A 16 to 1 Political Button from the 1896 Presidential Campaign
BillJones
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Here is another political item from the 1896 presidential election that is coin related. It features a crude rendering of a Type 3 gold dollar in the center surrounded by 16 crude renderings of the Morgan dollar. The slogan “16 to 1” is also included. This piece is mounted on a stud, not a pin, and was made by the same company that produced another stud button in my collection. That piece features a better facsimile Type 3 gold dollar and the slogan, “The money we want.”
Bryan’s plan was to allow the free coinage of silver with no restrictions. His goal was to inflate the money supply, which would have allowed debtors to pay off their loans in cheaper dollars. Many of his supporters probably did not understand all of the mechanics of the plan, but they were dedicated to its enactment. Bryan would travel 18,000 miles, mostly by train, and would speak to an estimated 6 million voters. Yet he was destined to fall short on Election Day.
Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
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I love this election and debate.
I carry an 1896 Morgan as a pocket piece, and I like to tell people who ask about it about the campaign.
Thanks for sharing!
-Amanda
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<< <i>COOL!!
I love this election and debate.
I carry an 1896 Morgan as a pocket piece, and I like to tell people who ask about it about the campaign.
Thanks for sharing!
-Amanda >>
I'm sure a lot of people ask about the coin in your pocket.
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<< <i>Bryan’s plan was to allow the free coinage of silver with no restrictions. His goal was to inflate the money supply, which would have allowed debtors to pay off their loans in cheaper dollars. Many of his supporters probably did not understand all of the mechanics of the plan, but they were dedicated to its enactment. Bryan would travel 18,000 miles, mostly by train, and would speak to an estimated 6 million voters. Yet he was destined to fall short on Election Day. >>
Here's a little more historical background on the 1896 election. It produced one of the most famous speech in American political history, delivered by William Jennings Bryan on July 9, 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago - known forever thereafter as the "Cross of Gold" speech. The country had been in dire economic times in the previous several years. The issue in that tumultuous year was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1. (This inflationary measure would have increased the amount of money in circulation and aided cash-poor and debt-burdened farmers.) After speeches on the subject by several U.S. Senators, Bryan rose to speak. The thirty-six-year-old former Congressman from Nebraska aspired to be the Democratic nominee for president, and he had been skillfully, but quietly, building support for himself among the delegates. His dramatic speaking style and rhetoric roused the crowd to a frenzy. The response, wrote one reporter, “came like one great burst of artillery.” Men and women screamed and waved their hats and canes. “Some,” wrote another reporter, “like demented things, divested themselves of their coats and flung them high in the air.” The next day the convention nominated Bryan for President on the fifth ballot.
As Bill Jones pointed out, Bryan did NOT win the presidency. Bryan was a great orator, and later participated in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in Tenessee in the 1920's, with the great Lawyer Clarence Darrow defending Mr. Scopes. This trial became the basis for a great movie titled "Inherit the Wind".
Here's the ending of William Jennings Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" Speech given at the Democratic Convention on July 9, 1896. It is believed by many Historians to be one of the greatest Political Speech's ever made:
<< <i>I want to suggest this truth, that if the gold standard is a good thing we ought to declare in favor of its retention and not in favor of abandoning it; and if the gold standard is a bad thing, why should we wait until some other nations are willing to help us to let it go?
Here is the line of battle. We care not upon which issue they force the fight. We are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard, and both the parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it? So if they come to meet us on that, we can present the history of our nation. More than that, we can tell them this, that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have.
Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.
There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.
You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single state in the Union.
I shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the state of New York by saying that when citizens are confronted with the proposition, “Is this nation able to attend to its own business?”—I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those states will declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3 million, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to 70 million, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.
If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. >>
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” Mark Twain
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Amazing when one thinks of it that Theodore Roosevelt, the compromise Vice president candidate for the Republican Party ended up being more progressive than even Bryan could have possibly imagined.
By the way, I still have the famous swivel medal in whuch you would turn the medal upright and show a gold standard with a stong and proud american eagle. Then swivel it to the right and you have a silver standard with a sad and stooped over american eagle. I seem to recall that it mentioned Bryanarchy as the result of a silver standard. It is such a cool medal. I remembered it stating PAT PENDING 1897. I assume it was used for the 1900 Presidential election?
Generally the 1900 piece is considered to be scarcer than the 1896 piece. Here is am 1896 piece with a pinbar for suspension.
I'll post more information about this if anyone is interested.
<< <i>Republican partisans issued “swivel medals” for both the 1896 and 1900 presidential campaigns. The quickest way to tell the difference is to look at the patent information. The 1896 pieces read “Pat app’d for,” and the 1900 reads, “Pat July 27, 1897.” The slogans are different when you twist the dial and read them.
Generally the 1900 piece is considered to be scarcer than the 1896 piece. Here is am 1896 piece with a pinbar for suspension.
I'll post more information about this if anyone is interested. >>
I'm interested Bill. Why the "I'm all right" slogan?
Anyone else find parallels between that "cross of gold" speech and debates over taxation today?
Don
When the disk is turned, the eagle has his head down and the slogan reads, "Where am I at?" On the reverse the slogan now reads, "Free silver means a dollar worth 50 cents Bryan Sewall and adversity." Here's a photo with the eagle's head down.
There was certainly ample reason to increase the money supply to help the economy. The trouble was Bryan put no limits on the amount of increase that the free coinage of silver would have caused. There was so much silver being mined out West, that it had almost become a "junk medal." To put into today’s terms, it would been almost like going to the company that makes the paper for U.S. currency and allowing them to have all the paper they could produce printed into money and sending it back to them. The inflationary problems would have been awful, and the U.S. would have been like a banana republic.
The economy started to improve a month or so before the 1896 election. Then after McKinley was elected more gold was found in South Africa and Alaska. That relieved the shortage and allowed the "civilized world" to increase its money supply.
Bryan used the same argument in 1900, but by then the economy was fully recovered and his crusade fell on mostly deaf ears.
He did dig some old coins, too, as usual.
At the time it cost $35.00.
The general appearance and workings of the 1900 (patented 1897) are the same. The differences are in the slogans on the reverse. In the “up” position the reverse reads, “Gold standard means a dollar worth 100 cents, Mack, Teddy and prosperity.” When the eagle is in the “down” position it reads, “Free silver means a dollar worth 50 cents, Bryanarchy and Stevenson.”
Really interesting stuff. I have a Bryan dollar from this period.
I can really appreciate the small pictures also. Something I can actually view on this board for a change.
<< <i>Nice Post! Now you have me interested in these - is there a book you can recommend on the subject? >>
TAMS put out a book by Fred Schornstein called "Bryan Money." According to the dust jacket, it's a complete revision of Farran Zerbe's "Bryan Money" from the July 1926 issue of The Numismatist.
I covered the election and the fight over free silver in the last chapters of "Crime of 1873: The Comstock Connection."