Editor's Foreword
Every election seems "critical" at the time it is held. Few seem quite so consequential in the broad sweep of history. Yet most historians would agree that of the handful of American presidential elections worthy of the designation, that of 1896 is wholly deserving.
To make such an observation may seem to imply that there is nothing fresh to be said about the topic. And in fact the narrative, in general at least, is well known, often expressed as a series of "either/or" propositions: gold or silver, city or country, farmer or urban worker, east or west, McKinley or Bryan. (ix)
Three interpretations stand out, and each is likely to be a bit controversial. The first involves Bryan. This is not simply a gifted speaker who takes the Democratic convention unexpectedly by storm. Williams's Bryan sees an opportunity and grabs it. The nomination is a prize he has had in view long before the convention, and by a combination of luck (the residue of design) and calculation, he wins it, as he predicts he will. (ix)
The second involves Mark Hanna, whose "front porch" strategy, actually suggested by the candidate himself, cannily guided his candidate, McKinley, to victory. Williams actually sees Hanna as a human being rather than a caricature, as the first modern political operative who grasps how politics is changing. He is not the one-dimensional fund-raising machine so often encountered but a shrewd, insightful politician who understands what is required to get his man elected.
Finally, there is the retiring incumbent, Grover Cleveland, who fares poorly. He is no portrait in courage but rather an increasingly out-of-touch, pathetically and increasingly irrelevant chief executive, whose party repudiates him in a way no other party has ever repudiated a sitting president. (x)
Author's Preface
Political scientists and historians call it a critical election, one of a handful (1800, 1828, 1860, and 1932 were the others) that brought fundamental realignments in American politics. New voting patterns replaced the old, a new majority party arose to govern the country, and national policies shifted to suit the new realities. (xi)
Chapter 1: 1896-The Party Background
In an extraordinarily mobile society, political parties often transcended state and territorial orders, and people moving into new areas could carry with them the party slogans, rituals, and identifications they had known back home. They adjusted to the new, in short, by taking with them important parts of the old.
Belonging to a political party, people had discovered, gave them a feeling of community, "an internalized sense of history, tradition, and common values." Once perceived as divisive, as they were by Jefferson and many others, the parties became schools instead, teaching "seasonal courses in how to be Americans." (2)
Reflecting these developments, the decades that followed the Civil War became in the eyes of historians and political scientists "the party period," the time of greatest attachment to political parties in the country's history--and no wonder: Civil War loyalties, Republican or Democratic, often lasted a lifetime. (4)
In 1896, the year of McKinley and Bryan, another innovation reflected the country's commitment to public politics, the arrival of the celluloid pinback button, which then spread more rapidly than any other single item in the history of American politics. (5)
The Australian secret ballot laws, which did in fact emerge from Australia, revolutionized the methods and processes of voting. The idea spread quickly. Massachusetts first adopted it in 1888, and by 1892, three-fourths of the states had followed. Under the new system, the state, not the party, printed the ballots, making sure they came in a uniform format regardless of party, for voters to mark in private and place, again in private, in a ballot box. Ballot reformers, of course, were delighted, but like many reforms, the secret ballot brought unforeseen consequences. Australian laws almost always called for "blanket" ballots that listed on a single ballot the candidates of all parties instead of just those of one party, a system that discouraged split tickets and third parties. Since a candidate's name, by law, could appear only once on a single ballot, the blanket ballot made it harder to "fuse" separate tickets in a strategy that had once enabled minority parties to combine various candidates in order to win. It also made it harder for poor whites, immigrants who could not read or write, and southern blacks to vote. In unexpected ways, it helped in the long run to decrease voter turnout. [6]
To get these large turnouts, politicians in the period perfected the "army" or "military style" of campaigning, which got its start in the 1850s and then grew dramatically in the decades after the Civil War. It seemed natural enough: people of the era had lived, after all, through the massive battles of the Civil War, and there were hundreds of thousands of Union and Confederate veterans who could not wait to march.
In this new military style, elections became battles, the two parties formed armies, voters were troops and the polls were the battlefield. "Even the language of politics," as one historian has noted, "was cast in military terms." At the opening gun of the campaign, the standard-bearer, along with his fellow warhorses, rallied the rank and file around the party standard. Precinct captains set their phalanxes to mobilize voters; party headquarters used their war chests to enlist supporters; party literature armed men for battle; and, on election day, the well-drilled ranks overwhelmed the opponent's camp and claimed the spoils of victory.
The military style lasted roughly through the late 1880s, though remnants of it could be seen many years later, including an impressive flare toward the close of William McKinley's 1896 campaign. Since virtually everyone belonged to one party (army) or the other, the party's task was not so much to convert voters to the cause as to get them out on election day. To do that, it employed badges, uniforms, parades, and mass gatherings to draw crowds to listen to party speakers. Fireworks and cannon fire simulated the battlefield. [9]
On October 31, 1896, well after the military style had begun to wane, over 100,000 people marched for Republican candidate William McKinley in a "sound money" parade down Broadway in New York City. [10]
Republicans took immense pride in their party's record. Large differences in outlook and issues set them apart from their Democratic opponents. Whereas Democrats stressed the local and negative, Republicans pursued a national vision, in which local interests merged into nationwide patterns and government became an instrument to promote moral and material [11] growth. Reed captured some of the distinction with his usual wit: "The Republican party does things, the Democratic party criticizes; the Republican party achieves, the Democratic party finds fault." It was a partisan judgment but one that outside observers confirmed. Beatrice Webb, the British socialist, noted that Republicans "represented a faith in centralized power, in the capacity of the few who are in authority at the centre of the state or the municipality to regulate the many and manage the affairs." [12]
In 1888, to Republican delight, that faith in the party's values seemed to be rewarded at last. Benjamin Harrison, the Republican presidential nominee, won the White House, and the Republicans captured control of both houses of Congress, a twin victory that neither party had been able to claim since Reconstruction, a dozen years before. Electing Reed as Speaker of the House, House Republicans adopted over bitter Democratic objections new and controversial parliamentary rules that expedited business and blocked Democratic obstructions. The famed Fifty-first Congress passed a flood of important legislation that measured the Republican vision.
It enacted the McKinley Tariff, which raised tariff rates to new levels, but included imaginative "reciprocity" provisions that enabled the president to lower rates on specific products to stimulate overseas trade, particularly with Latin America. For the first time, too, the act also offered high duties on a handful of "infant industries," such as manufacturing tinplate, used in the growing canning business, to create an entirely new domestic industry, in this case drawing on recently discovered tin ores in South Dakota's Black Hills.
The Dependent Pensions Act granted liberal pensions to Union army veterans, their widows, and their children. Both Republicans and Democrats joined in passing the Sherman Antitrust Act, one of the first federal attempts to regulate big business. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act responded to widespread agitation for the use of more silver in the currency, directing the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver a month and to issue legal tender in the form of Treasury notes in payment for it. Finally, Republicans in the House courageously passed a federal elections bill, which Democrats dubed the force bill, to protect the voting rights of African Americans in the South. Unpopular in much of an increasingly racist country, the bill showed the ongoing commitment among many Republicans to older ideals of racial progress. [12]
...in an era in which large numbers of voters distrusted the power of the federal government, the session posed large risks for Republicans, which Democrats happily seized upon. "From its organization down," a Democrat immediately complained, "this Congress has been a raging sea of ravenous legislation.... The friends of the people have only a moment to cry out before they are swept overboard to make their moans to the winds and the waves. It is not hte voice of the people. It is an instrument of tyranny." [13]
So, in a sense, had the Republicans in several states in the Midwest, especially in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. There, as on the national level, they had used the power of government to pursue party ideals. They had goverend in ways that intruded in private affairs and offended large numbers of voters. In Iowa, Republicans fought for Prohibition, hoping to end the evils of drink as they had earlier ended the evils of slaveryl In Illinois and Wisconsin, they passed public school laws, well-intentioned measures that required children to attend school a prescribed number of weeks each year.
All three states illustrated broader Republican trends, since at the same time Republicans in Boston and elsewhere were "reforming" public school laws, and Republicans in Ohio, Indiana, and Nebraska were working for temperance. In cities and states across the nation, Republicans were trying, as a prominent Iowa Republican put it, "to make a police sergeant out of the party," and now, in November 1890, they were discovering that thousands of voters recoiled from the idea.
In particular, many voters did not like the way the party's measures reflected certain religious precepts. Religious views, especially the tensions between liturgicals and pietists, strongly shaped political alignments in late [13] nineteenth-century America. Members of liturgical religions--Catholics, German Luthernas, Episcopalians, orthodox Calvinists, and others--stressed the institutions and rituals of the church, assigned the church responsibility for individual morality and salvation, and consequently restricted the role of the state in prescribing personal morality. As a rule, they tended to cast their lot with the Democratic party, which also set limits on state authority.
Members of pietist churches, by contrast, tended to prefer the Republican party, with its expansive, activist outlook. Pietists--Methodists, Congregationalists, some Presbyterians, and others--played down church ritual and believed in individual salvation, confirmed in a life of pure behavior. The state, they thought, was an appropriate instrument to achieve those ends. It should promote morality and purify society, through Prohibition, Sunday-closing laws, and other measures. [14]
In Iowa, Republican pietists took control of the state party during the 1880s and pushed Prohibition measures through the legislature."A school house on every hill, and no saloon in the valley" became their slogan. Soon there were also fewer Republicans in Iowa hills and valleys, as angry German Lutherans and Catholics flocked in protest to the Democratic party. ... Liturgically minded voters, including the region's German immigrants, numbering in the tens of thousands, were aghast. The Republicans were threatening church, family, and language.
Democrats skillfully exploited the opening, pointing out the larger pattern. In both nation and state--whether it was the McKinley Tariff, Prohibition, the force bill, Reed's tyrannical rules, or the Bennett law--the Republicans seemed bent on abusing power and encroaching on individual liberties. [14]
At the time, however, there was no hiding the devastation. Across the nation, voters in 1890 deserted the Republican party in droves. "IT IS REVOLUTION," headlined the St. Louis Republic. "On the face of the first returns, it is hard to see what the Republicans have left." The Repbulicans, in truth, had virtually nothing left. They lost 78 seats in the House, a reversal of political fortunes rarely equaled in the history of congressional elections. Instead of 166 Republican members, the next House would have 88, the Democrats 235. The totals were stunning, as was the extent of the damage. Republican candidates were overwhelmed even in areas of traditional party strength. They lost badly in New England, the Midwest, and on the plains. The force bill and other issues inflated the usual Democratic majorities in the South. Dazed, President Harrison called it "our election disaster" and hoped it indicated only the midterm reversal customary to American politics. [15]
Defeats were numerous. The Republicans lost six House seats in Wisconsin, seven in Illinois, four in Iowa, one in Indiana, six in Michigan, nine in Ohio, five in Kansas, three in Nebraska, and four in Missouri. As older faces disappeared, new politicians vaulted into sudden prominence, including a young man from Lincoln, Nebraska--William Jennings Bryan, who was swept into Congress by the Democratic landslide of 1890.
Attuned to farm problems, Bryan and others welcomed evidence that the Farmers' Alliance, a rapidly growing organization of reform-minded farmers, had scored heavily in the elections. Alliance leaders boasted that the movement had influenced or controlled 2.5 million votes, almost a quarter of the total votes cast for president in 1888. No one could confirm the figure, but it was impressive nonetheless. Leonaidas L. Polk of North Carolina, the eloquent and tireless president of the alliance, claimed thirty-eight avowed alliance men elected to Congress, with at least a dozen more pledged to alliance principles. The National Economist, the official newspaper of the order, raised the estimate to forty-four alliance members in Congress and sympathetic senators from six states.
Farmers in the South and West were fed up--with low crop prices, high railroad rates, and mortgages they could scarcely bear. In the South, they called the official history of the alliance The Impending Revolution, and they meant it. "The spirit of rebellion against the many evils is growing" it said. "Thousands of men who have already lost all hope of a peaceful solution to the great question of human rights are calmly waiting the issue." "The farmers of the United States are up in arms," another observer wrote. "They are the bone and sinew of the nation; they produce the largest share of its wealth; but they are getting, they say, the smallest share of its wealth; but they are getting, they say, the smallest share for themselves."
Southerners were particularly angry, victims of a regional economy that lagged far behind the rest of the nation. By 1890, many of them had had their fill of its chief characteristics: crop liens, depleted lands, cheap cotton, sharecropping, and living standards comparable to those of European peasants. [16]
Alliance growth, swift and startling, upset political patterns and dismayed politicians in the South and West. As a southern Democrat said: "I don't know how it is in the West, but in my country these blatant demagogues that the Farmers' Alliance send out have raised the very deuce." Republicans knew very well how it was in the West. Farmers were breaking away from the Republican party, with a determination that resisted the normal blandishments. "I never seen the time before but what I could soothe the boys down and make them feel good," a Dakota Republican wrote in July 1980, "but seemingly this fall they are not to be 'comforted.'" [17]
In Kansas, the alliance-related People's party, organized just a few months before, shocked the Republicans in the 1890 election. It elected four congressmen, took control of the lower hosue of the legislature, and deposed Senator Ingalls, "the innocent victim," he said, "of a bloodless revolution--a [17] sort of turnip crusade, as it were." William A. Peffer, a prominent Populist attorney and newspaper editor, took Ingalls's place and gained instant national prominence. Elsewhere in the Midwest, Nebraska elected a Democratic governor for the first time in its history.
Aggressive farm leaders emerged in both the South and the West. In Georgia, it was Thomas E. Watson, a talented orator and organizzer, a small and active, hot-tempered man with a thin face and dark-red hair brushed back from his forehead. In 1890, fed up with the desperate conditions of 'Georgia farmers, he won a race for Congress as an "independent" candidate on the Democratic ticket. Across Watson's South, the alliance won a swath of victories based on "the Alliance yardstick," a demand that Democratic party candidates pledge support for alliance measures in return for the organization's endorsement. When the elections were over, alliance leaders claimed on that basis a majority in eight southern legislatures, as well as six alliance-elected governors, including those in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas.
In the West, Jeremiah Simpson of Kansas, one of the most able of the newcomers, won a seat in Congress in 1890. Reflective and well read, a follower of the single-tax reformer Henry George, Simpson pushed for social and economic change. "We reformers," he said, "are fighting for a mud ball as big as a boulder; what we permanently win will be no larger than a diamond, but it will be a diamond."
Mary E. Lease--"Our Queen Mary," her alliance friends called her--joined Simpson on the Kansas lecture trail. Thirty-seven years old, tall and slender, she had trained herself as a lawyer and become interested in woman suffrage, temperance, and other reform issues. On the lecture platform, she sparkled, hurling sentences "as Jove hurled thunderbolts." One of those sentences, urging Kansas farmers to raise less corn and more hell, became famous nationwide, though she may never have said it. Lease made 160 speeches during that alliance summer of 1890, calling on farmers to rise against Wall Street and the manufacturing East.
Annie L. Diggs, also from Kansas, attracted a sizable following in a movement remarkably open to female leadership. Farther north, in Minnesota, Ignatius Donnelly brushed aside other leaders to take charge of the burgeoning movement on the northern plains. Donnelly was restless and irascible, a nationally known social critic who wrote several utopian novels, dabbled in reform politics, and "proved" that Shakespeare had not written his own plays. In 1890, he pushed long-cherished reforms and had large political ambitions, which the alliance movement might satisfy. [18]
As Harrison and other Republicans recognized, the year's devastation indicated dramatic shifts in voting patterns, perhaps even the onset of Democratic hegemony. Clearly, it thrust the Democrats far into the lead for the presidential election of 1892. Somehow, since 1888's remarkable victory, Republicans had lost touch with voters, something they would have to remedy if victory were to come again. On one level, they needed to take a close look at that "police sergeant" impulse toward moral and social reform, which seemed to alienate more people than it converted. On another, they needed to review the work of the Fifty-first Congress, its measures and outlookk, and the way both had been presented to the people. And finally, they needed to evaluate the challenge in the Midwest and West of this new People's party. Public opinion seemed clear, at least for the moment. The Republicans had gone too far, raised tariffs too high, imposed values too widely, legislated too much. The judgment galled party leaders, who believed they had adcted constructively in a fashion rarely seen in the past. [19]
Chapter 2: The Democrats in Power, 1893-1896
Building on his party's triumphs in the 1890 elections, Cleveland could celebrate an impressive victory in 1892, the most decisive victory, in fact, since the first election of Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. He won 5,555,426 votes to Harrison's 5,182,690, a margin of nearly 400,000 votes, large by the era's standards. He carried the South; many of the doubtful states, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, [21] and Indiana; and part of the electoral vote of several other states, including California. He also took Wisconsin and Illinois, the first Democratic candidate to do so since the 1850s. The Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. A large share of the labor vote and increased strength in the cities gave added significance to their achievement. Gaining strikingly among immigrant, Catholic, and labor voters, they carried New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Harrison's own Indianapolis, and other cities. Disgruntled Republicans complained that "the slums of Chicago, Brooklyn and New York" had decided the election, but the complaint measured envy as much as anything else. The Democrats had won votes virtually everywhere. [22]
The Democrats not only had capitalized on Republican weaknesses but also had beaten back the continued challenge of the People's party in the South. The Populists had opened the campaign with high hopes. At an emotional convention in Omaha, Nebraska, in July, they adopted a spirited platform calling for the free coinage of silver, an improved banking system, a graduated income tax, government ownership of the means of transportation and communication, and other reforms. Determined to cut away from the old parties, many of them planned to nominate for president North Carolina's Leonidas L. Polk, the popular and energetic head of the National Farmers' Alliance, who was telling friends that an independent Populist ticket would carry eight southern states and at least fourteen northern ones. But Polk, to people's dismay, died suddenly in June, and the Omaha convention had to turn elsewhere--to James B. WEaver of Iowa, a former congressman, Union army general, and third-party candidate (on the Greenback Labor party ticket) for president in 1880. [22]
An experienced campaigner, Weaver immediately took the stump to make up for the Populists' lack of an extensive organization and party press, much as William Jennings Bryan would do on a far larger scale four years later. He found the going difficult, especially in the South, where Democrats did not tolerate dissent. Night riders and hired toughs jostled his audiences and intimidated Populist sympathizers. The situation deteriorated as Weaver intimidated Populist sympathizers. The situation deterioriated as Weaver moved farther into the South, until a mob in Macon, Georgia, hurled rotten eggs, tomatoes, and rocks at the candidate and his wife. [22]
At that, Weaver regretfully called off the rest of his southern campaign and, accompanied by the fiery Mary E. Lease--"she could recite the multiplication tables and set a crowd hooting and hurrahing at her will," an opponent once conceded--focused on the plains states and silver-mining regions of the Far-West. There, audiences listened more respectfully to the Populist [22] message. "We have a system of [financial] slavery here today as inimical to human life as that which enslaved an emancipated people," Weaver told an enthusiastic crowd in Aspen, Colorado. "We wiped that out and we are on a second crusade today." [23]
The rising sun, in truth, appeared to be Democratic that year. The nation's discontented, those fed up in one way or another with current conditions and Republican rule, had voted for the Democrats, not the Populists, a signal of the basic failure of the People's party campaign. Among the Populists, discouragement began to set in. Farmers' Alliance membership lunged dramatically in 1892, for the second year in a row. The organization, once the breeding ground of the People's party, was shattered. Still, Populist leaders rallied the forces and pointed hopefully to elections in 1894 and 1896. That was the attraction of politics: another election, another chance, always lay ahead. [23]
"The Democratic party, of course, is indestructible, because it rests on a basis of permanent principles that make [sic] it the natural enemy of every successive new programme of innovation that comes up demanding accomplishment through active governmental agency." (see footnote 12) [24]
Continuing through 1897, the depression of the 1890s was the decade's decisive domestic event. It changed lives, reshaped ideas, altered attitudes, uprooted deep-set patterns. The human costs were enormous, even among the prominent.... The convulsion renewed questions about the costs of industrialization; sparked labor unrest and class antagonism; and in pointing up economic interdependencies, shifted the country's focus from the local to the national. Everywhere, older assumptions gave way to newer patterns and nagging doubts. (see footnote 26)
The depression, vast and unsettling, offered sudden opportunity to the Republicans and Populists, who might lure the discontented and build new coalitions. It strained sectional ties and strengthened complaints of monetary conspiracies--gold in the Northeast, silver in the South and West--to take over the land. [29]
Businessmen pleaded for quick action to shore up the finances and restore confidence, especially for a special session of Congress to repeal the damaging Sherman Act. Several times, Cleveland decided to follow the advice, then pulled back at the last moment. [31]
On June 26, there was more startling news--India had closed its mints to silver--and Cleveland met far into the night with Secretary of the Treasury John G. Carlisle. India's action, which left Mexico the only country in the world with free silver coinage, was the event the two men had been waiting for. It threw silverites on the defensive, illustrated once again the primacy of gold in international money markets, and swung public opinion toward the repeal camp. Even moderate silver journals began to waver, wondering if repeal might help after all. (see footnote 29) [31]
Its solution was equally simple: the unconditional repeal of the Sherman Act. Always sure of himself, Cleveland had staked everything on a single measure--a winning strategy if it succeeded, a devastating one if it did not. Characteristically, too, he would brook no opposition and instructed [31] subordinates to withhold patronage from Democrats who "oppose our patriotic attempt to help the country and save our party." [32]
Fervid silverites were fighting back, stung by the demand for unconditional repeal. They had, to be sure, no special affection for the Sherman Act, which had failed to add as much silver to the currency as they had hoped. But repeal without an effective silver substitute was another matter. "I never did think that the Sherman Bill was a wise piece of legislation," a California senator wrote, "but I believe that if it is unconditionally repealed, ...silver will be permanently demonetized."
That was exactly the point, silverites felt. Eastern and European financiers had joined in a selfish plot to demonetize silver, "a gigantic conspiracy...to establish finally and forever the single gold standard, and to extend it over the world." They had subverted the Sherman Act, dictated the closing of the Indian mints, and caused the collapse of the American economy. Now they had even enlisted the president, who tamely did their bidding. (see footnote 34) [32]
In such a battle, the stakes were high, silverites were sure, higher than at any time since the Revolution. The working masses were pitted against the parasitic rich, the producers against the speculators, the money of the people against the golden Baal. "The war has begun," Davis H. Waite, the Populist governor of Colorado, shouted to a large rally in Denver on July 11, 1893. "Our weapons are argument and the ballot," but should those not succeed, "it is better, infinitely better, that blood should flow to the horses' bridles than our national liberties should be destroyed." (see footnote 35) The angry rhetoric, repeated again and again as the repeal struggle approached, alarmed supporters of the gold standard, who, in turn, ridiculed the "Populist cuckoos" abroad in the land. By the time Congress convened, feelings had hardened on both sides of the currency question. Each side laid sole claim to "sound [32] principles," and respectively blamed the "gold trust" or the "silver inflationists" for the nation's economic ills. (see footnote 36) [33]
The message never mentioned the touchy word gold and hinted that quick repeal might lead to an international agreement to boost silver. Cleveland had set out to soothe tempers. (see footnote 37) [33]
The silver lines bent under the pressure. On August 16, William Jennings Bryan, the attractive young Nebraskan, tried to stiffen resolves. [33]
The end in sight, senators turned back a silverite proposal to restore the 1878 Bland-Allison Act, 37 to 33, then defeated a free silver amendment, 41 to 31. Ominously for the Democratic party, 22 Democrats voted for the free silver amendment, 20 voted against. Ominously, too, the delegations from sixteen states, all in the South and West, voted unanimously for free silver, whereas the delegations from twenty-one states, almost all in the Northeast and MIdwest, voted unanimously against. The lines in the free silver drama were tightening and not in the Democrats' favor. Early in the evening of October 30, the Senate turned at last to the repeal bill itself, which it passed, 48 to 37. The Republicans voted more than two to one for repeal; the Democrats again divided evenly. The gold reserve that day stood at $84,000,000. Cleveland was pleased, and he was the focus of the victory. "He has brought the entire Senate to his feet," one newspaper remarked. On November 1, 1893, he signed the bill into law and ordered the mints to stop purchasing silver. The great repeal battle of 1893, an event that would reshape the politics of the decade, was ended. (see footnote 46) [35]
Spurred by repeal, silver sentiment grew swiftly during 1893 and 1894, sweeping through the South and West and appearing even in the rural regions of New York and New England. Prosilver literature flooded from presses and filled newspaper columns. Pamphlets, some of them distributed by the millions, touted silver's virtues. People read, discussed, and believed. It was a time for solutions, with the economy slumping once more. During 1896, unemployment again shot up; farm income and prices fell to the lowest point in the decade. "I can remember back as far as 1858," said an Iowa hardware dealer that February, "and I have never seen such hard times as these are." Silverites offered a solution, simplistic but compelling: the free and independent coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one. (see footnote 49)[36]
Free coinage meant that the mints would coin all the silver offered to them. Independent coinage meant that the United States would coin silver regardless of the policies of other nations, nearly all of which were on the gold standard. The ratio of sixteen to one pegged silver's value at sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold, a formulation based on the market prices of the two metals back in the 1830s. [36]
The silverites believed in a quantity theory of money: the amount of money in circulation determined the level of activity in the economy. A money shortage--there was not enough gold to support economies around the world--meant declining activity and depression. Silver meant prosperity. Added to the currency, it would swell the money stock and quicken the pace of economic activity. Farm prices would rise. "The blood of commerce will again flow through the arteries of business; industry will again revive; millions of men will find employment; [and] the hand of greed will be stricken from the throat of prosperity."
By 1896, silver had become a symbol. For many, it had moral and patriotic dimensions and stood for a wide range of popular grievances. Cleveland and his fellow gold adherents never understood that. With skillful work, they could have drawn some of the movement's sting, but instead they adopted policies that sharpened its symbolism. Cleveland anointed silver in trying to kill it. For many in the society, silver reflected rural values rather than urban; suggested a welcome shift of power away from the Northeast; gave the nation, acting independently of other countries, a chance to display its growing authority in the world; and spoke for the downtrodden instead of the well-to-do. It represented the common people, as the vast literature of the movement showed. In article after article, pamphlet after pamphlet, farmers and financiers, thrown together in accidental circumstances, debated the merits of silver and gold, with results obvious to all who knew the virtues of common folk and common sense. [37]
Like Coin, silver profited from illusion. It fed on fears and grew with apprehensions. Its supporters, like the "goldolators" they despised, tended to oversimplify the issue, appeal to emotions, imagine conspiracies, and cast [37] events in terms of good and evil. They also tried to respond constructively to public need and economic hardship. Silver was a social movement, one of the largest in American history, but its life span turned out to be remarkably brief. As a mass phenomenon, it flourished between 1894 and 1896, then succumbed to defeat, prosperity, and the onset of fresh concerns. But in its time, it spoke a mood and won millions of followers. It altered the course of politics. Silver reshaped sectional alignments, changed party outlooks, and helped topple a president. It presided at the birth of a "new" Democratic party. [39]
The 1893 state and local elections turned Democrats out of office across the country. The Republicans prospered, as large numbers of Democratic voters either remained at home or voted Republican. Significantly, the Populists again failed to attract the discontented, except in some areas of the South.
The Republicans swept New York and Pennsylvania. In Massachusetts, they ousted Governor Russell, Cleveland's close friend and once the symbol of Democratic hopes in New England. In Iowa, they defeated Governor Horace Boies, a similar symbol in the Midwest and on the plains. In Ohio, William McKinley crushed his Democratic opponent and won a second term as governor by 81,000 votes, the largest margin in an Ohio gubernatorial race since the 1860s. Ohio and Massachusetts displayed patterns that delighted Republicans. In both states, Republican candidates simply did well everywhere: in rural areas, small towns, and cities among both old-stock and immigrant voters. They made substantial inroads in Boston, Fall River, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, and other urban-industrial areas. (see footnote 55) [39]
The Democrats' spirits dwindled, then reeled under a decisive blow in late March 1894. Looking for a way to soothe silver sentiment and reunite the party, the Democrats in Congress passed a bill authorizing the coinage of the silver seigniorage in the Treasury. The bill was little more than a gesture. It added relatively small amounts of silver to the currency and found its strongest support among Democrats from prosilver districts who had rallied to Cleveland's call for repeal the summer before. A seigniorage law, though largely ceremonial, might placate constituents and answer criticism that the Democrats had no positive approach to the depression. [40]
...Cleveland vetoed it as unwise and inopportune. It would sap business confidence and weaken the benefits of repeal. On Capitol Hill, reporters had never seen congressmen so angry. Silver Democrats clustered in the cloakrooms and lobbies, cursing Cleveland and complaining of a presidential tyranny that violated Democratic precepts of limited executive power.
Outside the Northeast, the seigniorage veto was a stunning blow to Democrats, a landmark event in the process of party alienation from Cleveland that led to Bryan's nomination for hte presidency in 1896. It further isolated Cleveland, confirmed his apparent rigidity, and renewed charges that he pursued a "purely obstructive" policy toward the depression. Moderate Democrats despaired of ever reuniting the party. Retreating into self-righteousness, Cleveland began to complain of the "misconception and prejudice and ignorance and injustice" around him. "There never was a man in this high office so surrounded with difficulties and so perplexed, and so treacherously treated, and so abandoned by those whose aid he deserves, as the present incumbent," he wrote a friend bitterly a few weeks after the veto. [40]
Hit with soldiers and injunctions, the union never had a chance. By late July, the Pullman Strike was over, with Debs headed for jail, charged with violating the court order. In some quarters, Cleveland for a moment enjoyed public acclaim, but praise came mainly from the comfortable and well-to-do, who lauded Cleveland and voted Republican. Many workingpeople turned against Cleveland and the Democrats, particularly as later investigations documented and administration's collusion with the railroad companies in the strike. Altgeld was bitter. Democrats did not send troops into states capable of handling their own affairs. That smacked of centralized power, Republicanism, and REconstruction. Relentlessly, Altgeld set out to discredit the hated Cleveland, organizing dissident Democrats in a movement to repudiate the president in 1896.
As if Pullman were not enough, the party reeled again in the debate over its long-promised tariff reform bill. Known as the Wilson-Gorman bill, it had awaited Cleveland's action on repeal of the Sherman Act, then stalled through July 1894 in a House-Senate conference committee. Tempers flared amid the turmoil of the Pullman Strike, and the public's patience began to run out. On July 19, Cleveland intervened, apparently thinking he could bludgeon the Senate as he had in the repeal battle the year before. The bill fell "far short" of desired reform, he wrote in a public letter to William L. Wilson, the bill's sponsor in the House, and amounted to "party perfidy and party dishonor."
Writing the letter was a major blunder, reflecting Cleveland's growing isolation from the party's center. Senate Democrats, including many of his staunchest supporters, erupted in anger and dismay. Cleveland immediately tried to back down, but it was too late. [41]
Cleveland was "depressed and disappointed," he said, uncertain whether to sign the Wilson-Gorman bill. Finally, on August 28, 1894, he let it become law without his signature, ignoring warnings that such a course would further isolate him from his party. William L. Wilson called the new law "a substantial beginning," but people knew better. It was instead a disheartening end, a dismal conclusion to the Democratic party's tariff reform crusade. "The Democrats have given an exhibition of fairly colossal incompetence," Theodore Roosevelt (TR) remarked happily. [42]
Sadness and a sense of impending disaster settled over the Democrats. Voters linked them to the depression and to the failure of silver repeal, Cleveland's panacea, to cure it. Republicans were confident, certain the tariff fiasco had sealed their opponents' fate. [42]
Republican and Populist strategists forecast massive defections among normally Democratic voters. Silverites were unhappy with repeal and the seigniorage veto; businessmen and merchants resented hte uncertainties of a year's tinkering with the tariff; sheep growers feared hard times from the removal of duties on wool in the Wilson-Gorman Tariff. [42]
Twenty-four states elected no Democrats to Congress; six others chose only one Democrat each. A single Democrat (Boston's John F. Fitzgerald, the grandfather of President John F. Kennedy) represented the party's once-bright hopes in New England. [43]
The returns discouraged the Populists. Their hopes had again been high as the campaign opened. Hard times might at last break old-party allegiances, moving the large numbers of discontented into the Populist fold. [43]
"The People's Party will come into power with a resistless rush," wrote Eugene V. Debs from jail. Working with Debs and others, the Populists wooed labor and the unemployed, particularly in areas where the Pullman Strike and other labor disturbances had left workers restless and dissatisfied. In the South, they often fused with the Republican party and nominated joint tickets to oppose the dominant Democrats.
None of the plans worked quite as the Populists had hoped. Nationwide, they increased their vote by about 42 percent over 1892 totals, an attractive figure but far short of expectations. They made striking inroads in parts of the South, especially in North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, and also gained in Nebraska, Minnesota, and California. Encouragingly, they improved in some urban areas, including Chicago and San Francisco, and did well among miners and railroad workers. (see footnote 71)
Still, it was far from enough. In a year in which thousands of voters were switching allegiances, the Populists elected only four senators and four representatives. They lost Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota, and Idaho, all Populist states in 1892. Governor Waite failed in his bid for reelection in Colorado. Ignatius Donnely lost his Minnesota state senate seat. Thomas E. Watson lost another race for Congress in Georgia. The Republicans swept Kansas, once a focus of the Populist movement. Everywhere, the results were disheartening. In Georgia, Alabama, and other southern states, the Democrats continued to use fraud and violence to keep Populist totals down. In the Midwest, the Populists doubled their vote in 1894 yet still attracted less than 7 percent of the vote. From Indiana to California, the discontented had tended to vote for the Republicans, not the Populists. With that, the Populist challenge, once so large with promise and possibility, was nearly over. (see footnote 72) [44]
Attention turned now to the long-awaited presidential election of 1896, an election made even more important by the events of the past few years. Candidates and platforms were yet to be determined, but the issues were already clear, and the stakes were high. Populist prospects looked dim, but elections could always surprise. The silver issue, thanks to Cleveland and the depression, had acquired large and unanticipated importance. The Democratic party had suffered badly but had strong ties to voters in the South and elsewhere. The depression's enormity had changed many voters' views, to which Republicans had responded so far with gratifying success. Confident, they understood they had prospered on the newer issues in 1894 and counted on doing so again in 1896, little knowing that the Democrats still had some important surprises in store. [45]
Chapter 4: Democrats Divided-The Democratic Convention at Chicago
That was an interesting thought, this making of money: in 1895, the nation Cleveland led continued to suffer under grave economic hardship. It was the third year of depression. Millions remained unemployed; many had lost hope. Farmers went bankrupt, their farms auctioned off to pay their debts. [67]
Rarely in American history has a political party repudiated its sitting president. It happened to Grover Cleveland in 1896.
It started early. In 1894, more than twenty Democratic state platforms came out for free silver. That fall, the elections accelerated the trend, decimating the Democrats in the Northeast and Midwest. Power within the party suddenly shifted to the South, where it remained for decades. [68]
In August, silver Democrats formed a Bimetallic Democratic National Committee, a "shadow" group to parallel the Cleveland-run regular committee. It monitored administration activities and lobbied for free silver platforms. [68]
In 1890, [Bryan] won election to the House. A low tariff Democrat who switched to free silver, he symbolized his party's transition during the 1890s. He supported Cleveland in 1892, then broke with him over the depression [69] and the currency. Seeing the mounting public interest in silver, Bryan studied the issue and made it his own. Opponents thought him shallow and unsophisticated, a creation of his own voice, but he attracted a growing following. In 1893, he helped lead the fight against unconditional repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and a year later, the object of Cleveland's bitter hostility, he retired from Congress to work full-time for silver. Between 1894 and 1896, Bryan canvassed the nation, courting editors, wooing potential delegates, and fanning interest in the silver cause. He turned down few invitations and spoke in almost every state. As always, his speeches built on each other, progressively bringing together favorite ideas and sentences from previous efforts. In December 1894, Bryan found a phrase he liked--"I will not help to crucify mankind upon a cross of gold"--and saved it for future use.
Unlike McKinley, Bryan drew on the Jeffersonian tradition of rural virtue, suspicion of urban and industrial growth, distrust of central authority, and abiding faith in the powers of human reason. Jefferson, he once said, "placed man above matter, humanity above property, and spurning the bribes of wealth and power, pleaded the cause of the common people." Bryan pleaded the same cause. He believed in human progress, but unreflective, he never thought deeply about its processes or ends. He ably led and only dimly understood. Professionals scoffed at his presidential ambitions, and Bryan himself recognized the distant odds. His prospects depended on silverite control of the party ad luck at the national convention. As 1896 approached, he seemed no more than an attractive dark horse, with strong ties to the discontented in the South and West, helpful friends among the Populists, and a broad network of party allies built up during years of relentless campaigning. In retrospect, he was the logical candidate, the embodiment of the forces reshaping the Democratic party. (see footnote 10) [71]
In February, Democrats in Congress voted almost two to one for a free coinage bill, an initial victory for the silverites. ...Cleveland lashed back, determined to hold the party for gold. He was sure the Democrats would lose that year, but he wanted a sound money candidate and platform to keep the record clean. [71]
Bryan: "So that you may both sleep well tonight, I am going to tell you something. I am the only man who can be nominated. I am what they call 'the logic of the situation.'" He alone, he said, had the kind of broad appeal to discontented farmers and laborers, silver Democrats, Populists, and silver Republicans that could win the election. [81]
In the end, the delegates chose Arthur Sewall of Maine, who was sixty-one years old, a well-to-do shipbuilder, and a board member of a Maine railroad and bank, two entities many Bryan Democrats and most Populists did not like. In his favor now, he was one of a few significant business figures in the country who openly supported silver. [90]
To many such as Masters, Bryan seemed a new Thomas Jefferson, perhaps a new Andrew Jackson, a man who could lead a nation once again on a crusade against privilege. [91]
White's reflections were generous, but they happened to have come years later. In July of 1896, he felt quite differently: "I was moved by fear and rage.... To me, he was an incarnation of demagogy, the apotheosis of riot, destruction, and carnage." [91]
Chapter 5: Bryan Takes the Stump
"The new Christ of Humanity," the "father of our Country," "the hope of the Republic--the central figure of the civilized world": these were heady words, and many candidates would have taken pains to sidestep them. Not Bryan, who saw himself, in fact, in those very terms. He believed his candidacy was the "first battle," as he later put it, in people's hope to improve their lot, fend off those hated gold barons, and regain their rightful role in a swiftly changing society. [94]
Phrases about the "enemy" were harmless enough when muttered in private but unfortunate when used in public. As the Bryans left Lincoln for the trip to New York, he told the crowd at the railroad depot that he had wanted to accept the nomination at home but had decided instead upon New York, "in order that our cause might be presented first in the heart of what now seems to be the enemy's country, but which we hope to be our country before this campaign is over." The phrase the enemy's country, so lightly said, haunted him through election day. (see footnote 8) [95]
Significantly, David B. Hill satyed away, as did all but a handful of New York State's Democratic leaders. Conservatives were openly apprehensive, fearful that Bryan might rouse the unemployed to a new pitch of discontent. [95]
For two hours, he did his best to rate peassure voters that he and his platform offered no menace to private property, traditional institutions, or the social order. There was no plan to abolish the Supreme Court, as some opponents were already claiming, just a hope it would reverse its decision on the income tax. He explained at length his views on the money question and urged sectional unity and national honor.
Opponents charged that he stood for revolution, but Bryan emphasized, but he did not.
"Our campaign has not for its object the reconstruction of society. We cannot insure to the vicious the fruits of a virtuous life; we would not invade the home of the provident in order to supply the wants of the spendthrift; we do not propose to transfer the rewards of industry to the lap of indolence. Property is and will remain the stimulus to endeavor and the compensation for toil." (see footnote 13)
...Some friends wished he had not read the speech and taken advantage of the compelling speaking skills that, after all, had drawn the thousands to the Garden. Friendly newspapers wished, too, that he had spoken at greater length on the income tax or the use of court injunctions against labor, both popular topics among urban workers. Instead, he had dwelled on silver, "the paramount question of this campaign," as he had told his listeners. Opponents, of course, had an easy time making fun of him. [96]
The criticism did not faze Bryan at all. Though a deeply sincere man, he was also fairly unreflective, sure of his mission, wedded to his moral purposes, and certain that he stood for the right. [97]
In early September, gold Democrats meeting in Indianapolis named a separate presidential ticket, obviously designed to take votes away from him. Democratic newspapers were deserting him in droves. In New York City alone, the World, Sun, Herald, Times, and Evening Post had already repudiated him, as did the Herald, Globe, and Post in Boston; the Times and Record of Philadelphia; and the News and Sun in Baltimore. With the defection of the Chicago Chronicle, the Democrats had no spokesperson at all in that city. In the South, the Louisville Courier-Journal, New Orleans Picayune, Charleston News and Courier, and Richmond Times refused to support Bryan and Sewall. All were widely read; all could usually be counted on to back the Democratic ticket. Hearst's New York Journal became the only Democratic newspaper in New York City and virtually the only paper in the whole Northeast that supported Bryan. (see footnote 16) [97]
Traditional Democratic donors were sending their money to McKinley or watching from the sidelines, eager for Bryan's defeat. [97]
As expected, Hearst and the New York Journal made one of the largest contributions to the campaign, nearly $41,000, Hearst himself chipping in $15,000 of the total. Marcus A. Daley, a Montana silver mine owner, reportedly sent $50,000, but contrary to campaign legends, little support came from the owners of silver mines. [97]
All told, Bryan collected about $300,000 for his entire campaign, a dramatic contrast to McKinley's fund of $3,500,000. Those two figures alone measured some of the enormous challenges Bryan faced.
Lacking money, Democrats could do little in the way of distributing campaign documents, only a small fraction of the materials the Republicans were sending out. In all, they managed to distribute only 10 million speeches and pamphlets, fewer than the Republicans mailed every few days, and 125,000 copies of Coin's Financial School, the prosilver pamphlet, once widely popular, that had just about outlived its usefulness. The National Silver party managed to add some 8 million documents, a woeful amount in this important campaign year. [98]
...Bryan chose Senator James K. Jones of Arkansas, head of the Bimetallic Democratic National Committee, to lead his campaign. The choice was tricky because Jones had the benefit of close ties with silverites but very difficult relations with southern Populists, whom he had once advised to join with "the negroes where they belong," a statement he quickly denied. Jones had also never led a campaign, a disadvantage that became clear at several points during the canvass. (see footnote 22) [98]
The party was badly split between the Cleveland and Bryan wings; it suffered from voters' perception of its inability to deal with the hardships of the depression, and it had the task now of figuring out what to do about the challenge of the People's party. This, it was clear from the start, would not be an easy campaign. [98]
First, bypass traditional party organizations and pull on the help of the thousands of silver men and silver clubs he had met in his years of campaigning. Second, forget all the newspapers that were deserting him; if he made enough news [98] on the stump, they would have to send reporters along on his train, print his speeches, and cover his campaign. Third, finance the campaign by minimizing expenses and inviting small contributions. And finally, place Bryan the candidate on the national stump, where the same alluring voice that had helped him win the nomination might just land him in the White House. [99]
"Nobody is on our side except the people." (see footnote 25) [99]
But he was the first presidential candidate to make a systematic tour of the states he needed for election.... "It used to be the newspapers educated the people," he said to an August rally in Iowa," but now the people educate the newspapers." (see footnote 26)
Reporters who accompanied him never knew whether to scoff or praise. [99]
In early October, the Democratic National Committee finally leased a private railroad car for him, named The Idler--"a most inappropriate name, it seemed to me," Bryan said--which added both to his comfort and to his efficiency.... Leaving home again on September 9, Bryan spent every day except Sundays campaigning. [99]
"Living near him is like living near Niagara," Willa Cather, his fellow Nebraskan, said. "The almighty ever-renewed force of the man drives one to distraction." [101]
Bryan was an evangelist by nature, and his campaign had many of the hallmarks of a revival meeting. [101]
...he would say in apology that "a large portion of my voice has been left along the line of travel, where it is still calling sinners to repentance," a line that nearly always drew a laugh. [101]
It did not matter that he only spoke for a few minutes, a historian of the campaign has noted. "Everyone knew his arguments anyway; the people had come to marvel at his appearance, to stand near the man who promised to redeem the land they loved from the grasp of the forces of Evil." [102]
The problem, so serious that it ultimately contributed to his defeat, surfaced first in Chicago, where he had adopted the rhetorical technique of "polarization"--an attempt to persuade his listeners to abandon the middle ground and commit to him and his cause--to win over the delegates. The technique had worked well in Chicago, helping him to gain the presidential nomination, but it fared less well in front of a national audience. (see footnote 34)
During his speech at the convention, he had employed strong rhetorical strokes. He had reminded listeners of the language of the Civil War ("In this contest brother has been arrayed against brother, father against son"); used military metaphors ("We are fighting in the defense of our homes, of our families, and posterity"); compared silver Democrats to Christian crusaders at war with the infidels; spoken approvingly of "the avenging wrath of an indignant people"; and blamed the nation's problems on the well-to-do ("What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand, as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggrandized wealth"). From start to finish, his language was consciously defiant: "We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them." (see footnote 35)
There was one truth, Bryan had said at Chicago, a theme he repeated over and over during his campaign. "If there is one lesson taught by six thousand years of history it is that truth is omnipotent and will at last prevail," he announced in Salem, on the lawn of the courthouse where he had first practiced law. "You may impede its progress, you may delay its triumph; but after awhile it will show its irresistible power, and those who stand in its way will be crushed beneath it." (see footnote 36) [102]
Bryan spoke that way throughout his campaign, in words and phrases that were often confrontational--crushed beneath it, extermination, warfare, and war, war, war--reinforced in turn by his frequent comparisons of himself and his cause to stories in the Bible, stories his Bible-reading audiences knew by heart. In Chicago, he had taken on the role of Jesus Christ himself, "crown of thorns," "cross of gold," and all. On other occasions, he summoned images of himself as David against Goliath, as Moses, as Saint Paul, or as Solomon, the wise rule-giver. Opponents he likened to Judas Iscariot, and though warned against it again and again, he continued throughout the campaign to call them "enemies."[103]
A party leader in Illinois happily reported that many Republicans "have come forward like sinners in a religious revival and joined us with public denunciations of their old party affiliations." Other spoke of "evangelists in the cause" and "converts." [103]
...but in this national campaign, it tended to drive people away. Many religious leaders questioned it, especially its use of sacred images for political purposes, and they delivered sermon after sermon against it. Many voters did not like it, a fact that McKinley and the Republicans quickly exploited. (see footnote 43)
In his own campaign, McKinley purposely established a different tone. "It is their intelligence we seek to reach," he said of those who might vote for Bryan; "it is their sober judgment we invoke; it is their patriotism to which we appeal.... It is to persuade, not to abuse, which is the object of rightful public discussion." (see footnote 44) [105]
McKinley, no less than Bryan, believed deeply in personal salvation, but he described the experience in terms that were tolerant and inclusive. Bryan thought otherwise. "If this [being born again] is true of one [person], it can be true of any number," he argued again and again. "Thus, a nation can be born in a day if the ideals of the people can be changed." Bryan's campaign aimed for exactly that: a nation that had been "born again," resting on bedrock values, acting on one "truth," conscious always of a sacred cause. (see footnote 45) [105]
"Probably the only passage in the Bible read by some financiers is that about the wise men of the East," he burst out. "They seem to think that wise men have been coming from that direction ever since." [106]
Without an adequate money supply, farmers were poor and restive, and "the farmers of the country are the Samsons, and when they fall they will pull down the pillars of the temple with them." [106]
Remarkably eloquent, he could carry audiences to new levels of thought, as he did in a speech in St. Louis in October:
"I was born after the war. I belong to that generation which has never had an opportunity to prove its love of country upon the battlefield; but, oh, my countrymen, never in the history of this country has there ben such an opportunity as there is today for the citizen to prove his love, not only of his country but of all mankind and of his God. The battle that we fight is fought upon the hilltop, and our contending armies are visible to all the world. All over this globe, in every civilized nation, the eyes of mankind are turned toward this battlefield. Show me, anywhere, a man oppressed, show me a man who has suffered from injustice, show me a man who has been made the victim of vicious legislation, and I will show you a man from whose heart goes up a silent prayer that we may win. (see footnote 56) [107]
The size of the crowds had also worried Republican leaders, including John Hay, who wrote a friend: "The last week of the campaign is getting on everybody's nerves. There is a vague uneasiness among Republicans.... I do not believe defeat to be possible, though it is evident that this last month of Bryan, roaring out his desperate appeals to hate and envy, is having its effect on the dangerous classes." (see footnote 58)
Those "dangerous classes," in fact, had heard Bryan speak less to hate and envy than to hope and possibility, to the liberating potential of silver, to priorities that offered hope to the downtrodden, to the intervention of government in national problems. He spoke to those people, as he often put it, who were sure that "there are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them"--and argument that would resonate through Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. [108]
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