from the start. I consider the situation in the West quite alarming as business is all going to pieces and idle men will multiply rapidly. With this communistic spirit abroad the cry of 'free silver' will be catching." Both Hanna and McKinley felt that the Republican party was united on the tariff but divided on the silver question. During a conference, probably before Bryan's nomination, McKinley said, "I am a Tariff man standing on a Tariff platform. This money matter is unduly prominent. In thirty days you won't hear anything about it," when William R. Day 1 remarked, "In my opinion in thirty days you won't hear of anything else."2 Even after the Chicago Convention, Hanna expressed himself as not wishing to allow the tariff issue to be overshadowed by the financial. But the logic of events taught both McKinley and Hanna that a determined fight must be put up against free silver in the Western States; and in point of fact their belief in bimetallism, but only on an international basis, proved as effective in the conduct of the campaign as if they had been uncompromising advocates of the single gold standard.

The Republican secession affected the vote in some of the Western States but the Democratic "bolt" was more significant. It took two forms: one, the nomination of separate candidates for President and Vice President known as gold Democrats, and the other votes given directly to McKinley as the surest means of beating Bryan.

There is no question that business was much depressed and that many men were out of employment. The Republicans had hoped to charge this condition to the Dem

1 Now Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1919). * Life of McKinley, Olcott, 321.

3 Life of Foraker, i. 492.

ocratic administration and to the Tariff bill of 1894, and therefore McKinley, who represented protection more than any other man in the country, was the logical candidate. He was the "advance agent of prosperity" and promised the "full dinner pail"; prosperity was to be secured by a return to the protective tariff of the Republican party. On the other hand, the Bryan Democrats, though agreeing to the Republican estimate of present conditions, promised an entirely different remedy for the hard times, and proposed a different policy for reducing the army of the unemployed. Remonetize silver, coin it at the ratio of 16 to 1, stop measuring money by the English standard but increase its volume, they averred, and the distress of men in legitimate business and of honest laborers out of employment will disappear. The demonetization of silver enhanced the value of the circulating medium and was in the interest of the creditor; restore it to its proper place, they argued, and the augmented circulation will enable the debtor to pay his debts and start all the wheels of industry going.

Bryan proved an effective campaigner, although his first move was not successful. Determined to open the campaign in "the enemy's country" he formally accepted the nomination in a speech in Madison Square Garden, New York City. But he committed an error in reading the speech which he had carefully written out. For Bryan, though an orator, was a poor reader. Other conditions were against him. The weather, even for the second week of August, was extremely hot and the notification speech unduly long. The large audience who had expected to laugh at "his free Western sallies and audacities" found him "transformed into a Professor

Dryasdust prosing through two mortal hours. . . . No wonder that they fled before his portentous pile of manuscript with cries of 'Good-night, Billy."'" 1

New York and other Eastern financial centres breathed a sigh of relief. They had been greatly alarmed at Bryan's stirring speech before his nomination and his short addresses on the way from Lincoln to New York City, but now they heard or read a dull economic argument, which could not carry conviction to thinking men and which utterly failed to rouse the proletariat. Depression at the fear that Bryan and his financial fallacies would carry the country was succeeded by a momentary and undue elation of the conservative forces.

But when Bryan began his trip through the country, his native ability as an orator and his sincere belief in the fallacies that he advocated gained him large audiences and shaped convictions. Farmers, obliged to accept a low price for their products, and laborers, who desired work but could not get it, were glad to learn that free silver was the one simple remedy for their trouble. The distress was indeed grave. If we subtract from Dr. Talmage's remarks what they contained of rhetorical exaggeration, an extract from his non-partisan sermon will give us an excellent idea. "Never within my memory,' he said, "have so many people literally starved to death as in the past few months. Have you noticed in the newspapers how many men and women here and there have been found dead, the post-mortem examination stating that the cause of death was hunger? There is not a day when we do not hear the crash of some great

1 The Nation, Aug. 20, 134.

commercial establishment and as a consequence many people are thrown out of employment. Among what we considered comfortable homes have come privation and close calculation and an economy that kills. Millions of people who say nothing about it are at this moment at their wits' end. There are millions of people who do not want charity but want work." 1

2

Goldwin Smith, a keen observer, felt Bryan's "preternatural power of clap-trap declamation." The Democratic National Committee coöperated skilfully with their candidate and made their appeal for funds in an attractive manner. Their pressing need was the hiring of speakers and the distribution of documents "for the dissemination of the truth." One hundred and twentyfive thousand of "Coin's Financial School" were circulated, a device that showed how clever they were. This little book was made up of addresses purporting to be delivered daily to large Chicago audiences, that were hereby instructed in the science of money by Coin, a "smooth little financier." The fascination of his manner, his ready argument, apparent fairness, cannot fail to charm even the reader of to-day who knows that the school was a fiction designed to serve as the subject of an attractive book in which fallacious arguments might be presented that would otherwise remain unheard. So this amiable-looking little man was supposed to deliver six lectures from the platform of a large hall of the Art Institute; and these were attended fictitiously by men prominent in business and finance, who were argued with and either convinced or refuted. This was not a difficult

1 Sept. 27. The First Battle, Bryan, 474.

2 Sat. Rev., Oct. 31, 462.

task as the opponents were men of straw, and the sympathetic reader of the book was quite ready to believe that "the little financier could not be cornered."

England cannot always be defended, but it was unmerited ill-luck that her work in the cause of sound finance should be bandied about in the course of an excited political campaign. "Coin's Financial School" is illustrated with rude but effective wood-cuts and, when Cleveland or Sherman is lampooned, such illustrations can be considered only proper game; but the comity of nations is transcended when Uncle Sam is pictured firing a cannon to the utter discomfiture of England with the amiable little Coin standing by, doffing his silk hat to the hurrah, "What our answer to England should be." This sentiment he elaborated in his last lecture: "A war with England," he said, "would be the most popular war ever waged on the face of the earth. If it is true that she can dictate the money of the world and thereby create world-wide misery, it would be the most just war ever waged by man.” 1

To no better team could the defence of the financial honor of the country have been confided than to McKinley and Hanna. When they came to appreciate that the fight must be against free silver, they wrought like veterans in the cause. Hanna exerted his wonderful talent of organization and threw himself into the contest with unstinted energy. He raised the necessary funds. Soon gaining the confidence of New York City financial men, he obtained from them important contributions to his campaign. Some concerns were assessed by Hanna ac

1 Coin's Financial School, by W. H. Harvey, 150 pages and 64 illustrations. Popular edition, 25 cents; Cloth, $1.00. This book sold well.