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Fighting misinformation

Recently two Gentlemen wrote that in 1896 the Democrat William Jennings Bryan proposed “Government money hand-outs to everyone through free silver.”

Nonsense.

Bryan and the Democratic Party platform advocated “the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1.” This was in opposition to the Republican platform which stated, “We are … opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement.” This Republican proposal existed despite the fact that the Constitution monetized gold and silver when forbidding the states from making “any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

During the 1870s the Republicans demonetized silver in violation of the Constitution. In the late 19th century, a stable gold supply and a doubling population led commodity prices to plummet. That was good for the rich. For those, like farmers with mortgages on land, buildings or equipment, it was a catastrophe.

In 1866 the price of wheat was $1.33 per bushel and in 1896 it was 63 cents. Fixed mortgage payments stayed the same while farm income dropped in half. These farmers were Bryan’s base.

Bryan knew the Republicans favored the rich. In his Cross of Gold Speech, Bryan said, “There are two ideas of government … those who believe that, if you … legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”

Bryan was no radical. He was a Christian fundamentalist who voluntarily joined the prosecution of John Scopes after Scopes — contrary to Tennessee law — taught evolution in school.

RICHARD MORRIS

Williamsport

Submitted via Virtual Newsroom

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