Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [73]
Right from the start the meeting was out of control. When the doors opened that July night, approximately 5,000 people dashed into the auditorium to get first pick of seats. One paper likened it to a dam bursting, and noted that women and old men were part of this “sprint” for seats. That some spectator was not trampled was nothing short of a miracle. At another point during the rally the crowd surged forward and actually snapped a guardrail directly in front of the speakers’ platform. Men sprang onto chairs in preparation for leaping onto the platform itself, and one man fainted in the crush. A panic almost ensued, and only the cool demeanors of Cleveland and the other speakers calmed the crowd. In spite of the chaos, New Yorkers of all political shades were unanimous in calling the historic meeting a great success.
Four years made a big difference for the Democrats. Cleveland’s name and portrait were nowhere to be seen even at the national convention in Chicago, let alone at Madison Square Garden. Indeed, Bryan’s nomination and the very Democratic platform were repudiations of the sitting president.
Partly as a result, Democrats themselves were especially divided. Before Bryan’s arrival in the city, many New York Democrats had publicly split with their own party’s candidate, and Senator David Hill refused even to take part in the ceremony. Tammany Democrats like Cockran were conspicuously absent. New York did not seem a hospitable environment for Bryan at all.
The Bryan campaign had chosen New York City for largely the opposite reason Cleveland had four years before: not because it would generate a sympathetic and enthusiastic hometown crowd, but because it was the “enemy’s country” and needed to be turned to the Democrats’ cause that year. The size and nature of the crowd that greeted the candidate outside the St. John house seemed to have shocked Bryan. He had expected a cheering and adoring throng numbering in the thousands. When faced with a handful of silent gawkers instead, he had quickly retreated through the front door. No, the Madison Square Garden speech was never really for the skeptical and merely curious New Yorkers, but for the country in general. This is why Bryan made the controversial decision to read a long and complicated speech. Combined with the heat wave, it doomed Bryan’s big night from the outset.
“The next day [after arriving] was spent resting and getting my speech into print,” Bryan later recalled. By seven o’clock that night his voice had largely—although not completely—recovered. Even New York’s sympathetic press, such as the New York World, noted that his voice still remained husky and that after only ten minutes of reading his speech his breathing became labored. The effects of the train trip clearly lingered.
While starting the campaign before the official notification had worked wonders for Bryan’s apparently booming popularity, the exhaustion caused by giving several speeches a day in extreme heat took its toll. Simply staying in William St. John’s home resting for twenty-four hours did not allow for the deep recuperation he needed. On the eve of embarking on a campaign the likes of which the country had never seen before, his trip to New York that August may have served as a primer on what not to do. Even the young, powerful Bryan had limits, and he had clearly reached them by the time his train screeched to a halt in Jersey City.
WHILE