The Secret Of Oz Page #9

"We must keep the people busy with political antagonisms. We'll therefore speed up the question of reform [of tariffs within] the Democratic Party; and we'll put the spotlight on the question of protection [for] the Republican Party. By dividing the electorate this way we'll be able to have them spend their energies at struggling amongst themselves on questions that, for us, have no importance whatsoever."

Now let's return to the 1896 democratic convention, the issues are remarkably similar.

William Jennings Bryan represented the embodiement of all the democrats' wrath against the gold money system.

At the democratic national convention in chicago, in 1896, Bryan made an emotional speech entitled "Crown of thorns ad Cross of gold".

Bryan's speech was so powerful that it propelled him from relative obscurity to the presidential nomination on the fifth ballot at a tender age of 36.

Amazingly we have Bryan's actual voice recreating portions of his famous speech recorded years later with the advent of recording technology.

Although the recording does not capture the power of the original moment, it does allow us to hear Bryan's voice:

"I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty - the cause of humanity. Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have just passed."

Bryan's recreation recording then skips significant portions of the original speech.

According to the official proceedings of the democratic national convention Bryan continued with these important references to America's monetary history:

"What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggregated wealth. We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe it is a part of sovereignty. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business."

Remember the 1892 memo from the bankers' magazine which bragged that they would try to busy the democrats with the tariff issue? Here's how Bryan refers to that very issue:

"They ask why it is we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question. I reply that if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished."

However the gold standard and its thirty-year restriction on the money supply had become so unpopular that even most republicans had come out against it. Now Bryan's recording picks back up:

"If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all the nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard, and that both the great parties this year are declaring against it. More than that, they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not for the masses have. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everwhere, we will answer the 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."

The response, wrote one reporter, "came like one great burst of artillery. Men and women screamed and waved their hats and canes!".

Some, wrote another reporter "[acted] like demented things divested themselves of their coats and flung them high in the air." The next day the convention nominated Bryan for president on the fifth ballot.

The bankers were scared: the average american farmer was mad about the lack of a plentiful money supply, now it looked like they had finally gained sufficient political force to win the highest office in the land and disrupt all the bankers' plans.

As a result the 1896 campaign was amongst he most fiercely contested presidential races in american history.

Though Bryan was only 36 years old at the time his speech is widely regarded as the most famous orations ever made before a political convention.

The McKinley campaign outspanned Bryan by a 5:1 margin. Bryan's strategy was to take his political campaign on the road. Bryan invented the national stamping tour.

He made over 500 speeches in 27 states during the 4 month campaign, an average of 4 a day, and many of them lasting over 2 hours.

Across the nations tens of thousands of americans rallied around Bryan's appearances with torchlight in parades. L. Frank Baum's own son wrote that Baum marched in more than 1 torchlight parade for Bryan.

The battle became so heated that thousands of miles away in Alaska, the highest mountain in north america Mount McKinley was even named for Bryan's opponent, republican William McKinley.

It seems that the first gold miner on the mountain, a man named William Dickey named the mountain the mountain in honor of the gold-money candidate in retaliation because his many silver-money friends so zealously supported William Jennings Bryan.

McKinley got manufacturers and industrialists to inform their employees that if Bryan were elected all factories and plants would close and there would be no work. The rule succeded, McKinley beat Bryan by a small margin.

Bryan ran for president again in 1900 and in 1908 but fell short each time. But the threat his presence presented to the national bankers afforded the republican alternatives, Roosevelt and Taft, a measure of independence from the bankers.

Roosevelt mildly opposed their monopolies and Taft was an unenthusiastic about their proposed central bank legislation that would finally be passed in 1913 as the Federal Reserve Act.

The bankers therefore shifted their support to democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

Although William Jennings Bryan never gained the presidency his efforts delayed the money changers for 20 years from attaining their next goal. A new privately-owned central bank for America, the Federal Reserve.

Bryan's defeat in 1896 was a great victory for big bankers, their yellow brick gold had effectively controlled the politics of the nation by squeezing the life out of the money system.

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