sequence, and he begins the work with an almost puerile biographical sketch of himself by his wife, and ends it with a really fatuous poem by Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The illustrations are scattered up and down the book broadcast, and without regard to connection with the letterpress; most of them are portraits of distinguished American politicians, and very fine-looking men they are, but we should suggest that the reproduction of a few campaign cartoons would have added materially to the interest and value of the record. The only interesting thing that Mrs. Bryan has to tell us about her husband's youth is that "there is a tradition that his appetite, which has since been a constant com- panion, developed very early. The pockets of his trousers were always filled with bread, which he kept for an emer- gency." When the biographer first saw her future husband "in the parlors of the young ladies' school which I attended
in Jacksonville I noted particularly his hair and his smile. The former, black in colour, fine in quality, and parted distressingly straight ; the latter, expansive and ex- pressive. In later years this smile has been the subject of considerable comment, but the well-rounded cheeks of Mr. Bryan now cheek its onward march, and no one has seen the real breadth of the smile who did not see it in the early days."
Nevertheless, in spite of the obvious shortcomings of the book, we have read it with great interest, and have no hesitation in recommending it to those who wish for a truer appreciation of Mr. Bryan and his motives and prin. ciples than could be gathered from the strongly biassed reports of the campaign which were cabled to England during its progress. There is no need to point out that the contest was momentous, and that no one can follow the future course of American politics without understanding the issues which were at stake. English opinion, which naturally lookad at the matter rather from a bondbolding point of view, came to the conclusion that the contest was merely one between gold and silver. But the currency question was only the lever with which Mr. Bryan and his party attacked all the intolerable abuses of money power under which their country groans. An address issued by the Populist Conven- tion puts the matter clearly, though doubtless not without exaggeration, when it says that "on the one side are the allied hosts of monopolies, the money power, great trusts and railroad corporations, who seek the enactment of laws to benefit them and impoverish the people. On the other side are the farmers, labourers, merchants, and all others who produce wealth and bear the burden of taxation. The one represents the wealthy and powerful classes who want the control of the Government to plunder the people. The other represents the people, contending for equality before the law and the rights of man." We were, indeed, agreeably surprised in reading Mr. Bryan's speeches to find how small a part of them was devoted to the silver question. When he does speak of it, he uses the arguments that might naturally be expected from a provincial lawyer who had read enough political economy to misunderstand the jargon of the science ; but he had no occa- sion to argue this point, because the Republicans, by incorpo- rating international bimetallism in their platform, gave away the silver question, and only made it necessary for him to contend that the United States was strong enough to carry out the " rehabilitation " without alien assistance. This, of course, was a matter less of argument than of patriotic spread-eagle assertion, and the parts of his speeches which deal with currency matters are largely an application of the Monroe doctrine to American finance. The following passage from a speech made at Minneapolis is a good example both of Mr. Bryan's eloquence and of his treatment of the silver question :— " I can urge a higher claim than mere party regularity could give—I am the only Presidential candidate prominently before • The First Battle: a Story of the Campaign of 1S95. By William J. Bryan. Tratether wth a C dlectinn of his Speeches and a Bionraphical eks'ch by his Wde. Illnatratei. London: Eampsun Low, Marston. aad Co.
the people who believes that the American people are able to attend to their own financial business. Do you say that we must wait for foreign help ? I reply that we have waited for twenty years Three national parties have now declared that the time for waiting has passed. Three parties have declared that we
shall wait no longer, and that the people of the United States, rising in their strength, shall declare for the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1 without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation. You ask, ' Can we do it ?' Upon that question we are ready to meet the opposition. We are ready to state our reasons. There is only one way to find out, and that is by trying ; our opponents will never find out by waiting If you tell me that there is danger in our system, I reply that the worst thing that you can prophesy as a result of free coinage is better than the best thing that you can hope for under the gold standard; and more than that, we not only believe that we have the strength and ability to furnish a use for silver that will take all the surplus silver upon the market and maintain the parity at 16 to 1, but we believe that the action of the United States, instead of discouraging other
nations, will compel them to join us As soon as we have shown our determination to act alone and to protect ourselves against the degrading influences of a gold standard, you will find that other nations will be willing to act with us, but they will not act with us so long as they can run our finances and attend to our business for us."
It is obvious that the orator here begs his question at the out- set, but having done so, he proceeds lucidly and temperately ; there is much less rbodomontade in his periods than we had been led to expect, and there are occasional outbursts of genuine eloquence. He is evidently a bold, vigorous speaker, characteristically American, and well able to carry an American audience with him. The sort of semi-religious fervour that he could arouse is exemplified by a remarkable interruption that he chronicles during a speech at Fredericks- burg. A man in the audience shouted, "Bryan, I am not a Christian, but I'm praying for you." An English reader is naturally inclined to smile, but we must remember that the Americans do not keep religious matters in the background as severely as we do. Mr. Bryan readily replied that "the people of that community had an additional reason for desiring my election, because, if they could convince the gentle- man of the efficacy of prayer, they might make a Christian of him." Like all great demagogues—though, by the way, he repudiates the title on the mistaken assumption that it im- plies insincerity—Mr. Bryan is ready with apt and homely illustrations. The recent American policy of issuing bonds for gold, which is at once taken away again, could hardly have been better illustrated than as follows :—
" When I have seen how they go to the Treasury and draw out the gold, and then demand bonds, and then draw out gold to pay for the bonds, and so on without limit, I have been reminded of a trick that a mother played upon her boy. He was taking some medicine, and the following dialogue took place between him
and a visitor Do you like that medicine ? No, Sir.'—` Well you seem to take it very nicely.'—' Mamma gives me five cents every time I take a dose of What do you do with the money?'—' I put it in the bank.'—' And what do you do with the
money in the bank ? Oh, mamma uses that to buy more medi- cine with.'"
Altogether, on perusing this work we arrive at the conclu- sion that Mr. Bryan must be an eminently attractive person, though the modesty with which he keeps his own individuality in the background makes it difficult to do more than guess. He repeats with some relish the vituperative comments of the opposition Press on himself and his efforts. And the speci, mens are certainly startling. For instance, the New York Tribune remarked, among other things, when all was over, that "its nominal bead was worthy of the cause. Nominal, because the wretched, rattle-pated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rottenness, was not the real leader of that league of hell. But he was the willing puppet.
Bryan was willing and eager Not one of his masters was more apt than he at lies and forgeries and blasphemies and all the nameless iniquities of that campaign against the Ten Commandments,"—and so on. There is humour in the repeti- tion of this by its subject, a humour that is also exemplified by the apt anecdotes that come up in his speeches. "Our opponents say," he remarked at Brooklyn, "we are opposed to the enforcement of the law, but the fact is that many of our opponents are afraid that the law will be enforced. They remind me of the man in court. He seemed to be uneasy, and when the judge assured him that he would get justice in that court, he replied : 'Great heavens! Judge, that's what I'm afraid of I' " The book is certainly welcome, as presenting new light on the campaign in which Mr. Bryan made a gallant effort against fearful odds, and since we are likely to hear of him again in 1900, perhaps with the chances more in his favour, it is worth the attention of political students. Apart from politics, it is interesting as a collection of American oratory, since many other speakers besides the candidate are quoted at length. One of the finest speeches that we have ever read is given in full : it was made by Senator Teller, that distin- guished Republican "bolter," at the St. Louis Convention.
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