Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

246 POLITICS AND THE APPEASEMENT OF ENVY
becoming dearer, whereas a silver dollar linked to gold would enable
them, while the prices of their products fell, to pay their debts with
'cheaper' money. In 1878 and in 1890, therefore, some compromise
currency laws were enacted which, however, only created a highly
complicated and confused situation, without relieving the economic
plight of the affected groups. But when, in 1893, President Cleveland
demanded the repeal of the Silver Purchase clause of an Act passed only
in 1890, Bryan opposed him with a fire-eating speech in Congress. This
did not prevent the repeal of the law, which in any case had failed to have
the desired economic effects, but silver producers distributed a million
copies of the speech. Bryan saw where the opportunity would lie for
presidential candidates three years later.
In 1892 Bryan was re-elected to Congress, this time as spokesman for
the silver-mine owners, whose interests, luckily for this gifted if demagogic
politician, corresponded at least in appearance with those of the
poor. In 1894, however, Bryan did not try a third time for the House of
Representatives, but ran for the Senate instead. He was not elected. His
friends in the silver trade set him up as editor of the Omaha World-Herald,
a post that enabled him to set about preparing the way for ·his
nomination as Democratic presidential candidate in 1896. Only very few
observers would have guessed, even in the early months of 1896, that
Bryan would be nominated and that bimetallism would become the
exclusive issue around which the election would be fought.
Even when Bryan had fought his way up through the convention,
McKinley, already nominated Republican candidate, believed that
within a few weeks the silver controversy would have blown over. He
would have much preferred a debate on protective tariffs. The Republicans
suddenly realized, however, that in Bryan they had to combat a
politically highly potent combination of the silver controversy and Populist
aspirations and resentment.
The Populist Party, in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century,
was an American social revolutionary protest movement for which a
justly discontented rural population was responsible, for it had never
really recovered from the depression of 1873. These farmers saw, and
more especially heard, a great deal of the prosperity of other population
groups. The symbol 'gold' was enough to direct this bitter and egalitarian-minded
resentment into political channels.