Free Silver Quotes
In 1897 one of the most contentious political issues in America was that of “free silver”—allowing silver to back American currency as well as gold. The country’s economy could not grow because more currency could not be issued for want of gold to back it. Meanwhile, the U. S. had a great deal of silver. William Jennings Bryant {640992} and the Democrats {591769} advocated free silver, and the Republicans fought to maintain the gold standard. The president of the very conservative Brown University advocated free silver to the shock of the trustees. They sent Andrews a letter asking him not to speak publicly on the subject as it would jeopardize donations and endowments. Andrews resigned. The incident caused a national furor about academic freedom with the public and most of the alumni siding with Andrews. He rescinded his resignation but was pushed out the following year. Later, the trustees named a building after him.
Most people owned a little land as most of America were still farmers. They had small amounts of money at different times but spent it for necessities. A relatively few people (mostly in the East) had money—gold and paper currency backed by gold. If the price of property was high, only rich could afford to buy it. The home mortgage system did not then exist, so there was no way that the average land owner could get enough money to buy land to expand farms or buy for children unless the price was low. Today, most land owners want the price of land to be high. The financial system in use at the time makes the difference.
In the Democratic national convention of 1912, Clark had obtained a majority of the delegate votes and was well on his way to the two thirds necessary for the Presidential nomination. William Jennings Bryan, a close personal friend of Clark's, headed the Nebraska delegation which had already instructed Bryan to vote for Clark. However, in a dramatic repudiation of his old friend, Bryan switched to Woodrow Wilson and turned the tide against Clark, who characterized Bryan as:
The “subversive” ideas that Bryan espoused included going off the gold standard and a whole series of reforms that we take for granted today. In a certain irony, Carnegie and other capitalists were really worried about Bryan (as opposed to other so called reformers) as he believed Bryan was too honest and meant exactly what he said.
