Cross of Gold
The narrative of those opposing the gold standard strongly emphasized unjust
inequality. In his 1895 book The American Plutocracy, Milford Wriarson
Howard wrote of America divided into two classes, the plutocracy and the
“toilers of the nation”: “The greatest struggle of all the ages is the one now going
on between these two classes.”19 He saw the moral value attached to the gold
standard as a canard promulgated by a conspiracy of established leaders to
justify simple robbery of working people: “This is modern brigandage, upheld
by the law and made respectable by society and the plutocratic churches.”20
That side of the story was contagious in certain quarters, producing a
constellation of stories that fed on that contagion, stories of arrogant and
grasping business managers who tricked and manipulated innocent people. But it
wasn’t the only story. On the other side was a story about the stupid masses
swept into a dangerous “populist” movement, a movement associated at the time
with the Democratic Party but running contrary to that party’s traditional values.
Henry L. Davis of the California Optical Company said in 1896:
The riff-raff is a very large proportion of the voters, and there is danger of
their gaining control. Our hope lies in educating them to a greater
intelligence, to change their views. Their success would destroy confidence,
the unrest would be continued and business would continue to suffer.21
A constellation of narratives arose to reinforce the idea that Silverites are
stupid and that economic disaster was imminent. Charles Merrill of Holbrook,
Merrill, and Stetson, a retailer of kitchen appliances and plumbers’ supplies, said
in 1896:
I have made this thing a deep study, since it is a matter which interests all
citizens—merchants and workingmen alike. I believe that if Bryan is elected
and the Democratic platform is carried out it will be the most disastrous thing
that could happen to this country. Business is bad enough now, but it would
be simply ruined in case of Democratic success, and all classes of people
would feel the effect of it equally. If the principles of the Democratic platform
were embodied into laws, I might as well go out of business.… It would be
worse than a civil war. During the late war we managed to maintain our credit

but we could not do so if the Democratic platform were put into effect.22
Nonetheless, the Democrats understood the power of gold and used it in their
narratives. William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech at the July 1896
Democratic National Convention is considered one of the most inspiring
American political speeches of all time. It interwove talk of the gold standard
with talk of Christian morality. Even today, millions of people remember the
concluding lines of the speech:
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.23
As Bryan spoke these words, he stretched his arms out as if he were on a cross,
to a cheering throng. The reaction was immediate, not only on the convention
floor but also nationwide, sometimes to the point of near hysteria, as if a
revolution were at hand and the working class would finally prevail.
Why are Bryan’s concluding lines so powerful? Likely the working classes
connected their economic suffering with the imagery of Jesus’s suffering a brutal
execution at the hands of the powerful Romans—one of the narratives that
helped propel the Christian church through the centuries. Although Bryan spoke
the words, he did not write the lines. As many newspapers later reported, a talk
by US representative Samuel W. McCall in January 1896, reprinted in the
Congressional Record, used almost the same words about a crown of thorns and
a cross of gold. Bryan had attended McCall’s talk, and he’d gauged the audience
reaction to those lines. He was doing what great demagogues have always done,
observing audiences, experimenting, and searching for something that will
take.24 As the New York Times commented:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed files of The
Congressional Record may bear. But until the gem has been mined, or rather,
until the vein has been worked, by the patient toilers among the back numbers
and then issued with an authoritative stamp, it remains useless to man.25
The authoritative stamp that Bryan, a celebrity, put on McCall’s ruminations was
exactly what this story needed to go viral. McCall’s words were not a story until
a presidential candidate said them in a public forum.