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By Root 371 0

in relation to the rest of the world than France had been in the early decades of the century. Yet France was able to hold the ratio at 15.5 to 1 from 1803 to 1873, despite first the major silver discoveries and then the major gold discoveries. There was substantial sentiment in favor of bimetallism in many European countries. India had only recently terminated the free coinage of silver, and China would remain on a silver standard until Franklin D. Roosevelt drove it off silver with his silver purchase program in the 1930s (interestingly enough, a politial sop to some of the same forces that had been behind the U.S. silver movement in the nineteenth century, as detailed in chapter 7). We have become so accustomed to regarding gold as the natural monetary metal that we have forgotten that silver was a far more important monetary metal than gold for centuries, losing first place only after the 1870s.

Had other countries joined the United States at 16 to 1, the damage done would have been even greater. On the other hand, had they joined at 35 to 1, the long-term results might well have been favorable. The outbreak of World War I in 1914, only a short time after the market ratio and the legal ratio would have come together, means that the effects, if any, would have been minor until after the war. After 1915 the market ratio fell sharply, to below 16 to 1 by 1920, and then rose sharply to a level over 35 by 1927. The postwar pattern doubtless would have been different had bimetallism become the legal standard for a number of countries, including the United States. The gold-exchange standard was adopted after World War I because of a concern that there would be a shortage of gold, and bimetallism would have relieved that concern. However, we are getting too far from our historical base for such speculation to be productive.

The Cyanide Process and Bryan's Political Decline

The final chapter in our story concerns the effect on Bryan's political career of the application of the cyanide process. That chapter is soon told. As we have seen, the flood of gold from South Africa produced the inflation that Bryan and his followers had sought to achieve with silver, "but when followers like the sociologist E. A. Ross pointed out to Bryan that the new gold supplies had relieved the money shortage and undermined the cause of silver, the Commoner was unimpressed" (Hofstadter 1948, p. 194). The result was inevitable. Bryan's political career had passed its peak.

Conclusion

Bryan labeled his account of the 1896 campaign The First Battle. From the outset, he clearly had viewed himself as a general at the head of an army engaged in a war—or a crusade—for a holy cause. He started his great speech at the 1896 Democratic convention by remarking, "This is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity." The rhetoric rolls on: the "zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit," "our war is not a war of conquest," "crown of thorns," "crucify," "cross of gold."

The crusaders who followed Bryan were a mixed lot, as they are in every broad-based political movement. The silver miners had narrow sectional interests. The agrarian reformers were motivated by the age-old conflict between country and city, the populists by the equally ancient conflict between the masses and the classes—Main Street versus Wall Street. No doubt Bryan's followers included many who were disturbed by the evident economic difficulties that the country had experienced in the prior decade and who thought monetary expansion a possible, or the only, cure. Unfortunately, they included few if any "logical and consistent bimetallists."

His opponents were an equally mixed lot: persons with interests in gold mining; deflationists castigated by the free-silver forces, with some justice, as "Wall Street"; convinced monometallists who interpreted the economic