Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [75]
Right on cue at 7:30, the band began to play, but few in the audience took heed. “The vast majority were looking for a breeze that cometh not from the business end of a brass horn in operation,” the writer for the Tribune continued. “It was not a melody but a blizzard that your New-Yorker wanted, and if Mr. Bryan, instead of bringing his speech, had carried a Rocky Mountain zephyr in his handbag and poured it with unstinting hand upon the perspiring mob he might have counted more surely on ultimate success in this campaign than from any possible effect his speech as a finality made for him.” “The movement of three solid acres of fans,” said the World, “was like the gentle surge of the sea.”
Everyone was aware that this was not an ordinary Democratic rally. The New York Times printed a long list of “Prominent Democrats Not Swallowed by the Populists,” including Grover Cleveland, David Hill, William Bourke Cockran, and Roosevelt’s politically active uncle, Robert Roosevelt. As members of the Democratic National Committee began entering the auditorium, no one let out a cheer, and vice presidential nominee Arthur Sewall’s entrance sparked no interest at all. One newspaper recorded the first cheer occurring at exactly 7:57 PM, when a man in one of the highest galleries shouted, “Three cheers for Bryan,” although the reporter swore the man actually said “O’Brien.” The band then struck up with the song “My Girl’s a Corker”:
My girl’s a corker, she’s a New Yorker
I buy her everything to keep her in style
She’s got a pair of legs, just like two whiskey kegs
Hey boys, that’s where my money goes-oes-oes
It was a ribald burlesque song that included lyrics such as “She does the teasin’, I do the squeezin’,” and “She wears silk underwear, I wear my latest pair,” not to mention couplets like “She’s got a pair of hips, just like two battle ships.” It was at this unfortunate moment that Mrs. Bryan chose to appear on stage. She gazed out at the vast auditorium and seemed to enjoy being the focus of the small tumult that accompanied her appearance. It was unlikely that she was familiar with the lyrics of “My Girl’s a Corker.”
As Mrs. Bryan and members of the National Committee took their seats on the stage, a man took up position at the rear of the rostrum with an oversized American flag. He waved it at every opportunity, and when Bryan finally appeared, the man carried the flag down and “tried to insert the staff in the resisting palm of the Presidential candidate, who looked unmercifully bored at this effort to make of him a male Columbia posing in a grand tableau for effect.” If planners wanted Bryan to take the flag, they certainly hadn’t warned the candidate. This attempt at theatricality marked an awkward beginning to the proceedings.
The task of introducing the candidate fell to Governor William J. Stone of Missouri. He read his speech from a little notebook and was constantly interrupted by calls for Bryan. The curious New York audience had not come to listen to the governor of Missouri. The high point of Stone’s speech came when he laid into England and asked rhetorical questions that received such “machine-like” responses that one reporter suspected the audience participation had been orchestrated. “Shall we be bound in financial servitude to England?” Stone asked. “No! No!” came the reply. “Shall we follow or lead?” “Lead! Lead!” “Shall we be sovereign or vassal?” “Sovereign! Sovereign!” Finally, the opposition from the crowd overwhelmed his words, and throwing the little notebook aside, the governor lifted above his head a white scroll representing the Chicago platform. “Take this,” he exclaimed to Bryan, “assume leadership, and we will follow!”
Finally, Bryan’s time had come. To the roars of the audience he repeatedly raised his hands to command silence. He moved