Bryan, William Jennings, 1860-1925

Outside a church, an old woman labeled “Democratic Party” stands between William Jennings Bryan as a friar labeled “16 to 1” and Arthur P. Gorman as the devil. She is smiling as she looks toward the devil. Caption: Mephisto Gorman — You’ve been fasting long enough with dull Friar William. Follow me. I’ll lead you to -.

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One of the thematic preoccupations of cartoonists in these years was the end of Lent — signifying (in cartoons, if not in real life) shedding the bonds of holy circumspection. In the interior pages, black-and-white humorous cartoons dealt with society girls and eligible bachelors.  Sometimes dealing with temptations. Cartoonist Pughe adds politics and current events to mix in this center-spread cartoon in Puck.

An old woman labeled “Democratic Party” turns a wheelbarrow to dump politicians labeled “Bryan, Olney, Gorman, Hill, Shepard, [and] Johnson” into a sandpit labeled the “Democratic Dumping Ground” where only the feet of other, previously discarded, Democrats are visible.

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What makes this cartoon particularly interesting to students of history is that the cartoonist Pughe was not criticizing Democrats from “across the aisle” or from an adversarial point of view. Puck Magazine was Democratic, and beseeched its own leaders, or moss-bound leaders of recent years, to clean house. Except for Grover Cleveland, there had been no Democratic president since before the Civil War. It is interesting that the cartoonist did not even label the politicians’ issues that failed to excite voters (free trade, bimetallism, anti-expansion), suggesting the leaders themselves had worn out their welcomes. Even Tom Johnson, reform mayor of Cleveland, is among the deplorables in Pughe’s cartoon.

William Jennings Bryan, as a pope wearing robes and a tiara labeled “16 to 1,” sits on a throne on a low pedestal labeled “Kansas City Platform.” Two Swiss guards stand next to him. The one on the left is labeled “Jones,” and the other on the right is labeled “Stone.” Caption: But Democrats have lost faith in his infallibility.

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As midterm elections loomed in 1902, William Jennings Bryan sought to assert his primacy in Democratic party councils. He had twice been beaten for the presidency, so his support — and support for his issues, for instance the bimetallic plank in the 1900 (Kansas City) platform — was vital. The vassals behind Bryan are two of his more loyal supporters: Senator James K. Jones of Arkansas was Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and William J. Stone (at the time a year away from being elected to the United States Senate from Missouri) was a contributor to Bryan’s magazine The Commoner. In 15 years’ time Stone would be one of six senators to vote against declaring war on Germany.

A donkey labeled “Democratic Party” stares at a dog labeled “Bryan” with the face of William Jennings Bryan, lying on a bed of hay labeled “Nomination.”

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William Jennings Bryan had twice led his party to defeat, in 1896 and 1900, as the Democrat standard-bearer. As such, however, he was still the nominal head of the national party, despite the partisans of former president Grover Cleveland and a scarce few others. In the mid-term elections of 1902 (this cartoon appearing in the midst of that campaign) Bryanites held sway, but poor electoral results, coupled with the immense popularity of President Roosevelt, would disabuse Bryan and his followers of a third straight nomination in 1904. A conservative presidential candidate, Judge Alton Brooks Parker of New York, was nominated for president and state tickets reflected a less Populist tone in platforms. The Democrats lost by record margins in 1904, and Bryan returned in 1908 as presidential candidate.

William Jennings Bryan and David B. Hill roast a bird over a campfire outside the “Dem. Homestead.” Caption: Dismal Dave and Weary William join in celebrating.

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Democratic leaders William Jennings Bryan, in the middle of his career as a perennial presidential candidate,and former governor and senator from New York, David Bennett Hill, the perennial aspirant for the office, experience a lean Thanksgiving. The two were virtually the only Democrats of national stature as the 1904 elections approached, and in cartoonist Keppler’s view have little to be thankful for. Indeed the Democrats in 1904 would nominate a nonentity, Judge Alton Brooks Parker, and lost the election by record margins.

William Jennings Bryan stands with the Democratic Donkey with bandages labeled “1896” and “1900.” They are watching David B. Hill, sporting a feather in his cap labeled “I’m a New Dem.”, getting into an automobile labeled “The New Democracy” with passengers William C. Whitney, Perry or August Belmont, Jr., and driver Daniel S. Lamont.

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Very seldom did cartoonists depict the Democratic donkey as something that could actually be ridden, or almost so. In Pughe’s cartoon the donkey of two-time standard-bearer William Jennings Bryan has two bad legs: his failed presidential campaigns. The cartoonist seizes upon the opportunity to depict a new-fangled automobile. What likely dismays Bryan is not only the “old versus the new”; three of the four “New” Democrats in the car are industrialists — William C. Whitney, one of the two Belmont brothers, and Daniel C. Lamont. Only David Bennett Hill is the traditional politcian; for two years the former governor aspired to be president — but when he dissented from Bryan’s populism, Hill famously declared “I am a Democrat” (and cartoonists thereafter drew him with a feather in his hat bearing that legend), which is here updated to “I am a NEW Democrat.”

Several men, identified as “Hill, Jones, Olney, Clark, Bailey, Shepard, Watterson, [and] Lamont,” carry planks of lumber which are identified as Democratic policies from previous election platforms and proposed new planks. As they construct the new “Democratic Platform,” Puck points to a plank they have forgotten, “Tariff Reform,” which sits on a platform in the background on the right. In the background on the left stands William Jennings “Bryan” holding a “Free Silver” plank of rotten wood. Caption: Puck — You are neglecting the only plank you ever did win with, – and the only one you ever can win with!

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Ever since President Grover Cleveland devoted his Annual Message to downward tariff revision (and the result of high tariffs, government surpluses, which Cleveland regarded as immoral) the Democratic Party was generally the party of low tariffs and free trade. Former Speaker of the House Samuel J Randall was one Democrat who generally favored high tariffs. But the implied point of Keppler’s cartoon is not that the Democratic Party cooled on the issue of tariff rates, but that “new” issues like anti-imperialism and standard positions on civil service reform provided the middle ground between the hoary populism of William Jennings Bryan and the tired arguments for tariff reductions could attract voters. Generally, they did not: the Democrats would lose the 1904 presidential election, to Theodore Roosevelt, by record margins.

William Jennings Bryan plays a drum labeled “Populism” while standing on a hatch labeled “Chicago Platform” on a ship that is going up in flames and billowing clouds of dark smoke labeled “Defeat 1896” and “Defeat 1900.” His hat is labeled “Free Silver” and a broken strap on the drum states “16 to 1.” Caption: The boy stood on the burning deck / From which all Democrats had fled; / The flames that lit the battle’s wreck / Shone ’round him o’er the dead. (Mr. Bryan says he is still standing on the Chicago Platform. – Roanoke, Va., speech).

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A seemingly minor detail in this cartoon and caption is dispositive about the positions and popularity of William Jennings Bryan in 1901. Dalrymple calls upon famous lines from an otherwise-forgotten poem by a relatively obscure British poet of the 1820s, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Casabianca. “The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle’s wreck Shone ’round him near the dead.” The first line. in Dalrymple’s time and ours, has lived as an allusion: people who are too blind, or blindly dedicated, to realize the destruction inherent in their stubbornness. The main point might be found in Bryan’s reference to the “Chicago Platform.” He had twice lost the presidency, soundly, yet it was not the recent (1900) platform to which he clung, but the five-year-old “Cross of Gold,” free-silver fever that overtook the 1896 Democrat convention. Had he learned a political lesson? By 1904 he quietly had softened his myopic attention to Populist economics, but, on the other hand, did not receive a third nomination. 

A man, probably Perry Belmont, labeled “New Democracy,” wears a hat with plume labeled “1904” and holds a crossbow labeled “Jeffersonian Principles.” William Jennings Bryan sits on the Democratic donkey, speaking and gesticulating wildly with his hands. His hat labeled “Populism” hangs on a post on which is a note that states “Please Bow. W.J.B.”

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Perry Belmont and his brother August H. Belmont, Jr., seldom were more than behind-the-scenes brokers in the Democratic Party. Their father, August Belmont, Senior (nee August Shoenberg in Germany and originally the American representative of the Rothschild banking interests) likewise was a quiet influence, although he had served as Chairman of the Democrat Party. In 1901 the Belmont brothers went public with criticism of William Jennings Bryan and the Populist influence on their party. Perry, likely Dalrymple’s subject, is wearing a feather labeled “1904,” but he never had electoral ambitions of his own: his public criticism at this time was focused on the fortunes of the national Democratic Party, specifically the 1904 presidential election. At this time there were movements of reform aimed at the self-described reformers in the Democratic Party, Bryanites and former Populists. At the time of this cartoon, Seth Low resigned as president of Columbia University to run for New York City mayor on the Citizens Union (Fusion) ticket, and attracted anti-Tammany Democrat support in his victory.

Representatives of the “Democratic, Republican, Populist, [and] Prohibition” parties carry a larger-than-life-sized President William McKinley on a sedan chair, and wave their hats as a show of support for McKinley’s policies. Behind them, on the right, are standing William Jennings “Bryan,” former senator George Frisbie “Hoar,” and Edward “Atkinson” (head of the Anti-Imperialist League) dressed like Filipinos. The U.S. Capitol building is in the background. Caption: All parties support him now, – except the unreconstructed Filipinos.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1901-05-29

William Jennings Bryan, holding a pitcher labeled “The Commoner,” pours water labeled “Editorials” into a paper crown labeled “McKinley’s Crown,” which is filled with holes and leaking water everywhere. The caption reads, “The Bryan Crown — It Won’t Hold Water.”

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In the year this cartoon was drawn, William Jennings Bryan, having lost two successive presidential campaigns, and with his anti-Imperialist views roundly rejected by Americans, retreated to two major pursuits: speeches on the Chautauqua circuit and launching a magazine that would keep his views before the public. The Commoner started publication in 1901, from Bryan’s home base of Nebraska, with the assistance of his brother Charles, later a governor of Nebraska and a vice-presidential candidate. The magazine, which was dismissed by Keppler in this Puck cover cartoon, had a healthy circulation for two decades.

William Jennings Bryan uses the hot air from his “Speeches” to inflate a large balloon labeled “Imperialism,” of President William McKinley dressed as the “Emperor of USA,” holding a scepter in one hand and a sword in the other. On the ground nearby is a burst balloon labeled “Goldbugism.”

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“Goldbugism” refers to the main thrust of William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 campaign, linking the Republicans to the gold standard and predatory monopolies. Bryan lost heavily in the Electoral College that year, and cartoonist Keppler predicted that the imperialism issue would have the same fate in the 1900 elections. It did.

William Jennings Bryan offers a large knife labeled “16 to 1” to a laborer who is daydreaming about “Contentment.” The laborer sits next to a large bucket, labeled “1900,” of golden eggs labeled “Savings, Good wages, Steady work, No shut downs, Prosperity, [and] Good hours.” Bryan wants the laborer to use the knife to kill the goose, in the left foreground, labeled “Gold Standard” that lays the golden eggs.

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“16 to 1” refers to the intentionally inflationary currency plan that would require the federal government to include silver as a medium of exchange and fix its rate at one-sixteenth of gold’s value. Especially after the discovery of major silver lodes in the West, this plan would make currency more elastic, and theoretically make economic life easier for farmers. This was one reason that both parties targeted the minds and votes of farmers in this era. The United States instead de-coupled silver, and went on the gold standard until the New Deal.

Puck massages the scalp of a deranged-looking Richard Olney who is sitting on a bench in a padded cell in the “Hopeless ward for incurables” and holding a rattle of William Jennings Bryan as a jester. On the floor are loose papers, one labeled “Olney’s letter indorsing [sic] Bryan.”

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Richard Olney had served as Attorney General in the second administration  of Grover Cleveland, and embodied the President’s conservative stands on Sound Money, “dangerous” unions and strikes, and regulation of monopolies if done in order to protect them. He also served Cleveland as Secretary of State, and some of his views on hemispheric affairs foreshadowed the Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine promulgated a decade later by President Theodore Roosevelt. Given this background — and as a prominent corporate and railroad lawyer, Puck was surprised that Olney supported William Jennings Bryan in the latter’s second run for the presidency.

William Jennings Bryan is a large spider labeled “Free Silver” with three flies labeled “White, Schurz, [and] Godkin” caught in his web labeled “16 to 1,” “Anti-expansion,” “Chicago Platform,” and “Bryanism.”

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The radical economic policies and agrarian roots of William Jennings Bryan kept many Eastern, aristocratic liberals from making alliance with his Populist-based campaigns. The old-line liberal reformers Horace White, Carl Schurz, and Edwin Godkin — all on the staffs of the New York Post and The Nation magazine — were tempted to support Bryan in his presidential candidacy of 1900 on the issues of Expansionism and anti-Imperialist views. The cartoon’s layout and labels indicate that cartoonist Pughe saw Imperialism as an issue that would lead to their doom.

William Jennings Bryan, on his knees, appeals to a sphinx with the face of former president Grover Cleveland.

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Grover Cleveland was the most prominent Democrat between the administrations of Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. He served two non-consecutive presidential terms, was a candidate three times, and was prominently mentioned as a potential candidate in 1900 and 1904. A conservative, he never enthusiastically endorsed the populist William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908. In a twist on the ancient theme of appealing to the silent Sphinx as an oracle, Bryan is shown here, one month before the election, pleading for a whisper of public support from the Democratic elder statesman. Bryan’s running mate was Adlai Stevenson, who had been Cleveland’s second Vice President, but the “association” did not persuade voters, who awarded Bryan with fewer votes than he had received in 1896.

William Jennings Bryan stands in the stirrups of his mount, a donkey labeled “Democracy,” directing the honor guard led by Adlai E. Stevenson, and including Henry R. Towne, Joseph Pulitzer, and Carl Schurz carrying a large flag with a portrait of Emilio Aguinaldo under the heading “The George Washington of the Philippines.” Also included are Oswald Ottendorfer, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, William Bourke Cockran, John Peter Altgeld, and William Sulzer.

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Emilio Aguinaldo’s revolutionary campaigns for Filipino independence from Spain began in the 1890s, variously as a guerilla and conventional armed insurrection, through the Spanish-American War, ultimately with and against the victorious American liberators. As a rebel leader his forces sustained and committed atrocities. He was captured and then released by President Theodore Roosevelt as part of the United States’ general amnesty, a putative end of hostilities. Aguinaldo became a hero to his countrymen and a symbol for the cause of American anti-imperialists. Of William Jennings Bryan’s ragtag “army” on this political issue, their professions provide a hint of the American movement’s constituents: Stevenson was Bryan’s running mate, committed to the Democrat party plank; Pulitzer, Schurz, Ottendorfer, and Godkin were editors and publishers; Towne was an industrialst (Yale locks); Bouke Cochran a politician and orator of unorthodox consistency; Altgeld the radical Governor of Illinois (famous for partiality to the Haymarket bombers); Sulzer a New York politcian who eventually became Governor, only to be impeached. Cartoonist Pughe clearly considered the leadership of Bryan (on an undersized donkey) and the number and prowess of the “guard” to be targets of ridicule.

Illustration shows two views of William Jennings Bryan sitting at a desk working on his campaign principles. The lower scene shows Bryan preparing for the 1896 presidential election. To the right are Carl Schurz, Henry Watterson, William Bourke Cockran, Richard Olney, and David B. Hill, all in disagreement with Bryan, each holding a sheet of paper disclaiming his principles. In the upper scene, Bryan has crossed out 1896 and replaced it with 1900, adhering to, and remaining consistent with, his earlier principles. To the right are the same five disclaimers. This time they bow to Bryan and offer only one comment: “We do not believe you will do what you promise to do, and we admire you because we think you are insincere. Hill, Olney, Cockran, Watterson, Schurz.”

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Cartoonist Dalrymple engages in hyperbole — the mother’s milk of many political cartoonists — in characterizing the positions of William Jennings Bryan as presidential candidate in 1896 (e.g., “Down with the Supreme Court”). Yet he was right to depict that fact that Bryan had changed few of his positions four years later when he was re-nominated. His in-house Democratic dissenters of 1896 indeed supported him in 1900 when this cartoon was published week before the election. In fact, three factors had changed: Bryan adopted a severe anti-Imperialist stance that attracted new adherents, his “radical” prescriptions of 1896 slowly were becoming palatable to voters, and four years out of office (“in the wilderness”) had Democrats yearning to support the only candidate in the race. Beyond the characterization of Bryan’s positions, the cartoonist’s point of view is reinforced by his caricature of the candidate — scruffy hair, needing a shave, a rough farmer’s hat.

William Jennings Bryan holds a large bellows labeled “Bryanism,” which he is using to fan the flames of a small campfire labeled “Imperialism.” On the left side of the fire is Carl Schurz and on the right, kneeling on the ground, is Adlai E. Stevenson. They blow on the fire as well, to no effect.

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Published days before the 1900 presidential election, this cartoon depicts the frustration of Democratic candidate Bryan, his running mate Adlai Stevenson, and the prominent German-American reformer Carl Schurz. At first glance, per the label, they might be thought to attempt a revival of imperialism, but imperialism fails to catch fire as a hot issue. In fact the opposition to the new territorial possessions of the United States, after the Spanish-American War, was the only important new plank in Bryan’s platform since 1896. And the public proved either indifferent to the objections… or quite in favor of America’s new place in the world.

William Jennings Bryan sits at a desk on which are papers labeled “Free Silver Speeches.” With a sorrowful look, he stares up at a raven perched on a bust of Pallas Athena. The raven wears a medallion labeled “Free Silver.” Caption: “On this home by horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore! — Is there — is there balm in Gilead? tell me, tell me, I implore! Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!'”

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Drawn and printed too early to have foreseen the actual outcome of the 1900 presidential election — which generally was considered a forgone conclusion against William Jennings Bryan — cartoonist Keppler drew a cartoon that would be safe in any eventuality. His albatross, so to speak, was the raven in this twist on Poe’s famous poem. For all of Bryan’s other attributes, qualities, and deficiencies, his stubborn adherence to inflationary bimetallism — “16 to 1” coinage of silver-to-gold ratio — widely was seen as fatal to his advancement on the national stage.