LAD #24 - Cross of Gold

A badge advocating the central idea of the "Cross of Gold" speech.

In 1895, some Democrats organized to advocate the unlimited coinage of silver. They won over several times, but in the process, people were turned against each other.

William Jennings Bryan was not speaking as an individual, but represented all people of Massachusetts, who were equal before the law. He said the accepted definition of a businessman is too limited; people who worked in country areas should be considered businessmen just as wealthy people in cities are.

The lower class was simply fighting for their rights, not as aggressors.
Bryan also rebutted or countered many points of the opposing side; for example, they said they had passed an unconstitutional law with the income tax law, but Bryan said it hadn't been unconstitutional at the time of passage, only afterwards when a judge changed his mind.

He also opposed the national bank currency, as it injured the working class and protected creditors. He pointed out some of the hypocrisy in this system.

He said there were two ideas of government: one that believed prosperity would trickle down to the masses if given to the prosperous, and one that held that if wealth were given to the masses it would find its way up the classes above them; and he said that cities would live as long as farms existed, but if farms were destroyed, cities wouldn't last long either.

The gold standard would serve only to help upper classes, leaving lower ones in the dust. Bryan declared that those classes would fight those who supported the gold standard, concluding by saying they would not give the laboring class this crown of thorns or crucify mankind on a cross of gold.