Bryan, William Jennings 1860–1925

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN (1860–1925) was born in Salem, Illinois. He attended Whipple Academy and graduated from Illinois College in Jacksonville in 1881. Studying law at Union Law School in Chicago, he passed the bar in 1883. Bryan moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1887, establishing a law partnership with a Union classmate. In 1890 he was elected to Congress, where he forcefully argued for both tariff and monetary reforms.

Bryan was inspired by his evangelical Protestantism to care deeply about the needs of the poorest in society.

After serving two terms, Bryan's strong advocacy of the free coinage of silver cost him the favor of President Grover Cleveland and his seat. He continued his crusade by becoming editor of the Omaha World Herald. Pro-silver delegates controlling the 1896 Democratic convention made Bryan the party's candidate after he eloquently delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech.

Losing the election, Bryan became a long-standing critic of the policies of the Republican majority. Though Bryan ran unsuccessfully for the presidency on two more occasions, President Woodrow Wilson named him secretary of state. Known for instigating numerous “treaties of reconciliation” with other countries, Bryan resigned in 1915, believing Wilson's vocal responses to the sinking of the Lusitania would lead to America's involvement in World War I.

[Page 94]In the last years of his life, Bryan focused on moral issues, including Prohibition. In 1925 he went to Dayton, Tennessee, to defend a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools. His main concern was that the teaching of evolution would help buttress the theory of social Darwinism. Though Bryan technically won the case, remembered as the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” he was humiliated by his opponent, Clarence Darrow, who put Bryan on the stand as an expert on the Bible and attacked his apparent hypocrisy and pomposity. As he died shortly after the trial, Bryan's last campaign served to obscure his many years of dedicated service to issues of reform.

With the exceptions of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, “the Great Commoner” was probably the most influential American politician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but he never lost his sympathy and compassion for poor, struggling people or his deep suspicion of big business. As LeRoy Ashby has written, Bryan “helped to define the great issues and policy questions that the nation faced,” including “the relevance of the nation's democratic traditions in an industrialized, corporate society [and] the role of common citizens in an age of specialized knowledge and expertise.”

He was a tireless crusader for the adoption of numerous causes that eventually became law: income and inheritance taxes; organized labor's right to exist and bargain collectively; sharp reductions in tariffs; women's suffrage; strict control over monopolistic railroads, industries, and financial institutions; government aid to farmers; strict controls of banks and currency; federal insurance for bank deposits; child and female labor laws; and direct election of senators.

According to Arthur Link, Bryan was one of a large minority of Democrats in 1912 who supported legislation “to destroy the oligarchical economic structure.” His policies as secretary of state were high-minded, but not always effective or universal. He and Wilson both failed to intervene on behalf of Japanese citizens who were forbidden to own land or earn citizenship in California.

...