The 'Fence' Speech
I have an interesting story to tell you about one of my ancestors, which happens to have some historical significance.
The presidential election of 1896 was a big turning point in the United States. Three years earlier, an economic depression gripped the country, giving rise to the new Populist movement. The Populists were made up of mostly western farmers who suffered from falling commodity prices and burdensome loans. Their solution was to attack the free market system, which they believed was unilaterally controlled by East Coast bankers and businessmen.
The Populists demanded such things as a progressive income tax, farm handouts, and public ownership of the railroads, grain elevators, and telegraph/telephone systems. They were the New Dealers before the New Deal.
However, their #1 target was the country's monetary policy -- the gold standard. They saw it as the primary tool of the bankers and businessmen to keep the lower and agrarian classes down while they themselves got rich. As an alternative, the Populists demanded the unlimited coinage of silver to increase the money supply, and thus, increase prices and alleviate loan payments.
The young William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, with his intense oratory skills helped turn the Populists into a national movement, and was their man in the 1896 election.
Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896, Bryan gave a speech that is now one of the most famous in political history. He attacked the East Coast industrial class by directly attacking the gold standard. He concluded his energetic speech by saying,
"If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their 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." (an audio re-production, delivered by Bryan himself in 1921, can be heard here)
His "Cross of Gold" speech, as it has now come to be known, was a huge rallying cry for the Populists.
That brings me to my point. My very own great, great grandfather, George Henry Carroll (on my mom's side), was living in Miller, South Dakota, at the time. He was a leading man in the community and cared deeply about how the politics of the day were affecting the country. However, he was on the side of the free market and the gold standard (I am blessed with good political DNA). Because he was in the Midwest and surrounded by Populist farmers, he was right in the thick of it.
My twin sister, Sally, who is a huge genealogy buff, was recently doing research on our great, great grandfather and found out that he gave a speech to an unknown audience in South Dakota ahead of the 1896 election (Sally found the speech in a book called "The Five Generations of Carrolls" written by Louise Carroll Wade, a distant relative. The speech, which is unavailable online, can be found at the South Dakota State Archives).
George Henry Carroll was trying to convince the people who were in attendance and who were clearly enamored with Bryan and the Populists to understand that the government wasn't the solution to their problems. During his speech, he said:
"The federal government is like a fence around a farm. The fence raises no crops of wheat -- no fields of corn. It only protects the farmer while he raises his crops, he giving a good portion of his time to keep the fence in repair. Just so we give a good share of our taxes to keep the great government fence in repair. I beg of you to keep this thought in mind that government has not a dollar to give any man...not a bed, not a cow or calf. Nothing but protection while you are at work for yourself...Government has nothing to give anybody."
He later said, "What are we waiting for? Are we looking for Providence to help us? Might as well look for the cow to back up to the milk stool."
I have a familial bias, but that's poetic in a "pull your sleeves up and get to work" kind of way.
Bryan, of course, lost the 1896 election, in part because commodity prices rose during the final weeks before the election -- darn that free market! However, the Populists, despite losing their influence in the subsequent years, got the last laugh. The country eventually passed an income tax and enacted farm subsidies. The government, as we all know, has since grown enormously in size, lurching leftward away from lower taxes and less spending.
In my opinion, "The Fence" speech is far superior to the "Cross of Gold" diatribe. It's too bad the latter received all the attention.
