27 pages • 54 minutes read
William Jennings Bryan, Robert W. ChernyCross of Gold
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1896A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Economic Context: The 1890s Depression
The United States began with a system that used both gold and silver as currency and to back paper money. Following the brief use of paper money that was not redeemable in either of these metals during the Civil War, the United States returned to gold and silver after the war. This changed during the Panic of 1893, an economic depression caused by many forces. A major culprit was the collapse of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad and the following stock market crash. The value of gold plummeted, banks closed, and unemployment numbers climbed. Under President Grover Cleveland, Congress deauthorized silver money. Many silver mines closed, leaving the miners out of work as well.
When Bryan gave his “Cross of Gold” speech, the platform he ran on was an attempted remedy to this crisis. He believed the United States should return silver coinage to common use and expand the sources of metal that could be used to back its currency. Doing so would result in inflation as the money supply grew faster than the economy. He and other proponents of the idea saw this as a way to correct the deflation seen in the prior few years. This would ease the growing burden of debt placed on rural farming populations by the depression. Opponents of the idea believed that gold was the safer option due to its adoption for international trade.
Political Context: 1896 Presidential Election
In 1896, the US political landscape was in turmoil. The economic depression caused bimetallism to be the main issue in the election. The Democrats nominated Bryan, who supported bimetallism, and the Republicans nominated William McKinley, who opposed it.
Before Bryan’s nomination, the so-called Bourbon Democrats ran the Democratic Party. They were fiscal conservatives who represented business, banking, and railroad interests. Grover Cleveland, the president at the time, ran this group. Cleveland’s conservative administration proved unpopular with much of the Democratic-leaning farming and mining population of the West, Midwest, and South. This was due to the economic issues they faced as a result of the administration’s decisions. Another concern was the influence of foreign governments and corporations on the US economy, as the gold standard was adopted on an international scale. The Bourbon Democrats opposed Bryan’s nomination and splintered off into a separate political party known as the Gold Democrats. The Republican Party supported the gold standard over bimetallism. However, they had their own splinter faction during the 1896 election in the form of the Silver Republicans, who supported the adoption of bimetallism and mainly came from Western mining states.
The presidential election saw fractures within the parties’ membership. The Silver Republicans backed Bryan over McKinley. The Gold Democrats, in turn, either supported McKinley or a third-party candidate. Additionally, the election saw a strong involvement from a third party on the Democrat’s side. The Populist Party, sometimes called the People’s Party, backed Bryan due to its focus on the concerns of the farming population and support of bimetallism. The Populist Party eventually merged with the Democratic Party. While many of its populist policies lingered, it ceased to exist as an entity in US politics.
